Tom Jones Book 7, Chapter 12

The Adventure of a Company of Officers

• The lieutenant has been really unlucky with his career.
• Everyone respects and likes him.
• But he has spent the last forty years under the command of a colonel who keeps blocking his promotion. Why?
• Because the colonel tried to sleep with the lieutenant's wife and she refused him. Oops.
• She never told her husband of this proposition for fear that he would be angry with her.
• So the lieutenant has no idea why the colonel won't promote him.
• He serves with a French lieutenant and two ensigns, Notherton and Adderly.
• At dinner, Tom says that the troops will no doubt fight "more like Grecians than Trojans" (7.12.7) against the enemy. (In other words, Tom is sure they'll win.)
• The ensign Notherton, responding to Tom, starts cursing Latin school, and religion.
• The lieutenant tries to scold the ensign for swearing so much and for cursing priests in particular.
• Northerton keeps trying to provoke Tom: he mocks Tom's "great learning" (7.12.18).
• Tom puts him down hard with some fine sarcasm.
• Notherton silently plans his revenge.
• When Tom raises his glass to toast Sophia, Notherton says that she "was lain-with by half the young fellows at Bath" (7.12.22). (Bath is a famous English resort town.)
• Tom insults Notherton and calls him a liar.
• Notherton throws a bottle at Tom's head.
• The bottle knocks Tom out; he's bleeding from his head.
• The lieutenant stops Northerton from escaping the scene of his crime.
• Northerton protests that he didn't mean any harm; he doesn't even know a woman named Sophia Western. (Idiot.)
• The lieutenant sends Northerton off into custody.
• The lieutenant calls in a surgeon for Tom.
• Tom starts waking up.