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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 12 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 1.XLV.

--'I wish, Dr. Slop,' quoth my uncle Toby, (repeating his wish for Dr. Slop
a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner
of wishing, than he had wished at first (Vide.))--'I wish, Dr. Slop,' quoth
my uncle Toby, 'you had seen what prodigious armies we had in Flanders.'

My uncle Toby's wish did Dr. Slop a disservice which his heart never
intended any man,--Sir, it confounded him--and thereby putting his ideas
first into confusion, and then to flight, he could not rally them again for
the soul of him.

In all disputes,--male or female,--whether for honour, for profit, or for
love,--it makes no difference in the case;--nothing is more dangerous,
Madam, than a wish coming sideways in this unexpected manner upon a man:
the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is for the
party wish'd at, instantly to get upon his legs--and wish the wisher
something in return, of pretty near the same value,--so balancing the
account upon the spot, you stand as you were--nay sometimes gain the
advantage of the attack by it.

This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.--

Dr. Slop did not understand the nature of this defence;--he was puzzled
with it, and it put an entire stop to the dispute for four minutes and a
half;--five had been fatal to it:--my father saw the danger--the dispute
was one of the most interesting disputes in the world, 'Whether the child
of his prayers and endeavours should be born without a head or with one:'--
he waited to the last moment, to allow Dr. Slop, in whose behalf the wish
was made, his right of returning it; but perceiving, I say, that he was
confounded, and continued looking with that perplexed vacuity of eye which
puzzled souls generally stare with--first in my uncle Toby's face--then in
his--then up--then down--then east--east and by east, and so on,--coasting
it along by the plinth of the wainscot till he had got to the opposite
point of the compass,--and that he had actually begun to count the brass
nails upon the arm of his chair,--my father thought there was no time to be
lost with my uncle Toby, so took up the discourse as follows.



Chapter 1.XLVI.

'--What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!'--

Brother Toby, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head with his
right hand, and with his left pulling out a striped India handkerchief from
his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as he argued the point
with my uncle Toby.--

--Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I will give you my
reasons for it.

Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, 'Whether my
father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his
left,'--have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the
monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.--But need I tell
you, Sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this world is
begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape!--and by
tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what
it is--great--little--good--bad--indifferent or not indifferent, just as
the case happens?

As my father's India handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he should
by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged:  on the
contrary, instead of taking off his wig with it, as he did, he ought to
have committed that entirely to the left; and then, when the natural
exigency my father was under of rubbing his head, called out for his
handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have done, but to
have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and taken it out;--which
he might have done without any violence, or the least ungraceful twist in
any one tendon or muscle of his whole body.

In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to make a fool
of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand--or by making some
nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)--his whole
attitude had been easy--natural--unforced:  Reynolds himself, as great and
gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.

Now as my father managed this matter,--consider what a devil of a figure my
father made of himself.

In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, and in the beginning of the reign
of King George the first--'Coat pockets were cut very low down in the
skirt.'--I need say no more--the father of mischief, had he been hammering
at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my
father's situation.



Chapter 1.XLVII.

It was not an easy matter in any king's reign (unless you were as lean a
subject as myself) to have forced your hand diagonally, quite across your
whole body, so as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat pocket.--In the
year one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it was
extremely difficult; so that when my uncle Toby discovered the transverse
zig-zaggery of my father's approaches towards it, it instantly brought into
his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of St. Nicolas;--the
idea of which drew off his attention so intirely from the subject in
debate, that he had got his right hand to the bell to ring up Trim to go
and fetch his map of Namur, and his compasses and sector along with it, to
measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack,--but
particularly of that one, where he received his wound upon his groin.

My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body
seemed to rush up into his face--my uncle Toby dismounted immediately.

--I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o'horseback.--



Chapter 1.XLVIII.

A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it,
are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one,--you
rumple the other.  There is one certain exception however in this case, and
that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin
made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a sarcenet, or thin
persian.

Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius, Heracleotes, Antipater,
Panaetius, and Possidonius amongst the Greeks;--Cato and Varro and Seneca
amongst the Romans;--Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne
amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good, honest, unthinking
Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can't recollect,--all
pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,--you might have
rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the
outside of them all to pieces;--in short, you might have played the very
devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of them would
have been one button the worse, for all you had done to them.

I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:--
for never poor jerkin has been tickled off at such a rate as it has been
these last nine months together,--and yet I declare, the lining to it,--as
far as I am a judge of the matter,--is not a three-penny piece the worse;--
pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore
stroke, side way and long-way, have they been trimming it for me:--had
there been the least gumminess in my lining,--by heaven! it had all of it
long ago been frayed and fretted to a thread.

--You Messrs. the Monthly Reviewers!--how could you cut and slash my jerkin
as you did?--how did you know but you would cut my lining too?

Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who will injure
none of us, do I recommend you and your affairs,--so God bless you;--only
next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at
me, as some of you did last May (in which I remember the weather was very
hot)--don't be exasperated, if I pass it by again with good temper,--being
determined as long as I live or write) which in my case means the same
thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish than
my uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz'd about his nose all dinner-time,--
'Go,--go, poor devil,' quoth he,--'get thee gone,--why should I hurt thee!
This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.'



Chapter 1.XLIX.

Any man, Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious suffusion
of blood in my father's countenance,--by means of which (as all the blood
in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you) he must have
reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and a
half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:--any man, Madam, but
my uncle Toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of
my father's brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the
whole affair,--would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that
for granted,--had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from
two such instruments being put in exact tune,--he would instantly have
skrew'd up his, to the same pitch;--and then the devil and all had broke
loose--the whole piece, Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of
Avison Scarlatti--con furia,--like mad.--Grant me patience!--What has con
furia,--con strepito,--or any other hurly burly whatever to do with
harmony?

Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle Toby, the benignity of whose heart
interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the motion would
admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed him too.  My
uncle Toby blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the pocket-hole;--so
sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and
looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible good-will--my
father, at length, went on as follows.



Chapter 1.L.

'What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!'

--Brother Toby, quoth my father, I do believe thee to be as honest a man,
and with as good and as upright a heart as ever God created;--nor is it thy
fault, if all the children which have been, may, can, shall, will, or ought
to be begotten, come with their heads foremost into the world:--but believe
me, dear Toby, the accidents which unavoidably way-lay them, not only in
the article of our begetting 'em--though these, in my opinion, are well
worth considering,--but the dangers and difficulties our children are beset
with, after they are got forth into the world, are enow--little need is
there to expose them to unnecessary ones in their passage to it.--Are these
dangers, quoth my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon my father's knee, and
looking up seriously in his face for an answer,--are these dangers greater
now o'days, brother, than in times past?  Brother Toby, answered my father,
if a child was but fairly begot, and born alive, and healthy, and the
mother did well after it,--our forefathers never looked farther.--My uncle
Toby instantly withdrew his hand from off my father's knee, reclined his
body gently back in his chair, raised his head till he could just see the
cornice of the room, and then directing the buccinatory muscles along his
cheeks, and the orbicular muscles around his lips to do their duty--he
whistled Lillabullero.



Chapter 1.LI.

Whilst my uncle Toby was whistling Lillabullero to my father,--Dr. Slop was
stamping, and cursing and damning at Obadiah at a most dreadful rate,--it
would have done your heart good, and cured you, Sir, for ever of the vile
sin of swearing, to have heard him, I am determined therefore to relate the
whole affair to you.

When Dr. Slop's maid delivered the green baize bag with her master's
instruments in it, to Obadiah, she very sensibly exhorted him to put his
head and one arm through the strings, and ride with it slung across his
body:  so undoing the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, without
any more ado, she helped him on with it.  However, as this, in some
measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest any thing should bolt out in
galloping back, at the speed Obadiah threatened, they consulted to take it
off again:  and in the great care and caution of their hearts, they had
taken the two strings and tied them close (pursing up the mouth of the bag
first) with half a dozen hard knots, each of which Obadiah, to make all
safe, had twitched and drawn together with all the strength of his body.

This answered all that Obadiah and the maid intended; but was no remedy
against some evils which neither he or she foresaw.  The instruments, it
seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, had so much room to play in it,
towards the bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that Obadiah could
not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the tire
tete, forceps, and squirt, as would have been enough, had Hymen been taking
a jaunt that way, to have frightened him out of the country; but when
Obadiah accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his
coach-horse into a full gallop--by Heaven! Sir, the jingle was incredible.

As Obadiah had a wife and three children--the turpitude of fornication, and
the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once
entered his brain,--he had however his objection, which came home to
himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the greatest
patriots.--'The poor fellow, Sir, was not able to hear himself whistle.'



Chapter 1.LII.

As Obadiah loved wind-music preferably to all the instrumental music he
carried with him,--he very considerately set his imagination to work, to
contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a condition
of enjoying it.

In all distresses (except musical) where small cords are wanted, nothing is
so apt to enter a man's head as his hat-band:--the philosophy of this is so
near the surface--I scorn to enter into it.

As Obadiah's was a mixed case--mark, Sirs,--I say, a mixed case; for it was
obstetrical,--scrip-tical, squirtical, papistical--and as far as the coach-
horse was concerned in it,--caballistical--and only partly musical;--
Obadiah made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which
offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and griping them hard
together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other putting
the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down
to the middle of it,--he tied and cross-tied them all fast together from
one end to the other (as you would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity
of round-abouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every
intersection or point where the strings met,--that Dr. Slop must have had
three fifths of Job's patience at least to have unloosed them.--I think in
my conscience, that had Nature been in one of her nimble moods, and in
humour for such a contest--and she and Dr. Slop both fairly started
together--there is no man living which had seen the bag with all that
Obadiah had done to it,--and known likewise the great speed the Goddess can
make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining
in his mind--which of the two would have carried off the prize.  My mother,
Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly--at least by
twenty knots.--Sport of small accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art,
and ever will be! had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but
it had,--thy affairs had not been so depress'd--(at least by the depression
of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the fortunes of thy house and the
occasions of making them, which have so often presented themselves in the
course of thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so
irrecoverably abandoned--as thou hast been forced to leave them;--but 'tis
over,--all but the account of 'em, which cannot be given to the curious
till I am got out into the world.



End of the first volume.



The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.

Volume the Second



Multitudinis imperitae non formido judicia, meis tamen, rogo, parcant
opusculis--in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, in seriis
vicissim ad jocos transire.

Joan. Saresberiensis,
Episcopus Lugdun.



Chapter 2.I.

Great wits jump: for the moment Dr. Slop cast his eyes upon his bag (which
he had not done till the dispute with my uncle Toby about mid-wifery put
him in mind of it)--the very same thought occurred.--'Tis God's mercy,
quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. Shandy has had so bad a time of it,--else
she might have been brought to bed seven times told, before one half of
these knots could have got untied.--But here you must distinguish--the
thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as
a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every
day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's
understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some
little gusts of passion or interest drive them to one side.

A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother's bed, did the
proposition the very service I am speaking of.  By all that's unfortunate,
quoth Dr. Slop, unless I make haste, the thing will actually befall me as
it is.
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