Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Vol. 1 — Chapter 04-05

C H A P.

IV

I KNOW there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in it, who are no readers at all,—who find themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of every thing which concerns you.

It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I have been so very particular already.

As my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right, will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men whatever,—be no less read than the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ itself—and in the end, prove the very thing which _Montaigne_ dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window;—I find it necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: For which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing in it, as _Horace_ says, _ab Ovo.

_ _Horace_, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;—(I forget which,) besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. _Horace’s_ pardon;—for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to any man’s rules that ever lived.

To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I can give no better advice than that they skip over the remaining part of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, ’tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive.

——————Shut the door.

—————— I was begot in the night betwixt the first _Sunday_ and the first _Monday_ in the month of _March_, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen.

I am positive I was.

—But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better clearing up this point.

My father, you must know, who was originally a _Turkey_ merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of ——, was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived.

As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for many years of his life,—on the first _Sunday-night_ of every month throughout the whole year,—as certain as ever the _Sunday-night_ came,—to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:—And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of,—he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle _Toby_, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have 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—_& 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 bye.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, 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 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 a 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.

C H A P.

V

ON the fifth day of _November_, 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as near nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have expected,—was I _Tristram Shandy_, Gentleman, brought forth 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 any how 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 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.