“Suddenly turned and attempted to take him by the Nose”

As quoted back here, in the 4 Sept 1769 Boston Gazette James Otis, Jr., made a novel natural-rights argument about John Robinson. He declared that if that Customs Commissioner “misrepresents me, I have a natural right if I can get no other satisfaction to break his head.”

In the 18 September Boston Chronicle, Robinson, addressing Otis directly, described what he did that Monday and the next day:

you strutted about the town, denouncing vengeance against the first Commissioner you should meet with.—On Tuesday you went to a shop, and asked, if I did not buy a stick there, and being told I had, you desired to have the fellow of it which you bought accordingly.—

The 11 September Boston Post-Boy contained Robinson’s description of how the two gentlemen finally crossed paths:

On the evening of the next day Tuesday, I went to the Coffee-house between the hours of 7 & 8, and seeing Mr. Otis without a sword, I went into a back room, where I laid mine aside, and immediately returned into the Public room.---

I then addressed myself to Mr. Otis, in these words or to this effect.—Some days ago you wanted a free conversation with me, now I want a free conversation with you:

He immediately stood up in a rage and said he was ready to answer me in any manner;

I replied have a little patience; and let me ask you whether, I did not repeatedly tell you when we met the other day, that if I had done you an injury, I was ready to give you that satisfaction you had a right to expect from a Gentleman.----How therefore could you publish the account in Edes and Gill’s paper of yesterday?

It was proposed by some persons, (his friends I suppose,) that we should go into a room.

I said, that I had been in a room with him once already; and perceiving that he frequently menaced me with his stick, I took him or at least attempted to take him by the nose.-----

The Boston Gazette’s 11 September report was of course sympathetic to Otis, but agreed on the basic details:

After a Proposal on the Part of Mr. Otis to decide this Controversy by themselves abroad, or in a separate Room, the former was refused, but the latter seemed to be consented to by Mr. Robinson, but very unexpectedly to Mr. Otis, and while he was following, Mr. Robinson in the Presence of the publick Company in the Coffee-Room, suddenly turned and attempted to take him by the Nose; and failing in the Attempt, he immediately struck at him with his Cane, against which Mr. Otis defended himself, and returned the Compliment.

The Evening-Post’s report was nearly identical but said that as Otis “was rising, Mr. Robinson…attempted to pull him by the Nose.”

Kenneth S. Greenberg has shown how nose-pulling had a strong meaning in genteel honor culture. It was a great insult as well as a physical pain. Greenberg focused on the ante-bellum American South, but that society inherited the dueling code of eighteenth-century Britain which Robinson and Otis were trying (somewhat clumsily) to follow.

TOMORROW: From nose to head.

[The picture above is “Poor old England endeavoring to reclaim his wicked American children,” published in London in 1777. Available from the Library of Congress, the British Museum, and, in color, the John Carter Brown Library.]