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

by Laurence Sterne

  5. military shoe: The reference is to Juvenal, Satires, 16, lines 23–5: ‘you must have a mulish brain… to provoke so many jack-boots, and all those thousands of hobnails’.

  6. patins: Wooden shoes (pattens); pantoufles: slippers (pantofles); calceus incisus: cutwork shoe; calceus rostratus: shoe with a point turned upward or backward. Lefèvre discusses most of the shoes on the list.

  7. That persons… lost: Lefèvre’s discussion is very similar:

  The most general colour of the Roman habits was white, which, except purple peculiar to the great offices, was deemed the most honourable. The citizens in public rejoicings generally appeared in white robes, to denote their joy… Persons of quality were distinguished… by the fineness, neatness, and whiteness of their habits: and we find in authors of those times, that they often sent their robes to the fuller to be cleaned and whitened. The inferior people, to avoid that expence, generally wore brown cloths. Appian informs us, that from Julius Cæsar’s time, distinction of habit was no longer observed at Rome;… that the slave was drest like his master…

  Lefèvre had already observed the introduction of linen by the Egyptians, and he goes on to discuss the Latus-clavus, but Sterne has a few additional observations not in Lefèvre; one assumes he had a second source or a work in the family of textbooks to which Lefèvre belongs.

  8. Egnatius… Scaliger: Fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Renaissance scholars, garnered from Rubens or a similar source.

  9. Bayfius: Sterne perhaps found this reference in Rubens’s first chapter: ‘Some understand the clavi to be clasps, either gold balls or purple ones, which were either sewn on the breast of the tunic or on the edges. Bayfius [Lazare de Baïf (c. 1496–1547), French scholar], in ch. 7 of his work On Clothing, seems to agree with these writers, though in ch. 12 he frankly confesses himself to have some doubts’ (translated by the editor).

  10. fibula: Clasp, buckle, brooch.

  11. lost the… saddle: Play on the proverbial expression ‘to win the horse or lose the saddle’.

  CHAPTER XX

  1. Poco-curante’s: OED cites this passage as its first example: ‘careless or indifferent person; one who shows little interest’; from Voltaire’s Lord Pococurante in ch. 25 of Candide.

  CHAPTER XXI

  1. Duke of Marlborough: John Churchill (1650–1722), first Duke of Marlborough, Commander-in-Chief of the British army under William III and Anne.

  2. the first… place: Sterne’s italics indicate a quotation; cf. John Muller, A Treatise… of Fortification (1746), where it is observed of parallels that ‘there are generally three in an attack; the first is about 300 toises from the covert-way…’

  CHAPTER XXII

  1. post-morning: OED cites this passageasits sole example: ‘indicating the time at which the mail leaves or arrives’.

  2. the Gazette: The London Gazette, official government newspaper, published thrice weekly beginning in 1666.

  3. chamade: Signal, by drum or trumpet, for retreat or parley.

  4. Liege and Ruremond: Towns captured by Marlborough in October 1702.

  5. portcullises… thing: See Glossary; according to Chambers, s.v. Portcullice, ‘now-a-days, the orgues are more generally used, as being found to answer the purpose better’.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  1. Amberg… Limbourg: All taken in 1703. The first three are in Germany; Huy and Limburg are in the Netherlands.

  2. Ghent… Flanders: Ghent and Bruges, captured by the Allies in 1708, are in Flanders; Brabant, an area of the Netherlands west and north of Flanders, containing both Brussels and Antwerp.

  3. Proteus: Minor sea-god with power to assume different shapes.

  4. Landen… Dendermond: Sterne may have intended Landen, where Trim was wounded in 1693, but probably he (or the compositor) misread Landau, a town in Germany taken by Marlborough in 1704. Sterne gathered his towns from the margins of Tindal; e.g. ‘Drusen’ occurs because he failed to notice the name ‘Drusenheim’ was hyphenated in the narrow margin. These campaigns took place in 1704–6.

  5. The next year: I.e. 1708.

  6. end of the siege: Sterne again plays on the early usage of ‘siege’ for ‘anus’ (OED); he has just mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah (the wicked cities of Genesis 19) and the many ‘parts’ they acted.

  7. succedaneum: Substitute.

  8. desiderata: Things desired.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  1. Montero-cap: Spanish cap worn by hunters; Sterne confused ‘montero’ (Spanish for hunter or mount aineer) with the notion of a ‘mounted’ (i.e., on horseback) soldier. Gala days = holidays.

  2. most bloody: Winston Churchill called the siege of Lille ‘the greatest siege… since the invention of gunpowder’. There were 23,000 dead and wounded among the 110,000 participants.

  3. ramallie wig: Named in commemoration of Marlborough’s victory at Ramillies in 1706, it had a long plait of hair behind, tied with one or two black ribbon bows.

  CHAPTER XXV

  1. clod of the valley: Job 21:33.

  2. cast in the rosemary: Cf. Hamlet, IV.v.175: ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’

  3. lips… plain: See Isaiah 32:4 and 35:6.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  1. Morocco tube: I.e. of Moroccan leather (see p. 405); Trim rigs his two water pipes (hookahs) so that when he inhales, smoke is sent from each pipe’s main tube through three small wash-leather tubes, each attached to a cannon.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  1. Garrick: See n. 2 to III.xii.

  2. my uncle Toby: In the memoir of his family Sterne wrote for his daughter in 1758, there is a sketch of his father in similar language: ‘he was… of a kindly, sweet disposition, void of all design; and so innocent in his own intentions, that he suspected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten times in a day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose’.

  3. through his liver: According to tradition the liver is the seat of the passions, especially of love.

  CHAPTER XXX

  1. the key… draw-well: See the opening paragraph of Volume V: Tristram’s vow to lock his study door and throw the key into the draw-well. Without access to his library, his list of misogynists is a comic mix of real and fictitious (mostly geographical) names, including a play on ‘Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia’ of Acts 2:9. The King of Sweden, Charles XII (1682–1718), was noted for his misogyny, but the other possibly ‘real’ person, Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), an Italian naturalist (but not a king), was not. Charles became a symbol of vain military ambition, as in Johnson’s famous couplet in Vanity of Human Wishes: ‘He left the Name, at which the World grew pale, / To point a Moral, or adorn a Tale.’

  2. Countess of K*****: The Countess of Königsmark, renowned for wit and beauty, was sent to Charles to negotiate a peace, but he refused a meeting; the story is told by Voltaire and others. Sterne was probably unaware that the Countess was a governor of the Abbey of Quedling-berg, as noted by Fritz W. Schulze (see Further Reading).

  3. Polixenes: Possibly Sterne confused Shakespeare’s Polixenes with his fellow king, Leontes, whose misogyny precipitates the action of The Winter’s Tale.

  4. peace of Utrecht: The end of the War of the Spanish Succession was proclaimed on 4 May 1713.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  1. Mary’s heart: Mary, Queen of England (1553–8), was widely reported to have said that the loss of Calais (1558), England’s last possession in France, was etched in her heart, as would be discovered after her death.

  2. Tertullus: Orator in Acts 24:1–8, who speaks against Paul and is answered by him; cf. sermon 19, ‘Felix’s behaviour towards Paul’: ‘Spare thy eloquence, Tertullus!’

  CHAPTER XXXII

  1. TOBY’s apologetical oration: Sterne combines elements of Don Quixote’s elevation of knight-errantry over the profession of scholar (I.IV.10–11) with Burton’s diatribe against war in the opening pages of Anatomy, sources that might influence our understanding of Toby’s self-justification.

  2. Guy
… England: Chapbook and ballad heroes, based on romance literature.

  3. Helena… without it: Helen, whose abduction precipitated the Trojan War; Hector, the Trojan hero. In Homer’s account (Iliad, 24), Priam, Hector’s father, is successful in recovering his body.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  1. fillet: Headband or ribbon. Thumb-stall: pad to protect the thumb.

  2. Quanto id… Cardan: Sterne borrows from Burton, 1.2.1.6, but misreads the attribution, which is not to Cardan (see n. 1 to V.iii), but to Jean Fernel (1497–1558), French physician and author of Universa medicina (1554); the sentence may be translated: ‘How much more careful then should we be in begetting our children.’

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  1. March to November: Troops were kept inactive in winter.

  2. according to stipulation: Sterne copies his account of the slow dismantling of Dunkirk from Tindal. Tugghe is identified therein as a ‘Deputy from the Magistrates of Dunkirk’. The full account is provided in the Florida Notes.

  3. spare the mole: It is possible to quarrel with the Florida Notes’ annotation of ‘mole’ as slang for ‘penis’ (Partridge, Dictionary), if Partridge’s ‘mole’ refers only to the animal and not possibly to a large pier or breakwater, the meaning of ‘mole’ here. Annotating Sterne’s bawdy is difficult, but when one reads that the queen was beseeched to ‘spare the mole, for the mole’s sake; which, in its naked situation, etc.’, one may be forgiven for believing that a mole is not always a mole in TS, as a nose is not always a nose.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  1. what love is: This chapter is heavily dependent on Burton’s discussion of ‘Love Melancholy’ in the third partition of Anatomy. Plotinus (205–69/70) and Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) are important commentators on Plato and major neoplatonic philosophers in their own right. Watt (354, nn. 1, 3) suggests Sterne is in error in using ‘devil’ where platonists use ‘daimon’, a spirit between the divine and the human. The error, however, is Burton’s.

  2. doctor Baynyard: Sterne borrows from Sir John Floyer and Edward Baynard, The History of Cold-Bathing (1702), who lament the overuse of ‘cantharides’ (a blistering agent) by calling it ‘the Devil himself’. In Sterne’s day, and long before, cantharides, a preparation of Spanish flies, was also known – as it is today – as an aphrodisiac.

  3. I have… passions: Work (467, n. 5) identifies this as a comment by St Gregory Nazianzen (329–89), a father of the Eastern Church, to his friend and correspondent Philagrius: ‘Bravo! that you philosophize in your sufferings’; one suspects Sterne had an intermediate source.

  4. Nor is… again: Sterne continues to borrow from Burton and at least one other source, perhaps Jacques Ferrand, Erotomania (1640). The opinion of Gordonius (Bernard de Gordon, French physician (fl. c. 1283– c. 1308)) is clearly from the latter. Rhasis (fl. 925), Arabian physician; Dioscorides (fl. 75) and Aëtius (fl. 540), Greek physicians, are often mentioned by both, as are refrigerants (cooling substances), although ‘hanea’ is mentioned only by Burton, his probable error for another herb. Camphor and topaz were thought to calm the passions; Tristram puts on a topaz ring in IX.xiii.

  CHAPTER XL

  1. cold seeds: Seeds of the cucumber, gourd, pumpkin, etc.; George Cheyne, The English Malady (1733), makes it clear that a diet of them was a remedy of last resort for extreme disorders of mind or body.

  2. These… fourth volumes: The abbreviations ‘Inv.’ and ‘Scul.’ appear below most engravings; here they mean the illustration was ‘invented’ (invenit) and ‘engraved’ (sculpsit) by Tristram Shandy (‘T. S’).

  3. says Cicero: Cicero often invokes the ‘Recta via’ or ‘the right path’ in his moral writings.

  4. cabbage-planters: Sterne almost certainly alludes to the sexual usage of both planting (intercourse) and cabbage (the female pudendum) in his day. Cf. VIII.i.

  5. the shortest line: Famous first assumption of Archimedes in On the Sphere and Cylinder.

  6. birth-day suits: Attire worn on the king’s birthday, but possibly – as in modern usage – nakedness.

  VOLUME VII

  Motto: From the Epistles of Pliny the Younger, who defends a digression of his own by arguing that although a writer’s first duty is to stick to his theme, a digression such as Homer’s description of the arms of Achilles is acceptable because it is ‘his main subject [the work itself] and not a digression’ (‘Non enim excursus hic eius, sed opus ipsum est’).

  CHAPTER I

  1. fountain of life: Cf. Proverbs 13:14: ‘The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.’ Cf. Proverbs 14:27 and Psalm 36:9.

  2. mounting… stick: Image of the hobby-horse, probably as old as Horace (Satires, II.iii).

  3. most tawdry one: Work (480, n. 2) suggests a passage in Burton (1.1.3.2): ‘as of him that thought himselfe a shell-fish; of a Nunne, and of a desperate Monk, that would not be perswaded but that he was damned’. A passage in Hall-Stevenson’s Makarony Fables (1768) may offer a clue to the bawdy joke now lost to us: ‘Lobsters ought not to think like oysters; / They were not made to be confin’d, / And spend their days like them in cloysters; / To stand when they should stir and bustle, / Gaping and studying like a muscle.’ Muscle = mussel.

  4. by sin… world: Romans 5:12.

  5. by the throat: Cash convincingly argues that Sterne lost his voice in the spring of 1762 and never recovered its full use; see LY, 148–50.

  6. Joppa: Port city of ancient Israel (modern Jaffa) from which Jonah went to sea to escape God’s mission (Jonah 1:3); and where Peter received the vision that allowed him to continue preaching to the Gentiles (Acts 11:5–17).

  7. Allons: Let’s go!

  CHAPTER II

  1. Rochester…Canterbury: Three towns on the road between London and Dover. Thomas à Becket (c. 1118–70) was murdered and enshrined in Canterbury Cathedral.

  2. nervous juices… salts: Chambers, s.v. Nervous Spirit or Juice: ‘a pure, subtile, volatile humour, better known by the name of animal spirits…’ They were thought to convey sensation and motion through the body, but Chambers is dubious about their existence. Salts, meaning any solid, soluble, non-inflammable substance, one of the five constituent elements of all bodies, were divided as fixed and volatile, the latter being those that rise when distilled.

  CHAPTER IV

  1. Addison: See Addison’s introductory comments in Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705); he writes of comparing scenes of his travels with classical accounts read beforehand.

  2. dry shod… not: Cf. ASJ: ‘much grief of heart has it oft and many a time cost me, when I have observed how many a foul step the inquisitive Traveller has measured to see sights and look into discoveries; all which, as Sancho Pança said to Don Quixote, they might have seen dry-shod at home’. The allusion is to Don Quixote, II.III.5, but the ultimate source is Joseph Hall’s Quo Vadis? (1617).

  3. Democritus… Ephesus: Democritus (c. 460– c. 370 BC), Greek physical philosopher, native of Abdera in Thrace, called the laughing philosopher, in contrast to Heraclitus (i.e. the ‘town clerk of Ephesus’ (c. 540–c. 480 BC)), the weeping philosopher. That Burton uses the pseudonym ‘Democritus Junior’ plays a significant part in Sterne’s invocation.

  CHAPTER V

  1. CALAIS… Calesium: See Van R. Baker, ‘Sterne and Piganiol de la Force: The Making of Volume VII of Tristram Shandy’, CLS 13 (1976), for a full account of Sterne’s extensive use of Jean Aimar Piganiol’s Nouveau Voyage de France (1724) for details of his journey, beginning with this description of Calais; Florida Notes provides the relevant parallel passages. Sterne opens his parodic use of Piganiol by repeating his pedantic list of former Latin spellings of the town.

  2. the Courgain: Literally, ‘small gain’, a name Piganiol attributes to the poverty of its inhabitants, poor fishermen. Sterne adds to Piganiol’s account the longstanding belief in the power of seafood to increase sexual potency.

  3. La Tour de Guet: Watchtower.

  4. Philip of France: Phi
lippe VI (1293–1350).

  5. Tête de Gravelenes: The fortifications facing the lower town of Gravelines.

  6. campaign: Tract of open country; a plain.

  7. Rapin’s own words: I.e. Sterne’s primary historical source, Paul Rapin de Thoyras’s L’Histoire d’Angleterre (see n. 1 to II.i). His account of the siege of Calais (1347–8) is actually less than a page, but Sterne is reading Piganiol’s account of the valour of ‘Eustache de saint Pierre, the most eminent person in the town’, who volunteered with five others to offer themselves to King Edward III with nooses around their necks in order to save the town.

  CHAPTER VII

  1. size-ace: Six and one on dice. For an entertaining note on the number seven in this seventh chapter of the seventh volume, see Harold Love, N&Q 216 (1971).

  2. ma chere fille: My dear girl!

  3. debt of Nature: I.e. death.

  CHAPTER IX

  1. inn-keeper’s daughter: Sterne mentions her again in ASJ, leading some to argue that he had a particular young woman in mind.

  2. slut: In Sterne’s day, an affectionate word.

  3. statue’s thumb: Perhaps an allusion to the classical notion of the ‘model statue’, the Doryphorus (Boy Carrying a Spear) of Polyclitus, which supposedly established ideal measures for the human body, including the rule that the thumb and nose (!) should be equal.