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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

Section 47 of 48 - Table of Contents
Chapter 4.LXXX.

As there are fifty different ends (counting all ends in--as well civil as
religious) for which a woman takes a husband, the first sets about and
carefully weighs, then separates and distinguishes in her mind, which of
all that number of ends is hers; then by discourse, enquiry, argumentation,
and inference, she investigates and finds out whether she has got hold of
the right one--and if she has--then, by pulling it gently this way and that
way, she further forms a judgment, whether it will not break in the
drawing.

The imagery under which Slawkenbergius impresses this upon the reader's
fancy, in the beginning of his third Decad, is so ludicrous, that the
honour I bear the sex, will not suffer me to quote it--otherwise it is not
destitute of humour.

'She first, saith Slawkenbergius, stops the asse, and holding his halter in
her left hand (lest he should get away) she thrusts her right hand into the
very bottom of his pannier to search for it--For what?--you'll not know the
sooner, quoth Slawkenbergius, for interrupting me--

'I have nothing, good Lady, but empty bottles;' says the asse.

'I'm loaded with tripes;' says the second.

--And thou art little better, quoth she to the third; for nothing is there
in thy panniers but trunk-hose and pantofles--and so to the fourth and
fifth, going on one by one through the whole string, till coming to the
asse which carries it, she turns the pannier upside down, looks at it--
considers it--samples it--measures it--stretches it--wets it--dries it--
then takes her teeth both to the warp and weft of it.

--Of what? for the love of Christ!

I am determined, answered Slawkenbergius, that all the powers upon earth
shall never wring that secret from my breast.



Chapter 4.LXXXI.

We live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles--and so
'tis no matter--else it seems strange, that Nature, who makes every thing
so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, unless for
pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to whatever passes through her
hands, that whether she designs for the plough, the caravan, the cart--or
whatever other creature she models, be it but an asse's foal, you are sure
to have the thing you wanted; and yet at the same time should so eternally
bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man.

Whether it is in the choice of the clay--or that it is frequently spoiled
in the baking; by an excess of which a husband may turn out too crusty (you
know) on one hand--or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the other--
or whether this great Artificer is not so attentive to the little Platonic
exigences of that part of the species, for whose use she is fabricating
this--or that her Ladyship sometimes scarce knows what sort of a husband
will do--I know not:  we will discourse about it after supper.

It is enough, that neither the observation itself, or the reasoning upon
it, are at all to the purpose--but rather against it; since with regard to
my uncle Toby's fitness for the marriage state, nothing was ever better:
she had formed him of the best and kindliest clay--had temper'd it with her
own milk, and breathed into it the sweetest spirit--she had made him all
gentle, generous, and humane--she had filled his heart with trust and
confidence, and disposed every passage which led to it, for the
communication of the tenderest offices--she had moreover considered the
other causes for which matrimony was ordained--

And accordingly. . ..

The Donation was not defeated by my uncle Toby's wound.

Now this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the Devil, who is the
great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised scruples in Mrs.
Wadman's brain about it; and like a true devil as he was, had done his own
work at the same time, by turning my uncle Toby's Virtue thereupon into
nothing but empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose, and pantofles.



Chapter 4.LXXXII.

Mrs. Bridget had pawn'd all the little stock of honour a poor chamber-maid
was worth in the world, that she would get to the bottom of the affair in
ten days; and it was built upon one of the most concessible postulata in
nature:  namely, that whilst my uncle Toby was making love to her mistress,
the corporal could find nothing better to do, than make love to her--'And
I'll let him as much as he will, said Bridget, to get it out of him.'

Friendship has two garments; an outer and an under one.  Bridget was
serving her mistress's interests in the one--and doing the thing which most
pleased herself in the other:  so had as many stakes depending upon my
uncle Toby's wound, as the Devil himself--Mrs. Wadman had but one--and as
it possibly might be her last (without discouraging Mrs. Bridget, or
discrediting her talents) was determined to play her cards herself.

She wanted not encouragement:  a child might have look'd into his hand--
there was such a plainness and simplicity in his playing out what trumps he
had--with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the ten-ace--and so naked and
defenceless did he sit upon the same sopha with widow Wadman, that a
generous heart would have wept to have won the game of him.

Let us drop the metaphor.



Chapter 4.LXXXIII.

--And the story too--if you please:  for though I have all along been
hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well
knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the world,
yet now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen, and go on
with the story for me that will--I see the difficulties of the descriptions
I'm going to give--and feel my want of powers.

It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore ounces of
blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the
beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, it
may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the
subtile aura of the brain--be it which it will--an Invocation can do no
hurt--and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to
inject me according as he sees good.

The Invocation.

Gentle Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy pen of my
beloved Cervantes; Thou who glidedst daily through his lattice, and
turned'st the twilight of his prison into noon-day brightness by thy
presence--tinged'st his little urn of water with heaven-sent nectar, and
all the time he wrote of Sancho and his master, didst cast thy mystic
mantle o'er his wither'd stump (He lost his hand at the battle of
Lepanto.), and wide extended it to all the evils of his life--

--Turn in hither, I beseech thee!--behold these breeches!--they are all I
have in world--that piteous rent was given them at Lyons--

My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen'd amongst 'em--for the laps
are in Lombardy, and the rest of 'em here--I never had but six, and a
cunning gypsey of a laundress at Milan cut me off the fore-laps of five--To
do her justice, she did it with some consideration--for I was returning out
of Italy.

And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which was
moreover filch'd from me at Sienna, and twice that I pay'd five Pauls for
two hard eggs, once at Raddicoffini, and a second time at Capua--I do not
think a journey through France and Italy, provided a man keeps his temper
all the way, so bad a thing as some people would make you believe:  there
must be ups and downs, or how the duce should we get into vallies where
Nature spreads so many tables of entertainment.--'Tis nonsense to imagine
they will lend you their voitures to be shaken to pieces for nothing; and
unless you pay twelve sous for greasing your wheels, how should the poor
peasant get butter to his bread?--We really expect too much--and for the
livre or two above par for your suppers and bed--at the most they are but
one shilling and ninepence halfpenny--who would embroil their philosophy
for it? for heaven's and for your own sake, pay it--pay it with both hands
open, rather than leave Disappointment sitting drooping upon the eye of
your fair Hostess and her Damsels in the gate-way, at your departure--and
besides, my dear Sir, you get a sisterly kiss of each of 'em worth a pound-
-at least I did--

--For my uncle Toby's amours running all the way in my head, they had the
same effect upon me as if they had been my own--I was in the most perfect
state of bounty and good-will; and felt the kindliest harmony vibrating
within me, with every oscillation of the chaise alike; so that whether the
roads were rough or smooth, it made no difference; every thing I saw or had
to do with, touch'd upon some secret spring either of sentiment or rapture.

--They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I instantly let down the
fore-glass to hear them more distinctly--'Tis Maria; said the postillion,
observing I was listening--Poor Maria, continued he (leaning his body on
one side to let me see her, for he was in a line betwixt us), is sitting
upon a bank playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little goat beside
her.

The young fellow utter'd this with an accent and a look so perfectly in
tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made a vow, I would give him a
four-and-twenty sous piece, when I got to Moulins--

--And who is poor Maria? said I.

The love and piety of all the villages around us; said the postillion--it
is but three years ago, that the sun did not shine upon so fair, so quick-
witted and amiable a maid; and better fate did Maria deserve, than to have
her Banns forbid, by the intrigues of the curate of the parish who
published them--

He was going on, when Maria, who had made a short pause, put the pipe to
her mouth, and began the air again--they were the same notes;--yet were ten
times sweeter:  It is the evening service to the Virgin, said the young
man--but who has taught her to play it--or how she came by her pipe, no one
knows; we think that heaven has assisted her in both; for ever since she
has been unsettled in her mind, it seems her only consolation--she has
never once had the pipe out of her hand, but plays that service upon it
almost night and day.

The postillion delivered this with so much discretion and natural
eloquence, that I could not help decyphering something in his face above
his condition, and should have sifted out his history, had not poor Maria
taken such full possession of me.

We had got up by this time almost to the bank where Maria was sitting: she
was in a thin white jacket, with her hair, all but two tresses, drawn up
into a silk-net, with a few olive leaves twisted a little fantastically on
one side--she was beautiful; and if ever I felt the full force of an honest
heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her--

--God help her! poor damsel! above a hundred masses, said the postillion,
have been said in the several parish churches and convents around, for
her,--but without effect; we have still hopes, as she is sensible for short
intervals, that the Virgin at last will restore her to herself; but her
parents, who know her best, are hopeless upon that score, and think her
senses are lost for ever.

As the postillion spoke this, Maria made a cadence so melancholy, so tender
and querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise to help her, and found
myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I relapsed from my
enthusiasm.

Maria look'd wistfully for some time at me, and then at her goat--and then
at me--and then at her goat again, and so on, alternately--

--Well, Maria, said I softly--What resemblance do you find?

I do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the humblest
conviction of what a Beast man is,--that I asked the question; and that I
would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable
presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever Rabelais
scatter'd--and yet I own my heart smote me, and that I so smarted at the
very idea of it, that I swore I would set up for Wisdom, and utter grave
sentences the rest of my days--and never--never attempt again to commit
mirth with man, woman, or child, the longest day I had to live.

As for writing nonsense to them--I believe there was a reserve--but that I
leave to the world.

Adieu, Maria!--adieu, poor hapless damsel!--some time, but not now, I may
hear thy sorrows from thy own lips--but I was deceived; for that moment she
took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I rose up, and
with broken and irregular steps walk'd softly to my chaise.

--What an excellent inn at Moulins!



Chapter 4.LXXXIV.

When we have got to the end of this chapter (but not before) we must all
turn back to the two blank chapters, on the account of which my honour has
lain bleeding this half hour--I stop it, by pulling off one of my yellow
slippers and throwing it with all my violence to the opposite side of my
room, with a declaration at the heel of it--

--That whatever resemblance it may bear to half the chapters which are
written in the world, or for aught I know may be now writing in it--that it
was as casual as the foam of Zeuxis his horse; besides, I look upon a
chapter which has only nothing in it, with respect; and considering what
worse things there are in the world--That it is no way a proper subject for
satire--

--Why then was it left so?  And here without staying for my reply, shall I
be called as many blockheads, numsculs, doddypoles, dunderheads, ninny-
hammers, goosecaps, joltheads, nincompoops, and sh..t-a-beds--and other
unsavoury appellations, as ever the cake-bakers of Lerne cast in the teeth
of King Garangantan's shepherds--And I'll let them do it, as Bridget said,
as much as they please; for how was it possible they should foresee the
necessity I was under of writing the 84th chapter of my book, before the
77th, &c?

--So I don't take it amiss--All I wish is, that it may be a lesson to the
world, 'to let people tell their stories their own way.'



The Seventy-seventh Chapter.

As Mrs. Bridget opened the door before the corporal had well given the rap,
the interval betwixt that and my uncle Toby's introduction into the
parlour, was so short, that Mrs. Wadman had but just time to get from
behind the curtain--lay a Bible upon the table, and advance a step or two
towards the door to receive him.

My uncle Toby saluted Mrs. Wadman, after the manner in which women were
saluted by men in the year of our Lord God one thousand seven hundred and
thirteen--then facing about, he march'd up abreast with her to the sopha,
and in three plain words--though not before he was sat down--nor after he
was sat down--but as he was sitting down, told her, 'he was in love'--so
that my uncle Toby strained himself more in the declaration than he needed.

Mrs. Wadman naturally looked down, upon a slit she had been darning up in
her apron, in expectation every moment, that my uncle Toby would go on; but
having no talents for amplification, and Love moreover of all others being
a subject of which he was the least a master--When he had told Mrs. Wadman
once that he loved her, he let it alone, and left the matter to work after
its own way.

My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle Toby's, as he
falsely called it, and would often say, that could his brother Toby to his
processe have added but a pipe of tobacco--he had wherewithal to have found
his way, if there was faith in a Spanish proverb, towards the hearts of
half the women upon the globe.

My uncle Toby never understood what my father meant; nor will I presume to
extract more from it, than a condemnation of an error which the bulk of the
world lie under--but the French, every one of 'em to a man, who believe in
it, almost as much as the Real Presence, 'That talking of love, is making
it.'

--I would as soon set about making a black-pudding by the same receipt.

Let us go on:  Mrs. Wadman sat in expectation my uncle Toby would do so, to
almost the first pulsation of that minute, wherein silence on one side or
the other, generally becomes indecent:  so edging herself a little more
towards him, and raising up her eyes, sub blushing, as she did it--she took
up the gauntlet--or the discourse (if you like it better) and communed with
my uncle Toby, thus:

The cares and disquietudes of the marriage state, quoth Mrs. Wadman, are
very great.  I suppose so--said my uncle Toby:  and therefore when a
person, continued Mrs. Wadman, is so much at his ease as you are--so happy,
captain Shandy, in yourself, your friends and your amusements--I wonder,
what reasons can incline you to the state--

--They are written, quoth my uncle Toby, in the Common-Prayer Book.

Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, and kept within his depth, leaving
Mrs. Wadman to sail upon the gulph as she pleased.

--As for children--said Mrs. Wadman--though a principal end perhaps of the
institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent--yet do not
we all find, they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain comforts? and
what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-achs--what compensation
for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and
defenceless mother who brings them into life?  I declare, said my uncle
Toby, smit with pity, I know of none; unless it be the pleasure which it
has pleased God--

A fiddlestick! quoth she.



Chapter 4.the Seventy-eighth.

Now there are such an infinitude of notes, tunes, cants, chants, airs,
looks, and accents with which the word fiddlestick may be pronounced in all
such causes as this, every one of 'em impressing a sense and meaning as
different from the other, as dirt from cleanliness--That Casuists (for it
is an affair of conscience on that score) reckon up no less than fourteen
thousand in which you may do either right or wrong.

Mrs. Wadman hit upon the fiddlestick, which summoned up all my uncle Toby's
modest blood into his cheeks--so feeling within himself that he had somehow
or other got beyond his depth, he stopt short; and without entering further
either into the pains or pleasures of matrimony, he laid his hand upon his
heart, and made an offer to take them as they were, and share them along
with her.

When my uncle Toby had said this, he did not care to say it again; so
casting his eye upon the Bible which Mrs. Wadman had laid upon the table,
he took it up; and popping, dear soul! upon a passage in it, of all others
the most interesting to him--which was the siege of Jericho--he set himself
to read it over--leaving his proposal of marriage, as he had done his
declaration of love, to work with her after its own way.  Now it wrought
neither as an astringent or a loosener; nor like opium, or bark, or
mercury, or buckthorn, or any one drug which nature had bestowed upon the
world--in short, it work'd not at all in her; and the cause of that was,
that there was something working there before--Babbler that I am!  I have
anticipated what it was a dozen times; but there is fire still in the
subject--allons.



Chapter 4.LXXXV.

It is natural for a perfect stranger who is going from London to Edinburgh,
to enquire before he sets out, how many miles to York; which is about the
half way--nor does any body wonder, if he goes on and asks about the
corporation, &c. . ..

It was just as natural for Mrs. Wadman, whose first husband was all his
time afflicted with a Sciatica, to wish to know how far from the hip to the
groin; and how far she was likely to suffer more or less in her feelings,
in the one case than in the other.

She had accordingly read Drake's anatomy from one end to the other.  She
had peeped into Wharton upon the brain, and borrowed Graaf (This must be a
mistake in Mr. Shandy; for Graaf wrote upon the pancreatick juice, and the
parts of generation.) upon the bones and muscles; but could make nothing of
it.

She had reason'd likewise from her own powers--laid down theorems--drawn
consequences, and come to no conclusion.

To clear up all, she had twice asked Doctor Slop, 'if poor captain Shandy
was ever likely to recover of his wound--?'

--He is recovered, Doctor Slop would say--

What! quite?

Quite:  madam--

But what do you mean by a recovery? Mrs. Wadman would say.

Doctor Slop was the worst man alive at definitions; and so Mrs. Wadman
could get no knowledge:  in short, there was no way to extract it, but from
my uncle Toby himself.

There is an accent of humanity in an enquiry of this kind which lulls
Suspicion to rest--and I am half persuaded the serpent got pretty near it,
in his discourse with Eve; for the propensity in the sex to be deceived
could not be so great, that she should have boldness to hold chat with the
devil, without it--But there is an accent of humanity--how shall I describe
it?--'tis an accent which covers the part with a garment, and gives the
enquirer a right to be as particular with it, as your body-surgeon.

'--Was it without remission?--

'--Was it more tolerable in bed?

'--Could he lie on both sides alike with it?

'--Was he able to mount a horse?

'--Was motion bad for it?' et caetera, were so tenderly spoke to, and so
directed towards my uncle Toby's heart, that every item of them sunk ten
times deeper into it than the evils themselves--but when Mrs. Wadman went
round about by Namur to get at my uncle Toby's groin; and engaged him to
attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and pele mele with the Dutch
to take the counterguard of St. Roch sword in hand--and then with tender
notes playing upon his ear, led him all bleeding by the hand out of the
trench, wiping her eye, as he was carried to his tent--Heaven! Earth! Sea!-
-all was lifted up--the springs of nature rose above their levels--an angel
of mercy sat besides him on the sopha--his heart glow'd with fire--and had
he been worth a thousand, he had lost every heart of them to Mrs. Wadman.

--And whereabouts, dear sir, quoth Mrs. Wadman, a little categorically, did
you receive this sad blow?--In asking this question, Mrs. Wadman gave a
slight glance towards the waistband of my uncle Toby's red plush breeches,
expecting naturally, as the shortest reply to it, that my uncle Toby would
lay his fore-finger upon the place--It fell out otherwise--for my uncle
Toby having got his wound before the gate of St. Nicolas, in one of the
traverses of the trench opposite to the salient angle of the demibastion of
St. Roch; he could at any time stick a pin upon the identical spot of
ground where he was standing when the stone struck him:  this struck
instantly upon my uncle Toby's sensorium--and with it, struck his large map
of the town and citadel of Namur and its environs, which he had purchased
and pasted down upon a board, by the corporal's aid, during his long
illness--it had lain with other military lumber in the garret ever since,
and accordingly the corporal was detached to the garret to fetch it.

My uncle Toby measured off thirty toises, with Mrs. Wadman's scissars, from
the returning angle before the gate of St. Nicolas; and with such a virgin
modesty laid her finger upon the place, that the goddess of Decency, if
then in being--if not, 'twas her shade--shook her head, and with a finger
wavering across her eyes--forbid her to explain the mistake.

Unhappy Mrs. Wadman!

--For nothing can make this chapter go off with spirit but an apostrophe to
thee--but my heart tells me, that in such a crisis an apostrophe is but an
insult in disguise, and ere I would offer one to a woman in distress--let
the chapter go to the devil; provided any damn'd critic in keeping will be
but at the trouble to take it with him.
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