The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [324]
CHAP. XXIX
1. Rhone … roti: The Vivarais, a mountainous part of Languedoc, is on the west bank of the Rhône, and the Dauphiné, a former province, on the east. Tristram looks forward to the finest Rhône wines: Hermitage from vineyards at Tain, and Côte rôtie, south of Vienne.
2. vamping chaise-undertaker: a chaise maker or dealer who renovates chaises. The OED lists Sterne’s use of the noun solely.
3. whispering these words in my ear: If these asterisks, like some others in the book, correspond to specific words, they have not yet convincingly been found. Tristram has warned us against assuming that Jenny is his wife or his mistress, but this passage suggests she is not merely his friend.
4. goat’s-whey: John Rutty, “A Practical Dissertation on the Uses of Goat’s Whey,” a tract in his The Argument of Sulphur or No Sulphur in Waters Discussed (Dublin, 1762), lists goat’s whey as “proper for” “diseases of the lungs, coughs and consumptions” (section V, p. 14) and praises its general nutritional value.
CHAP. XXX
1. Lippius of Basil: The extraordinary clock in the cathedral tower (1598) by Nicolas Lippius of Basel is mentioned by Piganiol along with the General History of China and the pillar at which Christ was flagellated.
2. valet de place: tour guide (French).
3. Pilate lived: Jacob Spon, mentioned in the following chapter, traces this misinformation in his Recherches curieuses d’antiquité (Lyon, 1683) to confusion with an actual resident, Humbert Pilati (168).
4. Tomb … lovers: The tomb is discussed by Spon (133ff.), though Sterne may have this information from Piganiol (VII, xxxi).
CHAP. XXXI
1. fibrillous: full of minute fibers.
2. Amandus … Amanda: Latin for “one who must be loved” in the masculine and feminine. The names and mini-romance are undoubtedly Sterne’s invention for the lovers.
3. Frusts … Rusts: fragments, bits. Collectors were often satirized for valuing the rust on ancient coins.
4. cullender: colander.
5. Spon: See last chapter, note 4.
6. Lyons-waistcoat: Lyons was known for its fine silks.
7. Mecca: Mecca, where Mohammed was born, is the site in modern Saudi Arabia of the most holy Islamic pilgrimages.
8. Santa Casa: the Holy House of Loreto, Italy, thought to be the miraculously relocated home of the Virgin Mary (cf. I, xiv).
9. Videnda: things to be seen.
10. Basse Cour: lower court, location of the stables (French).
11. dernier: last (French).
12. Monsieur Le Blanc: Much of Tristram’s trip probably corresponds to Sterne’s. An actual Le Blanc was James Boswell’s landlord in Lyons early in 1766. See Boswell on the Grand Tour, ed. Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), 271.
CHAP. XXXII
1. eleemosunary: eleemosynary: charitable.
2. with an ass … for ever: Cf. Sancho Pança’s complaint that if beasts spoke as they did in Aesop’s fables, he could “have communed with my Ass as I pleas’d” (1.3.11; 1:247). Noted by Gardner B. Stout, “Some Borrowings in Sterne from Rabelais and Cervantes,” ELN 3 (1965): 111–17.
3. Jack: short for Jackass.
CHAP. XXXIV
1. Pardonnez moi: Pardon me (French).
2. post royal: A double fee was charged for posts from places where the king resided.
3. if you please: Florida suggests that Sterne was influenced by a note of Ozell to Rabelais on payment by priests for licenses to keep mistresses, paid whether they kept them or not (2.7. n.).
4. salt: the hated salt tax (gabelle), rescinded by the French Revolution.
5. Bastiles: The Bastille, a Paris prison, was notoriously a repository for people incarcerated at the behest of the king or nobility; hence, it was often taken as the antithesis of English liberty.
6. WATER … OYL: In the last rites of the Catholic Church, usually known as Extreme Unction, the dying person is anointed with oil.
CHAP. XXXV
1. PAR LE ROY: by [order of] the king.
2. fermiers: The tax farmers: tax collectors.
3. PEACE WAS MADE: The Peace of Paris (1763) concluded the Seven