CHAPTER 39
There was no scene more entertaining in our family – and I believe the supreme Maker never put a family together whose characters were contrasted with so dramatic a felicity as ours; or which afforded such exquisite scenes, as in the Shandy Family.
None of these was more diverting, I say, in this whimsical theatre of ours – than what frequently arose out of this chapter of long noses – especially when my father’s imagination was heated with the enquiry, and nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle Toby’s too.
My uncle Toby, with infinite patience, would sit smoking his pipe for hours, whilst my father was trying every way to drive Prignitz and Scroderus into his head.
Whether they were above my uncle Toby’s reason – or whether his brain was like damp timber, where no spark could possibly take hold – or that it was so full of saps, mines, curtins, and such military obstacles, I say not.
’Twas unfortunate, no doubt, that my father had to translate every word for my uncle’s benefit; and as my father was no great master of Latin, his translation of Slawkenbergius was not always of the purest. This naturally opened a door to a second misfortune; that in his zeal to persuade my uncle Toby, my father’s ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as the translation outran my uncle Toby: which added little to the clarity of my father’s lecture.
CHAPTER 40
The gift of reasoning and deduction – I mean in man, not in superior classes of being, such as angels and spirits – but inferior beings, as your worships all know, syllogize by their noses.
The gift of syllogising, or reasoning, logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas with one another, by the intervention of a third idea (called the medius terminus); just as a man, as Locke observes, uses a yardstick to find two nine-pin-alleys to be of the same length, although they could not be brought next to each other to compare.
Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle Toby’s deportment – what great attention he gave to every word – and with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated his pipe, holding it this way and that – he would have concluded that my uncle Toby had got hold of the medius terminus, and was comparing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, as my father laid them before him.
This, by the bye, was more than my father wanted – his aim in these lectures was not to enable my uncle Toby to discuss, but to comprehend; – to hold the grains of learning – not to weigh them. My uncle Toby, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither.
CHAPTER 41
‘’Tis a pity,’ cried my father one winter’s night, after three hours’ painful translation of Slawkenbergius – ‘’tis a pity that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fortresses, and not surrender under the closest siege.’
Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle Toby’s thoughts, during my father’s explanation of Prignitz, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green! His body might as well have taken a turn there too – for with all the appearance of being intent on the argument, my uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture as if my father had been translating Slawkenbergius from Latin into Cherokee.
But the word siege, like a talismanic power, wafted through my uncle Toby’s fancy – he opened his ears – and my father, observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, – my father with great pleasure began his sentence again, only dropping the metaphor of the siege, to keep clear of some dangers he foresaw from it.
‘’Tis a pity,’ said my father, ‘that truth can only be on one side, brother, considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shown in their solutions of noses.’
‘Solutions? Can then noses be dissolved?’ replied my uncle Toby.
My father thrust back his chair – rose up – took four long strides to the door – jerked it open – shut it again – went hastily to his bureau – walked slowly back – threw his bookmark into the fire – bit my mother’s satin pin-cushion in two, filling his mouth with bran – confounded it – but mark! the oath of confusion was levelled at my uncle Toby’s brain, which was confused enough already.
’Twas well my father’s passions lasted not long; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life; and nothing made his passions go off so like gunpowder, as the unexpected blows his science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle Toby’s questions. Had ten dozen hornets stung him all at once, they could not have startled him half so much as one single query unseasonably popping in full upon him in his hobby-horsical career.
’Twas all one to my uncle Toby – he smoked his pipe on with unvaried composure – he never intended offence to his brother – and as he could seldom find out where the sting lay, he always gave my father the chance of cooling by himself. My father took five minutes and thirty-five seconds on this occasion.
‘By all that’s good, brother Toby!’ said he, eventually. ‘Why, by the solutions of noses, I meant, as you might have known, had you favoured me with one grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men give of the causes of short and long noses.’
‘There is no cause but one,’ replied my uncle, ‘why one man’s nose is longer than another’s: because God pleases to have it so.’
‘That is Grangousier’s solution,’ said my father.
‘’Tis he,’ continued my uncle Toby, ‘who makes us all, and puts us together in such proportions as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom.’
‘’Tis a pious account,’ cried my father, ‘but not philosophical – there is more religion in it than science.’
Now my uncle Toby feared God, and reverenced religion. So the moment my father finished his remark, my uncle Toby fell a-whistling Lillabullero with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.
CHAPTER 42
Every page of Slawkenbergius was a rich treasure of knowledge to my father; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in the world were lost – should the wisdom of governments ever be forgot, and Slawkenbergius only were left – there would be enough in him, he would say, to set the world a-going again.
A treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of all that needed to be known about noses, and everything else. All day was Hafen Slawkenbergius his recreation and delight: ’twas for ever in his hands, as worn and thumbed as a canon’s prayer-book.
In my opinion, the best, or at least the most amusing part of Hafen Slawkenbergius is his tales – and, considering he was a German, many of them told quite imaginatively. These take up his second book, and are contained in ten decads, each decad having ten tales – there are a few in his eighth, ninth, and tenth decads, which I own seem rather playful – but in general they all turn somehow or other upon the main hinges of his subject, and were collected by him as so many illustrations upon the doctrines of noses.
As we have leisure upon our hands – if you give me leave, madam, I’ll tell you the ninth tale of his tenth decad.
BOOK 4
SLAWKENBERGIUS’S TALE
It was a cool refreshing evening in late August, when a stranger, mounted upon a dark mule, with a small cloak-bag behind him, containing a few shirts, a pair of shoes, and a crimson-satin pair of breeches, entered the town of Strasburg.
He told the sentinel at the gates that he had been at the Promontory of Noses – was going on to Frankfort – and should be back again at Strasburg in a month, on his way to Crim Tartary.
The sentinel looked up into the stranger’s face – he never saw such a Nose in his life!
‘I have made a very good venture of it,’ quoth the stranger. Slipping his hand out of a loop of black ribbon, from which a scimitar was hung, he courteously touched his cap, put a florin into the sentinel’s hand, and passed on.
‘It grieves me,’ said the sentinel, speaking to a little bandy-legged drumm
er, ‘that so courteous a soul should have lost his scabbard. He will not be able to get a scabbard to fit his scimitar in all Strasburg.’
‘I never had a scabbard,’ replied the stranger, looking back at them. ‘I carry my scimitar naked,’ continued he, his mule moving on slowly all the time – ‘on purpose to defend my nose.’
‘It is well worth it, gentle stranger,’ replied the sentinel.
‘’Tis not worth a penny,’ said the bandy-legged drummer; ‘’tis a nose of parchment.’
‘Apart from being six times as big, ’tis a nose like my own,’ said the sentinel.
‘I heard it crackle,’ said the drummer.
‘By dunder,’ said the sentinel, ‘I saw it bleed.’
‘What a pity,’ cried the bandy-legged drummer, ‘we did not touch it!’
At this very moment, the same point was being debated betwixt a trumpeter and his wife, who were just coming up, and had stopped to see the stranger pass by.
‘What a nose!’ said the trumpeter’s wife, ‘’tis as long as a trumpet.’
‘And of the same metal,’ said the trumpeter, ‘as you hear by its sneezing.’
‘’Tis as soft as a flute,’ said she.
‘’Tis brass,’ said the trumpeter.
‘’Tis a pudding’s end,’ said his wife.
‘I tell thee,’ said the trumpeter, ‘’tis a brazen nose.’
‘I’ll get to the bottom of it,’ said the trumpeter’s wife, ‘for I will touch it with my finger before I sleep.’
The stranger’s mule moved on so slowly that he heard every word of both these disputes.
‘No!’ said he, dropping his reins, and crossing his hands upon his breast, in a saint-like position. ‘No! I owe nothing to the world – slandered as I have been. My nose shall never be touched whilst Heaven gives me strength.’
Making a vow to Saint Nicholas, he took up the reins and rode on slowly through the streets of Strasburg, till he came to the great inn in the market-place opposite the church.
The stranger alighted, and ordered his mule to be led into the stable, and his cloak-bag to be brought in: then, opening it, and taking out his crimson-satin breeches, with a silver-fringed appendage, which I dare not name – he put on his breeches, with his fringed codpiece, and with his short scimitar in his hand, walked out on to the grand parade.
The stranger had taken three turns upon the parade, when he saw the trumpeter’s wife. So turning short, lest she should try to touch his nose, he instantly went back to his inn – undressed, packed up his crimson-satin breeches, &c., in his cloak-bag, and called for his mule.
‘I am going on to Frankfort,’ said the stranger, ‘and shall be back at Strasburg in a month. I hope,’ he continued, stroking his mule before he mounted it, ‘that you have been kind to this faithful slave of mine – it has carried me above six hundred leagues.’
‘’Tis a long journey, Sir,’ replied the inn-keeper, ‘unless a man has great business.’
‘Tut! tut!’ said the stranger. ‘I have been at the Promontory of Noses; and have got me one of the goodliest, thank Heaven, that ever man had.’
Whilst the stranger was giving this odd account of himself, the inn-keeper and his wife kept their eyes fixed full on the stranger’s nose.
‘By saint Radagunda,’ said the inn-keeper’s wife to her husband, ‘it is bigger than a dozen noses put together! Is it not a noble nose?’
‘’Tis a false nose, my dear,’ said the inn-keeper.
‘’Tis a true nose,’ said his wife.
‘’Tis made of fir-tree,’ said he. ‘I smell the turpentine.’
‘There’s a pimple on it,’ said she.
‘’Tis a dead nose,’ replied the inn-keeper.
‘’Tis a live nose, and if I am alive myself,’ said the inn-keeper’s wife, ‘I will touch it.’
‘I have made a vow to saint Nicolas,’ said the stranger, ‘that my nose shall not be touched till–’ Here he stopped.
‘Till when?’ said she.
‘It never shall be touched,’ said he, clasping his hands to his breast, ‘until that hour–’
‘What hour?’ cried she.
‘Never! never!’ said the stranger, ‘never till I am got to–’
‘For Heaven’s sake, to where?’ said she. But the stranger rode away without saying another word.
The stranger had not got half a league towards Frankfort before all the city of Strasburg was in an uproar about his nose. The Compline bells were ringing to call the Strasburgers to their prayers, but no one heard ’em. The city was like a swarm of bees – men, women, and children flying in at one door, out at another – this way and that way – ‘did you see it? did you see it? for mercy’s sake, who saw it?’
‘Alas! I was at vespers!’ ‘I was washing,’ ‘I was scouring,’ – ‘I never saw it’ – ‘I never touched it!’ was the general cry.
Whilst all this confusion triumphed throughout the city of Strasburg, the courteous stranger went gently upon his mule towards Frankfort, talking as he rode, in broken sentences, sometimes to his mule – sometimes to himself – sometimes to his Julia.
‘O Julia, my lovely Julia! – nay, I cannot stop to let thee bite that thistle – that a rival should have robbed me of enjoyment on the very point of it…
‘Pugh! – ’tis nothing but a thistle – never mind...
‘Banished from my country – my friends – from thee…
‘Poor devil, thou’rt sadly tired! Come, get on a little faster – there’s nothing in my cloak-bag but two shirts, a crimson-satin pair of breeches, and a fringed – Dear Julia…
‘But why to Frankfort – is an unfelt hand secretly leading me?...
‘Saint Nicolas! at this rate we shall be all night in getting to…
‘To happiness – or am I to be the plaything of fortune? – why did I not stay at Strasburg! Come, thou shalt drink – to St. Nicolas – O Julia! – What dost thou prick up thy ears at? ’tis nothing but a man, &c…’
The stranger rode on, talking in this manner, till he arrived at his inn, where he alighted, saw his mule taken good care of – took his cloak-bag, with his crimson-satin breeches, &c., in it – called for an omelette, went to his bed about twelve o’clock, and in five minutes fell asleep.
By then the tumult in Strasburg had abated; the Strasburgers had got quietly into their beds – but they did not rest: for in their minds, the stranger’s nose had taken on as many different shapes as there were heads in Strasburg to hold them.
The abbess of Quedlingberg, who had come that week to Strasburg with four dignitaries of her order, to consult the university upon a case relating to their placket-holes – was ill all the night.
The courteous stranger’s nose had got perched in her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of the four nuns of her chapter, that they could not get a wink of sleep the whole night through – in short, they got up like so many ghosts.
All the severer orders of nuns who lay that night in blankets of hair-cloth, were in a worse condition still; – from tumbling and tossing in their beds the whole night, they scratched themselves, and got out of their beds almost flayed alive, having never once shut their eyes.
The nuns of saint Ursula acted the wisest – they never attempted to go to bed at all.
The dean of Strasburg and the prebendaries (assembled that morning to consider the case of buttered buns) all wished they had followed the nuns of saint Ursulas’ example.
In the confusion, the bakers had forgot to prove their loaves – so there were no buttered buns to be had for breakfast in all Strasburg. The cathedral was in a commotion: such restlessness, and such a zealous inquiry into its cause, had never happened since Martin Luther had turned the city upside down.
What a carnival did the stranger’s nose cause in the laity! ’tis more than my pen has power to describe; though I acknowledge, (cries Slawkenbergius, with more gaiety than I could have expected from him) that there is many a good simile which might
give my countrymen some idea of it; but at the end of such a work as this, on which I have spent the greatest part of my life, how should I have either time or inclination to search for it? Let it suffice to say, that the riot and disorder in the Strasburgers’ fantasies was so general – so many strange things were spoken about it – every soul, good and bad – rich and poor – learned and unlearned – mistress and maid – spent their time in hearing about it: every eye languished to see it – every finger burned to touch it.
Now what added to their desire was this, that the sentinel, the bandy-legged drummer, the trumpeter, the trumpeter’s wife, the inn-keeper and his wife, all widely differed from each other in their description of the stranger’s nose.
They all agreed in two points: first, that he was gone to Frankfort and would not return for a month; and secondly that, whether his nose was true or false, the stranger himself was a perfect paragon of beauty – the finest-made man – the most genteel and courteous that had ever entered the gates of Strasburg; that as he rode, with his scimitar slung loosely to his wrist, or walked in his crimson-satin breeches across the parade – ’twas with so sweet an air of careless modesty, yet so manly, that if his nose had not stood in the way, he would have captured the heart of every virgin who saw him.
The abbess called for the trumpeter’s wife, who went to visit her with the trumpet in her hand, to illustrate her theory. The sentinel and bandy-legged drummer – nothing could equal them! they read lectures under the city-gates, with all the pomp of Greek orators.
The inn-keeper read his lecture in the stable-yard – his wife read hers more privately in a back room. All flocked to their lectures – in a word, each Strasburger came crowding for information on the stranger’s nose.
As soon as the trumpeter’s wife had left the abbess, she begun to speak in public, on a stool in the middle of the great parade – which incommoded the other demonstrators: when a philosopher (cries Slawkenbergius) has a trumpet to help him, pray what rival can be heard besides him?