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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

L >> Laurence Sterne >> The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman




What inclined Eugenius to the same opinion was as follows:

A few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius stept in with an
intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his drawing
Yorick's curtain, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick looking up in his
face took hold of his hand,--and after thanking him for the many tokens of
his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet
hereafter,--he would thank him again and again,--he told him, he was within
a few hours of giving his enemies the slip for ever.--I hope not, answered
Eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone
that ever man spoke.--I hope not, Yorick, said he.--Yorick replied, with a
look up, and a gentle squeeze of Eugenius's hand, and that was all,--but it
cut Eugenius to his heart.--Come,--come, Yorick, quoth Eugenius, wiping his
eyes, and summoning up the man within him,--my dear lad, be comforted,--let
not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this crisis when thou
most wants them;--who knows what resources are in store, and what the power
of God may yet do for thee!--Yorick laid his hand upon his heart, and
gently shook his head;--For my part, continued Eugenius, crying bitterly as
he uttered the words,--I declare I know not, Yorick, how to part with thee,
and would gladly flatter my hopes, added Eugenius, chearing up his voice,
that there is still enough left of thee to make a bishop, and that I may
live to see it.--I beseech thee, Eugenius, quoth Yorick, taking off his
night-cap as well as he could with his left hand,--his right being still
grasped close in that of Eugenius,--I beseech thee to take a view of my
head.--I see nothing that ails it, replied Eugenius. Then, alas! my
friend, said Yorick, let me tell you, that 'tis so bruised and mis-shapened
with the blows which. . .and. . ., and some others have so unhandsomely
given me in the dark, that I might say with Sancho Panca, that should I
recover, and 'Mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as
thick as hail, not one of them would fit it.'--Yorick's last breath was
hanging upon his trembling lips ready to depart as he uttered this:--yet
still it was uttered with something of a Cervantick tone;--and as he spoke
it, Eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a
moment in his eyes;--faint picture of those flashes of his spirit, which
(as Shakespeare said of his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar!

Eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was broke:
he squeezed his hand,--and then walked softly out of the room, weeping as
he walked. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door,--he then
closed them, and never opened them more.

He lies buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the parish of. . .,
under a plain marble slab, which his friend Eugenius, by leave of his
executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of
inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy. Alas, poor Yorick!

Ten times a day has Yorick's ghost the consolation to hear his monumental
inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive tones, as denote a
general pity and esteem for him;--a foot-way crossing the church-yard close
by the side of his grave,--not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast
a look upon it,--and sighing as he walks on, Alas, poor Yorick!



Chapter 1.XIII.

It is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has been parted
from the midwife, that it is high time to mention her again to him, merely
to put him in mind that there is such a body still in the world, and whom,
upon the best judgment I can form upon my own plan at present, I am going
to introduce to him for good and all: But as fresh matter may be started,
and much unexpected business fall out betwixt the reader and myself, which
may require immediate dispatch;--'twas right to take care that the poor
woman should not be lost in the mean time;--because when she is wanted, we
can no way do without her.

I think I told you that this good woman was a person of no small note and
consequence throughout our whole village and township;--that her fame had
spread itself to the very out-edge and circumference of that circle of
importance, of which kind every soul living, whether he has a shirt to his
back or no,--has one surrounding him;--which said circle, by the way,
whenever 'tis said that such a one is of great weight and importance in the
world,--I desire may be enlarged or contracted in your worship's fancy, in
a compound ratio of the station, profession, knowledge, abilities, height
and depth (measuring both ways) of the personage brought before you.

In the present case, if I remember, I fixed it about four or five miles,
which not only comprehended the whole parish, but extended itself to two or
three of the adjacent hamlets in the skirts of the next parish; which made
a considerable thing of it. I must add, That she was, moreover, very well
looked on at one large grange-house, and some other odd houses and farms
within two or three miles, as I said, from the smoke of her own chimney:--
But I must here, once for all, inform you, that all this will be more
exactly delineated and explain'd in a map, now in the hands of the
engraver, which, with many other pieces and developements of this work,
will be added to the end of the twentieth volume,--not to swell the work,--
I detest the thought of such a thing;--but by way of commentary, scholium,
illustration, and key to such passages, incidents, or inuendos as shall be
thought to be either of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful
meaning, after my life and my opinions shall have been read over (now don't
forget the meaning of the word) by all the world;--which, betwixt you and
me, and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in Great Britain, and of
all that their worships shall undertake to write or say to the contrary,--I
am determined shall be the case.--I need not tell your worship, that all
this is spoke in confidence.



Chapter 1.XIV.

Upon looking into my mother's marriage settlement, in order to satisfy
myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we could
proceed any farther in this history;--I had the good fortune to pop upon
the very thing I wanted before I had read a day and a half straight
forwards,--it might have taken me up a month;--which shews plainly, that
when a man sits down to write a history,--tho' it be but the history of
Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, he knows no more than his heels what lets
and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his way,--or what a dance
he may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is over. Could a
historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,--
straight forward;--for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without
ever once turning his head aside, either to the right hand or to the left,-
-he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his
journey's end;--but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he
is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight
line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways
avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting
his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can
fly; he will moreover have various
Accounts to reconcile:
Anecdotes to pick up:
Inscriptions to make out:
Stories to weave in:
Traditions to sift:
Personages to call upon:
Panegyricks to paste up at this door;
Pasquinades at that:--All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt
from. To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be look'd into,
and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies, which justice ever
and anon calls him back to stay the reading of:--In short there is no end
of it;--for my own part, I declare I have been at it these six weeks,
making all the speed I possibly could,--and am not yet born:--I have just
been able, and that's all, to tell you when it happen'd, but not how;--so
that you see the thing is yet far from being accomplished.

These unforeseen stoppages, which I own I had no conception of when I first
set out;--but which, I am convinced now, will rather increase than diminish
as I advance,--have struck out a hint which I am resolved to follow;--and
that is,--not to be in a hurry;--but to go on leisurely, writing and
publishing two volumes of my life every year;--which, if I am suffered to
go on quietly, and can make a tolerable bargain with my bookseller, I shall
continue to do as long as I live.



Chapter 1.XV.

The article in my mother's marriage-settlement, which I told the reader I
was at the pains to search for, and which, now that I have found it, I
think proper to lay before him,--is so much more fully express'd in the
deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity
to take it out of the lawyer's hand:--It is as follows.

'And this Indenture further witnesseth, That the said Walter Shandy,
merchant, in consideration of the said intended marriage to be had, and, by
God's blessing, to be well and truly solemnized and consummated between the
said Walter Shandy and Elizabeth Mollineux aforesaid, and divers other good
and valuable causes and considerations him thereunto specially moving,--
doth grant, covenant, condescend, consent, conclude, bargain, and fully
agree to and with John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. the above-named
Trustees, &c. &c.--to wit,--That in case it should hereafter so fall out,
chance, happen, or otherwise come to pass,--That the said Walter Shandy,
merchant, shall have left off business before the time or times, that the
said Elizabeth Mollineux shall, according to the course of nature, or
otherwise, have left off bearing and bringing forth children;--and that, in
consequence of the said Walter Shandy having so left off business, he shall
in despight, and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the
said Elizabeth Mollineux,--make a departure from the city of London, in
order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at Shandy Hall, in the
county of. . ., or at any other country-seat, castle, hall, mansion-house,
messuage or grainge-house, now purchased, or hereafter to be purchased, or
upon any part or parcel thereof:--That then, and as often as the said
Elizabeth Mollineux shall happen to be enceint with child or children
severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten, upon the body of the said
Elizabeth Mollineux, during her said coverture,--he the said Walter Shandy
shall, at his own proper cost and charges, and out of his own proper
monies, upon good and reasonable notice, which is hereby agreed to be
within six weeks of her the said Elizabeth Mollineux's full reckoning, or
time of supposed and computed delivery,--pay, or cause to be paid, the sum
of one hundred and twenty pounds of good and lawful money, to John Dixon,
and James Turner, Esqrs. or assigns,--upon Trust and confidence, and for
and unto the use and uses, intent, end, and purpose following:--That is to
say,--That the said sum of one hundred and twenty pounds shall be paid into
the hands of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, or to be otherwise applied by
them the said Trustees, for the well and truly hiring of one coach, with
able and sufficient horses, to carry and convey the body of the said
Elizabeth Mollineux, and the child or children which she shall be then and
there enceint and pregnant with,--unto the city of London; and for the
further paying and defraying of all other incidental costs, charges, and
expences whatsoever,--in and about, and for, and relating to, her said
intended delivery and lying-in, in the said city or suburbs thereof. And
that the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall and may, from time to time, and at
all such time and times as are here covenanted and agreed upon,--peaceably
and quietly hire the said coach and horses, and have free ingress, egress,
and regress throughout her journey, in and from the said coach, according
to the tenor, true intent, and meaning of these presents, without any let,
suit, trouble, disturbance, molestation, discharge, hinderance, forfeiture,
eviction, vexation, interruption, or incumbrance whatsoever.--And that it
shall moreover be lawful to and for the said Elizabeth Mollineux, from time
to time, and as oft or often as she shall well and truly be advanced in her
said pregnancy, to the time heretofore stipulated and agreed upon,--to live
and reside in such place or places, and in such family or families, and
with such relations, friends, and other persons within the said city of
London, as she at her own will and pleasure, notwithstanding her present
coverture, and as if she was a femme sole and unmarried,--shall think fit.-
-And this Indenture further witnesseth, That for the more effectually
carrying of the said covenant into execution, the said Walter Shandy,
merchant, doth hereby grant, bargain, sell, release, and confirm unto the
said John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. their heirs, executors, and
assigns, in their actual possession now being, by virtue of an indenture of
bargain and sale for a year to them the said John Dixon, and James Turner,
Esqrs. by him the said Walter Shandy, merchant, thereof made; which said
bargain and sale for a year, bears date the day next before the date of
these presents, and by force and virtue of the statute for transferring of
uses into possession,--All that the manor and lordship of Shandy, in the
county of. . ., with all the rights, members, and appurtenances thereof;
and all and every the messuages, houses, buildings, barns, stables,
orchards, gardens, backsides, tofts, crofts, garths, cottages, lands,
meadows, feedings, pastures, marshes, commons, woods, underwoods, drains,
fisheries, waters, and water-courses;--together with all rents, reversions,
services, annuities, fee-farms, knights fees, views of frankpledge,
escheats, reliefs, mines, quarries, goods and chattels of felons and
fugitives, felons of themselves, and put in exigent, deodands, free
warrens, and all other royalties and seigniories, rights and jurisdictions,
privileges and hereditaments whatsoever.--And also the advowson, donation,
presentation, and free disposition of the rectory or parsonage of Shandy
aforesaid, and all and every the tenths, tythes, glebe-lands.'--In three
words,--'My mother was to lay in (if she chose it) in London.'

But in order to put a stop to the practice of any unfair play on the part
of my mother, which a marriage-article of this nature too manifestly opened
a door to, and which indeed had never been thought of at all, but for my
uncle Toby Shandy;--a clause was added in security of my father which was
this:--'That in case my mother hereafter should, at any time, put my father
to the trouble and expence of a London journey, upon false cries and
tokens;--that for every such instance, she should forfeit all the right and
title which the covenant gave her to the next turn;--but to no more,--and
so on, toties quoties, in as effectual a manner, as if such a covenant
betwixt them had not been made.'--This, by the way, was no more than what
was reasonable;--and yet, as reasonable as it was, I have ever thought it
hard that the whole weight of the article should have fallen entirely, as
it did, upon myself.

But I was begot and born to misfortunes;--for my poor mother, whether it
was wind or water--or a compound of both,--or neither;--or whether it was
simply the mere swell of imagination and fancy in her;--or how far a strong
wish and desire to have it so, might mislead her judgment;--in short,
whether she was deceived or deceiving in this matter, it no way becomes me
to decide. The fact was this, That in the latter end of September 1717,
which was the year before I was born, my mother having carried my father up
to town much against the grain,--he peremptorily insisted upon the clause;-
-so that I was doom'd, by marriage-articles, to have my nose squeez'd as
flat to my face, as if the destinies had actually spun me without one.

How this event came about,--and what a train of vexatious disappointments,
in one stage or other of my life, have pursued me from the mere loss, or
rather compression, of this one single member,--shall be laid before the
reader all in due time.



Chapter 1.XVI.

My father, as any body may naturally imagine, came down with my mother into
the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour. The first twenty or five-
and-twenty miles he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze himself,
and indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he said might
every shilling of it have been saved;--then what vexed him more than every
thing else was, the provoking time of the year,--which, as I told you, was
towards the end of September, when his wall-fruit and green gages
especially, in which he was very curious, were just ready for pulling:--
'Had he been whistled up to London, upon a Tom Fool's errand, in any other
month of the whole year, he should not have said three words about it.'

For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy blow
he had sustain'd from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had fully
reckon'd upon in his mind, and register'd down in his pocket-book, as a
second staff for his old age, in case Bobby should fail him. 'The
disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a wise man, than all
the money which the journey, &c. had cost him, put together,--rot the
hundred and twenty pounds,--he did not mind it a rush.'

From Stilton, all the way to Grantham, nothing in the whole affair provoked
him so much as the condolences of his friends, and the foolish figure they
should both make at church, the first Sunday;--of which, in the satirical
vehemence of his wit, now sharpen'd a little by vexation, he would give so
many humorous and provoking descriptions,--and place his rib and self in so
many tormenting lights and attitudes in the face of the whole
congregation;--that my mother declared, these two stages were so truly
tragi-comical, that she did nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, from one
end to the other of them all the way.

From Grantham, till they had cross'd the Trent, my father was out of all
kind of patience at the vile trick and imposition which he fancied my
mother had put upon him in this affair--'Certainly,' he would say to
himself, over and over again, 'the woman could not be deceived herself--if
she could,--what weakness!'--tormenting word!--which led his imagination a
thorny dance, and, before all was over, play'd the duce and all with him;--
for sure as ever the word weakness was uttered, and struck full upon his
brain--so sure it set him upon running divisions upon how many kinds of
weaknesses there were;--that there was such a thing as weakness of the
body,--as well as weakness of the mind,--and then he would do nothing but
syllogize within himself for a stage or two together, How far the cause of
all these vexations might, or might not, have arisen out of himself.

In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out of
this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose up in
it, that my mother, whatever was her journey up, had but an uneasy journey
of it down.--In a word, as she complained to my uncle Toby, he would have
tired out the patience of any flesh alive.



Chapter 1.XVII.

Though my father travelled homewards, as I told you, in none of the best of
moods,--pshawing and pishing all the way down,--yet he had the complaisance
to keep the worst part of the story still to himself;--which was the
resolution he had taken of doing himself the justice, which my uncle Toby's
clause in the marriage-settlement empowered him; nor was it till the very
night in which I was begot, which was thirteen months after, that she had
the least intimation of his design: when my father, happening, as you
remember, to be a little chagrin'd and out of temper,--took occasion as
they lay chatting gravely in bed afterwards, talking over what was to
come,--to let her know that she must accommodate herself as well as she
could to the bargain made between them in their marriage-deeds; which was
to lye-in of her next child in the country, to balance the last year's
journey.

My father was a gentleman of many virtues,--but he had a strong spice of
that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number.--'Tis
known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,--and of obstinacy in a
bad one: Of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she knew 'twas to
no purpose to make any remonstrance,--so she e'en resolved to sit down
quietly, and make the most of it.



Chapter 1.XVIII.

As the point was that night agreed, or rather determined, that my mother
should lye-in of me in the country, she took her measures accordingly; for
which purpose, when she was three days, or thereabouts, gone with child,
she began to cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard
me mention; and before the week was well got round, as the famous Dr.
Manningham was not to be had, she had come to a final determination in her
mind,--notwithstanding there was a scientific operator within so near a
call as eight miles of us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five
shillings book upon the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not
only the blunders of the sisterhood itself,--but had likewise super-added
many curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the foetus in cross
births, and some other cases of danger, which belay us in getting into the
world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, was absolutely
determined to trust her life, and mine with it, into no soul's hand but
this old woman's only.--Now this I like;--when we cannot get at the very
thing we wish--never to take up with the next best in degree to it:--no;
that's pitiful beyond description;--it is no more than a week from this
very day, in which I am now writing this book for the edification of the
world;--which is March 9, 1759,--that my dear, dear Jenny, observing I
looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk of five-and-twenty
shillings a yard,--told the mercer, she was sorry she had given him so much
trouble;--and immediately went and bought herself a yard-wide stuff of ten-
pence a yard.--'Tis the duplication of one and the same greatness of soul;
only what lessened the honour of it, somewhat, in my mother's case, was,
that she could not heroine it into so violent and hazardous an extreme, as
one in her situation might have wished, because the old midwife had really
some little claim to be depended upon,--as much, at least, as success could
give her; having, in the course of her practice of near twenty years in the
parish, brought every mother's son of them into the world without any one
slip or accident which could fairly be laid to her account.

These facts, tho' they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy
some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon my father's spirits in
relation to this choice.--To say nothing of the natural workings of
humanity and justice--or of the yearnings of parental and connubial love,
all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible in a case
of this kind;--he felt himself concerned in a particular manner, that all
should go right in the present case;--from the accumulated sorrow he lay
open to, should any evil betide his wife and child in lying-in at Shandy-
Hall.--He knew the world judged by events, and would add to his afflictions
in such a misfortune, by loading him with the whole blame of it.--'Alas
o'day;--had Mrs. Shandy, poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to
town just to lye-in and come down again;--which they say, she begged and
prayed for upon her bare knees,--and which, in my opinion, considering the
fortune which Mr. Shandy got with her,--was no such mighty matter to have
complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at
this hour.'

This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;--and yet, it was not
merely to shelter himself,--nor was it altogether for the care of his
offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this point;--
my father had extensive views of things,--and stood moreover, as he
thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread he
entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to.

He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had
unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's
reign down to his own time, that the current of men and money towards the
metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another,--set in so strong,--as to
become dangerous to our civil rights,--though, by the bye,--a current was
not the image he took most delight in,--a distemper was here his favourite
metaphor, and he would run it down into a perfect allegory, by maintaining
it was identically the same in the body national as in the body natural,
where the blood and spirits were driven up into the head faster than they
could find their ways down;--a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which
was death in both cases.

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