The story of my uncle Toby, &c., newly arranged

Front matter

H -tv >-

<r

'D y o * \ "* vi r T y 0 * X

Chapter I. Parson Yorick

N the fifth day of November, 1718, was 1, Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, brought fortli into this scurvy and disastrous 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 public 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 skating against the wind in Flanders, — I have been the continual sport of what the world calls fortune ;

THE STOBY OF 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.

In the same village where my father and 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 inconvenience, to which her husband’s flock had for many years been exposed, inasmuch, as there was no such thing as a midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the case have been never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles’ riding ; which said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to fourteen : and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at all ; it came

MY UNCLE TOBY.

into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a kindness to the whole parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get her a little instructed in some of the plain principles of the business, in order to set her up in it. As no woman thereabouts was better qualified to execute the plan she had formed than herself, the gentlewoman very charitably undertook it ; and having great influence over the female part of the parish, she found no difficulty in effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. In truth, the parson joined his interest with his wife’s in the whole affair ; and in order to do things as they should be, and give the poor soul as good a title by law to practise, as his wife had given by institution, — he cheerfully paid the fees for the ordinary’s license himself, amounting in the whole to the sum of eighteen shillings and fourpence ; so that betwixt them both the good woman was fully invested in the real and corporal possession of her office, together with all its rights and appurtenances whatsoever.

Whatever degree of small merit the act of benignity in favour of the midwife might justly claim, — at first sight seems not very material to this history ; certain however it was, that the gentlewoman, the parson’s wife, did run away at that time with the whole of it ; and yet, for my life, I cannot help thinking but that the parson himself, though he had not the good fortune to hit upon the design first, — yet, as he heartily concurred in it the moment it was laid before him, and as heartily parted with his money to carry it into execution, had a claim to some share of it, if not to a full half of whatever honour was due to it.

The world at that time was pleased to determine the matter otherwise.

Be it known then, that for about five years before the date of the midwife’s license, the parson had made himself a country talk by a breach of all decorum ; — and that was in never appearing better, or otherwise mounted, than upon a lean sorry jackass of a horse,

1—2 value about one pound fifteen shillings ; who, to shorten the description of him, was full brother to Rosinante.

In the several sallies about his parish, and in the neighbouring visits to the gentry who lived around him you will easily comprehend that the parson, so appointed, would both hear and see enough to keep his philosophy from rusting. To speak the truth, he never could enter a village, but he caught the attention of both old and young. — Labour stood still as he passed, — the bucket hung suspended in the middle of the well, — the spinning-wheel forgot its round, — even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got out of sight ; and as his movement was not of the quickest, he had generally time enough upon his hands to make his observations, — to hear the groans of the serious, and the laughter of the light-hearted ; — all which he bore with excellent tranquillity.— His character was, — he loved a jest in his heart — and as he saw himself in the true point of ridicule, he would say, he could not be angry with others for seeing him in a light in which he so strongly saw himself : So that to his friends, who knew his foible was not the love of money, and who therefore made the less scruple in bantering the extravagance of his humour,— instead of giving the true cause,— he chose rather to join in the laugh against himself ; and as he never carried one single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being altogether as spare a figure as his beast,— he would sometimes insist upon it that the horse was as good as the rider deserved.

At different times he would give fifty humorous and opposite reasons for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse, preferable to one of mettle ; — for on such a one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as delightfully de vanitate mundi et fugd sceculi , as with the advantage of a death’s-head before him that, in all other exercitations, he could spend

MY UNCLE TOBY.

his time, as he rode slowly along, — to as much account as in his study ; — that he could draw up an argument in his sermon, — or a hole in his breeches, as steadily on the one as in the other ; — that brisk trotting and slow argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two incompatible, movements. — But that upon his steed — he could unite and reconcile everything, — he could compose his sermon, — he could compose his cough, — and, in case nature gave a call that way, he could likewise compose himself to sleep. — In short, the parson upon such encounters would assign any cause but the true cause, — and he withheld the true one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought it did honour to him.

But the truth of the story was as follows In the first years of this gentleman’s life, and about the time when a superb saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it ,had been his manner or vanity, or call it what you will, — to run into the opposite extreme. — In the language of the county where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in his stable always ready for saddling ; and as the nearest midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the village than seven miles, and in a vile country, — it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together without some piteous application for his beast ; and as he was not an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more distressful than the last, — as much as he loved his beast, he had never a heart to refuse him ; the upshot of which was generally this, that his horse was either clapped, or spavined, or greased or he .was twitter-boned, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him, which would let him carry no flesh so that he had every nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of,— and a good horse to purchase in his stead.

THE STOBY OF

What the loss in such a balance might amount to, eommunibus annis , I would leave to a special jury of sufferers in the same traffic to determine ; — but let it be what it would, the honest gentleman bore it for many years without a murmur, till at length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to take the thing under consideration ; and upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his mind, he found it not only disproportioned to his other expenses, but withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable him from any other act of generosity in his parish. Besides this he considered, that with half the sum thus galloped away he could do ten times as much good ; and what still weighed more with him than all other considerations put together was this, that it confined all his charity into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the least wanted, namely, to the child-bearing part of his parish ; reserving nothing for the impotent,— nothing for the aged,— nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly called forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness, and affliction dwelt together.

For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expense ; and there appeared but two possible ways to extricate him clearly out of it ; — and these were, either to make it an irrevocable law never more to lend his steed upon any application whatever,— or else be content to ride the last poor devil, such as they had made him. with all his aches and infirmities, to the very end of the chapter.

As he dreaded his own constancy in the first, — he very cheerfully betook himself to the second ; and though he could very well have explained it, as I said, to his honour, — yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit above it ; choosing rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the laughter of his friends, than I undergo the pain of telling a story, which might seem 1 a panegyric upon himself.

MY UNCLE TOBY.

I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I think comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight of La Mancha , whom, by the bye, with all his follies,

I love more, and would actually have gone further to have paid a visit to, than the greatest hero of antiquity.

But this is not the moral of my story : The thing I had in view was to show the temper of the world in the whole of this affair. — For you must know, that so ^ i long as this explanation would have done the parson credit, — the devil a soul could find it out, — I suppose his enemies would not, and that his friends could not. ' — But no sooner did he bestir himself in behalf of the midwife, and pay the expenses of the ordinary’s licence to set her up, — but the whole secret came out ; every horse he had lost, and two horses more than ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of their destruction, were known and distinctly remembered. — The story ran like wildfire — “ The parson had a returning “ fit of pride which had just seized him ; and he was “ going to be well mounted once again in his life ;

“ and if it was so, ’twas plain as the sun at noon-day,

“ he would pocket the expense of the licence, ten “ times told, the very first year So that everybody “ was left to judge what were his views in this act of “ charity.”

What were his views in this, and in every other ' action of his life, — or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been found asleep.

About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be made entirely easy upon that score, — it being just so -long since he left his parish,— and the whole world at the same time behind him, — and stands accountable to a Judge of whom lie will have no cause to complain.

But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men : Order them as they will, they pass through a certain medium which so twists and refracts them from their true directions — that, with all the titles to praise which a rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are nevertheless forced to live and die without it.

Yorick was this parson’s name, who, by what I can remember of him, and by all the accounts I could ever get of him, seemed not to have had one single drop of Danish blood in his whole crasis ; in nine hundred years, it might possibly have all run out : — I will not

Ehilosophize one moment with you about it ; for, appen how it would, the fact was this : — that instead of that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and humours you would have looked for in one so extracted, — he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a composition,— as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions ; — with as much life and whim, and gaiete de cceur about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put together. With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one ounce of ballast ; he was utterly unpractised in the world ; and, at the age of twentysix, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen : so that upon his first setting out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul ten times in a day of somebody’s tackling ; and as the grave and more slow-paced were oftenest in his way, — you may likewise imagine, ’twas with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most intangled. For aught I know there might be some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom oi such fracas : for, to speak the truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike and opposition in his nature to gravity ; — not to gravity as such ; — for where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or serious of mortal men for days and weeks together ; — but he was an enemy to the affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as it appeared a cloak for ignorance, or for folly ; and then, whenever it fell in his way, however skeltered and protected, he seldom gave it much quarter.

But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and unpractised in the world, and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish on every other subject of discourse where policy is wont to impress restraint. Yorick had no impression but one, and that was what arose from the nature of the deed spoken of ; which impression he would usually translate into plain English without any periphrasis, — and too oft without much distinction of either personage, time, or place; — so that when mention was made of a pitiful or an ungenerous proceeding, he never gave himself a moment’s time to reflect who was the hero of the piece, — what his station, — or how far he had power to hurt him hereafter ; — but if it was a dirty action, — without more ado, — The man was a dirty fellow, — and so on : — and as his comments had usually the ill fate to be terminated either in a bon mot, or to be enlivened throughout with some drollery or humour of expression, it gave wings to Yorick’s indiscretion. In a word, though he never sought, yet at the same time, as he seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without much ceremony ; he had but too many temptations in life, of scattering his wit and humour, — his gibes and jests about him. — They were not lost for want of gathering. To speak the truth, he had wantonly involved himself in a multitude of small book-debts of this stamp, which, notwithstanding Eugenius’s frequent advice, he too much disregarded ; thinking that as not one of them was contracted through any malignancy; — but, on the contrary, from an honesty of mind, and a mere

IO jocundity of humour, they would all of them be crossed out in course.

Eugenius would never admit this ; and would often tell him, that one day or other he would certainly be reckoned with ; and he would often add, in an accent of sorrowful apprehension, — to the uttermost mite. To which Yorick, with his usual carelessness of heart, would as often answer with a pshaw ! — and if the subject was started in the fields,— with a hop, skip, and a jump, at the end of it ; but if close pent up in the social chimney corner, where the culprit was barricadoed in, with a table and a couple of arm-chairs, and could not so readily fly off in a tangent, Eugenius would then go on with his lecture upon discretion in words to this purpose, though somewhat better put together.

Trust me, dear Yorick, this unwary pleasantry of thine will sooner or later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, which no after- wit can extricate thee out of. — In these sallies, too oft, I see, it happens, that a person laughed at, considers himself in the light of a person injured, with all the rights of such a situation belonging to him ; and when thou viewest him in that light too, and reckons up his friends, his family, his kindred and allies, — and musters up with them the many recruits which will list under him from a sense of common danger ; — ’tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies ; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.

Revenge from some baneful corner shall level a tale of dishonour at thee, which no innocence of heart or integrity of conduct shall set right. — The fortunes of thy house shall totter, — thy character, which led the way to them, shall bleed on every side of it, — thy faith questioned,— thy works belied, thy wit forgotten, — thy

MY UNCLE TOBY.

ii learning trampled on. To wind up the last scene of thy tragedy, Cruelty and Cowardice, twin ruffians, j hired and set on by Malice in the dark, shall strike together at all thy infirmities and mistakes : — The best of us, my dear lad, lie open there,— and trust me, — trust me, Yorick, when to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be sacrificed, ’tis an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

Yorick scarce ever heard this sad vaticination of his destiny read over to him, but with a tear stealing from his eye, and a promissory look attending it, that he was resolved, for the time to come, to ride his tit with more sobriety. — But, alas, too late ! a grand confederacy was formed before the first prediction of it. — The whole plan of the attack, just as Eugenius had foreboded, was put in execution all at once, — with so little mercy on the side of the allies, — and so little suspicion in Yorick, of what was carrying on against him, — that when he thought, good easy man ! full surely preferment was o’ ripening, they had smote his root, and then he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before him.

Yorick, however, fought it out with all imaginable gallantry for some time ; till overpowered by numbers, and worn out at length by the calamities of the war,— but more so by the ungenerous manner in which it was carried on, — he threw down the sword ; and though he kept up his spirits in appearance to the last, he died, nevertheless, as was generally thought, quite broken-hearted.

A few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius stept in with an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his drawing Yorick’s curtain, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick, looking up in his face, took hold of his hand,— and, after thanking him for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet hereafter,— he would thank him again and again, — he told him, he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip for ever. — I hope not, answered Eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke, — I hope not, Yorick, said he. Yorick replied, with a look up, and a gentle squeeze of Eugenius’s hand, and that was all— but it cut Eugenius to his heart.— Come, come, Yorick, quoth Eugenius, . wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man within him, — my dear lad, be comforted, — let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this crisis when thou most wantest them ; — who knows what resources are in store, and what the power of God may yet do for thee? — Yorick laid his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head ; — for my part, continued Eugenius, crying bitterly as he uttered the words, — I declare I know not, Yorick, how to part with thee, — and would gladly flatter my hopes, added Eugenius, cheering up his voice, that there is still enough left of thee to make a bishop, — and that I may live to see it. I beseech thee, Eugenius, quoth Yorick, taking off his night-cap as well as he could with his left hand, — his right being still grasped close in that of Eugenius, — I beseech thee to take a view of my head. — I see nothing that ails it, replied Eugenius. Then, alas ! my friend, said Yorick, let me tell you, that Tis so bruised and mis-shapened with the blows which **** and ****, and some others, have so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that I might say with Sancho Panca, that should I recover, and “ Mitres thereupon he suffered to rain down from “ heaven as thick as hail, not one of ’em would fit it.” Yorick’s last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips ready to depart as he uttered this ; — yet still it was uttered with something of a Cervantic tone ; — and as he spoke it, Eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes ; —

MY UNCLE TOBY.

faint picture of those flashes of his spirit, which (as Shakspeare said of his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar !

Eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was broke ; he squeezed his hand, — and then walked softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door, — he then closed them, — and never opened them more.

He lies buried in a corner of his churchyard, in the

parish of , under a plain marble slab, which

his friend Eugenius, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy :

Alas, poor Yorick !

Ten times in a day has Yorick’s ghost the consolation to hear his monumental inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive tones, as denote a general pity and esteem for him; a foot-way crossing the churchyard close by the side of his grave, — not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it,— and sighing as he walks on,

Alas, poor Yorick !

Chapter II. My Father And Mother

PON" looking into my mother’s marriage settlement, in order to satisfy myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we could proceed any further in this history ; — I had the good-fortune to pop upon the very thing I wanted, which is so much more fully expressed in the deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity to take it out of the lawyer’s hand : — It is as follows :

“ this Enhcnturr further toiincsscth, That the “ said Walter Shandy, merchant, in consideration of “ the said intended marriage to be had, and, by God’s “ blessing, to be well and truly solemnised and con- “ summated between the said Walter Shandy and “ Elizabeth Mollineux aforesaid, and divers other good “ and valuable causes and considerations him there- “ unto specially moving, — doth grant, covenant, con- “ descend, consent, conclude, bargain, and fully agree £f to and with John Dixon and James Turner, Esqrs., “ the above-named trustees, &c., &c. — \o iuit, — That “ in case it should hereafter so fall out, chance, “ happen, or otherwise come to pass, — That the said “ Walter Shandy, merchant, shall have left off busi- ££ ness before the time or times that the said Elizabeth “ Mollineux shall, according to the course of nature,

“ or otherwise, have left off bearing and bringing “ forth children ; — and that, in consequence of the “ said Walter Shandy having so left off business, he “ shall, in despite, and against the free-will, consent, “ and good-liking of the said Elizabeth Mollineux,— “ make a departure from the city of London, in order “ to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at Shandy

“ Hall, in the county of or at any other country

“ seat, castle, hall, mansion-house, messuage, orgrange- “ house, now purchased, or hereafter to be purchased, “ or upon any part or parcel thereof : — That then, and “ as often as the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall “ happen to be enceinte with child or children severally “ and lawfully begot, he the said Walter Shandy shall, “ at his own proper cost and charges, and out of his “ own proper monies, upon good and reasonable “ notice, which is hereby agreed to be within six “ weeks of her the said Elizabeth Mollineux’s full “ reckoning, or time of supposed and computed deli- “ very, — pay, or cause to be paid, the sum of one “ hundred and twenty pounds of good and lawful “ money, to John Dixon and James Turner, Esqrs. “ or assigns,— upon trust and confidence, and for and “ unto the use and uses, intent, end, and purpose “ following : — is ter sag, — That the said sum of “ one hundred and twenty pounds shall be paid into “ the hands of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, or to be “ otherwise applied by them the said Trustees, for the “ well and truly hiring of one coach, with able and “ sufficient horses, to carry and convey the body of “ the said Elizabeth Mollineux, and the child or “ children which she shall be then and there enceinte “ and pregnant with, — unto the city of London ; and “ for the further paying and defraying of all other “ incidental costs, charges, and expenses whatsoever, “ — in and about, and for, and relating to, her said “ intended delivery and lying-in, in the said city or “ suburbs thereof. And that the said Elizabeth