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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
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.