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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 43 of 48 - Table of Contents
It never did, said the corporal.



Chapter 4.XLV.

--But 'tis no marvel, continued the corporal--seeing my uncle Toby musing
upon it--for Love, an' please your honour, is exactly like war, in this;
that a soldier, though he has escaped three weeks complete o'Saturday
night,--may nevertheless be shot through his heart on Sunday morning--It
happened so here, an' please your honour, with this difference only--that
it was on Sunday in the afternoon, when I fell in love all at once with a
sisserara--It burst upon me, an' please your honour, like a bomb--scarce
giving me time to say, 'God bless me.'

I thought, Trim, said my uncle Toby, a man never fell in love so very
suddenly.

Yes, an' please your honour, if he is in the way of it--replied Trim.

I prithee, quoth my uncle Toby, inform me how this matter happened.

--With all pleasure, said the corporal, making a bow.



Chapter 4.XLVI.

I had escaped, continued the corporal, all that time from falling in love,
and had gone on to the end of the chapter, had it not been predestined
otherwise--there is no resisting our fate.

It was on a Sunday, in the afternoon, as I told your honour.

The old man and his wife had walked out--

Every thing was still and hush as midnight about the house--

There was not so much as a duck or a duckling about the yard--

--When the fair Beguine came in to see me.

My wound was then in a fair way of doing well--the inflammation had been
gone off for some time, but it was succeeded with an itching both above and
below my knee, so insufferable, that I had not shut my eyes the whole night
for it.

Let me see it, said she, kneeling down upon the ground parallel to my knee,
and laying her hand upon the part below it--it only wants rubbing a little,
said the Beguine; so covering it with the bed-clothes, she began with the
fore-finger of her right hand to rub under my knee, guiding her fore-finger
backwards and forwards by the edge of the flannel which kept on the
dressing.

In five or six minutes I felt slightly the end of her second finger--and
presently it was laid flat with the other, and she continued rubbing in
that way round and round for a good while; it then came into my head, that
I should fall in love--I blush'd when I saw how white a hand she had--I
shall never, an' please your honour, behold another hand so white whilst I
live--

--Not in that place, said my uncle Toby--

Though it was the most serious despair in nature to the corporal--he could
not forbear smiling.

The young Beguine, continued the corporal, perceiving it was of great
service to me--from rubbing for some time, with two fingers--proceeded to
rub at length, with three--till by little and little she brought down the
fourth, and then rubb'd with her whole hand:  I will never say another
word, an' please your honour, upon hands again--but it was softer than
sattin--

--Prithee, Trim, commend it as much as thou wilt, said my uncle Toby; I
shall hear thy story with the more delight--The corporal thank'd his master
most unfeignedly; but having nothing to say upon the Beguine's hand but the
same over again--he proceeded to the effects of it.

The fair Beguine, said the corporal, continued rubbing with her whole hand
under my knee--till I fear'd her zeal would weary her--'I would do a
thousand times more,' said she, 'for the love of Christ'--In saying which,
she pass'd her hand across the flannel, to the part above my knee, which I
had equally complain'd of, and rubb'd it also.

I perceiv'd, then, I was beginning to be in love--

As she continued rub-rub-rubbing--I felt it spread from under her hand, an'
please your honour, to every part of my frame--

The more she rubb'd, and the longer strokes she took--the more the fire
kindled in my veins--till at length, by two or three strokes longer than
the rest--my passion rose to the highest pitch--I seiz'd her hand--

--And then thou clapped'st it to thy lips, Trim, said my uncle Toby--and
madest a speech.

Whether the corporal's amour terminated precisely in the way my uncle Toby
described it, is not material; it is enough that it contained in it the
essence of all the love romances which ever have been wrote since the
beginning of the world.



Chapter 4.XLVII.

As soon as the corporal had finished the story of his amour--or rather my
uncle Toby for him--Mrs. Wadman silently sallied forth from her arbour,
replaced the pin in her mob, pass'd the wicker gate, and advanced slowly
towards my uncle Toby's sentry-box:  the disposition which Trim had made in
my uncle Toby's mind, was too favourable a crisis to be let slipp'd--

--The attack was determin'd upon:  it was facilitated still more by my
uncle Toby's having ordered the corporal to wheel off the pioneer's shovel,
the spade, the pick-axe, the picquets, and other military stores which lay
scatter'd upon the ground where Dunkirk stood--The corporal had march'd--
the field was clear.

Now, consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting, or writing, or
any thing else (whether in rhyme to it, or not) which a man has occasion to
do--to act by plan:  for if ever Plan, independent of all circumstances,
deserved registering in letters of gold (I mean in the archives of Gotham)-
-it was certainly the Plan of Mrs. Wadman's attack of my uncle Toby in his
sentry-box, By Plan--Now the plan hanging up in it at this juncture, being
the Plan of Dunkirk--and the tale of Dunkirk a tale of relaxation, it
opposed every impression she could make:  and besides, could she have gone
upon it--the manoeuvre of fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-
box, was so outdone by that of the fair Beguine's, in Trim's story--that
just then, that particular attack, however successful before--became the
most heartless attack that could be made--

O! let woman alone for this.  Mrs. Wadman had scarce open'd the wicker-
gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances.

--She formed a new attack in a moment.



Chapter 4.XLVIII.

--I am half distracted, captain Shandy, said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her
cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach'd the door of my
uncle Toby's sentry-box--a mote--or sand--or something--I know not what,
has got into this eye of mine--do look into it--it is not in the white--

In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle Toby,
and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an
opportunity of doing it without rising up--Do look into it--said she.

Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart, as
ever child look'd into a raree-shew-box; and 'twere as much a sin to have
hurt thee.

--If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature--
I've nothing to say to it--

My uncle Toby never did:  and I will answer for him, that he would have sat
quietly upon a sofa from June to January (which, you know, takes in both
the hot and cold months), with an eye as fine as the Thracian Rodope's
(Rodope Thracia tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exacte oculus
intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non posset, quin
caperetur.--I know not who.) besides him, without being able to tell,
whether it was a black or blue one.

The difficulty was to get my uncle Toby, to look at one at all.

'Tis surmounted.  And

I see him yonder with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling
out of it--looking--and looking--then rubbing his eyes--and looking again,
with twice the good-nature that ever Galileo look'd for a spot in the sun.

--In vain! for by all the powers which animate the organ--Widow Wadman's
left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right--there is neither mote,
or sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of opake matter floating
in it--There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent delicious
fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions, into
thine--

--If thou lookest, uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment longer,--
thou art undone.



Chapter 4.XLIX.

An eye is for all the world exactly like a cannon, in this respect; That it
is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is the carriage
of the eye--and the carriage of the cannon, by which both the one and the
other are enabled to do so much execution.  I don't think the comparison a
bad one:  However, as 'tis made and placed at the head of the chapter, as
much for use as ornament, all I desire in return, is, that whenever I speak
of Mrs. Wadman's eyes (except once in the next period), that you keep it in
your fancy.

I protest, Madam, said my uncle Toby, I can see nothing whatever in your
eye.

It is not in the white; said Mrs. Wadman:  my uncle Toby look'd with might
and main into the pupil--

Now of all the eyes which ever were created--from your own, Madam, up to
those of Venus herself, which certainly were as venereal a pair of eyes as
ever stood in a head--there never was an eye of them all, so fitted to rob
my uncle Toby of his repose, as the very eye, at which he was looking--it
was not, Madam a rolling eye--a romping or a wanton one--nor was it an eye
sparkling--petulant or imperious--of high claims and terrifying exactions,
which would have curdled at once that milk of human nature, of which my
uncle Toby was made up--but 'twas an eye full of gentle salutations--and
soft responses--speaking--not like the trumpet stop of some ill-made organ,
in which many an eye I talk to, holds coarse converse--but whispering soft-
-like the last low accent of an expiring saint--'How can you live
comfortless, captain Shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head
on--or trust your cares to?'

It was an eye--

But I shall be in love with it myself, if I say another word about it.

--It did my uncle Toby's business.



Chapter 4.L.

There is nothing shews the character of my father and my uncle Toby, in a
more entertaining light, than their different manner of deportment, under
the same accident--for I call not love a misfortune, from a persuasion,
that a man's heart is ever the better for it--Great God! what must my uncle
Toby's have been, when 'twas all benignity without it.

My father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject to this
passion, before he married--but from a little subacid kind of drollish
impatience in his nature, whenever it befell him, he would never submit to
it like a christian; but would pish, and huff, and bounce, and kick, and
play the Devil, and write the bitterest Philippicks against the eye that
ever man wrote--there is one in verse upon somebody's eye or other, that
for two or three nights together, had put him by his rest; which in his
first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus:

'A Devil 'tis--and mischief such doth work
As never yet did Pagan, Jew, or Turk.'
(This will be printed with my father's Life of Socrates, &c. &c.)

In short, during the whole paroxism, my father was all abuse and foul
language, approaching rather towards malediction--only he did not do it
with as much method as Ernulphus--he was too impetuous; nor with
Ernulphus's policy--for tho' my father, with the most intolerant spirit,
would curse both this and that, and every thing under heaven, which was
either aiding or abetting to his love--yet never concluded his chapter of
curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the bargain, as one of the
most egregious fools and cox-combs, he would say, that ever was let loose
in the world.

My uncle Toby, on the contrary, took it like a lamb--sat still and let the
poison work in his veins without resistance--in the sharpest exacerbations
of his wound (like that on his groin) he never dropt one fretful or
discontented word--he blamed neither heaven nor earth--or thought or spoke
an injurious thing of any body, or any part of it; he sat solitary and
pensive with his pipe--looking at his lame leg--then whiffing out a
sentimental heigh ho! which mixing with the smoke, incommoded no one
mortal.

He took it like a lamb--I say.

In truth he had mistook it at first; for having taken a ride with my
father, that very morning, to save if possible a beautiful wood, which the
dean and chapter were hewing down to give to the poor (Mr. Shandy must mean
the poor in spirit; inasmuch as they divided the money amongst
themselves.); which said wood being in full view of my uncle Toby's house,
and of singular service to him in his description of the battle of
Wynnendale--by trotting on too hastily to save it--upon an uneasy saddle--
worse horse, &c. &c. . .it had so happened, that the serous part of the
blood had got betwixt the two skins, in the nethermost part of my uncle
Toby--the first shootings of which (as my uncle Toby had no experience of
love) he had taken for a part of the passion--till the blister breaking in
the one case--and the other remaining--my uncle Toby was presently
convinced, that his wound was not a skin-deep wound--but that it had gone
to his heart.



Chapter 4.LI.

The world is ashamed of being virtuous--my uncle Toby knew little of the
world; and therefore when he felt he was in love with widow Wadman, he had
no conception that the thing was any more to be made a mystery of, than if
Mrs. Wadman had given him a cut with a gap'd knife across his finger:  Had
it been otherwise--yet as he ever look'd upon Trim as a humble friend; and
saw fresh reasons every day of his life, to treat him as such--it would
have made no variation in the manner in which he informed him of the
affair.

'I am in love, corporal!' quoth my uncle Toby.



Chapter 4.LII.

In love!--said the corporal--your honour was very well the day before
yesterday, when I was telling your honour of the story of the King of
Bohemia--Bohemia! said my uncle Toby. . .musing a long time. . .What became
of that story, Trim?

--We lost it, an' please your honour, somehow betwixt us--but your honour
was as free from love then, as I am--'twas just whilst thou went'st off
with the wheel-barrow--with Mrs. Wadman, quoth my uncle Toby--She has left
a ball here--added my uncle Toby--pointing to his breast--

--She can no more, an' please your honour, stand a siege, than she can fly-
-cried the corporal--

--But as we are neighbours, Trim,--the best way I think is to let her know
it civilly first--quoth my uncle Toby.

Now if I might presume, said the corporal, to differ from your honour--

--Why else do I talk to thee, Trim? said my uncle Toby, mildly--

--Then I would begin, an' please your honour, with making a good thundering
attack upon her, in return--and telling her civilly afterwards--for if she
knows any thing of your honour's being in love, before hand--L..d help
her!--she knows no more at present of it, Trim, said my uncle Toby--than
the child unborn--

Precious souls!--

Mrs. Wadman had told it, with all its circumstances, to Mrs. Bridget
twenty-four hours before; and was at that very moment sitting in council
with her, touching some slight misgivings with regard to the issue of the
affairs, which the Devil, who never lies dead in a ditch, had put into her
head--before he would allow half time, to get quietly through her Te Deum.

I am terribly afraid, said widow Wadman, in case I should marry him,
Bridget--that the poor captain will not enjoy his health, with the
monstrous wound upon his groin--

It may not, Madam, be so very large, replied Bridget, as you think--and I
believe, besides, added she--that 'tis dried up--

--I could like to know--merely for his sake, said Mrs. Wadman--

--We'll know and long and the broad of it, in ten days--answered Mrs.
Bridget, for whilst the captain is paying his addresses to you--I'm
confident Mr. Trim will be for making love to me--and I'll let him as much
as he will--added Bridget--to get it all out of him--

The measures were taken at once--and my uncle Toby and the corporal went on
with theirs.

Now, quoth the corporal, setting his left hand a-kimbo, and giving such a
flourish with his right, as just promised success--and no more--if your
honour will give me leave to lay down the plan of this attack--

--Thou wilt please me by it, Trim, said my uncle Toby, exceedingly--and as
I foresee thou must act in it as my aid de camp, here's a crown, corporal,
to begin with, to steep thy commission.

Then, an' please your honour, said the corporal (making a bow first for his
commission)--we will begin with getting your honour's laced clothes out of
the great campaign-trunk, to be well air'd, and have the blue and gold
taken up at the sleeves--and I'll put your white ramallie-wig fresh into
pipes--and send for a taylor, to have your honour's thin scarlet breeches
turn'd--

--I had better take the red plush ones, quoth my uncle Toby--They will be
too clumsy--said the corporal.



Chapter 4.LIII.

--Thou wilt get a brush and a little chalk to my sword--'Twill be only in
your honour's way, replied Trim.
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