Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

‘You are wrong,’ said my father, ‘and for this plain reason: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * – I own,’ added my father, ‘that the offspring, upon this account, is not under the power of the mother.’

  ‘But the reason holds equally good for her,’ replied Yorick.

  ‘She is under another’s authority herself,’ said my father: ‘and besides, she is not the principal agent.’

  ‘In what?’ asked my uncle Toby.

  ‘Though by all means,’ added my father (not attending to my uncle Toby), ‘“The son ought to pay her respect,” as you may read, Yorick, in the first book of the Institutes of Justinian, at the eleventh title and the tenth section.’

  ‘I can read it just as well,’ replied Yorick, ‘in the Catechism.’

  CHAPTER 32

  ‘Trim can repeat every word of it by heart,’ quoth my uncle Toby.

  ‘Pugh!’ said my father, not caring to be interrupted with Trim’s saying his Catechism.

  ‘He can, upon my honour,’ replied my uncle. ‘Ask him, Mr. Yorick, any question you please.’

  ‘The fifth Commandment, Trim,’ said Yorick mildly, with a gentle nod. The corporal stood silent.

  ‘You don’t ask him right,’ said my uncle Toby. Raising his voice to a rapid tone of command, he cried: ‘The fifth.’

  ‘I must begin with the first, an’ please your honour,’ said the corporal.

  Yorick could not help smiling.

  ‘Your reverence does not consider,’ said the corporal, shouldering his stick like a musket, and marching into the middle of the room, ‘that ’tis exactly the same thing as presenting arms. – “Join your right-hand to your firelock. Poise your firelock. Now rest your firelock,”’ said he, demonstrating with his stick, and acting as both commander and soldier. ‘You see one leads into another. If his honour will begin but with the first–’

  ‘The First,’ cried my uncle Toby, waving his tobacco-pipe like a sword.

  The corporal went through his manual with exactness; and having honoured his father and mother, made a low bow, and stepped aside.

  ‘Everything in this world,’ said my father, ‘is big with jest, and has wit in it, if we can but find it.

  ‘Here in the Catechism is the scaffolding of Instruction, without the Building behind it.

  ‘Here is the looking-glass for teachers, tutors, and gerund-grinders, to view themselves in.

  ‘Oh! there is a husk and shell, Yorick, which grows up with learning, which they know not how to fling away!

  ‘Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.’

  Yorick thought my father was inspired.

  ‘I will promise this moment,’ said my father, ‘to donate all my aunt Dinah’s legacy to charitable causes’ (of which, by the bye, my father had no high opinion), ‘if the corporal has any one distinct idea attached to any one word he has repeated.– Prithee, Trim,’ quoth my father, turning to him, ‘What dost thou mean, by “honouring thy father and mother?”’

  ‘Allowing them, an’ please your honour, three half-pence a day out of my pay, when they grow old.’

  ‘And didst thou do that, Trim?’ said Yorick.

  ‘He did indeed,’ replied my uncle Toby.

  ‘Then, Trim,’ said Yorick, springing out of his chair, and shaking the corporal’s hand, ‘thou art the best commentator upon that commandment; and I honour thee more for it, corporal Trim, than if thou hadst had a hand in the Talmud itself.’

  CHAPTER 33

  ‘O blessed health!’ exclaimed my father, as he turned to the next chapter, ‘thou art above all gold and treasure; ’tis thou who enlargest the soul, ready to receive instruction and to relish virtue. He that has thee, has little more to wish for. I have concentrated all that can be said upon this important matter into a very little room; therefore we’ll read the whole chapter.’

  He read as follows:

  ‘The whole secret of health depends upon the contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture–’

  ‘You have proved that fact, I suppose,’ said Yorick.

  ‘Sufficiently,’ replied my father, shutting the book – but not pettishly; he kept his fore-finger in the chapter, his thumb resting upon the upper-side of the cover, and his three fingers supporting the lower side of it, without the least compressive violence.

  ‘I have demonstrated the truth of that point,’ quoth my father, nodding, ‘most sufficiently in the preceding chapter.’

  Now if the man in the moon could be told that a man on the earth had wrote a chapter demonstrating that the secret of all health depended upon the contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture, – and that he had managed it so well, that there was not one single word wet or dry upon heat or moisture, throughout the whole chapter–

  ‘O thou eternal Maker of all beings!’ he would cry, striking his breast with his hand (if he had one.) ‘Thou whose power and goodness can bring thy creatures to this infinite degree of perfection – What have we Moonites done?’

  CHAPTER 34

  With two strokes, the one at Hippocrates, the other at Lord Verulam, my father achieved it.

  The stroke at Hippocrates the physician, with which he began, was no more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of Ars longa and Vita brevis.

  ‘Life is short,’ cried my father, ‘and the art of healing tedious! And who are we to thank for both, but the ignorance of quacks themselves, and the coach-loads of chemical cure-alls, with which they have deceived the world?

  ‘O my lord Verulam!’ cried my father, turning from Hippocrates, and making his second stroke at the principal peddler of cure-alls. ‘What shall I say to thee, my great lord Verulam? What shall I say to thy opium, thy salt-petre, thy greasy unctions, thy daily purges and nightly enemas, and bogus medicines?’

  My father was never at a loss what to say to any man, upon any subject; and had the least excuse for this beginning of any man breathing. How he dealt with lord Verulam’s opinion, you shall see – but when, I know not – we must first see what his lordship’s opinion was.

  CHAPTER 35

  The two great causes which shorten life, says lord Verulam, are:

  First: the internal spirit, which, like a gentle flame, wastes the body down to death:

  And secondly, the external air, that parches the body: these two enemies, attacking us together, at length destroy our organs, and make them unfit to carry on the functions of life.

  This being the case, the road to Longevity was plain; nothing more being required, (says his lordship), but to repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making it more thick and dense with a regular course of opiates, and also by cooling its heat with three grains and a half of salt-petre every morning before you got up.

  Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the assaults of the air – but this was fenced off by a course of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no particles could enter, nor get out. This put a stop to all perspiration, the cause of so many scurvy distempers – and a course of enemas was needed to make the system complete.

  What my father had to say to my lord of Verulam’s opiates, his salt-petre, and greasy unctions and purges, you shall read, – but not today – or tomorrow: time presses upon me, – my reader is impatient – I must get on. You shall read the chapter at your leisure (if you choose), as soon as the Tristra-paedia is published.

  Suffice it to say at present, my father destroyed the hypothesis, and in doing so, he established his own.

  CHAPTER 36

  ‘The whole secret of health,’ said my father, beginning the sentence again, ‘depends upon the contention betwixt the radical heat and radical moisture within us; hardly any skill would be needed to maintain it, if only the schoolmen had not confused matters (as Van Helmont, the famous chemist, has proved) by mistaking the radical mois
ture for the fat of animal bodies.

  ‘Now the radical moisture is not the fat of animals, but an oily and balsamous substance; for the fat is cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of Aristotle, “Quod omne animal post coitum est triste.”

  ‘Now it is certain that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture, but whether vice versa, is a doubt. However, when the one decays, the other decays also; causing either an unnatural heat and dryness – or an unnatural moisture, leading to dropsies. So that if a child, as he grows up, can be taught to avoid running into fire or water, as either of ’em threaten his destruction, ’twill be all that needs to be done on that account.’

  CHAPTER 37

  The description of the siege of Jericho itself could not have held the attention of my uncle Toby more powerfully than the last chapter. His eyes were fixed upon my father throughout it; whenever he mentioned radical heat and radical moisture, my uncle took his pipe out of his mouth, and shook his head; and as soon as the chapter was finished, he beckoned to the corporal, to ask him the following question, (aside) – * * * * * * * * *?

  ‘It was at the siege of Limerick, your honour,’ replied the corporal.

  ‘The poor fellow and I,’ quoth my uncle Toby to my father, ‘were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, when the siege of Limerick was raised, for the very reason you mention.’

  ‘Now what can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother?’ cried my father, mentally.

  ‘I believe,’ quoth the corporal, ‘that if it had not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, and the claret and cinnamon which I gave your honour–’

  ‘–And the Geneva gin, Trim,’ added my uncle Toby, ‘which did us more good than all–’

  ‘–I verily believe, your honour,’ continued the corporal, ‘we would both have died in the trenches, and been buried there.’

  ‘The noblest grave a soldier could wish for, corporal!’ cried my uncle Toby, his eyes sparkling.

  ‘But a pitiful death!’ replied the corporal.

  All this was as much Arabic to my father; he did not know whether to frown or smile.

  My uncle Toby, turning to Yorick, began the account of Limerick, and settled the point for my father at once.

  CHAPTER 38

  ‘It was undoubtedly,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘a great happiness for myself and the corporal, that we had a burning fever, and a raging thirst, during the whole five-and-twenty days that dysentery was in the camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture must have got the better of us.’

  My father drew in his lungs top-full of air, and blew it forth again, as slowly as he could.

  ‘It was Heaven’s mercy,’ continued my uncle, ‘which put it into the corporal’s head to keep that contention betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforcing the fever with hot wine and spices; he kept up a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was. – Upon my honour,’ added my uncle Toby, ‘you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother, twenty miles away.’

  ‘If there was no firing,’ said Yorick.

  ‘Well,’ said my father, ‘if I was a judge, and the laws permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors–’

  Yorick, foreseeing the sentence was likely to end with no mercy, laid his hand upon my father’s breast, and begged he would wait for a few minutes, till he asked the corporal a question.

  ‘Prithee, Trim,’ said Yorick, ‘tell us honestly – what is thy opinion of this radical heat and radical moisture?’

  ‘With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment,’ quoth the corporal, bowing to my uncle Toby.

  ‘Speak thy opinion freely, corporal,’ said my uncle.

  The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon his wrist, he marched up to the place where he had performed his catechism; then putting his hand to his underjaw, he delivered his notion thus.

  CHAPTER 39

  Just as the corporal was beginning – in waddled Dr. Slop. ’Tis no matter – the corporal shall go on in the next chapter.

  ‘Well, my good doctor,’ cried my father sportively, for his changes of mood were unaccountably sudden; ‘and how is this whelp of mine faring?’

  Had my father been asking about the amputation of a puppy-dog’s tail, he could not have done it more carelessly. Dr. Slop did not care for this mode of enquiry.– He sat down.

  ‘Pray, Sir,’ quoth my uncle Toby more earnestly, ‘in what condition is the boy?’

  ‘’Twill end in a phimosis,’ replied Dr. Slop.

  ‘I am no wiser than I was,’ quoth my uncle Toby.

  ‘Then let the corporal go on,’ said my father, ‘with his medical lecture.’

  The corporal made a bow to Dr. Slop, and then continued:

  CHAPTER 40

  ‘The city of Limerick, the siege of which was begun under his majesty king William, the year after I entered the army, lies in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy country.’

  ‘’Tis quite surrounded,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘with the River Shannon, and is one of the strongest fortified places in Ireland.’

  ‘I think this is a new fashion,’ quoth Dr. Slop, ‘of beginning a medical lecture.’

  ‘’Tis all cut through,’ said the corporal, ‘with drains and bogs; and there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a puddle; ’twas that which brought on the dysentery, which almost killed us both. A soldier could not lie dry in his tent, without cutting a ditch round it, to draw off the water; and those who could afford it, as his honour could, set fire every night to a dish full of brandy, which took off the damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove.’

  ‘And what conclusion dost thou draw,’ cried my father, ‘from all this?’

  ‘I infer, an’ please your worship,’ replied Trim, ‘that the radical moisture is nothing but ditch-water – and that the radical heat, of those who can afford it, is burnt brandy; – for a private soldier, ’tis nothing but ditch-water and a dram of gin – and give us but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, to drive away the vapours – we know not what it is to fear death.’

  ‘I am at a loss, Captain Shandy,’ quoth Dr. Slop, ‘to decide whether your servant shines most in physiology or divinity.’ Slop had not forgot Trim’s comment on the sermon.

  ‘Only an hour ago,’ replied Yorick, ‘the corporal was examined in the latter, and passed with great honour.’

  ‘The radical heat and moisture,’ quoth Dr. Slop, turning to my father, ‘you must know, is the foundation of our being. – It is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved in many ways, but principally in my opinion by consubstantials, impriments, and occludents. Now this poor fellow,’ continued Dr. Slop, pointing to the corporal, ‘has heard some superficial talk upon this delicate point.’

  ‘That he has,’ said my father.

  ‘Very likely,’ said my uncle.

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ quoth Yorick.

  CHAPTER 41

  Doctor Slop being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the Tristra-paedia.

  Come! cheer up, my lads; I’ll show you land – for when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this twelve-month. Huzza!

  CHAPTER 42

  ‘– Five years with a bib under his chin;

  ‘Four years in learning the alphabet;

  ‘A year and a half in learning to write his own name;

  ‘Seven long years working at Greek and Latin;

  ‘Four years at his probations and negations – with the fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block, and nothing done, except his tools sharpened to hew it out! ’Tis a piteous delay! Wa
s not the great Julius Scaliger within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all? Forty-four years old was he before he could manage Greek; and Peter Damianus, bishop of Ostia, as all the world knows, could not read even when he was full-grown. Baldus entered the law so late in life, that everybody imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world.

  ‘No wonder that, when Eudamidas heard Xenocrates at seventy-five discussing wisdom, he asked gravely, “If the old man is still disputing wisdom, what time will he have to make use of it?”’

  Yorick listened to my father with great attention; there was a seasoning of wisdom mixed up with his strangest whims, and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses, as almost atoned for them.

  ‘I am convinced, Yorick,’ continued my father, ‘that there is a North-west passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of acquiring knowledge, than we generally take. But, alack! Not every child, Yorick, has a parent to point it out.

  ‘It entirely depends,’ added my father in a low voice, ‘upon the auxiliary verbs.’

  Yorick could not have looked more surprised.

  ‘I am surprised too,’ cried my father, observing it. ‘I think it one of the greatest calamities, that those who have been entrusted with our children’s education, and whose business it was to open their minds, and stock them early with ideas, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs. – So that, except Raymond Lullius, and the elder Pelegrini, who used them so perfectly that, in a few lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discuss any subject, pro and con, to the admiration of all–’

  ‘I should be glad,’ said Yorick, interrupting, ‘to understand this matter.’

  ‘You shall,’ said my father. ‘The greatest improvement a single word is capable of, is a high metaphor, – for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the worse – but be that as it may – when the mind has done that, there is an end; the mind is at rest, until a second idea enters; and so on.

  ‘Now the use of the Auxiliaries is to set the soul a-going by herself upon the word; and by twisting them round this great engine, to open new areas of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions.’