ArcaMax Publishing > Books > Fiction > The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman > Section 16
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 16 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 2.XVII.

Tho' the shock my uncle Toby received the year after the demolition of
Dunkirk, in his affair with widow Wadman, had fixed him in a resolution
never more to think of the sex--or of aught which belonged to it;--yet
corporal Trim had made no such bargain with himself.  Indeed in my uncle
Toby's case there was a strange and unaccountable concurrence of
circumstances, which insensibly drew him in, to lay siege to that fair and
strong citadel.--In Trim's case there was a concurrence of nothing in the
world, but of him and Bridget in the kitchen;--though in truth, the love
and veneration he bore his master was such, and so fond was he of imitating
him in all he did, that had my uncle Toby employed his time and genius in
tagging of points--I am persuaded the honest corporal would have laid down
his arms, and followed his example with pleasure.  When therefore my uncle
Toby sat down before the mistress--corporal Trim incontinently took ground
before the maid.

Now, my dear friend Garrick, whom I have so much cause to esteem and
honour--(why, or wherefore, 'tis no matter)--can it escape your
penetration--I defy it--that so many play-wrights, and opificers of chit-
chat have ever since been working upon Trim's and my uncle Toby's pattern.-
-I care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or Bossu, or Ricaboni say--(though
I never read one of them)--there is not a greater difference between a
single-horse chair and madam Pompadour's vis-a-vis; than betwixt a single
amour, and an amour thus nobly doubled, and going upon all four, prancing
throughout a grand drama--Sir, a simple, single, silly affair of that kind-
-is quite lost in five acts--but that is neither here nor there.

After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my
uncle Toby's quarter, a most minute account of every particular of which
shall be given in its proper place, my uncle Toby, honest man! found it
necessary to draw off his forces and raise the siege somewhat indignantly.

Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no such bargain either with himself--or
with any one else--the fidelity however of his heart not suffering him to
go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust--he contented
himself with turning his part of the siege into a blockade;--that is, he
kept others off;--for though he never after went to the house, yet he never
met Bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or
look kindly at her--or (as circumstances directed) he would shake her by
the hand--or ask her lovingly how she did--or would give her a ribbon--and
now-and-then, though never but when it could be done with decorum, would
give Bridget a. . .--

Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five years; that is
from the demolition of Dunkirk in the year 13, to the latter end of my
uncle Toby's campaign in the year 18, which was about six or seven weeks
before the time I'm speaking of.--When Trim, as his custom was, after he
had put my uncle Toby to bed, going down one moon-shiny night to see that
every thing was right at his fortifications--in the lane separated from the
bowling-green with flowering shrubs and holly--he espied his Bridget.

As the corporal thought there was nothing in the world so well worth
shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle Toby had made, Trim
courteously and gallantly took her by the hand, and led her in: this was
not done so privately, but that the foul-mouth'd trumpet of Fame carried it
from ear to ear, till at length it reach'd my father's, with this untoward
circumstance along with it, that my uncle Toby's curious draw-bridge,
constructed and painted after the Dutch fashion, and which went quite
across the ditch--was broke down, and somehow or other crushed all to
pieces that very night.

My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle Toby's
hobby-horse; he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever gentleman
mounted; and indeed unless my uncle Toby vexed him about it, could never
think of it once, without smiling at it--so that it could never get lame or
happen any mischance, but it tickled my father's imagination beyond
measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than any one
which had yet befall'n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of entertainment
to him--Well--but dear Toby! my father would say, do tell me seriously how
this affair of the bridge happened.--How can you teaze me so much about it?
my uncle Toby would reply--I have told it you twenty times, word for word
as Trim told it me.--Prithee, how was it then, corporal? my father would
cry, turning to Trim.--It was a mere misfortune, an' please your honour;--I
was shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications, and in going too near the edge
of the fosse, I unfortunately slipp'd in--Very well, Trim! my father would
cry--(smiling mysteriously, and giving a nod--but without interrupting
him)--and being link'd fast, an' please your honour, arm in arm with Mrs.
Bridget, I dragg'd her after me, by means of which she fell backwards soss
against the bridge--and Trim's foot (my uncle Toby would cry, taking the
story out of his mouth) getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against
the bridge too.--It was a thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that
the poor fellow did not break his leg.--Ay truly, my father would say--a
limb is soon broke, brother Toby, in such encounters.--And so, an' please
your honour, the bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was
broke down betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.

At other times, but especially when my uncle Toby was so unfortunate as to
say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards--my father would exhaust
all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a
panegyric upon the Battering-Rams of the ancients--the Vinea which
Alexander made use of at the siege of Troy.--He would tell my uncle Toby of
the Catapultae of the Syrians, which threw such monstrous stones so many
hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very foundation:-
-he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the Ballista which
Marcellinus makes so much rout about!--the terrible effects of the
Pyraboli, which cast fire;--the danger of the Terebra and Scorpio, which
cast javelins.--But what are these, would he say, to the destructive
machinery of corporal Trim?--Believe me, brother Toby, no bridge, or
bastion, or sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold
out against such artillery.

My uncle Toby would never attempt any defence against the force of this
ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in
doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it
set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of
violent coughing:  my uncle Toby leap'd up without feeling the pain upon
his groin--and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother's chair,
tapping his back with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and
from time to time wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which
he pulled out of his pocket.--The affectionate and endearing manner in
which my uncle Toby did these little offices--cut my father thro' his
reins, for the pain he had just been giving him.--May my brains be knock'd
out with a battering-ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father
to himself--if ever I insult this worthy soul more!



Chapter 2.XVIII.

The draw-bridge being held irreparable, Trim was ordered directly to set
about another--but not upon the same model:  for cardinal Alberoni's
intrigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle Toby rightly
foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out betwixt Spain and the
Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all
likelihood be either in Naples or Sicily--he determined upon an Italian
bridge--(my uncle Toby, by-the-bye, was not far out of his conjectures)--
but my father, who was infinitely the better politician, and took the lead
as far of my uncle Toby in the cabinet, as my uncle Toby took it of him in
the field--convinced him, that if the king of Spain and the Emperor went
together by the ears, England and France and Holland must, by force of
their pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;--and if so, he would say,
the combatants, brother Toby, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it
again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of Flanders;--then what
will you do with your Italian bridge?

--We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my uncle Toby.

When corporal Trim had about half finished it in that style--my uncle Toby
found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly considered
before.  It turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in
the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the
other to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing the
weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle Toby to
raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand,
which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare--but
the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable;--for by this
means, he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my enemy's
possession--and pray of what use is the other?

The natural remedy for this was, no doubt, to have his bridge fast only at
one end with hinges, so that the whole might be lifted up together, and
stand bolt upright--but that was rejected for the reason given above.

For a whole week after he was determined in his mind to have one of that
particular construction which is made to draw back horizontally, to hinder
a passage; and to thrust forwards again to gain a passage--of which sorts
your worship might have seen three famous ones at Spires before its
destruction--and one now at Brisac, if I mistake not;--but my father
advising my uncle Toby, with great earnestness, to have nothing more to do
with thrusting bridges--and my uncle foreseeing moreover that it would but
perpetuate the memory of the Corporal's misfortune--he changed his mind for
that of the marquis d'Hopital's invention, which the younger Bernouilli has
so well and learnedly described, as your worships may see--Act. Erud. Lips.
an. 1695--to these a lead weight is an eternal balance, and keeps watch as
well as a couple of centinels, inasmuch as the construction of them was a
curve line approximating to a cycloid--if not a cycloid itself.

My uncle Toby understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man in
England--but was not quite such a master of the cycloid;--he talked however
about it every day--the bridge went not forwards.--We'll ask somebody about
it, cried my uncle Toby to Trim.



Chapter 2.XIX.

When Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen, and
busy in making a bridge--my uncle Toby--the affair of the jack-boots having
just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain--took it instantly
for granted that Dr. Slop was making a model of the marquis d'Hopital's
bridge.--'tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby;--pray give my
humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I thank him heartily.

Had my uncle Toby's head been a Savoyard's box, and my father peeping in
all the time at one end of it--it could not have given him a more distinct
conception of the operations of my uncle Toby's imagination, than what he
had; so, notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and his bitter
imprecation about them, he was just beginning to triumph--

When Trim's answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and
twisted it to pieces.



Chapter 2.XX.

--This unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father--God bless your
honour, cried Trim, 'tis a bridge for master's nose.--In bringing him into
the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed his nose, Susannah
says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge
with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of Susannah's
stays, to raise it up.

--Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room this instant.



Chapter 2.XXI.

From the first moment I sat down to write my life for the amusement of the
world, and my opinions for its instruction, has a cloud insensibly been
gathering over my father.--A tide of little evils and distresses has been
setting in against him.--Not one thing, as he observed himself, has gone
right:  and now is the storm thicken'd and going to break, and pour down
full upon his head.

I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy frame
of mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.--My nerves relax as
I tell it.--Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the quickness of my
pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day of my life
prompts me to say and write a thousand things I should not--And this moment
that I last dipp'd my pen into my ink, I could not help taking notice what
a cautious air of sad composure and solemnity there appear'd in my manner
of doing it.--Lord! how different from the rash jerks and hair-brain'd
squirts thou art wont, Tristram, to transact it with in other humours--
dropping thy pen--spurting thy ink about thy table and thy books--as if thy
pen and thy ink, thy books and furniture cost thee nothing!



Chapter 2.XXII.

--I won't go about to argue the point with you--'tis so--and I am persuaded
of it, madam, as much as can be, 'That both man and woman bear pain or
sorrow (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal
position.'

The moment my father got up into his chamber, he threw himself prostrate
across his bed in the wildest disorder imaginable, but at the same time in
the most lamentable attitude of a man borne down with sorrows, that ever
the eye of pity dropp'd a tear for.--The palm of his right hand, as he fell
upon the bed, receiving his forehead, and covering the greatest part of
both his eyes, gently sunk down with his head (his elbow giving way
backwards) till his nose touch'd the quilt;--his left arm hung insensible
over the side of the bed, his knuckles reclining upon the handle of the
chamber-pot, which peep'd out beyond the valance--his right leg (his left
being drawn up towards his body) hung half over the side of the bed, the
edge of it pressing upon his shin bone--He felt it not.  A fix'd,
inflexible sorrow took possession of every line of his face.--He sigh'd
once--heaved his breast often--but uttered not a word.

An old set-stitch'd chair, valanced and fringed around with party coloured
worsted bobs, stood at the bed's head, opposite to the side where my
father's head reclined.--My uncle Toby sat him down in it.

Before an affliction is digested--consolation ever comes too soon;--and
after it is digested--it comes too late:  so that you see, madam, there is
but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to
take aim at:--my uncle Toby was always either on this side, or on that of
it, and would often say, he believed in his heart he could as soon hit the
longitude; for this reason, when he sat down in the chair, he drew the
curtain a little forwards, and having a tear at every one's service--he
pull'd out a cambrick handkerchief--gave a low sigh--but held his peace.



Chapter 2.XXIII.

--'All is not gain that is got into the purse.'--So that notwithstanding my
father had the happiness of reading the oddest books in the universe, and
had moreover, in himself, the oddest way of thinking that ever man in it
was bless'd with, yet it had this drawback upon him after all--that it laid
him open to some of the oddest and most whimsical distresses; of which this
particular one, which he sunk under at present, is as strong an example as
can be given.

No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child's nose, by the edge of
a pair of forceps--however scientifically applied--would vex any man in the
world, who was at so much pains in begetting a child, as my father was--yet
it will not account for the extravagance of his affliction, nor will it
justify the un-christian manner he abandoned and surrendered himself up to.

To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half an hour--and my
uncle Toby in his old fringed chair sitting beside him.



Chapter 2.XXIV.

--I think it a very unreasonable demand--cried my great-grandfather,
twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the table.--By this account,
madam, you have but two thousand pounds fortune, and not a shilling more--
and you insist upon having three hundred pounds a year jointure for it.--

--'Because,' replied my great-grandmother, 'you have little or no nose,
Sir.'--

Now before I venture to make use of the word Nose a second time--to avoid
all confusion in what will be said upon it, in this interesting part of my
story, it may not be amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with all
possible exactness and precision, what I would willingly be understood to
mean by the term:  being of opinion, that 'tis owing to the negligence and
perverseness of writers in despising this precaution, and to nothing else--
that all the polemical writings in divinity are not as clear and
demonstrative as those upon a Will o' the Wisp, or any other sound part of
philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which, what have you to do,
before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of
judgment--but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of the
main word you have most occasion for--changing it, Sir, as you would a
guinea, into small coin?--which done--let the father of confusion puzzle
you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or your
reader's head, if he knows how.

In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as I am engaged in--
the neglect is inexcusable; and Heaven is witness, how the world has
revenged itself upon me for leaving so many openings to equivocal
strictures--and for depending so much as I have done, all along, upon the
cleanliness of my readers imaginations.

--Here are two senses, cried Eugenius, as we walk'd along, pointing with
the fore finger of his right hand to the word Crevice, in the one hundred
and seventy-eighth page of the first volume of this book of books,--here
are two senses--quoth he.--And here are two roads, replied I, turning short
upon him--a dirty and a clean one--which shall we take?--The clean, by all
means, replied Eugenius.  Eugenius, said I, stepping before him, and laying
my hand upon his breast--to define--is to distrust.--Thus I triumph'd over
Eugenius; but I triumph'd over him as I always do, like a fool.--'Tis my
comfort, however, I am not an obstinate one:  therefore

I define a nose as follows--intreating only beforehand, and beseeching my
readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and condition
soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard against the
temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no art or wile
to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put into my
definition--For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of
noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs--I
declare, by that word I mean a nose, and nothing more, or less.



Chapter 2.XXV.

--'Because,' quoth my great grandmother, repeating the words again--'you
have little or no nose, Sir.'--

S'death! cried my great-grandfather, clapping his hand upon his nose,--'tis
not so small as that comes to;--'tis a full inch longer than my father's.--
Now, my great-grandfather's nose was for all the world like unto the noses
of all the men, women, and children, whom Pantagruel found dwelling upon
the island of Ennasin.--By the way, if you would know the strange way of
getting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a people--you must read the book;--find
it out yourself, you never can.--

--'Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs.

--'Tis a full inch, continued my grandfather, pressing up the ridge of his
nose with his finger and thumb; and repeating his assertion--'tis a full
inch longer, madam, than my father's--You must mean your uncle's, replied
my great-grandmother.

--My great-grandfather was convinced.--He untwisted the paper, and signed
the article.



Chapter 2.XXVI.

--What an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small
estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to my grandfather.

My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, saving the
mark, than there is upon the back of my hand.

--Now, you must know, that my great-grandmother outlived my grandfather
twelve years; so that my father had the jointure to pay, a hundred and
fifty pounds half-yearly--(on Michaelmas and Lady-day,)--during all that
time.

No man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better grace than my
father.--And as far as a hundred pounds went, he would fling it upon the
table, guinea by guinea, with that spirited jerk of an honest welcome,
which generous souls, and generous souls only, are able to fling down
money:  but as soon as ever he enter'd upon the odd fifty--he generally
gave a loud Hem! rubb'd the side of his nose leisurely with the flat part
of his fore finger--inserted his hand cautiously betwixt his head and the
cawl of his wig--look'd at both sides of every guinea as he parted with it-
-and seldom could get to the end of the fifty pounds, without pulling out
his handkerchief, and wiping his temples.

Defend me, gracious Heaven! from those persecuting spirits who make no
allowances for these workings within us.--Never--O never may I lay down in
their tents, who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force of
education, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from ancestors!

For three generations at least this tenet in favour of long noses had
gradually been taking root in our family.--Tradition was all along on its
side, and Interest was every half-year stepping in to strengthen it; so
that the whimsicality of my father's brain was far from having the whole
honour of this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions.--For in
a great measure he might be said to have suck'd this in with his mother's
milk.  He did his part however.--If education planted the mistake (in case
it was one) my father watered it, and ripened it to perfection.

He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that he
did not conceive how the greatest family in England could stand it out
against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses.--And for
the contrary reason, he would generally add, That it must be one of the
greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long and jolly
noses, following one another in a direct line, did not raise and hoist it
up into the best vacancies in the kingdom.--He would often boast that the
Shandy family rank'd very high in king Harry the VIIIth's time, but owed
its rise to no state engine--he would say--but to that only;--but that,
like other families, he would add--it had felt the turn of the wheel, and
had never recovered the blow of my great-grandfather's nose.--It was an ace
of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head--and as vile a one for an
unfortunate family as ever turn'd up trumps.

--Fair and softly, gentle reader!--where is thy fancy carrying thee!--If
there is truth in man, by my great-grandfather's nose, I mean the external
organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in his face--
and which painters say, in good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces,
should comprehend a full third--that is, measured downwards from the
setting on of the hair.

--What a life of it has an author, at this pass!
Prev Next All
Printer Friendly Version | Send this page to a friend | Discuss this Book
Your email address is safe with us. View our Privacy policy.

The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan W.S. Gilbert Category: Plays Sections: 50 What's this? Table of Contents		Non Fiction Short Stories Poetry Plays Sci Fi Philosophy Religion Biography