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The Pulter Project
pulterproject.northwestern.edu
Poem 60

To
S:rW:m D:1
Upon the unspeakable Loss of the
most conspicuous and chief Ornament2
of his Frontispiece

Edited by Emily Cock

In this humorous and rather uncharacteristic poem, Pulter uses contemporary understanding of nose reconstruction and transplantation to engage with Interregnum politics by imaginatively offering the playwright and poet Sir William Davenant a piece of her own body for the reconstruction of his nose. Davenant’s nasal bridge was famously sunken through the effects of the pox (syphilis) and its customary treatment with mercury. This association with venereal disease, and wider uses of nose cutting as a stigmatising punishment, meant that nasal disfigurements were considered highly dishonourable in early modern Europe.

While it had its roots in real surgical procedures to rebuild a nose, lip, or ear from a flap of the patient’s own skin, the full transplantation of a skin graft between individuals was largely a fantasy, which was used by British authors to a range of discursive ends. The graft employed to reconstruct the nose was understood to remain absolutely part of the original person, and it was thought to die when the original person did due to a medical phenomenon known as ‘sympathy’. Thus, through the logic of the transplant, part of Pulter’s private body is imaginatively attached to Davenant and brought into public politics. Within the poem, the success and longevity of Davenant’s new nose—and the Royalist project and authority it represents—become contingent upon Pulter. If he fails to offer sufficient loyal service, prayers for Pulter, and care for the nose in recompense, he will be truly worth the dishonour of noselessness.

Compare Editions
i
1Sir
2
3Extreamly
I deplore your loss3
4You’r like
Cheapside without a Cross4
5Or like a Dial and noe Gnoman
6In pitty (trust mee) I think noe man
7But would his Leg or Arm expose
8To
cut you out another Nose5
9Nor of the Female Sex thers none
10But’ld bee
one Flesh though not one Bone6
11I though
unknown7
would
sleight the pain8
12That you might have Soe great a gain
13Nay Any Fool did hee know itt
14Would
give his Nose9
to have your Wit
15And I my Self would doe the same
16Did I not fear t’wold
Blur my Fame10
17I as once said a Gallant Dame
18My Nose would venture not my Fame
19For who but that Bright eye above
20Would know twere
Charity not Love11
21Then Sir your Pardon I must Beg
22Excuse my Nose
accept my Leg12
23
But13
yet besure
bot14
night and Day
24For mee as for your Self you pray
25For if I First should chance to goe
26To visit those sad shades below
27As my
Frail Flesh15
there putrifies
28Your Nose noe doubt will
Sympathize16
29But this I fear least that blind Boy
30Which Fate descend (Yet such a Toy
31May take the Chit) should shoot again
32Then the Next loss would bee your Brain
33Some Coy Young Lass you Might Adore
34Which would prefer some base
Medore17
35And all your Witt and Titles sleight
36Imbrace a Page before a Knight
37Then should some Nobleminded Freind
38Astolpho like to
Heaven18
ascend
39And having search’d neare and Farr
40And found your most
capacious Jarr19
41Then beeing with Joy Returnd again
42You could not then
snuf up your Brain20
43Though all your
strenght21
you should expose
44You want the Organe cal’d a Nose
45Prodigious the Knight Remains
46
Withous22
or Nose, or Fame, or Brains23
,
47Then A bold ordinance
strook the Title of24
48Thus the proud
Parces25
sit and at us Scofe
49What now remains the Man at Least
50Noe surely nothing left but
Beast26
51Then Royall Favour
glu’d27
it on again
52And now the Knight is Bow-di’de and in grain
53Then Trample not that Honour in the
Dust28
54In beeing a Slave to those are Slaves to Lust
Macron symbol indicating the end of a poem.

Amplified Edition,

edited by Emily Cocki

Editorial Note

I have opted to complement the modernised Elemental Edition with a semi-diplomatic transcription in order to give readers a sense of the gains and losses in each style. I have retained original spelling and punctuation, but amended uses of u/v/w, i/j, and ff/F. Where a colon and superscription indicating abbreviation is incidental rather than substantive this has been expanded with italics; so too for the single use of a thorn for ‘the’.

The poem does not have as many classical references as some of Pulter’s other work, but instead builds from a central trope drawn from contemporary medicine and science, which I have explained for the general reader. The annotations are therefore less explanatory than interpretive, based on my reading of the poem in the context of British responses to the nose and especially nose reconstruction and transplantation (see Cock, Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019]). As I attempt to show, there is more to this poem than a funny joke about legs and noses.

Macron symbol indicating the end of a poem.
  • Emily Cock, Cardiff University
  • S:rW:m D:
    “Sir William Davenant” (1606–1668). Despite Pulter’s use of initials, there would have been little ambiguity around the identity of this knight. Davenant had contracted the pox in the late 1620s or early 1630s (in 1633 he refers to himself as a ‘long-sick Poet’). The Queen’s physician, Thomas Cademan, treated Davenant with a customary mercury salivation, in which mercury was rubbed, inhaled or ingested into the body to prompt saliva and sweating and ‘flush out’ the disease. Davenant addressed public poems of thanks that conceded his receipt of ‘Devill Mercurie’, thus acknowledging the venereal nature of his distemper (Mary Edmond, Rare Sir William Davenant [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987], pp. 45–46). After the bridge of his nose collapsed and flattened, this became a common point of ribaldry among political and poetic rivals, whose poems are discussed in detail by Marcus Nevitt (‘The Insults of Defeat: Royalist Responses to Sir William Davenant’s Gondibert [1651]’ The Seventeenth Century 24.2 [2009]: pp 287–304).
  • most conspicuous and chief Ornament
    While Pulter’s tone is mildly hyperbolic, surgeons who wrote on injuries and disfigurements to the nose often remarked on its centrality and importance for the face’s beauty, and thus the need to take particular care to reduce scarring and misshaping. Pulter refers to the importance of shape in Tell Me No More [On the Same]11 when she praises her daughter’s “white even nose”.
  • I deplore your loss
    Pulter has created a mock version of what Kate Lilley calls the ‘proxy elegy’, commemorating the death of Davenant’s nose by offering him her sympathy and an attempt at reparation (Kate Lilley, ‘True State Within: Women’s Elegy 1640–1700’, in Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman [eds.] Women, Writing, History 1640–1740 [London: Batsford, 1992]: pp 72–92).
  • Cheapside without a Cross
    The elaborate Eleanor Cross in Cheapside had been erected in 1289 by Edward I in memory of his wife. Royalists considered its removal on 2 May 1643 a highly symbolic blow against civil and religious values. By pairing this simile with a further comparison to a sundial without a gnomon (the protruding arm that casts a shadow), Pulter draws attention to both the symbolic and functional importance of the nose for Davenant’s face.
  • cut you out another Nose
    Pulter refers to belief that a new nose could be constructed from skin or flesh taken from another person. The origins for this belief lie in Bolognese surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi’s (1545–1599) techniques for reconstructing a nose, lip or ear using skin flaps taken from the patient’s own arm, which he detailed in a lavishly illustrated Latin folio, De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem (Venice: 1597) (for Tagliacozzi’s operation and career in the context of Italian surgery see Valeria Finucci, The Prince’s Body: Vincenzo Gonzaga and Renaissance Medicine [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015); Paolo Savoia, Gaspare Tagliacozzi and Early Modern Surgery: Faces, Men, and Pain [London: Routledge, 2019]). The use of skin flaps in this way has ancient origins, but in early modern Europe Tagliacozzi enjoyed a monopolist (but controversial) reputation after publication. Professional misunderstandings and popular rumours led to widespread belief that the new nose could also be built using a graft from someone else, though Tagliacozzi had rejected the feasibility of this operation.
  • one Flesh though not one Bone
    Pulter’s invocation of flesh and bone echoes Genesis 2:23–24, but hesitation to be of the same ‘Bone’ as Davenant may also refer to the skeletal damage caused by syphilis, which as ‘rotting shins’ was a ubiquitous referent.
  • unknown
    The suggestion that Pulter is ‘unknown’ to Davenant means that he is unlikely to have seen this poem, despite its direct address to him (“Sir,” “your,” etc) and reiterates that the graft was never a literal offer. It also means that Pulter is unlikely to have known other members of the Royalist ‘Cavendish Circle’ in Paris who promoted sympathetic medicine, such as Walter Charleton and Sir Kenelm Digby, thus further restricting her sources for this knowledge (on these men and sympathy see Seth Lobis, The Virtue of Sympathy: Magic, Philosophy, and Literature in Seventeenth-Century England [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015]; Elizabeth Hedrick, “Romancing the Salve: Sir Kenelm Digby and the Powder of Sympathy”, The British Journal for the History of Science 41.2 (2008): 161–85; Emily Booth, A Subtle and Mysterious Machine: The Medical World of Walter Charleton (1619-1707) [Dordrecht: Springer, 2006]).
  • sleight the pain
    Pulter’s iteration that she would slight (brush off, disregard) the pain of the operation undercuts the modesty of her surrounding protestations that anyone, male or female, would be willing to give up their flesh to help restore Davenant’s nose and honour, thus increasing the value of her offer.
  • give his Nose
    One strand of the nose graft story suggested that an actual nose would be transplanted to the patient, and may have been encouraged by the larger number of successful nose reattachments than skin flap reconstructions in the period. But Pulter recognises that this would be an imbalanced transaction: just as Davenant’s wit fails to make up for the lack of his own nose in terms of professional authority and personal identity, so too would it be insufficient payment for any other person who was to provide their own nose for his respite.
  • Blur my Fame
    Giving Davenant her own nose will transfer his problem onto her, and lead people to suspect that she has lost her nose to the pox too.
  • Charity not Love
    This is in part a denial of a sexual relationship, through which Davenant might have passed on his noselessness. But in emphasising that this will be an act of charity, Pulter also elevates herself above Davenant as the recipient, and leads them into a relationship of hospitality.
  • accept my Leg
    Having established that her nose is too valuable to give up, Pulter must beg Davenant’s pardon for offering a skin graft from her leg instead. This qualification also fulfils gendered requirements of humility, as Pulter does not presume herself to be able to fully replace Davenant’s own, God-given nose.
  • But
    The reciprocal obligations of Pulter’s offer start to become apparent, as she uses the graft and understandings of medical sympathy to establish an imaginative relationship with Davenant, and a debt from him that gives her political influence within the poem.
  • bot
    both
  • Frail Flesh
    While the ‘Frail Flesh’ is a rhetorical commonplace for Pulter and others, possibly originating in the Wycliffe Bible’s translation of Matthew 26:41, Pulter’s use here includes an element of performed humility: though she emphasises the ‘frailty’ of her own body, it is Davenant’s that has fallen out of his control.
  • Sympathize
    'Sympathy' was a system of influence between matter that was at a physical distance (see Lobis; Evelyn L. Forget, ‘Evocations of Sympathy: Sympathetic Imagery in Eighteenth-Century Social Theory and Physiology’, History of Political Economy 35 (2005): 282–308). Medically it could be used to treat a patient elsewhere, such as healing a wound by applying a ‘weapon salve’ to the weapon that had made it. When applied to allograft rhinoplasty, the doctrine of sympathy dictated that when the person from whom the skin graft was taken died, the new nose would ‘die’ with them. Sympathy was contentious, and increasingly elaborate stories of nose transplants would later be used to satirise believers (Alanna Skuse, ‘“Keep your face out of my way or I'll bite off your nose”: Homoplastics, Sympathy, and the Noble Body in The Tatler, 1710’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 17.4 (2017): 113-132). Samuel Butler included a joke about a reconstructed nose in the first part of his wildly successful mock-epic poem, Hudibras (1662), which cemented the mythology of the sympathetic nose as being sourced from a lower-class man’s buttocks (in Butler, ‘The brawny part of Porter’s Bum’) to restore the nose of a higher-status man. Thus Pulter warns Davenant that he should pray for the preservation of her own life as much as his, since if she dies (visits the ‘sad shades below’) so too will his new nose. Pulter’s reiteration that Davenant’s new nose will in fact be her skin offers an imaginative means by which a piece of her body will be present at the centre of Royalist politics, while the rest of her is politely ensconced in her country estate.
  • Medore
    Pulter’s brother-in-law was the son of John Harington, who translated Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and she refers to the book frequently (Alice Eardley, ‘Introduction’, in Eardley (ed.) Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda [Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014]: pp 1–38, at p. 17). The virtuous Orlando is jilted by his beloved, Angelica, in favour of an African soldier, Medore, and loses his wits. Pulter suggests that Davenant’s noselessness might lead to similar rejections if it cannot balance out his good qualities of nobility and intelligence, leading him to be rejected by a Lass whom Cupid (the “blind Boy”) leads him to adore. Nevitt highlights that Orlando’s fault “is as much a renunciation of religious and political allegiance as it is a capitulation to bestial instinct”, thus rendering Pulter’s integration of the poem further commentary on Davenant’s possible exacerbation of sexual with political weakness (‘Insults’, 289).
  • Heaven
    Like Pulter’s skin graft assisting Davenant while she is far away, another “Nobleminded Friend” will need to travel to Heaven to retrieve Davenant’s brains. She thus evokes the possible contributions of networks of friends, especially dispersed Royalists.
  • capacious Jarr
    Pulter further compliments Davenant’s ‘wit’ by suggesting his brain would require a very large container.
  • snuf up your Brain
    Orlando’s wits sit in a jar on the moon, and he snorts them back into his head after they are collected by Astolpho. Pulter reminds Davenant that without a nose he will have no such recourse.
  • strenght
    strength
  • Withous
    Without
  • or Nose, or Fame, or Brains
    Pulter admonishes Davenant for what she perceived was an increasing likelihood that he would defect to serve the Parliamentarians by tying political honour to sexual honour, with the corruption in Davenant’s nose at risk of spreading to his ‘fame [and] brains’. A knight with title but no intelligence, reputation, or nose would be a monstrous wonder (‘prodigious’).
  • strook the Title of
    Parliament’s ‘bold ordinance’ of 1646 voided (struck off) any titles conferred by the King since May 20, 1642, thus including Davenant’s knighthood granted in 1643.
  • Parces
    The Parcae are the three female Fates. Pulter’s anglicised plural, corrected in modernised editions to the Latin ‘Parcae’, may add further weight to suggestions she accessed Latin texts only in translation: in particular, Sarah Hutton and Alice Eardley suggest that she may have come to knowledge of Galileo through Henry More’s (1614–1687) Philosophical Poems (1647) (Eardley, ‘Introduction’, p. 11). ‘Parcae’ appears differently throughout the manuscript: from a possessive ‘Parces’ (Aletheia's Pearl32) and plural ‘Parce’ (Universal Dissolution6), to blotted plurals ‘Parces[?]’ (The Eclipse1) and ‘Parcia[?]’ (On those Two Unparalleled Friends, Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas, Who Were Shot to Death at Colchester7). This adds further weight to my belief that she was unfamiliar with Tagliacozzi’s original De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem, and instead accessed understanding of the nose reconstructions from sympathy books like Walter Charlton’s translation of Johannes Baptista van Helmont’s A Ternary of Paradoxes (London: 1649).
  • Beast
    Pulter’s warnings about the lure of a “Coy Young Lass” and Davenant as “Beast” signal her disapproval of the libertine tendencies of men like Davenant, evident throughout her oeuvre (see for example The Elephant (Emblem 19)84 and The Unfortunate Florinda, which Peter C. Herman discusses in detail: ‘Lady Hester Pulter’s “The Unfortunate Florinda”: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Rape’ Renaissance Quarterly 63.4 [2010]: pp 1208–1246).
  • glu’d
    The use of ‘glued’ for the restitution of Davenant’s knighthood parallels it with the reattachment of his nose.
  • Dust
    As Eardley notes, Pulter’s employment of ‘dust’ generally draws on its Biblical use as matter of human mortality: ‘for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’ (Genesis 3:19). More broadly, Pulter here continues her juxtaposition of esteemed qualities (honour, wit, nobility) with the baseness affiliated with Davenant’s sexual misbehaviour and corporal loss.
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