Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

  It will seem very strange to the reader, that this event, so many years after it happened, should interrupt the cordial peace and unity between my father and my uncle Toby. But nothing ever affected our family in the ordinary way. Perhaps at the time the event happened, our family had something else to afflict it; and it lay waiting for an opportunity to do its work. – I do not say this for a fact: I merely point out different paths of investigation, in order to find the first springs of the events I tell; – not like the decisive Tacitus, who outwits himself and his reader, but with the humility of a heart devoted to aiding the inquisitive; to them I write – and by them I shall be read, to the very end of the world.

  I can explain exactly how my great aunt Dinah created a rift between my father and my uncle. It occurred as follows:

  My uncle Toby Shandy was a gentleman who had a most extreme modesty of nature. Whether ’twas natural or acquired, ’twas nevertheless modesty in its truest sense; and that is, Madam, not in regard to words, but to things. His modesty even equalled, if possible, the modesty of a woman: that female cleanliness of mind, Madam, which makes your sex so much an object of awe to ours.

  You might imagine, Madam, that my uncle Toby spent much of his time talking with your sex, and that from such fair examples acquired this turn of mind.

  I wish I could say so, – but unless it was with his sister-in-law, my mother, my uncle Toby scarce exchanged three words with the female sex in as many years. No; he got this modesty, Madam, by a blow.

  – A blow!

  – Yes, Madam, a blow from a stone, broke off by a cannon-ball from the parapet of a horn-work at the siege of Namur, which struck full upon my uncle Toby’s groin.

  – How could that cause it?

  – The story of that, Madam, is long and interesting; but it would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you here. Later on, every detail of it shall be faithfully laid before you: but till then, I can say only that my uncle Toby was a gentleman of unparalleled modesty.

  Since he also had some family pride, he could never bear to hear the affair of my aunt Dinah mentioned, without the greatest emotion. The least hint of it made him blush; but when my father told the story in mixed company, which he did frequently, it would set my uncle Toby’s modesty bleeding; and he would take my father aside to expostulate with him, saying he would give him anything if he would only let the story rest.

  My father, I believe, had the truest love for my uncle Toby, and would have done anything to ease his brother’s heart. But this lay out of his power.

  My father, as I told you, was a philosopher; and my aunt Dinah’s affair was a matter of as much consequence to him, as the movements of the planets in their systems. Just as Venus’s orbit fortified the Copernican system, so the backslidings of my aunt Dinah in her orbit, did the same service in establishing my father’s system of names, which, I trust, will for ever hereafter be called the Shandean System.

  In any other family dishonour, my father would not have revealed the affair to the world; but he felt he owed an obligation to truth. My father would say to my uncle Toby, ‘Dinah was my aunt; – but Truth is my sister.’

  These contrasting tempers of my father and my uncle were the source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace, and the other would scarce let a day pass without some hint at it.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ my uncle Toby would cry, ‘and for my sake, and for all our sakes, my dear brother Shandy, do let this story of our aunt’s sleep in peace! How can you have so little feeling for the character of our family?’

  ‘What is the character of a family to an hypothesis?’ my father would reply. ‘Nay, if you come to that – what is the life of a family?’

  ‘The life of a family!’ my uncle Toby would say, throwing himself back in his armchair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg.

  ‘Yes, the life,’ my father would say. ‘How many thousands of ’em are every year cast away, (in all civilized countries at least) – and considered as nothing, compared to an hypothesis?’

  My uncle Toby would answer, ‘Every such instance is downright Murder.’

  ‘There lies your mistake,’ my father would reply; ‘for, in Science there is no such thing as murder; ’tis only Death, brother.’

  My uncle Toby would never answer this by any other argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of Lillabullero. This was the usual channel through which his passions got vent, when anything shocked or surprised him, or when he was presented with an absurdity.

  As none of our logical writers have thought proper to give a name to this particular species of argument, I here take the liberty to do it myself, for two reasons. First, that it may stand distinguished for ever from every other type of argument – like the Argumentum ad Verecundiam, ex Absurdo, ex Fortiori, etc; – and secondly, that it may be said by my grandchildren, when I am laid to rest, that their learned grandfather’s head had been busy once; that he had invented a name for one of the best and most unanswerable arguments in the whole science of Logic.

  I do therefore command that it be known by the name and title of the Argumentum Fistulatorium (or Whistlers’ Argument); and that it should rank hereafter with the Argumentum Baculinum (or Argument of Sticks) and the Argumentum ad Crumenam (or Moneybags’ Argument), and for ever after be treated of in the same chapter.

  As for the Argumentum Tripodium, (or Three-footed Argument), which is never used except by the woman against the man; – and the Argumentum ad Rem (or Argument to the Point), which, contrarywise, is only used by the man against the woman; – as the one of these is the best answer to the other, let them be kept apart, and be treated of in a place by themselves.

  CHAPTER 22

  The famous Dr. Joseph Hall, who was Bishop of Exeter in King James I’s reign, tells us in one of his Decads, printed at London in the year 1610, by John Beal, of Aldersgate-street, ‘That it is an abominable thing for a man to praise himself’; and I agree.

  And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind of a fashion, yet likely to go undiscovered; – I think it is just as abominable that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with the idea of it rotting in his head.

  This is precisely my situation.

  For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in all my digressions (apart from one) there is a masterstroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been overlooked by my reader, – not for lack of penetration in him, – but because ’tis an excellence seldom expected in a digression; – and it is this:

  That though my digressions are all fair, as you observe, and though I fly off from my subject as much as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly take care to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my absence.

  I was just going, for example, to have given you the outlines of my uncle Toby’s character, when my aunt Dinah and the coachman came across us, and led us wandering some millions of miles into the heart of the planetary system. Despite this, you perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby’s character went on gently all the time; – not the great contours of it, but some faint strokes were here and there touched on, as we went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my uncle Toby now than you were before.

  By this means, two contrary motions are introduced into the machinery of my work, and reconciled. In a word, my work is digressive, and progressive too, both at the same time.

  This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the earth’s moving round her axis in her daily rotation, along with her progress in her elliptic orbit which brings about the year and our variety of seasons; – though I admit it suggested the thought, as I believe the greatest of our discoveries have come from such trifling hints.

  Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine – they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, and you might as well take the book
along with them; cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer; – he steps forth like a bridegroom who bids All-hail to the feast.

  All the skill is in the good cookery and management of these digressions, not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable. For, if he begins a digression, from that moment his whole work stands stock still; – and if he goes on with his main work, then there is an end of his digression.

  This is vile work. For which reason, from the start, you see, I have constructed this book with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going. What’s more, it shall be kept a-going for forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.

  CHAPTER 23

  I am inclined to begin this chapter very nonsensically. – Accordingly I set off thus:

  If Momus’s glass windows had been fixed in human breasts, as proposed by that mocking spirit of Greek mythology, so that men’s thought might be laid bare; – then, the first consequence would have been, that all of us must have paid window-tax every day of our lives.

  And the second; that nothing more would have been necessary to examine a man’s character, but to have gone softly, as you would to a beehive, and looked in, – viewed the soul stark naked; observed her movements; traced all her maggots from their hatching to their crawling forth; – watched the soul’s frisks and gambols; – and then to take your pen and set down what you had seen.

  But this is an advantage not to be had by any biographer on this planet. In the planet Mercury, perhaps, it may be so, – for there the intense heat of the nearby sun must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of the inhabitants, so that they may have fine transparent bodies of clear glass – until the inhabitants grow old and wrinkled, whereby the rays of light, in passing through them, become monstrously refracted, so that a man cannot be seen through.

  But here on earth our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapped up in a dark covering of uncrystallised flesh and blood; so that if we would see the characters within, we must do it some other way.

  Many are the ways in which human wit can do this.

  Some, for instance, draw all their characters with wind-instruments. Virgil notes that way in the affair of Dido and Aeneas; but it is as false as the breath of fame. I know that the Italians pretend be able to exactly measure one particular sort of character, from the forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument they use, which they say is infallible. I dare not mention the name of the instrument; it’s enough that we have it amongst us. –This is enigmatical, and intended to be so. I beg, Madam, that you read on as fast as you can, and do not stop to inquire about it.

  There are others who will draw a man’s character from his evacuations; but this often gives a very incorrect outline, unless you take a sketch of his in-goings too; and compound one good figure from them both.

  I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must smell too strong of the lamp, and be made wearisome by forcing you to have an eye to his natural actions.

  There are others, fourthly, who disdain all these methods; not from any creativity of their own, but because they borrow the ideas of mechanical copyists. – These, you must know, are your great historians.

  One of these you will see drawing a full-length character against the light; that’s dishonest, and hard upon the character of the man who sits.

  Others will make a drawing of you in the Camera Obscura – that is most unfair of all, because you are sure to be shown in your most ridiculous attitudes.

  To avoid all these errors in giving you my uncle Toby’s character, I am determined to draw it by no mechanical help whatever; nor shall my pencil be guided by any wind-instrument; nor will I consider either his repletions or his discharges, – but in a word, I will draw my uncle Toby’s character from his Hobby-Horse.

  CHAPTER 24

  If I was not sure that the reader must be impatient to hear my uncle Toby’s character, I would here convince him that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing with, as a Hobby-Horse.

  A man and his Hobby-Horse, though they may not act on each other in exactly the same way as the soul and body do, yet doubtless have a communication between them of some kind; and my opinion is, that it is in the manner of electrified bodies, and that, by means of the heated parts of the rider coming into contact with the back of the Hobby-Horse, by long journeys and much friction, the body of the rider is at length filled with as much Hobby-Horsical matter as it can hold. So if you are able to give a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the character of the other.

  Now the Hobby-Horse which my uncle Toby always rode, was in my opinion well worth describing because of its uniqueness; – for you might have travelled from York to Dover to Penzance, and not have seen one like it. Indeed, so strange, and so utterly unlike any of the species was he, that it might be disputed whether he was really a Hobby-Horse at all: but it was proved by my uncle Toby’s getting upon his back and riding him about.

  In truth, my uncle Toby mounted him with so much pleasure, and he carried my uncle so well, – that he cared very little what the world thought about it.

  It is now high time, however, that I give you a description of him. But first, just let me acquaint you with how my uncle Toby came by him.

  CHAPTER 25

  When the wound in my uncle Toby’s groin, which he received at the siege of Namur, made him unfit for the army, he returned to England, in order, if possible, to be set to rights.

  He was for four years totally confined to his room: and in the course of his cure, through all that time, suffered unspeakable miseries, owing to a series of exfoliations from the os pubis, and the os illium, both of which bones were dismally crushed, as much by the irregularity of the stone as by its size, (though it was pretty large), which made the surgeon think that the great injury which it had done my uncle Toby’s groin, was more owing to the weight of the stone than to its projectile force.

  My father at that time was just beginning business in London, and had taken a house there; and as there was the truest friendship between the two brothers, and my father thought my uncle Toby could nowhere be so well nursed as in his own house, he assigned him the very best room in it. What was more, he would never allow a friend to step into the house without leading him upstairs to see his brother Toby, and chat an hour by his bedside.

  The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it; – my uncle’s visitors at least thought so, and they would frequently turn the talk to that subject, – and from there, the talk would roll on to the siege itself.

  These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle Toby received great relief from them, and would have received much more, except that they brought him unforeseen perplexities, which for three months retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon a way to get himself out of them, I believe they would have laid him in his grave.

  What my uncle Toby’s perplexities were – ’tis impossible for you to guess; if you could, I should blush; because as an author, I pride myself on the fact that my reader has never yet been able to guess anything. And in this, Sir, I am so fastidious that if I thought you were able to form the least conjecture of what was to come in the next page – I would tear it out of my book.

  BOOK 2

  CHAPTER 1

  I have begun a new book, so that I might have room enough to explain the perplexities in which my uncle Toby was involved, from the many questions about the siege of Namur, where he received his wound.

  I must remind the reader, if he has read the history of King William’s wars, that one of the most memorable attacks in that siege was made by the English and Dutch upon the point of the counterscarp, at the gate of St. Nicolas, which enclosed the great sluice wher
e the English were terribly exposed to the shot of the counter-guard of St. Roch. The result of that dispute, in three words, was this: that the Dutch lodged themselves upon the counter-guard, and that the English held the covered-way before St. Nicolas-gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of the French officers on the glacis.

  As my uncle Toby was an eye-witness at Namur, he was generally eloquent in his account of it; and the many perplexities he was in, arose out of the difficulties he found in making clear the differences between the scarp and counter-scarp, the glacis and covered-way, and the half-moon and ravelin, so that his company would fully comprehend where and what he was about.

  In trying to explain these terms, my uncle Toby did oft-times puzzle his visitors, and sometimes himself too.

  To speak the truth, unless the company my father led upstairs were very clear-headed, or my uncle Toby was in one of his explanatory moods, ’twas difficult to keep the discourse free from obscurity.

  What especially perplexed my uncle Toby was this: that in the attack of the counterscarp, before the gate of St. Nicolas, extending from the bank of the Maes up to the water-stop, the ground was cut across with such a multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, – and he would get so bewildered amongst them, that frequently he could neither go backwards or forwards; and was obliged to give up the attack on that account.

  This perturbed my uncle Toby more than you would imagine: and as my father’s kindness was continually dragging up fresh enquirers, he had a very uneasy time. When he could not retreat out of the ravelin without getting into the half-moon, or get out of the covered-way without falling down the counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without slipping into the ditch, he must have fretted inwardly.

  These little vexations, which may seem trifling to the man who has not read Hippocrates, – yet whoever has read Hippocrates or Dr. James Mackenzie, and has considered well the effects which the passions have upon the digestion – (Why not of a wound as well as of a dinner?) – may easily conceive what sharp paroxysms of his wound my uncle Toby must have undergone.