Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Vol. 1 — Chapter 33-34

C H A P.

XXXIII

IT is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle _Toby_ rung the bell, when _Obadiah_ was ordered to saddle a horse, and go for Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed _Obadiah_ time enough, poetically speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots.

If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,—should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time;—I would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas——and is the true scholastic pendulum,——and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried in this matter,—abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever.

I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from _Shandy-Hall_ to Dr. _Slop_, the man-midwife’s house:—and that whilst _Obadiah_ has been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle _Toby_ from _Namur_, quite across all _Flanders_, into _England_:—That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;—and have since travelled him and Corporal _Trim_ in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into _Yorkshire.

_—all which put together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance of Dr. _Slop_ upon the stage,—as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.

If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,—when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed ROMANCE, which, before, was a book apocryphal:——If I am thus pressed—I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,——by acquainting him, that _Obadiah_ had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. _Slop_;—and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too.

Imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new chapter.

C H A P.

XXXIV

IMAGINE to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor _Slop_, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards.

Such were the out-lines of Dr. _Slop_’s figure, which—if you have read _Hogarth_’s analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would;——you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred.

Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. _Slop_’s figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro’ the dirt upon the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour——but of strength,——alack!

——scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.

——They were not.

——Imagine to yourself, _Obadiah_ mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way.

Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.

Had Dr. _Slop_ beheld _Obadiah_ a mile off, posting in a narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,—splashing and plunging like a devil thro’ thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a phænomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its axis,—have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. _Slop_ in his situation, than the _worst_ of _Whiston_’s comets?

—To say nothing of the NUCLEUS; that is, of _Obadiah_ and the coach-horse.

—In my idea, the vortex alone of ’em was enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor’s pony, quite away with it.

What then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. _Slop_ have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that he was advancing thus warily along towards _Shandy-Hall_, and had approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden-wall,—and in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when _Obadiah_ and his coach-horse turned the corner, rapid, furious,—pop,—full upon him!

—Nothing, I think, in nature, can be supposed more terrible than such a rencounter,—so imprompt!

so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as Dr. _Slop_ was.

What could Dr. _Slop_ do?

——he crossed himself +—Pugh!

—but the doctor, Sir, was a Papist.

—No matter; he had better have kept hold of the pummel.

—He had so;—nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip,——and in attempting to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle’s skirt, as it slipped, he lost his stirrup,——in losing which he lost his seat;——and in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shews what little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind.

So that without waiting for _Obadiah_’s onset, he left his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the stile and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other consequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in the mire.

_Obadiah_ pull’d off his cap twice to Dr. _Slop_;—once as he was falling,—and then again when he saw him seated.

——Ill-timed complaisance;—had not the fellow better have stopped his horse, and got off and help’d him?

—Sir, he did all that his situation would allow;—but the MOMENTUM of the coach-horse was so great, that _Obadiah_ could not do it all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. _Slop_, before he could fully accomplish it any how;—and at the last, when he did stop his beast, ’twas done with such an explosion of mud, that _Obadiah_ had better have been a league off.

In short, never was a Dr. _Slop_ so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since that affair came into fashion.