The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Part 43

Chapter 3.LXVI.

I must observe, that although in the first year's campaign, the word town is often mentioned,-yet there was no town at that time within the polygon; that addition was not made till the summer following the spring in which the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was the third year of my uncle Toby's campaigns,-when upon his taking Amberg, Bonn, and Rhinberg, and Huy and Limbourg, one after another, a thought came into the corporal's head, that to talk of taking so many towns, without one Town to shew for it,-was a very nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle Toby, that they should have a little model of a town built for them,-to be run up together of slit deals, and then painted, and clapped within the interior polygon to serve for all.

My uncle Toby felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of the project itself.

The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of which it was most likely to be the representative:-with grated windows, and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.-as those in Ghent and Bruges, and the rest of the towns in Brabant and Flanders.

The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on, or off, so as to form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was put directly into hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation was exchanged between my uncle Toby and the corporal, as the carpenter did the work.

-It answered prodigiously the next summer-the town was a perfect Proteus-It was Landen, and Trerebach, and Santvliet, and Drusen, and Hagenau,-and then it was Ostend and Menin, and Aeth and Dendermond.

-Surely never did any Town act so many parts, since Sodom and Gomorrah, as my uncle Toby's town did.

In the fourth year, my uncle Toby thinking a town looked foolishly without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple.-Trim was for having bells in it;-my uncle Toby said, the metal had better be cast into cannon.

This led the way the next campaign for half a dozen bra.s.s field-pieces, to be planted three and three on each side of my uncle Toby's sentry-box; and in a short time, these led the way for a train of somewhat larger,-and so on-(as must always be the case in hobby-horsical affairs) from pieces of half an inch bore, till it came at last to my father's jack boots.

The next year, which was that in which Lisle was besieged, and at the close of which both Ghent and Bruges fell into our hands,-my uncle Toby was sadly put to it for proper ammunition;-I say proper ammunition-because his great artillery would not bear powder; and 'twas well for the Shandy family they would not-For so full were the papers, from the beginning to the end of the siege, of the incessant firings kept up by the besiegers,-and so heated was my uncle Toby's imagination with the accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away all his estate.

Something therefore was wanting as a succedaneum, especially in one or two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something like a continual firing in the imagination,-and this something, the corporal, whose princ.i.p.al strength lay in invention, supplied by an entire new system of battering of his own,-without which, this had been objected to by military critics, to the end of the world, as one of the great desiderata of my uncle Toby's apparatus.

This will not be explained the worse, for setting off, as I generally do, at a little distance from the subject.

Chapter 3.LXVII.

With two or three other trinkets, small in themselves, but of great regard, which poor Tom, the corporal's unfortunate brother, had sent him over, with the account of his marriage with the Jew's widow-there was

A Montero-cap and two Turkish tobacco-pipes.

The Montero-cap I shall describe by and bye.-The Turkish tobacco-pipes had nothing particular in them, they were fitted up and ornamented as usual, with flexible tubes of Morocco leather and gold wire, and mounted at their ends, the one of them with ivory,-the other with black ebony, tipp'd with silver.

My father, who saw all things in lights different from the rest of the world, would say to the corporal, that he ought to look upon these two presents more as tokens of his brother's nicety, than his affection.-Tom did not care, Trim, he would say, to put on the cap, or to smoke in the tobacco-pipe of a Jew.-G.o.d bless your honour, the corporal would say (giving a strong reason to the contrary)-how can that be?

The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine Spanish cloth, dyed in grain, and mounted all round with fur, except about four inches in the front, which was faced with a light blue, slightly embroidered,-and seemed to have been the property of a Portuguese quarter-master, not of foot, but of horse, as the word denotes.

The corporal was not a little proud of it, as well for its own sake, as the sake of the giver, so seldom or never put it on but upon Gala-days; and yet never was a Montero-cap put to so many uses; for in all controverted points, whether military or culinary, provided the corporal was sure he was in the right,-it was either his oath,-his wager,-or his gift.

-'Twas his gift in the present case.

I'll be bound, said the corporal, speaking to himself, to give away my Montero-cap to the first beggar who comes to the door, if I do not manage this matter to his honour's satisfaction.

The completion was no further off, than the very next morning; which was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the Lower Deule, to the right, and the gate St. Andrew,-and on the left, between St. Magdalen's and the river.

As this was the most memorable attack in the whole war,-the most gallant and obstinate on both sides,-and I must add the most b.l.o.o.d.y too, for it cost the allies themselves that morning above eleven hundred men,-my uncle Toby prepared himself for it with a more than ordinary solemnity.

The eve which preceded, as my uncle Toby went to bed, he ordered his ramallie wig, which had laid inside out for many years in the corner of an old campaigning trunk, which stood by his bedside, to be taken out and laid upon the lid of it, ready for the morning;-and the very first thing he did in his shirt, when he had stepped out of bed, my uncle Toby, after he had turned the rough side outwards,-put it on:-This done, he proceeded next to his breeches, and having b.u.t.toned the waist-band, he forthwith buckled on his sword-belt, and had got his sword half way in,-when he considered he should want shaving, and that it would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on,-so took it off:-In essaying to put on his regimental coat and waistcoat, my uncle Toby found the same objection in his wig,-so that went off too:-So that what with one thing and what with another, as always falls out when a man is in the most haste,-'twas ten o'clock, which was half an hour later than his usual time, before my uncle Toby sallied out.

Chapter 3.LXVIII.

My uncle Toby had scarce turned the corner of his yew hedge, which separated his kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived the corporal had begun the attack without him.-

Let me stop and give you a picture of the corporal's apparatus; and of the corporal himself in the height of his attack, just as it struck my uncle Toby, as he turned towards the sentry-box, where the corporal was at work,-for in nature there is not such another,-nor can any combination of all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works produce its equal.

The corporal-

-Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius,-for he was your kinsman:

Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness,-for he was your brother.-Oh corporal! had I thee, but now,-now, that I am able to give thee a dinner and protection,-how would I cherish thee! thou should'st wear thy Montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the week.-and when it was worn out, I would purchase thee a couple like it:-But alas! alas! alas! now that I can do this in spite of their reverences-the occasion is lost-for thou art gone;-thy genius fled up to the stars from whence it came;-and that warm heart of thine, with all its generous and open vessels, compressed into a clod of the valley!

-But what-what is this, to that future and dreaded page, where I look towards the velvet pall, decorated with the military ensigns of thy master-the first-the foremost of created beings;-where, I shall see thee, faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard with a trembling hand across his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes to the door, to take his mourning horse by the bridle, to follow his hea.r.s.e, as he directed thee;-where-all my father's systems shall be baffled by his sorrows; and, in spite of his philosophy, I shall behold him, as he inspects the lackered plate, twice taking his spectacles from off his nose, to wipe away the dew which nature has shed upon them-When I see him cast in the rosemary with an air of disconsolation, which cries through my ears,-O Toby! in what corner of the world shall I seek thy fellow?

-Gracious powers! which erst have opened the lips of the dumb in his distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer speak plain-when I shall arrive at this dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with a stinted hand.

Chapter 3.LXIX.

The corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply the grand desideratum, of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack,-had no further idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco against the town, out of one of my uncle Toby's six field-pieces, which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same time, though he had pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger from the miscarriage of his projects.

Upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he soon began to find out, that by means of his two Turkish tobacco-pipes, with the supplement of three smaller tubes of wash-leather at each of their lower ends, to be tagg'd by the same number of tin-pipes fitted to the touch-holes, and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the Morocco tube,-he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all together, and with the same ease as to fire one.-

-Let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out for the advancement of human knowledge. Let no man, who has read my father's first and second beds of justice, ever rise up and say again, from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out, to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.-Heaven! thou knowest how I love them;-thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I would this moment give my shirt-Thou art a fool, Shandy, says Eugenius, for thou hast but a dozen in the world,-and 'twill break thy set.-

No matter for that, Eugenius; I would give the shirt off my back to be burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish enquirer, how many sparks at one good stroke, a good flint and steel could strike into the tail of it.-Think ye not that in striking these in,-he might, per-adventure, strike something out? as sure as a gun.-

-But this project, by the bye.

The corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing his to perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, with charging them to the top with tobacco,-he went with contentment to bed.

Chapter 3.LXX.

The corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle Toby, in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle Toby came.

He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together in front of my uncle Toby's sentry-box, leaving only an interval of about a yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for the convenience of charging, &c.-and the sake possibly of two batteries, which he might think double the honour of one.