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Passage Illustrated: The Male Midwife arrives

— — And pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head? — — 'Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. Slop (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are — ’tis a point very difficult to know — and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;— — because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head — there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

— —What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncleToby.— —There is no such danger, continued he, with the head. — No, in truth quoth my father — but when your possibility has taken place at the hip — you may as well take off the head too.

— —It is morally impossible the reader should understand this— —'tis enough Dr. Slop understood it;— —so taking the green baize bag in his hand, with the help of Obadiah’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door— —and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my mother's apartments. [Book II, Chapter X]

Commentary

Tristram Shandy's father has summoned the choleric Dr. Slop, a rural physician and "man-midwife," to attend the birth of his son, who becomes the book's narrator, Tristram. Here, Sterne has his narrator describe Slop as "a little squat, uncourtly figure . . . about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards." Cruikshank makes him appear what he is: an incompetent quack. He has arrived to attend Mrs. Shandy without his "vile instruments" and "obstetrical engines," and therefore must send for them, in particular, for the forceps. As Sterne leads us to expect, Slop botches the forceps delivery by damaging the infant's nose, and must immediately perform a rudimentary nose-repair using a piece of whalebone from a maid's corset. Cruikshank has clearly borrowed from William Hogarth in the style of the composition, one of eight engravings on which he worked in May and June of 1832:

Owning an [1760] edition with Hogarth's frontispiece, he modeled the room and the figures of Walter Shandy, Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and Dr. Slop after these plates, animating the wigs and exaggerating the waists and physiognomies. . . . . Dr. Slop [he] . . . rendered even more slovenly and dwarfish than by Hogarth. . . . [Patten, p. 350]

Bibliography

Burton, Anthony. "Cruikshank as an Illustrator of Fiction." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Ed. Robert L. Patten. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1974, rev., 1992. Pp. 92-128.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Patten, Robert L. Chapter 21, "An 'Average-European' Style." George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art, vol. 1: 1792-1835. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers U. P., 1992; London: The Lutterworth Press, 1992. Pp. 341-354.

Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759). Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: James Cochrane, 1832.

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

McLean, Ruari. George Cruikshank: His Life and Work as a Book Illustrator. English Masters of Black-and-White. London: Art and Technics, 1948.

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