Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged Page 7

  How my uncle and Corporal Trim managed this matter, may make an interesting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this drama. – But for now the scene must drop, and change for the parlour fire-side.

  CHAPTER 6

  ‘What can they be doing, brother?’ said my father.

  ‘I think,’ replied my uncle Toby, taking, as I told you, his pipe from his mouth, and striking the ashes out of it; – ‘I think it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.’

  ‘Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, Obadiah?’ quoth my father.

  ‘Sir,’ answered Obadiah with a bow, ‘my Mistress is taken very badly.’

  ‘And where’s Susannah running to down the garden?’

  ‘Sir, she is running into the town,’ replied Obadiah, ‘to fetch the old midwife.’

  ‘Then saddle a horse,’ quoth my father, ‘and go directly for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife, and let him know your mistress is fallen into labour – and that I desire him to return with you speedily.’

  ‘It is very strange,’ said my father to my uncle Toby, as Obadiah shut the door, – ‘when there is an expert such as Dr. Slop so near, that my wife should persist so obstinately in trusting the life of my child to the ignorance of an old woman; – and not only the life of my child, but her own life, and with it the lives of all the children I might have in the future.’

  ‘Mayhap, brother,’ replied my uncle Toby, ‘she does it to save the expense.’

  ‘A pudding’s end!’ replied my father; ‘the Doctor must be paid the same for inaction as action, – if not more, to keep him happy.’

  ‘Then it can only be out of Modesty,’ quoth my uncle Toby, in the simplicity of his heart. ‘I dare say she does not care to let a man come so near her ****.’

  I will not say whether my uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not; but if he had not fully arrived at its end, – then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in oratory, the Aposiopesis. How the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the fiddle-stick, et cetera, give true pleasure! – O my countrymen – be cautious of your language; and never, O! never forget upon what small particles your eloquence and your fame depend.

  ‘My sister, mayhap,’ quoth my uncle Toby, ‘does not choose to let a man come so near her ****.’ Make this row of stars, and ’tis an Aposiopesis. Take it away, and write ‘Backside’; ’tis Bawdy. – Scratch ‘Backside’ out, and put ‘Covered way’ in, ’tis a Metaphor; – and, I dare say, as fortification ran so much in my uncle Toby’s head, that word was the one he would have added.

  But whether that was the case or no; – or whether the snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe happened through accident or anger, will be seen in due time.

  CHAPTER 7

  When my father’s tobacco-pipe snapped in the middle, he stood up and threw the pieces violently into the fire.

  ‘Not choose,’ quoth he, (repeating my uncle Toby’s words) ‘to let a man come so near her! – By Heaven, brother Toby! you would try the patience of Job.’

  ‘Why?’ replied my uncle in astonishment.

  ‘To think,’ said my father, ‘of a man living to your age, and knowing so little about women!’

  ‘I know nothing at all about them,’ replied my uncle Toby. ‘And I think that the shock I received the year after the demolition of Dunkirk, in my affair with widow Wadman – which shock you know was caused by my total ignorance of the sex – makes me say, that I do not pretend to know anything about ’em or their concerns.’

  ‘Methinks, brother,’ replied my father, ‘you might, at least, know the right end of a woman from the wrong.’

  Aristotle says that when a man thinks of anything which is past, he looks down upon the ground; but when he thinks of something that is to come, he looks up.

  My uncle Toby, I suppose, thought of neither, for he looked horizontally.

  ‘Right end of a woman!’ quoth he, muttering low, and fixing his eyes upon a crevice in the chimney-piece – ‘I declare, I know no more which it is than the man in the moon.’

  ‘Then, brother Toby,’ replied my father, ‘I will tell you. Everything in this world, my dear brother, has two handles.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘Everyone has two hands,’ replied my father, – ‘which comes to the same thing. Now, if a man was to sit down coolly, and consider the shape, the construction, come-at-ability, and convenience of all the parts which constitute a Woman, and compare them analogically–’

  ‘I never understood the meaning of that word,’ quoth my uncle Toby.

  ‘–Analogy,’ replied my father, ‘is the certain relation which different–’

  Here a loud rap at the door snapped my father’s definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two, and, at the same time, crushed the head of a notable dissertation; – it was some months before my father could complete it. And it is problematical (considering the confusion of our domestic misadventures, now coming thick and fast) whether or not I shall be able to find a place for it in my third volume.

  CHAPTER 8

  It is about an hour and a half’s good reading since my uncle Toby rung the bell, and Obadiah was ordered to go for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife; so no one can say that I have not allowed Obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, to go and return; – though, truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots.

  If the critic is resolved to measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell and the rap at the door; and, finding it to be no more than two minutes thirteen seconds, should decide to insult me for such a breach in the probability of time; – I would remind him that the idea of duration is got merely from the succession of our ideas.

  I would ask him to consider that it is only eight miles from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop’s house; and that whilst Obadiah has been going there and back, I have brought my uncle Toby from Namur, across all Flanders, into England: – that I have had him ill upon my hands four years; – and have taken him and Corporal Trim a journey of near two hundred miles into Yorkshire, all of which must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage.

  If my critic is intractable, alleging that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds, and will render my book a Romance – if I am thus pressed – I then put an end to the whole objection, by informing him that Obadiah had got no more than sixty yards from the stable before he met with Dr. Slop; and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too.

  Imagine to yourself – but this had better begin a new chapter.

  CHAPTER 9

  Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor Slop, about four feet and a half in height, but with considerable breadth of belly.

  Imagine him waddling slowly through the dirt upon a little pony, scarce able, alack! to walk under such a burden, even had the roads been good. – They were not. – Now imagine Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, in full gallop, and speeding the opposite way.

  Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.

  If Dr. Slop had beheld Obadiah a mile off, in a narrow lane, heading directly towards him at that monstrous rate, splashing and plunging like a devil through thick and thin as he approached, would not such a phenomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water round its axis, have been more fearful to Dr. Slop than the worst of Whiston’s comets?

  – To say nothing of the Nucleus; that is, of Obadiah and the coach-horse. – In my idea, the vortex alone of ’em was enough to carry, if not the doctor, at least the doctor’s pony, quite away. What then do you think Dr. Slop’s terror must have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that he was advancing towards Shandy-Hall, and was within five yards of a sharp angle in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane, – when Obadiah and his coach-horse turned the c
orner, rapid, furious – pop – full upon him!

  What could Dr. Slop do? – he crossed himself + (for the doctor, Sir, was a Papist.) He would have done better to have kept hold of the pummel – nay, to have done nothing at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip, and in attempting to save his whip, he lost his stirrup, – in losing which he lost his seat; – and in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shows what little point there is in crossing oneself) the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind.

  Tumbling off his pony like a pack of wool, he landed with the broadest part of him sunk twelve inches deep in the mire.

  Obadiah had been riding so fast, and the Momentum of the coach-horse was so great, that he rode in a circle three times round Dr. Slop, before he stopped his beast; and then ’twas done with such an explosion of mud that he had better have kept his distance. Never was a Dr. Slop so bespattered, and so transubstantiated into mud.

  CHAPTER 10

  When Dr. Slop entered the back parlour, where my father and my uncle Toby were discussing the nature of women, it was hard to say whether Dr. Slop’s appearance, or his presence, surprised them more; for Obadiah had led him in as he was, unwiped, with all his stains and blotches on him.

  He stood like Hamlet’s ghost, motionless and speechless, for a full minute and a half at the parlour-door in all the majesty of mud. His hinder parts, upon which he had fallen, were totally besmeared, and every other part so blotched with Obadiah’s explosion, that you would have sworn that every grain of it had taken effect.

  Here was an opportunity for my uncle Toby to have triumphed over my father; for no one who beheld Dr. Slop in that pickle, could disagree with my uncle’s opinion, ‘That mayhap Mrs. Shandy might not care to let Dr. Slop come near her ****.’ But ’twas not my uncle Toby’s nature to insult.

  Had my father reflected a moment, he might have recalled that he had told Dr. Slop only the week before, that my mother was at her full reckoning; and ’twas very natural in the doctor to have ridden to Shandy-Hall, to see how matters went on.

  But my father’s mind took unfortunately a wrong turn; running upon his ringing of the bell and the rap upon the door, measuring the distance betwixt them, and able to think of nothing else.

  The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door, likewise struck my uncle Toby, – but it excited a very different train of thought; – the noises instantly brought Stevinus, the great engineer, into my uncle Toby’s mind. What business Stevinus had in this affair, is the greatest problem of all. – It shall be solved, but not in the next chapter.

  CHAPTER 11

  Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As no one in good company would venture to do all the talking; – so no author with good manners would presume to do all the thinking. The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to leave him something to imagine.

  For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination busy.

  Thus, I have given an ample description of Dr. Slop’s sad overthrow, and his appearance in the back-parlour; his imagination must now go on with it for a while.

  Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. Slop has told his tale – and in what words his fancy chooses. Let him suppose that Obadiah has told his tale also, with rueful looks of concern.

  – Let him imagine that my father has stepped upstairs to see my mother. And, to conclude, – let him imagine the doctor washed, rubbed down, condoled, and got into a pair of Obadiah’s pumps, stepping towards the door, on the very point of entering the action.

  Truce! – truce, good Dr. Slop: – stay thy obstetric hand! Hast thou, Dr. Slop, been told of the secret and solemn treaty which has brought thee here? Art thou aware that at this instant, a mere midwife is put over thy head?

  Alas! ’tis too true. What canst thou do? Thou hast come unarmed; thou hast left thy new-invented forceps, and all thy instruments of deliverance, behind thee. By Heaven! at this moment they are hanging up in a green baize bag, at thy house! – Ring – call – send Obadiah back upon the coach-horse to bring them with all speed.

  ‘Make haste, Obadiah,’ quoth my father, ‘and I’ll give thee a crown!’

  Quoth my uncle Toby – ‘I’ll give him another.’

  CHAPTER 12

  ‘Your sudden and unexpected arrival,’ quoth my uncle Toby to Dr. Slop (all three of them sitting down to the fire together,) – ‘instantly brought the great Stevinus into my head, who, you must know, is a favourite author with me.’

  My father said, ‘I will lay twenty guineas that this Stevinus was some engineer or other, or has wrote upon the science of fortification.’

  ‘He has so,’ replied my uncle Toby.

  ‘I knew it,’ said my father, ‘though, for the soul of me, I cannot see what connection there can be betwixt Dr. Slop’s sudden coming, and fortification; – yet I feared it. No matter how unfit for the subject, you are sure to bring it in. I declare, my brother Toby, I would not have my head so full of curtins and hornworks.’

  ‘I dare say you would not,’ quoth Dr. Slop, interrupting him, and laughing greatly at his pun.

  No critic could detest a pun more than my father; it annoyed him at any time; – but to be broke in upon by one, in a serious discussion, was as bad, he would say, as a fillip upon the nose.

  ‘Sir,’ quoth my uncle Toby to Dr. Slop, ‘the curtins my brother Shandy mentions have nothing to do with bedsteads; – though, I know Du Cange says that bed-curtains, in all probability, have taken their name from them. – Nor have the hornworks he speaks of, anything to do with the horn-works of cuckoldom. The Curtin, Sir, is the word we use in fortification, for that part of the rampart which lies between two bastions. Besiegers seldom attack the curtins directly, because they are so well flanked.’

  ‘’Tis the case of other curtains,’ quoth Dr. Slop, laughing.

  ‘However,’ continued my uncle Toby, ‘to make them sure, we generally place ravelins before them, taking care only to extend them beyond the fossé or ditch. – Men who know little of fortification, confound the ravelin and the half-moon, though they are very different things; – not in their construction, for we make them exactly alike; for they always consist of two faces, making a salient angle with the gorges, not straight, but in a crescent.’

  ‘Where then lies the difference?’ quoth my father, a little testily.

  ‘In their situations,’ answered my uncle. ‘For when a ravelin, brother, stands before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when it stands before a bastion, then it is not a ravelin; – it is a half-moon; a half-moon likewise is a half-moon so long as it stands before its bastion; – but was it to get before the curtin, ’twould be no more than a ravelin.’

  ‘I think,’ quoth my father, ‘that the noble science of defence has its weak sides.’

  ‘As for the hornworks–’ (‘High! ho!’ sighed my father) ‘which,’ continued my uncle Toby, ‘my brother was speaking of, they are part of an outwork; they are called by French engineers, Ouvrage à corne, and we make them to cover such places as we suspect to be weaker than the rest. – ’Tis formed by two epaulments or demi-bastions – they are very pretty, and if you will take a walk, I’ll show you one well worth your trouble. I admit when we crown them, they are much stronger, but then they are very expensive, and take up a great deal of ground, so that, in my opinion–’

  ‘By the mother who bore us! brother Toby,’ quoth my father, not able to hold out any longer, ‘you would provoke a saint. Here you have got us, I know not how, into the middle of the old subject again. So full is your head of these confounded works, that though my wife is this moment in labour, and you hear her cry out, yet you want to carry off the man-midwife.’

  ‘Accoucheur, if you please,’ quoth Dr. Slop.

  ‘Certainly,’ replied my father. ‘I don’t care what they call you, – but I wish the whole science of
fortification at the devil; it will be the death of me. I would not, brother Toby, have my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, pallisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, if it made me owner of all the towns in Flanders.’

  My uncle Toby was a man of courage: and I know no man under whose arm I would have sooner taken shelter. He felt this insult of my father’s as feelingly as a man could do; – but he was of a peaceful, placid nature, with scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.

  ‘Go,’ says he, one day at dinner, to one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him all dinner-time, and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last; – ‘I’ll not hurt thee,’ says my uncle Toby, going across the room, with the fly in his hand, – ‘Go,’ says he, lifting up the sash, and letting it escape; ‘poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? This world is wide enough to hold both thee and me.’

  I was but ten years old when this happened: but this action instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation; how far the manner and expression of it, or a tone of voice attuned by mercy, might find a passage to my heart, I know not. This I know, that the lesson of universal good-will then taught by my uncle Toby, has never since been worn out of my mind. And though I would not depreciate what university study has done for me, or discredit the other helps of an expensive education; – yet I often think that I owe half of my philanthropy to that one accidental impression.

  [This is to serve for parents instead of a whole volume upon the subject.]

  I could not draw this stroke in my uncle Toby’s picture, by the instrument with which I drew the other parts of it, that mere Hobby-Horsical likeness: – this is a part of his moral character.

  My father was very different in his endurance of wrongs; he had a much more acute sensibility, and a little soreness of temper; though this never extended to malignancy: – yet in the small vexations of life, ’twas apt to show itself in a witty kind of peevishness. He was, however, frank and generous; and in the little bubblings-up of this acid humour towards others, but particularly towards my uncle Toby, whom he truly loved, he would feel more ten times more pain than he ever gave (except in the affair of my aunt Dinah, or where an hypothesis was concerned).