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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 32 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 3.LX.

The ancient Goths of Germany, who (the learned Cluverius is positive) were
first seated in the country between the Vistula and the Oder, and who
afterwards incorporated the Herculi, the Bugians, and some other Vandallick
clans to 'em--had all of them a wise custom of debating every thing of
importance to their state, twice, that is,--once drunk, and once sober:--
Drunk--that their councils might not want vigour;--and sober--that they
might not want discretion.

Now my father being entirely a water-drinker,--was a long time gravelled
almost to death, in turning this as much to his advantage, as he did every
other thing which the ancients did or said; and it was not till the seventh
year of his marriage, after a thousand fruitless experiments and devices,
that he hit upon an expedient which answered the purpose;--and that was,
when any difficult and momentous point was to be settled in the family,
which required great sobriety, and great spirit too, in its determination,-
-he fixed and set apart the first Sunday night in the month, and the
Saturday night which immediately preceded it, to argue it over, in bed with
my mother:  By which contrivance, if you consider, Sir, with yourself,. .
..

These my father, humorously enough, called his beds of justice;--for from
the two different counsels taken in these two different humours, a middle
one was generally found out which touched the point of wisdom as well, as
if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times.

I must not be made a secret of to the world, that this answers full as well
in literary discussions, as either in military or conjugal; but it is not
every author that can try the experiment as the Goths and Vandals did it--
or, if he can, may it be always for his body's health; and to do it, as my
father did it,--am I sure it would be always for his soul's.

My way is this:--

In all nice and ticklish discussions,--(of which, heaven knows, there are
but too many in my book)--where I find I cannot take a step without the
danger of having either their worships or their reverences upon my back--I
write one-half full,--and t'other fasting;--or write it all full,--and
correct it fasting;--or write it fasting,--and correct it full, for they
all come to the same thing:--So that with a less variation from my father's
plan, than my father's from the Gothick--I feel myself upon a par with him
in his first bed of justice,--and no way inferior to him in his second.--
These different and almost irreconcileable effects, flow uniformly from the
wise and wonderful mechanism of nature,--of which,--be her's the honour.--
All that we can do, is to turn and work the machine to the improvement and
better manufactory of the arts and sciences.--

Now, when I write full,--I write as if I was never to write fasting again
as long as I live;--that is, I write free from the cares as well as the
terrors of the world.--I count not the number of my scars,--nor does my
fancy go forth into dark entries and bye-corners to ante-date my stabs.--In
a word, my pen takes its course; and I write on as much from the fulness of
my heart, as my stomach.--

But when, an' please your honours, I indite fasting, 'tis a different
history.--I pay the world all possible attention and respect,--and have as
great a share (whilst it lasts) of that under strapping virtue of
discretion as the best of you.--So that betwixt both, I write a careless
kind of a civil, nonsensical, good-humoured Shandean book, which will do
all your hearts good--

--And all your heads too,--provided you understand it.



Chapter 3.LXI.

We should begin, said my father, turning himself half round in bed, and
shifting his pillow a little towards my mother's, as he opened the debate--
We should begin to think, Mrs. Shandy, of putting this boy into breeches.--

We should so,--said my mother.--We defer it, my dear, quoth my father,
shamefully.--

I think we do, Mr. Shandy,--said my mother.

--Not but the child looks extremely well, said my father, in his vests and
tunicks.--

--He does look very well in them,--replied my mother.--

--And for that reason it would be almost a sin, added my father, to take
him out of 'em.--

--It would so,--said my mother:--But indeed he is growing a very tall lad,-
-rejoined my father.

--He is very tall for his age, indeed,--said my mother.--

--I can not (making two syllables of it) imagine, quoth my father, who the
deuce he takes after.--

I cannot conceive, for my life, said my mother.--

Humph!--said my father.

(The dialogue ceased for a moment.)

--(I am very short myself,--continued my father gravely.

You are very short, Mr. Shandy,--said my mother.

Humph! quoth my father to himself, a second time:  in muttering which, he
plucked his pillow a little further from my mother's,--and turning about
again, there was an end of the debate for three minutes and a half.

--When he gets these breeches made, cried my father in a higher tone, he'll
look like a beast in 'em.

He will be very awkward in them at first, replied my mother.

--And 'twill be lucky, if that's the worst on't, added my father.

It will be very lucky, answered my mother.

I suppose, replied my father,--making some pause first,--he'll be exactly
like other people's children.--

Exactly, said my mother.--

--Though I shall be sorry for that, added my father:  and so the debate
stopp'd again.--

--They should be of leather, said my father, turning him about again.--

They will last him, said my mother, the longest.

But he can have no linings to 'em, replied my father.--

He cannot, said my mother.

'Twere better to have them of fustian, quoth my father.

Nothing can be better, quoth my mother.--

--Except dimity,--replied my father:--'Tis best of all,--replied my mother.

--One must not give him his death, however,--interrupted my father.

By no means, said my mother:--and so the dialogue stood still again.

I am resolved, however, quoth my father, breaking silence the fourth time,
he shall have no pockets in them.--

--There is no occasion for any, said my mother.--

I mean in his coat and waistcoat,--cried my father.

--I mean so too,--replied my mother.

--Though if he gets a gig or top--Poor souls! it is a crown and a sceptre
to them,--they should have where to secure it.--

Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy, replied my mother.--

--But don't you think it right? added my father, pressing the point home to
her.

Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, Mr. Shandy.--

--There's for you! cried my father, losing his temper--Pleases me!--You
never will distinguish, Mrs. Shandy, nor shall I ever teach you to do it,
betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience.--This was on the
Sunday night:--and further this chapter sayeth not.



Chapter 3.LXII.

After my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my mother,--he
consulted Albertus Rubenius upon it; and Albertus Rubenius used my father
ten times worse in the consultation (if possible) than even my father had
used my mother:  For as Rubenius had wrote a quarto express, De re
Vestiaria Veterum,--it was Rubenius's business to have given my father some
lights.--On the contrary, my father might as well have thought of
extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of a long beard,--as of
extracting a single word out of Rubenius upon the subject.

Upon every other article of ancient dress, Rubenius was very communicative
to my father;--gave him a full satisfactory account of
The Toga, or loose gown.
The Chlamys.
The Ephod.
The Tunica, or Jacket.
The Synthesis.
The Paenula.
The Lacema, with its Cucullus.
The Paludamentum.
The Praetexta.
The Sagum, or soldier's jerkin.
The Trabea: of which, according to Suetonius, there was three kinds.--

--But what are all these to the breeches? said my father.

Rubenius threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had been
in fashion with the Romans.--

There was,
The open shoe.
The close shoe.
The slip shoe.
The wooden shoe.
The soc.
The buskin.
And The military shoe with hobnails in it, which Juvenal takes notice of.

There were,
The clogs.
The pattins.
The pantoufles.
The brogues.
The sandals, with latchets to them.

There was,
The felt shoe.
The linen shoe.
The laced shoe.
The braided shoe.
The calceus incisus.
And The calceus rostratus.

Rubenius shewed my father how well they all fitted,--in what manner they
laced on,--with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribbands, jaggs, and
ends.--

--But I want to be informed about the breeches, said my father.

Albertus Rubenius informed my father that the Romans manufactured stuffs of
various fabrics,--some plain,--some striped,--others diapered throughout
the whole contexture of the wool, with silk and gold--That linen did not
begin to be in common use till towards the declension of the empire, when
the Egyptians coming to settle amongst them, brought it into vogue.

--That persons of quality and fortune distinguished themselves by the
fineness and whiteness of their clothes; which colour (next to purple,
which was appropriated to the great offices) they most affected, and wore
on their birth-days and public rejoicings.--That it appeared from the best
historians of those times, that they frequently sent their clothes to the
fuller, to be clean'd and whitened:--but that the inferior people, to avoid
that expence, generally wore brown clothes, and of a something coarser
texture,--till towards the beginning of Augustus's reign, when the slave
dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of habiliment was
lost, but the Latus Clavus.

And what was the Latus Clavus? said my father.

Rubenius told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the
learned:--That Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius Budaeus,
Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Casaubon, and Joseph Scaliger, all
differed from each other,--and he from them:  That some took it to be the
button,--some the coat itself,--others only the colour of it;--That the
great Bayfuis in his Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12--honestly said, he
knew not what it was,--whether a tibula,--a stud,--a button,--a loop,--a
buckle,--or clasps and keepers.--

--My father lost the horse, but not the saddle--They are hooks and eyes,
said my father--and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches to be made.



Chapter 3.LXIII.

We are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.--

--Leave we then the breeches in the taylor's hands, with my father standing
over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a lecture upon the
latus clavus, and pointing to the precise part of the waistband, where he
was determined to have it sewed on.--

Leave we my mother--(truest of all the Poco-curante's of her sex!)--
careless about it, as about every thing else in the world which concerned
her;--that is,--indifferent whether it was done this way or that,--provided
it was but done at all.--

Leave we Slop likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.--

Leave we poor Le Fever to recover, and get home from Marseilles as he can.-
-And last of all,--because the hardest of all--

Let us leave, if possible, myself:--But 'tis impossible,--I must go along
with you to the end of the work.



Chapter 3.LXIV.

If the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of ground
which lay at the bottom of my uncle Toby's kitchen-garden, and which was
the scene of so many of his delicious hours,--the fault is not in me,--but
in his imagination;--for I am sure I gave him so minute a description, I
was almost ashamed of it.

When Fate was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great transactions
of future times,--and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a
decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,--she gave a nod to
Nature,--'twas enough--Nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest
compost upon it, with just so much clay in it, as to retain the forms of
angles and indentings,--and so little of it too, as not to cling to the
spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul weather.

My uncle Toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans along
with him, of almost every fortified town in Italy and Flanders; so let the
duke of Marlborough, or the allies, have set down before what town they
pleased, my uncle Toby was prepared for them.

His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as ever
a town was invested--(but sooner when the design was known) to take the
plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a scale to
the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of
a large role of packthread, and a number of small piquets driven into the
ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his
paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine
the depths and slopes of the ditches,--the talus of the glacis, and the
precise height of the several banquets, parapets, &c.--he set the corporal
to work--and sweetly went it on:--The nature of the soil,--the nature of
the work itself,--and above all, the good-nature of my uncle Toby sitting
by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past-
done deeds,--left Labour little else but the ceremony of the name.

When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture
of defence,--it was invested,--and my uncle Toby and the corporal began to
run their first parallel.--I beg I may not be interrupted in my story, by
being told, That the first parallel should be at least three hundred toises
distant from the main body of the place,--and that I have not left a single
inch for it;--for my uncle Toby took the liberty of incroaching upon his
kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green,
and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt
two rows of his cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and
inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my
uncle Toby's and the corporal's campaigns, of which, this I'm now writing
is but a sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three
pages (but there is no guessing)--The campaigns themselves will take up as
many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a
weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to
rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work--surely they
had better be printed apart,--we'll consider the affair--so take the
following sketch of them in the mean time.



Chapter 3.LXV.

When the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle Toby and the corporal
began to run their first parallel--not at random, or any how--but from the
same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs; and
regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my uncle Toby
received from the daily papers,--they went on, during the whole siege, step
by step with the allies.

When the duke of Marlborough made a lodgment,--my uncle Toby made a
lodgment too.--And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a
defence ruined,--the corporal took his mattock and did as much,--and so
on;--gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one after
another, till the town fell into their hands.

To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,--there could not
have been a greater sight in world, than on a post morning, in which a
practicable breach had been made by the duke of Marlborough, in the main
body of the place,--to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed
the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him, sallied forth;--
the one with the Gazette in his hand,--the other with a spade on his
shoulder to execute the contents.--What an honest triumph in my uncle
Toby's looks as he marched up to the ramparts!  What intense pleasure
swimming in his eye as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph
ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should
make the breach an inch too wide,--or leave it an inch too narrow.--But
when the chamade was beat, and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and
followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts--
Heaven! Earth! Sea!--but what avails apostrophes?--with all your elements,
wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.

In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it,
except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or
ten days together, which detained the Flanders mail, and kept them so long
in torture,--but still 'twas the torture of the happy--In this track, I
say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which,
and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the
other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their
operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them
on.

The first year's campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the
plain and simple method I've related.

In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and Ruremond, he
thought he might afford the expence of four handsome draw-bridges; of two
of which I have given an exact description in the former part of my work.

At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with port-
cullises:--These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the better
thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle Toby, instead of a
new suit of clothes, which he always had at Christmas, treated himself with
a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt
which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind of an
esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon.

--The sentry-box was in case of rain.

All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which
enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.

My father would often say to Yorick, that if any mortal in the whole
universe had done such a thing except his brother Toby, it would have been
looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade
and prancing manner in which Lewis XIV. from the beginning of the war, but
particularly that very year, had taken the field--But 'tis not my brother
Toby's nature, kind soul! my father would add, to insult any one.

--But let us go on.
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