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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 41 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 4.XXXIV.

My uncle Toby's head at that time was full of other matters, so that it was
not till the demolition of Dunkirk, when all the other civilities of Europe
were settled, that he found leisure to return this.

This made an armistice (that is, speaking with regard to my uncle Toby--but
with respect to Mrs. Wadman, a vacancy)--of almost eleven years.  But in
all cases of this nature, as it is the second blow, happen at what distance
of time it will, which makes the fray--I chuse for that reason to call
these the amours of my uncle Toby with Mrs. Wadman, rather than the amours
of Mrs. Wadman with my uncle Toby.

This is not a distinction without a difference.

It is not like the affair of an old hat cock'd--and a cock'd old hat, about
which your reverences have so often been at odds with one another--but
there is a difference here in the nature of things--

And let me tell you, gentry, a wide one too.



Chapter 4.XXXV.

Now as widow Wadman did love my uncle Toby--and my uncle Toby did not love
widow Wadman, there was nothing for widow Wadman to do, but to go on and
love my uncle Toby--or let it alone.

Widow Wadman would do neither the one or the other.

--Gracious heaven!--but I forget I am a little of her temper myself; for
whenever it so falls out, which it sometimes does about the equinoxes, that
an earthly goddess is so much this, and that, and t'other, that I cannot
eat my breakfast for her--and that she careth not three halfpence whether I
eat my breakfast or no--

--Curse on her! and so I send her to Tartary, and from Tartary to Terra del
Fuogo, and so on to the devil:  in short, there is not an infernal nitch
where I do not take her divinityship and stick it.

But as the heart is tender, and the passions in these tides ebb and flow
ten times in a minute, I instantly bring her back again; and as I do all
things in extremes, I place her in the very center of the milky-way--

Brightest of stars! thou wilt shed thy influence upon some one--

--The duce take her and her influence too--for at that word I lose all
patience--much good may it do him!--By all that is hirsute and gashly! I
cry, taking off my furr'd cap, and twisting it round my finger--I would not
give sixpence for a dozen such!

--But 'tis an excellent cap too (putting it upon my head, and pressing it
close to my ears)--and warm--and soft; especially if you stroke it the
right way--but alas! that will never be my luck--(so here my philosophy is
shipwreck'd again.)

--No; I shall never have a finger in the pye (so here I break my metaphor)-
-

Crust and Crumb
Inside and out
Top and bottom--I detest it, I hate it, I repudiate it--I'm sick at the
sight of it--

'Tis all pepper,
garlick,
staragen,
salt, and
devil's dung--by the great arch-cooks of cooks, who does nothing, I think,
from morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and invent
inflammatory dishes for us, I would not touch it for the world--

--O Tristram! Tristram! cried Jenny.

O Jenny! Jenny! replied I, and so went on with the thirty-sixth chapter.



Chapter 4.XXXVI.

--'Not touch it for the world,' did I say--

Lord, how I have heated my imagination with this metaphor!



Chapter 4.XXXVII.

Which shews, let your reverences and worships say what you will of it (for
as for thinking--all who do think--think pretty much alike both upon it and
other matters)--Love is certainly, at least alphabetically speaking, one of
the most
A gitating
B ewitching
C onfounded
D evilish affairs of life--the most
E xtravagant
F utilitous
G alligaskinish
H andy-dandyish
I racundulous (there is no K to it) and
L yrical of all human passions: at the same time, the most
M isgiving
N innyhammering
O bstipating
P ragmatical
S tridulous
R idiculous--though by the bye the R should have gone first--But in short
'tis of such a nature, as my father once told my uncle Toby upon the close
of a long dissertation upon the subject--'You can scarce,' said he,
'combine two ideas together upon it, brother Toby, without an hypallage'--
What's that? cried my uncle Toby.

The cart before the horse, replied my father--

--And what is he to do there? cried my uncle Toby.

Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in--or let it alone.

Now widow Wadman, as I told you before, would do neither the one or the
other.

She stood however ready harnessed and caparisoned at all points, to watch
accidents.



Chapter 4.XXXVIII.

The Fates, who certainly all fore-knew of these amours of widow Wadman and
my uncle Toby, had, from the first creation of matter and motion (and with
more courtesy than they usually do things of this kind), established such a
chain of causes and effects hanging so fast to one another, that it was
scarce possible for my uncle Toby to have dwelt in any other house in the
world, or to have occupied any other garden in Christendom, but the very
house and garden which join'd and laid parallel to Mrs. Wadman's; this,
with the advantage of a thickset arbour in Mrs. Wadman's garden, but
planted in the hedge-row of my uncle Toby's, put all the occasions into her
hands which Love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle Toby's
motions, and was mistress likewise of his councils of war; and as his
unsuspecting heart had given leave to the corporal, through the mediation
of Bridget, to make her a wicker-gate of communication to enlarge her
walks, it enabled her to carry on her approaches to the very door of the
sentry-box; and sometimes out of gratitude, to make an attack, and
endeavour to blow my uncle Toby up in the very sentry-box itself.



Chapter 4.XXXIX.

It is a great pity--but 'tis certain from every day's observation of man,
that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end--provided there is
a sufficient wick standing out; if there is not--there's an end of the
affair; and if there is--by lighting it at the bottom, as the flame in that
case has the misfortune generally to put out itself--there's an end of the
affair again.

For my part, could I always have the ordering of it which way I would be
burnt myself--for I cannot bear the thoughts of being burnt like a beast--I
would oblige a housewife constantly to light me at the top; for then I
should burn down decently to the socket; that is, from my head to my heart,
from my heart to my liver, from my liver to my bowels, and so on by the
meseraick veins and arteries, through all the turns and lateral insertions
of the intestines and their tunicles to the blind gut--

--I beseech you, doctor Slop, quoth my uncle Toby, interrupting him as he
mentioned the blind gut, in a discourse with my father the night my mother
was brought to bed of me--I beseech you, quoth my uncle Toby, to tell me
which is the blind gut; for, old as I am, I vow I do not know to this day
where it lies.

The blind gut, answered doctor Slop, lies betwixt the Ilion and Colon--

In a man? said my father.

--'Tis precisely the same, cried doctor Slop, in a woman.--

That's more than I know; quoth my father.



Chapter 4.XL.

--And so to make sure of both systems, Mrs. Wadman predetermined to light
my uncle Toby neither at this end or that; but, like a prodigal's candle,
to light him, if possible, at both ends at once.

Now, through all the lumber rooms of military furniture, including both of
horse and foot, from the great arsenal of Venice to the Tower of London
(exclusive), if Mrs. Wadman had been rummaging for seven years together,
and with Bridget to help her, she could not have found any one blind or
mantelet so fit for her purpose, as that which the expediency of my uncle
Toby's affairs had fix'd up ready to her hands.

I believe I have not told you--but I don't know--possibly I have--be it as
it will, 'tis one of the number of those many things, which a man had
better do over again, than dispute about it--That whatever town or fortress
the corporal was at work upon, during the course of their campaign, my
uncle Toby always took care, on the inside of his sentry-box, which was
towards his left hand, to have a plan of the place, fasten'd up with two or
three pins at the top, but loose at the bottom, for the conveniency of
holding it up to the eye, &c. . .as occasions required; so that when an
attack was resolved upon, Mrs. Wadman had nothing more to do, when she had
got advanced to the door of the sentry-box, but to extend her right hand;
and edging in her left foot at the same movement, to take hold of the map
or plan, or upright, or whatever it was, and with out-stretched neck
meeting it half way,--to advance it towards her; on which my uncle Toby's
passions were sure to catch fire--for he would instantly take hold of the
other corner of the map in his left hand, and with the end of his pipe in
the other, begin an explanation.

When the attack was advanced to this point;--the world will naturally enter
into the reasons of Mrs. Wadman's next stroke of generalship--which was, to
take my uncle Toby's tobacco-pipe out of his hand as soon as she possibly
could; which, under one pretence or other, but generally that of pointing
more distinctly at some redoubt or breastwork in the map, she would effect
before my uncle Toby (poor soul!) had well march'd above half a dozen
toises with it.

--It obliged my uncle Toby to make use of his forefinger.

The difference it made in the attack was this; That in going upon it, as in
the first case, with the end of her fore-finger against the end of my uncle
Toby's tobacco-pipe, she might have travelled with it, along the lines,
from Dan to Beersheba, had my uncle Toby's lines reach'd so far, without
any effect:  For as there was no arterial or vital heat in the end of the
tobacco-pipe, it could excite no sentiment--it could neither give fire by
pulsation--or receive it by sympathy--'twas nothing but smoke.

Whereas, in following my uncle Toby's forefinger with hers, close thro' all
the little turns and indentings of his works--pressing sometimes against
the side of it--then treading upon its nail--then tripping it up--then
touching it here--then there, and so on--it set something at least in
motion.

This, tho' slight skirmishing, and at a distance from the main body, yet
drew on the rest; for here, the map usually falling with the back of it,
close to the side of the sentry-box, my uncle Toby, in the simplicity of
his soul, would lay his hand flat upon it, in order to go on with his
explanation; and Mrs. Wadman, by a manoeuvre as quick as thought, would as
certainly place her's close beside it; this at once opened a communication,
large enough for any sentiment to pass or re-pass, which a person skill'd
in the elementary and practical part of love-making, has occasion for--

By bringing up her forefinger parallel (as before) to my uncle Toby's--it
unavoidably brought the thumb into action--and the forefinger and thumb
being once engaged, as naturally brought in the whole hand.  Thine, dear
uncle Toby! was never now in 'ts right place--Mrs. Wadman had it ever to
take up, or, with the gentlest pushings, protrusions, and equivocal
compressions, that a hand to be removed is capable of receiving--to get it
press'd a hair breadth of one side out of her way.

Whilst this was doing, how could she forget to make him sensible, that it
was her leg (and no one's else) at the bottom of the sentry-box, which
slightly press'd against the calf of his--So that my uncle Toby being thus
attack'd and sore push'd on both his wings--was it a wonder, if now and
then, it put his centre into disorder?--

--The duce take it! said my uncle Toby.



Chapter 4.XLI.

These attacks of Mrs. Wadman, you will readily conceive to be of different
kinds; varying from each other, like the attacks which history is full of,
and from the same reasons.  A general looker-on would scarce allow them to
be attacks at all--or if he did, would confound them all together--but I
write not to them:  it will be time enough to be a little more exact in my
descriptions of them, as I come up to them, which will not be for some
chapters; having nothing more to add in this, but that in a bundle of
original papers and drawings which my father took care to roll up by
themselves, there is a plan of Bouchain in perfect preservation (and shall
be kept so, whilst I have power to preserve any thing), upon the lower
corner of which, on the right hand side, there is still remaining the marks
of a snuffy finger and thumb, which there is all the reason in the world to
imagine, were Mrs. Wadman's; for the opposite side of the margin, which I
suppose to have been my uncle Toby's, is absolutely clean:  This seems an
authenticated record of one of these attacks; for there are vestigia of the
two punctures partly grown up, but still visible on the opposite corner of
the map, which are unquestionably the very holes, through which it has been
pricked up in the sentry-box--

By all that is priestly! I value this precious relick, with its stigmata
and pricks, more than all the relicks of the Romish church--always
excepting, when I am writing upon these matters, the pricks which entered
the flesh of St. Radagunda in the desert, which in your road from Fesse to
Cluny, the nuns of that name will shew you for love.



Chapter 4.XLII.

I think, an' please your honour, quoth Trim, the fortifications are quite
destroyed--and the bason is upon a level with the mole--I think so too;
replied my uncle Toby with a sigh half suppress'd--but step into the
parlour, Trim, for the stipulation--it lies upon the table.

It has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till this very
morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it--

--Then, said my uncle Toby, there is no further occasion for our services.
The more, an' please your honour, the pity, said the corporal; in uttering
which he cast his spade into the wheel-barrow, which was beside him, with
an air the most expressive of disconsolation that can be imagined, and was
heavily turning about to look for his pickax, his pioneer's shovel, his
picquets, and other little military stores, in order to carry them off the
field--when a heigh-ho! from the sentry-box, which being made of thin slit
deal, reverberated the sound more sorrowfully to his ear, forbad him.

--No; said the corporal to himself, I'll do it before his honour rises to-
morrow morning; so taking his spade out of the wheel-barrow again, with a
little earth in it, as if to level something at the foot of the glacis--but
with a real intent to approach nearer to his master, in order to divert
him--he loosen'd a sod or two--pared their edges with his spade, and having
given them a gentle blow or two with the back of it, he sat himself down
close by my uncle Toby's feet and began as follows.
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