The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (pdf e book reader txt) 📕

no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up,⁠⸺⁠but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head⁠—and vice versa:⁠⸺⁠Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious Locke, who certainly understood the nature of these things better than most men, affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of prejudice whatsoever.

But this by the by.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocketbook, which now lies upon the table, “That on Lady-day, which was on the 25th of the same month in which I date my geniture,⁠⸺⁠my father set out upon his journey to London, with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster school;” and, as it appears from the same authority, “That he did not get down to his wife and family till the second week in May following,”⁠—it brings the thing almost to a certainty. However, what follows in the beginning of the next chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of doubt.

⸻But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January, and February?⁠⸺⁠Why, Madam,⁠—he was all that time afflicted with a Sciatica.

V

On the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as near nine calendar months as any husband could in reason have expected,⁠—was I Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disasterous world of ours.⁠⸺⁠I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any of the planets (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them (though I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,⁠—which, o’ my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest;⁠⸺⁠not but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could anyhow contrive to be called up to publick charges, and employments of dignity or power;⁠⸺⁠but that is not my case;⁠⸺⁠and therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it;⁠⸻for which cause I affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made;⁠—for I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I got in scating against the wind in Flanders;⁠—I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil;⁠⸺⁠yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained.

VI

In the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly when I was born; but I did not inform you how. No, that particular was reserved entirely for a chapter by itself;⁠—besides, Sir, as you and I are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once.⁠—You must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed farther with me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.⁠—O diem præclarum!⁠—then nothing which has touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious in its telling. Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out⁠—bear with me,⁠—and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:⁠—Or, if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,⁠—or should sometimes put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,⁠—don’t fly off,⁠—but rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;⁠—and as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do anything,⁠—only keep your temper.

VII

In the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with the help of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment in her business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and a great deal to those of dame Nature,⁠—had acquired, in her way, no small degree of reputation in the world:⁠⸺⁠by which word world, need I in this place inform your worship, that I would be understood to mean no more of it, than a small circle described upon the circle of the great world, of four English miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which the cottage where the good old woman lived, is supposed to be the centre?⁠—She had been left, it seems, a widow in great distress, with three or four small children, in her forty-seventh year; and as she was at that time a person of decent carriage,⁠—grave deportment,⁠—a woman moreover of few words, and withal an object of compassion, whose distress, and silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touched with pity; and having often lamented an