5 November 1718

5 November 1718 is the date of Tristram Shandy’s birth, fixed by the narrator as nearly nine calendar months after the period his account identifies. Its significance extends beyond the birthday itself: the birth follows a dispute over the terms of Elizabeth Mollineux’s marriage settlement, and becomes the point around which Walter Shandy’s anxieties about childbirth, bodily formation, and intellectual life gather.

The Settlement and the Country Birth

The marriage settlement provided that if Walter Shandy retired from business to the country while Elizabeth could still bear children, he would pay £120 for a coach, horses, and expenses to convey her to London for each confinement. It also allowed her to choose where and with whom to stay in the city. The provision thus gave her a contractual means to secure a London lying-in even within marriage.

A further clause limited that right if Elizabeth put Walter to the expense of a London journey on false signs of labor: she would forfeit the right for the next confinement, but not for later ones. The narrator says that this safeguard was added at the prompting of his uncle, Toby Shandy. In September 1717, when Elizabeth had taken Walter to London, Walter insisted on applying the clause; the narrator presents the consequence as a country birth and associates it with the later compression of his nose.

The account does not settle whether Elizabeth’s labor signs were genuine. The narrator leaves open whether she was deceived, mistaken, or misleading, and makes that uncertainty part of the story rather than resolving it. He presents the legal arrangement as a cause of his misfortune, while emphasizing that the question of his mother’s condition cannot be conclusively judged from his account.

Disagreement over Midwifery

Once the decision was made that Elizabeth would give birth in the country, she chose the experienced parish midwife. She began considering her choice only a few days into her pregnancy and settled on the older woman within the week, despite the absence of the eminent Dr. Manningham and the availability, eight miles away, of a male practitioner who had published a book on midwifery. The narrator notes that the local midwife had nearly twenty years of practice without an accident fairly attributable to her.

Walter preferred the man-midwife, while Elizabeth insisted on choosing her own attendant. His arguments moved between domestic authority, religion, fatherhood, and politics; hers rested on her claimed right to decide who would attend her. The dispute ended in a division of arrangements: Elizabeth would have the midwife, and the operator would be licensed to drink a bottle of wine with Walter and Toby in the back parlor for a fee of five guineas. The birth date therefore follows not a single medical choice but a negotiated contest over maternal preference, professional authority, and household power.

Walter’s Explanations of Birth and Health

Walter’s concern about the birth was part of a broader theory that the manner of delivery could shape a child’s mind. Citing a work he had consulted, he believed the force of labor could compress a child’s pliable head; the account gives the claimed average force as 470 pounds and says that, in 49 cases out of 50, the head would be molded into an elongated shape. Walter feared that this pressure would damage the brain and, especially, the cerebellum, which he regarded as the seat of understanding. He further believed that delivery by the feet would avoid the harm by directing pressure differently. These are Walter’s theories as reported in the narrative, not established explanations of Tristram’s later character.

His medical reasoning also extends to the balance of what he calls radical heat and radical moisture. He argues that health depends on their proper contention, distinguishes the supposed vital, oily moisture from animal fat and phlegm, and associates their decline with abnormal dryness or dropsy. In the passage on his theory, he concludes that a growing child must learn to avoid the dangers represented by fire and water. The detail shows how the birth date sits within Walter’s habit of treating bodily development as a system vulnerable to precise physical and intellectual consequences.

Birth, Kinship, and Narrative Consequence

The narrator dates his birth to 5 November 1718 and introduces himself at that moment as Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, born into what he calls a disastrous world. His account links this entry into life to the preceding settlement and disputes, while postponing a fuller explanation of the consequences he attributes to the compression of his nose. The date is therefore both a firm chronological marker and the beginning of a deliberately extended causal history.

The book also complicates the language of family connection through a legal case discussed by Walter and learned interlocutors. In the Duke of Suffolk’s case, a mother administered the goods of her intestate son, while his paternal half-sister contested her claim as next of kin. The consulted lawyers and church authorities were said to hold that a mother was not legally kin to her child under the principle Mater non numeratur inter consanguineos. Yorick then applies the argument to Tristram, joking that his parents are less related to him than Yorick is. Toby resists the conclusion, insisting that there must have been some kind of kinship between the duchess and her son. Set beside the birth, the episode turns descent into a dispute between formal legal classifications and ordinary familial understanding.