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 pocket-book, 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, &c. 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.
Chapter 1.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.
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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.
Chapter 1.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 foetus 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 piti-
ful 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 ten-pence 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 case, was, that she could not heroine it into so violent and hazardous an extreme, as one in her situation might have wished, because the old midwife had really some little claim to be depended upon,--as much, at least, as success could give her; having, in the course of her practice of near twenty years in the parish, brought every mother's son of them into the world without any one slip or accident which could fairly be laid to her account.
These facts, tho' they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon my father's spirits in relation to this choice.--To say nothing of the natural workings of humanity and justice--or of the yearnings of parental and connubial love, all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible in a case of this kind;--he felt himself concerned in a particular manner, that all should go right in the present case;--from the accumulated sorrow he lay open to, should any evil betide his wife and child in lying-in at Shandy-Hall.--He knew the world judged by events, and would add to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by loading him with the whole blame of it.--'Alas o'day;--had Mrs. Shandy, poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to town just to lye-in and come down again;--which they say, she begged and prayed for upon her bare knees,-- and which, in my opinion, considering the fortune which Mr. Shandy got with her,--was no such mighty matter to have complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at this hour.'
This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;--and yet, it was not merely to shelter himself,--nor was it altogether for the care of his offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this point;--my father had extensive views of things,--and stood moreover, as he thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to.
He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign down to his own time, that the current of men and money towards the metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another,--set in so strong,--as to become dangerous to our civil rights,--though, by the bye,--a current was not the image he took most delight in,--a distemper was here his favourite metaphor, and he would run it down into a perfect allegory, by maintaining it was identically the same in the body national as in the body natural, where the blood and spirits were driven up into the head faster than they could find their ways down;--a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which was death in both cases.
There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by French politicks or French invasions;--nor was he so much in pain of a consumption from the mass of corrupted matter and ulcerated humours in our constitution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was imagined;--but he verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy;--and then he would say, The Lord have mercy upon us all.
My father was never able to give the history of this distemper,--without
