Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

  ‘I have no debt,’ quoth I, ‘but the debt of Nature, and I will pay her every farthing I owe her – How can you be so hard-hearted, Madam, to arrest a poor traveller not harming anyone? do stop that death-looking, long-striding scoundrel who is following me – if only for a stage or two, just give me a head start, I beseech you, madam–’

  ‘Now, ’tis a great pity,’ quoth mine Irish host, ‘that all this good courtship should be lost; for the young gentlewoman has been after going out of hearing.’

  ‘Simpleton!’ quoth I. ‘So you have nothing else in Boulogne worth seeing?’

  ‘By Jasus! there is the finest Seminary for the Humanities.’

  ‘There cannot be a finer,’ quoth I.

  CHAPTER 8

  When a man’s wishes hurry on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in – woe be to truth! and woe be to the vehicle upon which he breathes forth his disappointment!

  As I never describe men or things in anger, ‘more haste less speed,’ was all the reflection I made upon the affair, the first time it happened. The second, third, fourth, and fifth time, I blamed only the second, third, fourth, and fifth post-boys, without reflecting further; but when the event befell me a sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth time, I could not avoid making a national reflection:

  That something is always wrong in a French post-chaise, upon first setting out.

  Or thus:

  A French postilion always has to alight before he has got three hundred yards out of town.

  What’s wrong now?

  Diable! – a rope’s broke! – a knot has slipped! – a staple’s drawn! – a tag, a rag, a jag, a strap, a buckle, wants altering.

  Now, I never swear at the post-chaise, or its driver – but I take the matter coolly, and consider that some tag, rag, jag, strap or buckle will always want altering, wherever I travel. So I take the good and the bad as they fall in my road, and get on.

  ‘Do so, my lad!’ said I; he had lost five minutes already, in alighting to get a luncheon of black bread, which he had crammed into the chaise-pocket, and he had remounted and was going leisurely on, to relish it the better – ‘Get on, my lad,’ said I, briskly – but in the most persuasive tone imaginable, for I jingled a coin against the glass: the dog grinned from ear to ear, and behind his sooty muzzle uncovered a pearly row of teeth.

  Heaven! What masticators! What bread!

  – and so as he finished his last mouthful, we entered the town of Montreuil.

  CHAPTER 9

  There is not a town in all France which looks better on the map than Montreuil; but when you come to see it – it looks pitiful.

  There is one thing, however, in it that is very handsome; and that is the inn-keeper’s daughter. She has been eighteen months at school in Amiens, and six at Paris; so she knits, and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.

  – A slut! In these five minutes that I have stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a white thread stocking – yes, yes, I see, you cunning gipsy! – you need not pin it to your knee.

  – That Nature should have told this creature about a statue’s thumb!

  – But as this sample is worth all their thumbs – and as Janatone (for that is her name) stands so well for a drawing – may I never draw more, if I do not draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if I had her in the wettest drapery.

  – But your worships choose rather that I should give you the length, breadth, and height of the great parish-church, or draw the abbey of Saint Austerberte, which was transported here from Artois, so that your worships may measure them at your leisure. But he who measures thee, Janatone, must do it now – thy frame will change – and before twice twelve months are passed, thou mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose thy shape – or thou mayest go off like a flower, and lose thy beauty – nay, thou mayest go off like a hussy, and lose thyself.

  But if I go on with my drawing, I’ll be shot–

  So you must be content with the original; which, on a fine evening in Montreuil, you will see as you change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I have, you had better stop–

  – Lord help me! I could not.

  CHAPTER 10

  All which being considered, and because Death might be much nearer to me than I imagined – ‘I wish I was at Abbeville,’ quoth I, ‘if only to see how they card and spin’ – so off we set.

  From Montreuil to Nampont – from Nampont to Bernay – from Bernay to Nouvion – from Nouvion to Abbeville–

  – but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed.

  CHAPTER 11

  What a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you will pick out of the next chapter.

  CHAPTER 12

  If I could tell Death, like my apothecary, how and where I will take his purge – I should certainly refuse to submit to it before my friends. Therefore I never seriously think upon the manner of this great catastrophe, which torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that God may let it happen to me not in my own house – but rather in some decent inn. At home, I know, the concern of my friends, wiping my brows and smoothing my pillow, will crucify my soul; but in an inn, the few cold services I wanted would be purchased with a few guineas, and provided with an undisturbed, but punctual attention.

  – But mark. This inn should not be the inn at Abbeville, even if there was no other inn in the universe.

  Let the horses be ready by four in the morning – Yes, by four, Sir! or I’ll raise a clatter in the house shall wake the dead.

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘Make them like unto a wheel’ is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the grand tour, and the restless spirit for making it, which David foresaw would haunt the children of men; and therefore, (thinks the great bishop Hall), ’tis one of the severest imprecations which David ever uttered against the enemies of the Lord. For motion, says he, is unquietness; and rest is heavenly.

  Now, I think differently; that motion is so much of life, and joy – and that to stand still, or move slowly, is death and the devil–

  Hollo! the whole world’s asleep! – bring out the horses – grease the wheels – tie on the mail – I’ll not lose a moment–

  Now the wheel we are talking of, with which he curseth his enemies, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they had them in Palestine at that time or not – and my wheel must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round once in an age; and of which I dare say they had great store in that hilly country.

  I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear Jenny) for their ‘getting out of the body, in order to think well.’ No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his humours, and either too lax or too tense. – Reason is half Sensation; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our present appetites–

  – But which of the two do you think to be mostly in the wrong?

  ‘You, certainly,’ quoth she, ‘to disturb a whole family so early.’

  CHAPTER 14

  But she did not know I had vowed not to shave my beard till I got to Paris; yet I hate to make mysteries of nothing. ’Tis the cold cautiousness of one of those little souls from which Lessius (De Moribus Divinis, book 13, ch. 24) hath made his estimate, that one Dutch cubic mile will allow room enough for eight hundred thousand million souls, which he supposes to be as many as can possibly be damned to the end of the world.

  I am at a loss as to what could be in Franciscus Ribbera’s head, when he pretends that no less a space than two hundred Italian miles cubed will be sufficient to hold the same number – he certainly must have counted some of the old Roman souls, without reflecting how much, by a gradual decline in the course of eighteen hundred years, they must have shrunk almost to nothing.

  In Lessius’s time, these souls were as little as can
be imagined – we find them less now–

  And next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go on this way, I have no doubt that in half a century we shall have no souls at all; by that time I doubt likewise of the existence of the Christian faith; both of ’em will be exactly worn out together.

  Blessed Jupiter! and blessed every other heathen god and goddess! for then ye will all come into play again, with Priapus at your tails – what jovial times!

  – but where am I? and into what a delicious riot of things am I rushing? I, who must be cut short in the midst of my days! – peace to thee, generous fool! and let me go on.

  CHAPTER 15

  – ‘So hating, I say, to make mysteries of nothing’ – I entrusted it with the post-boy, as soon as I got into the chaise; he gave a crack with his whip, and with the horse trotting, we danced it along to Ailly au Clochers, famed in days of yore for the finest chimes in the world; but we danced through it without music – the chimes being greatly out of order (as they were through all France).

  And so making all possible speed, from

  Ailly au Clochers, I got to Hixcourt, and then to Pequignay, and then Amiens, about which town I have nothing to inform you, but what I told you once before – that Janatone went there to school.

  CHAPTER 16

  Of all the whiffling vexations which come puffing across a man’s canvas, there is not one more teasing and tormenting than this:

  That be you never so ready for sleep – tho’ you are passing perhaps through the finest country, upon the best roads, and in the easiest carriage in the world – nay, even if you were sure you could sleep for fifty miles, without once opening your eyes – yet the necessity of paying for the horses at every stage – of putting your hand into your pocket, and counting out three livres fifteen sous, puts an end to rest so effectively that you cannot sleep above six miles, to save your soul from destruction.

  ‘I’ll be even with ’em,’ quoth I, ‘for I’ll put the precise sum into a piece of paper, and hold it ready in my hand all the way. Now I shall have nothing to do,’ said I (composing myself to rest), ‘but to drop this gently into the post-boy’s hat, and not say a word.’

  But then he wants two sous more to drink – or there is an old twelve sous piece which will not pass – or a livre to be brought over from the last stage, which Monsieur had forgot; still sweet sleep is retrievable; and still might the flesh recover from these blows – but then, by heaven! you have paid but for a single post-stage – whereas ’tis a stage and a half; and this obliges you to pull out your book of post-roads, the print of which is so very small, it forces you to open your eyes, whether you will or no.

  Then Monsieur le Curé offers you a pinch of snuff – or a poor soldier shows you his leg – or a shaveling his box – or the priestess of the cistern will water your wheels, swearing they need it – and in all this, the mind gets so thoroughly awakened, you cannot get it asleep again.

  It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes that I did not pass clean by the stables of Chantilly –

  – The postilion persisting that the two sous piece was a fake, I opened my eyes, and seeing it to be genuine as plain as my nose – I leaped out of the chaise in a passion, and so saw everything at Chantilly in spite. I tried this for three post-stages and a half, and believe ’tis the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon; for as few objects look inviting in that mood, you have little or nothing to stop you. By this means I passed through St. Dennis without so much as turning my head towards the Abbey.

  – Richness of their treasury! stuff and nonsense! their jewels are all false. I would not give three sous for anything in it, but Jaidas’s lantern – and only because it might be of use in the dark.

  CHAPTER 17

  Crack, crack – crack, crack – crack, crack – ‘so this is Paris!’ quoth I (in the same mood). ‘Humph! Paris!

  ‘The first, the finest, the most brilliant–

  ‘The streets however are nasty.

  ‘But I suppose it looks better than it smells.’

  Crack, crack – crack, crack – what a fuss thou makest! as if the good people needed to be informed that a man with a pale face and clad in black was driven into Paris at nine o’clock by a postilion in a tawny yellow jerkin–

  Crack, crack – crack, crack – I wish thy whip–

  But ’tis the spirit of thy nation; so crack on.

  Ha! – and no one gives you space by the wall! but if the walls are besh _t, – how can you do otherwise?

  And prithee when do they light the lamps? What? never in the summer months! – Ho! ’tis the time of salads. O rare! salad and soup – soup and salad – salad and soup, encore–

  How can that coachman swear so lewdly to that lean horse? don’t you see, friend, the streets are so villainously narrow, that there is not room to turn a wheelbarrow? In the grandest city of the world, it would not have been amiss if they had been a touch wider; if only so that a man in the street might know on which side of it he was walking.

  – Ten cooks’ shops! and twenty barbers! all within three minutes’ driving! one would think that all the cooks and barbers, by joint consent, had said ‘Come, let us all go live at Paris: the French love good eating – we shall rank high; if their god is their belly – their cooks must be gentlemen: and as the periwig maketh the man, and the wig-maker maketh the periwig – therefore,’ the barbers would say, ‘we shall rank higher still, and all wear swords–’

  And one would swear they continue to do so, (as far as one can tell by candle-light,) to this day.

  CHAPTER 18

  The French are certainly misunderstood: but whether the fault is theirs, in not sufficiently explaining themselves, or speaking too precisely – or whether the fault is on our side, in not understanding their language well enough – I shall not decide. But ’tis evident to me, when people say ‘That they who have seen Paris, have seen everything,’ they must mean those who have seen it by day-light.

  As for candle-light – I give it up – there was no depending upon it; in all the five hundred grand Hotels in Paris, and the five hundred good things (allowing one good thing to a Hotel), which by candle-light are best to be seen, felt, heard, and understood (which, by the bye, is a quotation from Lilly) – barely one of us out of fifty can get our heads thrust in amongst them.

  ’Tis simply this,

  That by the last survey taken in the year 1716, Paris did contain nine hundred streets; (viz.)

  In the quarter called the City, there are fifty-three streets.

  In St. James of the Shambles, fifty-five streets.

  In St. Oportune, thirty-four streets.

  In the quarter of the Louvre, twenty-five streets.

  In the Palace Royal, or St. Honorius, forty-nine streets.

  In Mont. Martyr, forty-one streets.

  In St. Eustace, twenty-nine streets.

  In the Halles, twenty-seven streets.

  In St. Dennis, fifty-five streets.

  In St. Martin, fifty-four streets.

  And in a further ten quarters, five hundred and thirteen streets, into any of which you may walk; and when you have seen them by day-light – their gates, bridges, squares, and statues – and have crusaded moreover, through all their parish-churches, – and to crown all, have taken a walk to the four palaces–

  Then you will have seen–

  – but no one needs tell you what, for you will read of it yourself upon the portico of the Louvre, in these words,

  EARTH NO SUCH FOLKS!

  NO FOLKS E’ER SUCH A TOWN AS PARIS IS!

  SING, DERRY, DERRY, DOWN.

  Non orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam - - - ulla parem.

  The French have a gay way of treating everything that is Great; and that is all that can be said.

  CHAPTER 19

  In mentioning the word gay (as in the close of the last chapter) it reminds an author of the word spleen: not that there appears to be any more common gro
und betwixt them, than betwixt light and darkness – only ’tis a craft of authors to keep up a good understanding amongst words, as politicians do amongst men – not knowing how soon they may need to use them together – so I write it down here–

  SPLEEN

  This, upon leaving Chantilly, I declared to be the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon; but that was only my opinion. I still hold the same view – only I had not then enough experience of its working to add that, though you do get on at a tearing rate, yet it makes you uneasy; for which reason I here quit it entirely, and for ever. – It spoiled the digestion of a good supper, and brought on a bilious diarrhoea, which brings me back again to my first principle – with which I shall now scamper away to the banks of the Garonne–

  No; – I cannot stop a moment to give you the character of the people – their manners – their customs – their laws – their religion – their commerce: qualified as I may be, by spending three days amongst them–

  Still I must away – the roads are paved – the post-stages are short – the days are long – I shall be at Fontainebleau before the king–

  Was he going there? not that I know–

  CHAPTER 20

  Now I hate to hear a traveller complain that we do not get on so fast in France as we do in England; whereas we get on much faster, all things considered. If you weigh their vehicles with the mountains of baggage, and consider their puny horses, ’tis a wonder they get on at all: a French post-horse would not know what in the world to do, was it not for the two words ****** and ****** in which there is as much sustenance as a bag of corn.

  As these words cost nothing, I long to tell the reader what they are; but they must be said plainly, and with the most distinct articulation, or they will not work – and yet to do it in that plain way – your reverences may laugh, or abuse it in the parlour.

  Therefore I have been revolving in my fancy for some time, by what clean device I might use the words, so that whilst I satisfy the reader I do not offend him.