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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

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Section 1 of 48
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.


A work by Laurence Sterne


(two lines in Greek)



To the Right Honourable Mr. Pitt.

Sir,

Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I
have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of the kingdom,
and in a retir'd thatch'd house, where I live in a constant endeavour to
fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by
mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,--but much more
so, when he laughs, it adds something to this Fragment of Life.

I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it--(not under
your Protection,--it must protect itself, but)--into the country with you;
where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile; or can conceive it has
beguiled you of one moment's pain--I shall think myself as happy as a
minister of state;--perhaps much happier than any one (one only excepted)
that I have read or heard of.

I am, Great Sir, (and, what is more to your Honour) I am, Good Sir, Your
Well-wisher, and most humble Fellow-subject,

The Author.




The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.



Chapter 1.I.

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were
in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they
begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were
then doing;--that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned
in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body,
perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;--and, for aught they knew
to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn
from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;--Had they duly
weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,--I am verily
persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from
that in which the reader is likely to see me.--Believe me, good folks, this
is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;--you have
all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused
from father to son, &c. &c.--and a great deal to that purpose:--Well, you
may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense,
his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and
activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that
when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a half-
penny matter,--away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the
same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain
and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the
Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.

Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?--
Good G..! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to
moderate his voice at the same time,--Did ever woman, since the creation of
the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?  Pray, what was your
father saying?--Nothing.



Chapter 1.II.

--Then, positively, there is nothing in the question that I can see, either
good or bad.--Then, let me tell you, Sir, it was a very unseasonable
question at least,--because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits,
whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in hand with the
Homunculus, and conducted him safe to the place destined for his reception.

The Homunculus, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may appear, in
this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;--to the eye of reason
in scientific research, he stands confess'd--a Being guarded and
circumscribed with rights.--The minutest philosophers, who by the bye, have
the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being inversely as their
enquiries) shew us incontestably, that the Homunculus is created by the
same hand,--engender'd in the same course of nature,--endow'd with the same
loco-motive powers and faculties with us:--That he consists as we do, of
skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages,
bones, marrow, brains, glands, genitals, humours, and articulations;--is a
Being of as much activity,--and in all senses of the word, as much and as
truly our fellow-creature as my Lord Chancellor of England.--He may be
benefitted,--he may be injured,--he may obtain redress; in a word, he has
all the claims and rights of humanity, which Tully, Puffendorf, or the best
ethick writers allow to arise out of that state and relation.

Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way alone!--or
that through terror of it, natural to so young a traveller, my little
Gentleman had got to his journey's end miserably spent;--his muscular
strength and virility worn down to a thread;--his own animal spirits
ruffled beyond description,--and that in this sad disorder'd state of
nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of melancholy
dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months together.--I tremble to
think what a foundation had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of
body and mind, which no skill of the physician or the philosopher could
ever afterwards have set thoroughly to rights.



Chapter 1.III.

To my uncle Mr. Toby Shandy do I stand indebted for the preceding anecdote,
to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given
to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily
complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my uncle Toby well
remember'd, upon his observing a most unaccountable obliquity, (as he
call'd it) in my manner of setting up my top, and justifying the principles
upon which I had done it,--the old gentleman shook his head, and in a tone
more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach,--he said his heart all
along foreboded, and he saw it verified in this, and from a thousand other
observations he had made upon me, That I should neither think nor act like
any other man's child:--But alas! continued he, shaking his head a second
time, and wiping away a tear which was trickling down his cheeks, My
Tristram's misfortunes began nine months before ever he came into the
world.

--My mother, who was sitting by, look'd up, but she knew no more than her
backside what my father meant,--but my uncle, Mr. Toby Shandy, who had been
often informed of the affair,--understood him very well.



Chapter 1.IV.

I know there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in
it, who are no readers at all,--who find themselves ill at ease, unless
they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of every thing which
concerns you.

It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a
backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I have
been so very particular already.  As my life and opinions are likely to
make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right, will take in all
ranks, professions, and denominations of men whatever,--be no less read
than the Pilgrim's Progress itself--and in the end, prove the very thing
which Montaigne dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a
parlour-window;--I find it necessary to consult every one a little in his
turn; and therefore must beg pardon for going on a little farther in the
same way:  For which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history
of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing
every thing in it, as Horace says, ab Ovo.

Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether:  But that
gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;--(I forget which,)
besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. Horace's pardon;--for in writing
what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to
any man's rules that ever lived.

To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I can
give no better advice than that they skip over the remaining part of this
chapter; for I declare before-hand, 'tis wrote only for the curious and
inquisitive.

--Shut the door.--

I was begot in the night betwixt the first Sunday and the first Monday in
the month of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
eighteen.  I am positive I was.--But how I came to be so very particular in
my account of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing to another
small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made publick for the
better clearing up this point.

My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey merchant, but had
left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his
paternal estate in the county of ----, was, I believe, one of the most
regular men in every thing he did, whether 'twas matter of business, or
matter of amusement, that ever lived.  As a small specimen of this extreme
exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule
for many years of his life,--on the first Sunday-night of every month
throughout the whole year,--as certain as ever the Sunday-night came,--to
wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head,
with his own hands:--And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of
age at the time I have been speaking of,--he had likewise gradually brought
some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he
would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one
time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell
upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my
grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no
connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could
never hear the said clock wound up,--but the thoughts of some other things
unavoidably popped into her head--& vice versa:--Which strange combination
of ideas, the sagacious Locke, who certainly understood the nature of these
things better than most men, affirms to have produced more wry actions than
all other sources of prejudice whatsoever.

But this by the bye.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father's pocket-book, which now lies
upon the table, 'That on Lady-day, which was on the 25th of the same month
in which I date my geniture,--my father set upon his journey to London,
with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster school;' and, as it
appears from the same authority, 'That he did not get down to his wife and
family till the second week in May following,'--it brings the thing almost
to a certainty.  However, what follows in the beginning of the next
chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of a doubt.

--But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January, and
February?--Why, Madam,--he was all that time afflicted with a Sciatica.



Chapter 1.V.

On the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the aera fixed on, was as near
nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have expected,--was I
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous
world of ours.--I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any of the
planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never could bear cold
weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them
(though I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet
of ours,--which, o' my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take to
be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest;--not but the planet is
well enough, provided a man could be born in it to a great title or to a
great estate; or could any how contrive to be called up to public charges,
and employments of dignity or power;--but that is not my case;--and
therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in
it;--for which cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds
that ever was made;--for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew
my breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an
asthma I got in scating against the wind in Flanders;--I have been the
continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not
wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or
signal evil;--yet with all the good temper in the world I affirm it of her,
that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she
could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set of
as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained.



Chapter 1.VI.

In the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly when I was
born; but I did not inform you how.  No, that particular was reserved
entirely for a chapter by itself;--besides, Sir, as you and I are in a
manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to
have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once.

--You must have a little patience.  I have undertaken, you see, to write
not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your
knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one,
would give you a better relish for the other:  As you proceed farther with
me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow
into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in
friendship.--O diem praeclarum!--then nothing which has touched me will be
thought trifling in its nature, or tedious in its telling.  Therefore, my
dear friend and companion, if you should think me somewhat sparing of my
narrative on my first setting out--bear with me,--and let me go on, and
tell my story my own way:--Or, if I should seem now and then to trifle upon
the road,--or should sometimes put on a fool's cap with a bell to it, for a
moment or two as we pass along,--don't fly off,--but rather courteously
give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;--and
as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do any thing,--
only keep your temper.



Chapter 1.VII.

In the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a thin,
upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with the help
of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment in her
business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and
a great deal to those of dame Nature,--had acquired, in her way, no small
degree of reputation in the world:--by which word world, need I in this
place inform your worship, that I would be understood to mean no more of
it, than a small circle described upon the circle of the great world, of
four English miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which the cottage where the
good old woman lived is supposed to be the centre?--She had been left it
seems a widow in great distress, with three or four small children, in her
forty-seventh year; and as she was at that time a person of decent
carriage,--grave deportment,--a woman moreover of few words and withal an
object of compassion, whose distress, and silence under it, called out the
louder for a friendly lift:  the wife of the parson of the parish was
touched with pity; and having often lamented an inconvenience to which her
husband's flock had for many years been exposed, inasmuch as there was no
such thing as a midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the case
have been never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding;
which said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country
thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to fourteen;
and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at all; it came
into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a kindness to the whole
parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get her a little instructed in
some of the plain principles of the business, in order to set her up in it.
As no woman thereabouts was better qualified to execute the plan she had
formed than herself, the gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and
having great influence over the female part of the parish, she found no
difficulty in effecting it to the utmost of her wishes.  In truth, the
parson join'd his interest with his wife's in the whole affair, and in
order to do things as they should be, and give the poor soul as good a
title by law to practise, as his wife had given by institution,--he
cheerfully paid the fees for the ordinary's licence himself, amounting in
the whole, to the sum of eighteen shillings and four pence; so that betwixt
them both, the good woman was fully invested in the real and corporal
possession of her office, together with all its rights, members, and
appurtenances whatsoever.

These last words, you must know, were not according to the old form in
which such licences, faculties, and powers usually ran, which in like cases
had heretofore been granted to the sisterhood.  But it was according to a
neat Formula of Didius his own devising, who having a particular turn for
taking to pieces, and new framing over again all kind of instruments in
that way, not only hit upon this dainty amendment, but coaxed many of the
old licensed matrons in the neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh,
in order to have this wham-wham of his inserted.

I own I never could envy Didius in these kinds of fancies of his:--But
every man to his own taste.--Did not Dr. Kunastrokius, that great man, at
his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses
tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had
tweezers always in his pocket?  Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the
wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself,--have they not
had their Hobby-Horses;--their running horses,--their coins and their
cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their
pallets,--their maggots and their butterflies?--and so long as a man rides
his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither
compels you or me to get up behind him,--pray, Sir, what have either you or
I to do with it?



Chapter 1.VIII.

--De gustibus non est disputandum;--that is, there is no disputing against
Hobby-Horses; and for my part, I seldom do; nor could I with any sort of
grace, had I been an enemy to them at the bottom; for happening, at certain
intervals and changes of the moon, to be both fidler and painter, according
as the fly stings:--Be it known to you, that I keep a couple of pads
myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor do I care who knows it) I
frequently ride out and take the air;--though sometimes, to my shame be it
spoken, I take somewhat longer journies than what a wise man would think
altogether right.--But the truth is,--I am not a wise man;--and besides am
a mortal of so little consequence in the world, it is not much matter what
I do:  so I seldom fret or fume at all about it:  Nor does it much disturb
my rest, when I see such great Lords and tall Personages as hereafter
follow;--such, for instance, as my Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M,
N, O, P, Q, and so on, all of a row, mounted upon their several horses,--
some with large stirrups, getting on in a more grave and sober pace;--
others on the contrary, tucked up to their very chins, with whips across
their mouths, scouring and scampering it away like so many little party-
coloured devils astride a mortgage,--and as if some of them were resolved
to break their necks.--So much the better--say I to myself;--for in case
the worst should happen, the world will make a shift to do excellently well
without them; and for the rest,--why--God speed them--e'en let them ride on
without opposition from me; for were their lordships unhorsed this very
night--'tis ten to one but that many of them would be worse mounted by one
half before tomorrow morning.

Not one of these instances therefore can be said to break in upon my rest.-
-But there is an instance, which I own puts me off my guard, and that is,
when I see one born for great actions, and what is still more for his
honour, whose nature ever inclines him to good ones;--when I behold such a
one, my Lord, like yourself, whose principles and conduct are as generous
and noble as his blood, and whom, for that reason, a corrupt world cannot
spare one moment;--when I see such a one, my Lord, mounted, though it is
but for a minute beyond the time which my love to my country has prescribed
to him, and my zeal for his glory wishes,--then, my Lord, I cease to be a
philosopher, and in the first transport of an honest impatience, I wish the
Hobby-Horse, with all his fraternity, at the Devil.



'My Lord,
I maintain this to be a dedication, notwithstanding its singularity in the
three great essentials of matter, form and place:  I beg, therefore, you
will accept it as such, and that you will permit me to lay it, with the
most respectful humility, at your Lordship's feet--when you are upon them,-
-which you can be when you please;--and that is, my Lord, whenever there is
occasion for it, and I will add, to the best purposes too.  I have the
honour to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient,
and most devoted,
and most humble servant,
Tristram Shandy.'
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