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The Time-Scheme of Tristram Shandy and a Source

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Theodore Baird
Theodore Baird*
Affiliation:
Amherst College
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Extract

The usual criticism of Tristram Shandy denies that there is in this great novel plan, form, or method. Sterne himself supplied the text which criticism has tirelessly amplified, “I begin writing the first sentence … trusting to God Almighty for the second.” A popular history of English literature, to take one of a great many possible examples, speaks of Tristram Shandy as having “an indefinite theme, worked out by a verve that has not the slightest concern for order, unity or logic. … The work is a series of mental and verbal pirouettings.” Governor Cross, almost alone among critics, has given the book its proper place in the history of the novel by elaborating what Sterne himself repeatedly said, that Tristram Shandy is Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding in a novelized form.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 1936 , pp. 803 - 820
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 Legouis and Cazamian, A History of English Literature (London, 1933), p. 883.

2 Wilbur L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne, revised edition (New Haven, 1925), i, 277, and “Laurence Sterne in the Twentieth Century,” Yale Review, New Series, xv, 106 ff.

3 Frederick S. Dickson in “The Chronology of ‘Tom Jones’,” in The Library (Third Series, viii, 218–224), has worked out the time-scheme, and concludes that Fielding carried his chronology in his head as he wrote, and that when he has the two day-by-day narratives of Tom and Sophia to tell, they are carefully related in time one to another.

4 Tindal's History is, of course, a compilation, but the complicated question of his sources is not here my concern. It is plain on more than one page that he is indebted to, or used the same sources as, Abel Boyer in The History of King William the Third (3 vols., London, 1703), The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, Digested into Annals (11 vols., London, 1703–11), The History of Queen Anne. Wherein all the Civil and Military Transactions of that Memorable Reign are Faithfully Compiled (folio, London, 1735), The Political State of Great Britain (38 vols., 1711–29). Boyer does not contain all the historical material that Sterne used, and there is not the same clear evidence of Sterne's verbal borrowing and paraphrase.

5 Tristram Shandy, iii, xxxiii.

6 T.S., iii, xxii, xxxi-xxxiii.

7 T.S., iii, x.

8 T.S., v, xl.

9 T.S., v, xxxvi-xl. Tindal, iii, 147 ff., but he makes no mention of the flux from which the camp suffered. Mr. Aubrey Attwater in the Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 23, 1933, p. 651, points out that Leven's Regiment (now the King's Own Scottish Borderers) was serving at this time in Scotland. Colonel Clifford Walton in his History of the British Standing Army. A.D. 1660 to 1700 (London, 1894), p. 136, quotes Trim's description of Limerick and says that it was “evidently taken by Sterne from some old soldier who had been present.”

10 T.S., viii, xix; ii, v. And now Tindal, iii, 240: “The King, seeing the battle lost, … ordered the regiments of Wyndham, Lumley, and Galway to cover his retreat over the bridge at Neerhespen, which he gained with great difficulty. There was now nothing but confusion and disorder in the Confederates camp … The King did what he could to remedy this disorder [the Hanover horse had broken], riding to the left to bring up the English horse for the relief of the right wing. … The King himself charged at the head of Lord Galway's regiment. … He charged himself, in several places, and was in the midst of the most imminent dangers; many being shot round about him with the enemies cannon, and himself escaping no less than three musket shots, one through is peruke which deafened him for some time, another through the sleeve of his coat, and a third, which carried off the knot of his scarf, … the Prince of Conti, in an intercepted letter to him declared, ‘I saw the King exposing himself to the greatest dangers; and surely so much valour very well deserved the peaceable possession of the crown he wears.‘ … Lieutenant-General Talmash brought off the English foot with great prudence, bravery, and success …” The order of these sentences follows Sterne's narrative and is not Tindal's. Sterne commonly misspells names of towns as they occur in Tindal, though Neerspeeken for Neerhespen is for him a bad mistake. Tindal, for his narrative of this battle, paraphrases Edward D'Auvergne, The History of the Last Campagne in the Spanish Netherlands, Anno Dom. 1693 (London, 1693), though as my concern is not with the source of a source, I do not here give the evidence.

11 T.S., viii, ix.

12 T.S., vi, vi.

13 J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (London, 1899), i, 378.

14 T.S., ii, i. See also ix, xxvi. Sterne made use of the following sentences from Tindal, iii, 293: “The English and Scots … came out of the trenches to the right, and attacked the point of the foremost counterscarp, which inclosed the sluice or water-stop. … The English [were] exposed to the shot of the counter-guard and demi-bastion of St. Roche. … The Dutch lodged themselves upon the counter-guard; and thus both they and the English preserved the foremost covered-way before St. Nicholas's gate from the Maese to the water-stop, with part of the counter-guard. … it must be also acknowledged, that the French officers behaved themselves like men of true courage, exposing themselves on the glacis of the counterscarp and on the breach of the counter-guard, with their swords in their hands, in order to encourage their soldiers.” And facing p. 289 in Tindal is a large plan of Namur, in which a reader may feel pretty confident that he could stick a pin upon the exact spot of ground where Uncle Toby was standing when he received his wound.

15 T.S., ii, iii; i, xxv.

16 T.S., ii, iii.

17 T.S., i, vii; x; xvii f.

18 T.S., ii, iii.

19 T.S., ii, iv.

20 T.S., i, xxi.

21 T.S., viii, ix.

22 T.S., ii, iv. And also i, xxv: “He was four years totally confined,—part of it to his bed, and all of it to his room. …” And viii, vi, where we learn how long he was confined to his bed: Captain Shandy's leg “was a little stiff and awkward, from a total disuse of it, for the three years he lay confined at my father's house in town. …” It was Monsieur Ronjat, Serjeant-surgeon to the King, who set King William's collar-bone after the fall from horseback which was to prove fatal to him. See Tindal, iii, 505.

23 T.S., ii, v.

24 T.S., viii, viii, ix.

25 T.S., viii, x.

26 T.S., vi, xxii. For Liege and Ruremond, Tindal, iii, 563.

27 Tindal, iii, 616.

28 Ibid., iii, 617 f.

29 Ibid., iii, 617, but spells it Rhinburg.

30 Ibid., iii, 620.

31 Ibid., iii, 620, but spells it Limburg.

32 T.S., vi, xxiii.

33 Tindal, iii, 238 ff.

34 Ibid., iii, 662, but spells it Traerbach.

35 Ibid., iii, 703.

36 Ibid., iii, 703 f., but reads Drusenheim. The marginal note, however, divides the word thus Drusen/heim, and it is obvious that Sterne is here collecting names of battles and sieges from the margin, where all these names appear, without reference to dates or details. Also T.S., vi, xxxv, in repeating the list of Uncle Toby's battles for this year, he repeats the spelling Drusen.

37 Ibid., iii, 704.

38 Tindal, iii, 751, for both Ostend and Menin.

39 T.S., vi, xxiii. Tindal, iii, 751, gives no precise date for Aeth and Dendermond. They were both captured in 1706.

40 T.S., iv, xxxi.

41 T.S., vi, xxiii.

42 T.S., vi, xxiii.

43 T.S., vi, vi–xiii. The date of the death of Le Fever's wife cannot be arrived at from what Sterne tells us. On his death bed the Lieutenant told Trim, “I was the ensign at Breda, whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.” Here Sterne is plainly referring to an indefinite past. He probably selected Breda as the proper setting of this sentimental episode, because Breda was regularly used for winter quarters. See Tindal, iii, 562.

44 Tindal, iv, 80 ff.

45 Ibid., iv, 91 ff.

46 T.S., vi, xxiii.

47 T.S., vi, xxiv. Tindal, iv, 81, reads thus: “Eight hundred grenadiers, supported by the like number of fusileers, thirty carpenters, and two hundred workmen, were commanded for the attack of the right, between the Lower Deule and the gate St. Andrew, under the direction of the Sieur des Roques; and sixteen hundred grenadiers, supported by the like number of fusileers, thirty carpenters, and two thousand workmen, were commanded for the attack of the left, between the river and the gate of St. Magdalen, under the direction of the Sieur du Mey.”

48 T.S., vi, xxiv–xxviii.

49 T.S., v, xii; viii, xxvi; vi, xxi.

50 . T.S., vi, vi.

51 T.S., vi, xxxi.

52 T.S., vi, xxxiv. Tindal, iv, 327, reads as follows: “Monsieur Tugghe, Deputy from the Magistrates of Dunkirk, presented to the Queen an address or petition, 'wherein he begged her Majesty's clemency for sparing the harbour and port of that town.' … Tugghe … presented a second address … and … concluded with presuming to hope, 'That her Majesty would graciously be pleased to recall part of her sentence, by causing her thunderbolts to fall only on the martial works, which might have incurred her displeasure, and by sparing only the mole and dykes, which, in their naked condition, could, for the future, be no more than an object of pity'.”

53 T.S., vi, xxxiv. Tindal, iv, 328, reads: “The French intended to have made a breach in the ramparts, or main fortifications of the town; but the two English Commissioners having made the Commandant sensible, that, if the same was permitted, the English garrison was not safe, and the French might easily make themselves masters of the place; Sir James insisted, and it was at last agreed to by le Blane, that all the outworks, both towards the sea and the land, should be first demolished; next, the harbour ruined and filled; afterwards the main fortifications of the place razed and destroyed; and last of all, the citadel.” Fort Louis, though not mentioned in the text of Tindal, is prominently represented on the map of the city and citadel of Dunkirk, facing p. 328, where it is from the citadel the most distant of the outworks.

54 T.S., vi, xxxix.

55 Tindal, iv, 84 ff.

56 T.S., viii, xix. Tindal, iv, 274, reads: “… the States having resolved to prosecute the operations of the war, the trenches were opened before Quesnoy, and the siege carried on with all imaginable vigour under the command of General Fagel. … The Duke therefore could no longer cover the siege of Quesnoy. …”

57 T.S., viii, xix. This is a condensed version of the itinerary as given in Tindal, iii, 654 ff, as the following pertinent phrases show: “From Maestricht the Duke of Marlborough marched to Bedburg. … and advanced from Bedburg to Kerpenord, the next day to Kalsecken. … He therefore continued his march with unwearied diligence, and advanced to the camp of Neudorf near Coblentz … Then the Duke passed the Neckar near Ladenburg, where he rested three days. … the Duke of Marlborough, who marched from Ladenburg to Mildenheim. … On the 24th, the army marched from thence [i.e., Westerstet] to Elchingen; the next day to Gingen. On the 30th, the army marched from thence to Landthaussen on the right, and Balmertshoffen on the left. … About five o'clock in the afternoon, they came before Schellenberg. … On the 5th of July, the Duke of Marlborough passed the Danube. … On the 10th, the whole army passed the Lech. … The Confederate army … decamped, on the 4th of August from Friburg. … The next morning, they decamped from thence [i.e., Kippach], and marched to Bokenwert. … The 10th, they marched to Schonevelt. … They [the enemy] were possessed of a very advantageous post on a hill near Hochstet, their right flank being covered by the Danube, and the village of Blenheim. …” Sterne as usual varies the spelling of the place names. The marginal note in Tindal, iii, 654, reads: “The Duke of Marlborough's march into Germany.” G. M. Trevelyan in his England under Queen Anne: vol. i, Blenheim (London, 1931), p. 377, describes Uncle Toby's speech as “A piece of literature about the campaign of Blenheim which will probably survive even the stirring couplets of Addison's Campaign … .' He also notices that all the places that Uncle Toby mentions may be found on the map.

58 T.S., viii, xviii–xxvi.

59 T.S., viii, xxviii.

60 T.S., viii, xxvii–xxxv.

61 T.S., ix, i–xxv.

62 T.S., ix, xxvi–xxx.

63 T.S., ix, xxxi–end.

64 T.S., i, xix.

65 T.S., vi, xii–xiii. Tindal, iv, 548.

66 T.S., i, xv–xvi.

67 T.S., i, iv.

68 T.S., iii, xxiv–xxv. Tindal, iv, 582, has a note in the margin under the year 1718 which reads “Intrigues of Spain” and immediately below it “Alberoni's practices discovered in France.”

69 T.S., iii, xiii.

70 T.S., iii, xxii. Tindal, iv, 570 f.

71 T.S., iv, xxxi. Tindal, iv, 620, lists the seven issues of actions, and says, “The Mississippi stock was in its greatest prosperity during the months of November and December 1719. …”

72 T.S., v, ii–xv, xvi.

73 T.S., vi, xiii.

74 T.S., v, xvii.

75 T.S., v, xx–xxii. The following sentences are from the account in Tindal, iii, 208 f., of the battle of Steenkirk: “But Count Solms … instead of obeying the King's commands, ordered the horse to march, and the foot to halt; which proved the loss of the day. … the Prince of Wirtemberg … began the attack with the Danes upon the right, which was immediately followed by the other four English regiments, that composed the van-guard, and seconded by Cuts's, Mackay's, Angus's, Graham's, Lowther's, the Prince of Hesse's, and Leven's regiments. … The English life-guards owed their preservation to the Danish foot-guards. … Sir Bevil Grenville, who commanded the Earl of Bath's regiment, marched up to his [the Baron of Pibrack, whose regiment was in disorder] relief, receiving the enemies fire, before he suffered any peloton of his batallion to discharge once. … For the ground was so strait, and the enemy had such hedges, copses, and ditches to cover them, that there was nothing to do for the horse. … All the other regiments behaved themselves with equal bravery, firing muzzle to muzzle through the hedges. … The King, enraged at the disappointment of the vanguard for want of a timely relief, expressed his concern by often repeating these words, Ol my poor English! how they are abandoned! Nor would he admit Count Solms to his presence for many months after.” The foregoing sentences follow the order of Sterne as he used them. And Tindal, iii, 240, in the account of the battle of Landen, says, “… the Count de Solms had his leg shot off by a cannon-ball, of which he died in a few hours.” Behind Tindal is [Edward D'Auvergne] A Relation of the Most Remarkable Transactions of the Last Campaigne in the Confederate Army, Under the Command of His Majesty of Great Britain; and After of the Elector of Bavaria, in the Spanish Netherlands, Anno Dom. 1692 (London, 1693), pp. 43 f., though he makes no mention of Count Solmes. Walton, History of the British Standing Army, pp. 224 ff., uses Sterne as an authority for his narrative of the battle.

76 T.S., vi, xiv–xv.

77 T.S., ii, xii.

78 T.S., i, xi.

79 T.S., i, x.

80 T.S., ii, xvii.

81 Cross, Life and Times of Laurence Sterne, ii, 266 f.

82 T.S., i, xviii.