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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
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.