Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

  In delicate and ticklish discussions (of which, heaven knows, there are all too many in my book) – where I find I cannot take a step without the danger of having someone upon my back – I write one-half full, and t’other half hungry; or write it all full, and correct it fasting, or vice versa, for they come to the same thing. So I feel myself upon a par with my father in his first bed of justice, and no way inferior to him in his second.

  Now, when I write full, I write free from the cares and terrors of the world. I count not my scars; nor does my fancy go forth into dark corners. In a word, I write as much from the fullness of my heart, as my stomach.

  But when I am fasting, ’tis a different story. I pay the world all possible attention and respect – so that betwixt both, I write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good-humoured Shandean book, which will do all your hearts good–

  – And your heads too, provided you understand it.

  CHAPTER 18

  ‘We should begin,’ said my father, turning round in bed, and shifting his pillow towards my mother’s, ‘We should begin to think, Mrs. Shandy, of putting this boy into breeches.’

  ‘We should so,’ said my mother.

  ‘We defer it, my dear, shamefully.’

  ‘I think we do, Mr. Shandy,’ said my mother.

  ‘Although the child looks extremely good in his tunics,’ said my father.

  ‘He does look very good in them,’ replied my mother.

  ‘So that it would be almost a sin,’ added my father, ‘to take him out of ’em.’

  ‘It would,’ said my mother.

  ‘But indeed he is growing very tall,’ rejoined my father.

  ‘He is very tall for his age, indeed,’ said my mother.

  ‘I can not imagine,’ quoth my father, ‘who the deuce he takes after.’

  ‘I cannot conceive, for my life,’ said my mother.

  ‘Humph!’ said my father.

  (The dialogue ceased for a moment.)

  ‘I am very short myself,’ continued my father gravely.

  ‘You are very short, Mr. Shandy,’ said my mother.

  ‘Humph!’ quoth my father to himself again: and plucked his pillow a little further from my mother’s. There was a pause for three minutes and a half.

  ‘When he gets these breeches,’ cried my father in a higher tone, ‘he’ll look like a beast in ’em.’

  ‘He will be very awkward in them at first,’ replied my mother.

  ‘And ’twill be lucky if that’s the worst of it,’ added my father.

  ‘It will be very lucky,’ answered my mother.

  ‘I suppose,’ replied my father, ‘he’ll be exactly like other people’s children.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said my mother.

  ‘Though I shall be sorry for that,’ added my father: and the debate stopped again.

  ‘They should be of leather,’ said my father, turning around.

  ‘They will last him longer,’ said my mother.

  ‘But he can have no linings to ’em,’ replied my father.

  ‘He cannot,’ said my mother.

  ‘’Twere better to have them of fustian,’ quoth my father.

  ‘Nothing can be better,’ quoth my mother.

  ‘Except dimity,’ replied my father.

  ‘’Tis best of all,’ replied my mother.

  ‘One must not give him his death, however,’ said my father.

  ‘By no means,’ said my mother: and the dialogue stood still again.

  ‘I am resolved, however,’ quoth my father, breaking silence, ‘he shall have no pockets in them.’

  ‘There is no need for any,’ said my mother.

  ‘I mean in his coat and waistcoat,’ cried my father.

  ‘I mean so too,’ replied my mother.

  ‘Though if he gets a toy or top – they are like a crown and a sceptre to children – they should have somewhere to keep it.’

  ‘Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy,’ replied my mother.

  ‘But don’t you think it right?’ pressed my father.

  ‘Perfectly,’ said my mother, ‘if it pleases you, Mr. Shandy.’

  ‘There’s for you!’ cried my father, losing his temper. ‘Pleases me! You never will distinguish, Mrs. Shandy, nor shall I ever teach you to do it, betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience.’

  This was on the Sunday night: and further this chapter sayeth not.

  CHAPTER 19

  After my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my mother, he consulted Albertus Rubenius upon it; and Rubenius used my father ten times worse (if possible) than my father had used my mother. My father might as well have thought of extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of a beard, as of extracting a single word out of Rubenius upon the subject.

  Upon every other article of ancient dress, Rubenius was very communicative; he gave a full and satisfactory account of

  The Toga, or loose gown.

  The Chlamys.

  The Ephod.

  The Tunica, or Jacket.

  The Synthesis.

  The Paenula.

  The Lacema, with its Cucullus.

  The Paludamentum.

  The Praetexta.

  The Sagum, or soldier’s jerkin.

  ‘But what are all these to the breeches?’ said my father.

  Rubenius threw down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had been in fashion with the Romans:

  The open shoe.

  The close shoe.

  The slip shoe.

  The wooden shoe.

  The hobnailed military shoe.

  The clogs.

  The pattins.

  The pantoufles.

  The brogues.

  The sandals.

  The felt shoe.

  The linen shoe.

  The laced shoe.

  The braided shoe.

  Rubenius shewed my father how well they all fitted, how they laced on, with what straps, thongs, ribbons, jags, and ends.

  ‘But I want to know about the breeches,’ said my father.

  Rubenius informed my father that the Romans manufactured various fabrics, some plain, some striped, some woven through with silk and gold; that linen was not in common use till the decline of the empire, when the Egyptians brought it into vogue.

  –That persons of quality distinguished themselves by the fineness and whiteness of their clothes; which colour they wore on their birthdays and public rejoicings. That it appeared from historians that they frequently sent their clothes to be cleaned and whitened: but that poorer people generally wore brown clothes of a coarser texture, till Augustus’s reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of dress was lost, but the Latus Clavus.

  ‘And what was the Latus Clavus?’ said my father.

  Rubenius told him that the point was still being argued amongst the learned: that Egnatius, Sigonius, Lipsius, Lazius, Casaubon and Scaliger, all differed from each other. Some took it to be the button; some the coat itself; others only the colour of it. Bayfius, in his Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12, honestly said he knew not what it was, whether a stud, a button, a loop, a buckle, or a clasp.

  My father lost the horse, but not the saddle.

  ‘They are hooks and eyes,’ said he – and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches to be made.

  CHAPTER 20

  We are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.

  – Leave we then the breeches in the tailor’s hands, with my father standing over him as he works, reading him a lecture upon the latus clavus, and pointing to the precise part of the waistband where he wanted it sewed on.

  Leave we my mother, careless about it, as about everything else in the world which concerned her; that is, indifferent as to how it was done, provided it was but done at all.

  Leave we Slop likewise to the profits of my dishonours.

  Leave we poor Le Fever to get home from Marseilles as best he can. And last of all, because the hardest of all–
<
br />   Let us leave, if possible, myself. – But ’tis impossible; I must go along with you to the end of the work.

  CHAPTER 21

  If the reader has not a clear idea of the quarter-acre of ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle Toby’s kitchen-garden, and which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours – the fault is not in me, but in the reader’s imagination; for I gave him a minute description.

  Nature blessed this plot with her kindliest compost, just enough to keep shape, but not so much as to cling to the spade, and render such glorious works nasty in foul weather.

  My uncle Toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with the plans of almost every fortified town in Italy and Flanders. The Duke of Marlborough, or the allies, might go where they pleased; my uncle Toby was prepared for them.

  He would take the plan of a town, and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of a large roll of thread, and many small pickets driven into the ground, he transferred the lines from his paper. Then, on deciding the depths and slopes of the ditches, the height of the parapets, &c., he set the corporal to work – and sweetly went it on.

  The nature of the soil, the nature of the work itself, and above all, the good-nature of my uncle Toby sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past deeds, left Labour little else but the ceremony of the name.

  When the place was finished in this manner, my uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel.

  – I beg you not to interrupt by telling me ‘That the first parallel should be at least six hundred yards distant – and that I have not left a single inch for it’; for my uncle Toby extended his works from the bowling-green onto his kitchen-garden, so that his first and second parallels ran betwixt two rows of cabbages and cauliflowers; the inconveniences of which will be considered in the history of my uncle Toby’s campaigns, of which this is but a sketch, and will be finished in perhaps three pages (but there is no guessing).

  – The campaigns themselves will take three books; and therefore had better be printed apart – but we’ll take the following sketch of them in the meantime.

  CHAPTER 22

  When the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel from the same points as the allies ran theirs; and following the accounts in the daily papers, they went on, during the whole siege, step by step with the allies.

  When the duke of Marlborough made a lodgment, my uncle Toby made one too. And when a bastion was battered down, or a defence ruined, the corporal took his mattock and did the same – and so on; gaining ground over the works, till the town fell into their hands.

  To one who took pleasure in the happiness of others, there could not have been a greater sight in the world, than to have stood behind the hornbeam hedge, and observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby and Trim sallied forth; the one with the Gazette in his hand, the other with a spade on his shoulder to execute its contents.

  What an honest triumph in my uncle Toby’s looks as he marched up to the ramparts! What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph to him while he worked. – But when he mounted the chamade, with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts – Heaven! Earth! Sea! wet or dry, ye never made so intoxicating a draught.

  In this happy track for many years, without interruption, except now and then when the west wind detained the Flanders mail, and kept them in torture – but still ’twas the torture of the happy – in this track, I say, my uncle Toby and Trim moved for many years, every year adding some improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight.

  The first year’s campaign was carried on in the plain and simple method I’ve related.

  In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and Ruremond, he thought he might afford the expense of four handsome draw-bridges, two of which I have described in the former part of my work.

  At the end of the same year he added a couple of gates with portcullises. That Christmas, instead of a new suit of clothes, he treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green: betwixt this and the glacis, there was a little esplanade for him and the corporal to hold councils of war upon.

  The sentry-box was in case of rain.

  The following spring, all these were painted white, which enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.

  My father would often say to Yorick, that if any man alive had done such a thing, except his brother Toby, it would have been looked upon as a refined satire upon the parading, prancing manner in which Louis XIV had taken the field.

  ‘But ’tis not my brother Toby’s nature, kind soul!’ my father would add, ‘to insult any one.’

  – But let us go on.

  CHAPTER 23

  I must observe, that although in the first year’s campaign, the word town is often mentioned, yet a town was not added till the year after the sentry-box was painted, which was the third year of my uncle Toby’s campaigns. Upon his taking Amberg, Bonn, Rhinberg, and Huy and Limbourg, one after another, a thought came into the corporal’s head, that to talk of taking so many towns, without one town to show for it, was very nonsensical; and so he proposed to my uncle Toby that they should have a little wooden model of a town built, to serve for all.

  My uncle Toby instantly agreed, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of which he was extremely proud.

  One was, to have the town built in the Flemish style, with grated windows, and the gable ends facing the streets, &c. – like those in Ghent and Bruges.

  The other was, not to have the houses made together, but to have every house independent, to hook on, or off, so as to form the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was begun directly, and many a look of congratulation was exchanged between my uncle Toby and the corporal, as the carpenter did the work.

  The next summer, the town was a perfect Proteus, constantly changing from Landen – to Trerebach – to Santvliet – to Drusen – and so on.

  Surely never did any Town act so many parts, since Sodom and Gomorrah.

  In the fourth year, my uncle Toby, thinking a town looked foolish without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple. Trim wished for bells in it; my uncle said, the metal had better be cast into cannon.

  This led the way for half a dozen brass artillery field-pieces, to be planted three on each side of my uncle Toby’s sentry-box; and these soon led to somewhat larger cannons, till it came at last to my father’s jack boots.

  The next year, when Lisle was besieged, and Ghent and Bruges fell into our hands, my uncle Toby was sadly in need of proper ammunition; I say proper, because his great artillery would not bear gunpowder; which was just as well. For so full were the papers of the incessant firings by the besiegers – and so heated was my uncle Toby’s imagination with these accounts, that he would have shot away all his estate.

  A substitute was therefore needed, to keep up something like a continual firing in the imagination. The corporal, whose strength lay in invention, supplied an entire new system of battering of his own, which was the finishing touch to the whole apparatus.

  This will be better explained if I set off, as I generally do, at a little distance from the subject.

  CHAPTER 24

  Poor Tom, the corporal’s unfortunate brother who married the Jew’s widow, had sent him over some trinkets, amongst which there was

  A Montero-cap and two Turkish tobacco-pipes.

  The Turkish tobacco-pipes were ornamented with flexible tubes of Morocco leather and gold wire, and mounted at their ends, one with ivory, the other with black ebony, tipped with silver.

  The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine Spanish cloth, mounted all round with fur, except about four inches in the front, which was faced with a light blue embroidered cloth. It seemed to have been the property of a Portuguese quartermaster
.

  The corporal was proud of it, for its own sake as well as for the sake of the giver, so he seldom wore it; and yet never was a Montero-cap put to so many uses; for in all disputed points, provided the corporal was sure he was in the right, it was either his oath, his wager, or his gift.

  – ’Twas his gift in the present case.

  ‘I’ll be bound,’ said the corporal to himself, ‘to give away my Montero-cap to the first beggar who comes to the door, if I do not manage this matter to his honour’s satisfaction.’

  He completed it the very next morning; which was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the Lower Deule and St Andrew’s Gate; and on the left, between St. Magdalen’s and the river.

  As this was the most memorable, gallant and bloody attack in the whole war, my uncle Toby prepared himself for it with more than ordinary solemnity.

  The evening before, as my uncle Toby went to bed, he ordered his ramallie wig, which had laid inside out for many years in the corner of an old campaigning trunk, to be taken out, ready for the morning; – and the first thing he did, when he had stepped out of bed, was to put it on.

  He proceeded next to his breeches, and buckled on his sword-belt. He had got his sword half way in, when he considered he should want shaving, and that it would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on, so took it off. He then found the same objection in his wig – so that went off too. So that what with one thing and another, ’twas ten o’clock, half an hour later than his usual time, before my uncle Toby sallied out.

  CHAPTER 25

  My uncle Toby had scarce turned the corner of his yew hedge, which separated his kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived the corporal had begun the attack without him.

  Let me describe the corporal’s apparatus, and his attack, just as it struck my uncle Toby, as he turned towards the sentry-box where the corporal was at work.

  The corporal–

  – Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius, for he was your kinsman.

  Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness, for he was your brother.

  Oh corporal! had I thee, now – how would I cherish thee! thou should’st wear thy Montero-cap every hour of every day – But alas! alas! thou art gone; thy genius fled up to the stars from whence it came – and that warm and generous heart of thine, compressed into a clod of the valley!