November 24, 2004

A look at the Tristram Shandy web seems a good way of marking Laurence Sterne's birthday today. By way of a further tribute I ask - is a well-formed nose essential to success in life?

Pascal famously remarked in Pensee 162 'Cleopatra's nose: had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been altered.' Clearly J.Caesar and Mark Antony must have been happy with Cleo's nose - however, ancient coins and images (other than the standardised Egyptian ones) show her as the hefty blonde Macedonian she presumably was, with a nose more impressive than lovely. Tycho Brahe had no nose, or rather, he had a prosthetic metal one. That did not stop him becoming the archetype of what astronomers look like, even as far away as China, though in most images his nose is discreetly normalised. Brass noses, of course, have a formidable academic record of their own, and an Oxford College to prove it. Maybe you don't need a perfect nose to be a success - just a remarkable one?

posted by Plegmund 20 years ago
  • Who nose?
  • Siren-nose or Cyrano's, that is the question.
  • Plegmund I'm an alumnus of said college. I mostly chose it for the amusing name. Although the central location was nice. And Michael Palin went there back in the day. The knocker hangs over the high table in the dining hall. Every night, the dons would come in to dine through a doorway just underneath the knocker. The name of the college was usually abbreviated to BNC, although sometimes just "Nose", which made for some interesting chants at inter-college sporting events. Looking back now, it all seems a bit silly. I seem to say that a lot about Oxford.
  • Good for you nails - it may be silly but it still seems a rather agreeable kind of silliness. I wonder whether they'd be able to buy a house just to get the knocker these days... Incidentally, I'm sure I once read a different story about how the nose was the last remnant of a statue of Roger Bacon, but I can't find any trace of it now and it was evidently nonsense historically.
  • Emma's Nose.
  • Pinocchio's nose grows and grows, when he's telling a lie, as Gepetto knows. Jimmy Durante had a great schnozz, his jokes often earned him laughs and applause. An elepahnt's beak, or a trunk, I suppose, is way more useful than a regular nose. A dog's nose, so I've been told, is healthiest if it's kept wet and cold. The nose of a cat, whiskered and pink, should never have this, at least, I don't think.
  • They haven't got no noses, The fallen sons of Eve; Even the smell of roses Is not what they supposes; But more than mind discloses And more than men believe. --G. K. Chesterton, "The Song of Quoodle"
  • My dog's got no nose.
  • How does he smell!?!
  • terrible!
  • Sir William Davenant lost his nose from syphilis acquired by "lying with a black wench in Axe Yard". (In the only surviving portrait this is reduced to a small black dot on one side of his nose.) He went on to become poet laureate, a Royalist commander and leading Restoration theatre manager. While plays were still forbidden under Cromwell, he put on the first opera in England, using movable scenery for the first time and featuring the first appearance of a woman on the stage, all of which argues a remarkable level of chutzpah.