The Tatler (Vol 4)

N.B.– As soon as the sentence was executed on the criminal, which was done in open court with the utmost severity, the first lady of the bench on Mr. Bickerstaff's right hand stood up, and made a motion to the court, that whereas it was impossible for women of fashion to dress themselves before the church was half done, and whereas many confusions and inconveniences did arise thereupon, it might be lawful for them to send a footman, in order to keep their places, as was usual in other polite and well-regulated assemblies.227 The motion was ordered to be entered in the books, and considered at a more convenient time.

Charles Cambric, linen-draper, in the city of Westminster, was indicted for speaking obscenely to the Lady Penelope Touchwood. It appeared, that the prosecutor and her woman going in a stage-coach from London to Brentford, where they were to be met by the lady's own chariot, the criminal and another of his acquaintance travelled with them in the same coach, at which time the prisoner talked bawdy for the space of three miles and a half. The prosecutor alleged that over against the Old Fox at Knightsbridge he mentioned the word "linen"; that at the farther end of Kensington he made use of the term "smock"; and that before he came to Hammersmith, he talked almost a quarter of an hour upon wedding-shifts. The prosecutor's woman confirmed what her lady had said, and added further, that she had never seen her lady in so great a confusion, and in such a taking, as she was during the whole discourse of the criminal. The prisoner had little to say for himself, but that he talked only in his own trade, and meant no hurt by what he said. The jury, however, found him guilty, and represented by their forewoman, that such discourses were apt to sully the imagination, and that by a concatenation of ideas, the word "linen" implied many things that were not proper to be stirred up in the mind of a woman who was of the prosecutor's quality, and therefore gave it as their verdict, that the linen-draper should lose his tongue. Mr. Bickerstaff said, he thought the prosecutor's ears were as much to blame as the prisoner's tongue, and therefore gave sentence as follows: that they should both be placed over against one another in the middle of the court, there to remain for the space of one quarter of an hour, during which time the linen-draper was to be gagged, and the lady to hold her hands close upon both her ears, which was executed accordingly.

Edward Callicot was indicted as an accomplice to Charles Cambric, for that he, the said Edward Callicot, did, by his silence and his smiles, seem to approve and abet the said Charles Cambric in everything he said. It appeared, that the prisoner was foreman of the shop to the aforesaid Charles Cambric, and by his post obliged to smile at everything that the other should be pleased to say: upon which he was acquitted.

Josias Shallow was indicted in the name of Dame Winifred, sole relict of Richard Dainty, Esq., for having said several times in company, and in the hearing of several persons there present, that he was extremely obliged to the widow Dainty, and that he should never be able sufficiently to express his gratitude. The prosecutor urged that this might blast her reputation, and that it was in effect a boasting of favours which he had never received. The prisoner seemed to be much astonished at the construction which was put upon his words, and said that he meant nothing by them, but that the widow had befriended him in a lease, and was very kind to his younger sister. The jury finding him a little weak in his understanding, without going out of the court, brought in their verdict Ignoramus.

Ursula Goodenough was accused by the Lady Betty Wouldbe, for having said that she, the Lady Betty Wouldbe, was painted. The prisoner brought several persons of good credit to witness to her reputation, and proved by undeniable evidences, that she was never at the place where the words were said to have been uttered. The Censor observing the behaviour of the prosecutor, found reason to believe that she had indicted the prisoner for no other reason but to make her complexion be taken notice of, which indeed was very fresh and beautiful: he therefore asked the offender with a very stern voice, how she could presume to spread so groundless a report? and whether she saw any colours in the Lady Wouldbe's face that could procure credit to such a falsehood? "Do you see," says he, "any lilies or roses in her cheeks, any bloom, any probability – " The prosecutor, not able to bear such language any longer, told him, that he talked like a blind old fool, and that she was ashamed to have entertained any opinion of his wisdom: but she was soon put to silence, and sentenced to wear her mask for five months, and not to presume to show her face till the town should be empty.

Benjamin Buzzard, Esq., was indicted for having told the Lady Everbloom at a public ball, that she looked very well for a woman of her years. The prisoner not denying the fact, and persisting before the court that he looked upon it as a compliment, the jury brought him in non compos mentis.

The court then adjourned to Monday the 11th instant.

"Copia vera.– Charles Lillie."

No. 260. [Addison and Steele.

From Tuesday, Dec. 5, to Thursday, Dec. 7, 1710

Non cuicunque datum est habere nasum.

Mart., Epig. i. 41.From my own Apartment, Dec. 6

We have a very learned and elaborate dissertation upon thumbs in Montaigne's Essays,228 and another upon ears in the "Tale of a Tub."229 I am here going to write one upon noses,230 having chosen for my text the following verses out of "Hudibras":

So learned Talicotius fromThe brawny part of porter's bumCut supplemental noses, whichLasted as long as parent breech:But when the date of nock 231 was out,Off dropped the sympathetic snout. 232

Notwithstanding that there is nothing obscene in natural knowledge, and that I intend to give as little offence as may be to readers of a well-bred imagination, I must, for my own quiet, desire the critics (who in all times have been famous for good noses) to refrain from the lecture233 of this curious tract. These gentlemen were formerly marked out and distinguished by the little rhinocerical nose, which was always looked upon as an instrument of derision, and which they were used to cock, toss, or draw up in a contemptuous manner, upon reading the works of their ingenious contemporaries. It is not therefore for this generation of men that I write the present transaction:

– Minus aptus acutis

Naribus horum hominum —

but for the sake of some of my philosophical friends in the Royal Society, who peruse discourses of this nature with a becoming gravity, and a desire of improving by them.

Many are the opinions of learned men concerning the rise of that fatal distemper which has always taken a particular pleasure in venting its spite upon the nose. I have seen a little burlesque poem in Italian that gives a very pleasant account of this matter. The fable of it runs thus: Mars, the god of war, having served during the siege of Naples in the shape of a French colonel, received a visit one night from Venus, the goddess of love, who had been always his professed mistress and admirer. The poem says, she came to him in the disguise of a sutling wench, with a bottle of brandy under her arm. Let that be as it will, he managed matters so well, that she went away big-bellied, and was at length brought to bed of a little Cupid. This boy, whether it were by reason of any bad food that his father had eaten during the siege, or of any particular malignity in the stars that reigned at his nativity, came into the world with a very sickly look and crazy constitution. As soon as he was able to handle his bow, he made discoveries of a most perverse disposition. He dipped all his arrows in poison, that rotted everything they touched; and what was more particular, aimed all his shafts at the nose, quite contrary to the practice of his elder brothers, who had made a human heart their butt in all countries and ages. To break him of this roguish trick, his parents put him to school to Mercury, who did all he could to hinder him from demolishing the noses of mankind; but in spite of education the boy continued very unlucky; and though his malice was a little softened by good instructions, he would very frequently let fly an envenomed arrow, and wound his votaries oftener in the nose than in the heart. Thus far the fable.

I need not tell my learned reader that Correggio has drawn a Cupid taking his lesson from Mercury, conformable to this poem; nor that the poem itself was designed as a burlesque upon Fracastorius.234

It was a little after this fatal siege of Naples that Talicotius235 began to practise in a town of Germany. He was the first clap doctor that I meet with in history, and a greater man in his age than our celebrated Dr. Wall.236 He saw this species extremely mutilated and disfigured by this new distemper that was crept into it; and therefore, in pursuance of a very seasonable invention, set up a manufacture of noses, having first got a patent that none should presume to make noses besides himself. His first patient was a great man of Portugal, who had done good services to his country, but in the midst of them unfortunately lost his nose. Talicotius grafted a new one on the remaining part of the gristle or cartilaginous substance, which would sneeze, smell, take snuff, pronounce the letters m or n, and, in short, do all the functions of a genuine and natural nose. There was, however, one misfortune in this experiment. The Portuguese's complexion was a little upon the subfusk, with very black eyes and dark eyebrows, and the nose being taken from a porter that had a white German skin, and cut out of those parts that are not exposed to the sun, it was very visible that the features of his face were not fellows. In a word, the Comdè resembled one of those maimed antique statues that has often a modern nose of fresh marble glued to a face of such a yellow ivory complexion as nothing can give but age. To remedy this particular for the future, the doctor got together a great collection of porters, men of all complexions, black, brown, fair, dark, sallow, pale, and ruddy; so that it was impossible for a patient of the most out-of-the-way colour not to find a nose to match it.

The doctor's house was now very much enlarged, and became a kind of college, or rather hospital, for the fashionable cripples of both sexes that resorted to him from all parts of Europe. Over his door was fastened a large golden snout, not unlike that which is placed over the great gates at Brasenose College, in Oxford; and as it is usual for the learned in foreign universities to distinguish their houses by a Latin sentence, the doctor writ underneath this great golden proboscis two verses out of Ovid:

Militat omnis amans, habet et sua castra Cupido,Pontice, crede mihi, militat omnis amans. 237

It is reported, that Talicotius had at one time in his house twelve German counts, nineteen French marquises, and a hundred Spanish cavaliers, besides one solitary English esquire, of whom more hereafter. Though the doctor had the monopoly of noses in his own hands, he is said not to have been unreasonable. Indeed, if a man had occasion for a high Roman nose, he must go to the price of it. A carbuncle nose likewise bore an excessive rate: but for your ordinary short turned-up noses, of which there was the greatest consumption, they cost little or nothing; at least the purchasers thought so, who would have been content to have paid much dearer for them, rather than to have gone without them.

The sympathy betwixt the nose and its parent was very extraordinary. "Hudibras" has told us, that when the porter died, the nose dropped of course, in which case it was always usual to return the nose, in order to have it interred with its first owner. The nose was likewise affected by the pain as well as death of the original proprietor. An eminent instance of this nature happened to three Spaniards whose noses were all made out of the same piece of brawn. They found them one day shoot and swell extremely, upon which they sent to know how the porter did, and heard upon inquiry, that the parent of the noses had been severely kicked the day before, and that the porter kept his bed on account of the bruises it had received. This was highly resented by the Spaniards, who found out the person that had used the porter so unmercifully, and treated him in the same manner as if the indignity had been done to their own noses. In this and several other cases it might be said, that the porters led the gentlemen by the nose.

On the other hand, if anything went amiss with the nose, the porter felt the effects of it, insomuch that it was generally articled with the patient, that he should not only abstain from all his old courses, but should on no pretence whatever smell pepper, or eat mustard; on which occasion, the part where the incision had been made was seized with unspeakable twinges and prickings.

The Englishman I before mentioned was so very irregular, and relapsed so frequently into the distemper which at first brought him to the learned Talicotius, that in the space of two years he wore out five noses, and by that means so tormented the porters, that if he would have given £500 for a nose, there was not one of them that would accommodate him. This young gentleman was born of honest parents, and passed his first years in fox-hunting; but accidentally quitting the woods, and coming up to London, he was so charmed with the beauties of the play-house, that he had not been in town two days before he got the misfortune which carried off this part of his face. He used to be called in Germany, the Englishman of five noses, and, the gentleman that had thrice as many noses as he had ears: such was the raillery of those times.

I shall close this paper with an admonition to the young men of this town, which I think the more necessary, because I see several new fresh-coloured faces, that have made their first appearance in it this winter. I must therefore assure them, that the art of making noses is entirely lost; and in the next place, beg them not to follow the example of our ordinary town rakes, who live as if there was a Talicotius to be met with at the corner of every street. Whatever young men may think, the nose is a very becoming part of the face, and a man makes but a very silly figure without it. But it is the nature of youth not to know the value of anything till they have lost it. The general precept, therefore, I shall leave with them is, to regard every town-woman as a particular kind of siren, that has a design upon their noses; and that, amidst her flatteries and allurements, they will fancy she speaks to them in that humorous phrase of old Plautus:

Ego tibi faciem denasabo mordicus. 238

"Keep your face out of my way, or I'll bite off your nose."

No. 261. [Steele.

From Thursday, Dec. 7, to Saturday, Dec. 9, 1710

From my own Apartment, Dec. 8

It is the duty of all who make philosophy the entertainment of their lives, to turn their thoughts to practical schemes for the good of society, and not pass away their time in fruitless searches, which tend rather to the ostentation of knowledge than the service of life. For this reason I cannot forbear reading even the common bills that are daily put into people's hands as they pass the streets, which give us notice of the present residence, the past travels, and infallible medicines of doctors, useful in their generation, though much below the character of the renowned Talicotius: but upon a nice calculation of the successes of such adepts, I find their labours tend mostly to the enriching only one sort of men, that is to say, the Society of Upholders. From this observation, and many other which occur to me when I am numbering the good people of Great Britain, I cannot but favour any proposal which tends to repairing the losses we sustain by eminent cures. The best I have met with in this kind, has been offered to my consideration, and recommended by a letter, subscribed Thomas Clement.239 The title to his printed articles runs thus: "By the Profitable Society at the Wheat Sheaf, over against Tom's Coffee-house, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, new proposals for promoting a contribution towards raising two hundred and fifty pounds to be made on the baptizing of any infant born in wedlock." The plan is laid with such proper regulations, as serves (to such as fall in with it for the sake of their posterity) all the uses, without any of the inconveniences of settlements. By this means, such whose fortunes depend upon their own industry, or personal qualifications, need not be deterred by fear of poverty from that state which nature and reason prescribe to us as the fountain of the greatest happiness in human life. The censors of Rome had power vested in them to lay taxes on the unmarried; and I think I cannot show my impartiality better than in inquiring into the extravagant privileges my brother bachelors enjoy, and fine them accordingly. I shall not allow a single life in one sex to be reproached, and held in esteem in the other. It would not, methinks, be amiss, if an old bachelor, who lives in contempt of matrimony, were obliged to give a portion to an old maid who is willing to enter into it. At the same time I must allow, that those who can plead courtship, and were unjustly rejected, shall not be liable to the pains and penalties of celibacy. But such as pretend an aversion to the whole sex, because they were ill-treated by a particular female, and cover their sense of disappointment in women under a contempt of their favour, shall be proceeded against as bachelors convict. I am not without hopes, that from this slight warning, all the unmarried men of fortune, taste, and refinement, will, without further delay, become lovers and humble servants to such of their acquaintance as are most agreeable to them, under pain of my censures: and it is to be hoped, the rest of the world, who remain single for fear of the encumbrances of wedlock, will become subscribers to Mr. Clement's proposal. By these means we shall have a much more numerous account of births in the year 1711, than any ever before known in Great Britain, where merely to be born is a distinction of Providence, greater than being born to a fortune in another place.

As I was going on in the consideration of this good office which Mr. Clement proposes to do his country, I received the following letter, which seems to be dictated by a like modest and public spirit, that makes use of me also in its design of obliging mankind:

"Mr. Bickerstaff,

"In the royal lottery for a million and a half, I had the good fortune of obtaining a prize. From before the drawing I had devoted a fifth of whatever should arise to me to charitable uses. Accordingly I lately troubled you with my request and commission for placing half-a-dozen youths with Mr. More,240 writing-master in Castle Street, to whom, it is said, we owe all the fine devices, flourishes, and the composure of all the plates, for the drawing and paying the tickets. Be pleased therefore, good sir, to find or make leisure for complying therewith, for I would not appear concerned in this small matter. I am very much

"Your humble Servant, &c."

It is no small pleasure to observe, that in the midst of a very degenerate age, there are still spirits which retain their natural dignity, and pursue the good of their fellow-creatures: some in making themselves useful by professed service, some by secret generosity. Were I at liberty to discover even all the good I know of many men living at this time, there would want nothing but a suitable historian to make them appear as illustrious as any of the noblest of the old Greeks or Romans. The cunning some have used to do handsome and worthy actions, the address to do men services, and escape their notice, has produced so many surprising incidents (which have been laid before me during my censorship), as, in the opinion of posterity, would absolve this age of all its crimes and follies. I know no way to deal with such delicate minds as these, but by assuring them, that when they cease to do good, I shall tell all the good they have done already. Let therefore the benefactor to the youths above-mentioned continue such bounties, upon pain of being publicly praised. But there is no probability of his running into that hazard; for a strong habit of virtue can make men suspend the receiving acknowledgments due to their merit, till they are out of a capacity of receiving them. I am so very much charmed with accidents of this kind, that I have made a collection of all the memorable handsome things done by private men in my time. As a specimen of my manner of noting such actions, take the following fragment out of much more which is written in my Year-Book, on the remarkable will of a gentleman, whom I shall here call Celamico.

"This day died that plain and excellent man, my much honoured friend Celamico, who bequeathed his whole estate to a gentleman no way related to him, and to whom he had given no such expectation in his lifetime."

He was a person of a very enlarged soul, and thought the nearest relation among men to be the resemblance of their minds and sentiments. He was not mistaken in the worth of his successor, who received the news of this unexpected good fortune with an air that showed him less moved with the benefit than the loss of the benefactor.

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"Notice is hereby given, that on Monday the 11th instant, the case of the visit comes on, between the hours of ten and eleven, at the Court of Honour; where both persons are to attend, the meeting there not being to be understood as a visit, and the right of the next visit being then to be wholly settled, according to the prayer of the plaintiff."

No. 262. [Addison and Steele.

From Saturday, Dec. 9, to Tuesday, Dec. 12, 1710

Verba togæ sequeris juncturâ callidus acri,Ore teres modico, pallentes radere moresDoctus et ingenuo culpam defigere ludo.Pers., Sat. v. 14. Journal of the Court of Honour, &c. 241

Timothy Treatall, Gent., was indicted by several ladies of his sisters' acquaintance for a very rude affront offered to them at an entertainment, to which he had invited them on Tuesday the 7th of November last past, between the hours of eight and nine in the evening. The indictment set forth, that the said Mr. Treatall, upon the serving up of the supper, desired the ladies to take their places according to their different age and seniority, for that it was the way always at his table to pay respect to years. The indictment added, that this produced an unspeakable confusion in the company; for that the ladies, who before had pressed together for a place at the upper end of the table, immediately crowded with the same disorder towards the end that was quite opposite; that Mrs. Frontly had the insolence to clap herself down at the very lowest place of the table; that the Widow Partlett seated herself on the right hand of Mrs. Frontly, alleging for her excuse, that no ceremony was to be used at a round table; that Mrs. Fidget and Mrs. Fescue disputed above half-an-hour for the same chair, and that the latter would not give up the cause till it was decided by the parish register, which happened to be kept hard by. The indictment further said, that the rest of the company who sat down, did it with a reserve to their right, which they were at liberty to assert on another occasion; and that Mrs. Mary Pippe, an old maid, was placed by the unanimous vote of the whole company at the upper end of the table, from whence she had the confusion to behold several mothers of families among her inferiors. The criminal alleged in his defence, that what he had done, was to raise mirth, and avoid ceremony, and that the ladies did not complain of his rudeness till the next morning, having eaten up what he had provided for them with great readiness and alacrity. The Censor frowning upon him told him, that he ought not to discover so much levity in matters of a serious nature, and (upon the jury's bringing him in guilty) sentenced him to treat the whole assembly of ladies over again, and to take care he did it with the decorum which was due to persons of their quality.

Rebecca Shapely, spinster, was indicted by Mrs. Sarah Smack, for speaking many words reflecting upon her reputation, and the heels of her silk slippers, which the prisoner had maliciously suggested to be two inches higher than they really were. The prosecutor urged, as an aggravation of her guilt, that the prisoner was herself guilty of the same kind of forgery which she had laid to the prosecutor's charge, for that she, the said Rebecca Shapely, did always wear a pair of steel bodice, and a false rump. The Censor ordered the slippers to be produced in open court, where the heels were adjudged to be of the statutable size. He then ordered the grand jury to search the criminal, who, after some time spent therein, acquitted her of the bodice, but found her guilty of the rump; upon which she received sentence as is usual in such cases.