No doubt, the breaking of the bridge of a child’s nose, by a pair of forceps – however scientifically applied – would vex any man; yet it will not account for the extravagance of his affliction, nor will it justify the unchristian manner he surrendered himself up to.
To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half an hour – and my uncle Toby in his old fringed chair beside him.
CHAPTER 31
‘I think it a very unreasonable demand,’ cried my great-grandfather, twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the table. ‘By this account, madam, you have only two thousand pounds fortune – and yet you insist upon having three hundred pounds a year jointure after my death.’
‘Because,’ replied my great-grandmother, ‘you have little or no nose, Sir.’
Now before I use the word Nose again – to avoid all confusion in this interesting part of my story, I shall define exactly what I mean by the term: being of the opinion that negligent writers who despise this precaution make themselves as clear as a Will o’ the Wisp: in order to which, what you have to do, before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of judgment – but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of the main word you have most occasion for – changing it, Sir, as you would a guinea, into small coin? which done – let the father of confusion puzzle you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or your reader’s head, if he knows how.
In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as this one, neglecting to make yourself clear is inexcusable; and Heaven is witness, how the world has revenged itself upon me for leaving so many openings to equivocal meanings – and for depending so much upon the cleanliness of my readers’ imaginations.
‘Here are two meanings,’ cried Eugenius, pointing with his forefinger at the word Crevice, in the one hundred and seventy-eighth page of the first volume of this book.
‘And here are two roads,’ replied I, ‘a dirty and a clean one – which shall we take?’
‘The clean,’ replied Eugenius.
‘Eugenius’, said I, stepping before him, ‘to define is to distrust.’ Thus I triumphed over Eugenius; but I triumphed over him like a fool. However, I am not an obstinate one: therefore–
I define a nose as follows – only beseeching my readers, both male and female, for the love of God to guard against the suggestions of the devil, and not to allow him to put any other ideas into their minds, than this.
For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs – I declare, by that word I mean a nose, and nothing more, or less.
CHAPTER 32
‘Because,’ quoth my great-grandmother, ‘you have little or no nose, Sir.’
‘S’death!’ cried my great-grandfather, clapping his hand upon his nose, ‘’tis not so small as that; ’tis a full inch longer than my father’s.’
Now, my great-grandfather’s nose was like the noses of the people whom Pantagruel found dwelling upon the island of Ennasin. ’Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs.
‘’Tis a full inch longer than my father’s,’ continued my grandfather, pressing up the ridge of his nose with his finger.
‘You must mean your uncle’s,’ replied my great-grandmother.
My great-grandfather was convinced. – He untwisted the paper, and signed the article.
CHAPTER 33
‘What an excessive jointure, my dear, we pay out of this small estate of ours,’ quoth my grandmother to my grandfather.
‘My father,’ replied my grandfather, ‘had no more nose, my dear, than there is upon the back of my hand.’
Now, you must know that my great-grandmother outlived my grandfather twelve years; so that my father had the jointure to pay, a hundred and fifty pounds half-yearly, during all that time.
No man paid his bills with a better grace than my father. As far as a hundred pounds went, he would fling it upon the table with a generous spirit; but faced with half that amount, he gave a loud ‘Hem!’, rubbed his nose, scratched his head, looked at both sides of every guinea as he parted with it – and could seldom get to the end of the fifty pounds, without pulling out his handkerchief, and wiping his temples.
Defend me, gracious Heaven! from those persecuting spirits who make no allowances for these workings within us, and for opinions derived from our ancestors!
For three generations at least this opinion in favour of long noses had gradually been taking root in our family; so my father’s whimsical brain was far from having devised this, as it had almost all his other strange notions. He might be said to have sucked this in with his mother’s milk. However, if education planted the mistake, my father watered it, and ripened it to perfection.
He would often declare that he did not see how the greatest family in England could stand it out against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses. And conversely, he would add, it must be a great problem when the same number of long and jolly noses, following one another in a line, did not raise the family up into the best vacancies in the kingdom.
He would often boast that the Shandy family ranked very high in King Harry the VIIIth’s time, owing to its noses; – but that it had never recovered from the blow of my great-grandfather’s nose. ‘It was an ace of clubs indeed,’ he would cry, shaking his head, ‘and as vile a one for an unfortunate family as ever turned up trumps.’
–Softly, gentle reader! where is thy fancy carrying thee? By my great-grandfather’s nose, I mean the external organ of smelling – and which painters say, should take up a full third of the face measured downwards from the hairline.
What a life an author has!
CHAPTER 34
It is a blessing that nature has formed the mind of man with the same happy backwardness which is observed in old dogs – ‘of not learning new tricks.’
What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher be, if he was eternally changing sides!
Now, my father, as I told you, Sir, picked up an opinion as a man picks up an apple. – It becomes his own – and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give it up.
I am aware that Didius will contest this point; and cry out, ‘Whence comes this man’s right to this apple? Pray, Mr. Shandy, how did it begin to be his? was it when he gathered it? or when he chewed it? or when he roasted it? or when he peeled, or digested it? – or when he–? For ’tis plain, Sir, that if the first picking up of the apple did not make it his – then no later act could.’
‘Brother Didius,’ Tribonius will answer, ‘it is decreed, as you may find it in Gregorius and Justinian’s laws, that the sweat of a man’s brows are as much his own property as the breeches upon his backside; and once dropped upon the said apple by the labour when it is found, carried home, roasted, peeled, eaten, digested, and so on; – ’tis evident that the gatherer of the apple has mixed up something with it which was his own, and so the apple is his apple.’
By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for all his opinions; he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more uncommon they were, the stronger was his claim. They had cost him moreover so much labour in cooking and digesting that they might well and truly be said to be his own. Accordingly he held fast by ’em, with teeth and claws, and would fortify them with as many ramparts as my uncle Toby would a citadel.
There was one plaguy rub – the scarcity of materials to defend himself against attack, since few men of genius had written on the subject of great noses. By the trotting of my lean horse, it is incredible! I am quite at a loss, when I consider how much precious time has been wasted upon worse subjects – how many millions of books in all languages have been fabricated upon points not half so important.
What books he could find, however, my father set great store by; and though he would often mock my uncle Toby’s library, yet at the same time he collected every book which had been wrote upon noses with as much care as my honest uncle
collected those on military architecture.
Here – why here, rather than in any other part of my story, I cannot tell: but here it is: my heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear uncle Toby, the tribute I owe thy goodness. Here let me kneel and pour forth the warmest love for thee, and veneration for thy excellency, that ever virtue kindled in a nephew’s bosom.
– Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head! – Thou didst envy no man’s comforts – insulted no man’s opinions – blackened no man’s character – devoured no man’s bread. Gently, with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way. For each one’s sorrow thou hadst a tear; for each man’s need, thou hadst a shilling.
Whilst I can afford to pay a weeder, the path from thy door to thy bowling-green shall never be over-grown. Whilst there is an acre of land in the Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle Toby, shall never be demolished.
CHAPTER 35
My father’s collection on noses was not great, but it was curious; he had the good fortune, moreover, to start well, in getting Bruscambille’s prologue upon long noses for only three half-crowns, owing to the stall-man seeing my father had a strong fancy for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.
‘There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom,’ said the stall-man, ‘except those chained up in libraries.’
My father flung down the money – took Bruscambille and hurried home from Piccadilly to Coleman-street with it, as if it were a treasure.
Once home, he solaced himself with Bruscambille after the manner in which, ’tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress – that is, from morning unto night.
Take note, I go no farther with the simile. My father’s eye was greater than his appetite – he cooled – his affections became divided – he purchased Prignitz, Scroderus, Paraeus, Bouchet’s Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; about which, as I shall have much to say by and by – I will say nothing now.
CHAPTER 36
Of all the tracts my father studied in support of his hypothesis, there was not one which disappointed him more at first, than the celebrated dialogue between Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the great Erasmus, upon the various uses of long noses. – Now don’t let Satan, my dear girl, get astride of your imagination: if he is so nimble as to slip on – let me beg you to frisk, jump, and kick like Tickletoby’s mare till you throw his worship into the dirt.
– And pray who was Tickletoby’s mare?
’Tis as unscholarlike a question, Sir, as to have asked what year the second Punic war broke out. Read, read, read, my unlearned reader! – or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon, you had better throw down this book at once; for without much reading and knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its wisdom has been able to unravel the many truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.
CHAPTER 37
‘Nihil me poenitet hujus nasi,’ quoth Pamphagus; that is, ‘My nose has been the making of me.’ ‘Nec est cur poeniteat,’ replies Cocles; that is, ‘How the deuce should such a nose fail?’
This was laid down by Erasmus with great plainness; but my father was disappointed to find no subtler argument from so able a pen.
My father pished and pughed at first most terribly. But as the dialogue was by Erasmus, he soon read it over again with great application, studying every word through and through.
He could still make nothing of it. ‘Mayhap more is meant than is said in it,’ quoth he. ‘Learned men don’t write dialogues upon long noses for nothing. I’ll study the mystic and allegoric sense.’
My father read on. Now I must inform your worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses listed by Erasmus, he writes that a long nose has its domestic conveniences also; for instance, in the want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well ad excitandum focum (to arouse the fire.)
My father had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it.
‘I’ve got within a single letter, brother Toby,’ cried he, scratching on, ‘of Erasmus’s mystic meaning. I’ve done it,’ he said, snapping his fingers. ‘See, my dear brother, how I have mended the sense.’
‘But you have marred a word,’ replied my uncle Toby. My father bit his lip – and tore the page out in a passion.
CHAPTER 38
O Slawkenbergius! thou faithful analyzer of my Disgrazias – thou sad foreteller of the misfortunes which have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other cause. Tell me, Slawkenbergius! what secret impulse first cried out to thee – ‘Go, go, Slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of thy life and all thy powers to the service of mankind, and write a grand Folio for them, upon the subject of their noses.’
How this came to pass – as he has been dead and buried ninety years – we can only guess.
In the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of his motives for spending so many years writing this one work – towards the end of his prologue, which by the bye should have come first, but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it betwixt the contents list and the book itself – he informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit down coolly, and consider the true state of man – or, to shorten my translation, for Slawkenbergius’s book is in Latin, and somewhat prolix – ‘ever since I understood what was what,’ quoth Slawkenbergius, ‘and could see that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by others, I have felt a mighty and irresistible call to undertake this myself.’
And to do him justice, he deserves to be held up as a prototype for all writers of voluminous works. For he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject – examined every part of it – then brought it into full daylight; elucidating it with his profound knowledge of the sciences – collecting, and compiling – begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, so that his book may be considered a thorough-stitched Digest and regular institute of noses, containing all that needs to be known about them.
Therefore I will not speak of many (otherwise) valuable books of my father’s collection, either wrote plump on noses or touching them – such as Prignitz, now lying upon the table before me, who from the examination of four thousand different skulls, in twenty charnel-houses in Silesia, through which he had rummaged – has informed us, that the shape of the osseous or bony parts of human noses, in every country except Crim Tartary, are much more alike than the world imagines; and that the size and jollity of every individual nose is owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts the blood and animal spirits are driven by the warmth of the imagination. So, says Prignitz, the excellency of the nose is in direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the wearer’s fancy or imagination.
Likewise, because ’tis all contained in Slawkenbergius, I say nothing of Scroderus who, all the world knows, violently opposed Prignitz – proving ‘that on the contrary – the nose begat the fancy.’
My father was weighing up which side he should take in this affair; when Ambrose Paraeus decided it by overthrowing both systems.
I am sure the learned know this: I mention it only to show that I know the fact myself–
That this Ambrose Paraeus was chief surgeon and nose-mender to Francis the Ninth of France, and was esteemed by the whole college of physicians, for knowing more about noses than anyone who had ever taken them in hand.
Now Ambrose Paraeus convinced my father that both Prignitz and Scoderus were wrong; and that the length and goodness of the nose was owing simply to the softness of the nurse’s breast; and flat, short noses were due to firmness of the same organ of nutrition in the healthy – which, though happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose was so snubbed that it
would never grow to full measure. But when the mother’s breast was soft and flaccid – by sinking into it, quoth Paraeus, as into so much butter, the nose was comforted, nourished, plumped up, and set a-growing for ever.
I have two things to observe of Paraeus; first, that he explains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum: for which may he rest in peace!
And, secondly, that his hypothesis overthrew not only the systems of Prignitz and Scroderus – but also the peace and harmony of our family. For three days, it not only embroiled matters between my father and my mother, but turned the whole house and everything in it, except my uncle Toby, quite upside down.
Such a ridiculous dispute between a man and his wife surely never occurred. My mother, you must know–
– but I have fifty things more necessary to let you know first – I have a hundred difficulties to clear up, and a thousand domestic misadventures crowding in upon me thick and fast. A cow broke in (tomorrow morning) to my uncle Toby’s fortifications, and ate the grass which faced his hornwork and covered way. – Trim insists upon a court-martial – the cow to be shot – Slop to be crucifixed – myself to be tristram’d and made a martyr of; – poor unhappy devils that we all are! – I need swaddling – but there is not time to waste – I have left my father lying across his bed, and my uncle Toby sitting in his old chair beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an hour; and five-and-thirty minutes are lapsed already.
Of all the perplexities an author was ever in, this certainly is the greatest, for I have Slawkenbergius’s folio, Sir, to finish – a dialogue between my father and my uncle Toby, upon the solution of Prignitz, Scroderus and others to relate – a tale out of Slawkenbergius to translate, and all this in five minutes less than no time at all. Such a head! would to Heaven my enemies only saw the inside of it!
Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged Page 14