The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Part 12

In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to make a fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand-or by making some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)-his whole att.i.tude had been easy-natural-unforced: Reynolds himself, as great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.

Now as my father managed this matter,-consider what a devil of a figure my father made of himself.

In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, and in the beginning of the reign of King George the first-'Coat pockets were cut very low down in the skirt.'-I need say no more-the father of mischief, had he been hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fas.h.i.+on for one in my father's situation.

Chapter 1.XLVII.

It was not an easy matter in any king's reign (unless you were as lean a subject as myself) to have forced your hand diagonally, quite across your whole body, so as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat pocket.-In the year one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle Toby discovered the transverse zig-zaggery of my father's approaches towards it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of St. Nicolas;-the idea of which drew off his attention so intirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his right hand to the bell to ring up Trim to go and fetch his map of Namur, and his compa.s.ses and sector along with it, to measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack,-but particularly of that one, where he received his wound upon his groin.

My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face-my uncle Toby dismounted immediately.

-I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o'horseback.-

Chapter 1.XLVIII.

A man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;-rumple the one,-you rumple the other. There is one certain exception however in this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a sarcenet, or thin persian.

Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius, Heracleotes, Antipater, Panaetius, and Possidonius amongst the Greeks;-Cato and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans;-Pantenus and Clemens Alexandrinus and Montaigne amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good, honest, unthinking Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can't recollect,-all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fas.h.i.+on,-you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outside of them all to pieces;-in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of them would have been one b.u.t.ton the worse, for all you had done to them.

I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:-for never poor jerkin has been tickled off at such a rate as it has been these last nine months together,-and yet I declare, the lining to it,-as far as I am a judge of the matter,-is not a three-penny piece the worse;-pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long-way, have they been tr.i.m.m.i.n.g it for me:-had there been the least gumminess in my lining,-by heaven! it had all of it long ago been frayed and fretted to a thread.

-You Messrs. the Monthly Reviewers!-how could you cut and slash my jerkin as you did?-how did you know but you would cut my lining too?

Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who will injure none of us, do I recommend you and your affairs,-so G.o.d bless you;-only next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at me, as some of you did last May (in which I remember the weather was very hot)-don't be exasperated, if I pa.s.s it by again with good temper,-(being determined as long as I live or write) which in my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish than my uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz'd about his nose all dinner-time,-'Go,-go, poor devil,' quoth he,-'get thee gone,-why should I hurt thee! This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.'

Chapter 1.XLIX.

Any man, Madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious suffusion of blood in my father's countenance,-by means of which (as all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you) he must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:-any man, Madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of my father's brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,-would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,-had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments being put in exact tune,-he would instantly have skrew'd up his, to the same pitch;-and then the devil and all had broke loose-the whole piece, Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of Avison Scarlatti-con furia,-like mad.-Grant me patience!-What has con furia,-con strepito,-or any other hurly burly whatever to do with harmony?

Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle Toby, the benignity of whose heart interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the motion would admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed him too. My uncle Toby blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the pocket-hole;-so sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible good-will-my father, at length, went on as follows.

Chapter 1.L.

'What prodigious armies you had in Flanders!'

-Brother Toby, quoth my father, I do believe thee to be as honest a man, and with as good and as upright a heart as ever G.o.d created;-nor is it thy fault, if all the children which have been, may, can, shall, will, or ought to be begotten, come with their heads foremost into the world:-but believe me, dear Toby, the accidents which unavoidably way-lay them, not only in the article of our begetting 'em-though these, in my opinion, are well worth considering,-but the dangers and difficulties our children are beset with, after they are got forth into the world, are enow-little need is there to expose them to unnecessary ones in their pa.s.sage to it.-Are these dangers, quoth my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon my father's knee, and looking up seriously in his face for an answer,-are these dangers greater now o'days, brother, than in times past? Brother Toby, answered my father, if a child was but fairly begot, and born alive, and healthy, and the mother did well after it,-our forefathers never looked farther.-My uncle Toby instantly withdrew his hand from off my father's knee, reclined his body gently back in his chair, raised his head till he could just see the cornice of the room, and then directing the buccinatory muscles along his cheeks, and the orbicular muscles around his lips to do their duty-he whistled Lillabullero.

Chapter 1.LI.

Whilst my uncle Toby was whistling Lillabullero to my father,-Dr. Slop was stamping, and cursing and d.a.m.ning at Obadiah at a most dreadful rate,-it would have done your heart good, and cured you, Sir, for ever of the vile sin of swearing, to have heard him, I am determined therefore to relate the whole affair to you.

When Dr. Slop's maid delivered the green baize bag with her master's instruments in it, to Obadiah, she very sensibly exhorted him to put his head and one arm through the strings, and ride with it slung across his body: so undoing the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, without any more ado, she helped him on with it. However, as this, in some measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest any thing should bolt out in galloping back, at the speed Obadiah threatened, they consulted to take it off again: and in the great care and caution of their hearts, they had taken the two strings and tied them close (pursing up the mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen hard knots, each of which Obadiah, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn together with all the strength of his body.

This answered all that Obadiah and the maid intended; but was no remedy against some evils which neither he or she foresaw. The instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, had so much room to play in it, towards the bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that Obadiah could not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the tire tete, forceps, and squirt, as would have been enough, had Hymen been taking a jaunt that way, to have frightened him out of the country; but when Obadiah accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot a.s.sayed to p.r.i.c.k his coach-horse into a full gallop-by Heaven! Sir, the jingle was incredible.

As Obadiah had a wife and three children-the turpitude of fornication, and the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once entered his brain,-he had however his objection, which came home to himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the greatest patriots.-'The poor fellow, Sir, was not able to hear himself whistle.'

Chapter 1.LII.

As Obadiah loved wind-music preferably to all the instrumental music he carried with him,-he very considerately set his imagination to work, to contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a condition of enjoying it.

In all distresses (except musical) where small cords are wanted, nothing is so apt to enter a man's head as his hat-band:-the philosophy of this is so near the surface-I scorn to enter into it.

As Obadiah's was a mixed case-mark, Sirs,-I say, a mixed case; for it was obstetrical,-scrip-tical, squirtical, papistical-and as far as the coach-horse was concerned in it,-caballistical-and only partly musical;-Obadiah made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and griping them hard together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other putting the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down to the middle of it,-he tied and cross-tied them all fast together from one end to the other (as you would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity of round-abouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or point where the strings met,-that Dr. Slop must have had three fifths of Job's patience at least to have unloosed them.-I think in my conscience, that had Nature been in one of her nimble moods, and in humour for such a contest-and she and Dr. Slop both fairly started together-there is no man living which had seen the bag with all that Obadiah had done to it,-and known likewise the great speed the G.o.ddess can make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining in his mind-which of the two would have carried off the prize. My mother, Madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly-at least by twenty knots.-Sport of small accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art, and ever will be! had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but it had,-thy affairs had not been so depress'd-(at least by the depression of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the fortunes of thy house and the occasions of making them, which have so often presented themselves in the course of thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so irrecoverably abandoned-as thou hast been forced to leave them;-but 'tis over,-all but the account of 'em, which cannot be given to the curious till I am got out into the world.

End of the first volume.

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENT.-VOLUME THE SECOND

Mult.i.tudinis imperitae non formido judicia, meis tamen, rogo, parcant opusculis-in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, in seriis vicissim ad jocos transire.

Joan. Saresberiensis, Episcopus Lugdun.

Chapter 2.I.

Great wits jump: for the moment Dr. Slop cast his eyes upon his bag (which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle Toby about mid-wifery put him in mind of it)-the very same thought occurred.-'Tis G.o.d's mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. Shandy has had so bad a time of it,-else she might have been brought to bed seven times told, before one half of these knots could have got untied.-But here you must distinguish-the thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your wors.h.i.+p knows, are every day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some little gusts of pa.s.sion or interest drive them to one side.