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

by Laurence Sterne

  4. wettest drapery: Sterne probably knew that wet drapery, used by ancient sculptors, was deemed inappropriate for painters.

  5. the abbey… hither: Sterne’s detail of the abbey’s transposition comes from Piganiol.

  6. devote: In ASJ, Yorick defines three stages in the life of a French woman, viz., coquette, deist and devoté, the last being when she turns herself over to religion.

  7. terce… capotted: Terms from the game of piquet; ‘terce to a nine’, the lowest three cards of a suit, i.e. seven, eight and nine; to hold them can be a very minor advantage. To be ‘piqued’ is to have one’s opponent win on cards and play before you begin to score; to be ‘repiqued’ is to have the opponent win on cards alone (hence, one cannot be piqued and repiqued in the same game). To be ‘capotted’ is to have one’s opponent win everything.

  CHAPTER X

  1. card and spin: Abbeville was famous for its weaving; Sterne’s conclusion perhaps glances at the motto on the royal arms of France: ‘Lilia non laborant neque nent’ (They toil not, neither do they spin).

  2. Book of French post-roads: Liste générale des postes de France, official guide to the post-roads of France, published annually from 1708 to 1779. A poste et demi is a ‘post and a half’, approximately nine miles.

  CHAPTER XII

  1. Genevieve: St Genevieve (c. 422–c. 500), patron saint of Paris.

  CHAPTER XIII

  1. MAKEthem… wheel: See Joseph Hall, Quo Vadis?: ‘None of the least imprecations, which David, makes against Gods enemies, is, Make them like unto a wheele, o Lord [Psalm 83:13]: Motion is ever accompanied with unquietnesse; and both argues, and causes imperfection, whereas the happy estate of heaven is described by rest.’ Sterne plays on his own thinness, a body ravaged by tubercular disease; whether Bishop Hall (see n. 1 to I.xxii) was more corpulent than a bishop should be is unknown.

  2. Ixion’s wheel: In Greek mythology, Ixion was tied to an ever-revolving wheel as a punishment for insulting Jupiter and Juno.

  3. I love… concoctions: Sterne found his sentence not in the Pythagoreans, but in John Norris (see n. 2 to III.xxi), Practical Discourses … Volume Two (1691). The italicized words translate the Greek; Norris has a somewhat different version: ‘that they must separate and unwind themselves even from their very Bodies, if they would be good Philosophers’. Norris attributes the sentence to the Pythagoreans, but gives no details. Sterne’s ‘too lax or too tense a fibre’ offers a standard medical truism of the period: good health depends on a balance in which the nerves of the body are neither too tight nor too loose. ‘Congenial humours’ means something like ‘our inclinations or dispositions’; as in sermon 28, ‘Our conversation in heaven’, Sterne follows Norris’s argument that we prepare ourselves for the pleasures of heaven, pace the Pythagoreans, by a proper enjoyment of this life; that ‘REASON, is half of it, Sense’ is not an invitation to hedonism but a recognition of the intimate relationship between body and soul in the postlapsarian human being, who nevertheless seeks ‘heaven’.

  CHAPTER XIV

  1. But she… nothing: Sterne borrows these two paragraphs from Burton, 2.2.3; they originated in John Wilkins, The Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638), whence Burton appropriated them for the fifth edition of Anatomy. Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623) and Francisco Ribera (1537–91) were Jesuit theologians. Dutch mile = about 4.4 English miles; Italian mile = not quite an English mile. Tabid: wasting, decaying.

  2. Priapus: Greek god of male potency, usually represented with an enormous phallus.

  3. where am… rushing: Cf. Burton, 1.3.2.4: ‘But where am I? Into what subject have I rushed? What have I to do with Nunnes, Maids, Virgins, Widows? I am a Batcheler my self, and lead a Monastick life in a Colledge…’ On Sterne’s bachelor (if not monastic) life during this period, see Cash, LY, ch. 5.

  4. midst of my days: Scriptural phrase; see Psalm 102:24, Jeremiah 17:11.

  CHAPTER XV

  1. thill-horse: Last horse in a carriage shaft.

  2. Ailly au clochers: Piganiol mentions Ailli aux Clochers, but says nothing about the chimes; Sterne may simply be playing on cloche: ‘bell’; clocher: ‘steeple, belfry’.

  3. Hixcourt: Error for Flixcourt.

  CHAPTER XVI

  1. avance-courier: Sterne’s error for an avant-courier: one who rides before; a herald.

  2. liards: Smallest French coin, worth about half a farthing; the livre contained twenty sous, about ten pence. Tristram’s difficulties are compounded by a general recoinage in 1738, hence the Louis XIV twelve-sous piece that ‘will not pass’.

  3. flesh… spirit: Galatians 5:17.

  4. Monsieur le Curè: Parish priest.

  5. shaveling: Contemptuous term for a tonsured friar; the box is for gathering alms.

  6. stables of Chantilly: Built by the Duke of Bourbon, they contained stalls for 1,000 horses, and were considered a benchmark of French extravagance.

  7. St. Dennis: The Benedictine Abbey of St Denis held many treasures, including the cup and lantern used by Judas on the night of Jesus’s betrayal (see John 18:3); as a Protestant, Sterne deems such ‘relics’ ridiculous.

  CHAPTER XVII

  1. so this is Paris: Tristram’s attitude towards Paris and Parisians is replete with traditional English prejudices regarding the dirtiness, narrowness and darkness of its streets; the ill-treatment of its horses, never very strong anyway (compared with English horses); and the meticulous attention to food that was nevertheless considered inferior to English fare.

  2. calamanco: Glossy Flemish woollen cloth.

  3. gives the wall: Allusion to the long tradition whereby courtesy was shown by allowing another pedestrian the side farthest from the gutter, and superiority by claiming that side for oneself.

  4. their god is their belly: Philippians 3:18–19.

  5. the periwig maketh the man: Sterne wrote to an acquaintance in 1765: ‘It is a terrible thing to be in Paris without a perriwig to a man’s head!’

  6. Capitouls: The magistrates of Toulouse were called ‘Capitouls’ and had gained infamy in the Jean Calas affair of 1761–2, in which a Huguenot father in Toulouse was wrongly executed for the death of his son, in what was almost certainly an act of religious bigotry. It had certainly appeared that way to Voltaire, who took up the cause of exoneration in a major way; to the salons of Paris that Sterne frequented in 1762–3; and to the English in anti-French, anti-Catholic pamphlets. Sterne thus capitalizes on his readers’ familiarity with the term to take yet another swipe at the French, with whom a war had just ended, and at Roman Catholicism.

  7. pardi: I.e. pardieu: by God!, Heavens!

  CHAPTER XVIII

  1. grand Hôtels: Palaces of the nobility.

  2. quotation from Lilly: Sterne quotes the definition of noun from A Short Introduction of Grammar by William Lily and John Colet, first published in 1549 and still in use in the eighteenth century as Lily’s Grammar.

  3. the last survey: Extracted verbatim from Germain Brice’s Description de la Ville de Paris (1752). Sterne’s date, 1716, comes from misapplying a sentence therein concerning the increase in Paris hôtels since 1716.

  4. St. Roche and Sulplice: Outstanding examples ofthe French classical style, completed inthe middle ofthe eighteenth century. Sulplice should be Sulpice (from Sulpice II, Bishop of Bourges (d. 647)), but the error is retained as a likely confusion with ‘surplice’, the clerical garment.

  5. portico of the Louvre: The complete sentence reads: ‘Non orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam, / Urbsve Domum, Dominum nec Domus ulla parem’ (The world holds no race, no race a city, or any city a house, or any house a master equal [to these]).

  CHAPTER XIX

  1. undercraft: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘a sly, underhand trick’.

  CHAPTER XX

  1. consideratis, considerandis: All things considered.

  2. though… parlour: About ASJ, Sterne wrote to an acquaintance: ‘the women will read this book in the parlour, a
nd Tristram in the bed-chamber’.

  3. volving: OED cites this passage as its last example: ‘to turn over in the mind; to consider’.

  4. Andoü illets: ‘Little sausages’; both Rabela is and Sterne play on the bawdy possibilities of sausages as phallic objects (see IX.v–vii).

  CHAPTER XXI

  1. sinovia: Lubricating fluid secreted in the joints.

  2. man of Lystra: Acts 14:8: ‘And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked.’

  3. scapulary across her lap: Sterne is perhaps consulting a Pharmacopoeia or medical handbook for his collection of herbal remedies. One assumes the prioress holds her scapulary across her lap to prevent the smoke from reaching her nostrils.

  4. whitloe: Inflammation or swelling; cf. ‘white swelling’ (p. 456 and n. 9 to this chapter). The difficulties of reading (and annotating) a teasing passage such as this in a work intent on showing that nothing human can be immunized from sexual play are discussed by New, ‘“At the backside of the door of purgatory”: A Note on Annotating Tristram Shandy’, in ‘Tristram Shandy’: Riddles and Mysteries ed. V. G. Myer (Vision, 1984).

  5. calesh: I.e. calash, small covered carriage.

  6. frize: I.e. frieze, coarse woollen cloth.

  7. hot-wine-lees: Sediment from wine, used to scour material such as felt.

  8. tempting bush: Sign of an inn.

  9. white swelling: Swelling without redness, but also a colloquial term for pregnancy.

  10. By my fig: By this point in the nuns’ story, ‘fig’ as a bawdy allusion to a woman’s pudendum almost certainly comes into play – perhaps a bilingual pun as well, i.e., pudendum muliebre.

  CHAPTER XXII

  1. obstreperated: OED cites this passage as its sole illustration: ‘to make a noise or clamour’.

  CHAPTER XXV

  1. I see no sin: Sterne’s joke is based on the indecency of foutre (to fuck) and the ambiguity of bouger (to stir, budge, move), with a probable allusion to bougre (bugger). Sterne labelled France ‘foutre-land’ in a letter to Hall-Stevenson.

  2. fa… mi, ut: The names given by Guido of Arezzo to the six notes of the hexachord system; see n. 2 to VI.i. Complines: the last of the seven daily canonical services.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  1. I never… out: Cf. Ben Jonson’s famous comment in Timber (1641): ‘I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that… hee never blotted out a line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand.’

  CHAPTER XXVII

  1. Fontainbleau: Sterne’s joke juxtaposes the excessive magnificence of this royal palace with Tristram’s lack of comment.

  2. out-gallop the king: This was, in fact, the rule.

  3. silks: The counsels of the various kings and courts, silks being used allusively in recognition of their silk gowns.

  4. We’ll go… discipline: Sterne returns to Piganiol for these two paragraphs on the Abbey of St Germain and its tombs. ‘Sequier’ is his consistent misspelling for Dominique Séguier, Bishop of Auxerre (1593–1659). St Héribalde, abbot of the monastery of St Germain and eventually Bishop of Auxerre (d. c. 857). Charlemagne ruled France from 768 to 814, succeeded by his son, Louis the Debonair, in turn succeeded by his son, Charles the Bald, who ruled from 840 until his death in 877.

  5. Saint MAXIMA: Piganiol does refer to a St Maxima buried in the Abbey, but the name was held by numerous saints, as was Maximus, about whom Piganiol says nothing; Sterne introduces him in order to play on the masculine and feminine forms and Walter’s bilingual pun, ‘the greatest saints’.

  6. Saint Germain: Bishop of Auxerre (c. 380–448), died at Ravenna, which accounts for the origin of St Maxima’s pilgrimage.

  7. Saint Optat: Bishop of Auxerre (d. c. 530). Latin optatus: longed for, desired, welcomed.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  1. most puzzled skein of all: Tristram’s multiple journeys through Auxerre comprise perhaps the single most discussed passage in TS among mid-twentieth-century critics. For example, in The Winged Skull: Papers from the Sterne Bicentenary Conference, ed. Cash and Stedmond, three of the first four essays discuss it.

  2. pavillion built by Pringello: Hall-Stevenson (see n. 3 to I.xii), called Antony within his circle (in ironic contrast to St Antony, the founder of Christian asceticism), tried to profit from Sterne’s success with a collection of very silly (and bawdy) stories in verse, Crazy Tales (1762). Each is narrated by a member of the so-called Demoniacs, Sterne’s circle of north Yorkshire friends; the tale by Don Pringello, ‘The Fellowship of the Holy Nuns; or the Monk’s Wise Judgment’, is a particularly tasteless tale, followed by a ‘scholium’ praising ‘Pringello’ as the architect (now thought to be Sir William Chambers (1726–96)) who helped renovate Hall-Stevenson’s ‘Crazy Castle’.

  Since Sterne’s actual journey ended in Toulouse, it has been assumed that ‘Mons. Sligniac’ might be the landlord mentioned in a letter written in August 1762, and that the pavilion is part of the country house Sterne describes as ‘an excellent house well furnish’d, and elegant’; see Cash, LY, 152–6.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  1. by water to Avignon: Tristram’s journey down the Rhône passes the area to the west known as Vivarais and the area to the east, Dauphiné, as well as the three cities mentioned. The Hermitage and Côte Rô tie were the most famous vineyards of the Rhône valley.

  2. chaise-undertaker: OED cites this passage as its only recorded example: ‘One who undertakes to renovate chaises, a dealer in secondhand chaises.’

  3. whispering these words: It is unlikely that Sterne has definite words in mind, despite the division of the asterisks; in contrast, note the ease with which one fills in the words in V.xvii.

  4. goat’s-whey: Prescribed in the eighteenth century for good health generally, and to aid in potency most particularly, as in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.

  CHAPTER XXX

  1. Lyons: Tristram’s excessive praise for the second city of France is at Paris’s expense. Lippius’ clock (and its inoperative condition), the library with the general history of China and the pillar in the Church of St Ireneus were all gleaned from Piganiol.

  2. milk coffee: Coffee was considered medicinal in the eighteenth century, but it was probably the milk (or cream) that Sterne had with it that eased his pulmonary illness.

  3. valet de place: A guide to strangers or tourists.

  4. Pilate lived: Sterne’s account does not come from Piganiol, but other travel writers mention the house, said to have belonged to Pontius Pilate in exile, a confusion over a local resident named Pilati and the town’s desire for a ‘relic’. This is the explanation given by the famous antiquarian Jacob Spon (1647–85), cited by Sterne in the next chapter; Sterne probably never consulted him.

  5. Tomb of the two lovers: Although Sterne credits Spon, he is translating Piganiol’s account (which cites Spon), a typical Sternean gesture. Piganiol notes that the tomb was demolished in 1707; exactly why it was erected remains a question, but travel writers did refer to it, often as the ‘tomb of the lovers’.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  1. fibrillous: This occurrence is the last cited by OED ; a fibril is a small fibre.

  2. Amandus… Amanda: Masculine and feminine forms in Latin for ‘one who must be loved’.

  3. pabulum: OED cites this passage as its first example of figurative usage: ‘that which nourishes and sustains the mind or soul; food for thought’. Sterne’s meaning is perhaps closer to pap, i.e. nonsense.

  4. Frusts… antiquity: OED cites this passage for the first occurrence of Frust: ‘a fragment’. ‘Rusts’ alludes to the value supposedly placed by antiquarians on layers of encrusted oxidation.

  5. Mecca: Holiest city of Islam, birthplace of Mohammed and the destination of pilgrimages.

  6. Santa Casa: In Loreto, Italy, said to have been the home of the Virgin Mary in Nazareth, miraculously relocated by angels; it remains a popular objec
tive of Roman Catholic pilgrimages.

  7. Videnda: OED cites this passage as its first illustration: ‘things worth seeing or which ought to be seen’.

  8. Basse Cour: Lower court, stable-yard.

  9. dernier: Last.

  10. Monsieur Le Blanc: Boswell (On the Grand Tour, 2 January 1766) mentions the house of Le Blanc in Lyons, a place he takes for three livres a day because ‘the best places were taken’. If the two Le Blancs are the same person, it suggests that Sterne did not stay in the ‘best places’ during his travels.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  1. But with… for ever: Sancho Pança wishes for an ass with which he might ‘commune’ (I.III.11).

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  1. Don’t puzzle me; said I: Cf. ASJ: ‘There is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am…’

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  1. CHAP. XXXIV: Behind this chapter is a joke told by Ozell in a note to Rabelais, II.7, about a curate who is told he must pay the tax for keeping a woman (the so-called custom of ‘couillage’), whether he has a mistress or not.

  2. Pardonnez moi: Pardon me.

  3. post royal: Any post from Paris or Lyons or from any place where the king actually resided, the fee for which was double.