Thomas Wedders might have had an enormous nose, but a much more common sight in the 18th century was someone with no nose or a collapsed nose. As early as 1676 Thomas Sydenham had observed in Observationes Medicae that syphilis could lead to the destruction of the nasal cartilage, leading to the nose to collapse into the face, a condition known as “saddle nose” and indicative of late-stage syphilis.
Mr Crumpton, an eccentric bon viveur, noticed an “abundance of both Sexes had sacrificed to the God Priapus and had unluckily fallen into the Fashion of Flat-Faces“. According to Edward Ward in his The History of the London Clubs (1709), he strolled around the streets of London”to pick acquaintance with all such stigmatiz’d Strumpets & Fornicators… appointing every one apart to meet him at the Dog Tavern in Drury Lane”. upon a Certain Day, a little before Dinner-Time, that they might Eat a bit together, & he would then acquaint them with the Secret.”
As the appointed hour approached, quite a crowd had gathered at the tavern and as they looked at each other, they realised that they had one thing in common, none of them had a nose to speak of. In fact, as Ward drolly observes, it was “as if every Sinner beheld their own Iniquities in the Faces of their Companions.”
Crumpton hosted a dinner and the chefs got into the spirit of things by cutting off the snouts of the pigs being served. Instead of appreciating the joke, the diners were outraged, summoning the cook to explain his actions. “He had cut off their Snouts, he said, to put the Pigs in the Fashion; for he thought it not fit for two such squeamish Creatures, to run their unmannerly Noses into such good Company that had but one amongst them”. This faux pas did not spoil proceedings, much alcohol was consumed and for once in their lives the diners could pretend that “their Sins were their Pride and their Sufferings their glory.”
Whether he had set the club up out of kind-hearted pity or whether he was amused by the sight of so many without noses gathered together, the club did not last long as within a year or so Crumpton had died. Whatever his motive the members remembered him fondly, leaving this poignant elegy which was read at his funeral:
“Mourn for the loss of such a generous friend,
Whose lofty Nose no humble snout disdain’d;
But tho’ of Roman height, could stoop so low
As to soothe those who ne’er a Nose could show.
Ah! sure no noseless club could ever find
One single Nose so bountiful and kind.
But now, alas! he’s sunk into the deep,
Where neither kings or slaves a Nose shall keep.
But where proud Beauties, strutting Beaux, and all,
Must soon into the noseless fashion fall,
Thither your friend in complaisance is gone,
To have Nose, like yours, reduced to none.”
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