The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

by Laurence Sterne

The nymphs join’d in unison, and their swains an octave below them——

  I would have given a crown to have it sew’d up—Nannette would not have given a sous— Viva la joia! was in her lips— Viva la joia! was in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us——She look’d amiable!——Why could I not live and end my days thus? Just disposer of our joys and sorrows,8 cried I, why could not a man sit down in the lap of content9 here—and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut brown maid?10 capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insiduous11——Then ’tis time to dance off, quoth I; so changing only partners and tunes, I danced it away from Lunel to Montpellier——from thence to Pesçnas, Beziers——I danced it along through Narbonne, Carcasson, and Castle Naudairy, till at last I danced myself into Perdrillo’s pavillion,12 where pulling a paper of black lines, that I might go on straight forwards, without digression or parenthesis, in my uncle Toby’s amours——

  I begun thus——

  END of the SEVENTH VOLUME.

  THE

  LIFE

  AND

  OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY,

  GENTLEMAN.

  Non exim excurfus bic ejus, fed opus ipfum eft.

  PLIN. Lib. quintus Epiftola fexta.

  VOL. VIII.

  LONDAN:

  Printed for T. BECKET and P. A. DEHONT, in the strand. M DCC LXV.

  (Height of original type-page 108 mm.)

  THE

  LIFE and OPINIONS

  OF

  TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

  CHAP. I.

  ——BUT softly ——for in these sportive plains, and under this genial sun, where at this instant all flesh is running out piping, fiddling, and dancing to the vintage, and every step that’s taken, the judgment is surprised by the imagination, I defy, notwithstanding all that has been said upon straight lines* in sundry pages of my book— I defy the best cabbage planter1 that ever existed, whether he plants backwards or forwards, it makes little difference in the account (except that he will have more to answer for in the one case than in the other)—I defy him to go on cooly, critically, and canonically, planting his cabbages one by one, in straight lines, and stoical distances, especially if slits in petticoats are unsew’d up—without ever and anon straddling out, or sidling into some bastardly digression——In Freeze-land, Fog-land2 and some other lands I wot of—it may be done——

  But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent—in this land, my dear Eugenius—in this fertile land of chivalry and romance, where I now sit, unskrewing my ink-horn to write my uncle Toby’s amours, and with all the meanders of JULIA’s track in quest of her DIEGO, in full view of my study window—if thou comest not and takest me by the hand——

  What a work is it likely to turn out!

  Let us begin it.

  CHAP. II.

  IT is with LOVE as with CUCKOLDOM—— ——But now I am talking of beginning a book, and have long had a thing upon my mind to be imparted to the reader, which if not imparted now, can never be imparted to him as long as I live (whereas the COMPARISON may be imparted to him any hour in the day)——I’ll just mention it, and begin in good earnest.

  The thing is this.

  That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best——I’m sure it is the most religious——for I begin with writing the first sentence——and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

  ’Twould cure an author for ever of the fuss and folly of opening his street-door, and calling in his neighbours and friends, and kinsfolk, with the devil and all his imps,1 with their hammers and engines, &c. only to observe how one sentence of mine follows another, and how the plan follows the whole.

  I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up——catching the idea, even sometimes before it half way reaches me——

  I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which heaven intended for another man.

  Pope and his Portrait*2 are fools to me——no martyr is ever so full of faith or fire——I wish I could say of good works too ——but I have no

  Zeal or Anger——or

  Anger or Zeal——

  And till gods and men agree together to call it by the same name ——the errantest TARTUFFE,3 in science—in politics—or in religion, shall never kindle a spark within me, or have a worse word, or a more unkind greeting, than what he will read in the next chapter.

  CHAP. III.

  ——Bon jour!——good-morrow!——so you have got your cloak on betimes!——but ’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly——’tis better to be well mounted, than go o’foot——and obstructions in the glands are dangerous—— And how goes it with thy concubine—thy wife—and thy little ones o’both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady—your sister, aunt, uncle and cousins——I hope they have got better of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers, stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore-eyes.——What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give such a vile purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—glis-ter—blister?——And why so many grains of calomel? santa Maria! and such a dose of opium! periclitating,1 pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——By my great aunt Dinah’s old black velvet mask!2 I think there was no occasion for it.

  Now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently putting off and on, before she was got with child by the coach-man—not one of our family would wear it after. To cover the MASK afresh, was more than the mask was worth——and to wear a mask which was bald, or which could be half seen through, was as bad as having no mask at all——

  This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that in all our numerous family, for these four generations, we count no more than one archbishop,3 a Welch judge, some three or four aldermen, and a single mountebank———

  In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists.

  CHAP. IV.

  “IT is with Love as with Cuckoldom”1——the suffering party is at least the third, but generally the last in the house who knows any thing about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the human frame, is Love— may be Hatred, in that—— Sentiment half a yard higher—— and Nonsense————no Madam,—not there——I mean at the part I am now pointing to with my forefinger——how can we help ourselves?

  Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle Toby was the worst fitted, to have push’d his researches, thro’ such a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse matters, to see what they would turn out——had not Bridget’s pre-notification of them to Susannah, and Susannah’s repeated manifesto’s thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle Toby to look into the affair.

  CHAP. V.

  WHY weavers, gardeners, and gladiators—or a man with a pined leg (proceeding from some ailment in the foot)— should ever have had some tender nymph breaking her heart in secret for them,1 are points well and duely settled and accounted for, by ancient and modern physiologists.

  A water-drinker, provided he is a profess’d one, and does it without fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament: not that, at first sight, there is any consequence, or shew of logic in it, “That a rill of cold water dribbling through my inward parts, should light up a torch in my Jenny’s—”

  ——The proposition does not strike one; on the contrary it seems to run opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects——

  But it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason.——“And in perfect good health with it?”

  —The most perfect�
�Madam, that friendship herself could wish me——

  —–“And drink nothing!—nothing but water?”

  —Impetuous fluid! the moment thou presses against the flood-gates of the brain——see how they give way!——

  In swims CURIOSITY, beckoning to her damsels to follow— they dive into the centre of the current——

  FANCY sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bowsprits——And DESIRE, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her, with the other——

  O ye water-drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that ye have so often governed and turn’d this world about like a mill-wheel—grinding the faces2 of the impotent—be-powdering their ribs—be-peppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature——

  —If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water, Eugenius.—And, if I was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I.

  Which shews they had both read Longinus3——

  For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long as I live.

  CHAP. VI.

  I Wish my uncle Toby had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had been accounted for, That the first moment Widow Wadman saw him, she felt something stirring within her in his favour—Something!—something.

  —Something perhaps more than friendship—less than love— something—no matter what—no matter where—I would not give a single hair off my mule’s tail, and be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain has not many to spare, and is not a little vicious into the bargain) to be let by your worships into the secret——

  But the truth is, my uncle Toby was not a water-drinker; he drank it neither pure nor mix’d, or any how, or any where, except fortuitously upon some advanced posts, where better liquor was not to be had——or during the time he was under cure; when the surgeon telling him it would extend the fibres, and bring them sooner into contact——my uncle Toby drank it for quietness sake.

  Now as all the world knows, that no effect in nature can be produced without a cause and as it is as well known, that my uncle Toby, was neither a weaver—a gardener, or a gladiator ——unless as a captain, you will needs have him one—but then he was only a captain of foot—and besides the whole is an equivocation——There is nothing left for us to suppose, but that my uncle Toby’s leg——but that will avail us little in the present hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment in the foot—whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder in his foot—for my uncle Toby’s leg was not emaciated at all. It was a little stiff and awkward, from a total disuse of it, for the three years he lay confined at my father’s house in town; but it was plump and muscular, and in all other respects as good and promising a leg as the other.

  I declare, I do not recollect any one opinion or passage of my life, where my understanding was more at a loss to make ends meet, and torture the chapter I had been writing, to the service of the chapter following it, than in the present case: one would think I took a pleasure in runing into difficulties of this kind, merely to make fresh experiments of getting out of ’em—— Inconsiderate soul that thou art! What! are not the unavoidable distresses with which, as an author and a man, thou art hemm’d in on every side of thee——are they, Tristram, not sufficient, but thou must entangle thyself still more?

  Is it not enough that thou art in debt, and that thou hast ten cart-loads of thy fifth and sixth volumes still—still unsold, and art almost at thy wit’s ends, how to get them off thy hands.1

  To this hour art thou not tormented with the vile asthma thou gattest in skating against the wind in Flanders? and is it but two months ago, that in a fit of laughter, on seeing a cardinal make water like a quirister2 (with both hands) thou brakest a vessel in thy lungs, whereby, in two hours, thou lost as many quarts of blood; and hadst thou lost as much more, did not the faculty tell thee———it would have amounted to a gallon?———

  CHAP. VII.

  ——But for heaven’s sake, let us not talk of quarts or gallons ——let us take the story straight before us; it is so nice and intricate a one, it will scarce bear the transposition of a single tittle; and some how or other, you have got me thrust almost into the middle of it——

  —I beg we may take more care.

  CHAP. VIII.

  MY uncle Toby and the corporal had posted down with so much heat and precipitation, to take possession of the spot of ground we have so often spoke of, in order to open their campaign as early as the rest of the allies; that they had forgot one of the most necessary articles of the whole affair; it was neither a pioneer’s spade, a pick-ax, or a shovel—

  —It was a bed to lie on: so that as Shandy Hall was at that time unfurnished; and the little inn where poor Le Fever died, not yet built; my uncle Toby was constrained to accept of a bed at Mrs. Wadman’s, for a night or two, till corporal Trim (who to the character of an excellent valet, groom, cook, sempster, surgeon and engineer, superadded that of an excellent upholsterer too) with the help of a carpenter and a couple of taylors, constructed one in my uncle Toby’s house.

  A daughter of Eve, for such was widow Wadman, and ’tis all the character I intend to give of her—

  —“That she was a perfect woman;”

  had better be fifty leagues off—or in her warm bed—or playing with a case-knife1—or any thing you please—than make a man the object of her attention, when the house and all the furniture is her own.

  There is nothing in it out of doors and in broad day-light, where a woman has a power, physically speaking, of viewing a man in more lights than one—but here, for her soul, she can see him in no light without mixing something of her own goods and chattels along with him—— till by reiterated acts of such combinations, he gets foisted into her inventory——

  —And then good night.

  But this is not matter of SYSTEM; for I have delivered that above——nor is it matter of BREVIARY——for I make no man’s creed but my own——nor matter of FACT——at least that I know of; but ’tis matter copulative and introductory to what follows.

  CHAP. IX.

  I Do not speak it with regard to the coarseness or cleanness of them—or the strength of their gussets——but pray do not night-shifts differ from day-shifts1 as much in this particular, as in any thing else in the world; That they so far exceed the others in length, that when you are laid down in them, they fall almost as much below the feet, as the day-shifts fall short of them?

  Widow Wadman’s night-shifts (as was the mode I suppose in King William’s and Queen Anne’s reigns) were cut however after this fashion; and if the fashion is changed, (for in Italy they are come to nothing)——so much the worse for the public; they were two Flemish ells2 and a half in length; so that allowing a moderate woman two ells, she had half an ell to spare, to do what she would with.

  Now from one little indulgence gain’d after another, in the many bleak and decemberly nights of a seven years widowhood, things had insensibly come to this pass, and for the two last years had got establish’d into one of the ordinances of the bed-chamber—That as soon as Mrs. Wadman was put to bed, and had got her legs stretched down to the bottom of it, of which she always gave Bridget notice—Bridget with all suitable decorum, having first open’d the bed-cloaths at the feet, took hold of the half ell of cloath we are speaking of, and having gently, and with both her hands, drawn it downwards to its furthest extension, and then contracted it again side long by four or five even plaits, she took a large corking pin3 out of her sleeve, and with the point directed towards her, pin’d the plaits all fast together a little above the hem; which done she tuck’d all in tight at the feet, and wish’d her mistress a good night.

  This was constant, and without any other variation than this; that on shivering and tempestuous nights, when Bridget untuck’d the feet of the bed, &c. to do this——she consulted no thermometer but that of her own passions; and so perfo
rmed it standing—kneeling—or squatting, according to the different degrees of faith, hope, and charity, she was in, and bore towards her mistress that night. In every other respect the etiquette was sacred, and might have vied with the most mechanical one of the most inflexible bed-chamber in Christendom.

  The first night, as soon as the corporal had conducted my uncle Toby up stairs, which was about ten——Mrs. Wadman threw herself into her arm chair, and crossing her left knee with her right, which formed a resting-place for her elbow, she reclin’d her cheek upon the palm of her hand, and leaning forwards, ruminated till midnight upon both sides of the question.

  The second night she went to her bureau, and having ordered Bridget to bring her up a couple of fresh candles and leave them upon the table, she took out her marriage-settlement, and read it over with great devotion: and the third night (which was the last of my uncle Toby’s stay) when Bridget had pull’d down the night-shift, and was assaying to stick in the corking pin——

  ——With a kick of both heels at once, but at the same time the most natural kick that could be kick’d in her situation—— for supposing * * * * * * * * * to be the sun in its meridian, it was a north-east kick——she kick’d the pin out of her fingers ——the etiquette which hung upon it, down——down it fell to the ground, and was shivered into a thousand atoms.

  From all which it was plain that widow Wadman was in love with my uncle Toby.

  CHAP. X.

  MY uncle Toby’s head at that time was full of other matters, so that it was not till the demolition of Dunkirk, when all the other civilities of Europe were settled, that he found leisure to return this.