The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics)

by Laurence Sterne

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

  CHAP. XXVIII.

  IN love!——said the corporal—your honour was very well the day before yesterday, when I was telling your honour 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 affair, 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 Deum1 ——

  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 the 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 takenat 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 steep2 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 cloaths 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 pipes3 —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.

  CHAP. XXIX.

  ——Thou wilt get a brush and a little chalk1 to my sword ——’Twill be only in your honour’s way, replied Trim.

  CHAP. XXX.

  ——But your honour’s two razors shall be new set—and I will get my Montero cap furbish’d up, and put on poor lieutenant Le Fever’s regimental coat, which your honour gave me to wear for his sake—and as soon as your honourisclean shaved— and has got your clean shirt on, with your blue and gold, or your fine scarlet——sometimes one and sometimes t’other— and every thing is ready for the attack—we’ll march up boldly, as if ’twas to the face of a bastion; and whilst your honour engages Mrs. Wadman in the parlour, to the right——I’ll attack Mrs. Bridget in the kitchen, to the left; and having seiz’d that pass, I’ll answer for it, said the corporal, snapping his fingers over his head—that the day is our own.

  I wish I may but manage it right; said my uncle Toby—but I declare, corporal I had rather march up to the very edge of a trench——

  —A woman is quite a different thing—said the corporal.

  —I suppose so, quoth my uncle Toby.

  CHAP. XXXI.

  IF any thing in this world, which my father said, could have provoked my uncle Toby, during the time he was in love, it was the perverse use my father was always making of an expression of Hilarion the hermit;1 who, in speaking of his abstinence, his watchings, flagellations, and other instrumental parts of his religion—would say—tho’ with more facetiousness than became an hermit—“That they were the means he used, to make his ass (meaning his body) leave off kicking.”

  It pleased my father well; it was not only a laconick way of expressing——but of libelling, at the same time, the desires and appetites of the lower part of us; so that for many years of my father’s life, ’twas his constant mode of expression—he never used the word passions once—but ass always instead of them ——So that he might be said truly, to have been upon the bones, or the back of his own ass, or else of some other man’s, during all that time.

  I must here observe to you, the difference betwixt

  My father’s ass

  and my hobby-horse—in order to keep characters as separate as may be, in our fancies as we go along.

  For my hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him——’Tis the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present hour—a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddle-stick—an uncle Toby’s siege—or an any thing, which a man makes a shift to get a stride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life— ’Tis as useful a beast as is in the whole creation—nor do I really see how the world could do without it———

  ——But for my father’s ass———oh! mount him—mount him—mount him—(that’s three times, is it not?)—mount him not:—’tis a beast concupiscent—and foul befall the man, who does not hinder him from kicking.

  CHAP.XXXII

  WELL! dear brother Toby, said my father, upon his first seeing him after he fell in love—and how goes it with your ASSE?

  Now my uncle Toby thinking more of the part where he had had the blister, than of Hilarion’s metaphor—and our preconceptions having (you know) as great a power over the sounds of words as the shapes of things, he had imagined, that my father, who was not very ceremonious in his choice of words, had enquired after the part by its proper name; so notwithstanding my mother, doctor Slop, and Mr. Yorick, were sitting in the parlour, he thought it rather civil to conform to the term my father had made use of than not. When a man is hemm’d in by two indecorums, and must commit one of ’em —I always observe—let him choose which he will, the world will blame him—so I should not be astonished if it blames my uncle Toby.

  My A—e, quoth my uncle Toby, is much better—brother Shandy——My father had formed great expectations from his Asse in this onset; and would have brought him on again; but doctor Slop setting up an intemperate laugh—and my mother crying out L— bless us!—it drove my father’s Asse off the field—and the laugh then becoming general—there was no bringing him back to the charge, for some time——

  And so the discourse went on without him.

  Every body, said my mother, says you are in love, brother Toby—and we hope it is true.

  I am as much in love, sister, I believe, replied my uncle Toby, as any man usually is ——Humph!said my father——and when did you know it? quoth my mother——

  ——When the blister broke; replied my uncle Toby.

  My uncle Toby’s reply put my father into good temper—so he charged o’foo
t.

  CHAP. XXXIII.

  AS the antients agree, brother Toby, said my father, that there are two different and distinct kinds of love, according to the different parts which are affected by it—the Brain or Liver ——I think when a man is in love, it behoves him a little to consider which of the two he is fallen into.

  What signifies it, brother Shandy, replied my uncle Toby, which of the two it is, provided it will but make a man marry, and love his wife, and get a few children.

  ——A few children! cried my father, rising out of his chair, and looking full in my mother’s face, as he forced his way betwixt her’s and doctor Slop’s—a few children! cried my father, repeating my uncle Toby’s words as he walk’d to and fro’——

  ——Not, my dear brother Toby, cried my father, recovering himself all at once, and coming close up to the back of my uncle Toby’s chair—not that I should be sorry had’st thou a score— on the contrary I should rejoice—and be as kind, Toby, to every one of them as a father—

  My uncle Toby stole his hand unperceived behind his chair, to give my father’s a squeeze——

  ——Nay, moreover, continued he, keeping hold of my uncle Toby’s hand—so much do’st thou possess, my dear Toby, of the milk of human nature, and so little of its asperities— ’tis piteous the world is not peopled by creatures which resemble thee; and was I an Asiatick monarch, added my father, heating himself with his new project—I would oblige thee, provided it would not impair thy strength—or dry up thy radical moisture too fast—or weaken thy memory or fancy, brother Toby, which these gymnicks1 inordinately taken, are apt to do—else, dear Toby, I would procure thee the most beautiful women in my empire, and I would oblige thee, nolens, volens,2 to beget for me one subject every month——

  As my father pronounced the last word of the sentence—my mother took a pinch of snuff.

  Now I would not, quoth my uncle Toby, get a child, nolens, volens, that is, whether I would or no, to please the greatest prince upon earth——

  ——And ’twould be cruel in me, brother Toby, to compell thee; said my father—but ’tis a case put to shew thee, that it is not thy begetting a child—in case thou should’st be able—but the system of Love and marriage thou goest upon, which I would set thee right in——

  There is at least, said Yorick, a great deal of reason and plain sense in captain Shandy’s opinion of love; and ’tis amongst the ill spent hours of my life which I have to answer for, that I have read so many flourishing poets and rhetoricians in my time, from whom I never could extract so much——

  I wish, Yorick, said my father, you had read Plato;3 for there you would have learnt that there are two LOVES—I know there were two RELIGIONS, replied Yorick, amongst the ancients ——one—for the vulgar, and another for the learned; but I think ONE LOVE might have served both of them very well—

  It could not; replied my father—and for the same reasons: for of these Loves, according to Ficinus’s comment upon Velasius, the one is rational——

  ——the other is natural—— the first ancient——without mother——where Venus had nothing to do: the second, begotten of Jupiter and Dione—

  ——Pray brother, quoth my uncle Toby, what has a man who believes in God to do with this? My father could not stop to answer, for fear of breaking the thread of his discourse——

  This latter, continued he, partakes wholly of the nature of Venus.

  The first, which is the golden chain4 let down from heaven, excites to love heroic, which comprehends in it, and excites to the desire of philosophy and truth——the second, excites to desire, simply——

  ——I think the procreation of children as beneficial to the world, said Yorick, as the finding out the longitude——

  ——To be sure, said my mother, love keeps peace in the world——

  ——In the house—my dear, I own——It replenishes the earth; said my mother——

  But it keeps heaven empty—my dear; replied my father.

  ——’Tis Virginity, cried Slop, triumphantly, which fills paradise.5

  Well push’d nun! quoth my father.

  CHAP. XXXIV.

  MY father had such a skirmishing, cutting kind of a slashing way with him in his disputations, thrusting and ripping, and giving every one a stroke to remember him by in his turn—that if there were twenty people in company—in less than half an hour he was sure to have every one of ’em against him.

  What did not a little contribute to leave him thus without an ally, was, that if there was any one post more untenable than the rest, he would be sure to throw himself into it; and to do him justice, when he was once there, he would defend it so gallantly, that ’twould have been a concern, either to a brave man, or a good-natured one, to have seen him driven out.

  Yorick, for this reason, though he would often attack him— yet could never bear to do it with all his force.

  Doctor Slop’s VIRGINITY, in the close of the last chapter, had got him for once on the right side of the rampart; and he was beginning toblow up all the convents in Christendom about Slop’s ears, when corporal Trim came into the parlour to inform my uncle Toby, that his thin scarlet breeches, in which the attack was to be made upon Mrs. Wadman, would not do; for, that the taylor, in ripping them up, in order to turn them, had found they had been turn’d before——Then turn them again, brother, said my father rapidly, for there will be many a turning of ’em yet before all’s done in the affair——They are as rotten as dirt, said the corporal——Then by all means, said my father, bespeak a new pair, brother——for though I know, continued my father, turning himself to the company, that widow Wadman has been deeply in love with my brother Toby for many years, and has used every art and circumvention of woman to outwit him into the same passion, yet now that she has caught him ——her fever will be pass’d it’s height——

  ——She has gain’d her point.

  In this case, continued my father, which Plato, I am persuaded, never thought of——Love, you see, is not so much a SENTIMENT as a SITUATION, into which a man enters, as my brother Toby would do, into a corps——no matter whether he loves the service or no——being once in it—he acts as if he did; and takes every step to shew himself a man of prowesse.

  The hypothesis, like the rest of my father’s, was plausible enough, and my uncle Toby had but a single word to object to it—in which Trim stood ready to second him——but my father had not drawn his conclusion——

  For this reason, continued my father (stating the case over again) notwithstanding all the world knows, that Mrs. Wadman affects1 my brother Toby—and my brother Toby contrariwise affects Mrs. Wadman, and no obstacle in nature to forbid the music striking up this very night, yet will I answer for it, that this self-same tune will not be play’d this twelvemonth.

  We have taken our measures badly, quoth my uncle Toby, looking up interrogatively in Trim’s face.

  I would lay my Montero cap, said Trim——Now Trim’s Montero-cap, as I once told you, was his constant wager; and having furbish’d it up that very night, in order to go upon the attack—it made the odds look more considerable——I would lay, an’ please your honour, my Montero-cap to a shilling— was it proper, continued Trim (making a bow) to offer a wager before your honours——

  ——There is nothing improper in it, said my father—’tis a mode of expression; for in saying thou would’st lay thy Montero-cap to a shilling—all thou meanest is this—that thou believest——

  ——Now, What do’st thou believe?

  That Widow Wadman, an’ please your worship, cannot hold it out ten days——

  And whence, cried Slop, jeeringly, hast thou all this knowledge of woman, friend?

  By falling in love with a popish clergy-woman; said Trim.

  ’Twas a Beguine, said my uncle Toby.

  Doctor Slop was too much in wrath to listen to the distinction; and my father taking that very crisis to fall in helter-skelter upon the whole order of Nuns and Beguines, a set of silly, fusty ba
ggages——Slop could not stand it——and my uncle Toby having some measures to take about his breeches—and Yorick about his fourth general division2—in order for their several attacks next day—the company broke up: and my father being left alone, and having half an hour upon his hands betwixt that and bed-time; he called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote my uncle Toby the following letter of instructions.

  My dear brother Toby,

  WHAT I am going to say to thee, is upon the nature of women, and of love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee—tho’ not so well for me—that thou hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon that head, and that I am able to write it to thee.

  Had it been the good pleasure of him who disposes of our lots—and thou no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that thou should’st have dipp’d the pen this moment into the ink, instead of myself; but that not being the case —————Mrs. Shandy being now close besides me, preparing for bed——I have thrown together without order, and just as they have come into my mind, such hints and documents as I deem may be of use to thee; intending, in this, to give thee a token of my love; not doubting, my dear Toby, of the manner in which it will be accepted.

  In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in the affair——though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I blush as I begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its offices thou neglectest—yet I would remind thee of one (during the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I would not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon the enterprize, whether it be in the morning or the afternoon, without first recommending thyself to the protection of Almighty God, that he may defend thee from the evil one.