Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

  My uncle Toby’s demand for two more pieces for the redoubt set the corporal at work again; and he had taken the two leaden weights from the nursery window: and as the sash pulleys were of no use without the weights, he had taken them away also, to make wheels for one of their gun-carriages.

  He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle Toby’s house long before, in the same way, though not always in the same order; for sometimes he began with the pulleys; and with the pulleys gone, the lead became useless, – and so the lead went to pot too.

  A great Moral might be picked handsomely out of this, but I have not time. ’Tis enough to say that wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally fatal to the sash window.

  CHAPTER 20

  The corporal might have kept the matter entirely to himself, and left Susannah to have sustained the whole weight of blame; but true courage is not content with coming off so.

  Trim imagined that the misfortune would never have happened, but for what he had done. – How would your honours have behaved? He determined not to take shelter behind Susannah, but to give it; and with this resolution, he marched upright into the parlour, to lay the whole manoeuvre before my uncle Toby.

  My uncle Toby had just been giving Yorick an account of the battle of Steenkirk, and of the strange conduct of Count Solmes in ordering the footsoldiers to halt, and the cavalry to march; which was directly contrary to the king’s commands, and proved the loss of the day.

  Trim, by the help of his forefinger, laid flat upon the table, and the edge of his hand striking across it at right angles, managed to tell his story so that priests and virgins might have listened to it; and the story being told – the dialogue went on as follows.

  CHAPTER 21

  ‘I would be impaled on stakes,’ cried the corporal, ‘before I would allow the woman to come to any harm; ’twas my fault, your honour, not hers.’

  ‘Corporal Trim,’ replied my uncle Toby, ‘’tis I certainly who deserve the blame, – you obeyed your orders.’

  ‘Had Count Solmes done the same at the battle of Steenkirk,’ said Yorick to the corporal, who had been run over by a dragoon in the retreat, ‘he would have saved thee.’

  ‘Saved!’ cried Trim; ‘he would have saved five battalions, your reverence; there was Cutts’s,’ he continued counting on his fingers, ‘Mackay’s, Angus’s, Graham’s, and Leven’s, all cut to pieces; and so would the English life-guards have been too, had it not been for some regiments upon the right, who marched up boldly to relieve them, and received the enemy’s fire in their faces – they’ll go to heaven for it.’

  ‘Trim is right,’ said my uncle Toby, nodding.

  ‘What signified his marching the cavalry,’ continued the corporal, ‘where the ground was so straight, and the French had so many hedges, and copses, and ditches to cover them. – Count Solmes should have sent us; we would have fired muzzle to muzzle with them. He had his foot shot off however for his pains, the very next campaign at Landen.’

  ‘Poor Trim got his wound there,’ quoth my uncle Toby.

  ‘’Twas owing, your honour, entirely to Count Solmes – had he drubbed them soundly at Steenkirk, they would not have fought us at Landen.’

  ‘Possibly not, Trim,’ said my uncle Toby; ‘though if you give them a moment’s time to entrench themselves, they are a nation which will pop and pop for ever at you. There is no way but to march coolly up to them, – receive their fire, and fall upon them, pell-mell.’

  ‘Ding dong,’ added Trim.

  ‘Horse and foot,’ said my uncle.

  ‘Helter skelter,’ said Trim.

  ‘Right and left,’ cried my uncle Toby.

  ‘Blood an’ ounds,’ shouted the corporal. The battle raged; Yorick drew his chair to one side for safety, and after a moment, my uncle Toby, sinking his voice, resumed as follows.

  CHAPTER 22

  ‘King William,’ said my uncle Toby to Yorick, ‘was so terribly provoked at Count Solmes for disobeying his orders, that he would not allow him in his presence for months after.’

  ‘I fear,’ answered Yorick, ‘Squire Shandy will be just as much provoked at the corporal. But ’twould be singularly hard in this case, if corporal Trim, who has behaved so differently to Count Solmes, should be rewarded with the same disgrace.’

  ‘I would blow up my fortifications,’ cried my uncle Toby, ‘and my house with them, and we would perish under their ruins, before I would stand by and see it.’

  Trim directed a grateful bow towards his master – and so the chapter ends.

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘Then, Yorick,’ replied my uncle, ‘you and I will lead the way, and you, corporal, follow a few paces behind us.’

  ‘And Susannah, an’ please your honour,’ said Trim, ‘shall be put in the rear.’

  In this order, without either drums beating, or colours flying, they marched slowly from my uncle Toby’s house to Shandy-Hall.

  ‘I wish,’ said Trim, as they entered, ‘instead of the sash weights, I had cut off the church spout, as I once thought to have done.’

  – ‘You have cut off spouts enough,’ replied Yorick.

  CHAPTER 24

  Although many pictures have been given of my father, in different airs and attitudes, not one of them could help the reader to predict how my father would think, speak, or act, upon any occasion. He had such an infinitude of oddities in him, that to know how he would take a thing, baffled, Sir, all calculations.

  The truth was, that every object presented its face and cross-section to his eye, altogether different from the plan of it seen by the rest of mankind.

  This is the true reason that my dear Jenny and I have such eternal squabbles about nothing. She looks at her outside, I, at her in. – How is it possible we should agree about her value?

  CHAPTER 25

  ’Tis a settled thing that, provided an author keeps along the line of his story, he may go backwards and forwards as he wishes; ’tis not considered to be a digression.

  Therefore I take the benefit of going backwards myself.

  CHAPTER 26

  Fifty thousand pannier loads of devils with their tails chopped off could not have made so diabolical a scream, as I did when the accident befell me. It brought my mother instantly into the nursery, so that Susannah just had time to escape down the back stairs as my mother came up the front.

  Now, though I was old enough to have told the story myself, yet Susannah, in passing through the kitchen, had left it in shorthand with the cook – the cook had told it with a commentary to Jonathan, and Jonathan to Obadiah; so that by the time my father had rung the bell half a dozen times, to know what was the matter, Obadiah could give him an account of it, just as it had happened.

  ‘I thought as much,’ said my father, tucking up his night-gown, and walking up stairs.

  One might imagine from this that my father had already wrote that remarkable chapter in the Tristra-paedia, which to me is the most original and entertaining one in the whole book – and that is the chapter upon sash-windows, with a bitter tirade at the end of it, upon the forgetfulness of chamber-maids.

  I have just two reasons for thinking otherwise.

  First, had the matter been considered before the event happened, my father certainly would have nailed up the sash window; which, considering with what difficulty he composed books, he might have done with ten times less trouble than writing the chapter.

  However, this argument, though good, is made obsolete by the second reason which I offer in support of my opinion that my father did not write the chapter upon sash-windows and chamber-pots: and it is this.

  That, in order to make the Tristra-paedia complete, I wrote the chapter myself.

  CHAPTER 27

  My father put on his spectacles – looked – took them off, and without opening his lips, turned about and walked quickly down stairs. My mother imagined he had stepped down for a bandage and basilicon ointment; but seeing him return with a couple of tomes, and Obadiah following him w
ith a large reading-desk, she assumed the books to be herbals, and drew him a chair to the bedside, so that he might consult on the case at his ease.

  ‘If it be but right done,’ said my father, turning to the Section de sede vel subjecto circumcisionis, – for he had brought up Spenser de Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus, and Maimonides.

  ‘– Only tell us,’ cried my mother, interrupting him, ‘what herbs?’

  ‘For that,’ replied my father, ‘you must send for Dr. Slop.’

  My mother went down, and my father went on reading the section as follows:

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  ‘Very well,’ said my father; * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ‘– nay, if it has that convenience–’ – and without stopping to decide whether the Jews had it from the Egyptians, or the Egyptians from the Jews, he rose; and rubbing his forehead as if rubbing out the footsteps of care, he shut the book, and walked down stairs.

  ‘Nay,’ said he, mentioning the name of a different great nation upon every step as he set his foot upon it – ‘if the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Phoenicians, the Arabians, and the Cappadocians did it – if Solon and Pythagoras submitted – what is Tristram? who am I, to fret or fume about the matter?’

  CHAPTER 28

  ‘Dear Yorick,’ said my father, smiling (for Yorick had come into the parlour with my uncle Toby) – ‘this Tristram of ours, I find, comes very hardly by his religious rites. Never was the son of Jew, Christian, Turk or Infidel initiated into them in so slovenly a manner.’

  ‘But he is none the worse, I trust,’ said Yorick.

  ‘There has certainly,’ continued my father, ‘been the devil and all to do in his stars, when this offspring of mine was made.’

  ‘You are a better judge of that than I,’ replied Yorick.

  ‘Astrologers know better than us both,’ quoth my father; ‘the trine and sextil aspects have jumped awry, or the lords of the genitures (as they call them) have been at bo-peep.’

  ‘’Tis possible,’ answered Yorick.

  ‘But is the child,’ cried my uncle Toby, ‘any the worse?’

  ‘The Troglodytes say not,’ replied my father. ‘And your theologists, Yorick, tell us he’s the better for it.’

  ‘Provided,’ said Yorick, ‘you travel him into Egypt.’

  ‘Of that,’ answered my father, ‘he will have the advantage, when he sees the Pyramids.’

  ‘Now every word of this,’ quoth my uncle Toby, ‘is Arabic to me.’

  ‘Ilus,’ continued my father, ‘circumcised his whole army one morning.’

  ‘Not without a court martial?’ cried my uncle.

  ‘Though the learned,’ continued my father, taking no notice of my uncle’s remark, but turning to Yorick, ‘are greatly divided as to who Ilus was; some say Saturn; some the Supreme Being; – others, no more than a brigadier general under the Pharaoh.’

  ‘Whoever he was,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘I know not by what article of war he could justify it.’

  ‘Historians,’ answered my father, ‘give two-and-twenty different reasons for it: – others have shown how futile most of these are. But then again, our best polemic divines–’

  ‘I wish there was not a polemic divine in the kingdom,’ said Yorick. ‘One ounce of practical divinity is worth a painted ship-load of all that their reverences have imported these fifty years.’

  ‘Pray, Mr. Yorick,’ quoth my uncle Toby, ‘do tell me what a polemic divine is?’

  ‘The best description I have read, captain Shandy,’ replied Yorick, ‘is the account of a couple of ’em in the battle fought hand to hand betwixt Gymnast and captain Tripet; which I have in my pocket.’

  ‘May I hear it?’ asked my uncle Toby earnestly.

  ‘You shall,’ said Yorick.

  ‘As the corporal is waiting for me at the door, and I know the description of a battle will do the poor fellow more good than his supper, I beg, brother, you’ll let him come in.’

  ‘With all my soul,’ said my father.

  Trim came in, erect and happy as an emperor; and having shut the door, Yorick took a book from his coat-pocket, and read, or pretended to read, as follows.

  CHAPTER 29

  – ‘which words being heard by all the soldiers there, many of them being inwardly terrified, did shrink back and make room for the assailant. All this did Gymnast consider; and therefore, acting as if he was alighting from his horse, as he was poising himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly (with his short sword by his thigh) shifted his feet in the stirrup, and performed the stirrup-leather feat, whereby, after the inclining of his body downwards, he launched himself aloft into the air, and placed both his feet together upon the saddle, standing upright with his back turned towards his horse’s head.

  ‘“Now,” (said he) “my case goes forward.” Then suddenly, in the same posture, he performed a gambol upon one foot, and turning to the left, carried his body perfectly round into his former position, without missing one jot.

  ‘“Ha!” said Tripet, “I will not do that, – and not without cause.”

  ‘“Well,” said Gymnast, “I have failed. I will undo this leap;” then with marvellous strength and agility, turning to the right, he performed another frisking gambol as before; then he set his right thumb upon the bow of the saddle, raised himself up, and sprung into the air, poising his whole weight upon the said thumb, and so turned and whirled himself about three times. At the fourth turn, reversing his body, and overturning it upside down and foreside back without touching anything, he brought himself betwixt the horse’s ears, and then with a jerking swing, he seated himself upon the crupper–’

  (‘This can’t be fighting,’ said my uncle Toby. The corporal shook his head. ‘Have patience,’ said Yorick.)

  ‘Then Tripet passed his right leg over his saddle, and placed himself en croup.

  ‘“But,” said he, “’twere better for me to get into the saddle;” then putting the thumbs of both hands upon the crupper, and leaning on them, as the only supporters of his body, he turned heels over head, and found himself betwixt the bow of the saddle; then springing into the air with a somersault, he turned about like a windmill, and made above a hundred frisks, turns, and demi-pommadas–’

  ‘Good God!’ cried Trim, losing all patience; ‘one home thrust of a bayonet is worth it all.’

  ‘I think so too,’ replied Yorick.

  ‘I am of a contrary opinion,’ quoth my father.

  CHAPTER 30

  ‘No,’ replied my father, answering a question from Yorick. ‘I have not advanced in the Tristra-paedia, but – reach me, Trim, the book from off the desk – it has oft-times been in my mind to read it over to you, Yorick, and to my brother Toby: – shall we have a short chapter or two now, and more later on, till we get through the whole?’

  My uncle Toby and Yorick agreed politely; and the corporal, though he was not included in the compliment, made his bow. The company smiled.

  ‘Trim,’ quoth my father, ‘has paid the full price for staying out the entertainment.’

  ‘He did not seem to relish the play,’ replied Yorick.

  ‘’Twas a Tom-fool-battle, your reverence, of captain Tripet’s and that other officer, making so many somersaults; the French come on capering now and then, but not quite so much.’

  My uncle Toby never felt more pleased than with the corporal’s reflections at that moment. He lit his pipe; Yorick drew his chair closer to the table; my father took up the book, coughed twice, and began.

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘The first thirty pages,’ said my father, turning over the leaves, ‘are a little dry; and as they are not closely connected with the subject, we’ll pass them by. ’Tis a prefatory introduction, or an introductory preface (for I am not sure which to call it) upon political government; the foundation of which
is laid in the first conjunction betwixt male and female, for procreation of the species – I was insensibly led into it.’

  ‘’Twas natural,’ said Yorick.

  ‘The origin of society,’ continued my father, ‘is conjugal; and nothing more than the getting together of one man and one woman; to which Hesiod adds a servant: but supposing in the beginning there were no men servants born – he lays the foundation of society in a man, a woman and a bull.’

  ‘I believe ’tis an ox,’ quoth Yorick, quoting the passage in Greek. ‘A bull must have given more trouble than he was worth.’

  ‘But there is a better reason,’ said my father (dipping his pen into his ink); ‘for since the ox is the most patient and useful of animals, ’twas the best emblem for the new joined couple.’

  ‘And there is a stronger reason still for the ox,’ added my uncle Toby. ‘For when the ground was tilled by the ox, then they began to secure it by walls and ditches, which was the origin of fortification.’

  ‘True, true, dear Toby,’ cried my father, striking out bull, and putting ox in his place.

  He gave Trim a nod to snuff the candle, and resumed.

  ‘I enter upon this speculation,’ said he carelessly, half shutting the book, ‘merely to show the foundation of the natural relation between a father and his child; he acquires these rights over him in several ways–

  ‘1st, by marriage.

  ‘2nd, by adoption.

  ‘3rd, by legitimation.

  ‘And 4th, by procreation; all of which I consider in their order.’

  ‘I would lay some stress on one of them,’ replied Yorick: ‘the act of procreation, especially when it ends there, in my opinion lays as little obligation upon the child, as it conveys power to the father.’