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 super-added many
curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the fœtus 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 pitiful 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
the remedy along with it.
“Was I an absolute prince,” he would say, pulling up his breeches with
both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, “I would appoint able
judges, at every avenue of my metropolis, who should take cognizance of
every fool’s business who came there;—and if, upon a fair and candid
hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home,
and come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children, farmer’s
sons, &c. &c. at his backside, they should be all sent back, from
constable to constable, like vagrants as they were, to the place of
their legal settlements. By this means I shall take care, that my
metropolis totter’d not thro’ its own weight;—that the head be no
longer too big for the body;—that the extremes, now wasted and pinn’d
in, be restored to their due share of nourishment, and regain with it
their natural strength and beauty:—I would effectually provide, That
the meadows and corn fields of my dominions, should laugh and
sing;—that good chear and hospitality flourish once more;—and that such
weight and influence be put thereby into the hands of the Squirality of
my kingdom, as should counterpoise what I perceive my Nobility are now
taking from them.”
“Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen’s seats,” he would ask,
with some emotion, as he walked across the room, “throughout so many
delicious provinces in _France_? Whence is it that the few remaining
_Chateaus_ amongst them are so dismantled,—so unfurnished, and in so
ruinous and desolate a condition?——Because, Sir” (he would say) “in
that kingdom no man has any country-interest to support;—the little
interest of any kind which any man has any where in it, is concentrated
in the court, and the looks of the Grand Monarch: by the sunshine of
whose countenance, or the clouds which pass across it, every _French_
man lives or dies.”
Another political reason which prompted my father so strongly to guard
against the least evil accident in my mother’s lying-in in the
country,——was, That any such instance would infallibly throw a balance
of power, too great already, into the weaker vessels of the gentry, in
his own, or higher stations;——which, with the many other usurped rights
which that part of the constitution was hourly establishing,—would, in
the end, prove fatal to the monarchical system of domestick government
established in the first creation of things by God.
In this point he was entirely of Sir _Robert Filmer_’s opinion, That
the plans and institutions of the greatest monarchies in the eastern
parts of the world, were, originally, all stolen from that admirable
pattern and prototype of this houshold and paternal power;—which, for a
century, he said, and more, had gradually been degenerating away into a
mix’d government;——the form of which, however desirable in great
combinations of the species,——was very troublesome in small ones,—and
seldom produced any thing, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion.
For all these reasons, private and publick, put together,—my father was
for having the man-midwife by all means,—my mother, by no means. My
father begg’d and intreated, she would for once recede from her
prerogative in this matter, and suffer him to choose for her;—my
mother, on the contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to
choose for herself,—and have no mortal’s help but the old woman’s.—What
could my father do? He was almost at his wit’s end;——talked it over
with her in all moods;—placed his arguments in all lights;—argued the
matter with her like a christian,—like a heathen,—like a husband,—like
a father,—like a patriot,—like a man:—My mother answered every thing
only like a woman; which was a little hard upon her;—for as she could
not assume and fight it out behind such a variety of characters,—’twas
no fair match:—’twas seven to one.—What could my mother do?—She had the
advantage (otherwise she had been certainly overpowered) of a small
reinforcement of chagrin personal at the bottom, which bore her up, and
enabled her to dispute the affair with my father with so equal an
advantage,——that both sides sung _Te Deum._ In a word, my mother was to
have the old woman,—and the operator was to have licence to drink a
bottle of wine with my father and my uncle _Toby Shandy_ in the back
parlour,—for which he was to be paid five guineas.
I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter a caveat in
the breast of my fair reader;—and it is this,——Not to take it
absolutely for granted, from an unguarded word or two which I have
dropp’d in it,——“That I am a married man.”—I own, the tender
appellation of my dear, dear _Jenny_,—with some other strokes of
conjugal knowledge, interspersed here and there, might, naturally
enough, have misled the most candid judge in the world into such a
determination against me.—All I plead for, in this case, Madam, is
strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to me as well as to
yourself,—as not to prejudge, or receive such an impression of me, till
you have better evidence, than, I am positive, at present can be
produced against me.—Not that I can be so vain or unreasonable, Madam,
as to desire you should therefore think, that my dear, dear _Jenny_ is
my kept mistress;—no,—that would be flattering my character in the
other extreme, and giving it an air of freedom, which, perhaps, it has
no kind of right to. All I contend for, is the utter impossibility, for
some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth,
should know how this matter really stands.—It is not impossible, but
that my dear, dear _Jenny!_ tender as the appellation is, may be my
child.—Consider,—I was born in the year eighteen.—Nor is there any
thing unnatural or extravagant in the supposition, that my dear _Jenny_
may be my friend.—Friend!—My friend.—Surely, Madam, a friendship
between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported without———Fy! Mr.
_Shandy:_—Without any thing, Madam, but that tender and delicious
sentiment which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference
of sex. Let me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of
the best _French_ Romances;—it will really, Madam, astonish you to see
with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious sentiment,
which I have the honour to speak of, is dress’d out.