The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | Page 3

what I have set about, I shall confine
myself neither to his rules, nor to any man's rules that ever lived.

To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, I can give no better
advice than that they skip over the remaining part of this chapter; for I declare
before-hand, 'tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive.
--Shut the door.--
I was begot in the night betwixt the first Sunday and the first Monday in the month of
March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I
was.--But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing which happened
before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own family, but
now made publick for the better clearing up this point.
My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey merchant, but had left off
business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the
county of ----, was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether
'twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of
this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for
many years of his life,--on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole
year,--as certain as ever the Sunday-night came,--to wind up a large house-clock, which
we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:--And being somewhere
between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of,--he had likewise
gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as
he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be
no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.
It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and
the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an
unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length,
that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up,--but the thoughts of some
other things unavoidably popped into her head--& vice versa:--Which strange
combination of ideas, the sagacious Locke, who certainly understood the nature of these
things better than most men, affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other
sources of prejudice whatsoever.
But this by the bye.
Now it appears by a memorandum in my father's pocket-book, which now lies upon the
table, 'That on Lady-day, which was on the 25th of the same month in which I date my
geniture,--my father set upon his journey to London, with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix
him at Westminster school;' and, as it appears from the same authority, 'That he did not
get down to his wife and family till the second week in May following,'--it brings the
thing almost to a certainty. However, what follows in the beginning of the next chapter,
puts it beyond all possibility of a doubt.
--But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January, and February?--Why,
Madam,--he was all that time afflicted with a Sciatica.

Chapter 1.
V.
On the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the aera fixed on, was as near nine
kalendar months as any husband could in reason have expected,--was I Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world of ours.--I wish I had been
born in the Moon, or in any of the planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never
could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them
(though I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,--which,
o' my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up of the shreds and
clippings of the rest;--not but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be born in
it to a great title or to a great estate; or could any how contrive to be called up to public
charges, and employments of dignity or power;--but that is not my case;--and therefore
every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it;--for which cause I
affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made;--for I can truly say,
that from the first hour I drew my breath in it, to this, that I can now scarce draw it at