Rhinoplasty

When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen, and busy in making a bridge—my uncle Toby——the affair of the jack-boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain——took it instantly for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis d’Hôpital’s bridge.——’Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby;—pray give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I thank him heartily.

Had my uncle Toby’s head been a Savoyard’s box, and my father peeping in all the time at one end of it——it could not have given him a more distinct conception of the operations of my uncle Toby’s imagination, than what he had; so, notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and his bitter imprecation about them, he was just beginning to triumph——

When Trim’s answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and twisted it to pieces.

CHAPTER XXVII

——This unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father——God bless your honour, cried Trim, ’tis a bridge for master’s 
nose.——In bringing him into the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed his nose, Susannah says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of Susannah’s stays, to raise it up.

——Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room this instant.

Forceps

"——And pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head?———’Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. Slop (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are—’tis a point very difficult to know—and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;——because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head—there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * * "

Upside down

But the cover illustration? — is this also a upside down? — And where is the instrument — the new invented ultra modern forceps of Dr. Slop?

Mucus

Mucus in: Tristram Shandys levned og meninger 1st. danish ed. (Borgen, 1976). Copy at Bibliotekshuset Rhodosvej, Amager.

The Nose #3

"[...] Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge———so that he 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 my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning.—You are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.———Pshaw! cried my father, scratching on——I might as well be seven miles off.—I’ve done it—said my father, snapping his fingers—See, my dear brother Toby, how I have mended the sense.——But you have marr’d a word, replied my uncle Toby.——My father put on his spectacles——bit his lip———and tore out the leaf in a passion."

The Nose #2

"[...]——Learned men, brother Toby, don’t write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.———I’ll study the mystick and the allegorick sense——here is some room to turn a man’s self in, brother.

My father read on.———Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniencies also; for that in a case of distress—and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad ixcitandum focum (to stir up the fire)."

The Nose

On Joseph Nollekens Marble bust of Sterne (1766) we see that:

“Nihil me pœnitet hujus nasi,” quoth Pamphagus;——that is—“My nose has been the making of me.”—————“Nec est cur pœniteat,” replies Cocles; that is, “How the duce should such a nose fail?”

The scull

In Coxwold, in the porch at St. Michaels Church, next to the epitaphstone*, we found this framed facsimile clipping from The Times on Thursday June the 5th 1969, on the reburied scull — and nearby found skeletal bones — in Coxwold. One thing further — among many others — for us to ponder upon: Tristrams nose, as well as his fathers — and his great grandfathers, that was shaped like an ace of clubs — was quite diminutive. But what about Sterne? Was he just as flat-nosed?

*)http://sterneetcetera.blogspot.dk/2015/08/sternes-stones.html

Nose-picking

A precedent readers mucus. In Tristram Shandys levned og meninger 1st. danish ed. (Borgen, 1976). Copy at the Main Library in Copenhagen.