Walter Shandy and Uncle Toby

Walter Shandy and Uncle Toby share a close brotherly relationship whose defining pattern is contrast without estrangement: Walter theorizes, jokes, and provokes, while Toby answers with compliance, plain good sense, and gestures of affection. Their exchanges move from the comic discomfort of a visit to the Abbey of Saint-Germain to a serious disagreement about love and marriage, but even Walter’s teasing makes room for solicitude, and Toby’s response to praise is a quiet squeeze of his brother’s hand.

Contrasting Temperaments

During their stay at Auxerre, Walter proposes that the brothers visit the Abbey of Saint-Germain to see the bodies recommended by Monsieur Sequier. Toby readily agrees that he will go and see anyone. When Walter warns that the bodies are mummies, Toby answers that there will be no need to shave; Walter, preferring the appearance of relations, says they should go with their beards on. They set out together, with Corporal Trim lending Toby his arm and following behind.

The visit brings the brothers’ different sensibilities into focus. At the tomb of St. Heribald, Toby imagines that the celebrated prince must have been a gallant soldier. The sacristan replies that Heribald was a monk. Toby and Trim seek comfort in each other’s faces but find none, while Walter—who dislikes monks intensely—claps both hands upon his codpiece in amusement. The joke lands more heavily on Toby and Trim than on Walter, and that imbalance gives Walter a sense of relative triumph. The scene makes their affection visible through its comic asymmetry: Toby is the target of the exchange, but the brothers remain together in the encounter rather than turning the teasing into a rupture.

Shared Journeys and Separate Pursuits

The brothers’ companionship is also expressed in the way they divide their attention without separating. After the visit, Walter decides that the tombs have interested him enough to remain another day in Auxerre. As they cross the square, he plans to see the other occupants of the abbey the following day. Toby, in turn, proposes that he and Trim use that time to go up onto the ramparts. Their interests differ—Walter’s curiosity draws him back to the tombs, while Toby’s military interests draw him to the fortifications—but the exchange assumes a shared journey in which each brother can pursue his own object.

That arrangement fits their broader contrast. Walter’s attention tends toward systems and interpretation; Toby’s toward practical military matters and direct response. The book presents their difference not as a barrier to companionship but as the texture of it: one brother proposes and comments, the other answers and acts, and their common travels give both patterns room.

Love, Marriage, and the Wish for Toby’s Happiness

Their most explicit disagreement concerns Walter’s account of love. He invokes an ancient division between kinds of love, associated with the brain or the liver, and says that a man in love should consider which kind has taken hold of him. Toby rejects the importance of that classification. What matters to him is whether love leads a man to marry, love his wife, and have a few children. His answer brings the discussion away from abstraction and toward the ordinary consequences of affection.

Walter reacts strongly to Toby’s mention of children, rising from his chair and looking toward Mrs. Shandy. He then recovers and tells Toby that he would not be sorry if Toby had twenty children; he would rejoice and be as kind to each as a father. Toby reaches behind his chair and squeezes Walter’s hand without being noticed. The small gesture answers Walter’s sudden declaration more effectively than argument could: brotherly warmth is expressed physically, privately, and without interrupting the conversation.

Walter extends his praise by calling Toby unusually humane and free of harshness. In an imagined example, he says that if he were an Asiatic monarch he would procure Toby a beautiful woman and oblige him to father a child every month, provided the exertion did not damage his strength, dry up his radical moisture, or weaken his memory and fancy. The extravagance is characteristic of Walter’s speculative speech, but its premise is affectionate: he imagines Toby as someone whose kindness ought to multiply in the world. Toby refuses the coercive proposal, saying he would not father a child nolens volens, even to please the greatest prince on earth.

Walter accepts that it would be cruel to compel him. He clarifies that the point is not whether Toby can beget a child, but whether the system of love and marriage on which Toby relies is the right one. Their disagreement therefore persists, but it is framed by a recognition of Toby’s right to choose. Walter’s wish to correct his brother’s ideas does not erase his tenderness toward him; Toby can reject Walter’s hypothetical scheme while remaining close enough to offer him an unobserved squeeze of the hand.

A Lasting Bond Amid Walter’s Teasing

The later preparations for Toby’s attack on Mrs. Wadman show Walter’s teasing returning in a new context. Trim reports that Toby’s thin scarlet breeches will not serve: the tailor has discovered, while ripping them up to turn them, that they have already been turned before. Walter answers rapidly that they should be turned again, since there will be many more turnings before the affair is finished. The joke accompanies Toby’s courtship, but Walter does not present it as a reason to obstruct him.

Instead, Walter says that the widow has been deeply in love with Toby for many years and has used every art to bring him into the same passion; now that she has caught him, he supposes her fever has passed its height. This is comic commentary rather than a solemn account of either lover’s feelings, yet it places Walter on the side of his brother’s attachment: he treats Toby’s courtship as an affair whose progress deserves attention, even while making it the subject of wit. Across the scenes, their bond holds together disagreement, teasing, concern, and affectionate touch. Walter’s elaborate theories and Toby’s plain answers remain sharply different, but neither difference dislodges the durable intimacy between the brothers.