The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne [42]
You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle Toby had contracted all this from this very source;----that he had spent a great part of his time in converse with your sex; and that, from a thorough knowledge of you, and the force of imitation which such fair examples render irresistable,—he had acquired this amiable turn of mind.
I wish I could say so,----for unless it was with his sister-in-law, my father’s wife and my mother,——my uncle Toby scarce exchanged three words with the sex in as many years;——no, he got it, Madam, by a blow.——A blow!—Yes, Madam, it was owing to a blow from a stone, broke off by a ball from the parapet of a horn-work at the siege of Namur,11 which struck full upon my uncle Toby’s groin.—Which way could that effect it? The story of that, Madam, is long and interesting;----but it would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you here.——’tis for an episode hereafter; and every circumstance relating to it in its proper place, shall be faithfully laid before you:----’Till then, it is not in my power to give further light into this matter, or say more than what I have said already,—–That my uncle Toby was a gentleman of unparallel’d modesty, which happening to be somewhat subtilized and rarified by the constant heat of a little family-pride,—–they both so wrought together within him, that he could never bear to hear the affair of my aunt DINAH touch’d upon, but with the greatest emotion.——The least hint of it was enough to make the blood fly into his face;—but when my father enlarged upon the story in mixed companies, which the illustration of his hypothesis frequently obliged him to do,----the unfortunate blight of one of the fairest branches of the family, would set my uncle Toby’s honour and modesty o’bleeding; and he would often take my father aside, in the greatest concern imaginable, to expostulate and tell him, he would give him any thing in the world, only to let the story rest.
My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle Toby, that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done any thing in nature, which one brother in reason could have desir’d of another, to have made my uncle Toby’s heart easy in this, or any other point. But this lay out of his power.
——My father, as I told you, was a philosopher in grain,12—speculative,—systematical;—and my aunt Dinah’s affair was a matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the planets to Copernicus:13—The backslidings of Venus in her orbit fortified the Copernican system, call’d so after his name; and the backslidings of my aunt Dinah in her orbit, did the same service in establishing my father’s system, which, I trust, will for ever hereafter be call’d the Shandean System, after his.
In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a sense of shame as any man whatever;——and neither he, nor, I dare say, Copernicus, would have divulged the affair in either case, or have taken the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they thought, to truth.—Amicus Plato, my father would say, construing the words to my uncle Toby, as he went along, Amicus Plato; that is, DINAH was my aunt;—sed magis amica veritas14——but TRUTH is my sister.
This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was the source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace recorded,———and the other would scarce ever let a day pass to an end without some hint at it.
For God’s sake, my uncle Toby would cry,——and for my sake,