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

told you, was towards the end of September, when his wall-fruit and green gages especially, in which he was very curious, were just ready for pulling:⁠⸺“Had he been whistled up to London, upon a Tom Fool’s errand, in any other month of the whole year, he should not have said three words about it.”

For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy blow he had sustain’d from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had fully reckon’d upon in his mind, and register’d down in his pocketbook, as a second staff for his old age, in case Bobby should fail him. The disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a wise man, than all the money which the journey, etc., had cost him, put together,⁠—rot the hundred and twenty pounds,⁠⸺⁠he did not mind it a rush.

From Stilton, all the way to Grantham, nothing in the whole affair provoked him so much as the condolences of his friends, and the foolish figure they should both make at church, the first Sunday;⁠⸺⁠of which, in the satirical vehemence of his wit, now sharpen’d a little by vexation, he would give so many humorous and provoking descriptions,⁠—and place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights and attitudes in the face of the whole congregation;⁠—that my mother declared, these two stages were so truly tragicomical, that she did nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, from one end to the other of them all the way.

From Grantham, till they had cross’d the Trent, my father was out of all kind of patience at the vile trick and imposition which he fancied my mother had put upon him in this affair⁠—“Certainly,” he would say to himself, over and over again, “the woman could not be deceived herself⁠⸺⁠if she could,⁠⸺⁠what weakness!”⁠—tormenting word!⁠—which led his imagination a thorny dance, and, before all was over, play’d the duce and all with him;⁠⸺⁠for sure as ever the word weakness was uttered, and struck full upon his brain⁠—so sure it set him upon running divisions upon how many kinds of weaknesses there were;⁠⸺⁠that there was such a thing as weakness of the body,⁠⸺⁠as well as weakness of the mind,⁠—and then he would do nothing but syllogize within himself for a stage or two together, How far the cause of all these vexations might, or might not, have arisen out of himself.

In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out of this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose up in it, that my mother, whatever was her journey up, had but an uneasy journey of it down.⁠⸺⁠In a word, as she complained to my uncle Toby, he would have tired out the patience of any flesh alive.

XVII

Though my father travelled homewards, as I told you, in none of the best of moods,⁠—pshawing and pishing all the way down,⁠—yet he had the complaisance to keep the worst part of the story still to himself;⁠—which was the resolution he had taken of doing himself the justice, which my uncle Toby’s clause in the marriage-settlement empowered him; nor was it till the very night in which I was begot, which was thirteen months after, that she had the least intimation of his design: when my father, happening, as you remember, to be a little chagrin’d and out of temper,⁠⸺⁠took occasion as they lay chatting gravely in bed afterwards, talking over what was to come,⁠⸺⁠to let her know that she must accommodate herself as well as she could to the bargain made between them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lye-in of her next child in the country, to balance the last year’s journey.

My father was a gentleman of many virtues,⁠—but he had a strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number.⁠—’Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,⁠—and of obstinacy in a bad one: Of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she knew ’twas to no purpose to make any remonstrance,⁠—so she e’en resolved to sit down quietly, and make the most of it.

XVIII

As the point was that night agreed, or rather determined, that my mother should lye-in of me in the country, she took her measures accordingly; for which purpose, when she was three days, or thereabouts, gone with child, she began to cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and before the week was well got round, as the famous Dr. Manningham was not to be had, she had come to a final determination in her mind,⁠⸺⁠notwithstanding there was a scientific operator within so near a call as eight miles of us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five shillings book upon the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the blunders of the sisterhood itself,⁠⸺⁠but had likewise superadded many curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the fœtus in cross births, and some other cases of danger, which belay us in getting into the world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, was absolutely determined to trust her life, and mine with it, into no soul’s hand but this old woman’s only.⁠—Now this I like;⁠—when we cannot get at the very thing we wish⁠⸺⁠never to take up with the next best in degree to it:⁠—no; that’s pitiful beyond description;⁠—it is no more than a week from this very day, in which I am now writing this book for the edification of the world;⁠—which is March 9, 1759,⁠⸺⁠that my dear, dear Jenny, observing I looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk of five-and-twenty shillings a yard,⁠—told the mercer, she was sorry she had given him so much trouble;⁠—and immediately went and bought herself a yard-wide stuff of tenpence a yard.⁠—’Tis the duplication of one and the same greatness of soul; only what lessened the honour of it, somewhat, in my mother’s