Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

  ‘Thou shouldst not have said that, Trim,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘for God only knows who is a hypocrite: at the day of judgment it will be seen who has done their duties, and who has not. – But we may depend upon it, Trim, that God is so just, that if we have done our duties, it will never be asked whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one. – But go on with thy story.’

  ‘When I went up,’ continued the corporal, ‘into the lieutenant’s room, he was lying in his bed: the youth was just taking up the cushion, upon which I supposed he had been kneeling.

  ‘When I walked up to his bed-side, the lieutenant said to me: “If you are captain Shandy’s servant, present my thanks to your master, with my little boy’s thanks too. If he was of Leven’s regiment” – I told him your honour was – “Then,” said he, “I served three campaigns with him in Flanders, and remember him, but ’tis most likely that he knows nothing of me. My name is Le Fever, a lieutenant in Angus’s; possibly he may know my story. Pray tell the captain, I was the ensign at Breda, whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.”

  ‘“I remember the story very well,” said I.

  ‘“Do you?” said he, wiping his eyes; and drawing out a little ring tied with a black ribbon about his neck, he kissed it twice.

  ‘“Here, Billy,” said he. The boy flew across the room to the bed-side, and falling on his knee, took the ring in his hand, kissed his father, and then sat down upon the bed and wept.’

  ‘I remember,’ said my uncle Toby, sighing deeply, ‘the story of the ensign and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty omitted; and particularly well because he, as well as she, upon some account or other (I forget what) was pitied by the whole regiment; but finish thy story.’

  ‘’Tis finished already,’ said the corporal, ‘for I could stay no longer. Young Le Fever saw me to the bottom of the stairs; and as we went down, told me they had come from Ireland, and were on their way to join the regiment in Flanders. But alas! the lieutenant’s last march is over.’

  ‘Then what is to become of his poor boy?’ cried my uncle Toby.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED

  It was to my uncle Toby’s eternal honour, that although he was warmly engaged at that time in carrying on the siege of Dendermond, and had already made a lodgment upon the counterscarp, nevertheless he gave it up, and bent his whole thoughts towards the private distresses at the inn; and except that he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he might be said to have turned the siege into a blockade, he left Dendermond to itself; and only considered how to relieve the poor lieutenant and his son.

  That kind being, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompense thee for this.

  As corporal Trim was putting him to bed, my uncle Toby said, ‘I tell thee, Trim: when thou offered'st my services to Le Fever – as sickness and travelling are expensive for a poor lieutenant, with a son to support – thou shouldst have made an offer to him of my purse; he would have been welcome to it.’

  ‘Your honour gave me no orders,’ said the corporal.

  ‘True,’ quoth my uncle; ‘thou didst very right, Trim, as a soldier, but very wrong as a man. And when thou offered'st him whatever was in my house, thou shouldst have offered him my house too. A sick brother officer should have the best quarters, Trim, and we could tend and look to him. Thou art an excellent nurse, Trim, and with thy care, and the old woman’s, and his boy’s, and mine together, we might set him upon his legs: in a fortnight or three weeks, he might march.’

  ‘He will never march, your honour, in this world,’ said the corporal.

  ‘He will march,’ said my uncle Toby, rising up, with one shoe off.

  ‘An’ please your honour,’ said the corporal, ‘he will never march but to his grave.’

  ‘He shall march,’ cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch; ‘he shall march to his regiment.’

  ‘He cannot stand,’ said the corporal.

  ‘He shall be supported,’ said my uncle Toby.

  ‘He’ll drop,’ said the corporal, ‘and what will become of his boy? do what we can for him, the poor soul will die.’

  ‘He shall not die, by G__,’ cried my uncle Toby.

  – The Accusing Spirit, which flew up to heaven with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.

  CHAPTER 9

  My uncle Toby went to his bureau, put his purse into his breeches pocket, and having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a doctor, – he went to bed, and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED

  The sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village but Le Fever’s; the hand of death pressed heavy upon his eye-lids. My uncle Toby entered the lieutenant’s room, and without preface or apology sat down upon the chair by the bed-side, opened the curtain in the manner of an old friend and brother officer, and asked him how he did, – how he had rested, – where was his pain, – what he could do to help him: and without giving him time to answer any of the enquiries, went on, and told him of the little plan which he had made.

  ‘You shall go to my house, Le Fever,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘and we’ll send for a doctor, and an apothecary; and the corporal shall be your nurse – and I’ll be your servant, Le Fever.’

  There was a frankness in my uncle Toby – not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it – which let you at once into his soul, and showed you the goodness of his nature. Additionally, there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner, which beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that before my uncle Toby had half finished his kind offers to the father, the son had pressed up close to him, and had taken hold of his coat.

  The blood and spirits of Le Fever, which were growing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart, rallied back. The film left his eyes for a moment: he looked up wishfully in my uncle Toby’s face, then at his boy; and that look was never broken.

  Nature instantly ebbed again, – the film returned – the pulse fluttered – stopped – went on – stopped again – moved – stopped – shall I go on? No.

  CHAPTER 11

  I am so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young Le Fever’s shall be told in a very few words in the next chapter. All that needs to be added in this chapter is as follows:

  That my uncle Toby and young Le Fever attended the poor lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave.

  That the governor of Dendermond paid him all military honours, and that Yorick paid for all ecclesiastic – for he buried him in his chancel: and it appears that he preached a funeral sermon over him. I say it appears, for it was Yorick’s custom to write on the first page of every sermon which he composed, the time, place, and occasion of its being preached: to this, he would add some short comment upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its credit.

  For instance, ‘This sermon upon the Jewish dispensation – I don’t like it at all; ’tis most tritely put together. This is a flimsy composition; what was in my head when I made it?’

  ‘– The excellency of this text is, that it will suit any sermon, and of this sermon, that it will suit any text.’

  ‘– For this sermon I shall be hanged, for I have stolen most of it. Doctor Paidagunes found me out. Set a thief to catch a thief.’

  On the back of half a dozen I find written, ‘So-so,’ – and upon a couple, ‘Moderato;’ by which, since he left the two sermons marked ‘Moderato’ and the half dozen of ‘So-so’ tied together in one bundle – one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the same thing.

  There is but one difficulty with this, which is that the ‘moderato’s’ are five times better than the ‘so-so’s’; show ten times more knowledge of the human heart; have seventy times m
ore wit and spirit in them; (and, to rise properly in my climax) reveal a thousand times more genius; – and to crown all, are infinitely more entertaining than the ‘so-so’s’. Therefore, when Yorick’s sermons are offered to the world, though I shall include only one of the ‘so-so’s’, I shall, nevertheless, print the two ‘moderato’s’ without any scruple.

  What Yorick could mean by the words lentamente, tenutè, grave, and sometimes adagio, with which he has labelled some of these sermons, I dare not guess. I am more puzzled still upon finding a l’octava alta! upon one; Con strepito upon another; Siciliana upon a third; Alla capella upon a fourth.

  All I know is that they are musical terms, and have a meaning; and as he was a musical man, I have no doubt that his compositions impressed very distinct ideas of their characters upon his fancy.

  Amongst these is that particular sermon which has unaccountably led me into this digression – the funeral sermon upon poor Le Fever. It seems to have been his favourite composition: it is upon mortality; and is tied lengthways and crossways with yarn, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty blue paper, which smells horribly of horse drugs. Whether these marks of humiliation were designed, I doubt; because at the end of the sermon, he had wrote–

  ‘Bravo!’

  – though it is two inches, at least, below the last line of the sermon, at that extreme right hand corner of the page, which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and it is wrote so faintly as scarcely to draw the eye towards it, whether your thumb is there or not. Being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to nothing, ’tis more like the shadow of vanity, than Vanity herself – resembling rather a faint thought of applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer, than a gross, obtrusive mark of it.

  Nonetheless, I am aware that in publishing this, I do no service to Yorick’s character as a modest man; but all men have their failings! and what wipes this one almost away, is that the word was struck through sometime afterwards in a different tint – as if he was ashamed of the opinion he once held of it.

  CHAPTER 12

  When my uncle Toby had turned Le Fever’s belongings into money and settled all his accounts, there was nothing left but an old regimental coat and a sword. The coat my uncle gave to the corporal.

  ‘Wear it, Trim,’ said he, ‘for the sake of the poor lieutenant. – And this’ – my uncle Toby drew the sword out of the scabbard as he spoke – ‘this, young Le Fever, I’ll save for thee. ’Tis all the fortune which God has left thee; but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way with – and thou doest it like a man of honour – ’tis enough for us.’

  As soon as my uncle Toby had laid a foundation, and taught the boy to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, where – except Whitsuntide and Christmas, when the corporal went to fetch him home – he remained until the spring of 1717. Then, fired by stories of the emperor’s sending his army into Hungary against the Turks, he left his Greek and Latin without leave; and throwing himself upon his knees before my uncle, begged his father’s sword, and my uncle’s permission to go and try his fortune as a soldier.

  Twice did my uncle Toby forget his wound and cry out, ‘Le Fever! I will go with thee, and thou shalt fight beside me.’ – And twice he laid his hand upon his groin, and hung his head in sorrow.

  My uncle Toby kept Le Fever a fortnight to equip him, and buy his passage to Leghorn. Then he took down the sword from where it had hung since the lieutenant’s death, and put it into his hand.

  ‘If thou art brave, Le Fever,’ said he, ‘this will not fail thee; but’ (musing a little), ‘Fortune may. If she does, come back again to me, Le Fever,’ said he, embracing him, ‘and we will shape thee another course.’

  The greatest injury could not have affected Le Fever more than my uncle Toby’s kindness; he parted from my uncle as the best of sons from the best of fathers – both dropped tears – and as my uncle Toby gave him his last kiss, he slipped him sixty guineas, tied up in an old purse of his father’s, along with his mother’s ring; – and bid God bless him.

  CHAPTER 13

  Le Fever reached the Imperial army in time to try his sword at the defeat of the Turks before Belgrade; but a series of undeserved accidents pursued him from that moment for four years after; he withstood these buffetings, till sickness overtook him at Marseilles.

  From thence he wrote to my uncle Toby that he had lost his time, his services, his health, and, in short, everything but his sword; and was waiting for the first ship to return to him.

  As this letter arrived about six weeks before Susannah’s accident, Le Fever was hourly expected; and was uppermost in my uncle Toby’s mind while my father was describing the person he would choose as a tutor for me. However, as my uncle Toby thought my father somewhat fanciful in the accomplishments he required, he did not mention Le Fever’s name till Yorick suggested that the tutor should be gentle-tempered, generous, and good. This impressed the image of Le Fever upon my uncle Toby so forcibly, he rose instantly, and taking my father’s hands, said:

  ‘I beg, brother Shandy, I may recommend poor Le Fever’s son to you. He has a good heart.’

  ‘And a brave one too, your honour,’ said the corporal.

  ‘The best hearts, Trim, are ever the bravest,’ replied my uncle Toby.

  ‘And the greatest cowards, your honour, in our regiment, were the greatest rascals. There was sergeant Kumber, and ensign–’

  ‘We’ll talk of them,’ said my father, ‘another time.’

  CHAPTER 14

  What a jovial and merry world would this be, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, melancholy, impositions, and lies!

  Doctor Slop, like a son of a w____, (as my father called him,) to exalt himself, debased me to death – and made ten thousand times more of Susannah’s accident than there was any grounds for; so that in a week’s time, it was in everybody’s mouth, That poor Master Shandy * * * * * * * * entirely.

  And Fame, who loves to double everything, in three days more, had sworn – and all the world, as usual, believed her – ‘That the nursery window had not only * * * * * * * * * * *; but that * * * * * * * * * * * also.”

  Could the world have been sued, my father would have done so, and trounced it; but as every soul who mentioned the affair, did it with the greatest pity imaginable, ’twas like flying in the face of his best friends.

  And yet to be silent was to acknowledge the report, at least in the opinion of half the world; and to make a bustle in contradicting it, was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the other half.

  ‘Was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so hampered?’ said my father.

  ‘I would show him publicly,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘at the market cross.’

  ‘’Twill have no effect,’ said my father.

  CHAPTER 15

  ‘I’ll put him, however, into breeches,’ said my father, ‘let the world say what it will.’

  CHAPTER 16

  There are a thousand resolutions, Sir, both in church and state, as well as in private concerns, which, though they have the appearance of being taken in a hasty, hare-brained manner, were, however, weighed – argued about – entered into, and examined on all sides with so much coolness, that the Goddess of Coolness herself could not have done it better.

  One of these was my father’s resolution of putting me into breeches; which, though decided in a huff, and a defiance of all mankind, had, nevertheless, been judicially talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month before, in two different beds of justice, which my father had for that purpose.

  I shall explain the nature of these beds of justice in my next chapter; and in the chapter following that, you shall step with me, Madam, behind the curtain, to hear how my father and my mother debated this affair of the
breeches – from which you may form an idea of how they debated all lesser matters.

  CHAPTER 17

  The ancient Goths of Germany, who (the learned Cluverius says) were first settled between the Vistula and the Oder, had a wise custom of debating everything of importance twice; that is, once drunk, and once sober. – Drunk, so that their councils might have vigour; – and sober, so that they might have discretion.

  Now my father being entirely a water-drinker, was for a long time perplexed how to turn this to his advantage, as he did every other thing which the ancients did or said; and it was not till the seventh year of his marriage, after a thousand fruitless experiments, that he hit upon a method which answered the purpose.

  That was, when any difficult and momentous point was to be settled, which required great sobriety, and great spirit too – he fixed and set apart the first Sunday night in the month, and the Saturday night immediately before it, to argue it over in bed, with my mother. By this contrivance, if you consider, Sir, the significance of these days in my first volume, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  These my father, humorously enough, called his ‘beds of justice’; for from the two different counsels taken in these two different moods, a middle one was generally found which was as near wisdom as if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times. This method answers full as well in literary discussions, as in conjugal; but it is not every author that can try the experiment as the Goths did it. My way is this: