p

LIBRARY

OF THE

University of California.

1H*

Class > $3^

554

STERNE

id STUDT

Works by the Same ^Author

BOLINGBROKE AND HIS TIMES

BOLINGBROKE: THE SEQUEL

DISRAELI: A STUDY IN PERSON-
ALITY AND IDEAS

BEACONSFIELD : A BIOGRAPHY

EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

SHERIDAN (in two volumes)

LAURENCE STERNE

From the Original Oil Painting (in the possession of
Theodore Blake Wirgman, Esquire)

STERNE

iA STUDY

BY

WALTER SICHEL

TO WHICH IS ADDED

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA

There is a fatality in it, — I seldom go to the place I set out for."

Sentimental Journey .

OF THE

OF
• (FORM

LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE

14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C
1910

/

943

St

Sft

TO

LADY STRACEY

// adds something to this fragment of Life."

Sterne.

214699

PREFACE

Sterne's Archbishop of Benevento abridged a treatise which
had employed fifty years of his life to the sheet-size of a
Rider's Almanac. The prelate set a good example, which 1
have tried to follow. But miniatures of big subjects, if they
are to be adequate, involve the compass of larger portraits.
The outlines can be reduced, but not the quintessence of
character.

This book is a study. It seeks to interpret the problem
of the man, to vitalise him and his companions. It does
not pretend to be a formal biography, though new facts, as
well as old, pervade it.

More than anyone, Sterne demands this treatment, for
the romance of him seems only half alive. Professor Cross's
careful volume supplies many aids, but much also has been
missed. It is striking that no biographer should have yet
realised that Mrs Sterne was Mrs Montagu's cousin, or
have tracked the lights cast by that celebrity's correspond-
ence on her and on Sterne himself. These enable us to make
Sterne's wife a speaking figure, while they help to explain
her husband. So with Catherine de Fourmentelle, the
" dear, dear Jenny " of his Tristram, which holds persistent
traces of her elusive presence. From other neglected clues
too (however slender) she has been reconstructed here. So
again with Mrs Vesey, the belle of the blue-stockings.
Sterne's devotion to her began far earlier than has been

Vlll

PREFACE

supposed, and many a hint has escaped notice. So, once
more, with Sterne's known letters, which have been left
dishevelled, but are now related to their times, circum-
stances, and psychological bearings. And in Sterne's books
themselves much of significance has been overlooked.
Everywhere I have striven to make his voice, and still
more his accent, audible. His temperament was his art,
and in an unknown letter he told Garrick that his works
were a picture of himself. In presenting his nature I have
dwelt on features hitherto unperceived. His unnoticed
" Reverie of the Nuns " supplies the key to an organisa-
tion so dreamily self-centred that the outside world seemed
merely its counterpart.

Fresh matter assists these pages. The full meaning of
Mrs Draper's long communication to Mrs James (in the
British Museum) may be so considered. Two important
letters, printed years ago in the Archivist, are now utilised
with others. Three or four new autograph letters have also
proved serviceable, while the entire "Journal to Eliza,"
transcribed at the end, speaks for itself.

At least five of the portraits are of new impression.
The crayons of Sterne and his wife by Francis Cotes, the
fine presentment of him in youth which forms the fronti-
spiece, the characteristic one from a rare engraving that
corrects Reynolds's delineation, and another taken during
his Italian journey, will be of novel interest.

My best thanks are due to Mr Blake Wirgman for per-
mitting his picture to be reproduced, and to Mr Vincent
O'Sullivan and their owner the Rev. G. W. Blenkin,
Prebendary of Lincoln, for enabling me to present the
likenesses of Sterne and his wife which Nathaniel Hawthorne
paid a pilgrimage to see. And, further, I am much indebted
to Mr H. H. Raphael and to Mr Broadley for allowing me
to use the letters in their possession.

PREFACE ix

Sterne created signal characters. In his detachment and
emergence, his pathetic irony and humour, he is modern.
So in style. He has handed down a succession of wide-
spread influence. He was a master-impressionist, and
an arch-Bohemian. His true home is a fantastic inland :
the great highways of literature lie outside it. " For
Bohemia (cried my Uncle Toby) being totally inland, it
could have happened no otherwise. "

WALTER SICHEL.

January 1910.

ADDENDUM

P. 141, fifth line from foot of page.— "Descended to Bowood "
and " through the statesman " are mistakes. The portrait was
bought by Lord Holland, and acquired, at the sale of his pictures in
1840, by Lord Shelburne's son, the third Marquis of Lansdowne,
for the sum of five hundred guineas. It is now at Lansdowne
House. Lord Ronald Gower in his Joshua Reynolds (p. 40) has
quoted an unpublished letter in which Sterne says that the painter
presented him with the picture "as a tribute . . . that his heart
wished to pay to my genius. That man's way of thinking and man-
ners are at least equal to his pencil." Professor Cross (p. 201) says
that the likeness was undertaken "at the request of" Lord Ossory.

P. 163, line 26, delete "bride's."

CONTENTS

CHAP.
I.

2.

3-

4-
5-
6.

7-
8.

9-

io.
ii.

12.
!3-

OF STERNE, APART FROM HIS " LIFE

OF STERNE'S LIFE, APART FROM STERNE

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE

ELIZABETH LUMLEY AND THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED .....

THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVAL (174I-I759)
THE PREACHER ......

THE UNSENTIMENTAL CASE OF STERNE'S MOTHER
"THE HISTORY OF A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT,"
TOGETHER WITH ONE OF THE BAD WARM
"DEMONIACS"

terne's WIF]

OF STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE (KITTY DE FOUR-

MENTELLE AND " TRISTRAM " : MARCH I 759 TO

JUNE I760)

THE URBAN PARSON (COXWOLD AND LONDON AGAIN,
I76l) ........

sterne's authorship ......

FRENCH LEAVE (THE STAY IN FRANCE : JANUARY
I762 TO MAY I764)

I

7
12

28

50
64

77
98

107
120

128

160
171

211

xii CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

15. UP TO THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY (JUNE I 764 TO

OCTOBER I765) ....... 235

1 6. THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY (FRANCE AND ITALY J

OCTOBER 1765 TO MAY 1 766) .... 243

17. THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL (ELIZA DRAPER : JANUARY

I767 TO JANUARY 1 768) ..... 256

18. THE LAST GASP (FEBRUARY 26 TO MARCH 1 8, 1 768 :

THE SEQUELS) ....... 280

APPENDIX THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA .... 293

INDEX ......... 352

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of Sterne ....... frontispiece

From the original oil-painting in possession of Theodore Blake
Wirgman, Esquire.

TO FACE PAGE

Mrs Sterne ......... 29

From the original portrait in crayons by Frances Cotes, in possession of
the Rev. G. W. Blenkin.

Sterne .......... 77

From original portrait in crayons by Frances Cotes, in possession of the
Rev. G. W. Blenkin.

Sterne . . . . . . . . . .135

From an early engraving.

Sterne .......... 142

From a mezzotint after the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds,

Parsonage House, Coxwold, Yorkshire . . . .160

The residetice of the Rev. Laurence Sterne. From an old engraving.

The Interior of Coxwold Church . . . . .162

From a drawing by Miss Florence Holms.

Sterne's Letter to Garrick . . . . . .169

From an old facsimile.

Sterne .......... 252

From the old Florentine engraving.

A facsimile page from "The Journal to Eliza" . . 270

Sterne's Daughter with her Father's Bust . . . . 285

From the original engraving in her edition of his letters.

xiii

STERNE

A STUDY
CHAPTER I

A vivid likeness of Laurence Sterne still seems to fail the
Georgian portrait gallery. The frame is there, and the wan,
pensive, roguish face, with the lips maliciously sentimental.
But the soul, about which Sterne declared himself so
"positive," the soul which contradicted his actions, is missing.
He has been much written about, mapped out, dissected,
criticised, but maps and anatomical plans are never portraits.
We hear too little of his accents, see too little of his gestures.
Even the few sketches of him show small perspective, and
views without perspective may be decoration, but they are
not pictures. Sterne's own " gerund-grinders " (" Smel-
fungus " and " Mundungus ") may labour over his " Life,"
yet what is life without living ? The moles have been busy
with the firefly, but the dancing, gleaming thing eludes
their patience. Nor have the critics succeeded in capturing
him. Even Thackeray, the master who borrowed so many
of his strokes, has dwelt on his lubricities, importing the
worst of the man into the best of his work ; and about the
man, indeed, there is much that is questionable. In this
regard Thackeray perhaps should be forgiven no more than

2 STERNE

Sterne. But debtors are seldom the fairest judges of their
creditors. More almost than any man of genius in the
eighteenth century (except perhaps Boswell), Sterne has been
alternately flogged and patronised by his inferiors.

When the French commissary of the posts asked
Tristram Shandy who he was, he returned the significant
answer, " Don't puzzle me." Though Sterne assured his
" Eliza " that he was the most " transparent " of men, and
wrote to a friend, " I show all," though Heine, comparing
him with Jean Paul, says from a true standpoint that Sterne
bares himself naked, a riddle to himself and others he was
and wished to be. It was part of his philosophy that the
most trivial things are enigmas. But we who watch him in
his century, that atmosphere of varnished licence and cruel
tenderness, need not be so perplexed. We have fresh
lights to guide us. He has written himself down on many
of his own pages, and his essence rather than his character
— the word "character" mates ill with Sterne — is not fleet-
ing, but permanent. For Sterne sums up a modern type,
that of the vagabond sentimentalist and fugitive feeler, self-
conscious, loose, morbid, errant, artistic, aesthetic to the
core. You can watch him, this firefly that fancied himself
a star. And though the stars look down on his brief night
hour with eternal scorn, we mortals, who flit so often, how-
ever highly we aspire, are concerned with his wanderings.

He was the first to strike the note of personal intimacy in

prose fiction. He was its first fantastic, its first master of

pathos ; the first in eighteenth century prose to perceive the

joy, though not the grandeur, of nature, the first to vignette

life. He founded modern impressionism, substituting for

\\ descriptive literature a diary of sensations, and a scale of

\ I cadence for a string of sentences. He went entirely of? the

\1 lines of his environment, contradicting its forms and shocking

I its formality. He was, in the strict sense of the term, an

OF STERNE, APART FROM HIS "LIFE" 3

eccentric. His own words about the elder Shandy fit him
well : " The truth was, his road lay so very far on one side
from that wherein most men travelled, that every object
before him presented a face and section of itself to his eye,
altogether different from the plan and elevation of it
seen by the rest of mankind — in other words, it was a

different object He saw kings and courts and silks

of all colours in such strange lights ! " Such were the
gossamer impressions that Sterne dramatised and christened
" Shandean."

But Sterne was more than a channel for these. His
essence may be best conveyed by the label of " a detached
sensationalist." His personality played on the whole gamut
of sensation, but the particular bar that momentarily absorbed
him sounded like the whole tune, so poignant was its appeal,
so sensitive was his ear. His acute sensationalism indeed
precludes him from attaining the highest harmonies. For
he could never realise the complete score, so keenly did
his favourite notes possess him, the music of his moods.
The part detained him from the whole. He was a sequence
of interludes, and hence arose his invertebrateness, his lack
of centrality ; the mastery of his touch, the limitations of
his range. He himself has given us the clue. On one
occasion his Parisian admirer, the young Suard, asked him
to account for this odd amalgam of the fixed and the fluid
— the volatile salt in him, changeful yet consistent. Sterne's
answer deserves close attention. He owned, he said, " one
of those delicate calibres dominated by the sacred, informing
principle of the soul, that immortal flame which at once
supports life and consumes it, which sublimes and varies
every sensation by unexpected starts." "This creative
faculty," he went on, "is named imagination or sensibility
according as it gets vent under a writer's pen either in
graphic scene-painting, or in the portraiture of the pas-

4 STERNE

sions." 1 So Sterne sums up his own nature, over-dignifying
it perhaps, yet warranted by its flitting phases. The salt has
not lost its savour. His vein persists both at home and
abroad. It will be found leavening Thackeray, Dickens,
and even Carlyle ; in more recent days, notably Robert
Louis Stevenson, not to speak of moderns like Mr William
Locke and Mr Anthony Hope. Sterne's imprint is visible
on some of Goethe, more of Jean Paul, and much of Heine.
In France he has imbued Xavier de Maistre, and he has
tinged Saintine. He claimed that he " would swim down the
gutter of Time " : assuredly he has done so.

And his belongings interest us too : his association
with " Count " Steele, the strolling artist who brought young
Romney to York and painted the future author ; his
wife's kinswoman, the redoubtable Mrs Montagu, whom
Sterne always called " cosin " and who to the last returned
his devotion ; John Blake, the parson headmaster of York
Grammar School, who consulted him on his most private
concerns and to whom Sterne addressed an amusing letter
about his correspondence ; 2 his fitful, shocking friend, John
Hall-Stevenson ; his grotesque comrade, Thomas Bridges
of York ; his normal friends at Stillington, the comfort-
able Crofts ; Fothergill, the wise " F " of his early letters ;
and all the setting of the worldly-holy Cathedral circle,
with those bickering intrigues after Church perquisites
that made it a miniature of London placemanship ; his
coquettish daughter Lydia, the self-willed " child of Nature,"
who might almost have been a creation of his own brain ;
his scolding, suffering wife — " a shrill, penetrating sound
of itself," he says of the very word — that wife of whom

1 Professor Cross gives this passage (otherwise translated) in his Life and
Times of Laurence Sterne. It comes from D. J. Garat's Mdmoires historiques
sur la vie de M. Suard, vol. ii. pp. 147-152.

2 This letter (from the autograph collection of Mr H. H. Raphael, M.P.)
is introduced post in Chapter VI.

OF STERNE, APART FROM HIS "LIFE" 5

we hear so little and from whom Sterne heard so much ;
and all the other frail wives of his capricious fancy — Kitty
de Fourmentelle, the sweet singer of York ; the great
lady of Paris ; the " Witty Widow " ; his London Queens
of Sheba (his own phrase) who came to visit this equivocal
Solomon, and ere the last, the proud Lady Percy and
the languishing Eliza Draper.

Sterne is phantasmal. That is at once his distinction
as an artist, his drawback as a man. His sentimentality
was peculiar. He lived in shadows ; he made a reverie
of feeling, and a drama of reverie. This is no generali-
sation. His dream of the nun " Cordelia/ ' which first
figures in these pages, leads up inevitably to the last
chapter of his "Journal to Eliza." It forms a pattern
to which he fitted the less living creatures of existence.
Nothing in or around him seems real, and the unreality
is genuine. All are fantoccini in shadow-land. Yet out
of these unsubstantial shapes, and by sheer subtlety
of stroke, he bodied forth those undying realities, Uncle
Toby, Corporal Trim, and the valet La Fleur ; he presented
those immortal interludes of poor Le Fevre and the Dancing
Maid of Languedoc ; he wove a spider-web of suggestion
which, though it entangled nasty flies in its fine-spun fila-
ments, also caught the fresh dew of the morning. He
revolutionised style. Moreover, strange as it may appear,
■he exerted a lasting humanitarian influence on our fellow-
feeling with dumb animals, unemancipated slaves, misused
servants, every victim of bigotry or oppression. And the
man who did this was a lanky, spare, meagre, crack-brained
parson, a rake at heart, who should never have preached
or married, whose ideas (as he owns) were " sometimes
rather too disorderly for ... . orders " * ; a consumptive

1 This, Sterne tells us in one of his letters, was an " expression which
dropped from the lips of the arch- prelate " (Gilbert of York). He adds that

6 STERNE

with the quick brain and slippery senses — that perverse
acuteness which is the heritage of the hectic and hysterical ;
a sort of Rousseauite in a country cassock, tied to a jog-
trot parish round till he had reached the age of forty-six,
an age which the French call " critical." Here, surely, is
a point which Smelfungus misses, a point of much meaning
as regards Sterne's long concealment and late activities. He
had been married close on twenty years before repute and
disrepute opened to his own amazement. He was forty-six
when he burst upon the world.

the archbishop " in his private hours " was always " most cordial." Cf.
Original Letters of the late Mr Laurence Sterne, Logographic Press, London,
1788, p. 27. In another of these letters he speaks of his own "spare, meagre
form" (ibid.\ p. m : he was a tall man, he tells us elsewhere, about six
feet high.

CHAPTER II

of sterne's life, apart from sterne

Sterne was forty-six when he wrote the two first volumes
of Tristram Shandy — in other words, he was forty-six when he
was born. If he had not been born then, what were his
antecedents ?

I suppose that everybody (that is nobody but you and
me and Mr Mundungus) knows that he descended from an
old East Anglian family — though Sterne denied his Danish
blood — a stock which, by dint of espousing heiresses, had
drifted into Yorkshire. That the crest of this family was a
" Stearne " or starling, which accounts for the famous " I
can't get out " episode in the Sentimental Journey. That
in Tristram Shandy Sterne speaks of a " great-aunt Dinah "
who left a legacy, and whose " black velvet mask " he turns
into a new-fangled form of adjuration. That in the same
chapter he tells " Eugenius " (his intimate, Hall-Stevenson)
how "for these four generations we count no more than
one archbishop, a Welsh judge, some three or four aldermen,
and a single mountebank," though " in the sixteenth century
we boast no less than a dozen alchymists." This first
dignitary was his great-grandfather, whose marble effigy in
the cathedral Sterne thought so like himself,1 and who had

1 " In the marble whole-length figure which dignifies the monument,"
Sterne wrote to William Combe, "you will find the likeness stronger" (than
in the Jesus College portrait). And he continues : " He was an excellent
prelate and an honest man — I have not half his virtues, if report speaks true

7

8 STERNE

been a grave archbishop when Charles the comic came, to
his throne.

Sterne's father (a younger son of Simon Sterne and
Mary, the wealthy granddaughter of Sir Roger Jaques of
Elvington) was a luckless, brisk, feckless subaltern in two
successive regiments, one of which was the famous " Handi-
sides." This Roger Sterne went about adventuring in the
long War of Succession, an unpromoted campaigner who
made no stay in any one place, and married the daughter of
a camp sutler to pay his debts. Sterne's mother, the
vivandiere of the regiment, was born " Agnes Nuttall," and
when Roger Sterne took her to wife was the widow of a
Captain Hebert, with decent connections in Ireland, and
a good-for-nothing son who wasted his substance in that
country. The Yorkshire Sternes resented this misalliance, and
treated the faithful, vulgar soul with middle-class contempt.

While Bolingbroke was manoeuvring the Peace of

Utrecht, he little dreamed that he was contributing to the

birth of a great humourist, and to that charming piece in

Tristram Shandy where Uncle Toby vindicates the virtue of

war. Shortly after the treaty was concluded, and just a year

preceding the birth of Rousseau (Sterne's temperamental

kinsman), Ensign, or " Captain," Sterne had to come home.

And his wife, hasting with him from Dunkirk to Ireland

for the purpose, brought Laurence Sterne into the world

on the twenty-fourth of November 17 13, almost under the

sign of Capricorn. He was her second child. The first had

been Mary, a beauty sacrificed to a Dublin spendthrift, one

Weemans, who beat and bullied her till she died of a

broken heart.1

of us both — and for his sake I hope it does, and for my own I hope it does
not." Cf Original Letters of the late Mr Laurence Sterne, Logographic
Press, London, 1788, p. 26.

1 Cf Sterne's Fragment of Autobiography, which prefaced his daughter
Lydia's edition of his Letters and is a fine specimen of his style.

OF STERNE'S LIFE, APART FROM STERNE 9

Laurence Sterne first saw the light at Clonmel, that
" Vale of Honey " which was also a centre of the woollen
trade. And throughout his childhood the Irish quarters
were the most permanent. Indeed, a collateral branch of
the Sternes had settled in Ireland much earlier, had won
Church preferment and been associated with Swift.

No rest had Roger Sterne or his wife thenceforward.
Child after child appeared, two with fanciful names, and
all with frail constitutions — " Joram," " Little Devijeher,"
and the rest. Only one survived, Catherine, and small
affection seems to have subsisted between brother, mother,
and sister.

Roger, on the disbanding of his regiment, resought the
maternal seat of Elvington, but again the troops were called
out, and the nomads set off, with many adventures, to Ireland
once more. The Peace of Utrecht and the Hanoverian
Succession did not end their wanderings or mend their
fortunes. Over Ireland they roved, from garrison to
garrison, when the Vigo Expedition, the siege of Gibraltar,
and eventually the Triple Alliance sent the regiment off
again over seas and lands, the poor undaunted ensign far
away, duelling (for a goose) and fighting for his country till,
during March 1 731, he drooped and died, a childish imbecile,
in Jamaica.

Meanwhile the struggling family were driven from point
to point, with hairbreadth escapes by shore and water — to
the Isle of Wight, Wales, and over Ireland again. There
the boy nearly lost his life in a mill-race — an accident which
had happened long before to an ancestor. At the age of
eight, the neglected Laurence learned his letters in Dublin
Barracks. By the age of ten his father had already removed
him from his mother's rather moulting wing and settled
him at school near Halifax under the care of a brother, Richard
Sterne of Woodhouse Hall. Up to that time Sterne's

io STERNE

childhood was a barrack-room ballad, and the barrack-
well seems to have been the source from which he drew
the dear old soldier and his faithful servant who are still
glories of our literature. " If," Sterne tells us in Tristram
Shandy, " if when I was a school-boy I could not hear the
drum beat but my heart beat with it, was that my fault ?
Did I plant the propensity there ? Did I sound the alarm
within, or Nature ? " But now all shifted with the scene.
Removed at Halifax from his early surroundings, the lad
was thrown in upon himself. He proved the usual dunce-
genius, idle though promising. It was said that he would
make his name, and at any rate he has himself told us that
he scrawled it on the school-room ceiling.

Such, then, is the genesis of Laurence Sterne, sickly by
inheritance, gipsy by nature, forced from the stir of war
into the tame humiliations of dependence, homeless by fate,
with some ancestral fame on one side and a coarse under-
current on the other, the sport of circumstance, a bantling
of the barracks. Drums and bugles sounded his lullabies,
rough soldiers must have tossed the puny boy in their arms,
and his mother, I fancy, could use her fists. You would
have expected a tough little hero or a hardened little ruffian
as the upshot. Not a bit of it ! Nature plays queer tricks
with environment. Out of these elements she moulded a
dreamy urchin with small relation to his surroundings,
who developed into king's jester at the court of Bohemia.
Sterne never saw a battle, but the fear and throb of warfare
had bitten into his soul. The lawlessness and restlessness of
necessity faced a constitution fickle, sensitive, furtive, delicate.
He was a waif by birthright, and there is no sustained
sentence in any part of his story : rather, it seems all hiatus
and parenthesis. In his own words, he was "born for
digressions," and perhaps for transgression also. He could
rivet himself to nothing. His life and his books were a

OF STERNE'S LIFE, APART FROM STERNE n

casual ward. Does not Tristram Shandy (informed by his
uncle) start with a gap ante-natal ? Does not Sterne, in the
unquoted verses which he contributed to his " Cousin "
Hall-Stevenson's Crazy Tales, descant on " the beautiful
oblique " of his method —

" . . . . No one notion
But is in form like the designing

Of the peristaltic motion ;
Vermicular ; twisting and twining

Going to work
Just like a bottle screw upon a cork." *

Does not he tell us, in words which Charles James Fox
afterwards appropriated, " I begin with writing the first
sentence, and trust to Almighty God for the second " ?

Whence, outside the strong after-influences of music and
the Bible, he derived his wonderful vocabulary, his rhythm,
at once simple and subtle, and the dainty phrasing that
interprets the sense, we know not. The artist within him
after all may have come from the Irish strain of that common,
down-trodden mother. Every quiver of Sterne reflected
itself in the troubled pools of emotion. Mere feeling
proved his truest experience, and he grew up a perverse
child of reverie. He was neurotic. We should, I am
afraid, have thought him a horrid boy.

1 " My Cousin's Tale."

CHAPTER III

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE^ WIFE

The child of reverie ! From earliest years Sterne loved
his dreamy communings. " How the wind blows I know
not," he sighs in one of his late letters, " and I have not
an inclination to walk to my window, where perhaps I
might catch the course of a cloud and be satisfied.'' He
grew weary, he wrote in another, of " talking to the many " :
he liked " conversing with the ancient and the modern dead "
— the " mutes " who could not resent his handling. But still
more he loved to body forth love-episodes alone. Feeling for
feeling's sake, however — the sentimentalism which means
feeling without passion — is an opiate which, if habitual,
soon deadens the heart. During the last year of his life,
Sterne wrote to a friend about the Sentimental Journey that
" it will, I dare say, convince you that my feelings are
from the heart, and that that heart is not one of the worst
of moulds." It was not that originally, but Sterne's titilla-
tions had so weakened its framework that it could scarcely
serve for common use. " I have torn my whole frame to
pieces by my feelings," he confessed at the close.1 And so
it might almost be doubted whether Sterne ever owned a
heart at all save in his own imaginings. If so, it was in the
wrong place ; it lay, not in attachments, but in the flutter
of his moods, memories, and pulsations. It was a frisking,

1 Cf. Sterne's Letters, published by his daughter (1775), vol. iii. p. 115.

12

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE 13

surface heart. True, no less a judge than the poet Heine
has traced his pathetic mirth to depths that were personally
tragic. This holds good certainly of "that long disease,
his life." But it involves no deep sympathy, and perhaps
the most exquisite Tenderers of joy and sorrow have felt
things more than they have felt with them. Sterne could
feel and express life's ironies to perfection ; he vibrated to
every gust like an aeolian harp. Beyond question too, and
therein lies his greatness, he loved much of human nature.
He loved it in his soul, and he presented it so warmly in his
works that Carlyle sums him up in his essay on Jean Paul
as " our last specimen of humour, and, with all his faults,
our finest, if not our strongest." How deeply Carlyle
was dipped in Sterne will appear hereafter.

But Sterne's tragedy was seldom too deep for tears
that gushed from a perennial fountain. He smiles wist-
fully over the wounds which he parades ; and, little as there
is in common between Sterne's arabesques and Byron's
thunderbolts, in this demand for public pity — the beggar's
posture — the two emotionalists are akin.

Sterne's life — his cramped, consumptive life — had
neither space nor soil enough for that steadfast love in
which the truth of feeling, the felt verity, takes its root.
The sweet, sad loveliness of things appealed paramountly 4
to him, and forms his paramount appeal. Loveliness is
a truth, but it is not the whole. " Writers of my stamp,"
he owns, "have one principle in common with painters.
Where an exact copying makes our pictures less striking,
we choose the less evil, deeming it even more pardonable
to trespass against truth than beauty." For sheer and
native artistry, Sterne has no rival ; it graces even his rags
and tatters. But if this excludes the ugly side of puritan-
ism, the more winning side i*' absent also. Sterne was
hedonist : hedonist, if it may so be put, without hedonism,

i4 STERNE

for he was receptive, not active. It was the fact of feeling
that enthralled him. What he realised was the pang
and the thrill, the pleasure of variegated sensation. His
tenderness was more towards others than for them ; he
draped it in the mists of sentiment, and he made it vocal
through the tremolo of his style. By virtue of the extreme
sensitiveness of that style his pity stood soliloquising.
But directly it stepped forward it often went after what
he has himself termed "that tender and delicious senti-
ment which ever mixes in friendship where there is a
difference of sex." And on that feeling he played his
fantasias.

" Sweet pliability of spirit," he was to muse in the
Sentimental Journey, " that could at once surrender itself
to illusions which cheat expectation and sorrow of their
weary moments — long — long since — had ye numbered out
my days, had I not trod so great a part of them on this
enchanted ground. When my way is too rough for my
feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it to some
smooth sentimental path which fancy has scattered over with
rosebuds of delights, and having taken a few turns in it,
come back strengthened and refreshed. When evils press
upon me and there is no retreat from them in this world,
then I take a new course — I leave it — and as I have a
clearer idea of the Elysian Fields than I have of Heaven,
I force myself like iEneas into them. I see him meet the
pensive shadow of his forsaken Dido, and wish to recognise
it — and I see the injured spirit wave her head and turn off
silent from the author of her miseries and dishonour — I
lose the feelings for myself in hers, and in those affections
which were wont to make me mourn for her when I was at
school." Here Heine is justified. Sterne lightens the ills
of life by a sensibility to the sorrows of others — and this is
tragedy's true function. But here, surely, can be heard

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE 15

also the self-indulgence of a self-pity distracted by the quick
play of emotions.

And Sterne, as a great and pathetic humourist, pursued
this life of sensation far more beautifully and brightly, far
more sociably than did Rousseau, though with much the same
selfishness that Rousseau used in embarking on like voyages.
Should anyone wish to test their likeness and unlikeness
in such matters, let them compare Rousseau's mawkish
account of his penchant for the Turin tradeswoman with
Sterne's famous episode of the Paris grisette. Rousseau is
all shy nastiness ; Sterne, all brisk and delightful impres-
sion. Rousseau stands greasy and pawing ; there is nothing
unctuous about Sterne, who dallies with heart-beats, spruce
and smiling, like a child caressing its birthday doll.
Rousseau can never throw himself out, Sterne can ; but the
self-centred, philandering mood is the same — a mood that
retires to feed on itself when it cannot fasten on something
outward.

Yes, Sterne was the child of reverie. When he was
"curing" (Heaven save the mark !) the souls of a York-
shire moorside he thus wrote to a friend in a letter of
invitation as yet unquoted, a letter which pictures the re-
frain of his life, his Reverie of the Nuns : — '

" After coffee I will take you to pay a visit to my nuns.
Do not, however, indulge your fancy beyond measure, but
rather let me indulge mine, or at least let me give you the
history of it, and the fair sisterhood who dwell in one of
its visionary corners. Now what is all this about ? you
will say. Have a few moments' patience and I will tell you.

1 This seems to have been no other than William Combe, that strange
vagrant in literature whose life was all mystery and moneylessness, and one
of whose after-escapades (if Samuel Rogers can be trusted) closely concerned
Sterne's own Eliza.

1 6 STERNE

You must know, then, that on passing out of my back
door I very soon gain the path which, after taking me
through several flattened meadows and shady thickets,
brings me in about twenty minutes to the ruins of a
monastery, where, in times long past, a certain number
of cloistered females had devoted their — lives — I scarce
know what I was going to write — to religious solitude.
This saunter of mine, when I take it, I call paying
a visit to my nuns. It is an awful spot : a rivulet flows by
it, and a lofty bank covered with wood, that rises abruptly
on the opposite side, gives a gloom to the whole and forbids
the thoughts, if they were ever so disposed, from wandering
away from the place. Solitary sanctity never found a nook
more appropriate to her nature ! It is a place for the
antiquary to sojourn in for a month, and examine with all
the spirit of rusty research. But I am no antiquary, as you
well know, and therefore I come here upon a different
and a better errand — that is, to examine myself."

And now observe the attitude : " So I lean lackadaisi-
cally over the gate and look at the passing stream and
forgive the spleen, the gout, and the envy of a malicious
world. And after having taken a stroll beneath mouldering
arches, I summon the sisterhood together, and take the
fairest among them, and sit down with her on the stone
beneath the bunch of alders, and do — what, you will say ?
Why, I examine her gentle heart, and see how it is attuned ;
I then guess at her wishes, and play with the cross that
hangs at her bosom — in short, 1 make love to her. Fie,
for shame ! Tristram, that is not as it ought to be. Now
I declare, on the contrary, that it is exactly what it ought to
be ; for though philosophers may say, among many other
foolish things philosophers have said, that a man who is in
love is not in his right senses, I do affirm in opposition to
all their saws — and see-saws — that he is never in his right

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE 17

senses, or I would say rather in his right sentiments, but
when he is pursuing some Dulcinea or other." '

This typical day-dream of the sisterhood is no isolated
experience. He twice mentions the place of his vision,
and " Cordelia," its heroine, in his unpublished " Journal
to Eliza," which will be found at the end of this volume ;
and he repeats this nun of his fantasy in at least two of
his letters.2

The phantom is the more piquant, since at York was a
Papist girls' school which its enemies, among whom Sterne
ranked foremost, styled the Nunnery. But the ruined
abbey was six miles distant from the city, by breezy
Coxwold, and there Sterne cast aside his Whig zeal, his
petty cares, his sad broodings, and his " solitary sanctity "
to drink his fill of airy nothings, by turns attentive to
Nature and a dreamer of images cloyed and cloying.

Sterne was no more an " antiquary " than Heine was,
but has erring fancy ever found more alluring expression ?
He was never " in his right sentiments " (unfrock thee,
Tristram ! ) but when he was " pursuing some Dulcinea or
other" ! She was naturally not Mrs Sterne, though of
her, at first, a Dulcinea he made. Poor Mrs Sterne ! For
all her failings, the laugh was rarely on her side, and it
had been well for both of them had she never seen and
been fascinated by young Laurey's lackadaisical blue eyes.3

1 Original Letters of the late Reverend Mr Laurence Sterne, never
before published, London, for the Logographic Press (1788), pp. 2-5. The
date is 1764.

2 Cf Sterne's Letters to his Friends on Occasions, London, 1775. This
letter (No. VI.) is genuine from internal evidence. A phrase of which
Sterne was fond appears in it. The passage runs : " I visited my Abbey as
usual every evening — amid the mouldering ruins of ancient greatness, I take
my solitary walk ; far removed from the news and bustle of a malicious world
I can cherish the fond remembrance of my Cordelia — ' Cordelia, thou wert
kind,' " etc. Another and later letter contains much of the same fantasy.

3 Sterne's eyes were of a blue nearly as piercing as Swift's. This is
apparent from Mr Blake Wirgman's portrait of him in youth.

1 8 STERNE

For he was in perpetual quest of some pleasant anchorage
for his shallop of sensation. He liked to moor it by
shimmering banks. Haze was his native air, and three
years after this letter was written he again descanted on his
own foible in a long appreciation of the valet La Fleur,
whose " one misfortune in the world was to be always
in love." " I am heartily glad of it," comments Sterne,
" having been in love with one princess or another almost
all my life, and I hope I shall go on so till I die, being
firmly persuaded that if ever I do a mean action it must
be in some interval betwixt one passion and another :
whilst this interregnum lasts I always perceive my heart
locked up — I can scarce find in it to give misery six-
pence ; and therefore I always get out of it as fast as
I can, and the moment I am rekindled I am all generosity
and goodwill again, and would do anything in the world
either for or with anyone if they will but satisfy my thirst
after sentiment. But in saying this surely I am commend-
ing passion and not myself." Flirtation was a fillip for
the sickliness of his nerves, and with such potions he braced
his wasting fibres. But Sterne's flirtations only objectified
his dreams, nor did it matter much where he found them.
When at length he met his Eliza, he assured her that he
would gladly give her inhuman husband five hundred
pounds, " if money could purchase the acquisition," to let
her sit by him as he wrote the Sentimental Journey, if only
for two hours " in a day." " I am sure," he urged, " the
work would sell so much the better for it, that I should
be reimbursed the sum more than seven times told." *

Even Goethe once urged that philandering was needful

for his early compositions ; and for Sterne, as for the young

Goethe, some sort of philandering seemed an artistic

requisite ; it " harmonises the soul," he assured a friend.

1 Letters from Yorick to Eliza (1775), PP- 63-4.

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE 19

He assured another the year before he died, in a passage
which seems to condense the whole of his temperament :
" You can feel ! Ay, so can my cat . . ., but cater-
wauling disgusts me. / had rather raise a gentle flame than
have a different one raised in me. Now I take Heaven to
witness, after all this badinage^ my heart is innocent; and
the sporting of my pen is equal, just equal, to what I
did in my boyish days, when I got astride of a stick and
galloped away." * And there was a deeper reason : no
one woman, it must be owned, can light every torch with
her taper. Are all these quenched tapers to be mourned,
and is the enduring torch a mere blaze of selfishness ?
Sterne's indiscretions were often (not always) as harmless
as Goethe's. Musing in one of his least-known letters on
an " affection " which he had " innocently indulged," he
says : " It is of a more delicate stamp than the gross
materials nature has planted in us. ... I hope ever to
retain the idea of innocence and love her still." 2 His
best susceptibility resembled thistle-down floating in the air,
wavering above the ground as he surveyed it ; and he
himself confessed that he was " the most tender fool that
ever woman tried the weakness of." This " idea of
innocence " (its shape, not its substance) seems ever
behind his peccant fancy. He was not always a male
coquette, but even when he was in earnest he never regarded
woman as a lifelong companion : she was an episode, like
everything with which he had to do, and he preferred the
episode to be impalpable. Indeed, he has given his own
quaint reason for this play with feeling. Never, he says,
did he resist temptation : he ran away from it, being
convinced that he would get bruised bodily in the conflict.

1 Cf. the letter to " Sir W," 12th September 1767 (Dr Browne's edition of
Sterne's Works (1885), vol. iv. p. 584).

2 Sterne's Original Letters to his Friends^ London, 1788, pp. 56-7.

20 STERNE

But this queer St Anthony only ran away from one
Dulcinea to another, though sometimes the Dulcinea
detained him. He confesses to falling in love regularly
every vernal and every autumnal equinox. It was during
the autumnal equinox that Sterne was to fall in with
Elizabeth Lumley ; but, ere we reach it, a brief impression
of the interval must be given.

The protecting uncle died, and a cousin, Richard, reigned
in his stead ; nor hitherto has it been noticed that from
this cousin Richard, Sterne seems to have derived his
character of the elder Shandy.1 Under his aegis, then,
Sterne proceeded, in July 1733, with £30 a year irregularly
paid, from a school near Halifax, or schools (for researchers
differ), to Jesus College, Cambridge. And there he soon
received a family perquisite of £30 more from a scholarship
founded by his ancestor, the archbishop. Here, again, the
sense of unreality which pervades him is manifest. Even
his entrance examination was deferred till a more convenient
season. Yet there is pathos in the situation. Save for his
kinsman, Sterne informs us, he would have been " driven
out naked to the world."

" The vivacity of his disposition very early in life dis-
tinguished him " : so writes his colleague and crony, John
Hall-Stevenson. This " vivacity " lay more in feeling than
in fact, and we know of none for whom the exterior of
existence was more a mask than for Sterne. Routine was
naturally not in his line. Off this and all lines he wandered,
diving into back-ways and by-ways of books, credit, perchance

1 In the first volume of Tristram^ speaking of that eccentric's natural
eloquence, Sterne relates : " I well remember when he went up along with
me to enter my name at Jesus College in ... . It was a matter of just
wonder with my worthy tutor, and two or three Fellows of his learned society,
that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools, should be able
to work after that fashion with 'em."

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE 21

of discredit also. To one of his college tutors, however,
— probably John Bradshaw — he was attached, and years
later, when the tutor had blossomed into a master, he
warmly commended and recommended him to a youth
then on the threshold of a career.1

His familiar spirit at College was John Hall, afterwards
(by a name bought through marriage) John Hall-Stevenson.
Sterne records that he first met him at Cambridge, though
a contemporary alleges, and it is just possible, that the
acquaintance dated from boyhood.2 John Hall was by two
years Sterne's senior. He came of a good Durham family
and by a chance inherited the South Yorkshire castle of
Skelton, near Saltburn-by-the-Sea. He was a handsome
madcap and hypochondriac, with more wit, says Sir Walter
Scott, than grace, a dilettante born : dilettante as viveur, as
author, as confirmed valetudinarian, as an eccentric in would-
be fashion, but this dilettantism must be qualified. He was
a dilettante in everything but delicacy, for the delicate was
foreign to a mind which in this respect eventually added to
his friend's degeneration. A confirmed roue and an ardent
book-lover, he plied a cynical tongue, which concealed,
Sterne assures us, a kindly heart and many good actions.
His mine of scholarship Sterne prized. " He always knows
what ought to be liked," he wrote to a friend ; " he is an
excellent scholar, and a good critic. But his judgment has
more severity than it ought to have, and his taste less
delicacy than it should possess. He has also great humanity,
but somehow or other there is so often such a mixture of
sarcasm in it, that there are many who will not believe that

1 Cf. Stern J s Origt7ial Letters, p. 6 : "He was my tutor when I was at
college, and a very good kind of man. He used to let me have my way when
I was under his direction, and that showed his sense, for I was born to travel
out of the common road. . . . And he had sense to see it, and not to trouble
me with trammels."

2 Cf. the preface to the Crazy Tales (1795).

22 STERNE

he has a single scruple in his composition. Nay, I am
acquainted with several who cannot be persuaded, but that
he is a very insensible, hard-hearted man, which I, who have
known him long and know him well, assure you he is
not. . . . He will do a kindness with a sneer or a joke or
a smile, when perhaps a tear or a grave countenance would
better become him. But that is his way ; it is the language
of his character." 1

Yet Stevenson could at times be more than an odd
lazybones, and in 1 745 he led a " flying squadron," with
General Oglethorpe for comrade, against the Young Pre-
tender. Sterne undoubtedly proved a stimulant to an
associate who always took refuge in bed when the wind
was in the east. And here the old anecdote will be
remembered, recounting how Sterne changed the direction
of the weather-cock to dispel his comrade's humours.
Detesting the blasts of his bleak habitat, Hall-Stevenson,
in his turn, liked to visit the damp, relaxing valley where
his comrade's first parish was situated. This bird of mixed
omens assembled a strange medley in his Gothic nest —
the mad club of " Demoniacs," a faint reflection of the
Medmenham Abbey hell-rakes. To these we must revert
hereafter, but his chief intellectual influence over the young
Sterne was to bring him into touch with Rabelais and the
queer gang of pigmy Pantagruelists who succeeded that
giant gipsy, reeking of immense garlic and laying waste the
rank places of solemn shams. Such were Beroalde de
Verville, Bruscambille, and Bouchet. Who reads them
now ? And how little could these triflers have foreseen
that two centuries after their gross fancies, a morbid and
mocking English parson would sum them up and refine them.
For refine them Sterne did. By his elfin obliqueness these
Renaissance demons were transformed into Georgian imps.
1 Original Letters \ etc., 1788, pp. 65-7.

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE 23

Hall-Stevenson, then, whose craze was for Crazydom, gave
Sterne this Gallic impetus, though from his birth the instinct
of the French was in him ; his bent was for their style.
But he followed the French Rabelaisians far more closely
than he was able to follow Rabelais. For Rabelais is the
Michael Angelo of grotesque, and such qualities transcended
his track. So did those of the romantic satirist whose
disciple Sterne always protested himself to be. Even thus
early he must have conned Cervantes, nor in all his
humours did he ever forget the knight of the rueful
countenance and the squire of low degree. Sterne, how-
ever, wore no quixotic spurs. He was a knight erring as
well as errant ; and though he stamps himself a rescuer
of distressed damsels, he displays little of his hero but the
roaming fancy. " Fay ce-que voudras " was his Rabelaisian
motto. " I generally act," he said, " upon first impulses,"
or " according as the fly stings." But that fly often stung
Sterne to dalliance by the road — with those " angels," as he
wrote, to which his "Balaam's ass" conducted him. Neither
the beast, however, nor his curveting " hobby-horse " was
a steed like Rosinante. Sterne always gave the freest and
loosest rein to the instinct which carried him, and he capari-
soned his palfrey with such bizarre trappings that we scarcely
note its vices or bad breeding. With all his daintiness Sterne
ranks among our frankest and freest humourists, both in
his tears and laughter. It has been said that the fulness
of humour is not for the young, who can only face half
of life. Sterne faced the whole, and drew a fantastic philo-
sophy from it, though he harped too often on the least
savoury side.

Later on, he added to his French literature the sentiment
of a novel, he Doyen de Cokrainey and the dull candour of
the Paysanne Parvenue.1 Montaigne, too, lay ever on his
1 Whitefoord Papers, p. 230.

24 STERNE

table. In English thought he took Locke for his guide,
" that history book," he styles him, " of what passes in a
man's own mind " ; and Locke himself would have been
startled to find how much his analysis of the senses influ-
enced Sterne's sentimentality. A lifelong favourite, too,
was Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy ^ that gold-mine of quota-
tion and reflection, which has enriched so many authors with
inexhaustible ore. Sterne still owes Burton a heavy bill.
And he also sought out, now and afterwards, many a rare old
English work on alchemy, fortification, and theology — most
curious browsing-fields for his whimsical mind. Such were
the elements that shaped it.

These and the Restoration dramatists were the Cam-
bridge staple of the two companions while they sat and
read together under the spreading walnut tree in the inner
court of Jesus College. This tree they named " the Tree
of Knowledge " — a knowledge, perchance, of evil more than
of good : —

" At Cambridge many years ago,
In Jesus was a walnut tree ;
The only thing it had to show,
The only thing folks went to see.

Being of such a size and mass,

And growing in so wise a college,
I wonder how it came to pass

It was not called the c Tree of Knowledge.' "

These are Sterne's own verses in his contribution of " My
Cousin's Tale " to his friend's Crazy Tales}

1 Hall-Stevenson's Works (1795), vol. iii. p. 28. The subjoined doggerel
contained in the gossip of Sterne's friend Croft, also attests Sterne's
authorship : —

" This should be the Tree of Knowledge,
As it stands in so very wise a college."
Cf. Whitefoord Papers, p. 229.

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE 25

The world lay before the two fantasts. John Hall soon
set off* for the grand tour before he tried to settle down
at the castle, which he christened "Crazy." In July 1740,
Sterne, with a light heart, empty pocket, and a diffuse
tincture of the classics, duly graduated as Master of Arts.
Ovid's Art of hove was in his blood, and sanctity held
aloof from his nature. Yet the robe of sanctity he was
forced to wear ; it was his only outlet for career. This is
not an edifying spectacle, but such, in the eighteenth century,
was often the profane Church, and it was said at the time
that it was far easier to find a bad actor than a good
clergyman.

His mother, now in receipt of a ^20 pension, bustled
over from Ireland with his sister, in the hope (which
her son never encouraged) of settling at Chester ; but
she had been repulsed by the grand Sternes of Elvington.
To them the drifting youth clung, as his only chance of
rising in the world. He had already profited by a Sterne
pittance and a Sterne endowment. The Sternes must now
find him some curacy. But already he felt himself cut off
from the bustle of life. Shortly before he quitted Cam-
bridge, he awoke one morning to find his bed deluged with
blood. A vessel had burst in his lungs, and he realised,
what he never ceased to make light of, that his course
would be a long tussle with death. Such a battle he did
all he could to convert into a scamper, and more and more
he frisked with mortality.

" The deuce take these bellows of mine," wrote Sterne
to the Earl of Effingham, when, almost thirty years onwards,
he burst another blood-vessel.1 But he did not always
mock at his malady. " O blessed health," he exclaims
as Shandy, " thou art above all gold and treasure ; 'tis thou
who enlargest the soul and openest all its powers to receive
1 Cf. Professor W. Cross's Laurence Sterne, p. 344.

26 STERNE

instruction and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little
more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want
thee wants everything else. . . . O thou eternal maker
of all beings, .... thou whose power and goodness can
enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to this infinite degree
of excellence and perfection, what have we Moonites
done ? " ! Nevertheless, in the main, and more and more,
he made of death a butt to play his pranks on. One of
these pranks, it must be owned, was his ordination.

On 6th March 1737, when he was twenty-four, the
irreverend " Mr Yorick " submitted to the ordaining hand
of the Right Reverend the Bishop of Lincoln in the Chapel
of Buckden Hall. At present, however, the Sternes
failed him. The Bishop it was who found the stripling a
stopgap of a cure. For a space Laurence Sterne figured
as curate of St Ives, near Huntingdon, whose graceful bridge
his artistic eye must often have admired. Nothing more
of this fugitive start is known but his vicar's name, William
Piggot. That he resumed flirtation there is probable from
a stray expression in a letter.2 There were few openings
at St Ives. After a year and a half the Sternes at
last came to the rescue. Cousin Richard was now dead
in his turn, like Uncle Richard before him. This time,
his uncle Jaques (or Jacob) Sterne befriended the thread-
bare curate — Doctor and Prebendary Jaques Sterne, now
Canon Residentiary and Precentor of York Cathedral,
Archdeacon of Cleveland, and aspirant to an archbishopric,
one of those coarse, grasping dignitaries whose life was not
the lily,

" If tales tell true, nor wrong these holy men."

No Sterne, he may have thought, should want, even
Laurey the wastrel ; and Uncle Jaques, who was a fighting

1 Tristram Shandy, vol. i. p. 117.

2 The episode of " Harriot " to be quoted later.

THE PRELUDE TO STERNE'S WIFE 27

Whig, had need of a ready penman. At Chester, accord-
ingly, on 20th August 1738, Laurence Sterne was duly
ordained priest. And a few days afterwards the Archbishop
of York — that Lancelot Blackburne who had started as a
buccaneer — bestowed on him through the uncle's influence
the living of Sutton-on-the-Forest, in Galways, a swampy
village that ill agreed with Sterne's complaint. The stipend
was wretched — the " passing rich on forty pounds a year,"
though ere long it brought with it a chaplaincy and a York
prebend. Only eight miles, however, parted it from the
county capital. After St Ives, Sutton might seem almost
gay, and who knew what tender hand and solid fortune
he might be able to hold ? Sterne's future wife was already
in sight. Once more, scold and shrew, and worse, as we
shall find her, poor, poor Mrs Sterne !

CHAPTER IV

ELIZABETH LUMLEY AND THE JESTER S COURTSHIP

Elizabeth Lumley, afterwards Mrs Sterne, has

never

been characterised. It has escaped biographers that she
was the termagant and arrogant cousin of Elizabeth
Montagu, " Queen of the Blue-stockings," and a connec-
tion of the great Pitt, to whom she sold her Hayes
Villa ; or that the saloniste herself branded her as " a fretful
porcupine, always darting her quills at somebody or some-
thing." 1 These amenities were domestic, not social.

1 Cf. Mrs Climenson's Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. p. 177. The cousin-
ship with Mrs Montagu arose from the fact that Mrs Sterne's grandmother
was half-sister to Mrs Montagu's grandfather.
The following is the pedigree from Mrs Climenson's book : —

2nd.
Elizabeth Clarke, = Thomas Robinson,

daughter of William son of Sir Leonard

Clarke of Merivale Robinson.

Abbey, Warwickshire,
heiress to her brother,
William Clarke.

1st.
Anthony Light.
1 daughter.

1st.
Thomas Kirke 1
of Cockridge,

Co. Yorks,

great virtuoso,

d. 1709.

2nd.

Lydia = The Rev. Robert

Lumley of Lum-

ley Castle,

Bedale, Yorks,

1721-1731.

Matthew = Elizabeth Drake,
Robinson daughter of
(father of Councillor
Mrs Mon- Robert Drake of
tagu, and the Drakes of
of a son, Ash, Devon.
Matthew).

Lydia = Rev. Henry Elizabeth = Rev. Laurence Sterne.

of Albury and
Ealing.

5 children.

Lydia,

died an

infant.

28

I
Lydia = A. de Medalle.

I
Son.

MRS. STER1

iginal portrait in crayons by Frc
(In the possession of the Reoerend G. W. Blenkin)

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 29

Sterne never ceased to praise the polish both of her intellect
and her manners, and Sterne's Eliza Draper — one whom
she had never seen, but who detested her — repeated not
only Sterne's words, but her friend Annie James's, when
she described her as for these qualities unrivalled " in
Europe."1 Such was Mrs Sterne, proud, querulous, and
quarrelsome. She grew to be an excitable virago, who as
years went by seems even to have taken refuge in drink.2
If so, it might account for her "madness," and for her
prolonged reproaches of abandonment by her kinsfolk.

Her earliest grievance was to be found single at an age
then perilously near old maidenhood. She never made the
best of Sterne, who afterwards came to contribute real causes
for estrangement by his periodical escapes to the warmth of
more sentimental companionships. But if her whole life
proved a chapter of complaints, she had compensations.
Nature had gifted her with a stalwart arm, which she
wielded manfully — according to Mrs Montagu's brother, an
"arm of flesh." >?^-Or-ti^ ^£v/.

From the moment that Sterne espoused this nettle-bed,
Mrs Montagu herself, despite his errors, espoused his
cause. " Madam," he once wrote to her when she begged
pardon for a temporary misunderstanding, " injuries come
only from the heart. You, I know, never intended one, and
so I had nothing to forgive. ... I have much to thank
you for, and am, with a heart full of the highest ideas of
yours, your most affectionate cosin."3

When Nathaniel Hawthorne beheld Cotes's crayon,
that first appears in this volume, he pronounced it the

1 Cf. her lengthy epistle from Bombay to Mrs James, of April 15, 1772.
Add. MSS. 34,527, ff. 47-70.

2 Cf. ibid. Mrs Draper's assertion was derived from other witnesses than
Sterne, though he confirmed them.

3 The whole of this interesting letter is in the autograph collection of
Mr H. H. Raphael.

3o

STERNE

visage of one so haughty and unamiable that he wondered
how " Sterne ever contrived to live a week with such an
awful woman." 1 Nevertheless, this likeness was taken when
she was already forty-eight. Hawthorne was mistaken in
supposing that her husband " ultimately left her." In the
long run it was she who found it more comfortable to
quit Sterne. All this, however, belongs to the future.
At present she could be even tender. What she became
was due partly to Sterne ; what he became, mainly to himself ;
though he was never rough to her, and had great provocations.

In 1732 died the Rev. Robert Lumley (erst of Lumley
Castle), Vicar of Bedale near Northallerton, a prize living
worth close on two thousand pounds a year. He came of
true and blue Yorkshire blood ; in his veins ran that of
the Rymers and Hoptons. The Lumleys descended from
Liulph, a noble of the Conquest, and they could boast a
long gallery of armoured ancestors.2 One of these had been
famous in the War of Succession, as Sterne did not fail
to commemorate after he had married the descendant.
" Your honour remembers with concern," said Corporal
Trim (in an unnoted passage) to Uncle Toby, " the total
rout and confusion of our camp and army at the affair of
Landen : everyone was left to shift for himself ; and if it
had not been for the regiments of Wyndham, Lumley, and
Galway, which covered the retreat over the bridge of
Neerspeeken, the King himself would scarcely have gained
it." Perhaps Mrs Sterne inherited the martial spirit.

This fortunate incumbent had married a certain Lydia,

1 Cf Our Old Home (* •' Pilgrimage to Old Boston "), modern reprint, p.
134. Professor Cross, in his Life and Times of Laurence Sterne (pp. 109-
10) has made the mistake of confusing this crayon portrait by Francis Cotes
with a caricature that Sterne is said to have made of her.

2 Cf Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. p. 139, where Mrs Montagu's sister-in-
law recounts the glories of the seat near Newcastle.

MISS LUMLEY: THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 31

widow of Thomas Kirke of Cockridge Hall, near Leeds in
the parish of Adel, antiquary, virtuoso, and a Fellow of the
Royal Society. Lydia' s father was Anthony Light of
Cockridge, but she was born in London, and she probably
brought grist to the Lumley mill. These Lights recur in
a curious connection. When Sterne's " Eliza " quitted
England in 1767 to rejoin her husband in India, it was a
Miss Light who accompanied her on the voyage.

Of this prosperous marriage sprang two petted daughters,
who lived "in a superior style," as befitted their father's
income. But on his death they were impoverished, and owed
part of their slender means to the intestacy of a nameless
relative, as we learn from one of the Montagu letters.1
The elder, Lydia, wedded the Rev. John Botham, the son
of the Vicar of Clifton Campden in Staffordshire, where the
Lumleys, too, seem to have owned property. At first
Rector of Elford in that county, next of Yoxall, this rather
wild clergyman eventually became Vicar of Ealing in
Middlesex, and Albury in Surrey, where his wife, the
spendthrift mother of many children (sometimes god-
mothered and always favoured by Mrs Montagu), died in
1753, and lies buried. Elizabeth, the younger of the
sisters, was much courted in small circles as an " heiress " ;
but before the little windfall of 1741 just mentioned, her
income did not exceed £30 a year.2

In 1739, when Sterne first knew Miss Elizabeth Lumley,
she was about a year older than her future lover. She
divided her time between Clifton Campden and York, where
the concerts and assemblies presented the pink of provincial

1 Of 1 74 1 from Lydia, Mrs Sterne's sister. The intestate was "an
ancient woman" "in the north," "whose very name I am a stranger to." It
consisted of some houses at Leeds of ^60 yearly value. Cf. Elizabeth
Montagu, vol. i. p. 85.

2 According to the Montagu letters, only ^30 ; but in Sterne's correspond-
ence and his daughter's there are traces of the ^40.

32 STERNE

fashion, especially during the biennial race meetings, which
brought together a concourse of youth, sport, and gaiety
from all parts of the kingdom. Nor was a lively leaven of
foreigners absent. Several French families are known ; there
was, too, a Mr Ricord who discounted bills ; and an occa-
sional visitor to Bishopsthorpe would be Sam Torriano, the
London dandy, who, through Mrs Montagu, became Sterne's
friend. Elizabeth Lumley relished these distractions. This
independent young woman used to take up her abode in
" Little Alice Lane " with a servant for duenna ; the alley
lay south of the Minster yard and hard by an arch marking
the site of an old gateway into the close. Elizabeth was
not beautiful, but she was very musical ; and Sterne, who
loved music, was no mean performer on the viol-di-gamba.
She liked dancing, and so did Sterne, who must often have
led her up in the minuet under the " magnificent lustres "
which adorned the gorgeous Egyptian Hall of the York
Assembly Rooms, designed after a draught by Palladio.1
Unlike Sterne, she does not appear to have been a
draughtswoman. Later still he became a painter in earnest,
and the curves of his feminine handwriting attest him an
artist. But Elizabeth shared Laurence's taste for reading,
and she was thought interesting. At least she would
listen to him for hours, and in such cases that is often
the test.

For two years, as Sterne has told us and all the world
knows, the young parson besieged this vigorous lady, who,
though she liked him (for who could talk more beautifully
or show a softer pity !), did not capitulate in a moment.
Her delay, by his own testimony, was quite unselfish.
" She owned she liked me," he wrote in the brief and
striking memoir which he left to his daughter ; " but she
thought herself not rich enough, or me too poor, to be
1 Cf. Defoe's A Tour through Great Britain, vol. iii. p. 168.

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 33

joined together." ! She feared to burden her wooer ; she
shrank from consulting her relations as to his character ; and
" woman," Sterne once wrote, " is a timid animal." 2

The young lover had his way to make in this plaguy
world, and the height of his present ambition would be the
slow provincial preferment, which might be hampered
by an early marriage. He was imprudent, too ; even
the halfpence burned his pocket, and she longed almost
maternally to save him from himself. A wife and family
must fare ill if the sum of Laurey's worldly goods
amounted to less than one hundred pounds income, and the
sole capital would be hers and might be squandered :
though, as a matter of fact, she refused to let it be settled
on their marriage, nor did Sterne ever abuse a confidence
for which he remained grateful.3

Yet how wonderfully the sentimentalist discoursed, how
fine she thought his preaching, what a languishment stole
from his curious gaze, how sweetly he sighed, and oh, at
her slightest pang, how tenderly he wept ! For already
Sterne showed the knack, congenital, though heightened
by French example, of tearful feeling. His tears were
the readiest possible. In the future he was always weep-
ing over the sorrows even of insects, though ever with
an oblique reference to his own. Nor was this affectation,
for two tear-drops still stain a paper which he drew up
in solitude, and for the benefit of his wife ere he first
journeyed abroad. And when he was not weeping, how
often he pressed the hands of women who were usually
more interesting than beautiful ! It is extraordinary what
good fortune he was to have in this respect ; but his r61e

1 Cf. Letters of the late Reverend Mr Laurence Sterne to his most
Intimate Friends, p. 19, by Sterne's daughter Lydia de Medalle, 1775.

2 Cf Original Letters, 1788, p. 196.

3 He records his gratitude in a letter to his uncle.

3

34 STERNE

was ever that of the guide, philosopher, and friend — of that
sympathetic guardian who used to be a figure familiar to
the stage. In this regard it is perhaps not realised what
an original Sterne was in his time and country. His
luxury of nerves seemed quite foreign to his age, a totally
new sensation, while at this moment of his courtship it
was alien to English literature. Defoe had not wept in
his Roxana, Fielding was still a pugilist in satire, and
Richardson was only on the point of issuing his Pamela
and Clarissa Harlowe, who, when they came, shed tears
of substance compared with Laurey's airy dew. Sterne
brought the eighteenth century tears as he brought the
woman's standpoint into fashion ; and if, long afterwards,
even the dry Hume was to weep when he quarrelled with
Rousseau, this was partly of Sterne's doing.

Oft and often would he come to share Elizabeth's modest
meal in Little Alice Lane, or in some cottage-nook hard by
the city and bowered " in roses and jessamin," which, perhaps
remembering Swift, Sterne named "D'Estella."1 In any case
the unnoticed fact that in one of the later sections of
Tristram he designates himself the " Curate D'Estella,"
shows that the name did not fade from his remembrance.

With pensive looks, perchance, he held her hand and felt
her pulse — the pulse of feeling more than of circulation — as
he was to do hereafter in the case of so many fleeting
affinities. He made a sympathy of little things. And then
he brought her books, and shared her tastes and outdoor
pursuits. Shakespeare and music and flowers were his

1 Professor Wilbur Cross, in his elaborate Life and Times of Laurence
Sterne^ makes the " roses and jessamin " which Ste# ne mentions in a letter of
this date to Miss Lumley refer to a garden round the York lodging ; but this
is clearly not so, for Sterne in this very letter writes of " the valley where
D'Estella stands," and adds that he " returned home to your lodgings " — the
cottage probably belonging to the anonymous "Miss" who was their
confidante.

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 35

themes, yet he could handle a gun and manage a horse,
though his hacking cough, pale face, and spider shanks pro-
claimed him delicate. For all his tears, he was not wholly-
morbid ; something there was of wiry robustness about and
within him. Sharp wit was on his tongue, and pathos,
relieved both by paradox and innuendo. And as he lan-
guished, he smiled a romantic smile. How different, this, from
the beefy types around her — the clumsy Squire Tunbellies,
the pompous deans, the drowsy curates of her acquaintance !
She found it hard to stem his winding approaches.

Yet here once more we are confronted by the essential
unreality of Sterne, who breathes in his books far more than
in the body. About this man there seems no bone or
muscle, only arteries and nerve-centres, little to touch or
handle. Glimpses of him we glean on several sides : letters
of his remain, self-revelations, in plenty, but we cannot
imagine him eating his breakfast, romping with a child
(unless it were very pretty), or giving anyone a hearty shake
of the hand. He seems always something outside himself,
wavering around or over it. But of two elements we may
be sure. His being held the seeds — he himself is our in-
formant— of two loves, the " sacred " and the " profane," *
— though for " sacred " should be read " airy," — and
the " profane " preponderated. On that side there was the
strain, the nasty strain, belonging to the brotherhood of
John Hall-Stevenson, though even here Sterne's bent was
far more sensuous than sensual ; on the other, the aerial
strain (though etherial never) — the tricksy, forward, laughing

1 Cf. Tristram Shandy, vol. vii. pp. 139-40: "'The latter,' continued
he, ' partakes wholly of the* nature of Venus ; the first, which is the golden
chain let down from heaven, excites the love heroic, which comprehends in it,
and excites too, the desire for philosophy and truth.' ' To be sure,' said my
mother, ' love keeps peace in the world.' ' In the house, my dear, I
own.' ' It replenishes the earth,' said my mother. ■ But it keeps heaven
empty, my dear,' replied my father."

36 STERNE

love that sought, as he himself puts it, " to get out of the
body " — no sustained feeling of selfless affection or deep
attachment, but a captivating caper of saucy spirits, at once
stimulating pity and simulating it. And joined to both
sounded those other notes of faun or satyr, of Pan playing
on his pipes amid the rushes while the dryads peer from
their forest.

There is no need to insist that there is a clean and an
unclean Sterne. What must be insisted, however, is that
his libertinage is that of the freest fancy, not that of a
fleshly rake ; and in this domain, as in the rest, Sterne lacks
actuality. His is a blithe, goblin grossness ; and though
his coarsest food is no meat for babes, it is not poison.
It is bad, but it is not putrid. It does not corrupt, infect, or
contaminate. Sterne never means to seduce ; his wanton-
nesses are not real, nor is that prurience which only pro-
vokes a smile. The whim and wit of them blow away the
scandal, just as the same qualities erase the blots in a first-
rate French farce. Had it been otherwise, the blameless
Lessing would not have loved Sterne's sallies, which were
taken literally by the dense critics and caricaturists of his
day. Sterne the author is no Lothario. In his own time
women favoured his books, from the duchess, it was then
said, to " the snuffy chambermaid." In ours, he is mainly
read by men. Since Thackeray scourged him with Victorian
scorpions, his first admirers have eyed him askance. True,
much of Tristram Shandy is not for girlhood (Sterne called j
it a book for " the bedchamber "), nor all of the Sentimental
Journey, which he styled "a book for the parlour." To that |
shelf, however, with some excisions, it might be restored. I
The part of Sterne which most shocks womankind is not I
his light and occasional lubricity, but the double meanings j
and the play at passion. Women realise that he is not
virile. Yet, set by Rabelais, who was virile indeed, Sterne I

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 37

is modest — a cascade to Niagara. Compared with Hall-
Stevenson, his worst page seems almost stainless ; but
compared with Goldsmith, the blemishes are foul indeed.
Still, one who could so well idealise the courtship of Uncle
Toby and the heart-pangs of Corporal Trim surely saw
some vision of love and sacrifice which he could not follow.
And this is another instance of what was urged at the
outset — that though his cobweb of suggestion entangled
filthy flies, it also caught the fresh dew of the morning.
Had not that dew been there, who would write about
Sterne ? With that dew in such odd commixture, who
would not write about him ?

And now that his courtship looms, we must pause
awhile to recall his general outlook on love. It was not
high, but neither was it mean, though its main limit was
gallantry : Sterne, like Boccaccio, romanticised a thrill, not
a passion. And romance is the poetry of the nerves.
Compare Bandello with Boccaccio, and you have the
difference between Stevenson who debased, and Sterne who
Decameroned passion. In this respect who can be more
candid ? He was not so Shandean as Tristram Shandy — so
he protested shortly before he died. Arid, though the
dividing line is thin, his flirting fancy was more of the
artist than the man. Or, rather, he himself was less a man
than an artist. He loved his fancies. He caressed his
feelings, not their objects, and even his feelings want sub-
stance ; they are lacework.

As a boy, we have seen how he grieved for Virgil's
heroine ; and " Oh," he exclaims in another passage, " there
is a sweet aera in the life of man when (the brain being
tender and fibrillous, and more like pap than anything
else) a story read of two fond lovers, separated from each
other by cruel parents, and by still more cruel destiny
.... affords more pabulum to the brain than all the Frusts,

38 STERNE

and Crusts, and Rusts of antiquity, which travellers can cook
up for it." l

Shakespeare's distich —

" Tell me, where is fancy bred —
Or in the heart, or in the head ? "

goes to the root of Sterne's love-philosophy. In Tristram
is a striking piece showing that Sterne's aesthetic flicker
sprang more from the head than from the heart : " It
is a great pity — but 'tis certain from every day's obser-
vation of man that he may be set on fire like a candle, at
either end, provided there is a sufficient wick standing
out ; if there is not — there is an end of the affair ; and if
there is, by lighting it at the bottom, as the flame in
that case has the misfortune generally to put itself out —
there is an end of the affair again. I, for my part, could I
always have the ordering of it which way I would be burnt
myself — for I cannot bear the thoughts of being burnt like a
beast — I would oblige a housewife constantly to light me
at the top, for then I should burn down decently to the
socket." 2

With Sterne women were not a shrine, but a picture
gallery through which the collector rambles. He discrimi-
nated their lights and shades. When Corporal Trim
muses on mortality to the waiting-maid : " c I could hear
Trim talk so for ever,' cried Susannah — c What is it
(Susannah laid her hand upon Trim's shoulder) — but cor-
ruption ? ' (Susannah took it off)." And here let Sterne's
comment be remarked : " Now I love you for this — and 'tis
this delicious mixture within you which makes you dear
creatures what you are.' CA11 I can say of the matter is
— that he has either a pumpkin for his head — or a pipkin

1 Tristram Shandy, vol. vii. p. 113.

2 Ibid., vol. viii. p. 41.

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 39

for his heart, — and whenever he is dissected 'twill be
found so.' " 1

The humourist of sensations makes his Shandy say that
love " is not so much a sentiment as a situation, into which
a man enters, as my brother Toby would do into a corps— no
matter whether he loves the service or no — being once in it
he acts as if he did, and takes every step to show himself a
man of prowess."2 This is the love of Smollett or of
Fielding. But Sterne questions whether love be not a
" disease," and in the " Love's Alphabet " which accompanies
the story of Widow Wadman he reveals himself by showing
that love is the most lyrical of all human passions ; at the
same time the most misgiving — and, he adds, " ridiculous."
" c You can scarce combine two ideas together upon it,
Brother Toby, without an hypallage.' c What is that ? '
cried my Uncle Toby. c The cart before the horse,' replied
my father." Often as he dwells on its physical foundation,
love's whimsical aspect is never far from his thoughts.
Widow Wadman is made to observe, when Uncle Toby
stays' with her, that a woman mixes a man up with her
house and furniture. And, with the irony which always
underlies him, Sterne tells us that in love "the suffering
party is at least the third."

Sterne never put love on the pinnacle of chivalry.
Though sometimes he idealised, he did not consecrate
or shield it with a vestal armour. Nor did he hedge it
round with obstacles for knights to vanquish ; or seclude
it in wilds inaccessible for daring to penetrate. Love
meant for him no Sleeping Beauty, no peerless rose won
only through thorns and brambles by some heroic prince.
Sterne was a nomad pagan who peeps at love by every
wayside corner. And women, he takes as facts : " Nature
is Nature," he says in one place. But then neither does

Tristram S 'handy ', vol. viii. p. 144. 2 Ibid.> vol. v. p. 52.

4o STERNE

Sterne wholly profane love, though he will not compound
with conventions : love for him is a sensation which he
aestheticises : " I said we were not stocks or stones, 'tis
very well, — I should have added, nor are we angels. I
wish we were ; but we are men, clothed with bodies and
governed by our imaginations, and what a junketing piece
of work there is betwixt these and our seven senses, especi-
ally some of them ; for my part, I own it, I am ashamed to
confess. Let it suffice that of all the senses, the eye, for I
absolutely deny the touch, though most of your barbati I
know are for it, has the quickest commerce with the soul —
gives the smarter stroke, and leaves something more in-
expressible upon the fancy than words can either convey —
or sometimes get rid of." This is nearer the Renaissance.
It presents love as an object of art, and the lover as
virtuoso. But, though love's dilettante, Sterne could be
earnest as well as whimsical. " c I thought love had been
a joyous thing,' quoth my Uncle Toby. c 'Tis a most
serious thing, an please your honour (sometimes) that is
in the world.' " Trim meant his answer ; he had suffered.

We need not doubt that in his own courtship Sterne was
serious. He had caught on fire from the " top " ; Elizabeth
Lumley appealed to his head. In his after-coquetries, the
question might occur as to what the charm of this unsub-
stantial man was. For it is certain that women were always
as much on his side as most men were against him.
Quaint as his strange countenance looked, odd as his
harlequin figure, he was the reverse of handsome. His
amusements were rather the eccentricities of a worn
phthisic racing with death than such as attract the gentle
or the gay. I think it was the blend of the two loves
already noticed, that drew so many "misunderstood"
moths to his pale candle.

His paganism was not materialist, and none could call

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 41

him a voluptuary. Women beheld in him a strange will-
o'-the-wisp straying in the twilight of the senses. His
mystery summoned them, and his elfin mockeries, far more
than any malign, erotic glamour. And something there
was in him that called on all who suffered, or thought they
suffered, from the normal, brutal man ; the feminine in him
appealed to the feminine. Mischievous as he was, he
never seems to have done them much harm, nor, outwardly
or inwardly, can he be called wholly of the flesh. He got
" out of the body " because, except in dreams, he was rarely
in it. He was often kind, always considerate, and he could
be disinterested. Nay, we know from a letter already cited
that he could be genuinely innocent. It concerns " a once
sprightly and vivacious Harriot," and expresses unfeigned
indignation against the man who had been " the fatal cause
of overwhelming the spotless soul, and plunging the yet
untainted mind into a sea of sorrow and repentance." " In
such cases," he asks, " does not man act the part of a
demon ? " " Had I known his pretensions," he resumes,
" I should have flown on the wings of friendship, of regard
and of affection — and rescued the lovely innocent. ... Be
not alarmed at my declaration — I have long been bound
to her in the reciprocal bonds of affection. ... I would
love the whole sex were they equally deserving." And
after a fresh outburst he dwells demurely on the " delight-
ful task of whispering peace to those who are in trouble,
and healing the broken in spirit." Once more, and in
another letter : " Surely the pleasures," he muses, " which
arise from contemplating such characteristics " (and he is
speaking of gracious ladies) — " embracing the urn which
contains their ashes, and shedding tears of friendship for
it — are far, far superior to the highest joys of sense, or
sensuality." And : " If you do not like the last word,"
he concludes as Yorick, " I pray you be so kind as to

42 STERNE

scratch it out, for that is a liberty I have never ventured
to take myself with anything I write." 1

Sterne, as a man, was a Lothario mainly of the mind.
Indeed, he says as much in a late and laughing letter to
" Hannah " or " Mrs H., " whom he rallies on vague flirta-
tions ; and he mocks at unsubstantial love-making with
double amusement to another friend. He liked romances
in the air, and the high-born fribbles who humoured and
cajoled him never dreamed of Yorick as an earthy gallant.
Kitty de Fourmentelle and Eliza Draper were the sole
passions of his life, and even these hardly deserve the
name. Rather, they were phantoms of passion, as the rest
were the sport of sentiment. The miasma lay, not in his
hazy actions, but in his brooding nerves, while above that
miasma shone a sunshine that often pierced and sometimes
dispersed it.

The originality of Sterne's gushes has been hinted ;
their mawkishness was tempered by his irony. He was
the first to coin the word " sentimental " in our language,
and that too in one of the first letters which at this time
the plaintive suitor addressed to the lady of his choice.
Some have thought that he derived this adjective from
France, but when his works were translated into French,
"sentimental" had to be repeated, just as in German it
was Lessing who suggested to the translator of the Senti-
mental Journey the paraphrase of " empfindsam." The term
was wholly new, and to it Sterne subsequently added the
verb "sentimentalise."2 After promising a correspondent
all the joys of the simple life, " In the meantime," he
proceeds, " we will philosophise and sentimentalise — the last

1 For the first quotation, cf. Siemens Letters to his Friends on Various
Occasions, London, G. Kearsly, 1775, pp. 54-62 ; and for the second,
ibid., p. 52.

2 Cf Original Letters, etc., 1788, p. 14. It seems addressed to William
Combe.

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 43

word is a bright invention of the moment, which was written
for yours and Dr Johnson's service — and you shall sit in my
study and take a peep into the world as into a show box,
and amuse yourself as I present the pictures of it to your
imagination. Thus will I teach you to love its follies, to
pity its errors and detest its injustice — and I will introduce
you among the rest to some tender-hearted damsel on whose
cheeks some bitter affliction has placed a tear, and having
heard her story you shall take a white handkerchief from
your pocket and wipe the moisture from her eyes and
from your own. — I love the classics as well as any man
ought to love them, but among all their fine science,
their fine writings and their fine phrases, their most
enthusiastic admirer will not be able to find me half a
dozen stories that have any sentiment in them — and so
much for that." These late sentences contain the whole
man, his artifice and his simplicity, for the two were inex-
tricably blended. After Sterne's death, the Abbe Raynal
said of him that " he was in love with the whole sex " ;
and Sterne, who had said the same, must have told it to
the Abbe. A part of the Sentimental Journey concerning
women, and written in Paris, reiterates it. " God bless
them all," says Sterne. " . . . . There is not a man upon
earth who loves them so much as I do : After all the foibles
I have seen and all the satires I have read against them still
I love them ; being firmly persuaded that the man who has
not a sort of affection for the whole sex is incapable of ever
loving a single one as he ought." x Dickens's Mr Snevell-
icci, it will be remembered, also owned that he loved " every
one of them." But then he was otherwise inspired, and he
was not a sentimental tramp.

Miss Lumley set off to join her sister at Yoxall rectory ;

1 Cf. Sentimental Journey, vol. ii. p. 65.

44 STERNE

and Sterne, after visiting the cottage of " Miss S.,"
their mutual friend, actually took on his lady-love's
" Minster lodgings," and haunted her deserted precincts.
To feast on feeling was ever his regimen. The familiar
letter to her in which he first uses the word " sentimental "
will bear repetition : —

" Alas, everything has now lost its relish and look ! The
hour you left D'Estella I took to my bed — I was worn out
with fevers of all kinds, but most of all that fever of the
heart with which thou knowest well I have been wasting
these two years, and shall continue wasting till you quit S.
[Staffordshire]. The good Miss S., from the forebodings
of the best of hearts, thinking I was ill, insisted upon me
going to her. What can be the cause, my dear L. [Lumley],
that I have never been able to see the face of this mutual
friend but I feel myself rent to pieces ? She made me stay
an hour with her. And in that short space 1 burst into
tears a dozen times, — and in such affectionate gusts of
passion that she was constrained to leave the room and
sympathise in her dressing-room. c I have been weeping for
you both,' said she, in a tone of the sweetest pity ; — c for
poor L.'s heart I have long known it — her anguish is as
sharp as yours — her heart as tender — her constancy as great
— her virtue as heroic — Heaven brought you not together to
be tormented.' I could only answer her with a kind look
and a heavy sigh — and returned home to your lodgings
(which I have hired till your return) to resign myself to
misery. — Fanny had prepared me a supper — she is all
attention to me — but I sat over it with tears ; a bitter
f sauce, my L., but I could eat it with no other. For the
moment she began to spread my little table, my heart fainted
within me ; one solitary plate, one knife, one fork, one
glass ! I gave a thousand penetrating looks at the chair
thou hast so often graced in these quiet and sentimental repasts

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 45

— then laid down my knife and fork, and took up my hand-
kerchief, and clapt it across my face, and wept like a child —
I do so at this very moment, my L., for, as I take up my
pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows, and tears
are trickling down the paper as I address the word L. Oh,
thou blessed in thyself and in thy virtues — blessed to all
that know thee — to me most so because more do I know of
thee than of all thy sex. — This is the philtre, my L., by
which thou has charmed me, and by which thou wilt hold
me thine, while virtue and faith hold the world together. —
This, my friend, is the plain and simple magic by which I

told Miss I have won a place in that heart of thine on

which I depend so satisfied that time, or distance, or change,
or anything which might alarm the hearts of little men,
create no uneasy suspicions in mine. ... I told you poor
Fanny was all attention to me since your departure — con-
trives every day bringing in the name of L. She told me
last night (upon giving me some hartshorn) she had observed
my illness began the very day of your departure for S. ;
that I had never held up my head, had seldom or scarce
ever smiled, had fled from all society ; that she verily
believed I was broken-hearted, for she had never entered
the room or passed by the door, but she heard me sigh
heavily. That I neither ate nor slept, nor took pleasure in
anything as before. Judge then, my L., can the valley look
so well or the roses and jessamin smell so sweet as hereto-
fore ? Ah me — but adieu ! the vesper bell calls me from
thee to my God ! "

If any other but Sterne or Rousseau had thus written
to his sweetheart we should scent hypocrisy. Ruskin has
distinguished between hypocrisy and imposture, relegating
the first to sentiment. Sterne was no impostor ; in his
letters he has told us how on one occasion he would not
open a letter, lest he might tell a falsehood to his wife ;

46 STERNE

while, on another, he himself confessed to a white lie in
terms that prove that he had a conscience. But he was
a morbid, self-concentrated egoist, fondling his fancies
and taking them for things. Some design there may have
been in one of these sentences, for, " More do I know
of thee than of all thy sex " betrays that side-flattery
which is perhaps the most captivating to woman. And the
whole is impregnated with himself ; the " philtre," the love-
potion, whereby she " charmed " him was her sympathy
which he mistook for his own. None the less, these out-
pourings were not assumed. They stirred him, like the
whispers of a breeze, and what he felt for the moment
demanded aesthetic expression — the same expression, when
the moment returned. Long before he had realised his
literary power, he sported with life, flirted it like a fan,
toyed with it slowly for the thrill of realising the process.
By the by-play of such exercise he titillated and fortified
himself, while the suffering which he liked and laughed at
was a mere peg for his artistry. He would never have
portrayed wretchedness at all, but for the luxury of its
appeal. Or rather, he chased away unhappiness, as he did
happiness, like butterflies, only to catch them, admire
their glint, and put his pin (or pen) through their plumage
afterwards. One winged butterfly followed another, till he
made a butterfly-dance, away or towards it, of death itself.
The physical courage which was his manliest endowment
belonged also to this volatile order. All his pangs and
ecstasies lay in the allurement, the capture, the impres-
sion, and the remembrance ; he may be said to have had
a memory for a heart. How true he remained to this way-
ward self appears from the fact that long afterwards — in the
year preceding his lonely death — he repeated the self-same
phases in the progress of his passion for " Eliza." Again
he wept over the dishes, again he communed with the maid-

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 47

servant who pitied his broken heart. Again he sought
solitude and bemourned his languishing frame, again he
poured out his grief to a mutual friend, for a receptacle of
woe was indispensable to Sterne. All this will be found in
the Journal at the end of this volume. And in both cases
it was the pleasure of self-pity that longed for a vent, and
received a relief. His whole being was a sieve for feeling ;
this one man started that sentimental vogue.

About thirty years after this epistle was posted, and only
four after the Sentimental Journey had been published,
Goethe, who praised and acknowledged his indebtedness to
Sterne,1 surrendered himself for once to the rapture of
pulsation, and dedicated it to suicide. Rousseau doubt-
less contributed the phase, but Goethe found its remedy
in the calm of Goldsmith and the confidence of that very
Sterne who had abetted the foible. Every print shop
exhibited pictures of Werther prostrate before Charlotte or
distraught in his rhapsodies over fate. Put such hysteria
into a stronger mould, raise the swell of feeling to the
storm of passion, turn the tea into brandy, and we get
Byron with his seared heart, defiant on the rock of exile,
and a spectacle for mankind. Truly Sterne was a pioneer.

One word more, and we have done with this early love-
letter. It introduces another of Sterne's characteristics
—those minute touches of observation that actualise his
impressionism. The touches themselves are impressionist,
for Sterne was the first to subordinate details to the
whole, to make them suggestive points in the general out-
line, to halve his imagination, as he said, with his reader's.
In painting, Turner was to do the same. This quality

1 Cf. {inter alia) Eckermann's Gesfirache mit Goethe \ vol. ii. p. 29. In
these conversations Goethe twice again alludes with pleasure to Sterne, and
especially to his saying that he regretted that he had not made a more
sensible use of misfortune.

48 STERNE

will be treated more fully hereafter, but his own illustra-
tion shall be given at once. " There are certain combined
looks of simple subtlety," he says when the Grisette
shook her head in answer to Sterne's head-shake, "where
whim, and sense, and seriousness, and innocence are so
blended, that all the languages of Babel set loose together
could not express them — They are communicated and
caught so instantaneously, that you can scarce say which
party is the infector. I leave it to your men of words to
swell pages about it — it is enough in the present to say
again, the gloves would not do ; so folding our hands
within our arms, we both lolled upon the counter — it was
narrow, and there was just room for the parcel to lie between
us." The famous passage follows about the gloves and
their glances, their glances and the gloves. " She looked
into my very heart and reins — it may seem strange, but I
could actually feel she did." 1

After this, revert to the love-letter which Sterne
never meant for publication. How he dallies over the
details : " one solitary plate ', one knife, one fork, one glass"
" a thousand penetrating looks at the chair" the handker-
chief, the " roses and the jessamin " ! This is not the
mechanical " realism " of photography, but the miniature
strokes that realise the lights and shades of an impression.
Everything that Sterne handles becomes a symbol of sensa-
tion that converts the commonplace into art, assuages the
author's longing to project himself, and builds, so to speak,
a bridge of intellectual sympathy. Such handling is abso-
lutely modern, and I know not who heralded it, however
unconsciously, but Sterne.

Sterne's realist impressionism, moreover, is allied to yet
another of his innovations. Colloquy with the reader was
initiated by Steele and imitated by Addison, but it was not
1 Cf. The Sentimental Journey, vol. i. pp. 175-7.

MISS LUMLEY : THE JESTER'S COURTSHIP 49

the dramatic monologue of Sterne. Over and over again
in these conferences he draws pictures of himself — crying,
laughing, fainting, restful, restless, in and out, off and on.
He imports himself into all the landscape, and the same
traits which disgust many in the man delight most as they
are used by the artist. Sterne is the playwright of impres-
sionism.

Sterne's maudlin lovesickness, from his wooing onwards,
revolts the wholesome male. Many a man must have
itched to kick him ; but Philistines were to arise who would
have kicked Shelley had he not been so ethereal, and Byron
had he not been a pugilist. With the women it fared
otherwise. Kitty and Eliza ; the lady at the door of the
Calais Remise ; the two Grisettes ; Janatone the Montreuil
innkeeper's daughter, distraught Maria, American Miss
Graeme (afterwards Mrs Ferguson), and peerless Mrs Vesey
— are not all these a cloud of witnesses ?

CHAPTER V

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED

The Sterne idyll proceeded in sequence. There was a
quarrel ; there were protests. He was neglectful, and she in
dudgeon. " I have offended her whom I tenderly love !
What could tempt me it ! But if a beggar was to knock at
thy gate wouldst thou not open the door and be melted
with compassion ? I know thou wouldst, for pity has
erected a temple in thy bosom. ... I have reconsidered this
apology, and alas ! what would it accomplish ? Arguments,
even if finely spun, can never change the nature of things !
So a truce with them ! " And then he steals into her heart
again, melting it by regret for " a very valuable friend lost
by a sad accident." " And what is worse, he has left a
widow and five young children to lament this sudden
stroke." With Sterne, love lay ever in wait for charity.
The sighing and laughing philosopher (and a philosophy
Sterne had) grows pensive : the preacher was in him from
the first. "These dark and seemingly cruel dispensations
of Providence often make the best of human hearts com-
plain." He can paint the distress of an affectionate mother
"made a widow in a moment, weeping bitterly over a
numerous, helpless, and fatherless offspring." Laurey's
carelessness was also a providential dispensation, and how
would his Elizabeth fare if in a moment she should be
widowed also ?

5°

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED 51

He fretted for her return ; she was coming back.
" May a kindly angel guide thy steps hither ! Solitude
at length grows tiresome. Thou sayest thou wilt quit the
place with regret ; I think so too. Does not something
uneasy mingle with the very reflection of leaving it ? It
is like parting with an old friend " — observe the by-
play— "whose temper and company," he proceeds, "one
has long been acquainted with. — I think I see you looking
twenty times a day at the house, — almost counting every
brick and pane of glass, — and telling them at the same time,
with a sigh, you are going to leave them. — Oh ! happy
modification of matter ! They will remain insensible of thy
loss. — But how wilt thou be able to part with thy garden ?
The recollection of so many pleasing walks must have
endeared it to you. The trees, the shrubs, the flowers,
which thou hast reared with thy own hands — will they not
droop and fade away sooner upon thy departure ? — Who
will be thy successor to nurse them in thy absence ? — thou
wilt leave thy name upon the myrtle tree, — if trees, and
shrubs, and flowers can compose an elegy, I should expect a
very plaintive one upon this subject. Adieu, adieu ! Believe
me ever, ever thine."

Already he had caught the art of matching the sound to
the sense in the subtle music of phrases. This plasticity
of material, interpreting meanings, is of an impressionist's
essence ; and Sterne became a musician in words, the Pied
Piper at whose call the feelings rushed trooping, and tripped
frolicsome.

Sick at heart and sick in body, at last Elizabeth came,

1 pining for Laurence, yet fearing that she would die ; for

in communion with this half-consumptive, she seems to

; have imagined that she was the same. Fancying herself in

a decline, she betrayed the great love that she bore him.

Sterne, in the brief and exquisite memoir bequeathed to

52 STERNE

his daughter, has thus recounted the sequel : — " I wrote
to her often. I believe then she was partly determined
to have me, but would not say so. On her return she
fell into a consumption ; and one evening that I was
sitting by her with almost a broken heart to see her
so low, she said, ' My dear Laurey, I can never be
yours, for I verily believe I have not long to live ; but I
have left you every shilling of my fortune/ Upon this
she showed me her will. This generosity overpowered me.
It pleased God that she recovered, and I married her."
But if she proved a Xantippe, he was never a Socrates.

No doubt Sterne felt himself flattered by an alliance
with one who was cousin to Mrs Montagu — the centre of
much fame and fashion, the most embroidered of the blue-
stockings. He would scarcely have been so pleased had
he read her family's opinion. A month after his marriage,
Mrs Montagu's brother, Matthew Robinson, informed her
that Betty Lumley was " now married to a parson who once
delighted in debauchery, who is possessed of about ^ioo a
year in preferment, and has a good prospect of more. What
hopes our relation may have of settling the affections of a
light and fickle man I know not, but I imagine she will set
about it, not by means of the beauty, but of the arm of flesh.
In other respects I see no fault in the match ; no woman
ought to venture upon the state of Old Maiden without a
consciousness of an inexhaustible fund of good nature."
And shortly afterwards the great Mrs Montagu herself
thus comments in a letter to her sister : " Mr Sterne has
one hundred pounds a year living, with a good prospect
of better perferment (sic). He was a great rake, but,
being japanned and married, has varnished his character.
I do not comprehend what my cousin means by their little
desires ; if she had said little stomachs it would have been
more help to their economies, but when people have not

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED $3

enough for the necessaries of life what avails it that they
can do without the superfluities and pomps of it ? Does
she mean that she won't keep a coach and six and four
footmen ? What a wonderful occupation she made of court-
ship ! But it left her no leisure for anything else. I
wish they may live well together." '

Elizabeth Lumley soon recovered, and, in an age of
feminine abeyance, she herself proposed to her grateful lover :
the Assembly Rooms, it is said, were the scene. This speaks
something for her will, perhaps aided by the " arm of flesh "
which her kinswoman commemorates and the legacy which
she had just received. From those Assembly Rooms the pair
hurried straight to the minister, and were married by special
licence on March 30, 1741, the then Dean officiating.
Her wilful suitor professed himself enraptured, and he was
in that mood which he depicted long after disillusionment
set in. " Hail, ye gentle sympathies," he tirades, " that
can approach two humble hearts to each other, and chase
every discordant idea from an union that Nature has de-
signed by the same happy colouring of character that she
has given them ! " 2 And at this very moment Sterne
wrote, picturing the future and transported with the
prospect, — " Yes ! I will steal from the world, and not
a babbling tongue shall tell where I am — Echo shall not so
much as whisper my hiding-place ; — suffer thy imagination
to paint it as a little sun-gilt cottage on the side of a
romantic hill, — dost thou think I will leave love and friend-
ship behind me ? " — he always couples the two — " No !
they shall be my companions in solitude, for they will sit
down and rise up with me in the amiable form of my L. —
We will be as merry and as innocent as our first Parents in
Paridise before the wretched Fiend entered that indescrib-

1 Mrs Climenson's Elizabeth Montagu, vol. i. pp. 73-4.

2 Original Letters, 1 788, p. 30.

54 STERNE

able scene. The keenest affections will have room to shoot
and expand in our retirement, and produce such fruits as
madness, and envy and ambition have always killed in the
bud. — Let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a
distance : the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. —
My L. has seen a polyanthus blow in December, some
friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind. No
planetary influence shall reach us but that which presides
[over] and cherishes the sweetest flowers. God preserve
us ! How delightful this prospect is in the idea ! We
will build and we will plant in our own way, — simplicity
shall not be tortured by art ; — we will learn of nature how
to live — she shall be our alchemist, to mingle up the good
of life into one salubrious draught — the gloomy family of
care and mistrust shall be banished from our dwelling,
guarded by thy kind and tutelar deities ; — we will sing our
choral songs in gratitude, and rejoice to the end of our
pilgrimage. Adieu, my L. Return to one who languishes
for thy society." Yet, as time wore on, these songs of
gratitude broke into discord. Sterne tuned his pipe for
other ears and forsook the house of his pilgrimage.
Arcadia palled, and the entrancing shepherdess appeared a
beldame. Dazed by the zigzags of the wayfarer's senti-
ment, she half lost her reason and was content to fare on
without him.

But before the matrimonial knot was tied, Sterne seems
to have travelled for some months abroad as tutor to a
young pupil. The youth whom he attended was probably
Lord Aboyne, whose chaplain he had been appointed, and
probability points to an earlier date than has been con-
jectured.1 Twice in Tristram Shandy does Sterne refer to

1 Professor Cross puts it immediately after the wedding. But the Sternes
appear to have settled down at once to their parish life, and he would hardly
have left his bride.

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED 55

the asthma which he contracted while "skaiting against
the wind in Flanders " ; 1 and several foreign allusions in
the early part of that work, together with a familiarity,
seemingly personal, with places both French and Flemish,
make it certain that he had taken that trip long before
ill-health drove him abroad. There are glimmers of Ghent
(though Sterne in childhood may have gleaned Uncle
Toby's allusions from his father), and references to old
French castles, even a mention of Rome and Loretto.
His quality of bear-leader is one to which he recurred
much later in his career, when he still hoped for an oppor-
tunity of conveying a young gentleman about Europe.

This first journey was notable, for it set him thinking,
gave him the zest to roam and a foretaste of sentimental
travel. The peep that he gives of it, moreover, is intro-
spective : it occurs while he moralises over his self-
appointment as " the King's Chief Jester." It is worth
mentioning, too, that the Mr " Noddy," whom he piloted
in the tour, reappears in Hall-Stevenson's so-called Moral
Tales.

"I had just time (he says) in my travels through
Denmark with Mr Noddy's eldest son, whom in the
year 1741 1 accompanied as governor, riding along with
him at a prodigious rate through most parts of Europe,
and of which the original journey performed by us two
will be given in the progress of this work, I had just
time, I say, and that was all, to prove the truth of
an observation made by a long-sojourner in that country
— namely 'That Nature was neither very lavish nor
ras she very stingy in her gifts of genius and capacity to its
inhabitants ; — but like a discreet parent was moderately kind
to them all, observing such an equal tenour in the distribu-
ion of her favours as to bring them in those points pretty
1 Tristram Shandy, vol. i. p. 16 ; vol. viii. p. 19.

S6 STERNE

near to a level with each other/ so that you will meet with
few instances in that kingdom of refined parts ; but a great
deal of plain household understanding amongst all ranks of
people, of which everybody has a share, which is, I think,
very right. With us, you see, the case is very different ; —
we are all ups and downs in this matter ; — you are a great
genius ; — or 'tis fifty to one, sir, you are a great dunce and
a blackguard, — not that there is a total want of intermediate
steps. . . . But the two extremes are more common, and in
a greater degree in this unsettled island, where Nature in her
gifts and dispositions of this kind is most whimsical and
capricious ; Fortune herself not being more so in the
bequest of her goods and chattels, than she.,, And
then follows his estimate of himself. " This is all that
ever staggered my faith in regard to Yorick's extrac-
tion. . . . For happen how it would, the fact was this —
that instead of the cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense
and humour you would have looked for, in one so extracted ;
— he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a
composition, — as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions ;
— with as much life, and whim and gaite de cceur about him ;
as the kindest climate could have engendered and put
together. With all this sail poor Yorick carried not one
ounce of ballast ; he was utterly unpractised in the world :
and at the age of twenty-six knew just about as well how to
steer his course as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen.
So that upon his first setting out the brisk gale of his spirits,
as you will imagine, ran him foul ten times in the day of
somebody's tackling ; and as the grave and slow-paced were
oftenest in his way — you may likewise imagine 'twas with
such he had generally the ill-luck to get the most entangled.
For aught I know there might be some mixture of unlucky
wit at the bottom of such Fracas : — For to speak the truth,
Yorick had an invincible dislike and opposition in his

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED 57

nature to gravity ; — not to gravity as such ; — for when
gravity was wanted he could be the most grave or serious of
mortal men for days or weeks together ; but he was an
enemy to the affectation of it, and declared open war
against it, only as it appeared a cloak for ignorance or for
folly ; and then, whenever it fell in his way, however
sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it much quarter.
Sometimes in his wild way of thinking, he would say that
gravity was an arrant scoundrel ; and he would add, — of the
most dangerous kind too, — because a sly one ; and that he
verily believed more honest and well-meaning people were
bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-
month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven.
In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he
would say, There was no danger — but to itself : — whereas
the very essence of gravity was design and consequently
deceit ; 'twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for
more sense and knowledge than a man was worth and that
with all its pretensions — it was not better, but often worse,
than what a French wit had long ago defined it, viz. : A
mysterious carriage of the Body to cover the defects of the Mind : —
which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence,
would say deserved to be wrote in letters of gold. . . .
Yorick had no impression but one, and that was what arose
from the nature of the deed spoken of ; which impression
he would usually translate into plain English without any
periphrasis — and too oft without much distinction of either
personage, time, or place ; — so that when mention was made
of a pitiful or ungenerous proceeding — he never gave him-
self a moment's time to reflect who was the Hero of the
piece — what his station — or how far he had power to hurt
him hereafter ; — but if it was a dirty action, — without more
ado, — The man was a dirty fellow — and so on ; — and as his
comments usually had the ill fate to be terminated either in

5 8 STERNE

a bon mot, or to be enlivened throughout with some drollery
or humour of expression, it gave wings to Yorick's indiscre-
tion. In a word, though he never sought, yet at the same
time, as he seldom shunned occasions of saying what came
uppermost and without much ceremony ; — he had but too
many temptations in life, of scattering his wit and his
humour, — his gibes and his jests about him — they were
not lost for want of gathering/' They certainly were
not.

In "Yorick," Hamlet's jester and Shandy's clergyman,
Sterne depicts the best part of himself, just as in the child
Tristram he sometimes depicts the worst. These are not the
sole occasions where Sterne dwells on his Yorick. He recurs
to it in that part of the Sentimental Journey where he observes
that the French are apter to " conceive " than to " com-
bine," and at the same time rallies a bishop for despising
his homilies : " c Good my Lord,' said I, c but there
are two Yoricks. The Yorick your lordship thinks of has
been dead and buried eight hundred years after he flourished
in Horwendillus's court. The other Yorick is myself, who
have flourished, my lord, in no court ' — he shook his head.
J Good God,' said I, c you might as well confound
Alexander the great with Alexander the coppersmith.' "

How true is the self-appraisement of the first quota-
tion ? Sterne here (and elsewhere) protests himself a son of
the South, doomed somehow to the North's chill counter-
blasts ; he repudiates the law of " gravity," and throws
down the gauntlet against seriousness ; yet he owns to
a sober strain, though he limits it by weeks. Sterne
certainly could be solemnly pert and frivolously solemn, and
in both capacities he was arch and demure. He was an
ironist with a touch of the poet in him, an adorer of beauty,
a detester of the formal. And more than once he wrote,
and well wrote, of his function, that every time a man

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED 59

smiles, and more so when he laughs, he "adds some-
thing to this fragment of life." 1 This was what he termed
the true Shandyism, which " opens the lungs and heart,"
and his commentators have usually claimed for him an
animal exuberance. This can certainly be claimed for
Rabelais, who shakes the spheres with his gross laughter.
But was Sterne quite so joyous as he fancied ? 1 think not.
He had the potentiality, but not the physical power, for the
romp of spirits : they were not animal. His gaiety was that
of sickly genius wrestling with disease, disorder, and ennui.
He professes too much mirth to be credited with its full
possession. He smiles rather than laughs, and his humour-
ous wit is a protest against his frail constitution. This was
no jolly wassailer, not even a pococurante, but a poor
consumptive court-fool with or without his cap and bells.
The chords of his pathos underlie all his grotesque twists,
which are themselves pitched in a minor key. His tears
and " sensibility" are not merely April showers ; the whole
purport of his Sentimental Journey was to show how these
can cement strangers together. His tears, he once wrote,
were " perpendicular " and " hit his horizontal spirits "
at right angles. And of his sensibility he said that though
it had often made him wretched, he would not exchange it
" for all the pleasure the grossest sensualist ever felt." Has
he not confessed, even while descanting on the spell of high
spirits, that the very sound of "gaiety" always associates
itself with the " spleen " ? "It is true," he added in another
place, " I love laughter and merry-making, and all that as
well as any soul upon earth ; nevertheless I cannot think
of piping and taboring it out of the world like the figures
in Holbein's Dance." 2 He did not belong to summer,

1 Original Letters, 1788, p. 7. He also introduced it into one of his
dedications.

2 Ibid., p. 23.

60 STERNE

though none could better irradiate the landscape with
laughing sunshine. You get it in the Peasant's Grace,
which in truth was a dance ; you get it when he wrote that
" a man may laugh and sing and dance too, and after all go
to heaven." You get it when he wrote in another letter :
" How often have I seen at a York Assembly two young
people dance down thirty couples, with as grave a counten-
ance as if they did it for hire, and were after all not sure of
being paid. And here [in France] have I beheld the sun-
burnt sons and daughters of labour rise from their scanty
meal with not a pulse in their hearts that did not beat to
pleasure and, with the brightest looks of satisfaction, make
their wooden shoes responsive to the sound of a broken-
winded haut-boy." l Above all, you get it in that magic
scene of the sunburnt daughter of Languedoc.

Sterne sought after the joy of living just because he
had it not, and he satisfies the want by his incomparable
union of words and feelings. The emotion sports hand in
hand with the sign ; they dance a saraband together.
Perhaps this is so with most great humourists, for humour
means the quick apprehension of opposites, and sunbeams
are more sparkling on a dark surface. Of sentimental
chiaroscuro, he was a master. Heine well observed of " the
child of tragedy," that Mnemosyne kissed him with her
rosy lips till " his heart and his mouth were at singular
variance. Just when the heart bled most tragically, then
to his own surprise the flippant laughter fluttered from
him."2

Sterne here also protests his pure simplicity. " Simplicity,"
he remarks in one of his sermons, " is the great friend to
nature, and if I would be proud of anything in this silly

1 For the sentence cf. Original Letters, pp. 152-6. The picture of the
Peasant's Grace comes, of course, from the Sentimental Journey.

2 Cf. Heine's Uber Deutschland, p. 232.

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED 61

world, it should be of this honest alliance." Was he quite
so unpractised as he pretends ? Spontaneous he certainly
was, under the promptings of a nomad impulse that felt
the moment and scampered after it. But was he free at any-
time from that morbid self-consciousness which undoes
simplicity ? A more self-centred man never existed, and
his left hand loved to know what his right was doing. He
could not be generous without acting as his own audience.
" If a man," he wrote in a letter describing how he had sent
a " poor client " back to his home with his comfort and his
bond restored, " if a man has a right to be proud of any-
thing— it is of a good action, done as it ought to be without
any base interest lurking at the bottom of it " ; and he adds
characteristically, " Bravo, Bravo ! " 1

His sympathy depended on attraction. What fascinated
him, he crept towards, nor was his course ever direct.
There is too much of veiled uneasiness to erase the back-
ground of design. Rousseau was the same. All that
Sterne urges against " gravity " may be pressed against
simplicity also : his, dwelt in externals, and was often that of
an ingenu. But this innate uneasiness, audible in all his
whisperings, never disfigures his grace of manner — a grace
rarely linked to so much whim. And in that combination
perhaps resides his personal charm. He has himself penned
an apotheosis of courtesy : " Hail ye small sweet courtesies
of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it ! Like grace
and beauty which beget inclinations to love, it is sweet ;
'tis ye who open this door and let the stranger in." 2

We left the Sternes married. That midsummer they
spent at his parish of Sutton-in-the-Forest-of-Galtrees, where
Sterne, for all his irregularities, was long a punctual and

1 Sterne's Letters, 1775, p. 43.

2 Sentimental Journey ', vol. i. p. 161.

62 STERNE

punctilious minister, though delicate health compelled him
to employ a curate.1

Bridegroom and bride were not yet disenchanted, the
future beckoned cheerfully, and the voice of the turtle
was heard in their land. His tumble-down vicarage was
scarcely then "a sun-gilt cottage," but they were contented.
Few clouds lowered on the horizon which York bounded.
He and she both attended the bedsides of suffering, where
he rehearsed his coming elegiacs. Of literary aptitude he
seems as yet to have been unconscious. For some years
no child was born to them, and they took their frugal
ease in the country, their scanty pleasures in the town.
This was not to last. The sirens played perilous melodies
in Laurey's ears. " You will, I am sure," he was to
write, " more than understand me when I mention that
sense of female perfection — I mean, however, when the
female is sitting or walking beside you, — which so possesses
the mind that the whole Globe seems to be occupied by
none but you two ; — when your hearts in perfect unison,
or I should rather say harmony, produce the same chords,
— and blossom with the same flowers of thought and senti-
ment." This was not written of Mrs Sterne. How
changed the scene, when, a quarter of a century onwards,
he seems to have looked back on his desentimentalised wife
as " a fume of a woman," and sighed that he had been
" forced into marriage by the thunder of the Church to a
tempest of a woman " ! 2

1 At £10 a year. For Sterne's punctiliousness cf his letter to the Rev.
Mr Blake from the series first given by Mr Fitzgerald in his Life, p. 93 : "I
know you excuse Formalities of which by-the-bye I am the most punctilious
regarder of withal." And this is borne out by the general tenor of his
correspondence. On one exceptional occasion, however, years onwards, and
in London, he turned up too late to preach a charity sermon at the Foundling
Hospital, but this was after time and engagement books were engrossed by
applicants.

2 Cf the fragment of "The Notary and his Wife? post, Chapter XIII.

THE COURTSHIP RESUMED

63

His courtship and marriage reveal not only the present,
but the future. The author already tinges the man.
Sterne would never have been known to diverge, if there
had not been a fixed point to diverge from. That point of
divergence proved, unhappily, his wife. Readers of Tristram
Shandy will remember that when the Widow Wadman felt
overpowered by love for the unconscious Toby, she gave,
in Sterne's fantastic expression, "a north-east kick." As
years rolled on, Sterne's kicks (and canters) were north-
easterly indeed !

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVAL (174I-I759)

Years of prosaic amity and commonplace occupation were
to elapse before the real Sterne appeared in Tristram Shandy.
In the very year of his wedding the Sutton vicar, who had
obtained the prebendal stall of Givendale, was able to
exchange it for the better one of North Newbald with its
accompanying Stonegate House in York, and he could now
take his turn at city preaching. Three years later,1 through
his wife's influence with Lord Fairfax, he further received
the adjacent living of Stillington, which introduced him to
Squire Stephen Croft, the well-to-do brother of an Oporto
wine-merchant. Stephen was very friendly with Sterne, who
passed many a pleasant evening by the Hall fireside ; but
when the younger brother, John, returned to England, he
spread much gossip about Sterne's doings and misdoings,
and this remains in two or more letters to Caleb Whitefoord,
the ally of Goldsmith, a wine-merchant, diplomatist, and
pamphleteer.

1 Professor Cross shows by documents that the date was early in 1743-4 ;
but Hall-Stevenson, in his preface to a continuation of Yorick's Sentimental
Journey (1774), puts the date as 1745. This is significant as indicating that
already, for some years, Hall-Stevenson saw nothing of Sterne ; and Hall-
Stevenson was never a good influence. In a letter to Bishop Warburton, of
19th June 1760, Sterne indeed goes so far as to say that so much had his
correspondence with this friend been totally interrupted that he had forgotten
his very handwriting.

64

THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVAL 65

But Sutton, on the other hand, brought Sterne into
collision with its testy squire, Philip Harland (and into
reconciliations with him), over land bargains, common en-
closures, and, curious to add, over music. As prebend and
double incumbent, Sterne now enjoyed an income of some
£$oy while his wife's was also at his disposal. With a
revenue of about ^120 a year he held himself above the
pinch of poverty, while he hoped much from land specula-
tions and dairy-farming.

A little Lydia, who died early, was born in October 1 743 ;
and in 1746 came another, to whom Mrs Montagu con-
sented to stand godmother. The sister's name was dear to
Mrs Montagu's heart.

Sterne bestowed great pains on his garden, for which, in
course of time, he even invented appliances. Mingled with
his irregularity, there was always something of the mechani-
cal inventor, and this turn was to find ample expression in
Tristram. As for literary performance, it was confined to the
York pulpits, till the political sequels of 1745 — which drove
his friend Stevenson into action — sent Sterne into fights
political on behalf of his terrible old uncle Jaques. For
eighteen years — from 1741 to 1759 — Sterne remained
obscure, and he remained reputable ; of Hall-Stevenson for
many years he saw nothing. The man who was to forfeit
respect in the future was still a credit to his cloth — " known
for his good life and conversation," as the sentence ran in
the Dean and Chapter's verbose certificate.1 As for his
countenance, it did not yet wear the frail, queer, caustic
expression that marks Reynolds's first delineation. Rather,
it was a worldly, amused face with the contradiction of
poetical eyes, the visage of Cotes's earlier presentment.
Nathaniel Hawthorne noted something of this contrast

1 For this and some other details cf. Professor Cross's Life, pp.
50-55-

5

66 STERNE

when this likeness was shown to him in England,1 and the
reader who here looks on it for the first time will note
other differences also. There is much more morbidity in
Sir Joshua's portrayal, and there is far less ease. The sickly
parson did not benefit by the social racket. Sterne was not
quite certain of his new part.

Only occasional peeps are possible of the protracted
interval that separates long obscurity from final fame. We
see Sterne stickling for his vocation. Everyone recollects
the anecdote, published by Hall-Stevenson, of his reply to
the young blasphemer in the Coney Street coffee-house.
Sterne told him of his dog, an excellent pointer, but cursed
with one infernal fault : " He never sees a clergyman
but he immediately flies at him." " How long may
he have had that trick ? " asked the coxcomb. " Sir,
ever since he was a puppy" rejoined the vicar. Dr
Johnson, who hated Sterne, would surely have applauded
him here.

We see the odd, gaunt Yorick going his rounds on
"as lean and lank and as sorry a jade as Humility her-
self could have bestrided," which, in the fitness of his
humour, he gave " fifty reasons " for not decking with the
fine saddle and bridle that he had purchased in the " pride
and prime of life." He " never could enter a village, but
he caught the attentions of both old and young — Labour
stood still as he passed — the bucket hung suspended in
the middle of the well, — the spinning-wheel forgot its
round — even chuck-farthing and shovel-cap themselves
stood gaping till he got out of sight ; and as his movement
was not of the quickest, he had generally time enough
upon his hands to make his observations — to hear the
groans of the serious and the laughter of the light-hearted,

1 Cf. Hawthorne's Our Old Home (" A Pilgrimage to Boston "—modern
reprint), p. 134.

THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVAL 67

all which he bore with excellent tranquillity. — His character
was, — he loved a jest in his heart." Not without reason
did Sterne dub the hero of his book " Shandy," which is
Yorkshire for "a wee bit daft."

We see him " skaiting " on the Car at Stillington,
falling into the ice, and left helpless amid the staring by-
standers, who were divided in their allegiance.1 We see
him bargaining for queer tomes of ancient learning and
animating their dust. We see him driving into York for
the concerts ; sauntering into bookshops and coffee-houses ;
visiting his friends Blake, Taylor, and Fothergill ; or
mountebanking it with his co-jester, Thomas Bridges,
as he does in their joint caricature of the clown and
" Macaroni " on the stage, with the whole York fair, and
all the fair of York, for audience. " He loved a jest in
his heart," and in a paper, which he drew up for
his wife's provision, he expressly mentions this painting
among his treasures, adding that he had given it to a
lady.2

We see him (all through the 'forties) consorting with
John Blake, the scholar-clergyman who was neither a
pedant nor a prude, whose attentions pleased Sterne's
bristling wife, and whose recourse to Sterne's counsel must
have kept a sense of self-respect alive. Many a jovial
evening they passed together. A new letter to him gives
wind of one of these junketings. " I hope," writes Sterne,
" vou got your coat home safe, tho' in what Plight I fear,
as it was a rainy night and ten o'clock at night before we
reached Sutton ow[e]ing to vile accidents to which Journiers
are exposed." And then follows a parenthetic jest quite
of the Tristram order : " Will you be so kind as to forward

1 Cf. Whitefoord Papers, p. 231.

2 These are the interesting memoranda of 28th December 1761. Cf.
Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. p. 270.

68 STERNE

the note to Mrs Cowper's any time before noon. There
is no note enclosed." l

We see him hob-nobbing with Marmaduke Fothergill,
one of those true friends, Yorick was to write, that envy
spared him, a close correspondent to the last, and the
recipient of letters among Sterne's best. And, in 1756,
he comes across the young Romney, then apprenticed to
the vagabond painter, Christopher Steele, who dubbed
himself a count, and eloped with the daughter of a
York citizen. In Steele's temporary studio Sterne could
indulge his artistic leanings, and sympathise with the
struggling genius bound hand and foot to a charlatan.
Romney did not forget these meetings. He lived to
paint several scenes from Tristram Shandy, which were
afterwards raffled for, to defray his expenses.2 One of
these pictures portrayed Slop's arrival at Shandy Hall.
It would be interesting to compare Romney's delineations
with Hogarth's grotesques, and to know whether Gains-
borough, who was to strike up a warm friendship with the
author, ever tried his hand at illustrating any part of his
work. Whither have these Romney illustrations flown,
and where, too, is the portrait which Steele painted of Sterne
long before he was famous ? All his life the artistic impres-
sionist gravitated towards artists, just as, on another side,
he gravitated towards sporting squires and jovial parsons.

We see him starting a Sunday covey of partridges as he
trudged over the turnips to Stillington with his pointer
at his heels. At once he hurries home for his gun and
leaves his expectant congregation in the lurch. But we
also see him helping to rescue Blake from the toils of
lawyers and match-makers, and this correspondence shows

1 Sterne to the Rev. J. Blake, " Monday." From the collection of
Mr H. H. Raphael, M.P. The Cowpers were great friends of Mrs Sterne.
This letter also mentions Oldfield the York postmaster.

2 So said Richard Cumberland. Cf. Professor Cross's Life^ p. in.

THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVAL 69

that Sterne's uncommon " sensibility " did not exclude a
shrewd common sense. We see him almost as yokel,
threshing his barley, repairing his house, and renewing his
garden — in two years expending close on £14 over fruit
trees and an " espalier apple hedge " for his orchard.
The orchard is not without import, for it gave Sterne
the hint for what seems to have been his first essay in
dream and fantasy. The piece is noteworthy, and deserves
more attention than it has received.

The vicar, writing that he has just been " sporting him-
self with some wild Fancies," — they were Fontenelle's —
strolls out of his study one midsummer night, and " stoops "
musing among his plum trees. Thus pensive, he gazes
up at the stars, and asks, as to-day we ask about Mars,
why should they not be peopled ?

" The inhabitants of the most inconsiderable planet that
revolves round the most inconsiderable star I can pick out
of this vast number, look upon their world, I warrant you,
as the only one that exists. They believe it the centre of
the Universe, and suppose that the whole system of the
Heavens turns round them, and was made, and moves purely
for their sakes. So considerable do they imagine them-
selves, as doubtless to hold that all these numerous stars
(our sun amongst the rest) were created with the only view
of twinkling upon such of themselves as have occasion to
follow their cattle late at night." And then Sterne clearly
remembers a line from Pope, prompted by Bolingbroke,
" We, on this isthmus of a middle state" : "We are situate"
(he says) "on a kind of isthmus which supports infinitys.
... It is hard to say which side of the prospect strikes the
imagination most ; whether the solar system or a drop of
pepper affords a nobler subject of contemplation, in short
whether we owe more to the Telescope or the Microscope."

Pursuing this notion of a microcosm to the absurd, he

70 STERNE

plays with it in a passage that may have suggested one in
Tristram. It follows a reference to that essay where Addison
depicts Mahomet spirited up to the seventh heaven, yet
returning in an instant of time to find his bed still warm,
and the water unspilt out of an overturned pitcher. "On
one side," Sterne writes, " infinite Power and wisdom appear
drawn to full extent ; on the other in miniature, the in-
finitely strong and bold Strokes there, the infinitely nice and
delicate Touches here, show equally in both the definite end.
... I leave it to future ages to invent a method for
making a minute seem a year."

So perpends the comic philosopher, adding that he could
conceive two nations on each side of a green leaf as valorous
as Alexander, and an Iliad in the sphere of a nutshell. And
then he yawns ; it was time for slumber. Here the tone
changes with the scene, and the poet within him begins
to dream. He finds himself in " a new state of being " with
no memory of pre-existence. In its empyrean he discerns
greater and lesser lights — " Second Stars," as he calls them.
These several orbs mean the fruit, the branches, and the
play of the leaves under the moon. And so Sterne reduces
the universe to a plum-tree.

A new world plunges him, first in follies, and then in
natural philosophy. But, like Faust, he can make little
out of it save " a heap of unintelligible jargon." Disillusion
sets him roaming " in quest of knowledge." Instead
of knowledge he finds " only a vain affectation of misery
in order to gain the veneration of the vulgar and thereby
serve the ends of Government." Suddenly the configura-
tion of the sky changes. The stars behind, seem lower ;
those in front, higher. "A huge dusky veil like a Cloud
which was only tinsel'd over with a faint glimmer of light,
was rising upon the Heavens." This phenomenon was the
solid earth, covering the backward "luminanes," and reveal-

THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVAL 71

ing new but familiar stars. He has returned whence he set
out, but he fares no better. Convinced that the world is
a globe, he is nearly burned. For "three or four ages,"
therefore, he retires into contemplation, fearing lest "the
great light should sink under the dark veil and leave us
in eternal night." Then he returns to the world, only to
find that great revolutions had happened. Religion has
yielded to free thought, and now was the time for his
scientific theories. "The Raillerie of free thinkers,"
however, persecutes him as much as the old "fury of
bigots." A small party of the broadminded support him,
but an irruption of barbarians once more expels him to
another country. There he opens a school, but fails to
persuade mankind that " the Second Stars are worlds in-
habited like ours." While "the wits" deride him a sudden
streak of light crosses the dusky veil. This was, in truth,
the daybreak piercing the plum-tree's foliage, but the dreamer
fancied it a vast planet ushering in a golden age. A fancy
follows so akin in spirit to Heine's much weirder dream of
the end of the world as to emphasise their partial affinity,
though Sterne cannot compare with him as thinker or poet.
A cataclysm impended : " At this time began to be
heard all over the world a huge noise and fragor in the skys
as if all nature was approaching her dissolution. The stars
seemed to be turned from their orbs, and to wander at
random thro' the Heavens. ... I fixed my attention upon
a constellation of the Second Stars," which " seemed to suffer
some cruel agitation." Several shot off and forsook the rest.
By slow degrees all these lights "were lost in the great
dark veil." "And now the fragor increased. The world
was alarmed ; all was consternation, horrour and amaze ; no
less was expected than a universal wreck of nature." In
this crack of doom the dreamer awoke with a start, to find
himself in bed. Off he hurried to the orchard, and " by a

72 STERNE

sort of natural instinct made to the plumb-tree " of his " last
night's reverie." He observed the face of the heavens
unaltered : "A brisk gale of wind, which is common about
sun rising, was abroad ! "

" I recollected a hint " — Sterne afterwards " recollected "
more — u I recollected a hint that I had read in Fontenelle,
who intimates that there is reason to suppose that the
Bloom on Plumbs is no other than an immense number
of living creatures." He climbed the tree and examined
the position of the fruit : — " I found that they hung in the
same position, and made the same appearance as the
constellations of Second Stars I had been so familiarly-
acquainted with, excepting that some few were wanting,
which I myself had seen fall. I could then no longer
doubt how the matter was." His visionary " plumb-land "
had symbolised space, and he ends in a pathetic strain
which separates him from the reeling satyrs of " Crazy
Castle," and shows that he loved nature and pathos more
than Swift or Fontenelle. It is a poetic epilogue : — " Oh
World ! wherein I have spent so many happy days ! oh !
the comforts and enjoyments I am separated from ; the
acquaintances and friends I have left behind me there ! Oh !
the mountains, rivers, rocks and plains, which ages had
familiarized to my view ! With you 1 seemed at home ;
here I am like a banished man ; everything appears strange,
wild and savage ! Oh, the projects I had formed ! The
designs I had set on foot, the friendships I had cultivated !
How has one blast of wind dashed you to pieces ! But thus
it is, plumbs fall and planets shall perish. . . . The time will
come when the powers of heaven will be shaken, and the
stars shall fall like the fruit of a tree when it is shaken by a
mighty wind." *

1 This manuscript fragment, addressed to Mr Cook of York, was first
published by M. Paul Stapfer in his Laurence Sterne^ sa Personne et ses

THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVAL 73

This essay shows many characteristics of Sterne's
future style. Mark in the closing part, the scriptural and
musical influence. Mark in the earlier, the particularity
that lends likelihood to fiction — the constellations of
" Second Stars " in the plum corresponding to those in the
skies, " excepting that some few were wanting^ which I my-
self had seen fall" Mark, too, the certainty of the cowherds
that the stars only twinkled for such as " follow their cattle
late at night." Swift was an expert in the little-great ; but
Swift was not a poet, and he never romanticised his art.
And the close sounds the sentimental note, though, to
the present peace of the Sterne household, it misses the
love-motive. With it included, however, Sterne finds the
style which Thackeray copied. Take, in advance, a piece
from Tristram Shandy about its "Jenny" and Sterne's
" Kitty " — a piece so modern in vein yet so like a morsel of
Catullus : — " Time wastes too fast ; every letter I trace tells
me with what rapidity Life follows my pen ; the days and
hours of it more precious — my dear Jenny — than the rubies
about thy neck are, flying over our heads like light clouds
on a windy day, never to return more ; — everything presses
on — whilst thou art twisting that lock ; see ! it grows grey ;
and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every
absence which follows it, are preludes to the eternal separa-
tion which we are surely to make.

" Heaven have mercy upon us both ! "

The same subdued tone found early utterance as he
buried his parishioners. The verses occasioned by hearing

Ouvrages (1870). It came into his hands through a friend who received it
from a lady at York. Though unsigned, the autograph seemed entirely
Sterne's. I agree with Professor Cross (pp. 144-9) m considering the
fragment genuine, if only on internal evidence. Dr J. B. Brown has pub-
lished the whole in his edition of Sterne's works (1885). In the original,
zodiacal signs indicate " God," " world," and " soul," while there are further
abbreviations.

74 STERNE

a pass-bell, which were printed in an antiquary's volume
over sixty years ago, demonstrate the protest that he could
be "grave." Throughout his life Sterne tried his hand
at verses, few of which remain, though he plumed him-
self on his muse. There are the lines to Julia in Tristram
Shandy. Twice repeated and twice applied is an epitaph on
the death of a lady which he quotes in his letters. And
there is a trifle, beginning "The lark hath got a shrill
fantastic pipe," which biographers have missed, though it
has been attributed to Sterne.1 But none of them display
the pathetic solemnity of these, some of which have a ring
almost of " Omar Khayyam." Here again Sterne muses
on the peopling of infinity : —

" Hark ! my gay Friend, That solemn toll,
Spreads the departure of a soul ;
'Tis gone, that's all we know — not where
Or how the unbodied soul does fare —
In that mysterious world none knows
But God alone to whom it goes ;
To whom departed souls return
To take their doom, to smile or mourn.

Oh ! by that glimmering light we view
The unknown world we're hastening to !
God has locked up the mystic page,
And curtained darkness round the stage !
Wise heaven to render search perplext
Has drawn 'twixt this world and the next
A dark impenetrable screen
All behind which is yet unseen.

This hour perhaps our Friend is well :
Death struck, the next he cries c Farewell !

1 Cf. Notes and Queries, 5th series, i. 388.

THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVAL 75

I die ! ' and yet for ought we see
Ceases at once to breathe and be. —

Swift flies the soul — perhaps 'tis gone
A thousand leagues beyond the sun,
Or twice ten thousand more thrice told
Ere the forsaken clay is cold !
And yet who knows if friends we loved
Tho' dead may be so far removed ;
Only the veil of flesh between
Perhaps they watch us, though unseen,
While we, their loss lamenting, say
They're out of hearing far away ;
Guardians of us, perhaps they're near
Concealed in Vehicles of air,
And yet no notices they give ;
Nor tell us where nor how they live."

From such heights we must descend to agriculture.
Sterne's farming and his wife's dairy proved failures. She
undersold the neighbours and grew unpopular, though her
geese were famous and welcomed by her friends. That
Sterne found small comfort in the poultry appears from a
passage in Tristram where, after praying Heaven to prosper
the manufacture of paper " under this propitious reign," he
says : " As for the propagation of Geese I give myself
no concern — nature is all-bountiful — I shall never want
tools to work with." And we can still hear the shrill
Elizabeth, standing arms akimbo on his threshold and
bidding him pluck the quills of the geese that were being
driven round their lawn : " Powl 'em, Laurey, powl 'em ! "
as John Croft gives her exclamation in his gossip to
Whitefoord.

Sterne reaped little but loss, and long afterwards he

j6 STERNE

dissuaded a friend from repeating his experiment. " You
are much to blame," he wrote, " if you dig for marie
unless you are sure of it. I was once such a puppy myself
as to pare and burn, and had my labour for my pains and
two hundred pounds out of pocket. Curse on farming
(said I), I will try if the pen will not succeed better than
the spade. The following up of that affair (I mean farm-
ing) made me lose my temper and a cartload of turnips was
I thought very dear at two hundred pounds. In all your
observations may your own good sense guide you. Bought
experience is the devil."

Try he did whether the pen would not profit more than
the spade before he realised his power in fiction. He
demeaned that pen to party warfare, but his first literary
efforts were his sermons ; and, in tracing the phantasmagoria
of twenty years, the preacher and his preaching must not
be relegated to the tail-end of a chapter.

vURENCE STERNE

portrait in crayons by Francis Cott
an of the Reoerend G. IV. Blcnkin)

CHAPTER VII

THE PREACHER

" Preaching, you must know," Sterne told the Treasurer of
the Foundling Hospital, whose inmates must have moved
him, "is a theologic flap upon the heart." A heart-
flapper Sterne remained in his gown as in his cassock.
Dr Johnson once condemned these discourses as only froth
on the cup of salvation. But in truth they were not the
froth on any cup ; they scarcely profess to quench a
spiritual thirst. Rather, they were like Bishop Berkeley's
Tar-water with which Sterne used religiously to dose himself
after all-night sittings. Or, to vary the metaphor, they
resemble the cupboard where Yorick kept his Sunday
crockery. It was refreshing for him each Saturday night to
dust and examine his curiosities — some of them, it must
be owned, exact replicas of ancient models. But the
china figures of saints and heroes made some amends
for the rest of tbe week, and he could sob as he surveyed
them. From the virtues he would single out Charity,
for he himself was charitable ; and when he kindled over
the specimens of the vices, his wrath would be reserved
for those sordid sins to which he was least inclined, though
in one instance — this Foundling Hospital appeal — he did
lay stress on " the treachery of the senses."

Sterne's pulpit gleanings succeeded better than his
temporal harvests. Yet he was no born orator. Indeed,

77

78 STERNE

according to John Croft, "his delivery and voice were so
very disagreeable " that half the congregation usually left
the church when he rose.1 But half remained, and
these were the more cultivated. Sometimes he drew large
audiences, while from 1747 onwards his sermons found
their way into the press and gained a wide attention. Two
only were published separately ; the rest appeared much
later in series. Many of them did double duty, being
repeated to his parishioners also ; and as for texts, has he not
told us in the Sentimental Journey that " Cappadocia, Pontus
in Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia " is " as good as any
one in the Bible " ? How they would be composed as he
jogged along on his broken-down jade, he has chronicled in
Tristram Shandy ; and he was proud of the fair handwriting
in his manuscript — a fact which has not escaped those
pages.2 One of them — the sermon on " Conscience " —
figures bodily in the narrative. Few will forget how it
fluttered from the volume of Stevinus (the first projector of
an air ship or " chariot ") ; air, as Sterne remarks, being
cheaper than horses. This was the book which Corporal
Trim fetched at the bidding of his master ; and all will
remember Trim's attitude as he delivered the discourse, and
the interjections of his hearers. As a rule, Sterne's sermons
teach little beyond proverbial prudence, and seem, as it
were, his briefs for a somewhat worldly heaven. They were
orthodox enough. But there are exceptions, and most of
them contain dramatic or human touches, while all are
distinguished by that oddity which even now seems odd,
but which must have irritated the Georgians.

The sermon in point — that which Trim repeated — was
preached as late as 1750 before the judges of assize.
It is numbered twenty-seven in the collected edition, and

1 [Vhitefoord Papers, p. 231.

2 Yorick's funeral sermon on poor Le Fevre.

THE PREACHER 79

through its insertion in the novel offended the clergy. But
Voltaire, in that article of his Dictionnaire Philosophique
which deals with the subject, extols the author, and the
French Rationalist subscribed for the last instalment of
Sterne's sermons. He comments on the part concerning
conscience as a deceiver. "The best that has ever been
said on this important subject," he remarks, "is to be
found in the comic book of Tristram Shandy, written by a
clergyman named Sterne. The works of this second
* English Rabelais ' [Swift was the first] resemble those little
satires of antiquity which held precious essences in their
phials. Two old half-pay captains [here Voltaire trips ;
Walter Shandy was a merchant], assisted by a Dr Slop,
propound the most ridiculous questions as to problems
which our own theologians have not been spared. . . .
At length they make a Corporal read them an old sermon
on Conscience composed by Sterne himself. Among many
pictures presenting the paintings of Rembrandt or the
sketches of Callot [this conjunction is curious], he draws
the portrait of an upright man of the world consuming his
days in the pleasures of the table, gaming and dissipating,
doing nothing that good company reproaches, and conse-
quently never reproaching himself. His conscience and
honour follow him to his pleasures, especially when he pays
liberally. He punishes the mean rascals who come before
him severely. He lives gaily and dies without a touch of
remorse. Dr Slop then interrupts the reader to assure him
that such a death could never happen to an Anglican, but is
peculiar to a Papist. In due course Sterne cites the example
of David, who had, he says, a conscience at once sensitive
and callous, illuminated and darkened. When he could kill
the king in a cave he was contented to cut off a piece of his
robe. But he passes a whole year without the slightest
twinge for the seduction of Bathsheba and the murder of

80 STERNE

Uriah. . . . Such, he says, are the majority of mankind.
We agree with the parson that the great of the world are
often in this case. The torrent of pleasure and business
carries them away. They have no time for conscience, how-
ever well conscience may serve for the people. ... It is
therefore good sometimes to awaken the consciences of semp-
stresses and kings by a moral that can impress them, but to
do so, the language of our day must be bettered."

So much for Voltaire on a sermon including a passage
on the Inquisition, which it is strange to find overlooked.
Voltaire's praise implies Dr Johnson's censure. In Boswell's
pages, Dr Johnson only met Sterne once, and then to amend
the English of a dedication to Lord Spencer, which, how-
ever, evidently stands as it was written. There is some
reason to believe that the great moralist met the great
impressionist again at Oxford, and one cannot blame
Johnson for disliking so loose a parson. But Yorick's
homilies are mild as milk. Some — Mrs Delany among
them — would have it that a laugh trembled on his lips,
and that the folly-tipped rattle lay in the hands that fingered
the pages. In reality, Sterne most restrained himself in
the pulpit, and his rather Tupperlike reflections give the
sole pretext for Goldsmith's absurd verdict that he was
" dull." Johnson's aversion was to the preacher, not to
the lectures. He denied, indeed, that he had ever read
them. But, when pressed home, he saved his sincerity by
admitting that once he had skimmed them in a stage-coach :
no other place on earth could have driven him into the
perusal. And this was the occasion when he answered
the young Miss Monckton (Lady Cork), protesting her
partiality : " That is, dearest, because you are such a
dunce."

It was not Sterne's sentiment that the sage hated : did
he not assure Mrs Thrale that he, too, could be a good

THE PREACHER 81

" feeler " ? What Johnson reprobated in Sterne (and in
Swift) was that a clergyman should so behave and keep such
company, that he should be both frivolous and profane,
although Johnson condoned profanity in Gibbon. The
great censor called him " the man Sterne," and he protested
that his fame would pass. This, however, is one of many
in his long chapter of wrong prophecies ; though here, as
always, he expressed the voice of a true citizen. He was
our jury incarnate, and Sterne was certainly guilty of not
keeping his calling holy. But he set great store by his
sermons — he told his Eliza that they came " all hot from
the heart" — and they were popular with the ladies. His
favourite, as he assured his daughter, was one of his earliest
— that on the " House of Feasting and the House of
Mourning." It does not, however, rise above graphic
platitude.1 It lacks the psychology of some others, and
their occasional glimpses of Yorick under his gown. But
it is distinguished by a typical trick — that of controverting
his text at the outset. In this case it was a verse from
Ecclesiastes : " It is better to go to the house of mourning,
than to the house of feasting," and he sets out with the
words : " That I deny." Nor is this instance out of gear
with the man ; it was the neurotic denial of one whose
rule was a repugnance to pain. Sterne repeats this trick
of denial in the " Conscience " sermon preached on " For
we trust we have a good conscience " ; and in Tristram he
makes Dr Slop perceive that the writer is a Protestant " by
the snappish manner in which he takes up the Apostle."
Another pet sermon of Sterne's was the charity sermon
on " Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath," preached at
St Michael's Church, York — a treatise on compassion which

1 The best sample perhaps occurs in the sermon on " St Paul and Felix,"
where he psychologises the Roman judge as grasping, but observes that
avarice is merely an ancillary vice that ministers to some ruling passion.

6

82 STERNE

he published in 1741, and much later laid at the feet of his
" dear, dear Jenny/' It was a billet doux, like that which,
years later, he offered to " Eliza."

The best, however, are those which concern himself or
portray human nature. The one on " Time and Chance "
suggests something of his own circumstances. He describes
a man starting life with every worldly advantage, and then
he paints a contrast of the reverse : — " He shall come into
the world with the most unpromising appearance — shall set
forwards without fortune, without friends — without talent
to procure him either the one or the other ; — nevertheless
you will see this clouded prospect brighten up insensibly,
unaccountably, before him ; everything presented in his way
shall turn out beyond his expectations ; — in spite of that
weight of insurmountable difficulties which first threatened
him — time and chance shall open him a way." Another
passage from another sermon — that on "The Prodigal Son"
— fits his own case also. He is considering " that fatal
passion which led the Prodigal — and so many thousands
after his example — to gather all he had together and take
his journey into a far country." Though the sermon is
mainly a guide to the grand tour, the sentimental wayfarer
emerges : — " The love of variety, or curiosity of seeing new
things, which is the same or at least a sister passion to it —
seems wove into the frame of every son of Adam ; it is
one of c Nature's liberties.' " And once; more, his sermon
on " The History of Jacob " strikes — and in a nobler strain
— the note which permeates all his gay defiance of suffering,
which mixes pain with pleasure and pleasure with pain,
which makes him grieve whenever he has not " turned
diseases into commodity," the note which inspires even for
the down-hearted and hysterical a chant of rapture. And
this was the very note which drew praise from the pagan
Goethe : —

THE PREACHER 83

" Grant me, Gracious God, to go cheerfully on the road
which thou hast marked out ! — I wish it neither more wide,
nor more smooth. — Continue the light of this dim taper
thou hast put into my hand. — I will kneel upon the ground
seven times a day, to seek the best track I can with it. — And
having done that, I will trust myself and the issue of my
journey to thee, who art the Fountain of Joy, — and will
sing songs of comfort as I go along."

This is a serene philosophy, though the preacher, it
is true, sang queer " songs of comfort " as he ambled
on in Tristram and the Sentimental Journey, But Corporal
Trim, and Uncle Toby, and the pathos of Le Fevre are,
surely, fraught with some tiny foretaste of the supreme
Fountain !

" Whatever is the proportion of misery in the world,"
he continues — and whenever he touches this theme he is
delightful — " whatever is the proportion, 'tis certain that it
can be no duty of religion to increase the complaint ; — or to
effect the praise which the Jesuits' College of Granada gave
their Sanchez : — that though he lived where there was a
sweet garden, yet he was never seen to touch a flower ; and
that he would rather die than eat salt or pepper or aught
that might give a relish to their meat. I pity the men
whose natural consciences are burdens, and who fly from
joy (as these splenetic and morose souls do) as if it was
really an evil in itself. If there is an evil in this world, it
is sorrow and heaviness of heart — the loss of goods, — of
health, — of coronets and mitres, are only evils as they
occasion sorrow ; take that out, and the rest is fancy, and
dwelleth only in the head of man. Poor unfortunate
creature that he is ! As if the causes of anguish in the
heart were not enow, — but he must fill up the measure with
those of caprice ; and not only walk in a vain shadow, — but
disquiet himself in vain too ! "

84 STERNE

The furnace of trial was far from Sterne's musings.
Yet he tried hard to warm both hands at it, and, if he had
no full joie de vivre, at least he vibrated to the moment.
In a preceding sermon, however, he has recognised, in words
at any rate, the purifying power of grief : —

" Strange that we should only begin to think of God
with comfort when with joy and comfort we can think of
nothing else. Man surely is a compound of riddle and
contradictions : by the law of his nature he avoids pain, and
yet unless he suffers in the flesh he will not cease from sin,
though it is sure to bring pain and misery upon his head
for ever."

Sterne never dwelt on the goods of life as evils ; it was
their misuse that, with a grave face, he reprimanded. We
find him so doing in the sermon upon Dives : — " That he
had received his good things, — 'twas from Heaven, and
could be no reproach. With what severity soever the
Scripture speaks against riches, .... all this is not laid to
him as a sin, but rather remarked as an instance of God's
blessing . . . . ; and whenever these things are otherwise,
'tis from a wasteful and dishonest perversion of them to
pernicious ends, — and ofttimes, to the very opposite ones for
which they were granted — to glad the heart, to open it,
and render it more kind." Here is the keynote of the
Sentimental Journey,

His own dual nature underlies his pulpit philosophy.
" 'Tis the necessity," he says in the same sermon, " of
appearing to be somebody in order to be so, — which ruins
the world." He knew, or at any rate came to know, despite
his pleas of oddity, that his deeds contradicted his pro-
fessions. But he also knew that his life seldom contradicted
his feelings, the true pivots on which he hinged — so that
he may almost be figured as a kind of "honest Joseph
Surface." After he had become famous, he preached a

THE PREACHER 85

notable discourse before the Paris Embassy. His theme
was " Hezekiah and the Messengers," his text, " And he
said, What have they seen in thine house ? And Hezekiah
answered, All the things that are in my house have they
seen ; there is nothing amongst all my treasures that I have
not shown them." Sterne opened with : " And where, you
will say, was the harm in all this ? " But from his main
path — the dangers of prosperity — he soon strayed to pursue
the contrasts in human nature. In that quest he seems
to recognise the frank Sterne as well as the furtive, the
pure Sterne as well as the impure. "We are a strange
compound," he ponders, " and something foreign from what
charity would suspect, so eternally twists itself into whatever
we do, that not only in momentous concerns where interest
lists under it all powers of disguise, — but even in the most
indifferent of all our actions not worth a fallacy, by force
of habit we continue it ; so that whatever a man is about —
observe him, — he stands armed inside and out with two
natures ; an ostensible one for the world, — and another which
he reserves for his own private use. — This you may say the
world has no concern with ; it might have been so ; but by
obtruding the wrong motive upon the world and stealing from
it a character instead of winning one, we give it a right and
a temptation along with it to enquire into the affair. The
motives of the one for doing it are often little better than
the other for deserving it. . . . Vanity bids all her sons be
generous and brave and her daughters chaste and courteous —
But why do we want her instructions ? — Ask the Comedian
who is taught to play a part he feels not. — Is it that
the principles of religion want strength, or that the real
passion for what is good and worthy will not carry us high
enough ? God ! Thou knowest they carry us too high ;
we want not to be, but to seem ! " He dramatises the knave
and the hypocrite. " With what an inflexible sanctity of

86 STERNE

deportment he sustains himself as he advances. Every line
in his face writes abstinence ; — every stride looks like a check
upon his desires ! See, I beseech you, how he is cloaked
up with sermons, prayers and sacraments ; and so bemuffled
with the externals of religion that he has not a hand left to
spare for a worldly purpose ! .... Is there no serving
God without all this ? Must the garment of religion be
extended so wide to the danger of its rending ? — Yes, truly,
or it will not hide the secret : And what is that ? — That the
saint has no religion at all." And then he vindicates
sentimentality. " One honest tear shed in private over the
unfortunate is worth it all."

So Sterne scathes the Pharisee ; but he himself proved
a Pharisee of feeling. The Biblical Pharisee clung to out-
ward forms, Sterne, to inward sensations, and both read
these into religion. Small trace of the publican is discover-
able in the preacher. He seldom stands convicted of sin,
or, rather, he seeks to reconcile right and wrong by his
emotional medium. Yet his sermons deserve notice, if
only for their self-revelation. Perhaps this state-sermon,
delivered abroad to versed men of the world, displays the
keenest knowledge of mankind. The stress, it will be
marked, is laid not so much on the hypocrisy of pretensions
as on their mixed consequences — the mongrel brood of
distorted motives.

" What a problematic set of creatures," he reflects, " does
simulation make us ! Who could divine that all that
anxiety and concern so visible in the airs of one-half of that
great assembly, should arise from nothing else but that the
other half of it may think them to be men of consequence,
penetration, parts and conduct ? What a noise about the
claimants ! . . . . Behold Humility out of mere pride !
And honesty almost out of Knavery ! Chastity, never once
in harm's way ! And Courage, like a Spanish soldier upon an

THE PREACHER 87

Italian stage, a bladder full of wind ! Hark ! that, — the
sound of that trumpet, — let not my soldier run ; — 'tis some
good Christian giving alms ! Oh Pity ! Thou gentlest of
human passions, soft and tender are thy notes, and ill
accord they with so loud an instrument. . . . Imposture
is all dissonance, let what master soever of it undertake
the part ; let him harmonize and modulate it as may
be, one tone will contradict another. . . . 'Tis truth only
which is sustained and ever in harmony with itself. . . .
Take away the motive of the act, you take away all that is
worth having in it ; wrest it into ungenerous hands, you load
the virtuous man who did it with infamy. Undo it all, I
beseech you. Give him back his honour — restore the jewel
you have taken from him ! — replace it in the eye of the
world ; it is too late."

But Sterne does not restrict himself to such dramatisa-
tions. Sometimes in these sermons he develops theories
as wayward and absurd as those of his own Walter Shandy.
In one, he even affirms that sympathy improves the constitu-
tion. While he preached, the critics — uncomprised in his
love of man and beast — were mute. His homilies are not
literature, though to them is due the deep acquaintance
with Scripture language which enriched his style, and the
Bible-assonance that converted a proverb of Provence, " God
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," almost into a text.1

That his preaching vein was instinctive, is shown by an
early love-letter to Miss Lumley, referring to checks in
the course of courtship. After pleading guilty to " an in-
dictment in the High Court of Friendship," and deprecating
" a too easy pardon," " a miser," he tells his " contem-
plative girl," "a miser says, though I do not give of my
money to-day, to-morrow shall be marked with some deed

1 This phrasing of "tempers the wind" will be found long before, in a
Rabelaisian fragment presently to be noticed.

88 STERNE

of beneficence. — The libertine says let me enjoy this week
in forbidden and luxurious pleasures and the next I will
dedicate to serious thought and reflection. — The Gamester
says let me have one more chance with the dice and I will
never touch them more. — The Knave of every profession
wishes but to gain independency, and he will become an
honest man. — The Female Coquette [and here Yorick is
profounder] triumphs in tormenting her inamorato, for fear
after marriage he should not [and Sterne did not] pity her." 1
These are the stock instances of his sermons, and a seam of
them — taken from Bishop Hall — runs through in a late
volume of Tristram Shandy.

He frankly owned a plagiarism which annexed sentences
from several divines. The third-rate, who always love to
detect the second-hand, charged him with more ; and Sterne
made merry in his Tristram over the long pedigree of
quotations — " from India to Persia, from Persia to Greece,
from Greece to Rome, from Rome to France, from France
to England," — "so things come round." He plagiarised
from Wollaston, as in his books he took ideas from D'Urfey
and older authors. But he transformed them by his manner,
and one instance may serve to show the valuelessness of
such charges. Burns is said to have appropriated his
" guinea's stamp " from a sentence in Sterne's dedication of
the story of Le Fevre. But the same notion occurs in
Wycherley and even earlier.

Sterne himself has laughingly owned — and this has
escaped remark — that Dr Clarke (the logical pedant) was a
favourite tap. The retort comes from an early fragment in
the style of Rabelais, and it is a plea for plagiarism to the
rescue. " Homenas " is himself. The phrasing is fully
Sternian, and the humour of Shandy's own : —

1 Letters of the late Mr Laurence Sterne, etc., published by his daughter,
Mrs Medalle (1775), vol. i. pp. 38-9.

THE PREACHER 89

" Homenas, who had to preach next Sunday (before God
knows whom), knowing nothing at all of the matter — was
all this while at it as hard as he could drive in the very
next room : — for having fouled two clean sheets of his own,
and being quite stuck in the entrance upon his third division
and finding himself unable to get either forwards or back-
wards with any grace, — c curse it/ says he, (thereby excom-
municating every mother's son who thought differently)
c why may not a man lawfully call in other help in this as
well as in other human emergencies ? * So ... . starting
up and nimming down .... Clarke — tho' without any
felonious intention of so doing, he had begun to clap him
in .... ; and because there was a confoundedly high gallery
was transcribing it away like a little devil. — c Now,' quoth
Homenas to himself, c tho' I hold all this to be fair and
square yet if I am found out, there will be the deuce and
all to pay. — Why are the bells ringing backwards , you lad?
What is all that crowd about, honest man ? — Homenas was got
upon Dr Clarke's back, Sir. — And what of that, my lad? — Why,
an please you, he has broke his neck and fractured his skull and
befouled himself into the bargain by a fall from the pulpit two
storeys high. Alas ! Poor Homenas ! Clarke has done his
business. Homenas will never preach more while breath is

in his body "

This fragment was not lost in Tristram Shandy : —
" c I am to preach at Court next Sunday,' said Homenas ;
1 run over my notes.' So I hummed over Dr Homenas's
notes — two modulations very well — 'twill do, Homenas, if
it holds on at this rate — so on I hummed — and a tolerable
tune I thought it was ; and to this hour, may it please your
Reverences, had never found out how low, how flat, how
spiritless and jejune it was, but that all of a sudden up
started an air in the middle of it, so fine, so rich, so
heavenly it carries my soul up with it into the other world."

9°

STERNE

None the less, Yorick was not without his ideal of
the preacher's office. " Sermons," he says in Tristram,
" should come from the heart, not the head. — To preach to
show the extent of our reading, or the subtleties of our wit,
— to parade it in the eyes of the vulgar — beggarly gains of a
little learning, tinselled over with a few words that glitter but
convey very little light and less warmth — is a dishonest use
of the poor single half hour of the week which is put into our
hands. It is not preaching the Gospel — but ourselves."

Sterne preached his York sermons sometimes in the
Church of St Michael-le-Belfrey, sometimes in the York
Minster, and often he preached them as the substitute for big-
wigs who had nothing to say, or something more agreeable
to do. In this connection an amusing episode survives in
a long letter, shortly to be noticed, to Francis Blackburne,
then Archdeacon of Cleveland and the successor of Sterne's
uncle, Dr Jaques. This Blackburne must not be confused
with Lancelot, the old Archbishop. He had died in 1743,
and been replaced by the placid Herring, also a Jesus man
and a staunch favourer of Sterne. By 1750, the date of
this letter, Herring had been translated to Canterbury, and
Matthew Hutton reigned in his stead. Sterne's communi-
cation to Blackburne will not be clear without taking stock,
as briefly as may be, of his attitude to the tiresome
Cathedral circle.

John Fountayne was now Dean in place of that Richard
Osbaldestone to whom Sterne dedicated his charity sermon
on " Elijah and the Widow." Fountayne, an old college
acquaintance, was still his very good friend, though from
Mrs Montagu's correspondence we glean that these relations
were not to last. Sterne hacked for the Dean, as for others.
He composed the Latin oration requisite for his Doctor's
degree, he fought his battles ; but he was not to secure his

THE PREACHER 91

gratitude. These things were to come. What concerns
the present juncture, however, is only that during this year
of 1750 Fountayne claimed a right against his Archbishop
of appointing the Cathedral preachers.

Besides these patrons, Sterne could now boast Sir
William Penniman, a neighbouring gentleman who appointed
him chaplain, and the first Earl of Fauconberg, who had
already tried to present him with the adjacent living of
Coxwold, which he did not manage to do till after the
publication of Tristram ; for the nonce, however, he con-
tented himself by conferring two " commissaryships " on
Sterne — semi-civil appointments entailing visitations of the
clergy and some censorship of district morals.1

He was not yet considered a bad shepherd. Lord
Fauconberg oppressed him with attentions, and, in a
future letter, Sterne wrote that he found these attentions
oppressive. It was something for a stiff nobleman in a
dull countryside to take " a peep into the world as into a
show-box," as Sterne elsewhere phrased it, with a wit like
Yorick for moraliser and showman.

At present he basked in Cathedral sunshine ; his friends
at court were manifold. But for some three years a black
cloud had been threatening his horizon. This portent
was none other than Dr Jaques Sterne, the Precentor,
who at length played the part of wicked uncle to the
babes in the wood of Sutton. Uncle Jaques (a very cor-
morant) had retained Sterne to write weekly pamphlets
and paragraphs ever since the rising of 1745 had turned
zealots for Walpole into prosecutors and persecutors of
Jacobites and Papists. Saul of Tarsus never persecuted
heretics more fiercely than the relentless Jaques, who was
as insatiable in clapping recusants into jail and striving to
suppress a Catholic girls' school as (like Earl Nelson long
1 For details cf. Professor Cross's Life> pp. 92-3.

92 STERNE

after him) he was insatiable — and unsuccessful — in solicit-
ing preferments. The nephew's zeal had pleased his
uncle in the election of 1741 — a test election after
Walpole's downfall — and in coming years he still subserved
the old man's fury, hoping doubtless to profit by it.
Among its temporary victims was the York leech and
antiquary, Dr Thomas Burton, an inditer of medical
works with preposterous titles. Laurence Sterne would not
let the physician alone, even after his uncle had done
with him as a Jacobite spy. He hounded him with vin-
dictive raillery in Tristram Shandy, where he stands pilloried
as Dr Slop, the man-midwife.

All these hostilities arose from Laurey's forced apprentice-
ship ; but suddenly, whether from disgust or ambition,
he kicked against the pricks, and refused to abet
his uncle's auto-da-fes. He was " tired," he wrote, of
employing his "brains for other people's advantage."
" 'Tis a foolish sacrifice," he adds, " . . . . made for
some years to an ungrateful person." 1 " He quarrelled
with me," is his own version in the memoir drawn up
for his daughter, "because I would not write paragraphs
for the newspapers, — though he was a party man, I was
not, and detested such dirty work, thinking it beneath
me — from that period he became my bitterest enemy."
The protest sounds plausible ; but a party man, if actions
are sound evidence, the vicar himself had been. And
there were other contributing causes to their rupture : one of
them, if the gossip of John Croft be true, not very creditable
to either of the parties,2 while the other concerned the
nephew's behaviour to his importunate mother.

Such, then, was Sterne's position when he took up his
pen to complain of the behaviour of one Hildyard, a York

1 Letter to Mrs F [query, Fothergill], * York, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 17 59."

2 The scandal had reference to a lady, cf. the Whitefoord Papers y p. 225.

THE PREACHER 93

bookseller who had set up as a sort of broker for these
" preaching by proxy " proceedings. This document, from
the Egerton Manuscripts of the British Museum, has been
published (in part at least) both by Mr. Fitzgerald and Pro-
fessor Cross. But it sheds so much daylight on the York
landscape that it must be retranscribed. Its capitals and
punctuations follow Sterne's own sweet will,1 and it should
be premised that Dr Jaques Sterne wrote afterwards, and
had probably written before, that he would rather preach
himself than allow " the only person unacceptable to me in
the whole Church, an ungrateful and unworthy nephew of
my own," to take his turn in the pulpit.2

Sterne's refusal to serve him as mercenary pamphleteer
was the chief cause of the bully's wrath. The start is not
too lucid : —

"Sutton, Nov. yrd> 1750.

"Dear Sir, — Being last Thursday at York to preach the
Dean's turn, Hildyard, the bookseller, who had spoke to me
last week about Preaching yours, in case you should not come
yourself, told me, he had just got a letter from you directing
him to get it supplied — But with an intimation that if I
undertook it, that it might be done in such a way, as that
it might not Disoblige your Friend the Precentor. If my
doing it for you in any way could possibly have endangered
that, my Regard for you on all accounts is such, that you
may depend upon it, no consideration whatever would have
made me offer my Service, nor would I upon any Invitation
have accepted it, Had you incautiously press'd it upon me ;
And therefore, that my undertaking it at all, upon Hildyards
telling me He should want a Preacher, was from a know-
ledge that, as it could not in Reason, so it could not in Fact,
give the least Handle to what you apprehended. I would
not say this from bare Conjecture But known Instances,
1 Cf. Eg. MS., 2325, f. 1. 2 Ibid., 2325, f. 3.

94 STERNE

having preach'd for so many of Dr Sterne's most Intimate
Friends since our Quarrel without their feeling the least marks
or most Distant Intimation, That he took it unkindly. In
which You will the readier believe Me, from the following
convincing Proof, That I have preached the 29th of May,
the Precentor's own turn, for these two last years together
(not at his Request, for we are not upon such Terms) But at
the request of Mr Berdmore * who is of a gentle and pacific
temper [?and] would not have ventured to have ask'd me
to preach it for him the 2nd. Time which I did without any
Reserve this last Summer. The Contest between Us, no
Doubt, has been sharp, But has not been made more so, by
bringing our Mutual Friend into it, who in all things (except
Inviting us to the same Dinner) have generally bore them-
selves towards Us, as if this Misfortune had never happened,
and this, as on my side, so I am willing to suppose on His,
without any alteration of our Opionions of them, Unless to
their Honor and Advantage, I thought it my Duty to let
you know, How this matter stood, to free you of any
unnecessary Pain, which my Preaching for you might
Occasion upon this score, since upon all others I flatter
myself You would be Pleased, As in general it is not only
more for the Credit of the Church, But of the Prebendary
himself who is about to have his Place supplied by A
Prebendy. of the Church where He can be had, rather than
by Another, tho' of equal Merit." After this rigmarole
comes his encounter with Hildyard, upon the " InsufFerable-
ness of whose Behaviour" he dilates with graphic indig-
nation. "Hildyard," he says, "gave himself out as the
Archdeacon's 'Plenipo' ; how far his Excellency exceeded
his instructions you will perceive from the account I have
given of the hint in your letter, which was all the foundation
for what pass'd. ... I step'd into his Shop just after
1 A Prebendary of York.

THE PREACHER 95

[the] Sermon All Saints when with an air of much Gravity
and importance, He beckon'd me to follow Him into an
inner Room ; No sooner had he shut the Dore, But with
the aweful Solemnity of a Premier who held a Lettre de
Chachet [sic] upon whose Contents my Life depended — after
a Minuite's Pause — He thus open'd his Commission. Sir,
my friend the A-Deacon of Cleveland not caring to preach
his Turn, as I conjectured, Has left me to provide a
Preacher, But before I can take any Steps in it with Regard
to you — I want first to know, Sir, upon what Footing you
and Dr Sterne are ? Upon what Footing ! Yes Sir.
How your Quarrel stands ? What's that to you ? How our
Quarrel stands ! What's that to you, you Puppy ? But Sir,
Mr Blackburn would know — What's that to Him ? — But
Sir don't be angry, I only want to know of you whether
Dr Sterne will not be displeased in ease you should preach —
Go Look ; I've just now been preaching and you could not
have fitter Opportunity to be satisfyed, — I hope, Mr Sterne,
you are not angry. Yes, I am ; but much more astonished
at your Impudence. I know not whether the Chancellor's
stepping in at this Instant and flapping to the Dore, did not
save his Tender Soul the pain of the last Word. However
that be, he retreats upon this unexpected Rebuff, takes the
Chancellr. aside, asks his Advice, comes back Submissive,
begs Quarter, tells me Dr Herding1 had quite satisfied
himself as to the grounds of his Scruple (tho' not of his
Folly) and therefore beseeches me to let the Matter pass,
and to preach the Turn, when I — as Percy complains in
Harry ye 4

" c All smarting with my wounds

To be thus pestered by a Poppinjay

Out of my Grief and my Impatience

1 From the date of the letter, Herring was now Archbishop of Canterbury,
but presumably remained Chancellor of the York diocese.

96 STERNE

Answered neglectingly, I know not what.

.... for he made me mad

To see him shine so bright and smell so sweet

And Talk so like a waiting Gentlewoman,

Bid him be Gone, and seek Another fitter for his Turn.'

" But as I was too angry to have the perfect Faculty of
recollecting Poetry, however pat to my Case, so I was proud
to tell him in plain Prose though somewhat elevated — That
I would not preach, and that he might get a Parson where
he could find one. But upon reflection that Don Joh[n]
{torn) had certainly exceeded his instructions, and finding it
to be just so, as I had suspected — There being nothing in
your letter but a cautious Hint — And being moreover
satisfyed in my mind, from this and twenty other Instances
of the same kind, That this Impudence of his, like many
Others, had issued not so much from his Heart as from
his Head, the Defects of which no One in Reason is
Accountable for, I thought I should wrong myself to
remember it, and therefore I parted friends and told him I
would take care of the Turn, wch. I shall do with Pleasure.

" It is Time to beg Pardon of you for troubling you
with so long a Letter upon so little a Subject — Which as
it has proceeded from the motive I have told you, of ridding
you of Uneasiness, together with a Mixture of Ambition not
to lose either the good Opinion or the outward Marks of
it from any man of worth and character till I have done
something to forfeit them, I know your Justice will Excuse.

" I am Revd. Sir with true Esteem and Regard of
wch I beg you'l[l] consider this Letter as a Testimony yr.
faithful and most Affte. Humble Servt.

" Lau : Sterne.

" P.S. — -Our Dean [Fountayne] arrives here on Saturday.
My Wife sends her Respects to you and yr. Lady."

THE PREACHER 97

The whole scene rises before us : the fussy yet servile
bookseller, the timid Archdeacon, the Precentor bullying in
the background, and the whimsical parson, hat-in-hand to
the worldly bread-giver ; though his obsequiousness pales
in comparison with the truckling that marked the necessitous
curate of this period.1

Nor are personal touches missing. Sterne's war with
" gravity " can be traced to its source, while the distinction
between the follies of the head and those of the heart is the
same antithesis which, towards the close, made his apology
for his lapses. The one most pressed against him was his
alleged treatment of his mother. Another long letter — from
Sterne to his uncle Jaques — goes far to excuse it. Both
lapse and letter have been ably handled by Professor Cross ;
but they must be treated afresh, for both help to explain the
antecedents of Tristram Shandy. .

1 A pamphlet satire in verse of 1765, entitled The Angel and the Curate^
by Nathaniel Weekes, depicts the miserable shifts and the cruel insolence
which caused them, on the part of those " who smoke the parson in his shirt."
Cf. also Shenstone's remarks about "the journeyman parson" in Hull's
Select Letters (1778).

CHAPTER VIII

THE UNSENTIMENTAL CASE OF STERNE's MOTHER

Hitherto Sterne's poor mother, Agnes, and his sister
Catherine have been lost in the dust of his controversies
and the mists of his sentiment.

"From my father's death," he wrote, "to the time I
settled in the world, which was eleven years, my mother
lived in Ireland, and as during all that time I was not in
a condition to furnish her with money, I seldom heard
from her, and when I did, the account I generally had
was that by the help of an Embroidery school that she
kept, and by a punctual payment of her pension, which is
£20 a year, she lived well and would have done so to this
hour, had not the news that I had married a woman of
fortune hastened her over to England."

This we have seen her doing ineffectually. Hence-
forward, outside a few sidelights, our chief authority will be
the substance of Sterne's appeal to his uncle during April
1 75 1 — a communication which in great measure absolves
him from the sneer of Horace Walpole and Byron's epigram
that Sterne starved a living mother while he whined over a
dead ass.1

It does not, however, wholly acquit him ; some lack of

1 This letter, large portions of which have been cited both by Fitzgerald
and by Cross, is to be found in Add. MSS. 25,479, f. 121. It bears date
5th April 1 75 1.

98

STERNE'S MOTHER 99

natural affection remains. All that his slender purse allowed,
he did, though he was hampered by his wife's repugnance to
such waste of money. But he had scant love for a mother
who had neglected him, nor could he harbour much sym-
pathy with the seamy side of her situation. No sooner
had Sterne married a pseudo-fortune, than his mother and
sister magnified the bride's dowry, and in 1742 resolved to
quarter themselves on the young couple. Sterne had hoped
that their difficulties were past : he was always willing to
spare Agnes what he could, provided she would spare him
her company.

" I trust," he wrote much later to a York friend, whom
he and his wife had driven over to visit, " that my poor
mother's affair is ended to our comfort and, I trust, to
hers." But the affair was never ended, and small comfort
ensued in the future.

When the son heard of her landing, he posted to Liver-
pool, and spent three days urging her to return to a country
where a maintenance was assured, and convincing her of the
fact that beyond his wife's and his own pittance, he had no
outside resources. He was, he urged, bound to respect the
provision of one who had generously refused a settlement
on her marriage. He gave his mother clothes and the
considerable present of twenty pounds, he plied her with
persuasion. But remonstrance proved in vain. Directly
she had got the money into her pocket, " she told me with
an air of the utmost insolence, that as for going back to live
in Ireland, she was determined to show me no such sport,
that she had found I had married a wife who had brought
me a fortune, and she was resolved to enjoy her share of
it, and live the rest of her days at ease either at York or
Chester." If Sterne's wife grew into a vixen, a vixen his
mother seems to have remained all her life long.

The sentimentalist did not wish to inflict on his well-

ioo STERNE

born helpmate the vulgarity of his low-born mother :
indeed, had he desired it, as he ought to have done, re-
crimination would have been loud and prolonged.

Sterne could not induce Agnes to go back to Ireland, but
he did induce her to remove to Chester. " I concluded,"
he says, "with representing to her the inhumanity of a
Mother able to maintain herself thus forcing herself as a
burden upon a Son who was scarce able to support himself
without breaking in upon the future support of another
person whom she might imagine was much dearer to me."
Scarcely a dutiful speech ; but it should be borne in mind
that Mrs Sterne, by her previous marriage with Captain
Hebert, had a son to whom she might as naturally have
turned. " I took my leave," adds Sterne, " by assuring
her That though my income was so strait, I would not
forget that I was a son tho' she had forgot that she was
a mother."

But the woman whose whole life had been a battle, and
who had experienced little but insult from her husband's
kindred, would place no trust in Laurence, nor could the
proud Catherine rest satisfied with ordinary assistance. For
some three years this unamiable pair stayed on at Chester,
remonstrant pensioners. In 1744, however, they took
another ply. The widow despatched her daughter (at the
son's expense) for a month's visit to Sutton, with the design
of working at one stroke both on the brother's pity and
the uncle's passion. Sterne had hitherto bestowed no less
a sum than ninety pounds on his family ; yet now, despite
indorsements on bills drawn by him in their joint favour,
Agnes denied receipt, and persisted in an endeavour to set
two taps flowing at the isame time. Sterne surely does not
exaggerate when he terms this behaviour an "ungenerous
concealment." The sister too was cunning, and the sorrows
of Agnes Sterne were exploited by the cruel old man to the

STERNE'S MOTHER 101

nephew's discredit, so that a fresh sting was thus added to
his rupture with the Precentor. It is an unpleasant story,
nor have we evidence on the other side. If we had, it
would probably amount to little more than the sad want
of affection between Sterne and his nearest kindred, or a
recital of those quarrels that usually attend generosity with-
out feeling. But it seems fairly clear that Sterne's mother
and sister clutched all they could and then prejudiced the
sinister uncle against their prey.

During the Sutton visit, the Sternes formed several
plans for Catherine's advancement. They offered that if
she would go to London as milliner and mantua-maker,
she should be allowed thirty pounds a year (almost the
"fortune " of Mrs Sterne) until business should come in ; and,
further, they promised to equip her with the needful outfit.
Or, if she preferred an opening in " the family of one of
the first of our Nobility," Mrs Sterne (and here surely
Mrs Montagu intervenes) would get her " a creditable
place," where she would receive not less than eight or ten
pounds a year together with other advantages. This post
was probably one as housekeeper or confidential maid, nor
must the salary be judged by its modern value. The
Montagu correspondence mentions just such a place with
just such remuneration, gratefully and happily accepted
by a well-bred spinster. Sour Lady Disdain, however,
despised unpretending employment. She answered her
brother with scorn, and told him that he might send his own
children to service, when he had any ; but for her part, as
she was the daughter of a gentleman, " she would not disgrace
herself^ but would live as such " : and this she did after her
sister-in-law had exerted herself to secure the possibility of
both her offers. Despite Catherine's pride, Sterne still con-
tinued to send, and she to take, his bounty. The sequel is
strange, and has passed unnoticed. If John Croft's gossip

102 STERNE

holds good,1 the aspiring damsel ended by marrying " a
publican in London," and this disgrace was pressed against
Sterne's paper-humanity by malicious or ignorant con-
temporaries.

It would be interesting to know whether, when the
author hurried up to London in 1760 to find both him-
self and his fame, he visited his sister's ale-house. Such
low connections, it might be feared, would shock a sensi-
bility too fine for workaday wear, though, up to the last ebb
of his life, Sterne protested that his feelings were too " nice "
for " this world," and that the " world " had " killed him."
Such might have been our conjecture, yet there is a trace
of new evidence to the contrary. In a remarkable paper
which Sterne drew up in December 1761, when he thought
himself dying, he expressly implored his wife to benefit
Catherine : " Leave my sister something worthy of your-
self," he begs, " in case you do not think it right to
purchase an annuity for your greater comfort ; if you chuse
that — do it in God's name." 2 After this avowal, it can
scarcely be held that Sterne's feelings never extended to
actions.

Four years elapsed before Agnes Sterne reappeared at
the critical moment when Dr Jaques most raged against his
rebellious nephew. This time she managed thoroughly to
poison his mind. In vain did the yet friendly Fountayne
seek to heal these dissensions. Son, mother, and exasperated
uncle remained irreconcilable. Although Sterne contrived
to settle eight pounds a year on the widow, things went from
bad to worse. Dr Sterne came to hate Laurence the more
because some protegie got mixed up in their quarrel. And,
to make the scapegrace or scapegoat a public example, he

1 Cf. Whitefoord Papers, \>. 231.

2 For this new document, already mentioned and afterwards to be quoted
in other connections, cf. Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. pp. 270-2.

STERNE'S MOTHER 103

clapped the poor old lady (now reduced to set up as a
laundress) either in Ousebridge jail, or perhaps in some
York almshouse, for no offence but her destitution.1 How
this was compatible with old Mrs Sterne's "pension,"
whether she had mortgaged it, or how she had forfeited it,
goes unexplained ; nor in the son's recapitulation of the cir-
cumstances is there one word about this imprisonment or his
desertion ; if the tale be true, the catastrophe seems ante-
dated. A subscription was set on foot, and the old lady
must have resumed her soap-suds, but among the dirty
clothes in her basket, her son's character went uncleansed.
The uncle took good care that he should be held up to
odium, though he himself confessed that Agnes Sterne was
rapacious. The forlorn woman must have cursed the day
which related her to those domineering Sternes. Two things,
however, seem patent. Dr Sterne was rich and childless,
and he had contributed nothing to her support, while he
had used her misery as a lever for the persecution of her
son. That son, still comparatively poor, had now a beloved
child to provide for, and, so far as his own pocket ex-
tended, he had emptied it. A right-down good fellow,
it will be thought, would have sheltered the poor old
thing under his roof, despite a wife unconsulted in other
matters of " sentiment." Sterne's point, however, was that
he had done what he could.

"Was I, Sir, to die this night," he remonstrated with
his uncle, after urging his gratitude to his wife, "was I,
Sir, to die this night, I have not more than the very
income of £20 a year (which my mother enjoys) to
divide equally betwixt my wife and a helpless child and

1 John Croft says, " the common goal [sic] at York," and adds that she
died there, which does not seem to have been the case. The Rev. Daniel
Watson, vicar of Leake, writing in 1776, says that the place was Ousebridge
prison. Cf. Professor Cross's Lifei p. 103. He is by far the best authority
on this subject.

io4 STERNE

perhaps a third unhappy sharer, that may come into the
world some months after its father's death to claim its
part. The false modesty of not being able to declare
this has made me thus long a prey to my mother, and to
this clamour raised against me ; and since I have made
known this much of my condition as an honest man ;
it becomes me to add, that I think I have no right to apply
one shilling of my Income to any other purpose but that of
laying by a provision for my wife and child ; and that it
will be time enough (if then) to add somewhat to my
mother's pension .... when I have so much to leave my
wife who besides the duties I owe her of a husband and
the father of the dear child, has this further claim; that she
whose bread I am thus defending was the person who
brought it into the family, and whose birth and education
would ill enable her to struggle in the world without it —
that the other person who now claims it from her, and has
raised so much sorrow upon that score, brought not one
sixpence into the family, — and though it would give me pain
enough to report it upon any other occasion, that she was
the daughter of no other than a poor Suttler, who followed
the camp in Flanders, was neither born nor bred to the
expectation of a fourth part of that the Government allows
her ; and therefore has reason to be contented with such a
provision, though double the sum would be nakedness to
my wife." Sterne signs himself, " Your once much obliged
though now injured Nephew."

He had contending duties — that is true ; and it is also
true that, however he misbehaved, neither to his wife, nor
mother, nor to the world at large, was he ever niggard,
while his affection for his daughter was intense. Embar-
rassed as he found himself, he was precise in payment, and
only one loan — twenty pounds from Garrick — has even been
alleged as unpaid. He does not rank among the sentimental

STERNE'S MOTHER 105

debtors, but his emphasis on his own mother's failure to
bring sixpence into the common stock hardly fits an apostle
of feeling. In the whole kaleidoscope of his word-colours,
he has never painted the Distressed Mother, though in one
of his letters he depicts, with satisfaction, the death-bed of a
woman whose last hours he comforted by promising to care
for her child. Had he left us the harrowing picture, it is
not hard to fancy its purport. How archly he would have
railed at casting up accounts ! How he would have poised
the treasure in one scale and the tears in the other ! How
he would have rhapsodised on the contrast between the young
mother's rapture over her new-born babe and the groans of
the grey-haired matron in her house of bondage ! How he
would have sighed over the thought that youth and age
were both cruel, yet both tender ! And how soon he would
have frisked off to warn (and warm) his " dear, dear Jenny "
or " Eliza " ! To sip the sweets of pathos is one thing ; to
feel and bear its burden, another.

And yet he did not abandon Agnes Sterne. Years
rolled by, and we find him writing that he has been to visit
the poor old thing, and that her fears are by this time
allayed. Time brings reconciliation. His friend Blake
acts as peacemaker, and by 1758 the mother accepts her
son's allowance. In the year which saw the death of the
malignant uncle who left his wealth to his housekeeper,
and for whom Sterne refused to wear the prepared mourning,
— in the May of 1759, she breathes her last, and is buried
in the very church where the son had preached his homily
on " Compassion." 1

Poor, fighting, bitter mother ! Strange, hardened,
softened son ! Who shall keep pace with such capriccios of
sentiment or follow the dance of their demi-semiquavers !

And still we have not reached that crucial year of 1760,
1 Cf. Professor Cross's Life^ pp. 117-84.

106 STERNE

when Sterne may be said to have been born in the first
two volumes of Tristram. Yet another effusion of his — a
preliminary canter in the Shandean field — belongs to the
year 1758, and claims notice. It is the satire, only post-
humously printed, of The History of a Good Warm Watch-coat
— the satire which Sterne burned and told Mrs Montagu that
he deeply regretted.1 Nor will this prelude alone lead us
straight up to Tristram ; there are two more turnings from
the direct road. Sterne's wife must be repictured, and the
episode of his " dear, dear Kitty," before he emerges. Such
peep-holes into personality will serve to elucidate the startling
contrast between the middle-aged parson and the young lion
of a London season.

1 Sterne also composed another trifle, an " Impromptu " on a coat drenched
by the rain, communicated by a " Mr P." to Sterne's daughter, who included
it in her edition of his Letters (1775), vol. iii. p. 157.

CHAPTER IX

"the history of a good warm watch-coat," together
with one of the bad warm " demoniacs "

Polemical satires are usually tedious : the events which
started them have vanished, and they are dust. So it hap-
pened even with Swift's Tale of a Tub, and in a brochure
like this, dealing with petty politics, the posthumous flatness
is the more patent. Such jokes have ceased to be practical.
Like stage tattle, they evaporate with the actors ; the scenery
has mouldered, and little lingers but remembrance.

The brisk fusillade in question ended a wordy warfare
of some eight years between the Cathedral dignitaries and
their leading lawyer, Dr Topham, who goes down to
posterity as the " Didius " of Tristram Shandy.

Topham was a Goliath of sinecures : no one could
be more official. Commissary and Keeper General of the
Exchequer and Prerogative Courts of the Archbishop of
York, official to the Archdeacon, official to the Archdeacon
of the East Riding, official to the Archdeacon of Cleveland,
official to the Precentor (and to be Dr Sterne's official was
to be an official indeed), official to the Chancellor, and
official to several of the Prebendaries. There is a smack
of smugness in the very sound of these revenues, and the
collector of them should have rested content, but he was
voracious. Long had he fixed his gaze on two small com-
missaryships — the trifling one (only £6 a year) which fell to

107

108 STERNE

Sterne, and another (of £20) which was reserved for a
Dr Mark Braithwaite, and at his death assigned to a
William Stables.

Dean Fountayne suspected Dr Topham's designs, and
when Hutton became Archbishop, Topham too, as his
counsel in the law, kept an eye on one who was not
unlike Trollope's Archdeacon Grantley.1 Topham haunted
Bishopsthorpe, spying, manoeuvring, or advising, and when
he failed to pouch the second commissaryship, he spread
various reports of the Dean's mismanagement. Matters
came to a head at a Sessions Dinner in the house of George
Woodhouse, a wine -merchant. At such assemblies the
county and the clergy met. Sterne, scenting a situation
and always keen for a comedy, sat down amongst the
guests. In the midst of many toasts, the Dean, heated
with wrath and wine, addressed Sir Edmund Anderson of
Kilnwick, and openly charged the legal pluralist with slander.
Topham denied any reflection on the Dean's backstairs
influence. But then out came Sterne with proof positive.
Topham, forced to recant, defended his behaviour by an
alleged promise on the part of Fountayne. This Sterne
challenged the lawyer to produce, while Fountayne, probably
prompted by Sterne, read aloud a correspondence which left
his opponent routed and crestfallen. The points are irk-
some and need not be examined. Suffice it to say that the
Archbishop's daughter played a part in the farce, that
Topham (as Mr Slope might have done in Barchester
Towers) called the Cathedral worthies a "set of strange
people," and, notwithstanding his discomfiture, "continued
to impugn the Dean's disregard of ecclesiastical forms."

These incidents laid the train of an explosion to which
another fuse soon set the match. In 175 1 Mrs Topham

1 Trollope himself, it will be found, was mindful of Tristram Shandy in
his Barchester Towers.

"A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT" 109

presented her husband with a son, destined when he grew
up to run the pace in London and to boast that in the
event he had laid the foundations of Sterne's literary career.
For this son Dr Topham resolved to provide, even in the
cradle. He discovered that the Patent of the Prerogative
Courts, his most lucrative appointment, could in strictness
be granted for two lives. The Archbishop was ill, his
daughter acted as secretary, and the assent was gained.
But Didius's triumph was short-lived. Fountayne and his
friends interposed. A shower of pamphlets ensued, the last
and best of which was Sterne's.

The History of a Good Warm Watch-coat^ racy at the time,
is now dullish reading. Far more vivid is the scene in
Tristram where Yorick settles his score with Didius's friend
by rescuing a chestnut which had scorched him. Sterne in
the early fragment, where plums figured as planets, had
applied the telescope. In this pamphlet the microscope
comes into play. It is a parish allegory where John the
Clerk means Fountayne, Trim (the opposite of his Shandean
namesake) is Topham, the Parson is the Archbishop, " Mark
Slender" is Braithwaite, and "Lorry Slim, an unlucky
whyte," is Sterne. The dispute turns on an old watch-coat
on which Trim had set his heart, and nothing would serve
him but he must take it home to have it stitched into a
warm petticoat for his wife and a winter jerkin for himself.
This, of course, signified the reversion of the Patent Office,
while the previous fusses respecting the two commissary-
ships are figured as tiffs " about an old cast-ofF pair of black
plush breeches " and " a great Green Pulpit-Cloth and old
Velvet Cushion."

The sole part still pertinent is that about Sterne
himself and the "pair of black breeches" which "are very
thin by this time." — But "Lorry has a light heart, and
what recommends them to him is this, that, thin as they

no STERNE

are, he knows that Trim, let him say what he will to the
contrary, still envies the possessor of them, and with all his
pride would be very glad to wear them after him." To
these " black breeches " Sterne constantly alludes hereafter :
they mean himself, the critics of Tristram are styled "the
reviewers of my breeches,' ' and the real breeches half fill the
scanty portmanteau of his journey to France. The sum of
the story is that, " in these several pitched battles Trim has
been so trimd as never disastrous hero was trimd before."

The matter was arranged : Sterne suppressed the
pamphlet, and even came to dislike the dignitary for whom
he had taken up the cudgels. His avowal in the paper which
he drew up as a sort of informal testament, will be new :
he is giving directions concerning his manuscripts : —

"The Political Romance I wrote, which was never
published, may be added to the fag end of the Volume.
. . . Tho' I have two reasons why I wish it may not be
wanted — First an undeserved compliment to one whom I
have since found to be of a very corrupt mind — I knew
him weak and ignorant, but thought him honest. The
other reason is I have hung up Dr Topham in the Romance
in a ridiculous light, which upon my soul, I now doubt
whether he deserves it. — So let the Romance go to sleep —
not by itself" (he adds), "for 'twill have company." In
time fresh cases of Cathedral selfishness were to develop
themselves. The Dean, commonly regarded as Sterne's
uniform befriender, changed his tone towards the man
who hacked for him, and eventually stood in his bad
graces. " My conscio [sic] ad clinum [i.e. clerum] in Latin "
(so Sterne notes bitterly) " which 1 made for Fountayne to
preach before the University to enable him to take his
Doctor's Degree you will find two copys of it with my sermons
— he got Honour by it — What got I ? Nothing in my life-
time, then let me not (I charge you, Mrs Sterne) be robbed

"A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT " in

of it after my death. That long pathetic letter to him of
the hard measure I have received — I charge you to let it be
printed — 'Tis equitable you should derive that good from
my sufferings."1

These dim and wearisome misunderstandings were
again exploited, to Sterne's discredit, when the sleek Gilbert,
faring, it was said, "like one of Epicurus' hogs," had
replaced Hutton at Bishopsthorpe. Nor has it yet been
noted that it was the powerful Mrs Montagu, Sterne's firm
ally, who exerted herself to dispel them and seems to
have reconciled the Dean to the Prebendary. " I wanted,"
Sterne assured her, "mercy, but not sacrifice, and am
obliged in my turn to beg pardon of you, which I do
from my soul, for putting you to the pain of excusing
what in fact was more a misfortune than a fault and but
the necessary consequence of a train of Impressions to my
disadvantage. The Chancellor of York, Dr Herring, was,
I suppose, the person who interested himself in the honour
of the Dean of York and requested that act of friendship
to be done to the Dean by bringing about the separation
'twixt the Dean and myself. — The poor gentleman has
been labouring this point many years, but not out of
zeal for the Dean's character, but to secure the next resi-
dentiaryship to the Dean of St Asalph [sic]> his son ;
he was outwitted himself at last and has now all the
foul play to settle with his conscience, without gaining or
being ever likely to gain his purpose. 1 take the liberty of
enclosing a letter I wrote last month to the Dean which
will give you some light into my hard measure, and show
you that I was as much a protection to the Dean of York
as he to me. The Answer to this has made me easy

1 These two quotations, modifying the received story about Fountayne,
occur in the memoranda which Sterne drew up in 1761, when he thought
himself dying. Cf. Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. pp. 271-2.

ii2 STERNE

with regard to my views in the Church of York, and as it
has cemented anew the Dean and myself beyond the power
of any future breach, I thought it would give you satisfac-
tion to see how my interests stand, and how much and
how undeserved I have been abused ; when you have read
it — it shall never be read more, for reasons your penetration
will see at once."

This inclosure to Mrs Montagu is evidently the appeal
to Fountayne mentioned by Sterne in the previous excerpt
about the bestowal of his papers. Whether that appeal
still survives is unknown. Sterne got into such a tangle of
politics, secular and clerical, that he constantly memorialised
his supposed misusers. Murmuring was not his wont,
though it was natural to his wife, and her influence is
latent in at least one of her own letters to Mrs Montagu
where, alluding to this very imbroglio, she sighs that she
"must expect to the last hour " of her life " to be reproached
by Mr Sterne as the blaster of his fortunes." 1

So much for the sequels of the Watch-coat. The satire
itself reposes in the limbo of old lumber : no biographer
can ever enliven it.

But Sterne consoled himself for Deans and Doctors. He
had other excitements apart from these bickerings, and all
are immanent in Tristram Shandy. During the decade or
so of Cathedral wrangles, his intimacy with John Hall-
Stevenson had revived. The sentimentalist visited Crazy
Castle, and occasionally gallivanted at Scarborough, where
theatrical Cradock saw him on a later occasion racing a
" chariot " along the shore with one wheel in the sea.
Stevenson renewed his bad ascendency, and from time

1 These letters of Sterne and his wife to Mrs Montagu are among our
new matter and belong apparently to the year 1759. Cf. Elizabeth Montagu,
vol. ii. pp. 175-7.

THE "DEMONIACS" 113

to time he visited Sterne, with whose wife he was " in high
favour." "She swears," Sterne told him in 1761, "you
are a fellow of wit, tho' humorous ; a funny jolly soul,
tho' somewhat splenetic ; and (baiting the love of women)
as honest as gold. How do you like the simile ? "

Meanwhile the hypochondriac lived his own un-
wholesome life in the solitude of his northern strong-
hold. There was something "satiric and hircine " about
the man which certainly pointed some of the directions
of Sterne's after-authorship. Yet even here we light
on that fanciful element which extends to his remotest
surroundings.

Crazy Castle itself was a fabric of romance. Fantastic
battlements, topped by a shabby clock tower and backed by
weird hills, fronted a stagnant moat and the tangled garden
where an owl perched on a classical urn.1 And around the
turret perpetually blew — the words are Sterne's — "a thin
death-doing pestiferous north-east wind." 7

More than has hitherto been quoted of Stevenson's own
description in his Crazy Tales is fraught with interest. It
characterises both the place and its master, though, luckily,
it does not characterise his Tales : —

" There's a castle in the North
Seated upon a swampy clay,
At present but of little worth ;
In former times it had its day.

This ancient castle is called Craxy^

Whose mouldering walls a moat environs,

Which moat goes heavily and lazy,
Like a poor prisoner in irons.

1 So it figures on the frontispiece to Hall- Stevenson's Crazy Talis.
When Sterne was in Paris in 1762 he showed this illustration to Trotter, one
of the Demoniac Brotherhood, and "made him happy beyond expression."

2 Sterne to Stevenson [August, 1761].

8

Ii4

STERNE

Many a time I have stood and thought,

Seeing the boat upon this ditch,
It looked as if it had been brought

For the amusement of a witch,
To sail amongst applauding frogs,
With water-rats, dead cats, and dogs.
The boat so leaking is and old

That if you're fanciful and merry
You may conceive without being told

That it resembles Charon's wherry.

A turret also you may note,

Its glory vanished like a dream,
Transformed into a pigeon-cote,

Nodding beside the sleepy stream,
From whence by steps with moss o'ergrown

You mount upon a terrace high,
Where stands that heavy pile of stone,

Irregular and all awry.
If many a buttress did not reach

A kind and salutary hand,
Did not encourage and beseech

The terrace and the house to stand,
Left to themselves and at a loss,
They'd tumble down into the foss.

Over the castle hangs a tower
Threatening destruction every hour,
Where owls and Rats and the Jackdaw

Their Vespers and their Sabbath keep,
All night scream horribly and caw,

And snore all day in horrid sleep.

Oft as the quarrels and the noise
Of scolding maids and idle boys,

THE "DEMONIACS" 115

Myriads of rooks rise up and fly,
Like legions of damned souls
As black as coals,
That foul and darken all the sky.

Where nothing grows,
So keen it blows,
Save here and there the graceless fir

From Scotland with its kindred fled
That moves its arms, and makes a stir,

And tosses its fantastic head,
That seems to make a noise and cry
Only for want of Company.

In this retreat, whilom so sweet,

Once Tristram and his Cousin dwelt.

They talk of Crazy when they meet
As if their tender hearts would melt.

Some fall to fiddling, some to fluting,

Some to shooting some to fishing,
Others to pishing and disputing,

Or to computing by vain-wishing.
And in the evening when they met,

To think on't always does seem good,
Then never met a jollier set,

Either before or since the Flood.
As long as Crazy Castle lasts

Their Tales will never be forgot,
And Crazy may fight many blasts

And better Castles go to pot."

" Cousin Anthony," the Castle's " lord," invited each
wild eccentric of the countryside to orgies, which do
not seem to have exceeded conversation : parsons like the

n6 STERNE

Rev. Robert Lascelles, the " Panty M (or Pantagruel) of
the " Demoniacs," together with Scroope, who was dubbed
Cardinal ; colonels like Lawson Hall, the son-in-law of
Lord William Manners, and Charles Lee, the renegade
" Savage" of the American War — whom Sterne can scarcely
have met since he was off fighting in the forties ; x Zachary
Moore, that queer prodigal who spent his substance on the
continent and died rich in poverty ; stoics like old Hewitt,
whom Smollett knew, who recrossed Sterne's path at Tou-
louse, married and sober, and who closed his life at Florence,
deeming self-starvation a fine quietus ; Squire Nathaniel
Garland, the " G " to whom Sterne addressed several of his
letters ; Gilbert, another " G," and probably another squire ;
Irvine (" Paddy Andrew "), doctor of divinity and dominie
of Kirk Leatham grammar school ; with Pringle (the " Don
Pringello" of Tristram), an unascertained architect who
eventually came to restore the building. To these a leaven
of worse fellowship was added afterwards, the remnant of
the Medmenham blasphemers : Sir Francis Dashwood (who
gave them their name of " Franciscans "), a godless roysterer
and perhaps the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that
England has ever suffered, and John Wilkes, the ribald
libertine who lived to assist Sterne's daughter, and to make
love to Sterne's Eliza. The " Demoniacs " were a lawless
brood, nothing was bad or good enough for their tongues,
and they were ill company for the Yorkshire vicar.2

The Castle was a palace of do-as-you-please and talk-as-

1 Sterne, however, lived to befriend and correspond with an Arthur Lee,
a namesake who was possibly his younger brother, Arthur Lee of Virginia.

2 The Crazy Tales, which their author dedicated to " himself," and the
Fables for Grown Gentlemen are naked but not ashamed, though it should be
remembered that the paradox of that generation was unexampled, and that
such literary excesses were not so seriously taken as they would be nowadays.

For the " Demoniacs " cf. Several Letters to Sterne, by W. Durrant
Cooper (1844), Fitzgerald's Life (p. 47 et seq.), and, more especially, Professor
Cross's Life (p. 122 et seq.).

THE "DEMONIACS" 117

you-should-not. Here they forgathered and rioted over
their round-table. Here Tristram profaned his office by
giving them his mock benediction as the " household of
faith," and here they let loose their nonsensical jokes and
unconscionable tales. Not more veering or untethered was
its weather-vane than the revelry of their humours. Hall-
Stevenson, whose topsy-turvydom is sketched in Yorick's
Eugenius, lived to be sixty-seven ; but he never sobered
down, though he made a religion of health. To the last
his odd aspect and scratch-wig were a byword in London.
Stevenson preached discretion to Sterne, as may be read
at the start of Shandy, and Sterne preached discretion to
Stevenson — in his potations : " If I was you, quoth Yorick,
I would drink more water, Eugenius. — And if I was you,
Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I."

As a man, Stevenson seems to have been a blunderbuss.
In La Bruyere's Caracteres, a book which Sterne had
certainly read, and whence he seems to have drawn hints
for his philosophy of posture,1 occurs a type — that of
Theodecte — which strongly recalls Sterne's intimate.

" I hear him," says the satirist, " in the very vestibule,
his voice strengthens with his approach till here he stands in
my room. He laughs, he cries, he deafens one's closed
ears ; he is a thunderstorm. His tone of speech is no less
singular than his mien. He keeps no truce with himself,
and he only returns from the din of his horseplay to mouth
out vanities and follies. He has so little regard for persons
or amenities that, in all innocence, he gets on everybody's
nerves, and disobliges the whole assembly, unconscious of
the fact. Directly dinner is served he takes the first seat at

1 " II n'y a rien de si delie, de si simple et de si imperceptible, ou il
n'entre des manieres qui nous d^celent. Un sot ni n'entre, ni ne sort, ni ne
s'assied, ni se leve, ni se tait, ni n'est sur ses jambes, comme un homme
d'esprit."

n8 STERNE

table. . . . He eats, drinks, tells his stories, and makes his
fun. He interrupts without discrimination. ... If they
gamble, he wins, rallies the loser and offends him. The
laughers are mere game for his fussiness. . . ."

But about Stevenson was an openness that formed
a rough foil to Sterne's dubious delicacy which hid in
corners. Sterne's theory — one afterwards transmitted to
De Maistre — was the distinction between soul and beast
both contending for the body. But soul for him was
feeling, while the beast preponderated in Stevenson's brain.
Neither Stevenson nor Sterne was a real man of the world :
in the flesh Stevenson had part, and in some sort of devil
both seemed to have shared. But Sterne's devil was not
satanic, it was a mischievous devil, the sprite of fancy that
settled on his desk and guided his pen.

Over and over again he assures us that he was so moved.
As we listen in face of his two-knobbed chair (which, he
says, typified wit and judgment) we behold behind it
not the foul spirit seeking whom he may devour, but
one of those grinning gargoyles which gibe at time from
some gothic buttress. None the less, the worst sallies
of Tristram were designed for the ears of the besotted,
though some, too, of its best creations seem studies of the
frayed odds and ends, the tags and bobtails of humanity
that formed the "Demoniacs." We cannot figure Uncle
Toby at their table : apocrypha has it that he was a Captain
Hinde of Worcestershire, though surely he belongs to
Sterne's childish days. And yet one more side of Sterne
was alien to these banquets — the sentimentalism which such
sons of Belial must have jostled unmercifully. Thicker
blood coursed in the veins of the whole set than circu-
lated in those of the anaemic Sterne. But the quaint
learning was there that pervades the scholar's workmanship.
They were not unintellectual. These men, for all their

THE " DEMONIACS " 119

twists, were no mere gormandisers and swillers ; most of
them had read and ranged afar. In intellect Sterne
delighted, and, though it is hard to imagine his joy in such
coarse carousals, these unpleasing frolics at least made him
feel on firmer ground.

Open those gothic windows, Tristram, and let that
noisome air escape ! Art thou so " positive " thou hast a
" soul " ? Lurks there not somewhere in thee a spark
ethereal ? Or is not the unhallowed scene rather the
flicker of a masquerade, a goblin dance in some uncanny-
carnival ?

CHAPTER X

of sterne's wife, apart from sterne

What manner of woman was the " contemplative girl "
whom Sterne had married ? She has been foreshadowed
already, but fresh clues may serve to resume her story.
In the portrait of her middle age we see some confirmation
of Mrs Montagu's estimate. We can imagine that " fleshy
arm," can hear her shrill, unplaintive girdings, can realise
her envy, and her grievance at the isolation which her
temperament entailed.

To Mrs Montagu, she bewails the " cruel " separation
from all her friends, while she declares that the least mark
of their kindness or remembrance gives her " unspeakable
Delight." * And she was jealous. She cannot hide her
pique at her cousin's preference for Lydia's children
even when the sister whom she dearly loved lay bedridden
in her last illness : —

" Your supposition of my sister's having boasted to me
of her children," she snarls, " is doubtless extremely natural.
I wish it had been as Just, but I can, in 3 words, inform
you of all I know about 'em, to wit their number and their
names. . . . Had my Lydia been so obliging as to have
made them the subject of her Letters, I shou'd by this time
have had a tolerable idea of them, by considering what she

1 Mrs Montagu's letter, if she had received it in a " more happy hour,"
would have made her " almost Frantic with Joy."

120

STERNE'S WIFE, APART FROM STERNE 121

said with some abatement : but as it is I no more know
whether they are Black, Brown or Fair, Wise or Otherwise,
Gentle, or Froward, than the Man in the Moon. Pray is this
strange Silence on so Interesting a Subject owing to her pro-
found Wisdom or her abundant Politeness ? But be it to
which it will, as soon as she recovers her health, I shall
insist on all the satisfaction she can give on this head. In
the meantime I rejoice to find they have your approbation
and am truly thankful that L. has done her part, which
is natural as most motherly, though 1 frankly own I shall
not be the first to forgive any slights that Dame Fortune
may be disposed to shy on them. Your God-daughter, as
in duty bound, sends her best respects to you. I hope that
she may enjoy what her poor Mother in vain laments, the
want of an intimate acquaintance with her Kindred."

Still later, and when Mrs Montagu helped her husband,
she shows the same scolding spirit. She admits that she
has always lamented the lack of any "little mark of kind-
ness or regard to me as a kinswoman." " Surely," she
sighs, " never poor girl who had done no one thing to merit
such neglect, was ever so cast off by her relations as I have
been." " I writ three posts ago to inform Mrs Montagu
of the sorrow her indifFeration [sic] had brought upon me,
and beg'd she wou'd do all that was in her power to undo
the mischief, though I cannot for my soul see which way."
And then follows a sentence already quoted, where she
expects to " the last hour " of her life to be " reproached "
by Sterne as " the blaster of his fortunes." 1

Poor soul ! she deserves our pity, always fretting over
fictions as keenly as over the real sorrows that hurt her less.
There is no evidence that Sterne ever reproached her as the
" blaster of his fortunes " : on the contrary, despite his

1 Cf. Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. p. 1 76 ; and, for the previous passage,

122 STERNE

neglects, he provided minutely for her material comfort, nor
can we find that her kinswoman had any cause for siding, as
she did, with Sterne, except that his wife was disagreeable.
Her disposition was her worst misfortune and ill fitted
her to cope with the sentimentality and sensationalism of
her husband's errors. Moreover, like her sister, she was
melancholy by constitution, and she shared the asthma, for
which Mrs Montagu used to prescribe "Valerian tea."
But neither can we excuse one who, instead of sparing
his wife, provoked her into morose indifference. And this
is the less excusable, because none better knew than the
student of feeling the true way to a woman's heart.

" Women " (he wrote in a letter headed " Wednesday,
past 9 at night — and not very well") "look at least for
attentions ; — they consider them as an inherent birthright,
given to their sex by the laws of polished Society ; and when
they are deprived of them they most certainly have a right
to complain and will be, one and all, disposed to practise
that revenge, which is not, by any means, to be treated with
contempt. . . . Love one, if you please, and as much
as you please — but be gracious to all." * Sterne was far too
gracious to the majority.

At the present period, wife and husband, as John Croft
remarks, did not " gee well together," though elsewhere he
adds that they would write daily love-letters to each other —
which must have been good practice for Yorick. His wife
would often murmur that no one house could hold them,
and this recalls the eighteenth-century wit who replied to a
like remark about himself that there were two sides to
houses as to questions — so he took the inside, and, as was
fitting, his wife, the outside.

Laurey was " g&y ill " to live with ; but Mrs Sterne's

1 Cf. Original Letters of the late Reverend Mr Laurence Sterne \ Never
Before Published^ London, the Logographic Press (1788), p. 200.

STERNE'S WIFE, APART FROM STERNE 123

repinings against neglect were due as much to the wish
for grand society, her sister's foible, as to her own
unhappiness. Yet, in Sterne's letters to his friend Blake,
we find his wife visiting the Cowpers and enjoying the
York amusements. Her native despondency, deepened by
her sister's death, gradually affected her mind, and it is this
melancholia that lends her pathos. As for her "arm,"
that it was active is shown by John Croft, who assures us
of one flagrant and merited instance, when she "pulled"
her inconstant husband on to the floor.

Such seems to have been the masterful Elizabeth — a
different figure from the phantom of biographers. She has
even been identified with the acquiescent, unintelligent Mrs
Shandy, as she figures in the dialogue concerning young
Tristram's breeches. Nothing can be further from the
truth. Mrs Sterne had a will of her own, of which none
was more aware than her henpecked husband.

By the summer of 1759, after a stroke of the palsy, she
became subject to hallucinations, and Sterne took a house in
the Minster Yard that she might be under the care of a
York doctor, while their daughter enjoyed the advantages of
an education for which her father was ever sedulous. Little
Lydia was much distressed at her mother's condition, but
Sterne sought to shake off his own dejection by the play of
his spirits. These set him a-writing, and, so far, Mrs Sterne's
illness contributed to Tristram Shandy, with which, as early as
the start of 1759, Sterne busied himself in good earnest.1

While her wits wandered, she fancied (a symptom of
megalomania) that she was the Queen of Bohemia, a domain
of which he was certainly the king. "He treated her as
such," John Croft tells us among his anecdotes, " with all
the supposed respect due to a crowned head, and continued

1 Cf. his letter to Mrs F [ ? Fothergill] headed "York, Tuesday,

November 19th, 1759."

i24 STERNE

to practise this farcical mockery during her confinement. . . .
It was in great measure owing to her insane state, which
afforded him more time for study, and to relieve melancholy,
that he first attempted to set about the work of Tristram
Shandy." Nor should it be forgotten that into that work
" Bohemia " enters. The king asserted his prerogative to
the full. " In order to induce her to take the air," resumes
Croft in another instalment, " he proposed coursing in the
way practised in Bohemia. For that he procured bladders
and rilled them with beans and tied them to the wheels of a
single horse-chair, when he drove Madam into a stubble field."
This resource, be it remarked in passing, was not necessarily
heartless, for it is only charitable to presume that the jest
was intended to persuade her into exercise. "With the
motion of the carriage all the bladders rattled, which alarmed
the hares, and the greyhounds were ready to take them." !
How the parishioners must have wondered !

Sterne behaved ill enough to his wife without aggrava-
tion by insult, and here he must be absolved. After his
peccadilloes and her recovery, he still addressed her as
" dearest," and some years later he thus delivered himself
to Mrs Montagu : " I return you thanks for the interest
which you took in her and there is not an honest man
who will not do me the justice to say I have ever given her
the character of as moral and virtuous a woman as ever
God made. — what occasioned discontent ever betwixt us is
now no more — we have settled accounts to each other's
satisfaction and honour, and I am persuaded shall end our
days without one word of reproach or even Incivility.1

» 2

1 Cf. Croft's Scrapeana, cited by Professor Cross in his Life, p. 185.
For the previous matters (outside Mrs Climenson's Elizabeth Montagu,
1896) cf. the White foord Papers, pp. 226-34 ; and the Blake correspondence
given in Mr Fitzgerald's biography.

2 Cf. Mrs Climenson's Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. p. 176. The letter is
undated, but internal evidence points to the date given.

STERNE'S WIFE, APART FROM STERNE 125

This was about 1761, yet it was not long ere he wrote to
Hall-Stevenson in the dog-Latin which was their common
language, that " what ailed him he knew not but he was
more sick and tired of his wife than ever," and that an imp
of darkness was driving him to London.

One tie of affection, however, always united them —
the little Lydia, whom her father never ceased to adore.
Even thus early the child suffered from that asthma
which was hereditary on both sides. But directly her
mother's health mended, Sterne's true daughter is found
playing practical jests on her York school-fellows, and
composing love-letters from feigned admirers to hoax them.
Neither in her nor in him could the mercurial element be
quenched, and when he was sick even unto death, he assured
a friend that he would probably " skip off next moment to
some monkeyish trick or another." For his little Lydia he
cared and toiled to the close, and when she parted from
him for the last time he sobbed that the severance was one
between his soul and his body. The year after his death,
the daughter gave a pleasant picture of herself and her
mother in a letter to John Wilkes. They were at
Angoul^me ; she sat reading Milton and Shakespeare aloud,
and passing the rest of her time in drawing and music.1
Here again she resembles her father.

The Sternes had agreed to spare and scrape every
farthing for this child of their hearts. They bought "a
Strong Box with a nick in the top " as a receptacle for these
savings. But one day, at the outset of Mrs Sterne's illness,
" she espied Lorry breaking open the Strong Box." The
mother fainted, and a quarrel ensued. So runs a tale which
John Croft traces to Mrs Sterne herself, among many which,
according to him, proved " poor Lorry " unstable.2 But

1 Cf. Add. MSS. 30877, ff. 72-8.

2 Cf. White foord Papers, pp. 234-5.

126 STERNE

is it quite impossible that this invasion of the hoard was
for the purpose of assisting his old mother ? The dates, in
any case, would seem to tally.

Little Lydia, then, should have riveted her parents, had
the one been able to curb her temper, or the other, his
temperament. Sometimes for happy seasons they would be
at one. But in the main they were apathetic, except when
illness revived attachment. Husband and wife had grown
callous. He told Hall-Stevenson that she was " easy " :
she no longer resented his sentimental excursions.

When the Channel divided them, he was eager to
comfort her, while she at least closed her ears to the
unkind suggestions of candid friends. True, at an earlier
stage he is said to have caricatured her features : the sketch
was signed "Pigrich," but its authenticity is unproved.
That Sterne could speak slightingly of the wife for whom
he often stinted himself appears by more tokens than
one. His Latin ebullition has been noted,1 and in other
letters he sometimes regrets though he never disparages
her. In his "Journal to Eliza" he styles her hard and
grasping. Such perhaps, through her extravagance, she
became. But Sterne himself had helped to harden a
woman whom the thorns of his sensibility had hurt without
the solace of its roses. On the other hand, his quick alter-
nation of moods must never be left out of sight. What
he would curse one day he would bless the next, and
he could be tender and cruel by turns. As he felt, he
shifted, but the strength of his sensations lent them a show
of permanence.

Mrs Sterne's illness of 1749 produced an influence,

1 " Nescio quid est materia cum me, sed sum fatigatus & negrotus de
mea plus quam unquam." This letter, which probably belongs to 176 1, though
in Dr J. P. Brown's edition of Sterne's Works (vol. iv. p. 596) it is misdated
" 1767," will be quoted again.

STERNE'S WIFE, APART FROM STERNE 127

not temporary as has been supposed, but colouring page
on page of Tristram, Deprived of his wife's companion-
ship, always in quest of the feminine, the mariner of
moods embarked on the first sentimental voyage of which
we have record. It is the episode of his " dear, dear Kitty,"
of Catherine de Fourmentelle — the " dear, dear Jenny " of
his romance.

" Oh Plato, Plato," sings Byron, mocking flirtation
under the domino of friendship. The platonic attitude was
natural to Sterne, half-poet, half-poseur. As he gazes into
the eyes of that interesting "friend," he looks like some
Watteauesque abbe, constantly (or inconstantly) coupling the
love of making an appeal with the luxury of making love.
And this Yorkshire abbe was now forty-six. For eighteen
years he had been married. He was frankly sick of his
surroundings and his life. The death-rattle had sounded in
his ears, and he panted for some romance. His waning
health and galling marriage alike oppressed him :

" All tragedies are finished by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage."

With the last line of this distich Sterne would not have
agreed. He was never a cynic.

CHAPTER XI

OF STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE (KITTY DE FOURMENTELLE
AND "TRISTRAM ": MARCH 1759 JUNE ll&0)

If we had strolled into a York draper's shop on the second
of March 1759, we should have observed a young lady cheap-
ening a silk of five-and-twenty shillings a yard, telling the
mercer she was sorry to have given him so much trouble,
and then immediately buying a wider material at tenpence.
Near her stood a middle-aged clergyman, looking a trifle
grave, and archly moralising that " when we cannot get at
the very thing we wish " we should " never take up with
the next best in degree to it." "No," he sighs, "that is
pitiful beyond description." Was it ? He was the best
judge.

Xhe clergyman, of course, was Sterne, who has informed
us of the affair ; the lady was Catherine de Fourmentelle.

Who was she ?

Her name stands variously as Fourmentelle, Fromantel,
and Fourmantel.1 All that can be vaguely gathered is that
she sprang from a Huguenot family — " Beranger " de
Fourmentelle — which had once held estates in Domingo ;
that her elder sister became Catholic, returned to Paris, and
was reinstalled in the family estates. Thus much is to be

1 The first, in the Public Advertiser, September 1760; the second, in
Joseph Baildon's Songs ; the third, in the collection of letters printed by the
Philobiblon Society (15 13-16).

128

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 129

gleaned from the loose hints of Kitty's " friend " Mrs
Agnes Weston, the source of those self-revealing letters
which, over fifty years ago, the late Mr Murray gave to
the world. That Mrs Weston cannot be taken seriously
is proved by the supplement of her story. It alleges that
Sterne had known the young lady before his marriage
(which had now lasted eighteen years), and that, distracted
by his " desertion," she was taken by her sister to Paris,
where she died in a mad-house ; though not before Sterne
had visited her, and interwoven her sad fate with the second
idyll of his Maria in the Sentimental Journey. Such assertions
are as baseless as that other myth which consigned Sterne's
daughter to the terrors of the French Revolution. What
has never yet been noticed is that up to 1767, the year
preceding Sterne's death, the name of his " dear, dear Jenny "
is to be found variously recurring in the pages of Tristram
Shandy, and that therefore she only ceases when Eliza
Draper crossed his path at the close.

We find her in a passage of 1762, where, hoping that
their " Worships and Reverences are not offended," he says
that he will give them something next year to be offended
at, and adds : " That is my dear, dear Jenny's way — but
who my Jenny is and which is the right and which the
wrong end of a woman is the thing to be concealed — it
shall be told you the next chapter but one, to my chapter
of Buttonholes — and not one chapter before." That
chapter was never written.

We find her, however, in the same year bickering with
Sterne, after commenting on his eccentricities. "This is
the true reason," he notes, " that my dear Jenny and I, as
well as all the world besides us, have such eternal squabbles
about nothing. — She looks at her outside, I at her in — how
is it possible we should agree about her value."

We catch sight of her in 1765 emulating the Pythagoreans

9

i3o STERNE

by getting " out of her body " to " think well," while in the
same year she figures in Sterne's fanciful disquisition on
cold water as being still in love. We hear her remonstrance
in a strange passage shortly afterwards, where Sterne typifies
all love's vagaries, by turns exclaiming : " Curse her ! ", and
" Brightest of Stars, thou wilt shed thy influence upon
someone," till he rejects all the stealthy spices dished up
" by the great arch cook of cooks, who does nothing from
morning to night but sit down by the fireside and invent
inflammatory dishes for us." At this point : " ' Oh, —
Tristram ! Tristram ! ' — cried Jenny, c Oh Jenny, Jenny,'
replied I, and so went on with the twelfth chapter."

In the year before he died, we still find her pervading
one of the tenderest passages that Sterne ever wrote, that
beautiful piece about the flight of time, already emphasised
— a piece for which Sterne might almost be pardoned a
dozen Jennies. And in this last passage Jenny wears rubies
about her neck. Perhaps too we find her once more in the
shamefaced or shameless Latin effusion (as you like it)
forwarded to Crazy Castle — probably in the autumn of
1 76 1 — where he owns that the demon of "love," not
"fame," was driving him townward, and that he was quite
infatuated : " Sum mortaliter in amore." Clearly, therefore,
Jenny is no fleeting presence, for Sterne was not accustomed
to feign the names on which he dwelt as an author. His
"dear, dear Jenny" is visible as by turns careful, fond, petulant,
critical, disputatious, but needy never. Unfriended we can-
not suppose her, for, at the outset of their correspondence,
her mother is with her ; pathos never enters into her situation.

York journals record her performances during the winter
when Sterne first made her acquaintance, dubbing himself,
in a letter that he then got her to write, as "a kind and
generous friend of mine, whom Providence has attached to
me in this part of the world where I came a stranger." And

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 131

there are London newspapers to prove that in 1761 at any
rate she was engaged at Ranelagh. Moreover, as we pro-
ceed, it will appear that Sterne himself wrote a song for this
Ranelagh nightingale. That he represented their footing
merely as one of dear, dear friendship is shown by that
early part of his Tristram, where, as a man, he owns " the
tender appellation of my dear, dear Jenny," but, as an author,
disclaims the inference. "All I plead for, in this case,
madam " (he writes), " is strict justice, and that you do so
much of it to me as well as to yourself, — as not to pre-
judge or receive such an impression of me, till you have
better evidence than I am positive, at present, can be pro-
duced. . . . — It is not impossible but that my dear, dear
Jenny ! tender as the appellation is, may be my child. — nor
is there anything above the stars — nor is there anything
unnatural or extravagant in the supposition that my dear
Jenny may be my friend. — Friend ! — my friend. — Surely,
Madam ; A friendship between the two sexes may subsist
and be supported without — Fie ! Mr Shandy : Without
anything, madam, but that tender and delicious sentiment,
which ever mixes in friendship where there is a difference
of sex. Let me entreat you ti study the pure and senti-
mental parts of the best French romances ; — it will really,
Madam, astonish you to see with what variety of chaste
expression this delicious sentiment, which I have the honour
to speak of is dressed out."

Meanwhile Jenny has been left in the mercer's shop,
and there we must leave her standing while we pursue
two more clues to her identity. John Croft's tattle has
already told us that the testy Jaques Sterne quarrelled
with Laurence about a lady. This lady may well have
been Catherine de Fourmentelle, if a conjecture, not wholly
1 fanciful, from Sterne's nomenclature be permitted. Why
did he call Tristram Shandy Tristram ? Sterne was versed

1 32 STERNE

in the cycle of ancient legend, and he can hardly have
been ignorant of " Tristram and Yseult," the plot of which
hinges on the nephew, whose lady-love was usurped by an
uncle. Then, again, Catherine's surname is given as
Beranger de Fourmentelle. She is known to have written
a letter of recommendation for Sterne's coming novel to
some person of influence in London. Of Garrick he
already knew, but it is not certain that he knew Garrick
personally.1 The close friend of Garrick and of all his
circle, the man who procured Hogarth's illustrations for
Tristram, was Richard Berenger, afterwards Master of the
Horse to the young Queen Charlotte, praised for his
chivalrous courtesy both by Dr Johnson and Hannah
More, and the nephew of Pope's and Bolingbroke's Lord
Cobham. His father seems to have descended from a
French family, and Kitty herself could boast a French
motto, " Je ne change pas qu'en mourant " : a convenient
sentiment for Sterne to work on. Is it unlikely that this
Richard Berenger was a distant kinsman of the Beranger de
Fourmentelles ? Such a surmise at least explains how
Sterne came to exploit the services of an obscure ballad-
singer for the advancement of his coming book.

Sterne's moods were as digressive as his authorship.
The poor distraught wife had apparently not long to live.
So far as he could be, he was afflicted. He probably wept
for her now, as it is certain that he wept for her afterwards ;
but real grief was not in his composition, and the prick of
his sorrow would only urge him to court distraction. He
resented the contrariness of a woman whom, later, he de-
scribed as though not " sour as lemon," yet not " sweet as
sugar." The plain high road of endurance was beyond the
vagrant. So he turned to one who looked up to him as a

1 Cf. the interesting and unknown letter from Sterne to Garrick, of 27th
January 1760, printed in the Archivist for September 1894.

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 133

protector, who shared his taste for music, and from whose
responsiveness he might extract fresh food for his fantasy.
The dreamer was forty-five.

" My dear Kitty," he wrote in one of his first love-
letters to the heroine, " I have sent you a Pot of Sweet-
meats and a Pot of Honey, neither of them half so sweet as
yourself ; but don't be vain upon this, or presume to grow
sour upon this character of sweetness I give you ; for if you
do, I shall send you a Pot of Pickles (by way of Contrarys)
to sweeten up and bring you to yourself again. Whatever
changes happen to you, believe me that I am unalterably
yours, and according to your Motto, such a one, my dear
Kitty, c qui ne changera pas, que en Mourant.' "

He did not stop at music or sweetmeats. Her caprice
urged his curiosity. He was going to paint her picture "in
black which best becomes you," but he would be "out of
humour " unless she accepted " a few Bottles of Calcavillo,"
which he has ordered his " Man " to leave at the " Dore."
The Calcavillo perhaps came from the Crofts, who still
continued their foreign wine trade. And the day was worthy
of the deed, for it was Sunday. " The Reason of this trifle-
ing Present, you shall know on Tuesday night, and I half
insist upon it that you invent some plausible excuse to be
home by 7." He signs himself " Yrs., Yorick."

And Kitty had clearly been treated to some tit-bits from
Tristram Shandy. The oftener the coquette listened, the
more Sterne flirted. Nor was it only profane literature that
he sent her. His pet sermon of "Elijah and the Widow
of Zarephath " is heartily at her service. He proffers it
"because there is a beautiful character in it, of a tender
and compassionate man in the picture given of Elijah."

Kitty, we may suppose, sympathised with her middle-aged
swain as the misunderstood husband with a stricken wife,
while he, on his part, had enlisted the favour of York

134 STERNE

friends for her profession. The sermon was a flattery.
" Read it, my dear Kitty," he goes on, " and believe me
when I assure you that I see something of the same kind
and gentle distinction in your heart which I have painted
in the Prophet's, which has attached me so much to you and
your Interests that I shall live and dye your affectionate and
faithful, Lawrence Sterne.', — A significant postscript follows.
He is off to watch the effect of his afternoon attentions,
after a visit to his staid friends, the Fothergills. He frisks
about like a kitten with his pretty ball of sensation, nor
does he conceal his pleasure. "Adieu, dear Friend, I had
the pleasure to drink your health last night." He has
toasted that mixed friendship which was ever his vaunt
with women. Sterne raising his glass to the female Elijah !
It is a picture, perhaps a caricature.

In the evenings — Saturday evenings — after her concerts
he sits long and late with her, discoursing, we may be
certain, about himself, and making his York sermons the
pretext for further visits. He assumes Swift's attitude ; he
chides and corrects her into devotion. " My dear Kitty," the
rogue writes again, " if this Billet catches you in Bed, you
are a lazy, sleepy little slut, and I am a giddy, foolish,
unthinking fellow for keeping you so late up ; but this
Sabbath is a day of sorrow, for I shall not see my dear
creature unless you meet me at Taylor's half an hour
after 12 — but in this, do as you like. I have ordered
Matthew to turn thief and steal you a quart of Honey.
What is Honey to the Sweetness of thee, who are sweeter
than all the flowers it comes from ? "

Her sweet tooth has been twice gratified, each time with
sweeter compliments, and Sterne now surrenders himself to
his novel rapture : " I love you to distraction, Kitty, and
will love you to Eternity. So Adieu ! And believe what
time only will prove me, that I am — Yrs."

LAURENCE STERNE

From an early engraving

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 135

A strange Sunday preacher for St Michael's pulpit !
A queer meanderer through the realms of Scripture ! His
sermon on " The Prodigal Son " was mainly a stalking-horse
for the benefits of foreign travel. And now he tours at
home with a vengeance. Sterne loves her to " distraction,"
but the episode is all friendship — pure, simple, platonic
friendship. What parable can do him justice ?

Kitty is urged to do something for her elderly bene-
factor. Time will never change him ; but time is short,
and the actor's moment is long. While the mother plays
propriety beside her, and Sterne, holding the manuscript
of Tristram, leans over the young girl's shoulder, she pens
the following at his dictation — the letter addressed, as may
be conjectured, to the incomparable Dick Berenger: —

"York, Jan. 1 [1760].
" Sir, — I dare say you will wonder to receive an Epistle
from me and the subject of it will surprise you still more,
because it is to tell you something about books. There are
two volumes, just published here, which have made a great
noise and have had a prodigious run ; for in two days after
they came out, the bookseller [Hinxman, Hildyard's suc-
cessor] sold two hundred and continues selling them very fast.
It is the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, which the
Author told me last night at our Concert he had sent to
London, so perhaps you have seen it ; if you have not seen
it, pray get it and read it because it has a great character
as a witching smart book, and if you think so your good word
in Town will do the Author, I am sure, great service. You
must understand he is a kind and generous friend of mine
whom Providence has attached to me in this part of the
world, where I came a stranger — and I cannot think how I
can make a better return, than to endeavour to make you a
Friend to him and his performance ; this is all my excuse

136 STERNE

for this liberty which I hope you will excuse. His name
is Sterne, a gentleman of great Preferment, and a Prebendary
of the Church of York, and is a great character in these
parts, as a man of Learning and Wit ; the graver people,
however, say 'tis not fit for young ladies to read his book
so perhaps you'll think it not fit for a young Lady to
recommend it ; however the Nobility and Great Folk stand
up mightily for it, and say 'tis a good book, tho' a little
tawdry in some places. — I am, Dear Sir, Yr. most obedt.
and humble Servant." This paved the way. Nearly four
weeks later Sterne wrote to Garrick, with whom he could
scarcely have been familiar, for he addresses him as " Sir."
He had sent him advance copies, and had heard of his good
opinion. The work had come " hot from his brain, without
one correction." It was "an original" and a picture of the
author himself : Garrick's good word would be its best
recommendation. Indeed he had often thought of making it
and its sequels into a " Cervantic comedy," but perhaps such
a play would only be appreciated by the Universities. And so,
" with his most sincere esteem, he was his most obliged and
humble servant." 1 Sterne showed himself an adept at rfolame.

That January ushered in the birth-year of Sterne's re-
nown. The whole of the last year he had been working at the
planned farrago of his book. He had shifted the sequence
of its parts to suit the differing verdicts of his hearers, and
on one occasion, so vexed had he been by the slumbering
audience at Croft's fireside that he pitched it into the grate,
from which his friend rescued it. To Stephen Croft's tongs
Tristram Shandy owes its existence. But even then Sterne
found it hard to bestow the produce of his brain. The title-
page was to lack the author's name, and booksellers would

1 For this new matter, cf. the letter of 27th January 1760, printed in the
Archivist for September 1894.

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 137

not hazard the venture without a subsidy. Sterne's expenses
now exceeded his income, and money was just the requisite
that he lacked. Luckily a bachelor friend, one Mr Lee,
stepped into the breach and offered a hundred pounds, which
Sterne gratefully accepted. Can this Mr Lee have been some
connection of the American Lee with whom Sterne afterwards
corresponded ? Lee, at all events, was a friendly critic.

The "Nobility" and "Great Folks" must have comprised
admirers like Lords Fauconberg and Aboyne ; Gilbert too,
the archbishop, was a great admirer, though from the first
the romance displeased many for more than one reason.
Its whimsicality was not comprehended by the dull, who
only found it pert. Its unabashed double entendre^ its
learning distilled into allegory, both mystified and offended,
while its ridicule of Doctor Burton as Doctor Slop set all
York by the ears. Moreover, the form of its presentation
in two tiny volumes, with their dashes, asterisks, and personal
flourishes, looked more like some feminine indiscretion than
a sober effort. Those who could not understand, resented
it ; those who could, objected to its want of dignity,
its sidelong glances, its over-freedom and over-easiness.
Sterne had not yet perfected the humanities of Trim and
Uncle Toby, while the contentious Shandy with his wire-
spun systems failed to impress the reader as real. The frag-
ment was a new and, many thought, an impudent departure:
a bid for "fame," so Sterne put it, more than "for food."

The words in Kitty's letter, "a little tawdry in some

I places," can hardly have been of Sterne's manufacture.
The singer must have had a judgment of her own.
The first two volumes of Tristram had already circulated
in York, whence they had been despatched for sale in London
to Robert Dodsley, the famous Pall Mall bookseller. No
York edition has survived, and it has therefore been guessed
that the book was first printed in the capital before a parcel

138 STERNE

of its sheets was forwarded to be bound in the Yorkshire
centre. This assumption, however, is not conclusive. It was
customary for provincial booksellers to make arrangements for
the publication of their wares in London until success might
be assured. Tristram Shandy was on approval, and it was
probably first printed in York, and then despatched to
London, where it was finally disposed of.1 Sterne was nice
about typography, and it has been guessed that he wanted a
fastidious woman-printer at York to produce it. This pro-
ject fell through, and Hinxman came into requisition.

Anxiously Sterne awaited the news of his bantling's
progress in the metropolis. The novel's hero had not
yet been born in these two first instalments, and it was as
an unborn experiment that Sterne watched the chances of
his book. Would it prove still-born after all ? Twice had
it been offered to the great London publisher, who had
tendered forty pounds for the copyright of a set, provided
Sterne would take half the risk of the remainder. This he
was unable to do, because he had privately parted with several
copies. Dodsley declared the new novel to be unsaleable.2

To the libretto, so to speak, of this operetta, Kitty de
Fourmentelle supplies an obligato accompaniment.

In the first week of March 1760, Sterne strolled
through the York streets, perhaps to call on Kitty, when he
met Stephen Croft, the elder of the two Stillington brothers,
in full trim for a journey. That hearty squire bluntly
proposed to haul the desponding parson off with him to
London. Sterne demurred at first, on the score of his wife's
precarious condition ; but she was under a doctor's charge,

1 John Croft specially says that " about 200 Copys " were printed in York.
It will be observed that the number tallies with the letter which Sterne
dictated to his dear Kitty, and this is confirmed by Hall-Stevenson himself
in his preface to the Sentimental Jowney Continued (1774). Professor
Cross, however, holds that the book was first printed in London.

2 Cf. White foord Papers^ p. 227.

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 139

the trip might bring him fortune, and the lights of London
summoned him cheerily. Croft offered to pay his expenses,
and such generosity was too tempting to refuse. Sterne
had barely an hour to settle his affairs and pack up his
" best breeches " before they drove off together.

Arrived in town, both lodged at the house of another
friend, " Mr Cholmley " of Chapel Street. Next morning,
before breakfast, Sterne vanished. He had lost no time in
visiting Dodsley, and the shopman told him the astounding
news that not a copy of Tristram Shandy could be iprocured.
The publisher had pronounced it unsaleable ; the public
now found it unbuyable. Then Dodsley himself appeared,
and a satisfactory interview took place. Croft and Cholmley,
passing in their coach up Pall Mall, espied the breakfastless
author, who darted out with the news that he was " mort-
gaging his brains " to the bookseller for the existing
volumes of Tristram at the rate of six hundred pounds,
and that he had further engaged to furnish a fresh volume
every successive year of his life. As a matter of fact, how-
ever, the sum afterwards reduced itself to about four hundred
and eighty pounds, though it is uncertain for what amount
Sterne may have drawn on Dodsley during the interval.
He must have noted how Sterne was impressed, for he
offered fifty pounds more if he would also publish two
volumes of " Yorick's Sermons." The sum, however, did
not content one on the threshold of plenty, and at this
very moment the sanguine novice was haggling over his
bargain. His friends counselled him to strike while the
iron was hot. He took their advice, and returned to
Chapel Street, " skipping into the room," and boasting that
"he was the richest man in Europe."1

Almost immediately after this good fortune, Sterne
exchanged Chapel Street for more fashionable rooms in the

1 Whitefoord Papers, pp. 227-8.

i4o STERNE

now extinct St Albans Street, just off Pall Mall and within
hail of the bookseller. He could now superintend the
debut of his adventure.

Never was success more sudden. Sterne had, in fact,
made a pilgrimage to his own shrine. He had not to find
fame ; it stood there ready-made. Like a sort of inferior
Faust, he had abandoned books and vexations to find his
youth dangerously renewed, and the transformation had been
achieved through one wave of the wand by the Mephis-
topheles of feeling. All London rang with the first two
volumes of Tristram Shandy, which divided it into two
hostile camps. Mystery added to the piquancy of the
situation. The anonymous title-page only made everyone
the more eager to cast eyes on the author, and when he
was once known to be a parson the sensation quickened.
Garrick (and Garrick's voice meant society's) trumpeted his
recommendation. He gave him the " liberty of his theatre,"
as Beard of Covent Garden (and hereby hangs a tale) had
already given him his. At first Garrick had only offered
a free pass to the Drury Lane pit. But Sterne's answer
soon put the wary David to shame. " I told him," he says,
" that he acted great things and did little ones ; so he
stammered, looked foolish, and performed at length with a
bad grace what the rival manager was so kind as to do with
the best grace in the world. But no more of that — he is so
able on the stage that I ought not to mention his patch-
work off it." ■ Sterne's friendship, however, with Roscius
was never ruffled. Mrs Garrick, the charming " Violet " of
Vienna, favoured him highly, and throughout his life he
repaid her by gallant homage.

He attended the courts both of the king and his
mother. Mrs Montagu acted as fairy godmother, and the

1 Cf. Original Letters of the late Reverend Mr Laurence Sterne (1788),
p. 60.

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 141

gates of great houses swung open before him. When he
entered, the man eclipsed even the book. It was found
that the country clergyman was a town wit, though he
sparkled more in small assemblies than in big, where he
often appeared even awkward. His quips and cranks, his
bons mots and repartees, went the round. His presence
was booked three weeks in advance, and Croft said that
it was like " a Parliamentary interest " to secure it.
Never was guest more in demand or evidence ; fashion
and he ran a race together. Sterne had become a spec-
tacle, and curiosity pressed to behold it. Lord Chester-
field, the Crichton of criticism, the sultan of deportment,
showed him signal attentions. The Yorkshire magnate,
Lord Rockingham, the most blameless and least signifi-
cant of statesmen, took him in his train, eventually, as
far as Windsor, where, in the following May, he witnessed
a grand installation of the Garter in company with Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick, Lord Temple, and the future Lord
Chatham, already the patron of Mrs Montagu's hero. The
great commoner was to accept a dedication of Tristram con-
tinued, and throughout life he disported himself with the
fancy of one who at this very moment put up in the Cornhill
window of a York poetaster, " Epigrams, anagrams, para-
grams, chronograms, sold here." 1 The Duke of York,
too, whose early promise succumbed to an early death, soon
made the wonder's acquaintance and widened it. Enigmas
attract enigmas. Lord Shelburne was enchanted with
Sterne. They corresponded to the close, and through the
statesman the famous portrait of Sterne descended to Bowood.
Reynolds painted him for the first time this March (he was
to paint him afresh on his return from France) ; and in the
following year, on the verge of starting on that journey,
he again frequented Sir Joshua's studio, not this time as a
1 For this new anecdote cf. Notes and Queries, ser. vi. 446.

1 42 STERNE

sitter, but as critic and conversationalist. Sir Joshua's picture
has stereotyped Sterne, but indeed it is rather the portrait
of Yorick than of Shandy. He leans his tired face on his
hand, and almost points to his forehead. The painting, as
we now view it, is not quite what it was. Its varnish has
sunk, and the consequent retreat of the eyes renders the
mouth more satyr-like. Some of the engravings have
clownified the features. But from this likeness Lavater
professed himself a discerner of the man. " In this face,"
he wrote, "you can discover the shrewd and arch satirist,
limited by subject, but therefore the more profound. You
can find this in the eyes parted by spaces, in the nose, and
the mouth." But at best we see Sterne dazed by the glitter
of renown, vain of it, and exhausted.

Lord Bathurst, the veteran who used to call his son
old in comparison, hurried him off from a levee at
Carlton House to dine and talk with one who, he said,
brought back the great wits of his youth — Swift and Prior
and Steele and Bolingbroke. Sterne did not recount this
to his Kitty ; it was reserved for a much later letter to
Eliza. But he did now sit down to tell his " sweet lass "
of the triumphs which had so turned his head that his
friends compared him to a shrub ill-transplanted to the
town. Sterne's " intellectuals " swam under the ordeal, as
he confessed afterwards when the process was repeated in
Paris. He lost his head, like many another poor fellow
before him, and there is something piteous as well as con-
temptible in his deference to the demigods of the peerage.

It is late at night. Company still lingers in the smart
chambers, and, likely as not, Sterne will sally forth again.
Yet Catherine still tantalises his heart. He finds some
pretext to steal from his guests. He seeks his best
quill and paper, rubs his wig awry as his wont was, and

From a mezzotint
After the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 143

recounts his triumphs in secret. The note is one of
admiration — for himself. " My dear Kitty [it runs], I
should be most unhappy myself, and I know you would
be so too, if I did not write to you by this post, tho'
I have not yet heard a word from you. Let me know,
my sweet Lass ! how you go on without me, and be
very particular in everything. My lodging is every hour
full of your Great People of the first rank, who strive
who shall most honour me ; even all the Bishops have
sent their Compts. to me, and I set out on Monday to
pay my visits to them all. 1 am to dine with Lord
Chesterfield this week etc. etc., and next Sunday Lord
Rockingham takes me to Court. I have snatched this
single moment, tho' there is company in my room, to
tell my dear, dear Kitty this and that I am hers for ever
and ever." And he had sat down to talk with her before,
on the very verge of moving to his new splendour.1 " I
have arrived here safe and sound," he confided, " except for
the Hole in my Heart, which you have made like a dear,
enchanting slut as you are. I shall take lodgings this
morning in Piccadilly or the Hay market, and before I seal
this letter will let you know where to direct a letter to me,
which letter I shall wait by the return of the Post with great
Impatience. So write, my dear Love, without fail. I have
the greatest Honors paid and most Civility shown me,
that were ever known from the great ; and am engaged
already to 10 Noble Men and Men of fashion to dine.
Mr G[arrick] pays me all and more honour than I could look
for. I dined with him to-day and he has promised numbers
of Great People to carry me to dine with 'em. He has
given me an order for the Liberty of his Boxes and all
other part of his house for the whole Season ; and indeed

1 The letter as printed is misdated 8th May, which is clearly a slip for
8th March.

i44 STERNE

leaves nothing undone that can do me either Service or
Credit ; he has undertaken the management of the Book-
sellers, and will procure me a good price — But more of this
in my next. And now, my dear, dear girl ! Let me
assure you of the truest friendship for you that ever man
bore towards a woman. Where ever I am, my heart is
warm towards you, and ever shall be till it is cold for
ever." That Sterne nourished this feeling is proved
from the permanence of his allusions. That he could be
tantalised, perhaps flattered, by jealousy, is evident from
the next sentence. "I thank you for the kind proof you
give me of your Love and of Yr. desire to make my
heart easy in ordering yourself to be denied to — you
know who ; — Whilst I am so miserable to be separated
from my dear, dear Kitty, it would have stabbed my soul
to have thought such a fellow could have the Liberty of
coming near you, I therefore take this proof of your
Love and good Principle most kindly, and have as much
faith and dependance upon you in it, as if I were at
yr. Elbow ; would to God I was at this moment ! But I
am sitting solitary and alone in my bed-chamber (10 o'clock
at night after the Play), and would give a guinea for a
squeeze of Yr. hand. I send my soul perpetually out to see
what you are a doing ; — wish I could send my Body with
it. Adieu, dear and kind Girl ! And believe me ever Yr.
kind friend and most affte. Admirer. I go to the Oratorio
this night. — Adieu ! adieu !

" P.S. — My Service to yr. Mama.

" Direct to me in the Pall Mall, at Ye 2nd House from
St Albans Street.

" To Miss Fortnantel,
" at Mrs Joliff's,

"In Stone Gate,
"YORK."

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 145

Sly rogue ! There are always postscripts. It is always
ten at night, and solitude endears her to him, for it is
then that he feels the rebound and craves a tenderness
in the distance. Had Mrs Sterne walked in to disturb his
nocturnal reveries, he would have shuddered, but he
hugs the illusion of his Kitty's presence. If only she
could come ! And why should a friend not come ? Dis-
cretion he sends to the winds, and if bishops are scandalised
— but no, they will never set eyes on the snug bower of
his Catherine. He is now powerful. He will speak to the
managers ; he will get her a London engagement. The
bishops can hear her sing if they will. So after a space he
persuades her to come up with her mother and take rooms
in Meard's Court near St Anne's Church, Soho. But she
delayed too long. Not till April the fourteenth did she quit
Stonegate, and as her admirer was bound early next month
for Windsor, he bemoans the separation that mars the
height of his pleasure.

Did he now permit himself (as he was certainly to do in
the case of Eliza) to indulge the disgusting prospect of his
wife's decease ? His words are dubious, but as yet they do
not quite seem to bear this construction : " These separations,
my dear Kitty, however grievous to us both, must be for
the present. God will open a Dore when we shall some-
times be much more together, and enjoy our Desires without
fear of interruption." He brims over with his triumphs :
"I have 14 engagements to dine now in my Books with
the first Nobility. I have scarce time to tell you how
much I love you, my dear Kitty, and how much I pray
to God that you may so live and so love me as one day
to share my great good fortune. My fortunes will certainly
be made ; but more of this when we meet. Adieu, adieu !
Write, and believe me your affte. friend, L. S.

" Compts to Mama."

10

146 STERNE

Let us hope in charity that the participation in his
fortune implies a wish to requite her for that early letter
of introduction : let Yorick at least have the benefit of the
doubt. It is scarcely credible that at this juncture he
could wish his recovering wife to die. Not only have we
a long memorandum of the following year, couched in a
strain of tender anxiety, but also the letter written to
Mrs Montagu in honour of the woman. Elsewhere, too, he
protests his pride in her mind and manners ; and though
Mrs Sterne (perhaps conscious of Kitty) asks Mrs Montagu
whether she thinks favouritism the "way to make a bad
husband better," she certainly now acquiesced in his errors.1

But though Sterne may be absolved of cold cruelty, he
can scarcely be absolved of random anticipation ; and of this
the next letter can leave no doubt. Will-o'-the-wisp is
elusive, and perhaps the less we pry below the surface,
the better. Only at times did he soften towards his tor-
mentress. When she suffered, he was affectionate long after
even the show of attachment had vanished. But when she
was apathetic, he let her slip from his regard, and it was
chiefly in connection with her daughter that he thought of
her at all. At least his successes would replenish their store.

On the tenth of March the living of Coxwold at last fell
vacant ; and Lord Fauconberg lost no time in presenting
Prince Fortunatus with t the living. Nor did Prince
Fortunatus lose a moment in acquainting Miss Kitty with
the tidings. " Tho' I have but a moment of time to spare,"
he says, " I wd. not omit writing you an account of my
good Fortune ; my Lord Fauconberg has this day given me
a hundred and sixty pounds a year wch. I hold with all my
preferment, so that all or the most part of my sorrows and
tears are going to be wiped away. 1 have but one obstacle
to my happiness now left, and what that is you know as
1 Cf. Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. p. 176. The communication is undated.

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 147

well as I. ... I assure you, my Kitty, that Tristram is the
Fashion. Pray to God 1 may see my dearest girl soon and
well — Adieu ! Your affectionate Friend."

To Meard's Court, Kitty and her mother duly repaired,
and here a new trifle of evidence comes into view. Sterne
constantly frequented Ranelagh — scarcely a fitting scene,
thought some, for a village pastor. At Ranelagh Kitty
wanted to perform this very spring, and Sterne used his
influence with the Covent Garden Manager for the purpose.
If she failed for the moment, she was certainly singing there
during the next autumn and in the course of the following
year. In that year, when Sterne revisited London, he
wrote, he says, "a kind of Shandean sing-song dramatic
piece of Rhyme for Mr Beard — and he sang it at Ranelagh
as well as on his own stage [Covent Garden], for the benefit
of Someone-or-Other." 1 " Someone-or-Other " must mean
Kitty de Fourmentelle, since a Public Advertiser of September
1760 advertises a "Collection of Songs sung by Mr Beard,
Miss Stevenson, and Miss Fourmentell at Ranelagh," and
composed by Joseph Baildon. A reference to the book
discloses the " Dialogue " between " Mr Beard and Miss
Fromantel" as Swain and Nymph respectively. Baildon's part
seems confined to the music. Was Sterne, even thus early,
the impenitent librettist, and did Kitty sing his doggerel even
before he left town in the late spring ? A book of songs
often succeeded their performance. The lines go as follows,
and another letter of Sterne acquaints us that they were
mistaken for Garrick's, in whose house he wrote them : 2 —

1 Cf. The Original Letters of the late Reverend Mr Laurence Sterne,
Logographic Press ( 1 788), p. 60. That this mention refers to 1 760 is shown from
the next sentence, which says that Sterne could not refuse Beard's request, for
" a year before " he had presented him with the freedom of Covent Garden
Theatre.

2 Cf. The Letters of the late Reverend Mr Laurence Sterne, published by
his daughter, Mrs Medalle (Becket, 1 775), p. 107. " Who told you that Garrick

148 STERNE

" How imperfect the joys of the soul,
How insipid Life's journey must be,
How unsocial the Seasons must roll,

To the wretches who dare not be free."

Kitty's disappointment at not securing an immediate
engagement appears from still another of Sterne's letters.
" I received," he says, " your dear letter, which gave me
much pleasure, with some pain about Ranelagh ; but never,
my dear girl, be dejected ; something else will offer and turn
out in another quarter. Thou mayest be assured nothing
in this world shall be wanting that I can do with discretion.
I love you most tenderly, and you shall ever find me the
same man of Honour and Truth. Write me what night you
may be in town that I may keep myself at liberty to fly to
thee. God bless you, my dear Kitty. — Thy faithful

" L. Sterne.

"P. S. — There is a fine print going to be done of me, so
I shall make the most of myself and sell inside and out. I
take care of myself, but am hurried off my legs by going to
great people. I am to be presented to the Prince.

" My service to your Mama."

Did he make the most of himself " inside " ? " Honour "
and " Truth " ! Here, methinks, soft Yorick protests too
much. He had better have stuck to the commonplaces of
the ditty. In any case, Sterne was " free " enough : he could
never contract his sentimental journeyings, though, to do
him justice, neither did he conceal his ditours in doubtful
continents. He painted them in moral colours, but at
no stage of this Fourmentelle episode does he appear to
moral advantage. All that can be said is that both towards

wrote the medley for Beard ? 'Twas wrote in his house however, and before I
left Town" (Sterne to Mrs F., "my witty Widow," Coxwold, 30th August 1761).

STERNE, APART FROM HIS WIFE 149

Kitty and his wife he seems, externally, to have gbeen kind
and generous, an easy-going means of shriving conscience.
Nor did he ever betray people : he boasted with truth that
never had he "forfeited a friendship/ ' He sought to
atone for his heart by his head, or rather his feelings. If
he preached beyond his practice, he tried to reconcile that
practice with his preaching through the medium of the
emotions. To the last he not only asserted but thought
that he had squared the moral circle : his taper sent out
its glow to all humanity, and persons were only details.
One thing, however, is clear. His interest in Kitty was
maintained, as is proved even by her musical engagement
in the following year.

As the season's prodigy grew more and more in
request, his visits to the daughter and mother became
less frequent. He put off his dearest with attentions.
"As I cannot propose the pleasure of your company
longer than till 4 o'clock this afternoon," he writes, " I have
sent you a ticket for the Play, and hope you will go there,
that I may have the satisfaction of hoping you are entertained
when I am not. You are the most engaging creature and I
never spend an evening with you, but I leave a fresh part of
my heart behind me. You will get me all, piece by piece,
I find, before all is over ; and yet I cannot think how I can
be ever more than what I am at present. P.S. — I may be
with you soon after 2 o'clock, if not at 2 ; so get yr.
dinner over by then."

But Sterne's " pieces " were multiplied by the miracle of
his triumphs, and only a morsel could be spared for Meard's
Court. " I was so intent upon drinking my tea with you
this afternoon," sighs the sinner, " that I forgot I had been
engaged all this week to visit a Gentleman's Family on this
day. I think I mentioned it in the beginning of the week,
but your dear company put that with many other things

i jo STERNE

out of my head. I will, however, contrive to give my dear
friend a call at 4 o'clock ; tho' by-the-bye, I think it not
quite prudent ; but what has Prudence, my dear girl, to do
with love ? In this I have no government, at least not half
so much as I ought. I hope, my dear Kitty has it and
good night. May all your days and nights be happy !
Some time it may and will be more in my power to make
them so — Adieu.

" If I am prevented calling at 4 I will call at 7."
Did he go ? I trow not. There were great men and
great ladies clamouring for Tristram, and the fragments of
his " heart " were being raffled for by the frivolous. The
tone of his promises soon sinks to diminuendo. " If it
would have saved my life," runs his last letter, " I have not
one hour or half hour in my power since I saw you on
Sunday ; Else my dear Kitty may be sure I should not
have been thus absent. Every minute of this day and to-
morrow is pre-engaged [so] that I am so much a prisoner as
if I was in Jayl. I beg, dear girl, you will believe I do not
spend an hour where I wish, for I wish to be with you
always : but Fate orders my steps, God knows how, for the
present. — Adieu, adieu. On Sunday at 2 o'clock I will
see you."

Yet she never slipped out of his mind. He frisked
on, and whisked off, but she was there. With all that is
blameworthy in this curious courtship, the unknown Kitty
stands out mysterious and alluring. What became of one
whom Sterne's pages commemorate up to the last year of
his life ? One would like to indulge a fancy, to imagine
that, like her sister, she may have joined the Roman com-
munion, and that at the final hour when Sterne lay dying
alone in Bond Street, she came, habited perchance as a
Sister of Charity, to soothe his death-bed. A fancy it is
and must remain, yet stranger things have happened, and

TRISTRAM: CRITICISM

151

the chapter of the not impossible is the most attractive in
literature as in life.

Sterne had won an audience, but his fame did not
march unchallenged. The critics crowded their watch-tower,
looking out for all his zigzags, his frailty and fickleness
both as man and writer. The Monthly Review led the way,
and was followed by the sour Smollett's young men in the
Critical Review, Gossip was of course added to censure, and
one Dr Hill, in the Female Magazine, professed to give an
account of the innovator's antecedents and present his
doings, his wayward steps and clerical errors. The more
dubious portions of Tristram were trounced. There is
a story of the time that illustrates the scandal, and will be
new to most. Sterne, it was said, protested to Garrick his
abhorrence of loose literature. Whoever issued such
books, he declared, ought to be hung before his own house-
door. " But you, I believe, live in lodgings," was the
actor's reply.1 To one who objected that his humour was
11 too gay and free for the colour of his coat," Sterne spoke
out his inner mind. His book, he said, was himself, " the
understrapping virtue of prudence " would only spoil " the
air and originality," those " slighter touches which identify
it from all others of the same stamp." He denied that he
had gone as far as Swift, who himself " kept a due distance
from Rabelais" ; and Swift had "said a hundred things" he
durst not say unless he was " Dean of St Patrick's." He
admitted that he " sported too much " with " his own wit,"
but he had suppressed much already. The " happiness of
Cervantic humour," he added, lay " in describing silly and
trifling events with the circumstantial pomp of great ones."
To purge his work would emasculate it.2

1 From a contemporary cutting in an album belonging to Mr Fritz Reiss.

2 This very interesting letter (undated) was printed in the Archivist
(vol. vii» p. 40) as belonging to Mr F. Barker. Professor Cross, without

1 52 STERNE

Later (in 1762), even Goldsmith, the most human of
humourists, the simplest of critics, found him not only wanton
but dull. His familiarity he resented ; he misconstrued
his style. He laughed that Sterne talked in riddles and
pulled men by the nose : " He must speak of himself, and
his chapters, and his manner, and what he would be at,
and his own importance, and his mother's importance, with
the most unpitying prolixity, .... smiling without
a jest, and without wit professing vivacity." 1 But when
Goldsmith condemned Sterne, the best of Tristram Shandy
was yet in store. Surely the lover of kindly nature
must have welcomed Trim and Toby, though much of
their neighbourhood was not laid in his own lavender.
And when Goldsmith tried to provoke Dr Johnson
(who would tease him for the same egoisms) into a
verdict of dulness, the pope of London's " Why no, sir,"
silenced him.

Sterne well knew how to defend himself against most
of his censors, nor did he conciliate them by his peculiar,
half-sentimental mockery. He might be said to have given
them a foretaste in the second volume of Tristram, where he
penned Uncle Toby's address to the fly — an appeal against
retaliation which, surely, was as ironical as it was sentimental.
" Go, says he, one day at dinner to an overgrown one who
had buzzed about his nose and tormented him cruelly all
dinner-time, — and which after infinite attempts, he had caught
at last as it flew by him ; — I'll not hurt thee, says my Uncle
Toby rising from his chair, and going across the room, with
the fly in his hand ; — I'll not hurt a hair of thy head : —
Go, says he, lifting up the sash and opening his hand as he

citing the source, only gives the sentence from it relating to Swift (cf. his
Life, p. 179). The struggle in Sterne lay between the ferment of his brain
and the preferment which Fothergill and other friends feared that Tristram
would preclude.

1 The Citizen of the World, letter 52.

TRISTRAM: CRITICISM 153

spoke to let it escape ; go, poor devil, get thee gone, why-
should I hurt thee ? This world surely is wide enough
to hold both thee and me." What author would withhold
his assent ? As time went on and revilers increased, Sterne
pricked them again and again under varying figures. Now,
he would sort them into learned and unlearned : the latter
" busied in getting down to the bottom of the well where
Truth keeps her little court " ; the former " pumping her up
through the conduits of dialectic induction " : — " They con-
cerned Themselves not with facts — they reasoned." Now, he
would deride their minutiae in the parlance of the theatre : —
11 And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night ? Oh,
against all rule, my lord, — most ungrammatically ! betwixt
the substantive and the adjective, which should agree
together in number case and gendery he made a breach thus
— stopping as if the point wanted settling ; and betwixt the
nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern
the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen
times, three seconds and three-fifths by a stop watch. —
Admirable grammarian ! But in suspending his voice — was
the sense suspended likewise ? Did not expression of
attitude or countenance fill up the chasm ? Did you narrowly
look ? I looked only at the stop watch, my lord — Excellent
observer ! " The philosophy of the stop-watch will never
be out of date. Now, he disposed of them with less good-
nature as a troop of jackasses : — " How they viewed and
reviewed us as we passed over the rivulet at the bottom of
that little valley — and when we climbed over that hill, and
were just getting out of sight — good God ! what a braying
did they all set up together ! Prithee, Shepherd ! who keeps
all those Jackasses ? . . . . Heaven be their comforter — what,
are they never curried ? — Are they never taken in in winter ?
Bray, bray — bray. Bray on — the world is deeply your
debtor ; — Louder still — that is nothing ; in good sooth, you

154 STERNE

are ill used : — was I a Jack-Ass, I solemnly declare I would
bray G-sol-re-at from morning even unto night."

It was the old warfare between lecture and literature.
And to this was added a succession of libellous imitations,
defilements of his English and his meaning. As for his
innuendoes, he always maintained that they were misunder-
stood by dullards, that they only derided mock gravity and
quack self-importance ; in every respect Sterne put himself
forward as homme incompris, just as he himself always affected
the femme incomprise. Not wholly or in each such instance
is Tristram to be trusted ; he could not trust himself ;
and he sought to compound with offended friends and
incensed enemies by leaving a blank page in his sixth
volume — the one page, he said, in this "thrice happy book,'*
which " malice will not blacken and which ignorance cannot
misrepresent." In the main, however, there is truth in
these excuses. It has been touched on before, and it will be
touched on again. We have seen that his accusers literalised
the double meanings which are seldom patent, and often
strike at some pasteboard idol. They were imperceptive. If
they went out of their way to take heavily what was intended
lightly, was that wholly the author's fault ? He ought not
to have used mud-missiles or to have danced through gutters.
But neither should they have ignored his aim and direction.
They talked as if Sterne purposed a praise of Priapus.
They picked the pellets to pieces, they splashed the dirt
around him, but much of the refuse adhered to themselves.

And here we are brought face to face with the brawniest
of his pummellers, William Warburton, who had just re-
ceived his reward for a lifelong pugilism by the bishopric
of Gloucester. Warburton was a stentor and bully, who
had bruised his way into public notice and vociferated his
claim to force genius under his protection. So he had
done with the credulous Pope ; and Bolingbroke, who then

TRISTRAM: WARBURTON 155

tried conclusions with him over the Essay on Man, well
said that he was like a chimney-sweep, because, whenever
he came to close quarters, he blackened you in the process.
So quarrelsome was Warburton that his own wife once
threw a book at him after a dispute, exclaiming, " If you will
not listen to mey perhaps you will listen to a book." He
was very proud of his books, and very pleased when he
found his heart-breaking treatise on the Divine Legation of
Moses mentioned in Tristram Shandy. Warburton longed
for acquaintance with the new genius, as he was soon to
term him. Always cautious, however, he made inquiries,
but he soon told his friend Garrick that these had elicited
nothing but praise of the clergyman — a bishop might safely
patronise him. Through Garrick the two came together,
but the real cause of their meeting has escaped biographers,
who have removed the incident to a subsequent phase of
their squabble. It was bruited (quite falsely, according to
Sterne) that the pedant himself was to figure in future
volumes as their hero's bear-leader. This was naturally too
much for Warburton. How Sterne took it is shown by his
well-known letter to Garrick, scribbled shortly before midnight.
The effusiveness of his mien betrays that want of dignity,
that hysterical sensitiveness which disfigures the man : —

" 'Twas for all the world like a cut across my finger
with a sharp penknife. I saw the blood — gave it a suck —
wrapt it up — and thought no more about it. But there
is more goes to the healing of a wound than this comes
to : — a wound (unless it is a wound not worth talking
of, but by-the-bye, mine is) must give you some pain
after. — Nature will take her own way with it, — it must
ferment — it must digest. . . . Was there no one learned
blockhead throughout the many schools of misapplied
science in the Christian world to make a tutor of for my
Tristram ? . . . . Are we so run out of stock that there is

156 STERNE

no one lumber-headed, muddle-headed, mortar-headed,
pudding-headed Chap amongst our doctors .... but I
must disable my judgment by choosing a Warburton.
Vengeance ! Have I so little concern for the honour of
my hero ? — Am I a wretch so devoid of sense, so bereft
of feeling for the figure he should make in story, that I
should choose a preceptor to rob him of all the immortality
that I intended him ? O ! Dear Mr Garrick. Malice is
ingenious — Unless where the excess of it outwits itself. . . .
The report might draw the blood of the author of Tristram
Shandy — it could not harm such a man as the author of the
Divine Legation — God bless him ! Though (by-the-bye, and
according to the natural course of descents) the blessing
should come from him to me. Pray have you any interest^
lateral or collateral^ to get me introduced to his Lordship ? "

The last sentence proves how Sterne first found his way
to Warburton. The prelate was soon convinced that rumour
lied. Sterne duly called at Grosvenor Square and was
rewarded with a purse of guineas, some classical books, and
Warburton's good wishes for his better success in author-
ship. The pompous Bishop evidently hoped to crush his
protege with benedictions. Sterne took the money, the
books, and the blessings, but all went as lightly as they
were got. He cared not one brass farthing for Warburton or
his works. Gradually the literary godfather grew suspicious
of this " philandering Faustus " — the godchild who fre-
quented Ranelagh and coquetted under the rose. Hill's
Female Magazine proved one eye-opener ; two sets of verses
which Hall-Stevenson published with Dodsley, not, it would
seem, without Sterne's connivance, were another.1 The first

1 " Two Lyric Epistles : One to my Cousin Shandy on his Coming to

Town, and the other to the Grown Gentlewomen, the Misses [York].

Printed for R. & J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, 1760." These verses were after-
wards printed in Hall-Stevenson's Collected Works.

TRISTRAM: WARBURTON 157

of these rallied " my Cousin Shandy " on coming to town
after being stoned by York children. His transformation was
compared to the plight of Jonah when disgorged by the whale,
and the change from pelting parishioners to applauding
drawing-rooms was hinted by the analogy of Elijah and the
boys whom the bears devoured. This, Warburton subse-
quently assured Sterne, put him in a very "mean light."
But the second of these lyrics was much more scandalous.
It encouraged two "young ladies of York," eager for
escapades in the metropolis. Sterne, it was bruited, had a
hand in this manifestly Crazyite concoction, and what was
a bishop to do with a pastor of such black sheep as these ?

The possibility of Sterne's share in the rubbish was
accentuated by the following stanza : —

" When a Man's saying all he has to say,
And something comes across the way,
Without a Provocation
I do not call it a Digression,
But a Temptation
Which requires Discretion
And therefore I petition
For leave to give a Definition
Of the word Reputation ;
'Tis an Impression or a Seal
Engraved, not upon steel
On a transparent Education

Which held up to the Light,
Discovers all the strokes and touches
That mark the Lady of a Knight,
A Mantua-maker, or a Duchess."

A still sharper stone of offence succeeded. Babble
whispered that Warburton had bestowed the purse in order
to silence Sterne for the future, and that his guineas had
been hush-money ill-bestowed. The Bishop was beside

158 STERNE

himself, but Sterne cared for none of these things. No
sooner had he returned home in the summer, than he
implored his patron to subscribe for the first volumes of
his Sermons, and, tongue in cheek, hoped to profit by his
advice. All the same, he would pursue his humour his own
way, and without mutilation : — " Laugh, my lord, I will,
and as loud as I can too." Warburton, pleased that Sterne
would "do justice" to his "genius," persisted in friendly
warnings : — " You say you will continue to laugh loud in
good time. But one who is no more than even a man of
spirit would choose to laugh in good company ; where priests
and virgins may be present." Nobody, he told Sterne with
great good sense, had been ever written out of the reputation
he had once fairly won but by himself. He plumed himself
on his prompt and warm commendation of Tristram Shandy
to all the best company in town, albeit another ecclesiastic
had taken him to task, but naturally he could not stomach
the insinuation that he had bought off Sterne from ridiculing
familiar foibles. "The fellow himself," he assured Hurd
at the close of 1761, "is an incorrigible scoundrel."1 But
even so, he retained a sneaking fondness for this feather-
brained heretic. " I have done my best," he told Garrick,
shortly after Sterne's petition about the Sermons, " I have
done my best to prevent his playing the fool in a worse
sense than I have the charity to think he intends. I have
discharged my part to him. I esteem him a man of genius,
and am desirous he will enable me to esteem him as a
clergyman." Where Warburton is to be blamed is for
trying to annex Sterne, and for postponing character to
reputation. But he has been wrongly blamed for his after-
conduct. He took Sterne up under false pretences which
he welcomed ; he dropped him because the pretences were
false. Sterne smiled, and Warburton blustered.

1 Cf. The Garrick Correspondence, vol. i. p. 1 1 5 */ seq.

TRISTRAM'S RETURN 159

In closing this farce, we recur to Kitty de Fourmentelle,
with whom we set out. In the very letter last mentioned,
Warburton thanks Garrick for the "hint received from
you by Mr Berenger concerning our heteroclite parson."
Berenger must have whispered something about Catherine
Beranger de Fourmentelle. " Dear, dear Kitty " had undone
Sterne with Warburton : the screen had fallen, and Joseph
Surface took refuge in sentiment.

But there was fame to solace him. The second
edition of Tristram Shandy was out, and Pitt accepted
its dedication. Sterne's name was known beyond Great
Britain. A wager had been laid that a letter forwarded
to him as "Tristram Shandy, Europe," would reach the
celebrity. When Sterne posted to York and Sutton under
the summer sunlight, on the road to his new living, a post-
boy " pulled of? his hat " and presented him with the
missive. So says John Croft, whose brother had piloted the
unknown penman to London.

Warburton and Kitty de Fourmentelle had been the
two poles of his experience. What a parson ! What a
portent ! " I shall write as long as I live " was now his motto.
" The Vanity," he said, " of a pretty woman in the hey-day
of her Triumphs is a fool to the Vanity of a successful
author." l If Sterne had only taken that maxim to heart !

1 This sentence occurs in the letter in which Sterne, before he left London,
begged Berenger's influence with Hogarth for illustrations to Tristram.
Hogarth did one then — that of Trim reading his sermon — and another for the
second issue — that of Tristram's christening — both grotesques, and both
gratuitously. The writer has seen Hogarth's first sketches for these, and
there are variations. In the sermon scene Trim's dropped hat is visible in the
foreground ; while in the christening scene the basin of water does not stand
on the table, but is overturned by the window. The true version of this letter,
in which Sterne urged u orna me, sighed Swift to Pope," has been given for
the first time by Professor Wilbur Cross in his preface (p. viii.) to his Life
and Times of Laurence Sterne.

CHAPTER XII

THE URBAN PARSON (cOXWOLD AND LONDON AGAIN, I761)

Sterne resought the country an inveterate Londoner. He
had come up to town a country sloven, he returned imbued
with society and craving for it. Those who taste of the
Trevi fountains at Rome rest not, it is said, till they return.
So it fared with Sterne : the town was in his blood. And
the Sutton swamps were now a thing of the past. Coxwold
(" near Easingwold," as he styles it) was indeed a
grateful exchange. It stands high up on the Thirsk road,
with the Hambleton hills in the background and a stretch
of moorland below them. Eight miles beyond Sutton, it
was further removed from York and temptation ; but its
air acted like medicine on his nerves, braced and revived
his drooping spirits, and re-enabled him to live in harmony
with his wife. He has given three impressions of his daily
round : two of them in his letters, and one in Tristram
Shandy}

" 'Tis 70 Guineas a year in my pocket," he notes, " though
worth a hundred — but it obliges me to have a curate to
officiate at Sutton instead — 'Tis within a mile of his lord-

1 Cf. Tristram Shandy, vol. ix. p. 67 et seq. ; and Letters of the late
Mr Laurence Sterne to his Most Intimate Friends, published by his
daughter, Mrs Medalle, London, 1775, vo^ '• P* IIJ> and vol. iii. p. 51 (letter
to Arthur Lee).

160

To face p. 160

i;;illli

mm

lilt

8 S

* i

§

l>

u

C)

THE URBAN PARSON 161

ship's seat and park. 'Tis a very agreeable ride out in
the chaise I purchased for my wife — Lyd has a Pony
which she delights in. — Whilst they take their diversion,
I am scribbling away at my Tristram. These two volumes
are, I think, the best. — .... 'tis in fact my Hobby
Horse ; and so much am I delighted with my Uncle Toby's
imagined character that 1 am becoming Enthusiast. — My
Lydia helps to copy for me — and my wife knits and listens
as I read her chapters."

A pleasing picture, and so is the complement. " I am as
happy as a Prince at Coxwold," he said, even in the last
year of his life, " 1 wish you could see in how princely a
manner I live — 'tis a land of plenty. I sit down alone to
venison, fish and wildfowl, or a couple of fowls or ducks,
with curds and strawberries, and cream, and all the simple
plenty which a rich valley .... can produce — with a clean
cloth on my table — and a bottle of wine on my right hand
to drink your health. I have a hundred hens and chickens
about my yard — and not a parishioner catches a hare, or a
rabbit, or a trout, but he brings it as an offering to me. If
solitude would cure a love-sick heart [Eliza, not Kitty], I
would give you an invitation — but absence and time lessens
no attachment that virtue inspires. I am in high spirits —
Care never enters this gate — I take the air every day in my
post-chaise with my two long-tailed Horses .... and as
to myself, I think I am better on the whole." Nor,
when he writes " happy as a Prince," should we forget
the happier phrase by which he adorned a proverb, when,
speaking of a postillion, he said that he sat "as horizontal
as a king."

And now hear him in Tristram Shandy, where he protests
his wish for economy : " I am persuaded there is not any
Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Potentate, great or small upon
earth, more desirous in his heart to keep straight with the

n

1 62 STERNE

world than I am — or who takes more likely means for it.
I never give above half a guinea or walk with boots, or
cheapen toothpicks — or lay out one shilling upon a bandbox
the year round ; and for the six months I am in the country
I am upon so small a scale that with all the good temper in
the world I out-do Rousseau a bar length — for I keep
neither man, or boy, or horse or cow, or dog or cat, or any-
thing that can eat or drink, except a thin poor piece of a
vestal (to keep my fire in and who has as bad an appetite as
myself). But if you think this makes a Philosopher of me
— I would not, my good people ! give a rush for your
judgment. True Philosophy — but there is no treating the
subject whilst my Uncle is whistling Lilliabullero. — Let us
go into the house."

In this frugal paradise he sat down, and his taste must
have revelled in the graceful church, with its hexagonal
tower and the circular gate to its Communion rail. The
chancel is Norman, the pulpit still retains the Georgian
staircase and sounding-board, while the large church-yard
still groups the stones together like flocks of sheep. Hard
by, stands the gabled habitation which he christened " Shandy
Hall," and where he would work all day and half the
night, slippered, unshaven, and in dressing-gown, under
the promptings of his " Demons." Since divided into
two tenements,1 it still wears the mediaeval aspect suit-
able to the old folios that supplied his "hobby horses,"
and he might almost have fancied himself on a broom-
stick flying up the chimney to the moon. Lord
Fauconberg saved Sterne's genius. Had he remained at

1 Shandy Hall is now let to two tenants by its owner, Sir G. Wombwell.
Before it was divided, a Dr Spensely used to live there, and three successive
carriers to York and Thirsk markets occupied it afterwards. The father of
the present sexton also lived and died there. Carriers and sextons — these
were after Sterne's own heart, and it almost seems as if his sprites had arranged
the tenancies.

ce p. 162

2

a

2 £

THE URBAN PARSON 163

Sutton, he would probably have drooped and died, and we
should have lost the best scenes of Tristram Shandy and the
finest pastels of the Sentimental Journey. But even now his
treacherous enemy threatened him, while his eagerness for
town aggravated the malady till it drove him abroad.

Might and main he toiled at Tristram Shandy \ delighting
in Uncle Toby and revelling in those perilous romances
which suggested the fable about whiskers ; but, above all,
there then emanated from him that wonderful story of Le
Fevre, which he sent in advance to Lady Spencer, while her
husband requited him with a silver standish which he
prized as much as they did his dedication.

Unseen voices he thought inspired him : he was never
tired of saying that his words ran unpremeditated, that
" My pen governs me — I govern not it." As he wrote, the
ink dropped aimlessly, for his absence of mind contrasted
with the smart effect of his writing. Out he would wander
alone, perhaps as far as the long wall (yet extant) where
Obadiah collided with Dr Slop, till a fresh thought sent him
hurrying home.1 At this time more than any other, he seems
to have led the life of his fancy. " Oh, for a life of sensa-
tions instead of thoughts ! " once sighed Keats. This was
now the existence of Sterne, and the sensations were keener
in loneliness than they had been in company. Not that
he was quite oblivious of the world. September saw the
marriage of the young king and his bride's coronation, and
Sterne celebrated the occasion by roasting an ox whole for
his parishioners.

But in the late autumn his fresh volumes, the sudden
death of Dodsley, and his itch for London compelled him
thitherward ; and Kitty too, as we have seen, may also have
summoned him. He seems to have arrived in the first
days of December, nor was it long ere he plunged into the
1 Cf. Professor Cross's Life, pp. 236-7.

164 STERNE

old vortex, consorting with fresh wastrels (tainted wits like
Foote, merry reprobates like Wilkes and Delaval), but also
with reputable celebrities. Not only did the Spencers adopt
him, he struck up a close friendship with the meteoric
Charles Townshend, the wit among statesmen, the states-
man among wits, the prince of improvisatores. Under his
auspices he heard the critical debates of that critical moment.
Pitt had just surrendered the seals ; the Seven Years'
War had but two years more to run ; Frederick the Great
soon made terms with his enemy. All England was divided
into " Prussians " and " Anti-Prussians " ; and Sterne, for
Croft's benefit and his wife's, despatched graphic accounts of
what struck him in the House, including Pitt's absence
through a " politic fit of the gout." Such was his influence
with the leaders that he could now forward the interests
of Stephen Croft's young son. The good word of a man
of letters still counted for something in the great world.

The bestowal of his books was arranged, and their new
publishers, who lasted till the end, were Becket and
Dehondt, an eminent firm in the Strand. He hoped to
produce two volumes a year. He seemed at the zenith of
his fortune. True, old stories hampered him, though they
had become old wives' tales. He had scandalised some
by lashing Queen Anne's Dr Mead in the person of
" Kunastrokius with his Asses' Tails." And he offended
again. At Townshend' s board he annoyed the redoubt-
able Dr Mounsey, the Spencers' physician, by a solemn
parody of his technical jargon. Doctors, Sterne always
hated, and in one of his letters he quotes Bacon to show that
they are " old women who sit by your bedside till they kill
you, or Nature cures." * Such incidents still rankled, while
his lighter associates offended the cloth. Dr Johnson
met and disdained him, while the graver sort fought justly
1 Cf. Original Letters (1788), p. 133.

THE URBAN PARSON: MRS VESEY 165

shy of one whom by turns they lectured and loathed. The
more Sterne complained of his revilers, the more he went
out of his way to make them revile him.

But in all the whirligig of this racket a blood-vessel
again broke in his lungs. He had been warned of the blow
previously — but not in time. No dinner could dispense
with him, and he forced himself out. At this very moment
his answer to Mrs Montagu's invitation to some great
party had been that " he would most assuredly not forget
to make himself the happiest man in this Metropolis on the
following Friday." 1 He made light of his ailment, though
not of a new fascination. Mrs Vesey, the fairy of the
Blues, had just met him, to their mutual enchantment : the
Blues too indulged in flirtations. They had sauntered at
Ranelagh, and her voice, he exclaimed, was that of a cherub.
He had listened to it in her " warm cabinet," but now he
could scarce whisper an order for gruel — much less his
appreciation. Yet though " colds, coughs, and catarrhs "
might " tie up the tongue," his heart was " above the little
inconveniences of its prison house," and one day would
" escape it." Meanwhile, he lost no time in addressing
her : — " Of the two bad cassocks which I am worth in the
world, fair lady, I would this moment freely give the latter
of them to find out by what irresistible force of magic it is
that 1 am forced to write a letter to you upon so short an
acquaintance." It was not brief, he reflected, in reality.
" Intercourses of this kind " were " not to be dated by hours,
days, or months — but by the flow or rapid progress of our
intimacies which are measured only by their degrees of
penetration by which we discover characters at once." Such
was his usual form of approach whenever his ivy of senti-
ment lit on a fit fabric to twine upon. Her beauty, he
added, was evident to each common beholder, staring at her

1 Cf. letter in the Autograph Collection of Mr H. H. Raphael.

1 66 STERNE

" as a Dutch boor does at the queen of Sheba " ; but her
tender and gentle modulations — these required " a deeper
research." " You are a system of harmonic vibrations," he
went on, " the softest and best attuned of all instruments."
He would gladly part with his other cassock to touch her ;
" but in giving my last rag of priesthood for that pleasure, I
should be left quite naked."1 While the "prison-house"
detained him, he wrote of her with rapture to Mrs Montagu.
Poor Kitty was quite eclipsed. "Never in my life,"
he said, " did I see anything so truly graceful as she is,
nor had I an idea until I saw her that Grace could be so
perfect in all its parts, and so suited to the higher ordinances
of the first Life, from the superintending impulse of the
mind." Hers, he added, was one " attuned to every virtue,
and a nature of the first order — beaming through a form of
the first beauty." Before the Ranelagh jaunt, it would seem,
she had received both him and Lord Bath, the infirm but
evergreen old statesman, and she had revived them both.
When his efforts at last failed to brave out his illness, she
it was who came " in the form of a pitying angel," made
his " tisane," and played at picquet with him to prevent his
attempts at conversation. About all this he poured out his
heart to Mrs Montagu. " In short," he cried, " if I had
ever so great an inclination to cross the gulph, while such a
woman beckoned me to stay, — I could not depart."

Sterne had agreed to visit Reynolds's studio (while the
artist painted the last portrait ever taken of Lord Bath),
to amuse the politician who had once helped Bolingbroke
against Walpole. And the worn veteran told Mrs Montagu

1 Cf. the two letters " to Mrs V." contained respectively in Sterne's Letters
to his Friends (1775), P- 44 *t seQ-> and in Original Letters (1788), p. 205
et seq. This episode is here fully presented for the first time from the
collation of these letters with the Montagu ones printed in Mrs Climenson's
book. Professor Cross is mistaken in thinking that Sterne first met Mrs Vesey
some three years later at Bath.

THE URBAN PARSON'S "MEMORANDUM" 167

how much he wanted to converse with " Mr Tristram
Shandy." So Tristram ventured to criticise a face which
wore, he thought, too painful an expression, and recom-
mended that Lord Bath should sit instead of standing for
the likeness. Was Yorick in bed when the day came round
for him to sparkle at Leicester Square ? It would have
needed a Mrs Vesey to detain him.

The strain cost Sterne dear. It was now imperative
that he should leave England. If he was rash enough to
risk the winter in London, he would never, he wrote, see
another spring. He begged Mrs Montagu " not to shed a
tear" for him "in vain," yet he constantly contemplated
himself dying. Should she drop more than one over her
friend when he was dead, it would soothe him, he said, while
he was alive. But he trusted that though something in his
death, whenever it happened, might distress her, there
would be something also of comfort in remembrance when
he was " laid beneath the marble." " But why do 1 talk
of Marble, — I should say beneath the sod."

" For cover my head with a turf, or a stone
'Twill be all one —
'Twill be all one."!

Solemn and tearful he sat down four days before the
new year to make a last provision for his wife and
daughter. His " Memorandum " was addressed to Mrs
Sterne, but deposited with his correspondent, " Our Cosin
— not because she is our Cosin, but because I am sure she
has a good heart." He enumerated all the papers that
might be published for the profit of the survivors. " The

1 The preceding particulars are derived from a combination of Lord
Bath's letters to Mrs Montagu in Elizabeth Montagu, vol. ii. pp. 268-9,
and the letter (evidently to Mrs Montagu) headed " Saturday evening" in the
Original Letters of the late Rev. Mr Laurence Sterne, Never Before Published ,
Logographic Press (1788).

1 68 STERNE

large piles of letters in the Garrets at York " were " to be
sifted in search for some either of Wit or Humour, or,
what is better than both, of Humanity and Good Nature —
These will make a couple of volumes more, and as not one of
'em was ever wrote, like Pope's or Voiture's, to be printed,
they are more likely to be read." He had drawn his
will. He left all to Elizabeth and Lydia Sterne ; they need
not " quarrel about it." His " Estate," he estimated, would
bring in £1800 or more, outside what might be "raised"
from his works and the sale of the last copyright. All so far
realised, except ^50, remained in his booksellers' hands :
Garrick would receive and invest it. He advised that his
effects and library should be sold, and the proceeds be laid
out in Government securities. He thought much of his
daughter. " If my Lydia should marry," he wrote, " I
charge you — I charge you over again (that you may
remember it the more) — That upon no Delusive prospect,
or promise from any one, you leave yourself dependent ;
reserve enough for your comfort — or let her wait your
Death." £200 would be due from his Living. Should
Lydia predecease her mother, he begged Mrs Sterne to
remember his poor sister, and he added the dramatic
postcript, " We shall meet again." This is the document
on to which two of the tears which Sterne shed at the
prospect have trickled : it is the sole known receptacle of
that incessant fountain. " But thou wilt number my tears,"
he was to tell Eliza, as he wept in sickness, "and put
them all in thy bottle." A dozen bottles would not have
sufficed, even had they been Jeroboams.

The vista before him looked sombre. In the full
flush of festival he descried the writing on the wall. And
he invoked those unfailing spirits which, he has told us,
when " Death himself knocked at his door," " bade him go
away, and did it in such a gay tone of careless indifference

To face p. 169

STERNE'S LETTER TO GARRICK
From an old facsimile

THE URBAN PARSON AND DEATH 169

that he doubted of his commission — There must be some
mistake, quoth he." But Death, as Tristram draws him,
was not to be put off. In he strode : Sterne faced him
with light bravado. He might pull ever so hard at his
throat, but his clutches should be baffled. The arch-
enemy might run after him, he would still win in the race.
" By Heaven ! I will lead him a dance he little thinks of —
for I will gallop .... without looking once behind me, to
the banks of the Garonne ; and if I hear him clattering at
my heels — I'll scamper away to Mount Vesuvius." Hall-
Stevenson was in town and led him to his chaise. " Allons^
said I ; the Post-boy gave a crack with his whip — off I went
like a cannon, and in half a dozen bounds, got into T)over.yy
Sadly as he must have felt, his " spirits " came to the
rescue. Now, as in future crises, he commended himself
" entirely to Dame Nature " — the " dear goddess " who had
saved him in so many bouts, that he entertained " a kind
of enthusiasm in her favour." " Neck or nothing " was his
habit ; " as for life and death," he wrote, " I love to run
hazards rather than die by inches." His nonchalance finds
quaint expression in the request made to Garrick a little
earlier for an advance of twenty pounds. The sum, it may
be guessed, was repaid, or Garrick would hardly have
continued so cordial. As this letter finds no place in the
printed collections, it will be read with interest: —

"Parsonage House,

" Coxwold, Yorkshire.

" Dear Garrick, — Upon reviewing my finances this

morning with some unforeseen expenses — I find I should set

out with 20 pds less than a prudent man ought. — Will you

lend me twenty pounds ? — Ys., L. Sterne." 1

1 It was facsimiled on a sheet headed by a view of Shandy Hall, and
published in 1835 by C. J. Smith of Southampton Street. The original
seems now to be in the ownership of Mr A. H. Joline of New York. Cf.
Professor Cross's Life, p. 528. Professor Cross does not transcribe it.

i7o STERNE

" Prudent H is a charming touch. Looking back on this
brief appeal a decade afterwards, Garrick perhaps might
have deemed it worthy of Sheridan, and at this moment
Sterne evidently thought it worth Garrick's attention.
" Money and counters," he was to inform Eliza, " are of
this equal use, in my opinion, that they both serve to set
up with." 1

Not yet was he bound for Vesuvius. His first stop was
to be at Paris ; thence he proceeded to the South of France,
where, after a time, his wife and daughter joined him.
And so, with the forms of fame and beauty before his eyes,
half-reeling from the draught that had been held to his
lips, yet half-pleased to survey himself as he drank it, off
he sped on his gipsy wayfare. He stands, a sentimental
traveller before the Sentimental Journey, persuaded, despite
his errors, that he has the best heart in the world, purposing
— well or ill — not to reform his life, but to reap fresh
impressions, to remain an artist so long as he lived and
strayed. Glimpses of these will succeed hereafter. At
present it is time to consider his works and style, for the
interest of the author is now absorbed in the interest of the
man. As he waits, pale and pensive, on the deck, waving
his handkerchief to bid some last adieu, we seem to see
embodied in him — or disembodied — that thin borderland
of ideas — as opposed on the one hand to affection, on the
other, to aspiration — which belongs not to flesh and blood,
nor to spirit, but to purely perceptive genius.

1 Letters from Yorick to Eliza (1775), p. 80.

CHAPTER XIII

sterne's authorship

" Impetuous fluid ! The moment thou pressest against the
floodgates of the brain — see how they give way ! In swims
Curiosity, beckoning to her damsels to follow — they dive
into the centre of the current — Fancy sits musing upon the
bank, and with her eyes following the stream, turns straws
and bulrushes into masts and bowsprits. And Desire,
with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them
as they swim by her with the other."

" For my own part I am but just set up in the business,
so know little about it — but, in my opinion, to write a book
is for all the world like humming a song — be but in tune
with yourself, Madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low
you take it."

" 'Tis a sporting little filly-folly — which carries you out
of the present hour — a maggot, a butterfly, a fiddlestick —
an Uncle Toby's siege — or an anything^ which a man makes
shift to get a stride on, to canter it away from the cares and
solitudes of life — 'tis as useful a beast as any in the whole
Creation — nor do I really see how the world can do with-

out it. -

These three excerpts from Tristram Shandy strike the
key-notes of Sterne's authorship and point the distinctions
between him and his predecessors. Feeling, dreaminess,

171

1 72 STERNE

music, impressionism, a blend of acted raillery and confes-
sion,— all these divide Sterne from the past. Intimacy is
their outcome — writing, he said, was only another form of
talking — and also that wonderful skill he had in miniatur-
ing emotions, in making small masterpieces out of big
subjects. Sterne's Janatone, the landlord's daughter at
Montreuil, is reported to have said of Mrs Piozzi's courier
that " the tone makes the song." 1 To none is this adage
more applicable than to Sterne.

Only in this regard does Tristram Shandy resemble the
Sentimental Journey save towards its close, when it includes
it. Tristram is a farrago — a gallimaufry — produced in annual
instalments, and Sterne's particularity does not lend itself
to lengthy treatment or sustained effort, which sometimes
wearies and often bewilders. True, Tristram gave the world
three master-characters, but length and disjointedness are
its faults. The Sentimental Journey, on the other hand, is
a succession of vignettes, and there his metier succeeds.
In this genre all depends on the arrangement of the
particles, whether they are subordinate to the whole,
whether the microscope makes a picture. In Tristram,
Toby, Trim, and Le Fevre afford a wine of generous vintage
lacking to the Journey, which is half liqueur ; and to liqueurs
Sterne was actually addicted. This is what makes Taine,
who could not understand Trim or Toby, regard Sterne as
a dram, chiefly suitable for dark days and blue devils.

The compass of his range was narrow, but not the com-
pass of his voice. That was multiple. It sang no recitative,
it told no tale, but it implied and has inspired hundreds.
Beyond the two or three great characters that Sterne created,
— not through narrative but through impression, by their
immanence in us, — he made no others ; the society of his

1 Cf. the incident drawn from Mrs Piozzi's book of travel (1779), and intro-
duced by Professor Cross in his Life of Sterne, p. 365.

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 173

day seems to have dried up that source. But he continued
to improvise on life through his modern vehicle of feeling ;
and he grew more exquisite in the manner that renders —
themes by tone and accent. His fineness will best appear by
comparison. Scott's Wandering Willie, the beloved vaga-
bond of Redgauntlet) is a creature after Sterne's own heart,
and he lives breezily and substantially (with an occasional
whisper from the earlier wizard) in the Wizard's pages.
But the transforming wand is different. Scott vivifies the
vagrant by sheer force and vigour. Even in the vision of
Willie's visit to the living dead, we realise that Scott
relates (and prolongs) a superstition. With Sterne it would
have been otherwise. The magic would have lain in the
person, not in the story, and a few strokes would have
sent the awe-struck fiddler wavering for ever in dreamland.
It is the difference between etching and line engraving, I
between the oblique " oratio " and the direct. Even in the j
grotesquer traceries of Tristram^ Sterne is an impressionist, i
As an impressionist above all, he must be considered, and
perhaps impressionism includes the rest. The term has
been glibly used by our own contemporaries. Let us
analyse its meaning.

Impressionism, in whatever branch of art it occurs, is
the method, or rather the spirit, of suggestion, as opposed
to the method, or rather the substance, of description. Its
appeal is associative. It is the scent that recalls the flower,
the shell that re-echoes the wave, the lock of hair that
brings back the vanished presence, the tone of the sentence
that implies the motive for its delivery. It joins the sense
to the form ; it is at once pulse and thermometer. And if,
for one moment, we retrace the origin of English literary
impressionism, it consists, firstly in our noble version of
the Bible, and secondly in the influence of music. The old
Greek viewed nature from the outside ; he described what

i74 STERNE

in the jargon of the schools is termed the " object," he
described the " it." The ancient Hebrew, on the other
hand, shadowed and bodied forth the subject, the " /," the
inward life. Greece and Rome viewed man in his relation to
externals ; Judea, in his relation to himself. Compare for
one instant Job's "Yet man is born unto trouble, as the
sparks fly upward," with the " Suffering is learning' ' senti-
ment in Herodotus, Agamemnon, and the Symposium, and
this difference is manifest. Or Pindar's " Man is a dream
of a shadow " with " All those things are passed away like
a shadow, and as a post that hasted by": the addition
defines the distinction. What pagan would have imaged
death by "the silver cord being loosed and the golden
bowl being broken, when the mourners go about the streets
and man goeth to his long home " ? These are the notes of
sentimental impressionism. Whereas even the darkness
covering the eyes of Homeric heroes, the " the shade of each
of us feels pain " in Virgil, the " not all of me shall die "
in Horace, fail to strike or stir acute feeling. Again,
contrast " the sea's countless dimple " of iEschylus with
Job's " when the morning stars sang together and the sons
of God shouted for joy." The one expresses plastic art,
the other resembles music, and the essence of music is its
subjectivity. The Old and the New Testaments alike are
full of a sense of the infinite environing the individual,
while the main emphasis of classical accent is finality —
Catullus is perhaps an exception. The personal and the
plaintive hold the voice and quality of impressionism. It
is just these, and not his acquaintance with the mythology
of Lempriere, that makes Keats an impressionist ; just
these, and not his whimsical vagaries, that cause us so to
consider Sterne. Impressionist writing is a department of
romantic and sentimental literature eminently fit for lyrical
poetry, or for such prose as lends itself to glimpses of

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP

175

life or nature through awakened memories. But it is
not confined to lyrical poetry. " Here I and sorrow sit,"
for example, strikes an intenser note of desolation than
pages of description. " I kissed thee ere I killed thee "
flashes before us Othello's whole nature ; so does Shylock's
" I had it of Leah, when I was a bachelor, I would not
have given it for a wilderness of monkeys." So does
Gretchen's

" Doch alles, was mich dazu trieb,
Gott, war so gut ! ach, war so lieb ! "

All these are windows into the soul. They are lyrical
epigrams. Such a treatment is only truthful, and there-
fore valuable, when the incompleteness of its statement is
counterbalanced by the completeness of its suggestion. We
should never allow ourselves to believe that impressionism
is any royal road to imaginative art, or admirable as an end
in itself. Some moderns hold otherwise. For them im-
pressionism often means the obscuration of an idea by
fog instead of the indication of it by lights and shadows.
There is an anecdote which may dispose of this fallacy.
An impressionist artist once proudly showed his masterpiece
to a friend. " What a beautiful sunset ! " was the response.
" Sunset ! " exclaimed the indignant genius, " sunset ! Why,
it is a portrait of your uncle."

Music and the Bible, then, founded impressionism.
Now it is precisely these two currents that most influenced
Sterne. He told young Suard that the Bible, which he read
daily, had shaped his style ; would that it had shaped his life !
And he was as passionately fond of music as he was of painting.
Music, indeed, was the bond which afterwards riveted him
to Gainsborough, and he constantly interweaves its terms
into his pages. If a signal instance be wanted of Sterne
penetrated by Scripture, we have only to take his now

1 76 STERNE

hackneyed " God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,"
which he thrice used before he brought it into the Sentimental
Journey. The spell of music controls all of his best ; it is
the secret of that assonance which conveys the sense through
the sound. These considerations are more distinctive of
Sterne than the mere sentimentality on the surface, which
displays him as always feeling pulses and increasing tears.
Still more do they transcend that nasty nicety which prevented
the speedy recognition of his genius, and which still hampers
its free play.

Sterne's bent was neither epic nor reflective. Prose
lyrics were his province. He was a romantic impressionist.
The French rightly distinguish between "romanesque"
(the fancifully outlandish) and "romantique." Much in
Sterne is "romanesque," but more is "romantique." There
is air in his very sickliness, and a scent of the open even
about his artifice. He can create as well as adorn, and
the restlessness of nerves demanding an anodyne is itself
capable of imparting composure. The feeling of fancy and
the fancy of feeling form his groundwork.
ih And Sterne is not only a sentimental impressionist, but
an ironist of the first order. Directly he has touched, if
not our heart, at least our fibre, some whimsy confronts us
that makes us wonder whether he meant to touch us at all.
He steeps us in pathos till we seem gazing from above on
grief, and then he whisks us down again to some quite
[common cranny of the ludicrous. This leads to a suspicion
J of insincerity ; but Sterne is perfectly sincere in the sense
that he expresses himself. What he felt he wrote ; and he
felt the irony of things, the small step from the sublime to
the ridiculous. Heine does the same. And this characteristic
is heightened by those tiny strokes of realistic colour by which
he visualised his impressions. In both of these attributes
he was unique in his time and country. The English

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP

177

prose fiction of Sterne's generation has nothing to show
like it, and his contemporaries were as much annoyed
by the novelty as by the questionable parts. Their
prudish Reverences, he wrote, would laugh at it in the
bedchamber and abuse it in the parlour. It is nonsense
to think that the reviews which trounced him were really
purist, still less puritan. Grossness did not offend them ;
though Sterne's grossness did. To the pure such as these,
all things are impure ; and this is what Sterne meant by his
comment (as the " Curate d'Estella ") on his dubious fable
of " Noses " : —

" Chastity," he there wrote, " by nature the gentlest of
all affections — give it but its head — 'tis like a ramping
and a roaring lion. The drift of the Curate d'Estella's
argument was not understood — they ran the scent the
wrong way. — The world bridled his ass at the tail."
" Even this operation," he adds, " would be misconstrued,
— when the extremes of delicacy, and the beginnings
of concupiscence, hold their next provincial chapter
together."

,& We have seen that " sensationalism " is a truer name
for Sterne's manner than " sentimentality." Sensations
were the plane in which he lived and moved and had his
being. A single instance will show how rounded was that
microcosm. In the second volume of Tristram, where he
depicts the blush cast by the light of a fine May evening
through the crimson curtains on the young shop-girl, and his
own real blush that answered it, the scene, the light, the feel-
ing, consciously combine : — "There is a sort of pleasing, half-
guilty blush, where the blood is more in fault than the man
— 'tis sent impetuous from the heart, and virtue flies after
it not to call it back, but to make the sensation of it more
delicious to the nerves — 'tis associated — but I'll not
describe it."

12

178 STERNE

To doubt his colours would be to spoil them, and
Sterne expressly demands acquiescence. " I would go fifty
miles on foot," he says, "for I have not a horse worth
riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous
heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his
author's hands — be pleased, he knows not why, and cares
not wherefore.,, And elsewhere he writes : " No author
who understands the great boundaries of decorum and good
breeding would presume to think all. The truest respect
which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve
this matter amicably and leave him something to imagine in
his turn as well as yours." .

Such workmanship might be termed pictures without
palettes. Everyone knows, if only from Thackeray's repeti-
tion of it, the famed passage in Tristram Shandy (though by
right it belongs to the Sentimental Journey), which glows
like a pastoral by Gainsborough, and perhaps best illus-
trates Sterne's artistry in word-painting. It can scarcely be
repeated too often : —

" 'Twas in the road 'twixt Nismes and Lunelle, where
there is the best Muscatto wine in all France, and which,
by the bye, belongs to the honest canons of Montpellier, —
and foul befall the man who's drank it at their table but
grudges them a drop of it. The sun was set — they had
done their work ; the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh,
and the swains were preparing for a carouse. My mule
made a dead point. 'Tis the fife and tabourin, said I. —
I'm frighten'd to death, quoth he. . . . 'Tis very well,
Sir, said I — I never will argue the point with one of your
family as long as I live ; so leaping off his back, and kicking
off one boot into this ditch, and t'other into that — I'll take
a dance, said I, so stay you here. A sun-burnt daughter of
Labour rose up from the groupe to meet me as I advanced
towards them. Her hair, which was a dark chesnut,

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 179

approaching rather to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but
a single tress. We want a cavalier, said she, holding out
both her hands, as if to offer them. And a cavalier ye shall
have ; said I, taking hold of both of them. Hadst thou,
Nannette, been array'd like a dutchesse ! — But that cursed slit
in thy petticoat ! Nannette cared not for it. We could not
have done without you, said she, letting go one hand, with
self-taught politeness, leading me up with the other. A
lame youth, whom Apollo had recompenced with a pipe, and
to which he had added a tabourin of his own accord, ran
sweetly over the prelude as he sat upon the bank. — Tie me
up this tress instantly, said Nannette, putting a piece of
string into my hand. — It taught me to forget I was a stranger —
The whole knot fell down. — We had been seven years
acquainted. The youth struck the note upon the tabourin —
his pipe followed, and off we bounded. . . . The sister of the
youth who had stolen her voice from heaven, sang alter-
nately with her brother — 'Twas a Gascoigne roundelay,

c Viva la Joia !
Fidon la Tristessa ! '

The nymphs joined in unison, and their1 swains an octave
below them — I would have given a crown to have it sew'd
up — Nannette would not have given a sous. Viva la joia 1
was in her lips — Viva la joia ! was in her eyes. A transient
spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us — She look'd
amiable ! — Why could I not live and end my days thus ?
Just disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could
not a man sit down in the lap of content here — and dance,
and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this
nut brown maid ? "

What scene could be more delicious, or where is
southern sunlight more immortal ? Even the petticoat slit
does not mar the perfection of the landscape, the figure,

180 STERNE

the style : the whole is steeped in atmosphere — the
atmosphere of

" Youth, and bloom and this delightful world."

What grace and tournure in simple things and nature's
toilet ! What a fine example of the power to make a new
birth of every moment ! This wayside idyll has been
illustrated by none so well as Stothart, who is perhaps the
best interpreter of Sterne. It comes from one of the last
three volumes of Tristram^ which contain so much that is
charming of Uncle Toby and of the Shandy prelude to the
Sentimental Journey. These also supply the first encounter
with the mad Maria, preferable to the second, though less
familiar than the picture which Angelica Kaufmann popu-
larised. It is a triumph of Sterne's pathos, as the dancing
maid is a triumph of his joy : —

" They were the sweetest notes I ever heard ; and I
instantly let down the fore-glass to hear them more distinctly
— c 'Tis Maria,' said the postillion, observing I was listen-
ing— c Poor Maria,' continued he (leaning his body to one
side to let me see her, for he was in the line betwixt us),
1 is sitting upon the bank, playing her vespers upon her pipe,
with her little goat beside her.'

" The young fellow uttered this with an accent and look
so perfectly in tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made
a vow I would give him a four-and-twenty sous piece when
I got to Moulins.

" c And who is poor Maria ? ' said I.

" c The love and pity of all the villages around us,' said
the postillion. ' 'Tis but three years ago that the sun did
not shine upon so fair, so quick-witted and amiable a maid ;
and better fate did Maria deserve, than to have her banns
forbid by the intrigues of the curate of the parish, who
published them.'

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 181

" He was going on, when Maria, who had made a short
pause, put the pipe to her mouth, and began the air again ;
they were the same notes — yet were ten times sweeter.

" £ It is the evening service of the Virgin/ said the young
man,— c but who has taught her to play it, and how she
came by her pipe, no one knows : we think that Heaven
has assisted her in both ; for, ever since she has been un-
settled in her mind, it seems her only consolation ; she has
never once had her pipe out of her hand, but plays that
service upon it almost day and night/ The postillion
delivered this with so much discretion and natural eloquence
that I could not help deciphering something in his face
above his condition, and should have sifted out his history,
had not poor Maria taken such full possession of me. We
had got up by this time almost to the bank where Maria
was sitting : she was in a thin white jacket, with her hair,
all but two tresses, drawn up into a silk net, with a few
olive leaves twisted a little fantastically on one side — she
was beautiful ; and if ever I felt the full force of an honest

heartache, it«was the moment I saw her. c God help her !

poor damsel ! Above a hundred masses ' (said the pos-
tillion) c have been said in the several parish churches and
convents around for her, — but without effect ; we have still
hopes, as she is sensible for short intervals, that the Virgin
at last will restore her to herself ; but her parents, who
know her best, are hopeless upon that score, and think her
senses are lost for ever/ As the postillion spoke this,
Maria made a cadence so melancholy, so tender and queru-
lous, that I sprang out of the chaise to help her, and found
myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I relapsed
from my enthusiasm. Maria looked wistfully for some
time at me, and then at her goat — and then at me — and then
at her goat again, and so on alternately."

Could any impression be more delicately rendered ?

1 82 STERNE

This half-witted, pensive girl, the evening service to the
Virgin, "the air again — the same notes — yet ten times
sweeter," the chirruping postillion, the man of sensibility
in his post-chaise — all are felt with complete suddenness.
What a subject for a painter ! Yet what artist could
match the author ? Some will tell us that Sterne founded
himself on his own Cervantes and Rabelais ; but the flavour
that makes his best defies all pedigree and analysis.

But the death-bed of the dying soldier, the elder Le
Fevre, is his masterpiece ; — the most pathetic scene that
Sterne ever painted : — " There was a frankness in my
Uncle Toby, — not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of
it, — which let you at once into his soul and showed you
the goodness of his nature. To this there was something
in his looks and voice and manner superadded, which
eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take
shelter under him ; so that before my Uncle Toby had half
finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had
the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had
taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it
towards him. The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which
were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to
their last citadel, the heart — rallied back ; — the film forsook
his eyes for a moment ; — he looked up wistfully in my Uncle
Toby's face, — then cast a look upon his boy, — and that
ligament, fine as it was, was never broken. — Nature instantly
ebbed again, — the film returned to its place, — the pulse
fluttered — stopped — went on — throbbed — stopped again —
moved — stopped — Shall I go on ? No."

How opposed this, to the descriptive manner ! Not
only do we hear the ticking of the heart gradually fainter,
we share the suspense and sorrow. How fine that phrase
of " beckoning to the unfortunate to come and take shelter
under him " ! The lights and shadows fall without our

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 183

knowing it. We are sympathisers as well as spectators by
the magic of the style. And it is not merely in show
specimens that the spell is exercised. How honestly un-
affected, too, is the tribute to Uncle Toby, in a piece
unspoiled by any titillation of the heart-strings or jugglery
with the feelings : — " Here — but why here, rather than in
any other part of my story ? — I am not able to tell : — But
here it is — my heart tells me to pay to thee, my dear Uncle
Toby, once for all, the tribute I owe thy goodness. — Here
let me thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the
ground, whilst I am pouring forth the warmest sentiment of
love for thee, and veneration for the excellences of thy
character, that ever virtue and nature kindled in a nephew's
bosom. — Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head !
Thou enviedst no man's comforts, — insultedst no man's
opinions, — thou blackenedst no man's character, — devouredst
no man's bread ! Gently, with faithful Trim behind thee,
didst thou ramble round the little circle of thy pleasures,
jostling no creature in thy way : For each one's sorrow thou
hadst a tear ; for each man's need thou hadst a shilling.
Whilst I am worth one to pay a weeder, — thy path from thy
door to thy bowling green shall never be grown up. — Whilst
there is a rood and a half of land in the Shandy family,
thy fortifications, my dear Uncle Toby, shall never be
demolished."

To Le Fevre and Uncle Toby we must revert ; but here,
in considering Sterne's word-colour and word-music, we
should not omit the interpretation of a curtsey from the
Sentimental Journey : — " The young girl made me more an
humble courtesy than a low one — 'twas one of those quiet,
thankful sinkings where the spirit bows itself down — the
body does not more than tell it. I never gave a girl a crown
in my life which gave me half the pleasure." Or its
pendant, "The mortality of Trim's hat," the place where

i84 STERNE

the loyal servant imparts the sad news of young master
Bobby's death. " c Are we not here now ? ' continued the
Corporal ; c and are we not ' — (dropping his hat plump on
the ground, and pausing before he pronounced the word)
— c gone in a moment ? ' The descent of the hat was as if
a heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it. —
Nothing could have expressed the sentiment of mortality, of
which it was the type and forerunner, like it — it fell dead —
the Corporal's eye fixed upon it as upon a Corpse ; and
Susannah burst into a flood of tears."

And then take this from the part of Tristram Shandy
where Sterne already surveys the delights of travel : —
"With what felicity, continued I, clapping my two hands
together, shall I fly down the rapid Rhone with the Vivares
on my right hand, and Dauphiny on my left, scarce seeing
the ancient cities of Vienne, Valence and Vivieres. What
a flame will it rekindle in the lamp to snatch a blushing
grape from the Hermitage and C6te roti, as I shoot by the
foot of them ! And what a fresh spring in the blood ! To
behold upon the banks advancing and retiring, the Castles
of Romance, whence courteous knights have whilome rescued
the distressed — and see vertiginous, the rocks, the mountains,
the cataracts, and all the hurry which Nature is in with all
her great works about her." The last sentence gives more
than tints : it pictures thought.

A further specimen of Sterne's faculty will add his
humour. The Shandys are at Auxerres ; they repair to the
Abbey of St Germain to see the bodies " of which Monsieur
Sequier has given such a recommendation." " I'll go to see
anybody, quoth my Uncle Toby ; for he was all compliance
through every step of the journey. — Defend me ! said my
father, they are all mummies. — Then one need not shave,
quoth my Uncle Toby. Shave ! No — cried my father —
'twill be more like relations to go with our beards." The

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 185

sacristan, a young Benedictine, shows the way. They visit
the graves of saints and heroes, and at last, — " This tomb,
said the young Benedictine, looking downwards, contains the
bones of St Maxima who came from Ravenna on purpose
to touch — the body of St Maxim us, said my father, putting
in his saint before him. They were two of the greatest saints
of the whole Martyrology, added my father. Excuse me,
said the Sacristan, — 'twas to touch the bones of St Germain
the builder of the Abbey. — And what did she get by it ? said
my Uncle Toby. — What does any woman get by it ? said
my father. — Martyrdom ; replied the young Benedictine,
making a bow down to the ground, and uttering the word
with so humble yet decisive a cadence, it disarmed my father
for a moment. 'Tis supposed, continued the Benedictine,
that St Maxima has lain in this tomb four hundred years,
and two hundred before her canonization — 'tis but a slow
rise, Brother Toby, quoth my father, in this selfsame army
of Martyrs. — A desperate slow one, an' please your Honour,
said Trim, unless one could purchase. — I should rather sell
out entirely, quoth my Uncle Toby. — I am pretty much of

your opinion, Brother Toby, said my father. Poor

St Maxima ! said my uncle Toby low to himself, as
we turned from her tomb : She was one of the fairest
and most beautiful ladies either of Italy or France,
continued the sacristan. — But who the duce has got lain
down here, beside her, quoth my father, pointing with his
cane to a large tomb as we walked on. — It is St Optat, Sir,
answered the sacristan. — And properly is St Optat placed !
said my father : And what is St Optat's story ? continued
he. — St Optat, replied the sacristan, was a bishop. — I thought
so by Heaven ! cried my father, interrupting him — St Optat
— How should St Optat fail ? So snatching out his pocket-
book, and the young Benedictine holding him the torch as
he wrote, he set it down as a new prop to his system of

1 86 STERNE

Christian names, and I will be bold to say so disinterested
was he in the search after truth that had he found a treasure
in St Optat's tomb, it would not have made him half so
rich : 'Twas as successful a short visit as ever was paid to
the dead."

Though Sterne's manner sometimes declines on manner-
ism, it is not precious or mediocre. The artist picturesques
attitude with unique grace and concentration. When Mrs
Shandy listens at her husband's door " with all her powers,"
" laying the edge of her finger across her two lips — holding
in her breath and bending her head a little downwards, with a
twist of her neck (not towards the door, but from it, by which
means her ear was brought to the chink)," Sterne writes
that " the listening slave with the Gates of Silence at his back
could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio." And
when Captain Shandy falls asleep, pondering on his mock
campaigns, and " the magic left the mind the weaker,"
" Stillness, with Silence at her back, entered the solitary
parlour and drew their gauzy mantle over my Uncle Toby's
head, and Listlessness, with queer lax fibre and undirected
eye, sat quietly down beside him in his arm chair. . . .
Softer visions, gentler vibrations stole sweetly in upon his
slumbers, — the trumpet of war fell out of his hands — he
took up the lute, sweet instrument ! of all others the most
delicate ! The most difficult ! How wilt thou touch it, my
dear Uncle Toby ? " Sterne's touch is happiest in lutes and
Lydian measures.

The tiny strokes in the first of these passages demand
a few examples of his ideal realism. Tristram Shandy, a
" rhapsodical " work, as Sterne called it, on which he said
the " sunshine " of his digressions played, is full of such
artistic minuteness. Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Mr and
Mrs Shandy, cannot walk in or out, sit up or down, laugh or
weep, without living in the small symbols of their move-

STERNER AUTHORSHIP 187

ments. Sterne has explained why he used a method so
preposterous for his time, so congenial to ours. He loved J
to transfigure and interpret the obvious. When old Shandy,
overwhelmed by the blow of the son's mischristening, reflects
on the fatality of wrong names and tells us that a man may
be " Nicodemused " into nothing, the peculiarity of his exit
is thus accounted for : — " Nature in all provoking cases deter-
mines us to a sally of this or that member — or else she thrusts
us into this or that place, or posture of body, we know not why
— but mark, Madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries —
the most obvious things which come in our way have dark
sides which the clearest sight cannot penetrate into and even
the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find
ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of
nature's works ; so that this, like a thousand other things,
falls out for us in a way, which though we cannot reason
upon it, — yet we find the good of it, may it please your
Reverences and your Worships — and that's enough for us.
Now, my father could not lie down with this affliction for
his life nor could he carry it upstairs like the other — he
walked composedly out with it to the fishpond. Had my
father leant his head upon his hand, and reasoned an hour
which way to have gone — Reason, with all her force, could
not have directed him to anything like it : There is some-
thing, Sir, in fishponds — but what it is I leave to system
builders and fishpond diggers betwixt 'em to find out — but
there is something in the first disorderly transport of the
humours, so unaccountably becoming in an orderly and a
straight walk towards one of them, that I have often
wondered that neither Pythagoras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor
Lycurgus, nor Mahomet, nor any of your noted law-givers,
ever gave orders about 'em." This miniature process fits
the whole of the Sentimental Journey, which deals with the
small amenities of life, and paints them in pastel.

1 88 STERNE

Nowhere is Sterne's "grand curiosity" on little lines
displayed better than in his outline of the begging philo-
sopher whom he watched from the lattice of his hotel : —
" It was a tall figure of a philosophic, serious, adust look
which passed and repassed sedately along the street, making
a turn of about sixty paces on each side of the gate of the
Hotel. The man was about fifty-two, had a small cane
under his arm, was dressed in a dark drab-coloured coat,
waistcoat, and breeches, which seemed to have seen some
years' service. They were still clean, and there was a little
air of frugal proprete throughout him. By his pulling ofF
his hat and his attitude of accosting a good many in his way
I saw he was asking charity, so 1 got a sous or two out of
my pocket ready to give him as he took me in his turn.
He passed by me without asking anything, and yet he did
not go five steps further before he asked charity of a little
woman — I was much more likely to have given of the two
— he had scarce done with the woman when he pulled off
his hat to another who was coming the same way. An
ancient gentleman came slowly and after him a young smart
one, he let them both pass and asked nothing. I stood
observing him half an hour in which time he had made a
dozen turns backwards and forwards and found that he
invariably pursued the same plan." Something " singular "
there was in this problem which kept Sterne awake all night.
His whimsicality is always analysing the singular, even in
candle-light.1 Every dwarf and loafer in the crowd attracts
him, and it will be remembered that when he gave alms as
he left the inn he said that to be called " my lord Anglais "
was worth the money. But in this case he had not long to
wait before his perplexity ended, as he espied the same man
begging from two " vestal sisters " in the dark back alley of
Paris. Sterne was certainly not one like his " Mundungus,"
1 In the foreign travels of Tristram occurs a whimsy on the Paris candles.

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 189

who " travelFd straight on looking neither to his right
hand or his left, lest Love or Pity should seduce him out
of his road " : —

" There is a long dark passage issuing out from the
?'r Opera Comique into a narrow street ; 'tis trod by a few who
humbly wait for a, fiacre, or wish to get off quietly o'foot when
the opera is done. At the end of it, towards the theatre, 'tis
lighted by a small candle, the light of which is almost lost
before you get half-way down : but near the door — 'tis more
for ornament than use — you see it as a fixed star of the
least magnitude ; it burns — but 'tis little good to the world,
that we know of. In returning along this passage, I dis-
cerned, as I approached within five or six paces of the door,
two ladies standing arm in arm, with their backs against the
wall, waiting, as I imagined, for a fiacre — as they were next
the door, I thought they had a prior right ; so edged my-
self up about a yard, or little more, of them, and quietly took
my stand. I was in black, and scarce seen. The lady next
me was a tall lean figure of a woman, of about thirty-six ;
the other of the same size and make, of about forty ; there
was no mark of wife or widow in any one part of either of
them — they seemed to be two upright vestal sisters, unsapped
by caresses, unbroke in upon by tender salutations : I could
have wished to have made them happy — their happiness
was destined that night to come from another quarter. A
low voice with a good turn of expression, and sweet cadence
at the end of it, begged for a twelve-sous piece betwixt them,
for the love of Heaven. I thought it singular that a beggar
should fix the quota of an alms — and that the sum should
be twelve times as much as what is usually given in the dark.
They both seemed astonished at it as much as myself.
— Twelve sous ! said one — A twelve-sous piece ! said the
other — and made no reply. The poor man said he knew not
how to ask less of ladies of their rank ; and bowed down

i9o STERNE

his head to the ground. Poo ! said they — we have no
money. The beggar remained silent for a moment or two,
and renewed his application. Do not, my fair young ladies,
said he, stop your good ears against me. — Upon my word,
honest man ! said the younger, we have no change. — Then
God bless you, said the poor man, and multiply those joys
which you can give to others without change ! I observed
the elder sister put her hand into her pocket. — I'll see,
said she, if I have a sous. A sous ! give twelve, said the
supplicant ; Nature has been bountiful to you, be bountiful
to a poor man. I would, friend, with all my heart, said the
younger, if I had it. My fair charitable ! said he, address-
ing himself to the elder — What is it but your goodness and
humanity that makes your pretty eyes so sweet that they
outshine the morning even in this dark passage ? And
what was it which made the Marquis de Santerre and his
brother say so much of you both as they just passed by ?
The two ladies seemed much affected ; and impulsively at
the same time they both put their hands into their pockets,
and each took out a twelve-sous piece. The contest betwixt
them and the poor supplicant was no more — it was con-
tinued betwixt themselves, which of the two should give
the twelve-sous piece in charity, and to end the dispute,
they both gave it together, and the man went away. I
stepped hastily after him : it was the very man whose
success in asking charity of the women before the door of
the Hotel had so puzzled me — and I found at once his
secret, or at least the basis of it — it was flattery, delicious
essence ! How refreshing art thou to Nature ! . . . .
How sweetly dost thou mix with the blood and help it
through the most difficult and tortuous passages to the
heart ! The poor man as he was not straitened for time,
had given it here in a larger dose : and 'tis certain he had
a way of bringing it into less form, for the many sudden

STERNER AUTHORSHIP 191

cases he had to do with in the streets ; but how he con-
trived to correct, sweeten, concentrate and qualify each — I
vex not my spirit with the inquiry. — It is enough the
beggar gained two twelve-sous pieces — and they can best
tell the rest, who have gained much greater matters by it."

This is one of the most original passages in all Sterne —
at once realistic and impressionist. It is small, it is big, it
is inconclusive, and yet it is definite. It has many of the
qualities which endear the work of Robert Louis Stevenson,
and there are two further passages proving that, though
Sterne harped on one string, he could do so in many
keys. The first is a pathetic portrait of the broken-down
Chevalier de St Louis, who stood in the streets of Versailles
selling patties, with the cross set in gold and with its
red ribbon tied to his button-hole ; the other is the weird
fragment of the Notary and his wife. The first might be
a piece out of the New Arabian Nights ; the other is a
forebear of Markheim.

" He was begirt with a clean linen apron which fell
below his knees, and with a sort of bib half-way up to his
breast. Upon the top of this, but a little below the hem, hung
his croix. His basket of little pates was cover'd with a white
damask napkin ; another of the same kind was spread at the
bottom ; and there was a look oiproprete and neatness through-
out that one might have bought his pates from him as much
from appetite as from sentiment. . . . He told me, in a few
words, that the best part of his life had pass'd in the service,
in which, after spending a small patrimony, he had obtain'd
a company and the croix with it ; but at the conclusion of the
last peace, his regiment, being reformed, and the whole corps,
with those of some other regiments, left without any
provision, he found himself in a wide world without friends,
without a livre — and indeed, said he, without anything but
this — pointing, as he said it, to his croix." This is not the

192 STERNE

sole place where Sterne treats of those broken-down gentle-
men who specially appealed to him.

But the notary interlude is as uncanny as this is sweet
and melting. It opens with a sort of back-glance at Mrs
Sterne, and though it is connected with mediaeval romance,
the form and feeling are Sterne's entirely. Observe how
directly he enters into the heart of the story : —

" Now as the notary's wife disputed the point

with the notary with too much heat — I wish, said the
notary (throwing down the parchment) that there was
another notary here only to set down and attest all this.

" And what would you do then, Monsieur ? said

she, rising hastily up. — The notary's wife was a little fume
of a woman, and the notary thought it well to avoid
a hurricane by a mild reply. — I would go, answered
he, to bed. — You may go to the devil, answered the
notary's wife.

" Now there happening to be but one bed in the house,
the other two rooms being unfurnished, as is the custom at
Paris, .... the notary went forth with his hat and cane
and short cloak, the night being very windy, and walked
out ill at ease towards the Pont Neuf. Of all the bridges
which ever were built, the whole world who have passed
over the Pont Neuf must own, that it is the noblest — the
finest — the grandest — the lightest — the longest — the broad-
est, that ever conjoined land and land together upon the
face of the terraqueous globe. — By this it seems as if the
Author of the fragment had not been a Frenchman. The
first fault which divines and the doctors of the Sorbonne
can allege against it, is, that if there is a capful of wind in
or about Paris, 'tis more blasphemously sacre-Dieu d there
than in any other aperture of the whole city — and with
reason, good and cogent Messieurs ; for it comes against you
without crying garde d'eau, and with such unpremeditable

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 193

puffs, that of the few who cross it with their hats on not one
in fifty but hazard two livres and a half, which is its full worth.
The poor notary, just as he was passing by the sentry,
instinctively clapp'd his cane to the side of it, but in raising
it up, the point of his cane catching hold of the loop of the
sentinel's hat, hoisted it over the spikes of the ballustrade,

clear into the Seine. 'Tis an ill wind, said a boatman, who

catched it, which blows nobody any good. The sentry being
a gascon, incontinently twirl'd up his whiskers, and levell'd
his harquebuss. Harquebusses in those days went off with
matches ; and an old woman's paper lantern at the end of
the bridge happening to be blown out, she had borrow'd
the sentry's match to light it — it gave a moment's time
for the gascon's blood to run cool, and turn the accident
better to his advantage. — 'Tis an ill wind, said he,
grasping the notary's castor and legitimating the capture
with the boatman's adage. . . . Luckless man that I am !
said the notary, to be the sport of hurricanes all my days —
to be born to have the storm of ill language levelled against
me and my profession wherever I go — to be forced into
marriage by the thunder of the Church to a tempest of
a woman — to be driven forth out of my house by domestic
winds, and despoiled of my castor by pontific ones — to be
here, bare-headed, in a windy night at the mercy of the
ebbs and flows of accident. — Where am I to lay my head ?
miserable man ! what wind in the two-and-thirty points of
the whole compass can blow unto thee, as it does to the
rest of thy fellow creatures, good ! As the notary was passing
on by a dark passage, complaining in this sort, a voice
call'd out to a girl to bid her run for the next notary. —
now the notary being the next, and availing himself of his
situation, walk'd up the passage to the door, and passing
through an old sort of a saloon, was usher'd into a large
chamber dismantled of everything but a long military pike

13

194

STERNE

— a breast plate — a rusty old sword, and bandoleer, hung
up equidistant in four different places against the wall.
An old personage who had heretofore been a gentle-
man, and, unless decay of fortune taints the blood along
with it, was a gentleman at that time, lay supporting his
head upon his hand in his bed ; a little table with a taper
burning was set close beside it, and close by the table was
placed a chair — the notary sat him down in it ; and
pulling out his ink-horn and a sheet or two of paper which
he had in his pocket, he placed them before him, and
dipping his pen in his ink, and leaning his breast over the
table, he disposed everything to make the gentleman's last
will and testament. Alas ! Monsieur le Notaire, said the
gentleman, raising himself up a little, I have nothing to
bequeath which will pay the expence of bequeathing, except
the history of myself which I should not die in peace unless
I left it as a legacy to the world ; the profits arising out of
it I bequeath to you for the pains of taking it from me — it
is a story so uncommon it must be read by all mankind —
it will make the fortunes of your house. — The notary
dipp'd his pen into his ink-horn. — Almighty director of
every event in my life ! said the old gentleman, looking up
earnestly and raising his hands towards heaven — thou
whose hand has led me on through such a labyrinth of
strange passages down into this scene of desolation, assist
the decaying memory of an old, infirm, and broken-hearted
man — direct my tongue by the spirit of thy eternal truth,
that this stranger may set down naught but what is written
in that Book, from whose records, said he, clasping his
hands together, I am to be condemned or acquitted ! — the
notary held up the point of his pen betwixt the taper and
his eye. . . . And where is the rest of it, La Fleur ? said
I, as he just then enter'd the room."

These and their like convince more than the stock

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP

*95

beauties of the monk at Calais, or the twice-told whimpers
over the dead ass by the wayside. They are poetical, and
bear no trace of what Sterne calls the Correggiosity of Correggio.
Something there is in them that takes us out of ourselves
and the world — a snatch of the strain pervading the far
greater Heine. Sterne, elsewhere in his Paris pictures,
depicts the sad dwarf_bullied by the German soldier on the
theatre parterre. The word-catchers inform us that he took
his hint from some old French author. Whence he took it
matters not, it bears his signature and superscription. What
does matter is that the joint effect of that episode and our
last citation shows a real relationship to Heine's strange
fragment about the strolling troupe that he met in London
and re-met across the water. Heine has well said that in
the great Morgue of literature the faces of the dead bear a
mutual likeness which he who knows may recognise.

Sterne's affinities are clear ; nor are they limited to
these. There is his modern trick of employing refrains
like that of " The Lady Baussiere rode on," which Byron
quoted with gusto. And there is a constant dramatisa-
tion of the style, peculiar to him in his age. When he
talks of a post-chaise he addresses the postillions, and when
he touches on the inconsequence of his manner he inserts
a scene from those York races which he so often attended : —
" What a rate have I gone at, curveting and frisking it away,
two up and two down for four volumes together, without
looking once behind or even on one side of me to see whom
I trod upon ! .... So off I set .... as if the arch-Jockey of
jockeys had got behind me. Now riding at this rate with
what good intention and resolution you may, — 'tis a million
to one you'll do someone a mischief, if not yourself. He's
flung — he's off — he's lost his seat — he's down — he'll break
his neck. — See ! If he has not galloped full among the
scaffolding of the undertaking criticks ! He'll knock his

196 STERNE

brains out against some of their posts — he's bounced out ! —
Look — he's now riding like a mad cap through a whole
crowd of painters, fiddlers, poets, biographers, physicians,
lawyers, logicians, players, schoolmen, churchmen, statesmen,
soldiers, casuists, connoisseurs, prelates, popes, and engineers.
— Don't fear, said I, I'll not hurt the poorest jackass upon
the king's highway. — But your horse throws dirt ; see, you've
splashed a bishop. — I hope in God 'twas only Ernulphus,
said I. — But you have squirted full in the faces of ... .
doctors of the Sorbonne. — That was last year, replied I. —
But you have trod this moment upon a king — kings have
bad times on't, said I, to be trod on by such people as me. —
You have done it, replied my accuser. I deny it, quoth I,
and so have got of?. And here am I standing with my
bridle in one hand and with my cap in the other, to tell
my story." Could Richardson, or Smollett, or Fielding
have so introduced the turf ?

Some of his literary moods elude precision ; Sterne's
wit and fun are not of the catching kind. And in all his
best writing the sob is never far from the smile. That is
is irony ; and though he put forward Tristram Shandy to
be laughed at, his power, as was justly remarked, was
his pathos.1 His humour, in his own phrase, which Sir
Walter Scott and Mr Rudyard Kipling have repeated, is
"another story." He himself has remarked on the close
alliance between gaiety and " spleen." His crotchets are
never sour, but they invite less to laughter than a smile.
And sometimes they strike deep down into human nature.
Few will forget the bit where Trim exclaims, brightening up
his face, " Alack-o'-day, your honour knows I have neither
wife nor child — I can have no sorrows in this world " ; or
that other where Uncle Toby tells his brother of his
bequests for the comrade of his battles : " c I have left Trim
1 Cf. The Monthly Review, March 1768.

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 197

my bowling-green/ said my Uncle Toby. My father smiled.
c I have also left him a small pension. ' My father looked
grave."

Sometimes he would emulate the conceits of Congreve,
as where his lost manuscript reappears in the curl-papers of
a tradesman's wife, and Sterne observes : " All my remarks,
in your head, Madam " ; we recall Mrs Millamant and her
wish to be " pinned up in prose." And sometimes he
could be caustic, as in the colloquy between Shandy and
Obadiah about horses : " The Devil's in that horse ; then
take Patriot, cried my father, and shut the door. — Patriot
is sold, said Obadiah." But through all his variations, one
element reigns — an insouciance that sports with trouble,
extracting the sweet from the bitter. " Great Apollo," he
exclaims, " if thou art in a good humour, give me, I ask
no more, but one stroke of native humour with a single
spark of thy own power along with it, and send Mercury
with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared, with my

compliments to no matter." The rules and compasses

he scorned, and his was a pagan resignation — the "philo-
sophy " of which Goethe approved. How pagan he could
be has been shown already in his tender apostrophe to Time.
It may be re-illustrated by another and more jocund passage.
" Blessed Jupiter," he exclaims, " and blessed every other
heathen god and goddess, for now ye will all come into
play again. What Jovial times ! But where am I ? And
into what a delicious riot of things am I rushing ? I, I,
who must be cut short in the midst of my days, and taste
no more of 'em than what I borrowed from imagination,
peace to thee, generous fool, and let me go on."

There is a divine impressionism and a profane. Keats
is such a divine impressionist, while Sterne, with his fits of
staginess, cannot attain such heights. It is not merely that
Keats was an ethereal poet while Sterne hovers in the nether

198 STERNE

air. Their force of flight is different : there is no ecstasy in
Sterne. The contrast accentuates itself in the two exquisite
lines which conclude the sonnet beginning, " To one who
has been long in city pent " : —

" E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.,,

This thought is not un-Sternian, and we may guess how
much less celestially Sterne would have treated the last
image in prose — an image whose airiness, though not its
purity, he would have been certain to coquette with. In
the Shandean plane it might be handled thus : —

" But I shall be buried first before I get to my chapter
on Buttons ! ' It would never have happened ' (quoth my
Uncle Toby, drawing himself up ever so little) ' had it not
been that the uniform was soiled.' — c By what ? ' asked
my father, laying down his pipe, as who should say, something
must have wetted it. c A pint of Tarragona, I'll wager by
all that skinful^ guffawed Dr Slop. — 'It must have been
the rain,' said my mother. — cAnd faith, 'twas a rain,'
sighed Trim. — c An't please your honour, tell them the
story of the gipsy's tear.' — c Tell it thyself, Trim,' resumed
my Uncle, c for thou wast the cause of it.' — i He fisti-
cuffed him ? ' surmised my father ; c Gipsies are vagabonds
and doubtless the rascal deserved the blow ! ' c 'Twas
a wench,' continued my Uncle, 'whom Trim there saved
from drowning.' — c The uniform ? ' interrupted the doctor. —
The honest fellow hung down his head and blushed at the
recollection ; he never did a kind action, but I'll swear he
blushed at the telling on't ; then, clearing his voice, he
began — c I'm cursed if I let him tell it now — Someday
perhaps, but now ! ' Surely, Madam, a button is worth more
than a tear to you. After all, I protest, what is a tear ? —
A slight moisture from the swelling of the lachrymal gland,

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 199

nothing more ; — and yet the round world may be mirrored
in that drop ! Hath not the too-learned Fandangus in
his ponderous De Ampullis Romanorum indited a folio
fit to fell an ox with on the angelic spell of tear bottles ?
Did not Gregorio, Archbishop of Treves, prove by a demon-
stration that the dew fell straight from the orb of Gabriel i.
— One pang for human folly, and it starts — a limpid,
seraphic grief. — It glints — it glides — a drip, drip, drip of
crystal gently nearing our duller sphere. Heavenly large
at birth, the bubble shrinks by transit — smaller, still smaller —
till at length 'tis winnowed into tiny sparkles and drank up
by the thirsty fields. — c And I hung them out to dry ! '
sobbed Lavinia." 1

Sterne presents at least three literary faces. The one is -
turned towards his " hobby-horses " — his philosophic im-
pressionism, his Shandean mock-theories, his grotesques of
monkish learning, which Ernulphus's curse, heightened from
the Glastonbury chronicle, exemplifies, the pink and prime
of commination that gave a cue to Richard Barham in
the Ingoldsby Legends : or his Hogarthian personalities con-
centred on Dr Slop, who yet remains a living creature, as
Trollope shows by deriving Mr Slope in Barchester Towers
from the same ignoble family. Sterne's second face is turned, /
alas ! towards the Crazy brotherhood. But his third, and
greatest, towards human nature, the prize-book, he prided
himself, of his library.2 This creative side of him finds less

1 This parody, together with the substance of some preceding passages
on impressionism, is reprinted, by kind permission of Mr John Murray,
from the author's article in a Quarterly Review of 1897 on "The Fathers
of Impressionism in English Literature."

2 Cf. his letter headed "Thursday, November 1 " {Original Letters (1788),
p. 144) : " My definitions are not borrowed from the common room of a
College, .... but from the book of Nature, the volume of the world, and
the pandects of experience."

200 STERNE

frequent expression than the others — would it showed oftener
to the front ! But his human originals are of their kind
without parallel in comedy since Shakespeare. Uncle Toby,
Corporal Trim, the two Le Fevres, will never die, and to
them some words must be devoted.

A bully, says Sterne, " though he may have fought fifty
duels is a coward .... we all know that cowards have
fought, nay — that cowards have conquered, — but a coward
never performed a generous or noble action : and thou hast
my authority to say .... that a hard-hearted character was
never a brave one." * When Sterne wrote this he thought of
Uncle Toby ; and Uncle Toby, I think, was Sterne's own
father. The author writes with an affection that seems
rooted in boyhood.

" My Uncle Toby," says Hazlitt, " is one of the finest
compliments ever paid to human nature. He is the most
unoffending of God's creatures — or, as the French express
it, un tel petit bon homme. Of his bowling-green, his sieges,
and his amours, who would say or think anything amiss ? "
Sterne's real greatness lies in Uncle Toby ; for here he is
out of himself, and here too he is quite dissociated from
Rousseau, who never created anybody or anything outside
his own temperament. Who he was (beyond the mis-
attribution to Captain Hinde) we know not, though Sterne
evidently did, and many of his other characters are ascer-
tained : Smelfungus, of course, is Smollett, Mundungus is
Dr Sharp. What Uncle Toby is all the world knows : a
man human in every vein, simple, serious, an amusing
grown-up child whose long experience of war taught him
to love mankind more than glory or pleasure, and to find
in the soldier's temper the greatest surety for peace ; loyal,
brave, modest, affectionate, reverent, who " never spoke of
the being and attributes of God but with hesitation " ;
1 Cf. Original Letters (1788), p. 189.

STERNER AUTHORSHIP 201

considerate for all, eager to protect the lives and fortunes
of the few from the plunderings of the many : — " Whenever
that drum beats in our ears," he says, " I trust, Corporal,
we shall neither of us want so much humanity and fellow
feeling as to face about and march. " That Sterne loved
him we may be sure. Uncle Toby was his ideal of a man,
and he abides his fairest handiwork.

The bowling-green where he whistled " Lillibullero,"
where he and Trim campaigned together, will its turf ever
cease to flourish ? — " Never did lover post down to a
beloved mistress with more heat and expectation, than
my Uncle Toby did to enjoy this self-same thing in private ;
— I say in private, for it was sheltered from the house,
as I told you, by a tall yew hedge and was covered on the
other three sides from mortal sight by rough holly and
thickset flowering shrubs ; — so that the idea of not being
seen did not a little contribute to the idea of pleasure
preconceived in my Uncle Toby's mind. — Vain thought !
However thick it was planted about, or private soever it
might seem, — to think, dear Uncle Toby, of enjoying a thing
which took up a whole rood and a half of ground, — and not
to have it known."

What he did there charms us in all the last volumes.
A glimpse is irresistible : — " To one who took pleasure
in the happy state of others, there could not have been a
greater sight in the world, than, on a post morning in
which a' practicable breach had been made by the Duke of
Marlborough in the main body of the place, to have sat
behind the horn-beamed hedge, and observed the spirit
with which my Uncle Toby, with Trim behind him, sallied
forth ; — the one with the gazette in his hand, the other with
a spade to execute its contents. — What an honest triumph
in my Uncle Toby's looks as he marched up to the
ramparts, what intense pleasure in his eye as he stood over

202 STERNE

the Corporal reading the paragraph ten times over to him
as he was at work, lest peradventure he should make the
breach an inch too wide or leave it an inch too narrow. —
But when the chamade was beat and the Corporal helped
my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand
to fix them upon the ramparts — Heaven ! Earth ! Sea ! —
But what avail apostrophes ? — With all your elements, wet
or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught."

And here stood the sham sentry-box wbere he first
yielded to widow Wadman ; and she appears to have been
Lord Windsor's sister, whom Mrs Montagu encountered
in the Bath Pump-Room.1 What can surpass her sauciness
as Uncle Toby peers into her eye : — " I protest, Madam,
said my Uncle Toby, I can see nothing whatever in your
eye. — It is not the white, said Mrs Wadman : my Uncle
Toby looked with might and main into the pupil. Now
of all the eyes that ever were created, from your own,
Madam, up to those of Venus herself, there never was an
eye of them all so fitted to rob my Uncle Toby of repose
as the very eye which he was looking upon. It was not,
Madam, a rolling eye, a romping or a wanton one, nor was
it an eye sparkling, petulant, or imperious, all high gleams
and terrifying executions, which would have curdled at once
that milk of human nature of which my Uncle Toby was
made up, but 'twas an eye full of gentle salutation and soft
response, speaking, not like the trumpet stop of some ill-
made organ, in which many an eye I talk to holds coarse
conversation, but whispering soft like the last low accents of
an expiring saint. — c How can you live comfortless, Captain
Shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head
upon or trust your cares to ? ' — It was an eye — but I shall
be in love with it myself if I say another word about it. —
It did my Uncle Toby's business." A few steps on the
1 Cf. Elizabeth Montagu^ vol. i. p. 166.

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 203

path beyond, and we reach the widow's parlour and Uncle
Toby's proposal of marriage : — " My Uncle Toby saluted
Mrs Wadman after the manner in which women were
saluted by men in the year of our Lord 17 13. Then,
facing about, he marched up abreast with her to the sofa,
and in three plain words, though not before he was sat
down, nor after he was sat down, but as he was sitting
down, told her he was in love. So that my Uncle Toby
strained himself more in the declaration than was needed.
Mrs Wadman only looked down upon a slit she had
been darning up in her apron upon expectation every
moment that my Uncle Toby would go on ; but having no
talents for amplification, and love, moreover, of all others,
being the subject of which he was the least the master,
when he had told Mrs Wadman once that he loved her
he let it alone, he left the matter to work off its own way."
After discussing the elder Shandy's theory that talking of
love is making it, Sterne completes the interview : — " Mrs
Wadman sat in expectation my Uncle Toby would do so,
to almost the first pulsation of that minute wherein silence
on one side or the other generally becomes indecent. So
drawing herself a little more towards him, and raising up her
eye, sub-blushing as she did so, she took up the gauntlet,
or the discourse, if you like it better, and communed with
my Uncle Toby thus : — c The cares and disquietudes of
the married state,' quoth Mrs Wadman, £ are very great.'

" c I suppose so,' said my Uncle.

" c And therefore, when a person,' continued Mrs
Wadman, l is so much at his ease as you are, so happy,
Captain Shandy, in yourself, your friends and your amuse-
ments, I wonder what reasons can incline you to the state.'

" ' They are written,' quoth my Uncle, c in the Common
Prayer-book.' . . . When my Uncle Toby had said this, he
did not care to say it again ; so casting his eye upon the

2o4 STERNE

Bible which Mrs Wadman had laid upon the table, he took
it up, and popping, dear soul, upon a passage in it of all
others the most interesting to him, which was the siege of
Jericho, he set himself to read it* over, leaving his proposal
of marriage, as he had done his declaration of love, to work
in its own way." This last whimsy individualises the
tite-a-tete.

And now it is but a step back again to Uncle Toby's
own snuggery, while he sits, one blustery evening, over
supper. The landlord of the village inn enters to ask for a
glass or two of sack "for a poor gentleman, — I think of
the army," but so ill that the Boniface would almost steal it.
Trim, Uncle Toby's henchman, is all attention when his
master urges him to run after the landlord and inquire the
name of the sick stranger. Boniface returns and talks of a
son, " a boy of about eleven or twelve years of age ; — but
the poor creature has tasted almost as little as his father ;
he does nothing but mourn and lament for him night and
day. He has not stirred from the bedside these two days."
Thereupon Uncle Toby lays down his knife and fork and
thrusts his plate from before him as Trim silently clears
away. The compassionate captain ruminates over his pipe,
and after a dozen whiffs or so, resolves to visit the sick-
bed, despite the effects of a rainy night on the remains
of the wound received at Namur. Trim dissuades him and
goes himself, nor was it till his master had knocked the
ashes out of his third pipe that the Corporal re-entered
with his account. The servantless invalid had arrived with
hired horses, on his way, it was thought, to his regiment.
" { Alas ! the poor gentleman will never get from hence,'
said the landlady to me, cfor I heard the death-watch all
night long — and when he dies, the youth, his son, will
certainly die with him, for he is broken-hearted already.' '
The boy descends into the kitchen to order a thin toast : —

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 205

" I will do it for my father myself," said the youth. The
kind soldier offers to save him that trouble. " Poor
youth ! " said my Uncle Toby, " he is being bred up from
an infant in the army, and the name of a soldier, Trim,
sounded in his ears like the name of a friend — I wish I had
him here." Never, in his longest march, had the Corporal
had so great a mind to dinner as he had to cry with him for
company : " c What can be the matter with me, an' please
your honour ? ' — c Nothing in the world, Trim,' said my
Uncle Toby, blowing his nose, c but that thou art a good-
hearted fellow.' " Mr Yorick's curate sat smoking in the
kitchen, but he breathed not a word to comfort the youth.
" ' I thought it wrong,' added the Corporal — c I think so
too,' said my Uncle Toby." And then comes the sequel,
with its tender touches of Uncle Toby's visit, the proffer
of his own house for the invalid, and the finale of Lieutenant
Le Fevre's death. Its epilogue is, if possible, even more
moving. The son grows up, tended and cherished by this
good Samaritan. When he chooses his father's profession,
Uncle Toby gives him a purse of gold and the father's sword,
which, years gone by, he had hung up on a crook and pointed
to as "all the fortune, my dear Le Fevre, which God has left
thee " ; adding that " if he has given thee a heart to fight
thy way with it in the world and thou doest it like a man of
honour — 'tis enough for us." And now, at their moment
of parting, "my Uncle Toby took down the sword from
the crook, where it had hung untouched ever since the
Lieutenant's death, and delivered it to the Corporal to
brighten up ; — and having detained Le Fevre a single
fortnight to equip him, and contract for his passage to
Leghorn, he put the sword into his hand. — If thou art
brave, Le Fevre, said my Uncle Toby, this will not fail
thee. — But Fortune, said he (musing a little) — Fortune
may — and if she does, added my Uncle Toby, embracing

206 STERNE

him, come back again to me, Le Fevre, and we will shape
thee another course. The greatest injury could not have
oppressed the heart of Le Fevre more than my Uncle Toby's
paternal kindness. — He parted from my Uncle Toby as the
best of sons from the best of fathers. — Both dropped tears,
and as my Uncle Toby gave him a last kiss, he slipped sixty
guineas, tied up in an old purse of his father's, in which was
his mother's ring, into his hand, and bade God bless him."
— The son fell ill at Leghorn : did he die ?

There is more of philosophic design in Sterne than most
imagine, and Walter and Toby Shandy are meant to typify
heart and head, the perversions of reason and the freaks of
sensibility. The elder brother, a crabbed casuist, the
" motive-monger " who knew his neighbour's motive for
tears or laughter better than he knew it himself, feeds on
argument ; the younger, collects the curiosities of fellow-
feeling. Both of them are off the common track, inhabiting
a quaint world of their own, for Sterne would never pursue
the beaten road. But each relates himself to wider fields
and a larger atmosphere. Real sorrow has no place in
Tristram Shandy ; but the pin-pricks that take its place, and
prostrate the father, are so disposed that the impression
is the same. In this respect, if in no other, Jane Austen
follows the same path as Sterne.

But a small space remains for Trim — his faithful worship,
his manly tenderness ; his recollections of his brother's widow,
of the Inquisition, which gained him his Montero cap, of
his one romance — the fair Beguine with whom he would fain
have divided the world in half ; his grave attitude when he
taught his master how to "smoke" the citadel above the
bowling-green ; his queer garden-encounter with Susannah
and the curate ; his catechism, his sermon, his thoughts on
death, and all his kitchen wisdom. How different is La
Fleur, that other servant whom Sterne hired abroad, a

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 207

sportive monkey, as the other is a faithful dog. Just as
Trim gave Sterne occasion to advocate the slave and impeach
auto-da-fh) so La Fleur enabled him to raise his voice for
labour : — " The sons and daughters of service part with
Liberty, but not with Nature, in their contracts ; they are
flesh and blood, and have their little vanities and wishes in
the midst of the house of bondage, as well as their task-
masters— no doubt, they have set their self-denials at a price
— and their expectations are so unreasonable, that I would
often disappoint them, but that their condition puts this so
much in my power to do it. Behold ! behold ! I am thy
servant — disarms me at once of the powers of a master. —
Thou shalt go, La Fleur ! said I."

Even Sterne's gush over animals did more than flood
handkerchiefs, though the Starling episode rings false, be-
cause, on Sterne's own showing, the bird only exchanged
tyrants. But his irksome though misused ass did contri-
bute to humanity. More than ten years later, Graves,
author of the Spiritual Quixote^ and indignant at cruelty
to animals, wrote that he often thought of Sterne.1 Here
sentimentality has helped the world.

~THuman nature underlies Sterne's very distortions.
While Smollett and Fielding enveloped it in large, rough
parcels,- Sterne folded it in packets of tissue-paper which he
tied with a silken thread, and this daintiness has hampered
appreciation. Without some counterbalance, indeed, it
has grave drawbacks. Sterne's counterbalance lay in the
pathos of his humour and his power of reducing large
outlines with effect. But these do not always save him.
His predilection for small pieces (imaged by the duodecimos
which held them) tended to make him fancy himself rich
while he was poor, to resemble a man who should mistake

1 Cf. Hull's Select Letters between the late Duchess of Somerset^ Lady
Luxborough, William Shenstone^ etc., vol. ii. p. 184.

208 STERNE

the petty cash into which he changes his gold for the
gold itself. But the contrary method has its dangers also,
and Sterne rightly reacted against those who, as he said,
added so much to the bulk, so little to the stock. In these
respects he is the Meissonier of fiction. His miniature
manner is wholly responsible for De Maistre's attractive
Voyage autour de ma Chambre, a sketch almost slavish in
its adherence. And Saintine, who cannot boast the fine-
ness or the finish, imbibes the spirit in his Picciola, which
turns on a State-prisoner's sentimental attachment to a plant
and the transference of that love to a gaoler's daughter
who, at the risk of her life, begs Napoleon's permission to
keep the languishing blossom in the cell. To pursue
Sterne's influences on France would require a chapter.

No review of his works would be complete without
some mention of his word-curiosities, chosen mostly per-
haps for their sound. He speaks of " demi-pommados,"
" catachresis," and what-not like them. Nor are his names
less peculiar. " Slawkenbergius " is an actual person, but
what are we to say of " Mynheer Vanderbronderdonder-
gewdenstronke " ? His apostrophes, too, the " Sir " and
" Madam," his " your Worships and Reverences," his
"your High Mightinesses the world," are his own idioms.
These last, Carlyle copied ; but he borrowed more than these
from one whom he praises in language lending some colour
to consciousness of debt. Might not the following come
straight out of Sartor Resartus ? — " Heavens, thou art a
strange creature, Slawkenbergius, what a whimsical view of
the involutions of the heart of woman hast thou opened !
How this can ever be translated, and yet if this specimen of
Slawkenbergius and the exquisitiveness of his moral should
please the world — translated shall a couple of volumes be. —
Else how this can ever be translated into good English I
have no sort of conception, — seems in some passages to

STERNE'S AUTHORSHIP 209

want a sixth sense to do it rightly.— What can he mean by
the lambent pupilability of slow, low, dry chat, five notes
below the natural tone, — which you know .... is little
more than a whisper ? "

That Thackeray drew on Sterne is evident. Jenny,
Time, and the Lock of Hair speak for themselves, while
Colonel Newcome's "Adsum" is Sterne all over. The
chapter on sleep, too, might well have been written by him : —
"'Tis the refuge of the unfortunate — the enfranchisement
of the prisoner — the downy lap of the hopeless, the weary
and the broken-hearted ; nor could I set out with a lie in
my mouth by affirming that of all the soft and delicious
functions of our nature by which the great Author of it in
His bounty has been pleased to recompense the sufferings
wherewith His justice and His good pleasures have wearied
us, — that this is the chiefest (1 know pleasure worth ten of
it), or what a happiness it is to man, when the anxieties and
passions of the day are over and he lays down upon his
back, that his soul shall be so seated within him that which
ever way she turns her eyes, the heavens shall look calm
and sweet above her — no desire, or fear — or doubt that
troubles the air, nor any difficulty past, present or to
come, that the imagination may not pass over without
offence, in that sweet secession."

And the whole of Le Fevre inspired Thackeray. The
ring of its opening will suffice : — " It was some time in
the summer of that year in which Dendermond was taken by
the Allies, which was about seven years before my father
came into the country and about as many after the time that
my Uncle Toby and Trim had privately decamped from my
father's house in town, in order to lay some of the finest
sieges to some of the finest fortified cities in Europe — that
my Uncle Toby was one evening getting his supper with
Trim sitting behind him at a small sideboard." How far

14

210 STERNE

this excels that prize conceit in Le Fevre about the accusing
spirit " which flew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath "
and " blushed as it gave it in," — while the recording angel,
" as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and
blotted it out for ever." What Garrick and Lady Spencer
and half London called " sublime " seems now more like a
courtier's compliment at some heavenly levee than a human
tribute. It followed my Uncle Toby's " He shall not die,
by God." That sentence is worth a thousand of the other :
it comes straight from the heart, and convinces it. Placed
where it is and as it stands, it is a noble line, worthy to
establish a master's fame, and a fit memorial of his genius.

CHAPTER XIV

FRENCH LEAVE (THE STAY IN FRANCE : JANUARY lj6l
TO MAY I764)

It is a pot-pourri, this gallop of Sterne from Death to Paris,
his gallop there with the most galloping of a break-neck set,
and his gallop off to Toulouse, where in the late summer he
dismounted, a trifle breathless, to settle down with his wife
and daughter. From the Cross Keys at Dover to the Silver
Lion at Calais (not yet was Dessein's his mark), from Calais
to Boulogne, from Boulogne to Montreuil, and thence by
Abbeville, Amiens, and Chantilly to the capital — all is a
wild-goose chase of spirits threatened by extinction. His
chart was not that of those cut-and-dried tourists who dis-
pensed guide-books as anodynes for the sleepless — not such
as " Mundungus " issued, the dullard who (like Smollett),
Sterne said, would spoil heaven, but whose fair daughters
were to be famed by Sheridan. Sterne jests at every
obstacle, at the discomforts and bad language of post-chaises
and post-boys. By these, indeed, he warranted one of his
least savoury morsels — the " Abbess of Andouillets " ; and
these, too, years afterwards, his own daughter singled out
with the same nonchalance, though not in the same vein.
" A journey through France," she wrote, " — the posting part
— cannot be a sentimental one, for it is a continual squabble

with innkeepers and postillions, yet not like Smelfungus

211

212 STERNE

[Smollett] who never kept his temper, for we kept ours, and
laughed whilst we scolded. The French can give themselves
ease by swearing. English women do not know how to set
about it, yet as Archbishops in France swear as well as their
neighbours, I cannot see why women should not. The
French women do it sans facon — scratch out the word and
put an English one." 1

Thomas Morton, who invented the character of " Mrs
Grundy " in his play of Speed the Plough, was yet unborn,
nor as yet was the crone so unbearable as hereafter. On
her censorship, however, Sterne now turned his back ;
though he was often ready to flatter her to her face and to
maintain that everything depends on the point of view.2
Abroad, Mrs Grundy was a cipher, and perhaps Sterne
missed her stimulating presence.

Yorick's travel-pictures form his best itinerary ; he leads
ofFwith the Channel passage : —

" Pray, Captain, quoth I, as I was going down into the
cabin, is a man never overtaken by Death in this passage ?
— Why there's not time for a man to be sick in it, replied
he. — What a cursed liar ! for I am sick as a horse, quoth I,
already. — What a brain ! Upside down ! Hey-day ! The
cells broke loose one into another and the blood, and the
lymph, and the nervous juices, with the fixed and volatile
salts, are all jumbled into one mass ! . . . Everything turns
round in it like a thousand whirlpools. — 1 had give a
shilling to know if I shant write the clearer for it. Sick !
Sick ! Sick ! Sick ! — When shall we get to land, Captain ?

1 Cf. Add. MSS. 30,877, ff. 70-78, Lydia Sterne to Wilkes, Angouleme,
22nd July 1769.

2 " The etiquette of this town," he was to assure his Eliza, " (you'll say)
says otherwise. — No matter ! Delicacy and Propriety do not always consist
in observing her frigid doctrines." Cf. Letters from Yorick to Eliza
(1775), P- 28.

FRENCH LEAVE

213

— They have hearts like stones. — Oh, I am deadly sick ! —
Reach me that thing, boy : — 'Tis the most discomforting
sickness — I wish I was at the bottom ! Madam, how is it
with you ? — Undone ! undone ! undone ! — Oh ! undone !
So. — What ! The first time ? — No ; 'tis the second, third,
sixth, tenth time, Sir. . . .

" Boulogne ! — hah ! So we are all got together, —

Debtors and sinners before heaven ; A jolly set of us ; —
but I can't stay and quaff it off with you, I am pursued
myself like a hundred Devils and shall be overtaken before
I can well change horses : — For heaven's sake, make
haste."

How he ironises the scene ! — " Ah I ma chere fille ! said
I, as she tripped by from her matin, — you look as rosy as
the morning (for the sun was rising, and it made the compli-
ment the more gracious) — No ; it can't be that, quoth a
fourth — (She made a court'sy to me, — I kissed my hand) —
'Tis debt, continued he — 'Tis certainly debt, quoth a fifth.
— I would not pay that gentleman's debts, quoth Ace, for a
thousand pounds. . . . But I have no debt but the debt
of nature ; and I want but patience of her, and I will pay
her every farthing I owe her. — How can you be so hard-
hearted, Madam, to arrest a poor traveller going along,
without molestation to anyone upon his lawful occasions ?
Do stop that death-looking long-striding scoundrel of a
scare-sinner, which is posting after me. — He never would
have followed me but for you — If it be but for a stage
or two, just to give me start of him, I beseech you,
Madam."

With fresh flippancies the man of feeling beguiled his
way till he stopped to notice the innkeeper's daughter at
Montreuil : —

" She has been eighteen months at Amiens, and six at
Paris, in going through her courses ; so she knits and sews

2i4 STERNE

and dances and does the little coquetries very well." He
watches her work. It is a white thread stocking. She
" has let fall a least a dozen loops." ..." Yes, yes, — I see
you, cunning gipsy — 'tis long and taper, you need not pin it
to your knee ; — and that 'tis your own, — and fits you exactly."
And then the pale man in black brings out his sketchbook : —
"... As Janatone, withal (for that is her name) stands so
well for a drawing, — May I never draw more ; or rather, may
I draw like a draught horse by main strength all the days of
my life, if I do not draw her with all her proportions and with
as determined a pencil as if I had her in the wettest drapery.
But your Worships choose rather that I give you the length,
breadth, and perpendicular height of the great parish church,
or a drawing of the facade of the Abbey of St Austreberte,
which has been transported from Artois hither : — Every-
thing is just, I suppose, as the masons and carpenters left
them ; . . . So, your Worships, and Reverences may all
measure them at your leisure ; but he who measures thee,
Janatone, — must do it now. Thou earnest the principles
of change within thy frame ; and considering the chances of
a transitory life, I would not answer for thee a moment i
Ere twice twelve months are passed and gone, . . . thou
mayest go off like a flower and lose thy beauty ; — Nay, thou
mayest go off like a hussy and lose thyself. ... So you
must e'en be content with the original, which, if the evening
be fine, in passing thro' Montreuil, you will see at your
chaise door, as you change horses."

The froth of feeling ! Maybe ; but what a touch in the
whipping of it ! Where Fielding or Smollett would serve
up a beef-steak, Sterne makes a French omelette of these
eggs of sentiment. And the bitter herbs of his malady enter,
half-seen, into the compound.

At length Paris is in sight, looking better, he ponders,
than it smells. Through the streets he rattles to his hotel

FRENCH LEAVE 215

in the Faubourg St Germain, and, in passing, he translates
the legend on the Louvre —

" Earth no such folks ! — no Folks e'er such a town
As Paris is ! — sing deny, deny, down." *

It was a year of manifold French wonders — that of
Rousseau's Emile and Social Contract, of downcast Jesuits
and uppish Opera Comique, of the long preliminaries to the
Peace of Paris. The orchestra that was to play the demon-
dance of the distant Revolution tuned up already. Its pre-
ludes were not yet the roar of a strident mob, but the
soft, decadent note of a sapped society. And their master
flutists were a strange crew — perverts from Calvin with
perverts from Loyola, fanatics and Jldneurs, the feelers who
reasoned, and the rationalists who felt. Such were the
builders of that huge Encyclopaedia which Diderot founded
—the Diderot who had now quarrelled with Rousseau.
Madame d'Epinay played muse to the movement ; Baron
d'Holbach, a refined materialist, acted as its Maecenas, while
Grimm, another German adventurer, added scepticism
even to theirs. For they believed in nothing but " man,"
and for man they invented a false nature which answered
only to theories and emotions. This was the vogue
patronised by patricians like Bissy and Choiseul, and
argued by casuists like the Abbe Tollot, Hall-Stevenson's
friend, or the unfrocked Abbe Raynal whose book was
the last to be burned by a hangman. Voltaire held
away and aloof, though he had sounded the strain of
humanity in his poem on the Lisbon earthquake. Diderot
was now the leader ; but Diderot was didactic, which
Sterne certainly was not. Sterne's influence on Diderot

1 Non orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam

ulla parem.

216 STERNE

appears in Jacques le Fataliste , a book published long after
Sterne had vanished from the scene.

Into this circle, letters from the Goliath, Pitt, and
Garrick, the David, admitted him. It seems odd that he
never mentions Rousseau, now estranged from the set
but their constant whipping-stock. Odd, too, that he
never visited him at Mont St Louis ; for, but a month
after Rousseau's flight to Yverdun, Sterne did hire a chaise
and horse to drive the same distance, and on a very
Rousseau-like occasion : — " Before I got half way, the poor
animal dropped down dead ; — so I was forced to appear
before the Police, and began to state my story in French,
which was, that the poor beast had to do with a worse
beast than himself, namely, his master, who had driven him
all the day before (Jehu-like), — and that he had neither had
corn nor hay ; therefore I was not to pay for the horse : —
But I might as well have whistled as to have spoke French ;
and I believe my Latin was equal to my Uncle Toby's Lilli-
bullero, — being not understood because of its purity ; but
by dint of words, I forced my judge to do me justice : —
no common thing by the way in France." One could have
wished a meeting between the two sentimentalists, though
it is pretty certain that Rousseau would soon have suspected
Sterne. And there was this marked difference between
them — Rousseau's feeling, such as it was, took effect in
action ; Sterne's actions, such as they were, took effect in
feeling.

Sterne's bad French is the more curious because he
soon boarded with a Parisian family to learn the language.
At first he moved in the English colony — mostly Jacobites
like his old associate, Trotter, and his new one, Shippen.
There were tourists, too, of distinction : Macartney (whom
Sterne knew) bear-leading Stephen Fox, whom (and his
great brother) Lord Holland trained on Chesterfieldian

FRENCH LEAVE 217

precepts. With them the humourist visited Versailles,
and it may have struck him that Parisian manners were
not the best school for English morals, and that a boy
in his teens might live the better for not seeing life.

Yorick and the big-wigs were soon acquainted. There
was the Due de Biron, Marshal of France, who talked to
him about the "English ladies," and the financier La
Popiliniere, who talked to him of the "English taxes."
But he was more absorbed in the group of d'Holbach,
where his wit and oddities recommended him. He jested,
he says, " at his own expense ■' ; and this is true in more
senses than one. In his elation he looked on life as a boy
does at a prism of soap-bubbles. The convalescent threw
his calling to the winds, and halved his time between
beauty and badinage. Garrick had introduced him to Titon,
a connoisseur of the coulisses. Sterne haunted the theatres,
where he saw the " great Clairon " (who invited him to her
suppers), Preville (" Mercury himself "), and the bewitching
Dumesnil. Diderot wrote plays, and Sterne sent Garrick
a translation of his Natural Son, the weeping comedy which
he called tragic. Needless to say, a lady had Englished it.
With Sterne it was always a lady ; what he would have
done without them baffles comprehension. Among the
French, besides the d'Epinay and, perhaps, the Geofrrin,
his letters record a Madame Morellet, while his Sentimental
Journey has post-dated Madame de Vence, the doubter whom
he nigh converted to his queer orthodoxy : — " There are
three epochas," he writes, " in the empire of a French woman
— she is coquette, then deist, then devote : The empire during
these is never lost — she only changes her subjects : . . .-
Madame de V. was vibrating between the first of these epochas,
the colour of the rose was fading fast away — she ought to
have been a deist five years before I had the honour to
pay my first visit." Conversing on the sofa, Sterne told her

21* STERNE

that there was no more dangerous thing in the world
than for a beauty to be a deist. " We are not adamant,
said I, taking hold of her hand — and there is need of all
restraints till age in her own time steals in and lays them
on us — but, my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand, 'tis
too, — too soon — I declare I had the credit all over Paris of
unperverting Madame de V. — She affirmed .... that in
one half hour I had said more for revealed religion than all
the encyclopaedias had said against it. I was listed directly
into Madame de V.'s Coterie — and she put off the epocha of
deism for two years." His work had heralded his visit,
and the Comte de Bissy was immersed in Tristram. Sterne,
refreshed by the buoyant air, could not resist an encore of
his London gaieties. Once more he was booked a fort-
night ahead. " For three weeks together," he tells us in
retrospect, " I was of every man's opinion I met. Pardi !
Ce Mons. Torick a autant a esprit que nous autres — 77 raisonne
bien^ said another. — Cest un bon enfant ', said a third, and at
this price I could have eaten and drunk and been merry all
the days of my life at Paris."

Yorick's esprit was quite French, and so were his
compliments. The savants received books from England ;
for the salonistes he doubtless procured trinkets. Nor was
his " dear, dear Jenny " forgotten, if we may trust the ques-
tionable mention of her when he describes Lyons in Tristram.
In his turn, he accepted gifts : a snuff-box set in garnets,
and a portrait shortly to be noticed, both of which, in the
best of humours, he despatched to his wife. Success comes,
he said, not by services but by being served ; " you put a dry
twig in the ground, and water it because you have planted
it." Vain as a coquette, he magnified civilities, and mistook
flattery for fame. Yet the chameleon told Garrick how
little he liked the hyperboles of the French, their ecstasies
in conversation and even in commerce.

FRENCH LEAVE 219

In London Sterne knew the Duke of York, in Paris he
knew the Duke of Orleans, nor did the court jester despise
court favours. The Duke commissioned his painter,
Carmontelle, to draw him in water-colours, and there he
stands in smart black on the terrace with a quizzed and
quizzing expression. Perhaps he was thinking, as after-
wards in the Sentimental Journey, " Happy people ! that
once a week at least are sure to lay down all your cares
together, and dance and sing and sport away the weights of
grievance, which bow down the spirits of other nations to
the earth ! "

This mood, however, was not to last. The gipsy in him
took fright, and preferred the breezes of the road to the
hot air of drawing-rooms. He murmured that politeness
tired him ; and his paradox, that the French were too
" serious " a people, shocked his hosts. If they made
greatness gay, he said, they also reversed the process. He
wearied of their "beggarly system." He found their
pleasures monotonous.

In the late spring, too, alarming news distressed him.
The little Lydia, on whom he doted, was asthmatic, and
Sterne feared for her safety. He besought his wife and
daughter to come out and join him ; they would start
together for the South. Racket and anxiety told on his own
health. Another vessel burst in his lungs ; for three days
he lay speechless, though once more his spirits came
to the rescue. Within a week he was out and bustling,
full of preparations for the travellers.1 He wrote minute

1 Writing afterwards to Hall-Stevenson about this seizure, he said :
" About a week or ten days before my wife arrived at Paris, I had the same
accident I had at Cambridge of breaking a vessel in my lungs. It happened
in the night, and I bled the bed full, and finding in the morning I was likely
to bleed to death, I sent immediately for a surgeon to bleed me in both arms. —
This saved me, and with lying speechless for three days upon my back in
bed I recovered ; the breach healed, and a week after I got out — this, with

220 STERNE

instructions for his " dear Bess " and Lydia ; he directed
his publisher to supply the funds.1 He was intimate
with a Mr Foley, who, together with the firm of Panchaud,
managed his money affairs. Foley was about to visit
England ; he offered to act as their escort, and of these
good offices Sterne gladly availed himself.2 He cared
for their passports ; he told his wife what to bring, and
how to bring it — the silver coffee-pot and the copper tea-
kettle, which would make life cosy, the watch-chains and
little volumes to requite attentions. Above all, she was to
mind her own health as well as her daughter's, to beware of
the prevailing heat, always to drive in the cool of the dawn,
and to be pleased with a carriage which he had bought, a
bargain. He supervised Lydia's costume : she was to bring
two "negligees." He rejoiced that she was "a child of
nature, not of art" — which only meant that she was the
wayward child of Sterne. The kindliness of these letters is
pleasant reading after all his gambols. " Lyd " would soon
" chatter French like a magpie," he told his wife. "...
You will do the same in a fortnight. — Dear Bess, I have a
thousand wishes, but have a hope for every one of them.
You shall chant the same jubilate y my dears : So God bless
you ! My duty to Lydia, which implies my love too ;
Adieu, believe me your affectionate."

my weakness and hurrying about, made me think it high time to haste to
Toulouse." Cf. Letters of the late Reverend Mr Laurence Sterne to his Most
Intimate Friends, published by his daughter, Mrs Medalle (1775), vol. ii.
p. 10.

1 Cf. Eg. MS. 1662, f. 5.

2 Sterne wrote a grateful letter to this Mr Foley and his wife. One
sentence is worth quoting : — " The friendship, goodwill and politeness of my
two friends I never doubted to me or mine, and I return you both all a
grateful man is capable of, which is merely my thanks. I have taken, how-
ever, the liberty of sending an Indian Taffety, which Mrs Foley must do me
the honour to wear for my wife's sake." Cf Letters of the late Reverend
Mr Laurence Sterne, p. 6.

FRENCH LEAVE 221

Sterne's feelings are always more interesting than his
actions, but at this time he truly said of himself that
he did a thousand things which " cut no figure but in the
doing." Two of these were long remembered. Crossing
the Pont Neuf (the scene of his notary's adventure) he
stopped short before the statue of Henri Quatre and, to the
crowd's astonishment, knelt down before the pedestal. —
" Why are you all staring at me ? " he cried ; " do likewise all
of you ! " Down knelt the wondering lieges, who must have
discerned some method in Yorick's madness.1

The second is a tale which Thackeray used to prove
that Sterne was " no gentleman," despite the protests of
any " superfine friend." He suppressed it, however, in
the final form of his English Humourists ; and, indeed, the
story amounts to little but a wit's vainglory over his cups.
Louis Dutens, English charge d'affaires at Turin, after-
wards in London, a Whig intriguer, and still later a witness
at Lady Hamilton's wedding, attended Lord Tavistock, in
the general wake of paid peacemakers, to Paris. On June
the fourth, the King's birthday, that peer entertained some
distinguished Englishmen at dinner. Sterne sat next to
Dutens, but had not caught his name. The talk turned
on travel and Turin. Yorick, having heard strange tales
of his neighbour with whom he professed acquaintance,
now asked him if he knew — himself. The diplomat
humoured the humourist, who invented story on story of
the envoy's past. Not until Dutens left did the guests
inform Sterne ("a little merry") of his offence, and of
what he must expect on the morrow. The delinquent
sallied forth in fear and trembling, and his apology was
like himself. Over-eagerness, he said, to amuse the com-
pany was responsible. Dutens at once absolved him,

1 This story comes from Garat's Memoirs of Suard, and is cited by
Professor Cross in his Life and Times of Sterne, p. 281.

222 STERNE

adding that he was as much amused at the blunder as
any of the party, that Sterne had said nothing to offend,
and that if he had known the man he spoke of as well
as Dutens did he might have said much worse. Thereupon
he proffered friendship, and off went Sterne delighted.
The biter had been bit ; that was all.1

Sterne had not wished to go south. He had hoped to
have returned home by Holland at the end of May. But the
double stroke of his daughter's illness and his own left him
no other choice, and he resolved to settle at Toulouse
where his friends the Hewitts were staying. None of
them, he wrote, could stand another winter at York. So
he obtained leave of absence from the Archbishop, and
duly provided for his parish, appointing " home deputies."
On the eighth of July 1762, Mrs Sterne and Lydia entered
Paris, and three days later they set off in hopes and spirits,
under a sky "as hot as Nebuchadnezzar's oven."

Sterne purposely prolonged his route. He meant this
journey to be one of sentiment, and to introduce it into
his next instalment of Tristram. Not a chance that his
observant eye could furnish should be missed. Gil Bias was
not fonder of the humours of the road, and Sterne's mind was
a spying-glass, extending to animals, waggons, and still-life.
He watched the effect on a donkey of a macaroon after
an artichoke ; and when he bought a basket of figs and
discovered eggs at the bottom, he at once turned it into
a case of conscience. Of every city he made a peep-show,
of every village a fair. He examined the passers-by as
a pedlar gauges his customers ; their very exclamations
enhanced his bric-a-brac. And on his return he brought
all this glittering merchandise to market.

1 This incident, also mentioned by Professor Cross (pp. 290-2), comes
from Dutens's Memoirs of a Traveller.

FRENCH LEAVE 223

Their way to Lyons led through Auxerre, the site
of his Shandean pilgrimage to St Maxima's shrine. His
cheap chaise proved a failure ; at Lyons it broke down
utterly. Sterne tells with cheery humour how he sold it
for a song, and prepared to continue the voyage by water.
Here the commissary of posts intervened, exacting a toll
for the land journey, which provoked Sterne into the
quoted answer : " Don't puzzle me." Here his guide-
book prompted a search for the grave of two lovers, which
he found did not exist. Here he communed with the
ass " Honesty." " God help thee, Jack ! said I, thou hast
bitter breakfast on't. . . . 'Tis all — all bitterness to thee,
whatever life is to others." And here he found that he
had lost his diary. Hasting back to search for it in the
bartered vehicle, he pretends to have reclaimed his pages
from the head of the coach-builder's wife, who had twisted
them into papillotes. Now was the moment for a tilt at
his critics : —

" The chaise-vamper's house was shut, it was the 8 th of
September, the nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother
of God. Tantarra-ra-tivy, the whole world was going out
amaypoling — frisking here, capering there, — Nobody cared
a button for me or my remarks. So I sat me down upon
a bench by the door, philosophizing upon my condition.
By a better fate than usually attends me I had not waited
half an hour when the mistress came in to take the papillotes
from her hair before she went to the maypoles." When

he explained her coiffure, " J9 en suis bien mortifiie,

said she. — 'Tis well, thinks I, they have stuck there ; —
for could they have gone deeper, they would have made
such confusion in a Frenchwoman's noddle she had better
have gone with it unfrizzled to the day of Eternity. — Tenez,
said she, — So without any idea of the nature of my suffering,
she took them from her curls, and put them gravely, one

224 STERNE

by one, into my hat : — One was twisted this way, — another
twisted that — Ay, by my faith, and when they are -published,
quoth I, they will be worse twisted still."

With a like quaintness he treats of the clock and the
cathedral. He went no farther than the west door, while
the clock, he was told, " had not gone for some years." He
reached the Jesuits' library, where he hoped for a general
history of China in thirty Chinese volumes, but all the
Jesuits were ill, and the library was closed. And this
signifies that the Paris Jesuits were out of favour.

The travellers sailed down the Rhone. Landing at
Avignon in a storm, Sterne lost his hat, a mischance which
colours his fragment of the Notary. Out of it he made a
proverb — " Avignon is more subject to high winds than any
town in all France " — but no Slawkenbergius was there to
explain it. The Avignonese he found as high and as mighty
as their winds ; everyone seemed a patrician, and he feigns
that wishing to pull off his jack-boots at the inn door, and
putting the mule's bridle into the hands of an idler, he
turned round to thank him — " but Monsieur le Marquis had
walked in."

The waiting mule points to a change of plan. Sterne
now decided to amble at leisure, while his wife and daughter
proceeded by post. How they relished this move may be
questioned. Sterne, however, was enchanted to rove in this
gipsy fashion while he brought up the rear of so crazy a
caravan. Their road lay through Languedoc, and here it
was that he kicked off his shoes to dance with the nut-brown
maid.

The landscape was rich and smiling. " I had now," he
tells us in Tristram Shandy, " the whole South of France, from
the banks of the Rhone to those of the Garonne, to traverse
upon my mule at my own leisure, — at my own leisure, — for
I had left Death, the Lord knows — and he only — how far

FRENCH LEAVE 225

behind me ! — I have followed many a man through France,
quoth he, but never at this mettlesome rate. — Still he
followed, — and still I fled him, — but I fled him cheerfully ;
still he pursued, but like one who pursued his prey without
hope, — as he lagged, every step he lost softened his look. —
.... There is nothing more pleasing to travellers, or more
terrible to travel writers, than a large .... plain, especially
.if it is without great rivers or bridges, and presents
nothing to the eye but one unvaried picture of plenty : For
after they had once told you that 'tis delicious or delightful
(as the case happens) ; that the soil was grateful, and that
Nature pours out all her abundance. . . . They have
then a large plain upon their hands which they know
not what to do with, and it is of little or no use to them but
to carry them to some town ; and that town, perhaps of
little more than a new place to start from to the next plain, —
and so on. — This is most terrible work ; — -judge if I don't
manage my plains better."

Sterne did. Thrice he loitered half a mile behind.
First, to confer with a drum-maker who was making drums
for the fair of Baucaira and Tarascone — " I did not under-
stand the principle." Next, to turn and return with two
Franciscans, who were " straitened more for time " than
himself. Lastly, to settle the affair of the Provence figs.
These he entitled his " Plain Stories," and he called their
occasion the busiest and most fruitful of his life. He
stopped and talked, he says, to every soul (" not in a full
trot ") that met him. He waited for every soul behind :
" Hailing all those who were going their cross-roads, arrest-
ing all kinds of beggars, pilgrims, fiddlers, friars — not passing
by a woman in a mulberry tree without .... tempting her
into conversation with a pinch of snuff." He seizesd every
handle of what size or shape soever that chance held out
to him. " I turned," he boasts, " my plain into a city ; I

226 STERNE

was always in company and with great variety too ; and as
my mule loved society as much as myself. . . . — I am
confident we could have passed through Pall Mall or St
James's Street for months together, with fewer adventures, —
and seen less of human nature."

And so, dancing the song of the " sun-burnt daughter
of labour," and "only changing partners and towns," he
" danced it away from Lunelle to Montpellier ; from thence
to Pescenas, Beziers — .... along through Narbonne,
Carcasson, and Castle Naudary, till at last I danced myself
into Pedrillo's pavilion " ! The sentimental traveller had
settled at Toulouse.

Sterne is more fascinating in motion than at rest. His
stay in the Provencal town, with its "clear climate of
fantasy and perspiration," would pall if dwelt upon. It
lasted ten months, from the August of 1762 to the June
of 1763. Sterne's letters of business and friendship
give a perspective of his life, and at no moment did he
live more happily with his family ; semi-detachment from
Mrs Sterne seems only to have issued in peace between
them. The Hewitts and an Abbe Macarty had found him
the " pavilion," which lay in the southern quarter, sleepy
and sequestered. " We cannot easily go wrong," he wrote
to Hall -Stevenson, "though by the bye, the devil is
seldom found sleeping under a hedge." He soon described
his habitation to the friend who had seen his wife across the
water. The house was "most deliciously placed at the
extremity of the town, .... well furnished, and elegant
beyond anything I looked for — 'tis built in the form of
a hotel with a pretty court towards the town and behind the
best garden in Toulouse, laid out in serpentine walks, and
so large that the company in our quarter usually come to
walk there in the evenings for which they have my consent
— i the more the merrier.' " It consisted " of a good

FRENCH LEAVE 227

salle a manger above stairs adjoining to the very great
salle a compagnie as large as the Baron D'Holbach's ; three
handsome bed-chambers with dressing rooms to them —
below stairs two very good rooms for myself, one to study
in, the other to see company. — I have moreover cellars round
the court and all other offices. — Of the same landlord I
have bargained to have the use of a country-house which he
has two miles out of town, so that myself and all my family
have nothing more to do than to take our hats and remove
from the one to the other. — My landlord is moreover to
keep the gardens in order. — And what do you think I am
to pay for all this ? Neither more nor less than thirty
pounds a year. — All things are cheap in proportion — so we
shall live for very very little."

Here Sterne came to a halt. He drank asses' milk
every morning, he even began to grow stout and well-
looking. He resumed Tristram and gloated over the love-
making of Uncle Toby, with a glass of Frontignac ever on
his table. The Hewitts were more than amiable, and the
Sternes were welcomed by the English colony of health-
seekers. But to be fixed disagreed with him : some sort
of motion and excitement were the breath of his nostrils.
True, the winter brought distractions. Abbe Tollot and a
mutual friend Sir Charles Danvers came over to relieve the
tedium ; a troupe of English actors arrived, and their per-
formances were catching ; for the Sternes and Hewitts,
" fiddling, laughing and singing and cracking jokes," turned
their minds to ^mateur theatricals. They played Mrs
Centlivre's Busy-Body with an improvised orchestra in the
big drawing-room, followed by Vanbrugh's and Cibber's
Journey to London, which Sterne seems to have patched up
into a Journey to Toulouse.

But the cold and damp winds of December told upon
his health, and he had no stimulus to help it. On the

228 STERNE

contrary, his finances depressed him. " Ten cartloads " of
the new Shandys were on his booksellers' hands, and by
March, from the half-dozen guineas which he noted in
December, he had a beggarly " five louis to vapour with in
this land of coxcombs. " Even next summer he was arrang-
ing with Beckett for some remittances due on a few fresh
sales ; but against these had to be set the sums previously
advanced to Mrs Sterne,1 and it is a wonder how her husband
weathered these months of embarrassment. Foley perhaps
financed him : he was always generous, though occasional
misunderstandings arose which were soon explained. His
dissatisfaction with the French revived ; their courtesies fell
flat. He grew visibly worse. The doctors2 advised the
waters of Banyers (Bagneres de Bigorre), as he told his
archbishop. To him he communicated the " continued
warfare with agues, fevers and physicians," aggravated
by the strong bouillons prescribed for him. He had over-
preached, he protested ; and he begged, with a smile, to be
received into some "Hotel des Invalides, if such existed,
upon any solitary plain betwixt here and Arabia Felix." 3
This is not the sole instance where he ascribes to his preach-
ing some of the evils resulting from his practice. London,
not Coxwold, had exhausted him, and he had tasked himself
more in drawing-rooms than in pulpits. But the virtues
of Bagneres brought no relief, while its thin air tried
his lungs, so the goad of travel urged him once more.
A projected journey to Spain fell through. OfFhe wandered
southward, in undescribed zigzags, seeking rest and finding
none, out of health and out of pocket, till at length he
returned to Toulouse, where a welcome remittance awaited

1 Cf. Add. MSS. 21,508, f. 47-

2 One of these physicians, Dr Jamme, remained his friend and corre-
spondent long afterwards.

3 Sterne to Archbishop Drummond, May 1763. Cf. Professor Cross's
Life, p. 313.

FRENCH LEAVE 229

him. Once more he was driven to the doctors. They
prescribed Montpellier ; and to Montpellier, towards the
end of September, he bent his steps.

That spot was to the eighteenth century what Men tone
means now to ours — a picturesque winter-garden for
English invalids. Its bridge, where the Rodamont of
Spanish story had fought for the maidens he rescued, must
have appealed to the romanticist's fancy. But the physicians
reigned paramount, and almost " poisoned " him with their
" bouillons refraichissants — cocks flayed alive and boiled with
poppy seeds, then pounded in a mortar, afterwards passed
through a sieve." " There is to be one crawfish in it," he
wrote, " and I was gravely told it must be a male one — a
female would do me more hurt than good." Dr Antoine
Fizes presided, and Sterne suffered under his ministrations.

So did Smollett, who arrived there in November. He
has pictured the old Parliament-town and its surroundings
in the caustic Travels which he published three years
afterwards. " Smelf ungus " was no sentimentalist ; he took
things as they were, and often worse than they were. He
was one of those who, in Sterne's words, could travel from
Dan to Beersheba without a throb of sentiment : through-
out his itinerary runs a vein of sourish realism. Himself
a surgeon, he consulted Mrs Sterne on his health, and it
may be that he and her husband shook hands. It is less
likely that they did so cordially. They were antipathies.
The rough, robust pessimist, who had slated Tristram
Shandy, must have loathed the sickly rosiness of the man of
feeling, and I am not sure that if we had met Sterne we
should not have shared Smollett's opinion. Despite the
strength of his humour, something there was always about
him of the amphibious, of the merman — a human face, a
human voice, but a fish's tail instead of legs. He never
stood, he swam ; and his element was the brine of his tears ;

230

STERNE

his very charm lay in his elusiveness. The firm shore was
uncongenial, and the petty amusements of Montpellier soon
bored him. There were theatres, concerts, the " insipid "
French, and the eternal round of the English, who tend to
display their Sunday worst on a foreign soil. He depended
on stray travellers. Tollot visited " ce bon et agriable
Tristram" and, with Tollot again, the Thornhills, who
had been touring with Hewitt and a sporting squire of
the Skelton set, by name Charles Turner. They found
him persecuted by his wife's jealousy, borne, they said,
with angelic patience. In truth, Mrs Sterne was ailing :
rheumatism tormented her, and the " arm of flesh " reasserted
itself, though its victim now took his drubbings meekly.
Perhaps she had cause to belabour a truant, who could
seldom resist the lures either of roads or petticoats. Sterne
long fretted to return to England. He told them that he
was bound for his other wife, the Church, whom he had
treated, it must be owned, in the same cavalier manner.
In a word, he was sick of Montpellier, though apparently
not of his tormentress, and once more his health troubled
him. He called himself a ghost ; he disregarded his body.
" I took a ride," he wrote to Foley, " towards Perenas — I
returned home in a shivering fit, though I ought to have
been in a fever, for I had fired my beast and he was as
unmovable as Don Quixote's wooden horse, and my arm
was half dislocated in whipping him — This, quoth I, is
inhuman — No, says a peasant on foot behind me, I'll drive
him home — So he laid on his posteriors, but 'twas needless
— as soon as his face was turned towards Montpellier he
began to trot. . . . This fever has confined me ten days
to my bed — I have suffered in this scuffle with death
terribly — but unless this spirit of prophecy deceives me,
I shall not die but live. In the meantime, dear Foley,
let us live as merrily and as innocently as we can which is

FRENCH LEAVE

231

every bit as good, if not better than, a bishoprick to me —
and I desire no other." The sharp air of Montpellier
agreed with him even worse than the rarity of Bagneres.
No sooner had he recovered from his accident than again
his lungs gave way. Quiet, climate, and Mrs Sterne alike
provoked his patience. He kept thinking of his friends at
Paris, and of young Fox revisiting that neighbourhood.
The sole bar to his escape was his daughter, now sixteen
and frolicsome, the darling of his heart. Mrs Sterne he
only wished with him that Lydia might be near ; but
she, on her part, refused to budge. " My dear Lydia,"
he soon wrote, " I acquiesced in your stay in France —
likewise it was your mother's wish, but I must tell you
both that (unless your health had not been a plea made
use of) I should have wished you both to have returned
with me."

At length his mind was made up ; husband and wife
entered into a treaty : — " I told Mrs Sterne that I should
set out for England very soon, but as she chooses to remain
in France for two or three years I have no objection except
that I wish my girl in England." And then sounds his
farewell to Montpellier : — " The States of Languedoc are
met — 'tis a fine raree show, — with the usual accompaniments
of fiddles, bears and puppet shows — I believe I shall step
into my post chaise with more alacrity to fly from these
States than a Frenchman would fly to them — and except a
tear on parting with my little slut, I shall be in high spirits,
and every step I take that brings me nearer England will, I
think, help to set this poor frame to rights. My wife
chooses to go to Montauban, rather than stay here, in which
I am truly passive." So he writes to Mrs Foley, and a
man would not so write to a woman who disapproved of his
conduct. The lifelong separation from Mrs Sterne which
dates henceforward was of her own choice, though in a

23 2 STERNE

sense it seems of his making. But she was not his home,
and homeward he now turned with alacrity.

Tollot had offered him his Paris lodgings, and in the
first week of March 1764, he set off for the French capital.
There the old merry-go-round was again set spinning —
Trotter, Tollot, the Thornhills, all Holbach's circle, with the
fresh addition, John Wilkes, the outlaw. Weekly Sterne
dined with the new ambassador, Lord Hertford, with his son
Lord Beauchamp, or the diplomatic Lord Tavistock. But
Wilkes was a bad companion — a profligate in life, in word,
in politics, who yet had come to typify the stand for liberty
and the call of generous instinct. The born Jacobin trades
on sentiment, and, long before the name of Jacobinism was
known, Wilkes traded upon Sterne. Tristram, it might be
thought, had consigned his bands and cassock to the Maid
of Languedoc's keeping, yet he still clung to the stage of
his pulpit. Preaching had undone him, he said. He had
vowed to preach no more ; yet, when bidden to preach before
the Embassy, he spared neither his lungs nor his sentiment.
His discourse was that sermon on Hezekiah, which un-
ravelled the double motives of man. It made something of
a stir. Paris still chattered of Tristram and his vagaries ;
but, after two long years, the sensation had grown stale. The
Parisians craved piquant dishes, and a new sauce was on
the table to whet their appetite — David Hume, historian
and philosopher. On the very night of Sterne's pulpit
eloquence both he and the Scotsman dined at the Embassy.
A "prompt French Marquis," mistaking Hume for John
Home of Douglas fame, asked him whether he was the
playwright. cc<No,' said Hume mildly. — ^T ant pis ^ replied
the Marquis. c It is Hume, the historian/ said another.
— c Tant mieuxj said the Marquis." And " Mr Hume, who
is a man of excellent heart, returned thanks for both."
Are not all these things written in the book of the Senti-

FRENCH LEAVE 233

mental Journey ? And then, true to the scepticism which
made an old Edinburgh housewife refuse to carry the
:< atheist " across the marsh until he had said the Lord's
Prayer, Hume assailed Sterne for his adherence to miracle.
u David" the humourist thought, " was disposed to make a
little merry with the parson," and in return the parson was
equally disposed to rally the heretic. " We laughed at one
another and the company laughed with us both." * Thus
Yorick shook his bells at infidelity.

But in these distractions he was ill at ease. His heart
stayed with his daughter at Montauban. He sent her
books, Spectators and Metastasio, begging her to study the
former, and read the latter only as a pastime. He warned
her against friendships with French women ; he was so
jealous of her, he said, that he would be miserable to see
her with the least grain of coquetry in her composition.
She was musical — he sent her a "guittar," while he forbade
her to waste time on drawing ; for that sphere she had
" no genius," though " she could never be made to believe
it." " Remember," he concludes, " to write to me as a
friend — in short, whatever comes into your little head, and
then it will be natural. — If your mother's rheumatism con-
tinues and she chooses to go to Bagneres, tell her not to be
stopped for want of money for my purse shall be as open as
my heart. I have preached at the Ambassador's Chapel —
on Hezekiah — (an odd subject, your mother will say).
There was a concourse of all nations, and religions too. —

I shall leave Paris in a few days 1 am lodged in the same

hotel with Mr T. [Thornhill]. They are good and generous

souls Tell your mother that I hope she will write to me

and that when she does so I may also receive a letter from

1 Cf. Original Letters of the late Reverend Mr Laurence Sterne (1788),
pp. 126-7. This friendly passage of arms has been frequently introduced
into biographies.

234 STERNE

my Lydia. Kiss your mother for me, and believe me your
affectionate — L. Sterne." 1

In money matters his word was his bond ; so long
as he had a shilling in the world, he was to assure them,
ninepence of it should be his wife's and daughter's. Those
ninepences, and more, were regularly sent, and they strained
his resources. Indeed the need for replenishment was one
of the reasons that now urged him to London. On
Thursday, May the twenty-fourth, he quitted Paris with
Tollot and Thornhill. When he had first set out, it was
bruited in the London papers that he was dead, and, like
Sheridan and Lord Brougham, he had enjoyed the satis-
faction of perusing his own obituary. His return proved
similarly a nine days' wonder. By the beginning of June he
installed himself with Tollot at the Thornhills' house in John
Street, and within a week he sat once more to Sir Joshua
for his portrait.2 He could never be out of evidence.

1 Sterne to Lydia, Paris, 15th May 1764. Cf. Original Letters (1788),
vol. ii. p. 75.

2 This is the portrait which Sterne gave to Edward Stanley, who
bequeathed it to James Watman of Ventors, Maidstone. Cf. Professor
Cross's Life^ p. 331.

CHAPTER XV

UP TO THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY (jUNE 1 764 TO
OCTOBER I765)

London was empty, Garrick on the Continent. Save Foley,
there were few to visit, and when the one called on the
other, the other was out : like the two buckets of a well,
in Sterne's simile. There was nothing for the prodigal
but a return to his " wife, the Church." He tried to break
the shock by joining Hall-Stevenson, who was running a
horse at the York races. A brilliant concourse assembled,
including Lord Rockingham ; Tollot and Hewitt posted
down, and Sterne entertained him with hosts of his friends.
Nor were these outings enough for one who could never
sate his thirst for variety. Some woman or other always
tugged at his heart-strings. He sent letters of recommenda-
tion to Foley at Paris for a Miss Tuting — " a lady known
and loved by the whole kingdom." And no sooner had the
profane shepherd peeped at his "few poor sheep in the wilder-
ness " than off he scampered to Scarborough, in the train too
of no less a luminary than Shelburne,1 with whom was Lord
Granby, just appointed Master-General of the Ordnance.
Sterne's health supplied the pretext. Directly he came

1 That Lord Shelburne accompanied him in this expedition is clear from
his letter to Foley (then returned to Paris) of 16th November 1764. Cf.
Letters to his Most Intimate Friends (1775), P- io4- Professor Cross gives
this matter quite accurately in his Life.

235

236 STERNE

back, he told Hall-Stevenson (fresh from Harrogate) that
he had been drinking the waters ever since the races, and
would have benefited more had he not overplayed "the
good fellow " with " my Lord Granby and Co." ; and even
now he would fain have " sacrificed a few days to the God of
Laughter " with him and his jolly set. No sooner was he
ensconced in his " philosophical hut " than he longed again
to be off to Skelton Castle ; and, even in the performance
of duties, which he never shirked, he needed frisks for
incentives. He was at work on the penultimate part of
his Tristram, the volumes of Uncle Toby's courtship. His
" northern vintage," he said, had so gripped his brain, it came
upon him so " like an armed man at nights," that he must
yield for quietness' sake, or " be hag-ridden with the con-
ceit of it all his life long." " I have been miss-ridden this
last week by a couple of romping girls, bien mises et comme il
faut, who .... have rendered my judgment and fancy more
airy than they wanted — These things accord not well with
sermon-making, but 'tis my fool errantry, as Sancho says,
and that's all that can be made of it." A good excuse for
flirtation ! Don Quixote ran in his mind. " I am as
honest," he wrote to Foley, " (as Sancho Panca says), only
not so rich " ; and then he told him that if Mrs Sterne
should want thirty louis more she was to have them, and
he would balance all "with honour" at Christmas.

His parish round, the distant Mrs Sterne on the one
side and the romping misses on the other, such are the
weather-signs of his temperament. " Were it possible," he
once wrote, " to take an inventory of all our sentiments and
feelings — just and unjust — holy and impure — there would
appear as little difference between them as there is between
instinct and reason, — or — wit and madness. The barriers
which separate these — like the real essence of beauties — escape
the piercing eye of metaphysicks and cannot be pointed out

UP TO THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 237

more clearly than geometricians define a straight line which
is said to have length without breadth. Oh, you learned
anatomical aggregates, who pretend to instruct other aggre-
gates ! Be as candid as the sage whom ye pretend to revere
— and tell them that all you know is that you know nothing." 1

Up he came for the London season, scattering requests
for subscriptions to his books. Once more he played fast
and loose with his time, his health, and his feelings. Once
more a spa was prescribed for him — on this emergency, the
waters of Bath. Bath was much to his mind, for it was
gay, and Mrs Vesey was there, whom he admired beyond
measure to the bitter end. He found himself in a bevy
of Irish beauties. There was Mrs Gore, with her then
" fine form and Grecian face," with Mrs Moore, whom
Sheridan was to praise in his " Clio's Protest," and among
the English, the Mrs Ferguson whom he called his "witty
widow," and who archly inquired whether "Tristram Shandy
was married " or not.2 With all these Sterne philandered,
and he got into trouble afterwards for tattling about them.
" Juno or Minerva," he said, were his alternatives of
womanhood ; Mrs Vesey was certainly his Minerva ; per-
haps Mrs Ferguson was the Juno. And so this incurable
Paris went about handing his apples of discord, playing at
romance and calling it love, playing at love and calling it
friendship. There is no end to the mazes of his fancy, and
he always maintained, as in his first love-letter, that to " steal
from the world " was his acme of bliss. This he called the
enthusiastic spirit, for he played at enthusiasm also. He
was the greatest amateur player in the charade of romance
since Boccaccio hymned his Fiammetta and made a fete-

^■^ Cf. Sterne's Letters to his Friends (1775), p. 67.

2 He told her that the reply must be left to her own conscience. Cf.
Professor Cross's Life^ p. 342. There were two Mrs Fergusons. He was to
meet the other (the American Miss Graeme) in the following year.

23 8 STERNE

champ etre of passion. " Had I lived," he wrote, " in days
of yore, when virtue and sentiment bore price, I should
have been the most peerless knight of them all ! Some
down-hearted damsel in distress would ever have been my
object — to wipe away the tears from off the cheek of such
a friendless fair one I would go to Mecca, and for a friend
to the end of the world.1 And again, to another friend :
" If foul fortune should take thy stately palfrey with all its
good and gilded trappings beneath thee, or if while thou
art sleeping by moonlight beneath a tree — it should escape
from thee and find another master ; — or if the miserable
banditti of the world should plunder thee — . . . thou
wouldst find out some distant cell and become a hermit ;
and endeavour to persuade thyself not to regret the separa-
tion from those friends who will ever regret their separation
from thee." 2 These two extracts contain the whole senti-
ment of Sterne. But he was a pert adventurer also. Back
he came in April, reinvigorated, and down he sat in the
Mount Coffee-house to besiege Lord Bute's daughter, the
fair Lady Percy (then at loggerheads with her husband).
His note would stand unrivalled in impudence, had not
its recipient probably regarded it as a mere masquerade,
while its writer fancied himself some gallant of romance.
"There is a strange mechanical effect," writes Yorick,
surveying himself in his glass, " a strange mechanical effect
produced in writing a billet doux within a stone-cast of the
lady who engrosses the heart and soul of an inamorato. —
For this cause (but mostly because I am to dine in this
neighbourhood) have I, Tristram Shandy, come forth from
my lodgings to a Coffee-house, the nearest I can find to my
dear Lady Percy's, and have called for a sheet of gilt paper

1 Cf. Sterne's Letters to his Friends (1775), p. 15.

2 Cf. Original Letters of the late Rev. Mr. Laurence Sterne (1788),
p. 184.

UP TO THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 239

to try the truth of this article of my creed. — Now for it —
Oh, my dear lady, what a dish-clout of a soul thou hast made
of me ! — I think, by the by, this is a little too familiar an
introduction for so unfamiliar a situation as I stand in with
you, where, Heaven knows, I am kept at a distance, and
despair of getting one inch nearer you with all the sobs and
whines I can think of to recommend myself to you. —
Would not any man in his senses run diametrically from
you — and as far as his legs would carry him rather than
thus aimlessly, foolishly and fool-hardily expose himself
afresh, — and afresh where his heart and his reason tells him
he would be sure to come off loser, if not totally undone ? —
Why would you tell me you would be glad to see me ?
Does it give you pleasure to make me more unhappy or
does it add to your triumph, that your eyes and lips have
turned a man into a fool, whom the rest of the town is
courting as a wit. ... I am a fool, the weakest, most
ductile, and most tender fool, that ever woman tried the
weakness of ; — and the most unsettled in my purposes and
restless of recovering my right mind. — It is but an hour
ago that I kneeled down and swore I never would come
near you ; — and, after saying my Lord's Prayer for the sake
of the close, of not being led into temptation — out I sallied like
any Christian hero, ready to take the field against the world,
the flesh and the devil ; not doubting but I should finally
trample them all down under my feet : — And now am I got
so near you — within this vile stone's cast of your house, I
feel myself drawn into a vortex that has turned my brain
upside down ; and though I had purchased a box ticket to

carry me to Miss 's benefit, yet I know very well that,

was a single line directed to me to let me know Lady Percy
would be alone at seven, and suffer me to spend the evening
with her, she would infallibly see everything verified I have
told her. I dine at Mr Cowper's in Wigmore Street in this

24o STERNE

neighbourhood, where I shall stay till seven, in hopes you
purpose to put me to this proof. If I hear nothing by that
time, I shall conclude you are better disposed of, and shall
take a sorry hack and seriously jog on to the play. — Curse
on the word ! I know nothing but sorrow, — except this
one thing, that I love you (perhaps foolishly but) most
sincerely, — L. Sterne." x

After this, what need to bridge over the gap that inter-
cepts the Journey ? Sterne returns to Coxwold ; he
proceeds with Tristram and his homilies ; he re-attends the
York races (in the August of 1765), where he meets a fresh
enchantress, the Philadelphian Miss Graeme;2 he besieges
friends to subscribe for his Sermons — " dog cheap, only half a
crown." His Sutton parsonage burns down ; the frightened
curate, Marmaduke Collier, runs away, and Sterne, befriend-
ing him, laments that the wicked world should breathe a word
to the contrary. He provides diligently for his wife, who
had removed to Vaucluse — the very sound of its name
thrills Sterne with echoes of Petrarch and Laura, though
Laura, he significantly adds, was not Mrs Sterne. Yet two
years later, when she (not Laura) was unwell, he would rush
to her aid, and he grieves lest she should suffer in solitude.
His daughter was ever in his thoughts. She had been pro-
posed for by a French marquis ; and Sterne put him off
with characteristic humour — by balancing sentiment against
fortune and exacting an impossible dowry.

And in October he turns his face towards London,
his "Jerusalem" — blessed with the milk and honey of

1 Cf Mrs Medalle's edition of her father's letters, vol. iii. p. 128.
Professor Cross (p. 343) has been the first to allot this letter to its real
date. Thackeray supposed it to belong to the spring of two years later, when
Sterne was engaged with Eliza Draper, but the Professor's industry has made
certain that Thackeray was wrong. The singer whose benefit he speaks of
attending, was Miss Wilford at Covent Garden.

2 Cf Professor Cross's Lifey p. 365.

UP TO THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 241

sentiment and applause. Again, however, the writing
stood on the wall. He fell very ill ; there was nothing
for it but an Italian journey. Already even his decadence
had decayed, and though he was to write the easiest of
his compositions in the perfection of his style, the man
had visibly dwindled. His romantic escapades had been
mainly nominal, but his frail being had been torn to
tatters. Disease and delusion never forsook him. His
dear friend Mrs Meadows was entreated to help him at
Coxwold, where they would " sit in the shade while in the
evening the fairest of all the milk-maids " who passed by his
gate should weave a garland for her. " This plaguy cough
of mine seems to gain ground in spight of me — but while
I have strength to run away from it I will — I have been
wrestling with it for this twenty years past — and what with
laughter and good spirits have prevented its giving me a
fall — But my antagonist presses closer than ever upon me —
and I have nothing left on my side but another journey
abroad. — a-propos — are you for a scamper of that sort ? If
not, parhaps you will accompany me as far as Dover that
we may laugh together on the beach, to put Neptune in a
good humour before I embark — God bless you .... and
believe me ever yours."

Fifty-two years had not lessened his vanity, and before
he started for a brief sojourn in Paris he told Foley how
" terrible " a thing it was to be in Paris " without a periwig
on a man's head," while he begged him to order " une
peruque — a bourse, au mieux — c'est a dire — une la plus
extraordinaire — la plus jolie — la plus gentille." He had
the honour, he added, to be a great critic, nor least fastidious
in his fancy of perukes. Once he had been a tatterde-
malion, but in Paris, and at his age, he must suffer to be
beautiful.

At nine on the morning of the tenth of October

16

242 STERNE

1765 he stood on the Calais packet.1 He anticipated
pleasure mixed with reflection, " the vintage when all nature
is joyous/' and philosophical saunters "on the other side
of the Alps." 2 And to other vintages he looked forward
also. Once, it will be recalled, he had told Mrs Vesey that
" the heart is above the little inconveniences of its prison-
house and will one day escape from them all." That
scapegrace of a " heart " fared forth on the last wanderings
which culminated in Eliza Draper. Not yet had he en-
countered her, though the refrain of her name slipped into
the pages of the Sentimental Journey afterwards. But Eliza's
essence perfumes them, and when she came she was merely
an embodiment of his habit, and the reflection of his
caprice.

1 The date is indicated by an autograph letter (in the possession of
Mr Robson) from Sterne to Becket about his Sermons. It is dated
"october 19 1765," and Sterne says that he arrived, much the better, "five
days ago." This letter is interesting otherwise ; as he tells the publisher of
his Sermons, that he had written a preface for them, but now thought they
had better go forth without an " apology" : " let them speak for themselves."

2 Sterne to David Garrick, 16th March 1765. Cf. Mrs Medalle's Letters
of Sterne (1775), vol. ii. p. 109.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY (FRANCE AND ITALY I
OCTOBER I765 TO MAY 1 766)

He had told Hall-Stevenson that pleasure and profit would
be combined, that he would " spring game " in and by his
sentimental journey. Its imperfect record remains partly in
the work, partly in his impromptu letters. These impres-
sions must be fused together. The book is all filigree ; the
letters give passing glimpses of those Italian scenes which,
had he lived, Sterne intended to sketch in literary form.
His Sentimental Journey appeared on 27th February 1768,
not a month before he died, in two volumes, small in size,
but not in import. They are dissolving views : —

Calais — The bottle of Burgundy that mellowed Sterne
into universal peace, even with the exacting Bourbons — The
after-sense that he was not mechanical and could confound
" the most physical prkieuse in France " — The after-mood
that he " had had an affair with the moon in which there
was neither sin nor shame " — The sad entry of the meek
Franciscan monk with his horn snuff-box, presented to the
" epicure in charity " 1 who had not given him alms, but who
was to shed tears on the nettles by his grave. — Who knows

1 This phrase occurs in one of his letters.
243

244 STERNE

them not ? And who knows not also the prelude of the
post-chaise, that Desobligeant in which Sterne penned his
preface while Monsieur Dessein was out at prayers ? It was
well for Dessein that he came back, for his guest's book
made his fortune, and to this day Sterne's desk and book
are visible.

ii

And then the duet at the Rimise door of Yorick and
the mysterious lady, their counter-glances and pauses —
Her countenance, of which Sterne said ere he had seen it,
"When the heart flies out before the understanding, it
saves the judgment a world of pain. . . . Good God !
How a man might lead such a creature as this round the
world with him ! " — And after he had seen it (and read
Eliza's into it) : "It was a face of about six and twenty —
of a clear transparent brown, simply set off without rouge
or powder. — It was not critically handsome, but there was
that in it, which in the frame of mind I was in, attached
me much more to it — it was interesting ; 1 fancied it wore
a widowed look and in that state of its declension which
had passed the two first paroxysms of sorrow and was quietly
beginning to reconcile itself to its loss — but a thousand
other distresses might have traced the same lines ; I wished
to know what they had been — and was ready to enquire,
(had the same bon ton of conversation permitted, as in the
days of Esdras) — c What aileth thee ? and why art thou
disquieted ? And why is thy understanding troubled ? ' "
— Their silent paces before the coach-house, while she walked
musing on one side — their silent entry together into it and
the standing carriage, when Monsieur Dessein shut the
door — Sterne's reflection that grave people hate love for
the name's sake, selfish people for their own, and hypocrites
for heaven's, and the lady's blushing declaration : "You

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 245

have been making love to me all this while." How finely-
all this is shadowed ! There is something inimitable in
the visionary visitants and their dumb show of feeling.
Were Sterne in a desert, he once exclaimed, he would find
out wherewith in it to call forth his affections, he would
fasten them upon some sad myrtle, or seek some melancholy
cyprus, he would court their shade, and greet them kindly
for their protection. He would cut his name upon them,
and swear they were the loveliest trees throughout the
desert ; and if their leaves withered he would teach them to
mourn, and when they rejoiced he would rejoice along
with them. He was not in a desert : he was in a post-
chaise, and the sad myrtle was the Marquise de Lamberti,
now on her way from Brussels to Paris.

in

Montreuil and Janatone revisited : the lovely Janatone,
who afterwards became a devoted wife and was introduced
in England by Sterne to his Eliza1 — The entrance and
engagement of La Fleur the drummer-boy, ushered in by
Janatone's father : La Fleur, who " had set out early in life
as gallantly as most Frenchmen do that serve for a few years ;
at the end of which, having satisfied the sentiment and
found, moreover, that the honour of beating the drum was
likely to be its own reward .... he retired h ses terres, and
lived comme il plaisoit a Dieu — that is to say, upon nothing."
And then the reflection : " So, quoth Wisdome, you have
hired a drummer to attend you in this tour of yours through

1 Cf. an autograph letter from Mrs Eliza Draper to her friend Mrs James,
of 15th April 1772, Add. MSS. 34,527, ff. 47-70 (alluded to by Professor
Cross in his Life^ p. 499): "The 'lovely Janatone' died 3 years ago, after
surviving her husband about a week, and her friend 12 months. She
calls her ' our smart, pretty French woman.' " The Professor does not seem
to have connected this name with the Montreuil beauty's, but the identity
seems a fair inference.

246 STERNE

France and Italy ! 'Psha ! said I, and do not one half of
our gentry go with a humdrum compagnon de voyage and have
a pauper and the devil and all to pay besides ? . . . . But
you can do something else, La Fleur ? said I. — Ok, quoui —
I can make spatterdashes, and play a little upon the fiddle. —
Bravo ! said Wisdome. — Why, I play the bass myself, said L
— We shall do very well. . . . He had all the dispositions
in the world. — It is enough for heaven ! said I, interrupting
him — and ought to be enough for me. So supper coming
in, and having a frisky English spaniel on one side of my
chair, and a French valet with as much hilarity in his
countenance as ever nature painted in one, on the other — I
was satisfied to my heart's content with my empire — and if
monarchs knew what they would be at, they might be as
satisfied as I was." — And then the throng of beggars in the
hotel yard, as they drive away — The "poor tattered soul with-
out a shirt," who " instantly withdrew his claim by retiring
two steps out of the circle, and making a disqualifying bow
on his part. Had the whole parterre called out place aux
dames, with one voice, it would not have conveyed the senti-
ment of deference for the sex with half the effect."

IV

The Dead Ass and the Postillion. — The Remise lady again,
at Amiens — The love-letter furbished from La Fleur's
pocket-book — And at length, Paris, and that famous parley
with the demure grisette who handed her wrist for Sterne
to experiment on : —

" Would to Heaven, my dear Eugenius, thou hadst
passed by, and beheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my
lack-a-day-sickal manner, counting the throbs of it, one by
one, with as much true devotion as if I had been watching
the critical ebb or flow of her fever — . . . Trust me,
Eugenius, I should have said, there are worse occupations

f

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 247

in the world than feeling a woman's pulse. — But a Grisset's !
thou wouldst have said — and in an open shop, Yorick ! — so
much the better, for when my views are practical, Eugenius,
I care not if all the world saw me feel it."

All the world had seen Kitty at the York mercer's.
— Sterne was never shamefaced, nor at this juncture was
the invading husband : — " Monsieur is so good, quoth she,
as he passed by us, as to give himself the trouble of feeling
my pulse. — The husband took off his hat, and making me a
bow, said I did him too much honour — and having said that,
he put on his hat and walked out." — And last, the minute
by-play with the gloves. " She begged I would try a single
pair, which seemed to be the least. — She held it open — my
hand slipped into it at once — It will not do, said I, shaking
my head a little — No, said she, doing the same thing. . . .
Do you think, my dear Sir, said she, mistaking my embar-
rassment, that I could ask a sous too much of a stranger —
and of a stranger whose politeness, more than his want of
gloves, has done me the honour to lay himself at my mercy ?
AT en croyez capable ? Faith ! not I, said I ; and if you were,
you are welcome — So counting the money into her hand,
and with a lower bow than one generally makes to a shop-
keeper's wife, I went out, and her lad with the parcel followed
me." — What artful artlessness ! What trifles ! Yet how
they haunt the memory !

The " Grissett " is but a link in the slender chain of
Sterne's introduction to Madame de Rambouillet, the great
lady of Paris, and his way of treating his adventures is like
his reflection on the contrast between the sobriety of
English and the extravagance of French advertisement : —
. tc What a difference ! JTis like time to eternity." — La Fleur
enters with the bouquet which his sweetheart had given
to a footman, the footman to a sempstress, and the semp-
stress to a fiddler — The bouquet enveloped in the sheets of

248 STERNE

Sterne's fragment of the Notary. — The fanciful joins hands
with the real, and all the figures are traceries.

What have these people of his brain to do with his Paris
companions — with Wilkes and Foote, now prominent ; with
the magnificent John Crawfurd, and the genial Earl of
Upper Ossory ; with quiet Lord William Gordon, or the
starched Horace Walpole, always shivering at the impalpable,
though he condescended to the Sentimental Journey ? These
men of taste were all satellites revolving round the blind,
unquenchable Madame du Deffand, who would have passed
that " Case of Delicacy " which Crawfurd told Sterne, and
which closes the Sentimental Journey with offence.

Off goes the peruke ; on come the slippers. Away the
roamer flies to Lyons, along " the Bourbonnois, the sweetest
part of France," where he spends "a joyous week," and meets
Home Tooke, the poulterer's son and unfrocked parson,
now en route for Voltaire. Motley are the gipsy encamp-
ments that stud the common of the eighteenth century !

VI

Sterne is in the mountains, ascending Tarare, dismayed
by storms. It is not Maria, re-encountered by the wayside
forlorn and tuneful, but the less-known Peasant's Supper,
and his Grace that here enchant us. In cottages Sterne felt
at home, and here some likeness may be seen to Greuze.
The painter loved the half -toned sentiment that lives in
Sterne ; the set damsels with broken pitchers, and yet the
simple village life. Might not the following be one of his
pictures ? certainly it is one of the author's best : —

" It was a little farm - house, surrounded with about
twenty acres of vineyard, about as much corn — and close to
the house, on one side, was a potagerie of an acre and a half

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 249

full of everything which could make plenty in a French
peasant's house — and on the other side was a little wood
which furnished wherewithal to dress it. ... I walked
directly into the house. The family consisted of an old
grey-headed man and his wife, with five or six sons and
sons-in-law, and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy
out of them. They were all sitting down together to their
lentil-soup ; a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the
table ; and a flagon of wine at each end of it promised joy
through the stages of the repast — 'twas a feast of love. The
old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful cordiality
would have me sit down at the table : my heart was set
down the moment I entered the room ; so I sat down at once
like a son of the family ; and to invest myself in the character
as speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old man's
knife, and taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty hunch. . . .
Was it this, or tell me, Nature, what else it was that made
this morsel so sweet — and to what magick I owed it, that the
draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it, that
they remain upon my palate to this hour ? If the supper was
to my taste — the Grace which followed it was much more so.
" When supper was over, the old man gave a knock upon
the table with the haft of his knife, to bid them all prepare
for the dance. The moment the signal was given, the
women and girls ran together into a back apartment to tye
up their hair — and the young men to the door to wash
their faces, and change their sabots : and in three minutes
every soul was ready upon a little esplanade before the
house to begin — The old man and his wife came out last,
and placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sopha of
turf by the door. The old man had some fifty years ago
been no mean performer upon the vielle — and, at the age he
was then of, touched it well enough for the purpose. His
wife sung now and then a little to the tune — then intermitted

250 STERNE

— and joined her old man again, as their children and grand-
children danced before them. It was not till the middle
of the second dance, when, from some pauses in the move-
ment wherein they all seemed to look up, I fancied I could
distinguish an elevation of spirit different from that which
is the cause or the effect of simple jollity. — In a word, I
thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance — but as I
had never seen her so engaged, I should have looked upon
it now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is
eternally misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as
the dance ended, said, that this was their constant way :
and that all his life long, he had made it a rule, after supper
was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice ;
believing, he said, that a cheerful and contented mind was
the best sort of thanks to Heaven that an illiterate peasant

could pay. Or a learned prelate either, said I."

How strong and simple this is ! What a far cry, from
mere city sentiment ! It is the country side of him, the
better part that sweetened rustic pleasures, the strain that
justifies his own motive for printing the Sentimental Journey
— that it was to further the good-will of man and the love
of nature. Here he transcends Goldsmith on his own
ground. It is well for us that Sterne loitered at Tarare.

VII

Pont Beauvoisin : a deluge of cold rain keeps him
discontented, nor did nature's majesty ever fit him.
Gradually he goes down to Modane, and on to Turin,
where he is presented to the king, and f£ted everywhere :
" No English here ! " he cries in triumph.1 And here he
meets the future comrade of his voyage, Sir James
Macdonald, the Highland youth who was to die at Rome.
His mother was daughter of the Earl of Eglinton, the
1 Letter to Penchaud, of 15th November 1765.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 251

travelling student whom Walpole found sedate. Had
Sterne been only a poseur, this piece of wisdom would
hardly have struck up a friendship at first sight ; for he
was unaffected, as were most of those whom Walpole dis-
approved. Macdonald, when Sterne fell in with him, was
in the leading-strings of a Mr Ogilby (or Ogilvie) — per-
chance the solemn tutor who seven years later married the
future Duchess of Leinster, the aunt of Charles James Fox.
What an exchange was Yorick who always managed to
make friends with the young ! And so, together young
Dignity and ageing Impudence proceed to Milan, the Italian
Paris. Martini's concerts were the rage. Enter Sterne,
eager for the music : exit at the same moment the Marchesa
Fagniani, George Selwyn's friend. They nearly collide.
Each stands dodging the other, Sterne, with his peering gaze,
the beauty with that boldness transmitted to her daughter,
the future Marchioness of Hertford. " Life," he wrote, " is
too short to be long about the forms of it. ... I made
six efforts to let you go out, or we should have run our
heads together." She had made the same number to allow
Sterne to come in. Instead of striking each other in this
way, they struck each other in another, and a tete-a-tete
ensued. Sterne had already met Selwyn during his first
visit to Paris ; he was to meet him again in London. Did
he ever, it may be wondered, relate this incident to the cynic
who loved little save executions and the Fagnianis ? l

VIII

On, on to Florence, " in weather delicious as a kindly
April," by Parma, Piacenza, and Bologna, where, strange to
say, Sterne never mentions the Caracci : three snowy days

1 Professor Cross thinks that Sterne did not meet Selwyn till after his
return from his journey, but in his previous journey we find Selwyn's name
in Sterne's letters.

252

STERNE

on the Apennines had proved a sad transition. Three
days of the Tuscan capital suffice.1 Townshend was there,
the spendthrift Chancellor ; and Cowper, an excursionist
sentimental as Sterne ; and, as a corrective, the model Duke
of Portland, who was to be the figure-head of the Whig
party. Sterne dines with Townshend and Cowper ; he
shares the macaroni, perhaps the music, of Horace Mann.
Was Walpole's friend to Tristram's taste ? Though Sterne
was never formal,2 he somehow admires the Venus of Medici's
town-bred elegance. It did not attract Smollett, with whom
most of the world agrees ; and though Smollett was then in
England, Sterne banters his contempt.

And then Rome, too great for Sterne, though he had
sighed to be " introduced to all the saints in the Pantheon."
The classical appealed to him, not the colossal ; but the Italians
must have found his enthusiasm mo I to simpatico. Little
lingers of the man of feeling in the city of empire but stray
hints of sketches, and the old girding at Smelfungus, who
found nothing better to say of the Pantheon than that it
was a huge cock-pit. Wherever he went Smollett grumbled.
He would retail his grievances to the world ; Sterne retorts
that he had better tell them to his doctor.

Naples, the home of sunshine and forgetfulness — in
some respects the feminine of Rome. — The city of
languor agreed with Sterne's constitution ; and there,
after a fortnight, a young Errington and a Mr Symonds
join his party of carnival. Vesuvius erupts, and so does
Tristram. " Nothing," he writes, " but Operas, Punchi-

1 During this half-week, however, the portrait was taken which illustrates
these pages, and another (by Patch) referred to at the close of this chapter.

2 Sterne hated formality. Writing to his friend Sir George Macartney,
towards the close of 1767, "My dear friend," he says, "for though you are
His Excellency and I still Parson Yorick — I still must call you so — and were
you to be next Emperor of Russia I could not write to you or speak to you on
any other relation."

#^.

'^IB

I1B|

Jj|

?J#

kSrH

2- "^:--

||gg

W&L ■ ' ' ''^ MBaE ''MpK"™~y*WB

■^ulli&rlfflr^

r fflMwff-^HHBHwBI

jj^^^^Qj^

111

g^lP^^BB^w^Hsffi^s^B

\w$M.

~T^"BBPSfi

^||J|

l^^l^r L&2

jM^jteja^r ^s^'" v<*=£^\'"v ' 'ft

<=>Z^yt^e^z^py <^#6

'<&n&0'' n^Zey-ruy

LAURENCE STI

From the old Florentine engra

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 253

nelloes and Masquerades," — the climate "heavenly," — "a
new principle of health reviving " which he had not felt
for years. The Princess Francavilla receives the strangers,
— mummers and junketers all. And, "Haec est Vita dis-
solutorum." 1 Thus passed their hours till All Fools' day
proclaimed it time to depart. Sterne felt refreshed, and it was
on this second Roman visit that Nollekens modelled his bust.
Ever on the look-out for contributions towards the great ex-
penses of his journey, Sterne hoped to secure a pupil. And
here Errington who was off to Venice, comes into play.
But all fell through. Suddenly Macdonald caught the ague,
and Sterne was seized with home-sickness for his daughter
and his wife. Already from Naples he had written a
loving letter to Lydia, who was quitting Tours. He
desired his debts to be discharged, and "then, my Lydia,
if I live, the produce of my pen shall be yours : — If fate
reserves me not that, the Humane and Good (part for thy
father's sake, part for thy own) will never abandon thee." 2
Her mother, too, had been ailing. If she would only return
with him to Coxwold, he would render their summers at Cox-
wold, their winters at York, as agreeable as he could. He
sends them trifles purchased on his way ; he is quite marital.
At Rome he stayed till April ended. But he could
never resist the spring. His cap and bells were on him.
He felt " unaccountably well and most unaccountably non-
sensical." So he rushed away once more. Macdonald's
plight was not yet serious, nor can Sterne be charged with
abandoning him. His mother came to nurse the invalid,
but in July he expired.

1 So Sterne was to tell his Toulouse physician Dr Jamme. For this letter,
now in New York, cf. Professor Cross's Life, pp. 381, 528.

2 Sterne to Lydia, Naples, 3rd February 1766. On 8th February he writes
to Foley that his wife informed him of her uneasiness respecting money, and
he begs him to relieve her. A hundred louis and a few ducats had been all
so far that he had drawn for himself.

254 STERNE

IX

Sterne is off to hunt for his family — he knows not
where they hide — Countless journeyings and doublings, a
tortuous chase through half a dozen towns, till at length,
in Franche-Comte he " runs them to earth " — His wife,
" very cordial," but averse to England — " Poor woman,
she begs to stay another year or so " — His Lydia, " greatly
improved in everything I wished her." Sterne felt the
elixir of life within him — he would write for years, he told
Hall-Stevenson, and drop with the pen in his fingers — His
wife thought otherwise, and when they parted it was with
" melancholy " that she bade adieu. He too felt sad, but
Yorick's sorrows never lasted.

So back to Dijon and the vine-blossom. Other blossoms
there were besides. A friend of his, "the Countess de

M " [can this be Matignon ?], " invites him to her

chateau, " with a dozen of very handsome, agreable ladies.
Her ladyship has the best of hearts, a valuable present not
given to everyone." The scene is a fete-champ etre ; the
weather, the "most celestial in that delicious part of the
world " ; the background, mountains that grew the best of
inspiring Burgundies, — " for her ladyship is not stingy with
her wine." All day long " they lie and chat upon the grass."
The week flies by alfresco, a French Heptameron.

From romance to prose. He had promised Hall-
Stevenson to toast King George's birthday. Home he
hurries — the ninth volume of Tristram in his hand, the
Sentimental Journey in his head. He tarried but three
days at Paris, and there Galiani, the Neapolitan envoy,
found Yorick wearisome.1

1 Cf. Professor Cross's Life, p. 384.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 255

Italy and Burgundian juices fermented in his brain, and
yet he yearned for England. By June the first he landed.
Not two years more of his life remained, but they were
pregnant with results. At the beginning of the next year he
was to meet Eliza Draper ; early in the following, to publish
the work which has most renowned him. After his death,
Hall-Stevenson tried to continue the Journey from notes
entrusted to his keeping. Here and there amidst the
scrabble a scrap half seems to bear the stamp of Sterne, such
as this address to Nature on the precariousness of life : —

" With thy help, the life allotted to this weak, this tender
fabric shall be rational and just. . . . Instruct me to
participate another's woes to sympathize at distress. . . .
Reflect, wretch, on the .... instability of life itself : Calcu-
late, caitiff, the days thou hast to live — some ten years or
less : — Allot the portion thou now spendest for that period
and give .... to the truly needy. Could my prayers
prevail with zeal and reason join, misery would be banished
from earth, and every month be a vintage for the poor."1

But never in his lightest vein had he quite dismissed
the spectre that hid in ambush. During his brief stay at
Florence, Patch, an English artist, had drawn and published
a half-caricature, which Walpole treasured. Sterne, startled
and haggard, faces the grim intruder, while underneath
appears the invocation from Tristram which summoned
his spirits to drive away the skeleton.2 Even in his wildest
moments he cared with tenderness for his daughter, and
with concern for his wife. He hoped to leave no arrears
before the last debt payable was settled.

1 Cfi Yoric&s Sentimental Journey, to which is prefixed Some Account of
the Life of Mr Sterne, by Eugenius (1774), p. 186.

2 The writer has seen a copy of this rare print, indorsed with Walpole's
writing.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL (ELIZA DRAPER I JANUARY 1 767
TO JANUARY I 768)

" Territory of Anjengo, what art thou ? But thou art the
spot where Eliza first drew breath." So rhapsodised the
blatant x Raynal, who was to step into Sterne's shoes as Mrs
Draper's eulogist. Through her association with Yorick,
heightened afterwards by an Indian elopement, Eliza Draper
became a romantic heroine. Officers enshrined her dwelling-
places, and her name still lingers in Anglo-Indian story.
She affords one more instance of the glamour reflected
on women by men of genius. Would Laura ever have
been heard of except for Petrarch ; or Fiammetta except for
Boccaccio ; or Sacharissa except for Waller ; or Vanessa
except for Swift ; or Lady Hamilton save for Nelson and
Romney ? Yet most of these were far stronger personalities
than Eliza. As portrayed in her own letters,2 she was little
more than an expansive and hysterical girl, condemned to
an ill-assorted marriage and eager to surmount fate by court-
ing notice. She avows herself a "woman of sentiment"
with a "muse-like apprehension," while she laments the

1 So Gibbon thought him.

2 Cf. especially Eliza Draper to Mrs James, Bombay, 15th April 1772,
Add. MSS. 34,527, ff. 47-70 ; and the letter written on the eve of her elopement
to her husband, in January 1773, and printed in the Times of India (Over-
land issue), 3rd March 1894.

256

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 257

drawbacks of her superficial training.1 A blue-stocking
bacchante of overwrought nerves, she thrust herself forward,
and she dealt in superlatives.

Born in 1744 at Anjengo on the Malabar coast, she was
the daughter of Mr Whitehill (a writer in the East India
Company's service) by his marriage with May Sclater, the
scion of an old and esteemed Gloucestershire family. After
a boarding-school in England, she returned to India as a
girl of thirteen, only to be married in the next year to
Daniel Draper, another of the Company's officials, and
some twenty years her senior. No Hindu sacrifice to a
Brahmin could have been worse than this assignment of
a young English girl of fourteen to a cross-grained and
phlegmatic husband old enough to be her father.

From this union sprang two children, a boy and a girl ;
and in 1765 Daniel Draper accompanied his wife to Eng-
land for the purpose of putting them to school. He was
a man of more industry than talent, and his plodding
nature ill suited the sensitive and uncontrolled temperament
of his child-wife ; nor, if her allegations and native rumour
are true, was he without reproach in private. She found
herself neglected and, of course, misunderstood. The wish
to assert her individuality combined with her yearning for
recognition and sympathy. Full of her wrongs, she dabbled
in women's rights long before Mary Wollstonecraft had
christened the cause.2 Her " sensibility " craved for some

1 She calls it the " Birthright" of girls well-born. Those "destined for India,"
she says, " are less indebted for education than any in the world .... most
are extremely frivolous and ignorant, how can they be other ? They are only
taught the importance of getting an establishment of a lucrative kind as soon
as possible. Tolerable application, easy manner, some taste in adjusting
ornaments, some skill in dancing a minuet and singing an air are the
Summum Bonum of perfection here." Cf. the remarkable and lengthy letter
from Mrs Draper to Mrs James, Add. MSS. 34,527, ff. 47-70.

2 " Nothing," wrote Eliza Draper, "but the frivolous manners inculcated by
our frivolous education, prevents our capacity from disputing the Empire of

17

258 STERNE

supporting and caressing hand, for an admirer, if possible illus-
trious, who might prove her friend and guardian. Boswell
was not more bent on annexing heroes than she on attaching
herself to a mentor. She was ready-made for the sentiment
which Sterne had set going ; and Sterne, if he resembled his
Uncle Toby in nothing else, resembled him in this, that he
" eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take
shelter under him." At least so he did now in Bond Street.
Sterne first met her in the early January of 1767, at the
Gerrard Street house of Commodore James and his wife
Anne, who had lately become intimates. They were affluent
and amiable ; but they did not move in the circles where his
wit usually shone, and they looked up to him not only as a
man of fame, but as a sprig of fashion, who was now hand
in glove with the Duke of York. Their connections —
Newnhams and the like : those Newnhams who were to
furnish the Prince of Wales's alderman-champion in Parlia-
ment— lay cityward, and when Sterne procured tickets for
Madam Corneilly's assemblies at Carlisle House, Mrs James
was enchanted. Softer traits, too, fastened their regard.
Sterne found a likeness in their little daughter to his
darling Lydia. He shared Mrs James's artistic tastes ; he
unbosomed himself of his woes ; he lived on pity, and his
plight now seemed pitiable indeed. If what Eliza after-
wards heard from independent witnesses holds good — and
Sterne confirmed it — his violent wife had declined on drink,
and was now even seeking to estrange his daughter.1 He

Science, Wit, and Reason with those masculine Rulers, and that they do
possess it is rather owing to their usurped authority as legislators than to any
superiority from the point of natural advantages, those of strength and
courage excepted."

1 Cf. Mrs Draper's letters to Mrs James of the 15th April 1772, Add.
MSS. 34,527, ff- 47-7o :—

" The widow, I was assured, was occasionally a drinker, a swearer ....
though in point of understanding and finished address supposed to be
inferior to no Woman in Europe." In another part, however, of the same

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 259

figured himself as an exile, another Ovid, amid barbarians
ignorant of his griefs and language. If the Commodore
welcomed the genius, his wife pitied the martyr. Her
friendship with Sterne was close — so close that, had not
Eliza intervened, it is possible that she might have taken
her place. But Mrs James was Eliza's confidante ; she felt
for the delicate girl who pined like a fading lily, and was
fast resolving to prolong her absence from a climate and
husband alike repugnant. While the Commodore dozed
over pamphlets, she and Eliza would trill their songs and
mingle their tears — a dangerous atmosphere, Sterne's very
own. No sooner had he breathed it than the mischief
was done. Eliza was a sweet, injured Indian. He would
be her teacher, monitor, and defender. He styled himself her
" Bramin " ; she should be his "Bramine." He told her that
she and his Lydia were the true children of his heart. He
exhorted her to " lean her whole weight " upon him and she
would not regret it. He assured her that the motives of
his zeal could not be misread, even by her husband. He
trained her mind, he aided her accomplishments, and especi-
ally he loved to hear her sing a ditty with the refrain of " I'm
lost, I'm lost."1 He flattered and encouraged her corre-
spondence by asking whence she derived her art of writing
" so sweetly," and by jesting that, if his fortunes dwindled,
he would print her letters as the " Finished Essays of an Un-
fortunate Young Indian Lady." He displayed himself in his
favourite blend of father, guardian, and platonic admirer. He
told her that he would be more a friend to her than she was
to herself ; he adopted her into the family of his feelings. In
every way he sought to steal into her heart, by extolling its

communication she says that Lydia had written in a letter, which Eliza
deplores, that "her father sometimes misrepresented her mother in order to
justify his neglect of her" ; but "is this daughterly?" she adds.

1 Cf. Letters from Yorick to Eliza (1775), p. 88. And for his other state-
ments cf. ibid, passim.

260 STERNE

virtues and suggesting that only a sentimental breast could
interpret hers. But all this he did spontaneously, with an
actor's feeling. The stage of his adoration was as natural to
him as the words of his part. Still, it was an old, old story.
He had done the same before ; had he lived, he would have
done the same again. And if it has been objected that in his
Journal he repeats the words of his earliest love-letters, it
has been forgotten that not only there, but in his corre-
spondence with Eliza, he repeats the actions also. The play
of his sentiment had habitual phases, which he could not
help re-enacting, because they proceeded from the fanciful
phantoms to which he accommodated the real women whom
he met. He learned them from no prompt-book ; they came
unbidden, and he knew no other process.

In his letters to Eliza, Sterne dwells on the features
which most drew him towards his heroine. No doubt, he
identified her with the " Cordelia " of his dreams. She was
not beautiful ; but the pale oval of her face — the most " per-
fect," he said, that he ever saw — and the soulfulness of her
eyes made amends. A simplicity there was about her bear-
ing, that made him call her " Simplicia," and, above all, she
was interesting ; she vibrated to his touch — in that her chief
charm resided. Sterne liked her least in her gala-trappings,
and he has contrasted the two aspects as shown in a portrait
which he drew of her, and in another limned by their
mutual friend. He courted the graces of her mind : — " I
have just returned from our dear Mrs James's, where I
have been talking of thee for three hours. — She has got
your picture, and likes it. . . . Some other judges agree
that mine is the better, and expressive of a sweet character,
but what is that to the original ! Yet I acknowledge that
hers is a picture for the world, and mine is calculated only
to please a very sincere friend, or sentimental philosopher ;
in the one you are dressed in smiles and with all the advan-

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 261

tages of silks, pearls and ermine ; — in the other, simple as
a vestal — appearing the good girl Nature made you ; which
to me conveys an idea of more unaffected sweetness than
Mrs Draper habited for conquest in a birthday suit, with
her countenance animated and her dimples visible. If 1
remember right, Eliza, you endeavoured to collect every
charm of your person into your face with more than common
care the day you sat for Mrs James. — Your colour, too,
brightened ; and your eyes shone with more than usual
brilliancy. I then requested you to come simple and
unadorned when you sat for me — knowing (as I see with
unprejudiced eyes) that you could receive no addition from
the silk-worm's aid or jeweller's polish. Let me now tell
you a truth, which I believe I have uttered before. — When
I first saw you, I beheld you as an object of compassion,
and as a very plain woman. The mode of your dress (tho'
fashionable) disfigured you — but nothing now could render
you such, but the being solicitous to make yourself admired as
a handsome one — you are not handsome, Eliza, nor is yours
a face that will please the tenth part of your beholders, — but
you are something more ; for I scruple not to tell you, I
never saw so intelligent, so animated, so good a counten-
ance ; nor was there, (nor ever will be) that man of sense,
tenderness, and feeling, in your company three hours, that
was not (or will not be) your admirer, or would not be your
friend, in consequence of it ; that is if you assume no
character foreign to your own, but appear the artless being
Nature designed you for. A something in your eyes, and
voice, you possess in a degree more persuasive than any
woman I ever saw, read, or heard of. But it is that
bewitching sort of nameless excellence that men of nice
sensibility alone can be touched with."1

1 Cf. Letters from Yorick to Eliza (1775), PP- 60-3. Two lines of this
passage have evidently been misprinted, and the text is here corrected.

V

262 STERNE

Sterne's first approach repeated his first approach to
Kitty. He sent her his sermons, which, he said, came
" hot from the heart." His Tristram, which " came from
the head," accompanied them. He knew not why, he
added, but he was "half in love," and ought to be wholly
so, for he never valued or saw more good qualities to
value, or thought more of one of her sex than of Eliza.
— " So, adieu."

And his next letter is like unto it. She suffered ; he
could not rest till he knew how she was though he would
call at half-past twelve : — " May thy dear face smile as thou
risest, like the sun of this morning." She had been ill ;
he was alarmed, but a friend might claim the privilege of a
physician. He had flattery to prescribe, for here it is that he
brings in the " good old Lord Bathurst, " and recalls his first
introduction to him. Seven years had elapsed, yet Eliza
now absorbed Sterne's converse with the sprightly patron of
the Augustan age, who at eighty-five had " all the wit and
promptness of the man of thirty, a disposition to be pleased,
and a power to please others beyond whatever I knew."
Nestor had blossomed into the " man of feeling." A most
sentimental afternoon till nine o'clock had they passed.
Thrice did they toast " the Star that conducted and enlivened
the discourse." Was her adorer cheered ? Not in the
least, it was not his way : — " Best of all girls, the sufferings
I have sustained the whole night on account of thine, Eliza,
are beyond my power of words. . . . Thou hast been bowed
down, my child, with every burden that sorrow of heart and
pain of body can inflict upon a poor being." But she
must "hope everything," and she would yet enjoy a "spring
of youth and cheerfulness." One wonders if Elizabeth's
burdens ever afflicted Sterne like Eliza's. Distance lent no
enchantment to Mrs Sterne.

Matters were marching indeed ! He sent his " Bramine "

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 263

an old epitaph of his own, adapted not to her case but to
his dread of its contingencies : —

" Columns, and labour'd urns but vainly show
An idle scene of decorated woe ;
The sweet companion, and the friend sincere
Need no mechanic help to force the tear.

In heartfelt numbers, never meant to shine,
'Twill flow eternal o'er a hearse like thine ;
'Twill flow, whilst gentle goodness has one friend,
Or kindred tempers have a tear to lend."

As for Eliza, the " Bramin's " portrait hung over her
writing-desk, an oracle for every doubt and difficulty. And
even ere " the roses " returned to her cheek, her husband,
" if he is the good-feeling man I wish him," would kiss her
" pale, poor dejected face " with more transport than in
the best bloom of her beauty. If not, Sterne pitied
him, and so, doubtless, did Eliza.

It was a cruel fate. Daniel's fiat had gone forth, and she
must be dragged to his Indian den. The drooping victim
was to sail in April on the long voyage that would remove
her presence, but not her heart. And yet acquaintances
there were, base enough, wrote Sterne, to insinuate evil
against her befriender. He was half beside himself, and
told one of the few untruths traceable in his career. He
warned her against the tattlers. He said that Mrs James
shared his own aversion, but this he afterwards acknow-
ledged as a ruse. To whom should the grass-widow turn,
but to one who had her truest interests at heart ? Her
distresses are his. He executes her commissions ; he has
been with " Zumps," and the pianoforte will be tuned for
her cabin. The very pliers that he gets her will " vibrate
sweet comfort" to his hopes. Twelve "handsome brass
screws to hang your necessaries upon " he buys ; two he

264 STERNE

retains to bring her back to him at Coxwold. He instructs
the Deal pilot ; night and morning he shields the defence-
less. Such was the "mild, good, generous Yorick," as
Eliza knew him.1

The nearer her departure, the more restive he grows.
He counts over the sweets of their sentimental rambles.
One whole day they had passed together, visiting the
children at Salt Hill ; for hours they had talked of them-
selves, and she had taught him the pigeon-English of
Indian servants.2 Bereft of her, as his Journal puts it,
he would be left beholding the sad sunset of his life.
Hitherto the refrains of his pathos had been soft arpeggios ;
their piano now quickened to agitato and crescendo. From
all accounts, his wife lay dying, and years afterwards Eliza
remembered that she too thought the same. Under similar
circumstances, his first dairyings with Kitty had culminated
in the avowal that he loved her to distraction. And so
it happened now, though on a larger scale, for his bout
with Eliza came nearer to a genuine passion. Mrs Sterne
had grown not only impossible, but grasping: — "My
wife cannot live long — she has sold all the provinces
in France already — and I know not the woman I should
like so well for her substitute as yourself — 'Tis true, I am
ninety-five in constitution, and you but twenty-five — rather
too great a disparity this ! but what 1 want in youth I will
make up in wit and good Humour. Not Swift so loved his
Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Sacharissa as I
will love and honour thee, my wife elect. All those names,
eminent as they were, shall give place to thine, Eliza. Tell
me, in answer to this, that you approve and honour the

1 Cf Mrs Draper's letter to Mrs James, Add. MSS. 34,527, ff. 47-70.

2 For the first of these facts cf the Journal transcribed at the end of this
work ; for the second, cf. Letters from Yorick to Eliza (1775): "It can no
be, Massa." And the phrase is repeated in a later part of the Journal.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 265

proposal, and that you would (like the Spectator's mistress)
have more joy in putting on an old man's slippers than
associating with the gay, the voluptuous and the young —
Adieu." This is the first place where he shows any thrill
at literary fame. But Yorick's glory, though it flattered the
Blanche Amory of Gerrard Street, could not hold her from
a settled purpose. And the fatality of her absence was one
after Yorick's own heart. It made her as unsubstantial as
himself.

Directly she drove off to Dover, Sterne fell ill. He
had been on " the verge of the Gates of Death " — " this
poor fine-spun frame of Yorick's " had given way. He
had broke a vessel in his breast and could not stop the loss
of blood " till four this morning." Her Indian handkerchiefs
had staunched it, and the gush came, he of course said, from
his heart. He fell asleep " from weakness " ; at six he
awoke " with the bosom of his shirt steeped in tears." The
dream-life still formed his real existence : — " 1 dreamt I was
sitting under a canopy of Indolence and that thou earnest
into the room with a shaul in thy hand, and told me my
spirit had flow to thee in the Downs with tidings of my
fate ; and that you were come to administer what consolation
filial affection could bestow, and to receive my parting breath
and blessing. — With that you folded the shaul about my
waist, and kneeling supplicated my attention. I awoke, but
in what a frame ! Oh ! my God ! . . . . Dear girl, I see
thee, — thou art for ever present to my fancy, embracing my
feeble knees, and raising thy fine eyes to bid me be of
comfort, and when I talk to Lydia, the words of Esau, as
uttered of thee, will ring in my ears. — ' Bless me, even also,
my father.' — Blessing attend thee, thou child of my heart ! "
Sterne's truths are always dreams.

The filial is his all over. Denied the respect of the
world, he demanded it the more. He dressed up Cupid in

266 STERNE

parental clothes, and Eliza revered his tender gravity.
They arranged to exchange diaries, and he despatched a
first portion of his Journal to the boat. This, like hers,
has perished. Eliza doubtless burned it, fearing the pub-
lication that was to threaten her letters. But from the
Sunday when she sailed (it was April the thirteenth), he re-
sumed the record and desisted from corresponding.1 With
his usual ilany he soon surmounted the first attack. He
even dined with Hall-Stevenson at the Brawn's Head, where
" the whole pandemonium " of the brotherhood assembled.
But, as soon, he relapsed, "worn out with fevers of all
kinds, but most of all with fever of the heart, with which I
am eternally wasting, and shall till I see Eliza." — " Great
Controller of events, surely thou wilt proportion this to my
strength, and to that of my Eliza." He passes all his time
in reading her letters. He takes no pleasure in society or
diversions. " What a change, my dear girl, thou madest in
me ! " She has turned the " tide " of his passions. " They
flow, Eliza, to thee — and ebb from every object in this world
— And reason tells me they do right — for my heart has rated
them at a Price that all the world is not rich enough to
purchase them from me at. — In a high fever all the night."
"So ill, so ill." He could not "totter out" to Mrs
James. He sits gazing at Eliza's picture above his table.
" Oh, my Bramine ! my friend, my Helpmate — for that, if 1
am a prophet, is the lot marked out for thee. . . . Cor-
delia's spirit will fly to tell thee in some sweet slumber the
moment the door is open for thee, and the Bramin of the
valley shall follow the track whither it leads him, to get to
his Eliza, and invite her to his cottage." Cordelia, it will
be remembered, was his Nun, the successor and precursor of
all his dreams. Clearly, he had imparted his cloister reverie,

1 The Journal closes on ist November. The previous excerpts come
from his letters.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 267

and in a subsequent part of the Journal he figures Eliza
catching him in her arms at Cordelia's grave.

Love-sickness, lung-sickness, beset him, and after his
wont he strikes the same old strings, while he exhibits the
same old spelling. We are back once more in the Cottage
d'Estella. Yet was this iteration mere stock-in-trade ?
Rather it seems the natural mechanism of his natural outlets,
the monotone of self-pity and its transference to others.
None the less Mrs Sterne can hardly have been pleased,
when, after his death, she compared parts of the diary with
the old effusions of his courtship. Some coincidences are
so remarkable as to have prompted a guess that Lydia,
who edited his first love-letters (with a comment that they
did him honour), concocted some of them out of this very
"Journal."1 He eats his "chicking," "sitting over my
repast upon it with tears — a bitter sauce — Eliza ! but I
could eat it with no other. When Molly spread the table
cloath my heart fainted within me — one solitary plate — one
knife, one fork — one glass ! Oh, Eliza, 'twas painfully dis-
tressing— I gave a thousand pensive penetrating looks on
the arm-chair thou so often graced on those quiet senti-
mental Repasts — and I sighed and laid down my knife and
fork, — took out my handkerchief and clapped it across my
face and wept like a child — I shall read the same affecting
account of many a sad dinner wch. Eliza has had no power
to taste and from the same feelings of recollection how she
and her Bramin had eat their bread in Peace and Love
together ! " The Bramin loves the lotus-flower of the
Ganges.

When at last he could get out, it is to Mrs James he

1 There is reason, however, to believe otherwise. The first of Sterne's
love-letters to his wife is cited as genuine in the Archivist and Autograph
Review, vols. i. and iii. (March 1888 and 1890) ; nor have they ever been really
doubted.

268 STERNE

drives. He brings her painting materials, but their colours
are washed away in tears. " Long conversations about thee,
my Eliza." "Sunk my heart with an infamous account of
Draper and his detested character at Bombay. For what a
wretch art thou hazarding thy life, my dear friend, and what
thanks is his nature capable of returning ! — Thou wilt be re-
paid by injuries and Insults ! Still there is a blessing in store
for the meek and gentle, and Eliza will not be disinherited of
it. Her Bramin is kept alive by this hope only — otherwise
he is so sunk both in spirits and looks, Eliza would scarce
know him again." And yet a few months later he drafted
a letter to that marital monster, calmly proposing his per-
mission for Eliza's exeat, and a platonic holiday at Coxwold.1
Quit his roof she did, but with another, after Sterne was
dead, and long after his maunderings had left her cold.

The sickliest moonbeams brood over this sentimental
journal. Sterne owns that he begins " to feel a pleasure in
this kind of resigned misery arising from that situation of
heart unsupported by aught but its own tenderness — Thou
owest me much, Eliza ! — and I will have patience, for thou
wilt pay me all." He tracks her journey. He sends for
" a chart of the Atlantic Ocean — O ! 'tis but a little way off
— and I could venture after it in a Boat methinks. . . . But
Fate has chalked out other routes for us. We must go on
with many a weary step, each in the separate heartless track,

till Nature ." He buys Orme's history of British

India ; he constantly communes with her picture and Mrs
James, who duplicates the bygone tears of Miss Lumley's
friend. When he sets up his carriage, he laments that Eliza
cannot share it. His " ardour " overpowers him, he dissolves
in compassion. — " 'Tis the language of Love and I can speak
no other." — " Poor, sick-headed, sick-hearted Yorick ! " —

1 Cf. Add. MSS. 34,527 (Gibbs Papers). Professor Cross, who draws
attention to this document, thinks that it was never forwarded.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 269

Eliza has made a "shadow" of him — and a bore. And
then afresh he betakes himself to his bed with a raging
fever, caused, he would have her believe, by these heart-
pangs. A prophetic spirit, he avers, had inspired him with
Trim's anguish for the fair " Beguine." He breaks another
vessel, the blood mingles with his tears, and the doctors
assign a cause for his malady which shocks while it amuses
him. Yet he retails it all, not only to Eliza, but afterwards
in a published letter to Lord Shelburne. No detail is
too minute (or gross) for him to notice. Gradually he
mends, but he does not mend his manner. The spirit of
Eliza cheers him more than " all the lectures of philosophy "
(whatever those may have been) : she, she alone, soothes
all his "little fears and may-be s" It is the seventh day
that he has tasted nothing but water-gruel. Hall has
persuaded him to eat a " boiled fowl," — " so he dines with
me on it — and a dish of Mackereels." Needless to say that
Sterne drinks " everlasting Peace and Happiness " to Eliza's
name. His " poor pulse quickened," his " pale face glowed,"
and tears " stood ready " in his eyes " to fall upon the paper "
as he " traced the word Eliza." The doctors stroke their
beards and look "ten per cent, wiser." He is to run
through a course of Van Sweeten's corrosive mercury, or
rather Van Sweeten's course of corrosive mercury "is to
run through " him. He will be " sublimated," he sighs, to
some etherial substance by the time his Eliza sees him ; but
he was ever, he adds, " transparent and a Being easy to be
seen through."

There is little to relieve these nauseous pages, yet as
he recovers, calling upon her name, the close examiner may
find a trace. He has been ordered the cure of Montpellier
once more. That word appears to arouse associations
and to sharpen the contrast between his rasping wife and
the new-found comforter. For he makes Molly, the maid-

270 STERNE

servant, exclaim that she never heard a " high or hasty
word from either of you." He does not gain strength —
" Something is wrong, Eliza, in every part." There we must
agree with him ; but in the long, sleepless nights he does
think of her " dangers and sufferings " more than of his own.
" I have rose wan and trembling with the Havock they
have made upon my nerves — 'tis death to me to apprehend
for you." In vain the callers come trooping to his chamber
— forty of them in one afternoon. " The Rapper is always
going " ; but he only welcomes his morbid feelings, the wan
visitors that rap at his heart.

It is a surfeit of sentiment. Nevertheless, other excite-
ments force themselves into view, and when at last he staggers
forth enfeebled, it is not always Mrs James who takes up his
time. He goes to Court, he takes his airing in the Park,
where the spectacle (or spectre) of Tristram sits there for all
the world to see. And his wit accompanies his wistfulness ; he
cannot resist showing himself off. On one of these occasions
he encounters the belle — maybe Lady Percy — whom he
nicknamed his " Queen of Sheba." It was May-day, life
and balm were in the air : — " Got out into the Park. . . .
Sheba there on horse-back ; passed twice by her without
knowing her — she stopped the third time to ask me how
I did. I would not have asked you, Solomon, said she,
but your looks affected me, for you're half dead, I fear —
I thanked Sheba very kindly, but without any emotion but
what sprung from gratitude — Love, alas ! was fled with thee,
Eliza ! I did not think Sheba could have changed so much
in grace and beauty. Thou hadst shrunk poor Sheba away
into nothing but a good-natured girl without powers or
charms. — I fear your wife is dead, quoth Sheba — No, you
do not fear it, Sheba, said I. — Upon my word, Solomon, I
would quarrel with you, was you not so ill. — If you knew
the cause of my illness, Sheba, said I, you would quarrel but

To face p. 270

7- -^ >~ y^

A^ — i//* s/yi/rf* J ..'£*** -A *sA *^ &u>Jtc£y
—Jto**dA*t* *sAS £**, t/*£>~™/s±sSi4L £jt

/Lu*A (c/ dCdk ,tr+y As* J£; AJ- i*/*^ a^ t^/^

Ji*s*2*3 y* ^n^tX is>~ pre*** c* <^~- /£ ^_ t.%^ Ae^sJ
U/U* W d^U ,- toUJfc *A£A* — - fro, jf.<ru tl^lt J<*~y <V

ffc 9^^ UjSx( *rx*. - j^^. &i, /•£>"**! Cu^/t^rt/ /&£

/I facsimile page from The Journal to Eliza

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 271

the more with me. — You lie, Solomon ! answered Sheba, for
I know the cause already — and am so little out of charity
with you upon it that I give you leave to come and drink
Tea with me before you leave town. — You're a good honest
Creature, Sheba. — No ! you rascal, I am not. But I am in
Love as much as you can be for your Life. — I am glad of it,
Sheba, said I. — You lie, said she, and so cantered away."
So does his frivolity, though Eliza must be impressed. And
then falls the inevitable tear : — " Oh, my Eliza, had I ever
truly loved another (wch. I never did) thou has long ago cut
the root of all affection in me — and planted and watered
and nourished it to bear fruit only for thyself.' ' The
Bramin, too, reasserts himself. Is he not her mentor ?
" Respect thyself " had been the counsel of his letters ; " Be
true to thyself " is his prescription now.

Three weeks later he packs up for Coxwold, " detained
by Lord and Lady Spencer, who had made a party to dine
and sup on my account " ; but he longs for " loneliness " : —
"There the mind, Eliza, gains strength and learns to lean
upon herself and seeks refuge in its own Constancy and
Virtue. In the world it seeks or accepts of a few treacher-
ous supports. The vain compassion of one — the flattery of
a second — the civilities of a third — the friendship of a fourth
— they all deceive and bring the mind back to where mine
is retreating — that is, Eliza, to its Queen, to thee, who art
my second self — to retirement — reflection and books." We
seem to hear his sermons over again. And so he goes next
morning and stays two days on the road at the Archbishop of
York's, where he must needs hand round his Bramine's
miniature to the assembled party. It is a queer episode,
this archiepiscopal blessing on Eliza's friendship. The
journey tires him, as the Journal tires us. He gets to
bed so emaciated that Eliza would scarce remember him :
— " Alas, poor Yorick ! Remember thee ! Pale Ghost

272 STERNE

Remember thee — Whilst memory holds a seat in this
distracted world — Remember thee — Yes, from the Table of
her memory shall just Eliza wipe away all trivial men and
leave a throne for Yorick."

The second of June has a surprise in store. A letter
from Lydia lies on his table ; " she and her Mama " an-
nounce their intention of visiting Coxwold, and his out-
burst had best speak for itself : — " But on condition I
promise not to detain them in England beyond next April —
when they purpose, by my consent, to retire into France
and establish themselves for life. To all of which I have
freely given my parole of Honour and so shall have them
with me for the summer — From October to April they
take lodgings in York, when they leave me for good and all,
1 suppose — Everything for the best, Eliza. This unex-
pected visit is neither a visit of friendship or form — but 'tis
a visit such as I know you would never make me of pure
Interest to pillage what they can from me. In the first place
to sell a small estate I have of 60 pds. a year — and lay out
the purchase money in joint annuities for them in the
French Funds ; by this they will obtain 200 pds. a year to be
continued to the longer Liver — and as it rids me of all future
care, and simply transfers their income to the kingdom
where they purpose to live — I am truly acquiescent — though
I lose the contingency of surviving them — but 'tis no matter,
I shall have enough and a hundred or two hundred Pounds
for Eliza whenever she will honour me by putting her hand
into my purse. — In the mean time I am not sorry for this
visit as everything will be finally settled between us by it —
only as their annuity will be too strait — I shall engage to
remit them a hundred guineas a year more, during my wife's
life — and then I will think, Eliza, of living for myself and
the Being I love as much. — But I shall be pillaged in a
hundred small items by them, which I have a spirit above

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 273

saying No — to ; as provisions of all sorts of linens — for
house use — body use — printed linens for gowns, Magassines
of Teas. Plate, all I have (but six silver spoons) — in short
I shall be plucked bare — all but of your portrait and snuff
box, and other dear presents — and the neat furniture of my
thatched Palace, and upon these I set up stock again, Eliza."
Altogether, a nice pickle for a man of sentiment !

Sterne did not leave Mrs Draper two hundred pounds.
Was it for this that, in a spasm of rage against his wife and
daughter, his "idolater" branded her Yorick after his death as
"tainted with the vices of injustice, meanness, and folly" P1 Or
was wounded vanity her motive ? Yet, if so, why should
she have come to sanction the publication of his letters to her-
self ? Sterne's indignation presents no such difficulties ; his
wife was extravagant and rapacious. But broken nerves and
a craving for pity exaggerated his annoyance ; nor but for
these would he ever have included the daughter of his
heart in his pettish diatribes. When she departed and
Sterne presented her with a ten-pound note, she made such
a pretty speech of generous refusal, and with such a pretty
moue, that he burst into applauding tears.

They came ; Lydia without her rouge-pot, against which
Sterne had cautioned his "child of nature." But when
they came, it may be questioned whether they quite
appreciated Yorick's preparations. Shandy Hall was trans-
formed. He had fitted up a snug sanctuary for Eliza in
his " thatched Palace," while he prudently secreted the
document which depicts it. And they must have marked
a change not only in the house but its owner. Sterne's
jottings portray him at his morbidest ; and though his
brain was unimpaired it may be feared that his nerves were
softening. Well might he moralise : " What is Wisdom

1 Cf. Eliza's long letter to Mrs James from Bombay, of 15th April 1772.
Add. MSS. 34,527, ff. 47-70.

18

274 STERNE

to a foolish weak heart like mine ! 'tis like the sound of
melody to the broken spirit." But the " broken spirit "
still kept a post-chaise with "a couple of fine horses" to
muse on his lost companion as he rolled along, and could
incur expenses for his unseen idol's temple : —

" I have this week finished a sweet little apartment,
which at the times of doing I flattered the most delicious of
ideas in thinking I was making it for you — A neat little
simple elegant room, overlooked only by the sun — -just big
enough to hold a Sopha for us — a table, 4 chairs, a Bureau
and a Book case. — They are to be all yours, room and all.
And there, Eliza, shall I enter ten times a day and give the
testimonies of my devotion — Wast thou this moment sat
down in it, it would be the sweetest of earthly tabernacles.
I shall enrich it from time to time for thee — till Fate lets
me lead thee by the hand into it — and then it can want no
ornament. — 'Tis a little oblong room, with a large Sash at
the end — a little elegant fireplace — with as much room to
dine around it as in Bond Street, but in sweetness and
simplicity and silence beyond anything. Oh, my Eliza ! — I
shall see thee surely Goddesse of this Temple and a most
sovereign one of all I have — and of all the powers heaven
has trusted me with. — They were lent me, Eliza ! Only
for thee — and for thee, my dear Girl, they shall be kept and
employed. — You know what Rights you have over me —
Wish to heaven I could convey the grant more amply than
I have done — But 'tis all the same — 'Tis registered where
it will longest last." It is the old, visionary Sterne, and
he seeks a purring sympathy from his cat !

His "Reverie of the Nuns," the key-note of the
past, runs through all these ravings. And Eliza is now
merged in the Cordelia whose " convent " he revisits.
How characteristic of Sterne ! How divergent from his
contemporaries is this ghost-land of imagination, investing

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 275

trifles with dim significance, importing both the past and
the future into his daily round ! Something of the old
magic still clings to his magnifying-glass. " I have re-
turned," he writes, " from a delicious walk, my Bramine,
which I am to tread a thousand times over with you
swinging on my arm. ... I have plucked up a score of
Bryers by the roots which grew near the edge of the way
that they might not scratch or incommode you — Had I been
sure of your taking that walk with me the very next day I
could not have been more serious in my employment. — Dear
enthusiasm, thou bringst things forward in a moment that
Time keeps for ages back. — I have you ten times a day
beside me — I talk to my Eliza for hours together, I take
your Council I hear your reasons and I admire you for
them ! To this magic of a warm Mind 1 owe all that is
worth living for during the state of our trial."

A touch of falsetto protrudes, but there is pathos too
in the drawn-out whimpers of this chronicle. It is not all
mawkish. Sterne was at the height of his fame, yet in the
depths of his despair. It was a year of homage to his
genius. Lord Spencer, he notes, had "loaded" him with
" a grand Escritoire of forty guineas." From Paris he was
to receive a gift of equal value, a fine gold snufF-box with an
" inscription on it more valuable than the box itself."
There was a portrait, " worth them both," which he boasts to
have immortalised in his Sentimental Journey. There were
six beautiful marbles of the sculptures upon " poor Ovid's
tomb," the bard "who died in exile though he wrote so
well upon the Art of Love." There were Eliza's presents,
the " gold Stock Buccle and Buttons," rated " above rubies
because they were consecrated by the hand of friendship, as
she fitted them to me." He was offered preferment both
in Ireland and Surrey, and there was an American present,
omitted from the diary. Tristram Shandy had humour-

276 STERNE

esqued the two "handles" displayed by every living creature.
In pursuance of this whimsy a Dr Eustace of North Carolina
forwarded a two-handled walking-stick, with an enthusiastic
letter. Sterne was greatly touched, and returned a fitting
compliment. Nor was he less to appreciate the homage
paid to his humanity by a grateful negro, Ignatius Sancho.
Above all, he naturally prized most the dubious gift of
Eliza's heart — " So finely set, with such rich materials and
workmanship that Nature must have had the chief hand in
it. If I am able to keep it I shall be a rich man. If I
lose it, I shall be poor indeed — So poor that I shall stand
begging at your gates." Yet all this time the bond between
them was brittle. Eliza, renowned, had younger fish to
hook, and Sterne begged at every gate where compassion
stood almoner.

It is a relief to find him in a vaunting mood. He
was not unconscious of his power : — " I have brought
your name, Eliza, and picture into my work — where they
will remain when you and I are at rest for ever. Some
annotator, or explainer of my works will take occasion to
speak of the friendship which subsisted so long and faith-
fully betwixt Yorick and the Lady he speaks of — Her name,
he will tell the world, was Draper — a native of India —
married there to a gentleman in the India Service of that
name, who brought her over to England for the recovery of
her health in the year '6$ — where she continued till April in
the year 1767. It was about three months before her return
to India that our Author's acquaintance and hers began.
Mrs Draper had a great thirst for knowledge — was handsome,
genteel and engaging — and of such gentle disposition and
so enlightened an understanding that Yorick (whether he
met much opposition is not known) from an acquaintance
soon became her Admirer. — They caught fire at each other
at the same time and they would often say, without reserve

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 277

to the world, and without any idea of anything wrong in it,
that their affections for each other were unbounded — Mr
Draper dying in the year . . . ., his lady returned to England.
And Yorick, the year after becoming a widower — they were
married — and retiring to one of his livings in Yorkshire where
was a most romantic situation, they lived and died happily —
and are spoke of with honour in the parish to this day."
And other dreams floated before him. They would fly to
Florence : " Arno's Vale " would " look gay again upon
Eliza's visit," while " the companion of her journey " would
" grow young .... as " he " sits upon her banks with
Eliza seated beside " him. The dramatis personam alone
failed the performance : " the play is wrote — the scenes are
painted and the curtain ready to be drawn up. The whole
piece waits for thee."

Nicely settled ! But the curtain was to rise on none of
these anticipations ; rather, it was to fall on the illusions of a
lifetime. Yet how contradictory are this man's moods ! No
sooner does he find that letters to his wife miscarry than he
is pained " because it has the aspect of an unreasonable un-
kindness .... to take no notice of what has the appear-
ance at least of a civility in desiring to pay me a visit — My
daughter, besides, has not deserved it of me — and though
her mother has, I would not ungenerously take that oppor-
tunity which would most overwhelm her to give any mark
of my resentment. I have besides long since forgiven her
and am more inclined now as she proposes a plan whereby
I shall never more be disquieted." Nor is the contrast less
visible hereafter. Even while he softens towards his wife,
he tells Eliza how "merciless" his neighbours think her.
He is a bundle of sensations.

And regrets are diversified by his old vagaries. He
consorts with Lord Fauconberg, he flies off to Crazy Castle
(how Hall-Stevenson must have laughed at him !), to Harro-

278 STERNE

gate, to the York races, to God knows where ; hawking
about Eliza's miniature, which he was to show even to
Lord Shelburne, and parading his stricken heart. No sooner
does he return than he sits down in his land of plenty,
surrounded by venison, strawberries and cream ; enter-
taining his " Cousin Antony." Other days, other moods.
When his wife's " unfeeling " communications vex him, he
fasts, but finds fresh solace in setting up "a sweet Pavillion"
in a retired corner of his garden for the woman who sym-
bolises his nerves. She is the centre of all his negotiations
with Mrs Sterne, and their issue tranquillises him. The
wife and " dear Girl " stayed two months with him before
they wintered at York, and his compact with the former
was concluded. She would retire into Southern France
and remain there. Never, she vowed, would she occasion
another sorrowful or discontented hour. She " has been
conquered," he boasts, " by humanity and generosity."
He promised to allow her three hundred guineas a year,
while he gladly bestowed two thousand pounds on his
daughter. The sums are large, and the three thousand
pounds derived from his works would scarcely have sufficed,
had it not been for his land-jobbing at Stillington. Though
he was to die some seven hundred pounds in debt, he
was not a Yorkshireman for nothing. Shrewdly enough
he deplores his wife's resolve to sink Lydia's portion in
French annuities. That wife is "half in love" with him
when she leaves. The barometer is set fair, and his hysteria
subsides.

All this time he worked feverishly at the Sentimental
Journey. He overtaxed his strength — fresh spittings of
blood ensued with their usual remedy, a flying visit to
London. This happened in November ; it was short but
stirring, for all his grand friends flocked round him.
Though Sterne knew everyone from Chatham to Wilkes and

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNAL 279

seems to have scintillated everywhere, he figures less in social
records than any personage of his century. A certain shy-
ness in big assemblies has been noted, and Sterne was a man
who only unbosomed himself to women. He could not
face the world, though he wished a woman to smooth his
pillow. Yet during these few weeks he did not visit Mrs
James, who felt hurt at his neglect. He wrote a letter of
excuses. Does it ring true ? Perhaps it does. Whither
could the prodigal more gladly have turned than to Gerrard
Street, had health and engagements permitted ? Perhaps
its associations were too recent and painful for his
lacerated nerves. He sought fresh distractions. New
friends had been added to old, among others young Arthur
Lee and Sir William Stanhope. " Praised be God for my
sensibility," he wrote to the latter ; but the sensibility, once
so buoyant, was fast killing a diseased dotard.

Bond Street saw him for the last time in January when
he came up to arrange the publication of his work. Lydia
and Mrs Sterne waited in England till the book appeared in
February, and Sterne was to yearn bitterly for their presence
at the last. Short and evil were the few days remaining.
He indulged in his old transports ; he wrapped round him
his old robe of injured innocence ; but the mantle had worn
out, and its tatters revealed much that its wearer could
never realise or confess. He had fed on feeling too long.

There is a sadness in such an end quite distinct from
ruin or solitude. Sterne could not be called bankrupt or
forsaken, but, throughout, he had forsaken himself and
made a bankruptcy of emotion. He could now draw on
nothing but his dreams — implacable bankers dishonouring
his bills. The mirage had vanished.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LAST GASP
(FEBRUARY l6 TO MARCH 1 8, 1 768 I THE SEQUELS)

The Sentimental Journey convulsed London, and even
Sterne's enemies owned it innocent. The un-English wit
of it, at once pert and piercing, started a vogue ; a
conventional society could only draw out its pocket-hand-
kerchief and weep. More than ever Yorick was feted, yet
as a " ghost " he partook of those banquets : the expression
is his own. He delighted in acquainting great folks like
Lord Ossory and George Selwyn with his Eliza's Jameses ;
he hoped to introduce Lord Shelburne. He had made
acquaintance with the Duke of Queensberry, that Restora-
tion voluptuary who never grew old, though " old Q "
was to be his sobriquet. He saw much of Mrs Montagu
whom Eliza worshipped.1 But this last struggle with his
body proved too much for his spirit. An epidemic of
influenza set in, and Sterne caught it as easily as the town
caught his sentiment. He kept to his room. He wrote
to Mrs James and his daughter. His dearest wish was
that Eliza's friend should protect the girl from her head-
strong mother, and that one day his Lydia and Eliza
might be sisters. It had been rumoured that he would
bequeath her to the fair Indian. This was untrue. His

1 When Mrs Montagu's book on Shakespeare appeared in 1769, Eliza
wrote with rapture of it to Mrs James. Cf. the long letter before cited.

280

THE LAST GASP 281

Gerrard Street hostess was to have been the legatee : —
" No, my Lydia ! " he wrote, " 'tis a lady whose virtues I
wish thee to imitate that I shall entrust my girl to — I
mean that friend whom I have so often talked and wrote
you about — From her you will learn to be an affectionate
wife, a tender mother and a sincere friend. And you can-
not be intimate with her without her pouring some part
of the milk of human kindness into your breast, which
will serve to check the heat of your own temper. . . . Nor
will that amiable woman put my Lydia under the painful
necessity to fly from England for protection whilst it is in
her power to grant her a more powerful one in England."
Mrs Sterne had been venting her tempers on her daughter
because of these rumours, though while she was still
abroad, she had repelled with dignity those who accused
Sterne of Eliza. He must have remembered this in con-
tinuing his letter : — " I think, my Lydia, that thy mother
will survive me — do not deject her spirits with thy pro-
fessions on my account — I have sent you a necklace, buckles,
and the same to your mother — my girl cannot form a wish
that is in the power of her father that he will not gratify her
in ... . and 1 cannot injustice be less kind to thy mother.
I am never alone, the kindness of my friends as ever the
same — I wish, tho', I had thee to nurse me — but I am
deny'd that — Write to me twice a week, at least — God
bless thee, my child, and believe me ever, ever, thy affec-
tionate father." He promised to meet her in May.

At first he rallied. Mrs Montagu sent him remedies
which, he thought, revived him. " I am absolutely this
morning free," he wrote to her, "from every bodily
distemper that is to be read of in the catalogue of
human infirmities, and know I shall not be able to delay
paying you my thanks in person longer than till tomorrow
noon, if you are visible, as the French say. I follow no

282 STERNE

regimen but strict Temperance, and so am, with all sense of
your goodness, dear Madame, your affectionate cosin." l

But he was rash as usual. In the first fortnight of
March pleurisy supervened, and his case grew serious.
Friends crowded to his bedside ; the great carriages drove
incessantly to the wig-maker's above whose shop Yorick
lay dying. The Jameses were seldom absent ; he was " never
alone." For a moment he still hoped to recover and to
complete his sittings for the third portrait which Sir Joshua
attempted, and which may possibly have given Sterne his
coup de grdce.2 The beginning of his end was not lonely,
though after his death it was babbled otherwise. Nor,
though hampered, were his finances crippled : the proceeds
of his book flowed in. But his strength was ebbing, and the
dance of his spirits no longer availed him. For the closing
nine days he saw no one, and he took up his pen for the last
time to write to Mrs James. The letter is headed Tuesday,
which was the eighth of March. His faculties were clear,
and his one thought was for his daughter. Her he again
recommended to the lady of his heart and Eliza's : — " Your
poor friend is scarce able to write ; he has been at death's
door this week with a pleurisy — I was bled three times
on Thursday and blistered on Friday. The physician says
1 am better. — God knows, for I feel myself sadly wrong,
and shall, if I recover, be a long while gaining strength.
Before I have gone thro' half this letter I must stop to
rest my weak hand above a dozen times. Mr James was
so good as to call upon me yesterday — I felt emotions not
to be described at the sight of him ; and he overjoyed me
by talking a great deal of you. — Do, dear Mrs James,

1 This letter, kindly offered by its owner, comes from Mr Broadley's
autograph collection. It is undated, but tradition assigns it to a very short
time before his death.

2 He had sat for him on 22nd February and 1st March. Cf. the reference to
Reynolds's Pocket- Book for 1768, given by Professor Cross in his Life, p. 460.

THE LAST GASP 283

entreat him to come tomorrow or next day, for perhaps I
have not many days or hours to live. — I want to ask a
favour of him, if 1 find myself worse — that I shall beg of
you, if in this wrestling I come off conqueror — My spirits
are fled ; — 'tis a bad omen : — Do not weep, my dear Lady :
— Your tears are too precious to shed for me. Bottle
them up and may the cork never be drawn ! Dearest,
kindest, gentlest, and best of women, may health, peace
and happiness prove your handmaids ! — If I die, cherish the
remembrance of me ; and forget the follies which you so
often condemned — which my heart, not my head, betrayed
me into.1 Should my child, my Lydia, want a mother,
may I hope you will (if she is left parentless) take her to
your bosom ? — You are the only woman on earth I can
depend upon for such a benevolent action. — I wrote to her
a fortnight ago and told her what I trust she will find in
you. — Mr James will be a father to her. He will pro-
tect her from every insult ; for he wears a sword which
he has served his country with, and which he would know
how to draw out of the scabbard in defence of innocence.
Commend me to him as I now commend you to that
Being who takes under His care the good and kind above
all the world. — Adieu — all grateful thanks to you and
Mr James. Your affectionate friend, L. Sterne."

Sterne never shrank from death. In one place he dwells
on the uncertainty of its shape, in another on his desire
to die alone at some inn, though elsewhere he yearns
for near and dear ones to tend his death-bed. The Bond
Street lodging was not a home, and all but the last of
these wishes were gratified. His exit is more dramatic
than Le Fevre's. On Friday, the eighteenth of March,
a number of Sterne's friends dined together in Clifford

1 It is curious that Heme's apology in his will should so much resemble
Sterne's.

284 STERNE

Street with John Crawfurd of Erroll, his old com-
panion. There were the Dukes of Queensberry and
Grafton ; there were the Earls of March and Upper
Ossory — the latter an ally of standing ; there was Garrick,
to whom he had sent his first books ; his Paris acquaintance
Hume ; and the inseparable James. Almost every period
of his life was represented. The talk turned on Yorick's
illness, which none could believe fatal. And when the truth
leaked out, their host instantly asked John Macdonald, a
cadet of Sir James's clan then in his service, to go out and
inquire. He went. The mistress opened the door ; she
told Macdonald to seek the nurse in the sick-room. He
watched him die. Ten minutes he waited ; but in five,
Sterne gasped, "Now it is come." He put up his hand
as if to ward a blow, and expired. The masquerader had
quitted the ballroom.1

Ossory proceeded to Lady Mary Coke, who much
" lamented " Yorick, while the Earl of Eglinton, who was
present at her party, said that the last sentimental journey
had been taken. But an unsentimental journey was in
store, nor had Sterne ended his adventures with his breath.

Becket, the bookseller, and Commodore James attended
his funeral in the new Bayswater burial-ground of St
George's, Hanover Square. Nor was a memorial erected
till 1780, when "two Brother Masons" (whose masonry
was probably the free craft of Crazy Castle) set up a head-
stone with a rhymed inscription in honour of the humourist
— " By Fools insulted, and by Prudes accused." Three
days after the interment — and Hall-Stevenson is our witness
— his body was snatched by the graveyard highwaymen who
then abounded. It was sold for dissection, some say at

1 Cf. John Macdonald's own account in his Travels (pp. 146-7), cited
by Professor Cross in his Life, p. 461.

•^W' /y-T%. iU*

LlfBIA S.TBBMS BE MlBDALOS •„

STERNE'S

,HTER WITH HER FATHER'S BUS
Anal engraving in her edition of his letters

THE SEQUELS 285

Oxford, others at Cambridge, where tradition runs that
his features were recognised. One can scarcely pass that
cemetery without a shudder. What an epilogue to senti-
ment, and what a peg whereon Yorick might have hung
his moral ! Thenceforward Sterne has been the prey of
dissectors. It has been the aim of this imperfect book
to present him more as Sir Joshua might have done
in his interrupted likeness — to give his inner core, the
fantasy which fed on dreams, the nerve-quivers that unfitted
him for any action but his shadow-dance of sensation.
Even the women who responded (or corresponded) to it
seem nebulous — mere palpitations of his feeling.

To body-snatching, book-snatching succeeded. Sterne
proved a treasure for literary thieves. "Was ever any-
thing so unreasonably reasonable as Yorick's pathetic wit ? "
— such was the verdict of his reviewers.1 Imitations and
impostures shot into notice. His wife and daughter
hurried from Angoule'me to stop this traffic, and ply
their own. They seemed to have stayed with Mrs James,
their perpetual helper. After settling his estate and sell-
ing his books and china, they searched his manuscripts.
Unprinted sermons — the sweepings of his study, as Sterne
termed them — were pushed into publicity, only to betray
the worst instance of his plagiarism.2 They wished to
continue his Sentimental Journey, and Hall-Stevenson made
a futile effort. Above all, they turned to Wilkes, now a
political prisoner, to collaborate with " Cousin Antony " in a
memoir and collected edition of his works, which Lydia
even designed to illustrate. But somehow this project fell

1 Cf Monthly Review for March 1768, pp. 174, 185.

2 A whole passage about being "born unto trouble" from Walter
Leightonhouse, a seventeenth-century prebendary of Lincoln. Cf. Professor
Cross's Life, pp. 476-7.

286 STERNE

through : Stevenson was too " lazy," ! nor was Wilkes over
eager. The widow and her daughter needed support ; for,
despite the annuity, which may have been mortaged, they
were both in straits : and the lord of Crazy Castle collected
as much as eight hundred pounds for them at the ensuing
York races. Their poverty made them stoop to shifts.
They tried to set Dodsley and Becket in competition and
to break contracts in doing so. Above all, they threatened
to publish Sterne's correspondence with Eliza. The
infuriated Mrs Draper did not protest from across the sea
in vain ; the publication was stopped, but Eliza had to pay
a price. Thenceforward she abominated the Sternes, though
she admitted to Mrs James that some of her surmises
were baseless, and, in 1775, herself permitted the issue of
Yorick's letters. She had done more than this : she
dispatched a certain Colonel Campbell for the express pur-
pose of marrying Lydia ; she still proffered her protection.
And the vanity of her sentimentalism was unbounded. If
she " loved once," she wrote, or " gave her love at all," she
"gave all." In the January of 1773 she eloped from her
husband in the ship of Sir John Clark, and took refuge
with an appreciative uncle.

When the Sternes resought their French asylum in
1769, they were content, diverting themselves and trifling,
wrote Lydia, with the muses. An ill-scanned couplet of hers
may serve as a specimen : —

" Thus wisely careless, innocently gay,
We play the trifle, life, away." 2

Time passed. Mrs Sterne's health and habits deteriorated,
and in the autumn of 1770 they moved southward to

1 Cf. Lydia's letter to Wilkes, Add. MSS. 30,877, ff. 70-5. Stevenson, how-
ever, did supply a brief prefatory memoir to his continuation of the Journey.

2 Cf. ibid.

THE SEQUELS 287

Albi, near their old hunting-ground of Toulouse. Lydia
maintained that shallow pertness which Eliza was to find
alluring.1 In the spring of 1772 she turned Catholic on
her marriage with Jean Baptiste Alexandre de Medalle, a
young man of good connections, but five years her junior.
The records of the place illuminate both Lydia' s character
and her wedding ; for, in Sheridan's words, " they do say
there were pressing reasons for it."

In 1775 she and her mother revisited England for the
purpose of publishing Sterne's letters. Wilkes may have
aided her, just as at the same time he seems to have assisted
Eliza in editing Yorick's. For Eliza, too, had returned,
and both ladies besieged the demagogue with flattering
disclaimers of literary ability.2 Sterne's daughter professed
an unwillingness to trust her pen ; Eliza deprecated and
withheld her own letters. Surely Mrs Draper and Madame
de Medalle must now have met and been reconciled.

The sequel is tragic. Mrs Sterne had again to be
treated in a doctor's house, where she expired soon after her
daughter's marriage. The Medalles had an only child, a
son, who died in 1781 at the Benedictine School of Soreze.
Ere then Lydia herself had departed. Eliza closed her
days in 1788, and rests in Bristol Cathedral, where Burke
and Raynal visited her monument. Little more than a
decade after Sterne's death his nearest connections had
perished, and with his boy grandson the stock of Shandy
became extinct.

1 Cf. her long letter to Mrs James, Add. MSS. 34,527, ff. 47-70 : "Miss
Sterne is supposed to have a portion of each parents' best Qualities — the
sensibility and frolicsome vivacity of Yorick most happily blended in her
composition — lively by Nature, Youth and Education, she cannot fail to
please every freak of the captious man."

2 For Eliza's letter to Wilkes cf. Add. MSS. 30,875, f. 112. The internal
evidence of the preface to Yorick's Letters to Eliza seems indicative of
Wilkes's editorship.

288 STERNE

But Shandyism survives. Lessing exclaimed that he
would have given ten years of his life to prolong Sterne's,
and Lessing was a sane man and a great critic. Germany,
indeed, proved the foster-mother of Sterne's genius.
Societies were founded in his name, which still flourish.
French as he frequently seems, he has appealed far more
forcibly to Germany than to France. For, despite the
quick march of science, the Germans have never ceased
to be sentimental. The land of music and tobacco-smoke
is loyal to Sterne, while his faculty for detachment and the
crispness of his impressions mitigate that abstractness and
bent for eternity which the Teutonic sentence embodies.

As author Sterne's province and immanence are unique.
His point of attack is modern, though he emerged from
antique surroundings. Equally modern is the pitch of a
voice at variance with the tone of his countrymen. His
virtuosity was his own. And yet, despite the French en-
velope that often wraps his deliverance, he is English ; Uncle
Toby is Saxon to the core. Where Sterne diverges from
England is in an ironical dreaminess almost Heinesque.
The Irish part of him lies in his waywardness and his
wistfulness. He seems compacted of several races, but his
modernity may be summed up once more in this, that he
took the woman's standpoint.

As a man he is barely lovable — for the simple reason
that real love was but half known to him. He loved people
not for their solid selves, but as they floated in his feelings ;
it was his feeling for them, and his feeling for his feeling,
that he loved. ( And this is part of that essential shadowi- '
ness which distinguishes him throughout, from his first
reveries to his last, from the first thrill of his nerves to
their decay. Just as he steeped himself in the music of
the Scriptures, while he difregarded their lesson, so he was
too much enthralled by the tune of life to realise its meaning.

EPILOGUE 289

There was no clash of action, or practical force, or any sense
of home, to lend strength to his sentiment ; and round
its faint orchestra the maestro hovered. Little could he
realise but sensation. To be a clergyman gave him no
sensation at all. His disrespectability, if we remember the
standards of his day, hinged more on his office than on his
lapses. Except in these flights of profane folly, wholly dis-
reputable he was not. He minded his formal duties, he paid
his debts, he was never ungenerous, and, in the main, he was
truthful. His defiance of suffering is the most virile of his
qualities, and this perhaps held his women-admirers as much
as the feminine within him. Yet an indefinable flimsiness
repels us, and would repel more had Sterne himself not dis-
believed in it. The flicker of the embers which warmed him
seems to escape in smoke up his own chimney. Yet common
smoke it is not ; it seems an enchanted vapour that broods
as it curls in wreathing spirals of wonderful form.

As artist he endures. As an artist he is palpable and
living. Nor is it otherwise than pathetic to think at
what cost to the soul that gain has been secured. Many
martyrs die to save the world outside those noble heroes
who step consciously to the scaffold. Some of the holiest
Italian pictures, it is said, were painted by penitents in anguish
after nights of debauch. Out of their impurity purity has
arisen, though the prolonged struggle dashed them to
pieces. No such high conflict is visible in Sterne, yet con-^
flict there was and appears. He was " positive that he had
■a soul." He knew that he was not an episode or an atom.

The sadness of such wreckage leads us to ponder over
the good that results. Finer spirits have quickened his
issues, but the issues are still Sterne's. Sterne is latent in
the great moral impressionist Ruskin, and Sterne, again, in
Dickens's Tale of Two Cities and the Christmas Carol. He
had this great courage in his generation, that he was not

19

290

STERNE

ashamed to feel. And though his feeling was unbacked by
purpose, though it usually returned to his meandering self
which stood naked and unashamed, the power has perse-
vered. Sterne's was not the trumpet-stop of the great organ,
but a swell of the vox humana was his. Since then, and be-
yond literature, men of feeling have ruled in statecraft, and
tend to rule in economics. Mill and Sterne — the miser of
logic and the prodigal of feeling — are opposite poles. Dog-
matic utilitarianism is dead, but the renaissance of feeling
J'abides. It was not easy to confess feeling when Sterne pro-
claimed it on the house-tops. It was a bold experiment
which he himself doubted.1 And though he gave it a
staccato touch, though it became a fashion and an affectation,
it may claim to have prevailed. To him it was natural, and
his art has helped to make it nature. Unchecked, it is a
danger, like every instinct ; yet without it the call of reason
is a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Byron has well
sung of the sensibility which he rhetoricised : —

" A thing of temperament and not of art,

Though seeming so, from its supposed facility,
And false, though true ; for surely they're sincerest
Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest."

Sterne's nearest neighbours were his own fancies. There
are far deeper and better elements than these, but, in his own
way, and without any message, Sterne heralded their approach.

1 Cf. his letter to Garrick of 27th January 1760, unpublished in any
collection, but printed in the Archivist and Autograph Review, vol. vii.
(September 1894), p. 44 et seq. After saying that his beginning of Tristram
is " a picture " of himself, and " an original," he adds that he would like to
dramatise the whole, "tho' I as often distrust its success, unless at the
Universities."

THE END

APPENDIX

STERNE'S JOURNAL TO ELIZA

PREFATORY NOTE

This Journal, which Sterne sought to disguise as a fiction,
is transcribed from the Gibbs Manuscripts in the British
Museum. It continues an earlier instalment which has been
lost and seems, as Professor Cross conjectures, to have
been originally consigned to the care of Mrs James,
the depositary of her two friends' outpourings. If so,
Mrs Sterne's face must have been a study when she dis-
covered it, though she can hardly have been surprised at its
contents. The autograph is accompanied by two letters of
Sterne to his Eliza, the draft of one to her husband, and
a long letter numbering some seventy-two pages of self-
revelation from Mrs Draper to Mrs James ; and this fact
lends likelihood to the supposition. Mr Gibbs of Bath
collected a library of which this came to be part and on his
death his son Thomas, then a boy of eleven, rescued it
from being " cut up into spills to light candles with." Since
it lit up the candles of two fantastic beings, it is to be
regretted that Thackeray, to whom it was shown for his
English Humourists, neglected to use it. Had he perused
Sterne's dream of the nun referred to in these pages as
" Cordelia," he would have found an intrinsic aid to in-
terpretation which he has missed in his shallow estimate.

293

294 STERNE

Though Yorick's diary displays the dotage of his feelings,
yet its monotone once more instances that an actor can
feel his part with the sincerity of sensation — even when his
audience is unmoved.

The spelling in this transcript is left intact, and where
Sterne thrice speaks of himself as the " Bramine," " Bramin "
should of course be read : the " Bramine " is Eliza. A few
consecutive sentences respecting a medical aspect of his case
have been omitted.

WALTER SICHEL.

STERNE'S PREFACE

This Journal wrote under the fictitious names of Yorick
& Draper — and sometimes of the Bramin & Bramine —
but 'tis a Diary of the miserable feelings of a person separ-
ated from a Lady for whose society he languished — The
real names are foreign — & the Ace* a Copy from a french

Mans, in Mrs S s hands — but wrote as it is to cast a Viel

over them — There is a Counterpart — which is the Lady's
Ace* what trans-actions dayly happened — & what Senti-
ments occupied her mind, during this separation from her
Admirer — these are worth reading — the translator cannot
say so much in favr of Yorick's — which seem to have little
merit beyond their honesty & truth —

295

CONTINUATION OF THE BRAMIN[E]'S
JOURNAL1

Sunday , Ap. 13. — Wrote the last farewel to Eliza by
Mr Wats who sails this day for Bombay (he saild 23) —
inclosed her likewise the Journal kept from the day we parted,
to this — so from hence continue it till the time we meet
again — Eliza does the same, so we shall have mutual testi-
monies to deliver hereafter to each other, that the Sun has
not more constantly rose and set upon the earth, than we
have thought of & remembered what is more chearing
than Light itself — eternal Sun-shine !

Eliza ! — dark to me is all this world without thee ! &
most heavily will every hour pass over my head, till that is
come wch brings thee, dear Woman back to Albion, dined
with Hall at the brawn's head — the whole Pandamonium
assembled — supped together at Halls — worn out both in
body & mind, and paid a severe reckoning all the night.

Ap. 14. — got up tottering & feeble — then is it Eliza,
that I feel the want of thy friendly hand & friendly
Council — & yet, with thee beside Me, thy Bramin would
lose the merit of his virtue — he could not err — I will take
thee upon any terms, Eliza ! I shall be happy here — & I
will be so just, so kind to thee, 1 will deserve not to be
miserable hereafter — A Day dedicated to abstinence and

1 Add. MSS. 34,527, ff. 1-40.
297

298 STERNE

reflection — & what object will employ the greatest part of
mine — full well does my Eliza know.

Monday ^ Ap. 15. — worn out with fevers of all kinds
but most, by that fever of the heart with which I am eternally
wasting, & shall waste till I see Eliza again — dreadful
suffering of 15 months ! — it may be more — great Con-
trouler of Events ! surely thou wilt proportion this to my
strength, and to that of my Eliza, passed the whole after-
noon in reading her Letters, and reducing them to the order
in which they were wrote to me — staid the whole evening
at home — no pleasure or interest in either Society or
Diversions — what a change, my dear Girl, hast thou made
in me ! — but the Truth is, thou hast only turn'd the tide of
my passions a new way — they flow Eliza to thee — & ebb
from every other Object in this world — & Reason tells me
they do right — for my heart has rated thee at a Price, that
all the world is not rich enough to purchase thee from me,
at. In a high fever all the night,

Ap. 16. — and got up so ill, I could not go to Mrs
James as I had promised her — took James's Powder how-
ever— & leaned the whole day with my head upon my
hand, sitting most dejectedly at the Table with my Eliza's
Picture before me sympathizing & soothing me — O my
Bramine ! my Friend ! my Help-mate ! — for that (if I am
a prophet) is the Lot marked out for thee, — & such I con-
sider thee now, & thence it is Eliza, I share so righteously

with thee, in all the evil or good which befalls thee

But all our portion is Evil now, & all our hours grief. —
1 look forward towards the Elysium we have so often and
rapturously talk'd of — Cordelia's Spirit will fly to tell thee
in some sweet slumber, the moment the door is opened for
thee — & the Bramin of the Vally shall follow the track
wherever it leads him, to get to his Eliza & invite her to
his Cottage. —

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 299

5 in the afternoon, — I have just been eating my Chicking,
sitting over my repast upon it with Tears — a bitter Sause —
Eliza ! but I could eat it with no other — when Molly spread
the Table cloath, my heart fainted within me — one solitary
plate — one knife & fork — one Glass ! — O Eliza ! 'twas
painfully distressing — I gave a thousand pensive penetrating
Looks at the Arm chair thou so often graced on these quiet
sentimental Repasts — & Sighed & laid down my knife
& fork, — & took out my handkerchief, clap'd it across
my face & wept like a child — I shall read the same affect-
ing Ace* of many a sad Dinner wch Eliza has had no
power to taste of, from the same feelings and recollections,
how she and her Bramin have eat their bread in peace and
Love together.

April 17. — with my friend Mrs James in Gerard Street,
with a present of Colours & apparatus for painting. Long
conversation about thee, my Eliza — sunk my heart wth
an infamous Accfc of Draper & his detested character at
Bombay — for what a wretch art thou hazarding thy life, my
dear friend, & what thanks is his nature capable of return-
ing ? — thou wilt be repaid by injuries & Insults ! still
there is a blessing in store for the meek & gentle, &
Eliza will not be disinherited of it : her Bramin is kept
alive by this hope only — otherwise he is so sunk both in
spirits & looks, Eliza would scarce know him again,
dined alone again today ; & begin to feel a pleasure in
this kind of resigned misery arising from that situation of
heart unsupported by aught but its own tenderness — Thou
owest me much, Eliza ! — & I will have patience for thou
wilt pay me all — But the Demand is equal ; much I owe

thee, & with much shalt thou be requitted. Sent for a

Chart of the Atlantic Ocean, to make conjectures upon what
part of it my Treasure was floating. O ! 'tis but a little
way off — and I could venture after it in a Boat methinks —

3oo STERNE

I'm sure I could, was I to know Eliza was in distress — but
fate has chalked out other roads for us — we must go on
with many a weary step each in this separate heartless track
till Nature

Ap. 1 8. — This day set up my carriage — new subject of
heart-ache that Eliza is not here to share it with me. Bought
Orm's account of India — why ? — Let not my Bramine ask
me — her heart will tell her why I do this, & every-thing —

Ap. 19. — poor sick-headed, sick-hearted Yorick ! Eliza
has made a shadow of thee — I am absolutely good for
nothing, as every mortal is who can think & talk but
upon one thing ! — how I shall rally my powers alarms me ;
for Eliza has melted them all into one — the power of loving
thee — with such ardent affection as triumphs over all other
feelings — was with our faithful friend all the morning ; &
dined with her &: James — What is the cause that I can
never talk ab* my Eliza to her but I am rent in pieces ? —
I burst into tears a dozen Different times after dinner, &
such affectionate gusts of passion, That she was ready to leave
the room & sympathise [several erasures] in private for us.
I weep for you both said she (in a whisper) for Eliza's
anguish is as sharp as yours — her heart as tender — her
constancy as great — heaven will join your hands I'm sure
together. — James was occupied in reading a pamphlet upon
the East India affairs — so 1 answered her with a kind look,
a heavy sigh & a stream of tears — what was passing in
Eliza's breast at this affecting crisis ? — something kind, and
pathetic ! I will lay my life.

8 o'clock. — retired to my room, to tell my dear this — to
run back the hours of joy I have passed with her — to
meditate upon those wch are still in reserve for us. — By
this time Mr James tells me, you will have got as far from
me as the Maderas — & that in two months more you will
have doubled the Cape of Good Hope — I shall trace thy

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 301

track every day in the Map, & not allow an hour for
contrary Winds or Currents — every engine of nature
shall work together for us — 'Tis the language of Love &
I can speak no other. & so, good night to thee, & may
the gentlest delusions of Love impose upon thy dreams, as
I forbode they will this night on those of thy Bramine.

April 20. Easter Sunday. — Was not disappointed — yet
awoke in the most acute pain — Something, Eliza, is wrong
with me. [Many erasures.'] You should be ill out of
sympathy — & yet you are too ill already my dear friend —
\Whole lines of erasures^] All day at home in extreme
dejection.

April 21. — The Loss of Eliza, & attention to that one
Idea, brought on a fever — a consequence I have for some
time forseen — but had not a sufficient Stock of cold phil-
osophy to remedy — to satisfy my friends call'd in a Physician
— Alas ! alas ! the only Physician & who carries the Balm
of my Life along with her is Eliza. — why did I suffer thee
to go from me ? surely thou hast more than once call'd
thyself my Eliza, to the same Account. — 'twill cost us both
dear ! but it could not be otherwise — We have submitted. —
we shall be rewarded.

'Twas a prophetic Spirit which dictated the Ace* of
Corporal Trim's uneasy night when the fair Beguin ran in
his head, — for every night & almost every slumber of mine
is a repetition of the same description — dear Eliza I am very
ill — very ill for thee — but I could still give thee greater proofs
of my affection.

parted with 12 ounces of blood, in order to quiet what
was left in me — 'tis a vain experiment, — physicians cannot
understand this ; 'tis enough for me that Eliza does — I am
worn down my dear Girl to a shadow & but that I'm certain
thou wilt not read this till I'm restored — thy Yorick would
not let the Winds hear his complaints

3o2 STERNE

4 o'clock. — sorrowful meal ! for 'twas upon an old dish
— we shall live to eat it my dear Bramine, with comfort.

8 at night. — our dear friend Mrs James, from the for-
bodings of a good heart, thinking I was ill sent her Maid
to enquire after me. — I had alarmed her on Saturday ; &
not being with her on Sunday, her friendship supplied the
condition I was in. — She suffers most tenderly for us my
Eliza ! & we owe her more than all the sex — or indeed
both Sexes, if not all the world put together — adieu ! my
sweet Eliza for this night — thy Yorick is going to waste
himself on a restless bed where he will turn from side to
side a thousand times — & dream by intervals of things
terrible & impossible — that Eliza is false to Yorick or
Yorick is false to Eliza.

Ap. 22d. — rose with utmost difficulty — my Physician
ordered me back to bed as soon as I had got a dish of Tea
— was bled again ; & my arm broke loose & I half bled
to death in bed before I felt it. O Eliza ! how did thy
Bramin mourn the want of thee to tye up his wounds &
comfort his dejected heart — still something bids me hope —
& hope I will — & it shall be the last pleasurable sensation
I part with.

4 o'clock. — They are making my bed — how shall I be
able to continue my Journal in it ? — If there remains a
chasm here — think Eliza, how ill thy Yorick must have
been. — this moment recd a card from our dear friend
begging me to take [care ?] of a life so valuable to my friends
— but most so she adds, to my poor dear Eliza. — not a
word from the Newnhams ! but they had no such exhorta-
tions in their hearts, to send thy Bramine — adieu to 'em ! —

Ap. 23. — a poor night, and am only able to quit my
bed at 4 this afternoon — to say a word to my dear — & fulfill
my engagement to her of letting no day pass over my head
without some kind communication with thee — faint resem-

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 303

blance, my dear Girl, of how our days are to pass when one
kingdom holds us — visited in bed by 40 friends in the
Course of the Day — is not one warm affectionate call, of
that friend for whom I sustain Life, worth 'em all ? — what
thinkest thou, my Eliza ?

dp. 24. — So ill I could not write a word all this
morning — not so much, as Eliza ! farewel to thee ; I'm
going am a little better —

— So I shall not depart, as I apprehended — being
this morning something better — & my symptoms become
milder by a tolerable easy night. . . .

Everything convinces me, Eliza, We shall live to meet
again — So — Take care of yr health, to add to the comfort
of it.

Ap. 25. — After a tolerable night I am able, Eliza, to
sit up & hold a discourse with the sweet Picture thou
hast left behind thee of thyself, & tell it how I had
dreaded the catastrophe of never seeing its dear Original
more in this world — never did that look of sweet resigna-
tion appear so eloquent as now ; it has said more to my
heart & chear'd it up more effectually above little fears &
maybe s — Than all the Lectures of philosophy I have strength
to apply to it in my present debility of mind & body. —
as for the latter — my men of science will set it properly
going again — tho' upon what principles — the wise Men of
Gotham know as much as they. — If they act right — What
is it to me how wrong they think ; for finding my machine
a much less tormenting one than before, I become reconciled

to my situation, and to their Ideas of it but don't

you pity me after all, my dearest & my best of friends ?
I know to what amount thou wilt shed over me this tender
Tax — & 'tis the Consolation springing out of that, & of
what a good heart it is which pours this friendly balm
on mine, That has already, & will for ever heal every

3o4 STERNE

evil of my Life, and what is becoming of my Eliza, all
this time ! — where is she sailing ? — what sickness or other
evils have befallen her ? I weep often my dear Girl, for
those my Imagination surrounds thee with — What would
be the measure of my sorrow, did I know thou wast dis-
tressed ? — adieu — adieu — & trust my dear friend, my
dear Bramine, that there still wants nothing to kill me in
a few days but the certainty that thou wast suffering what
I am — and yet I know that thou art ill — but when thou
returnest back to England, all shall be set right — so heaven
waft thee to us upon the wings of Mercy — that is as speedily
as the winds & tides can do thee this friendly office.
This is the 7th day that I have tasted nothing better than
Water gruel — am going, at the solicitation of Hall, to eat
of a boird fowl — so he dines with me on it — and a dish
of Macareels.

7 o'clock. — I have drunk to thy Name Eliza ! everlasting
peace & happiness (my toast) in the first glass of Wine
I have ventured to drink, my friend has left me — & I
am alone — like thee in thy solitary Cabbin after thy return
from a tastless meal in the round house, & like thee I
fly to my Journal to tell thee I never prized thy friendship
so high, or loved thee more — or wished so ardently to be
a sharer of all the weights wch Providence has laid upon
thy tender frame — Than this moment — when upon taking
up my pen my poor pulse quickened — my pale face glowed
— & tears stood ready in my eyes to fall upon the paper,
as I traced the word Eliza. O Eliza ! Eliza ! ever best
& blessed of all thy Sex ! blessed in thyself & in thy
Virtues — & blessed & endearing to all who know thee —
to me Eliza most so because / know more of thee than
any other — This is the true philtre by which thou hast
charmed me & will for ever charm & hold me thine
whilst Virtue and faith hold this world together ; for the

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 305

simple Magick by which I trust I have won a place in that
heart of thine, on wch I depend so satisfied, That Time
or distance or change of everything which might alarm the
little hearts of little men, create no uneasy suspense in
mine — It scorns to doubt & scorns to be doubted — 'tis
the only exception when Security is not the parent of
Danger.

My Illness will keep me three weeks longer in town —
but a journey in less time would be hazardous, unless a
short one across the Desert wch I should set out upon
tomorrow could I carry a Medicine with me which I was
sure would prolong one month of yr Life — or should it

happen but why make Supposition8 ? — when

Situations happen — 'tis time enough to show thee That thy
Bramin is the truest & most friendly of mortal Spirits,
& capable of doing more for his Eliza than his pen will
suffer him to promise.

Ap. 26. — Slept not till three this morning — was in too
delicious Society to think of it ; for I was all the time with
thee besides me, talking over the progress of our friendship
& turning the world over into a thousand shapes to enjoy
it. got up much better for the conversation — found myself
improved in body & mind & recruited beyond anything
I look'd for ; My Doctors stroked their beards & looked
ten per Cfc wiser upon feeling my pulse & enquiring
after my symptoms — am still to run through a Course of
Van Sweeten 's Corrosive Mercury, or rather Van Sweeten' s
Course of Mercury is to run through me — I shall be subli-
mated to an etherial substance by the time my Eliza sees
me — she must be sublimated & uncorporated too to be
able to see me — but I was always Transparent & a Being
easy to be seen through, or Eliza had never loved me — nor
had Eliza been of any other Cast herself could her Bramin[e]
have held communion with her. hear every day from our

20

3o6 STERNE

worthy sentimental friend — who rejoices to think that the
name of Eliza is still to vibrate upon Yorick's ear — this, my
dear Girl, many who loved me despaired of — poor Molly
who is all attention to me — & every day brings in the
name of poor Mrs Draper, told me last night that she &
her Mistress had observed I had never held up my
head since the Day you last dined with me — that I had
seldom laughed or smiled — had gone to no Diversions —
but twice or thrice at the most dined out — That they
thought I was broken-hearted, for she never entered the
room or passed by the door, but she heard me sigh heavily —
That I neither eat or slept or took pleasure in anything as
before, except writing — The Observation will draw a sigh,
Eliza, from thy feeling heart — & yet, so thy heart wd
wish to have it — 'tis fit in truth we suffer equally — nor can
it be otherwise when the Causes of anguish in two hearts
are so proportion^ as are ours. — Surely, surely thou art
mine, Eliza ! for dear have I bought thee !

Ap. 27. — Things go better with me, Eliza ! and I shall
be reestablished soon except in bodily weakness ; not yet
being able to rise from thy Arm chair & walk to the other
corner of my room, & back to it again without fatigue — I
shall double my journey tomorrow, & if the day is warm
the day after be got into my Carriage & be transported
into Hyde Park for the adventure of air & excercise —
wast thou but besides me I could go to Salt Hill I'm sure
& feel the journey short & pleasant — another Time ! . . . .
— the present alas is not ours. I pore so much on thy
Picture — I have it off by heart — dear Girl — oh 'tis sweet !
'tis kind ! 'tis reflective ! 'tis affectionate ! 'tis — thine my
Bramine. I say my matins & vespers to it — I quiet my
murmurs by the Spirit which speaks in it " All will end well,
my Yorick ! " I declare my dear Bramine I am so secured
& wrapt up in this belief That I would not part with the

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 307

Imagination of how happy I am to be with thee, for all the
offers of present Interest or Happiness the whole world
could tempt me with ; in the loneliest cottage that Love &
Humility ever dwelt in ; with thee along with me, I could
possess more refined Content than in the most glittering
Court ; & with thy love & fidelity taste truer joys my
Eliza ! & make thee also partake of more, than all the
senseless parade of this silly world could compensate to
either of us — with this I bound all my desires & worldly
views — what are they worth without Eliza ? Jesus ! grant
me but this, I will deserve it — I will make my Bramine as
happy as thy goodness wills her — I will be the Instrument
of her recompense for the sorrows & disappointments thou
has suffered her to undergo, & if ever I am false, unkind
or ungentle to her, so let me be dealt with by thy Justice.

9 0 clock. — I am preparing to go to bed my dear Girl,
& first pray for thee, & then idolize thee for two wakeful
hours upon my pillow — I shall after that I find dream all
night of thee, for all the day I have done nothing but think
of thee — something tells that thou hast this day, been em-
ployed exactly in the same Way. good night, fair soul —
& may the sweet God of sleep close gently thy eyelids —
& govern & direct thy slumbers — adieu ! adieu, adieu !

Ap. 28. — I was not deceived, Eliza ! by my presenti-
ment that I should find thee out in my dreams ; for I have
been with thee almost the whole night, alternately soothing
Thee and telling thee my sorrows — & I have rose up
comforted & strengthened & found myself so much better
that I ordered my Carriage to carry me to our mutual
friend — Tears ran down her cheeks when she saw how pale
& wan I was — never gentle creature sympathised more
tenderly — I beseech you, cried she good soul, not to regard
either difficulties or expenses, but fly to Eliza directly — I
see you will dye without her — save yourself for her — how

3o8 STERNE

shall I look her in the face, what can I say to her, when on
her return I have to tell her That her Yorick is no more ! —
Tell her my dear friend, said I, that I will meet her in a better
world — & that I have left this because I couldnt live with-
out her ; tell Eliza, my dear friend, added ll — That I died
broken-hearted — and that you were a witness to it — as I
said this she burst into the most pathetick flood of Tears
[erasures] that ever kindly Nature shed — you never beheld
so affecting a scene — 'Twas too much for Nature ! — Oh
she is good — I love her as my sister ! & could Eliza have
been a witness hers would have melted down to Death &
scarce have been brought back, from an Extacy so celestial
& savouring of another world.— I had like to have fainted,
& to that Degree was my heart and Soul affected it was
wth difficulty I could reach the street door ; I have got
home & shall lay all day upon my Sopha — & tomorrow
morning, my dear Girl, write again to thee ; for I have not
strength to drag my pen.

April 29. — I am so ill today my dear I can only tell
you so — I wish I was put into a ship for Bombay — I wish
I may otherwise hold out till the hour we might otherwise
have met — I have too many evils upon me at once — &
yet I will not faint under them — Come ! — Come to me soon
my Eliza & save me !

April 30. — Better today — but am too much visited &
find my strength wasted by the attention I must give to all
concern'd for me — I will go Eliza, be it only by ten mile
journeys, home to my thatched cottage — & there 1 shall
have no respit — for I shall do nothing but think of thee —
& burn out this weak taper of Life, by the flame thou
hast superadded to it — farewell my dear. . . . — tomorrow
begins a new month — & I hope to give thee in it a more
sunshiny side of myself — Heaven ! how is it with my
Eliza ?—

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 309

May 1. — Got out into the park today — Sheba there on
horseback ; pass'd twice by her without knowing her — She
stop'd the third time to ask me how I did. I wd not
have asked you, Solomon, said she, but yr looks affected
me — for you're half dead I fear — I thank'd Sheba very
kindly, but wthout any emotion but what sprung from
gratitude — Love alas ! was fled with thee Eliza ! I did
not think Sheba could have changed so much in grace &
beauty — Thou hadst shrunk poor Sheba away into Nothing ;
but a good-natured girl without powers or charms — I fear
your wife is dead, quoth Sheba — No, you don't fear it,
Sheba said I. Upon my word Solomon ! I would quarrel
with you was you not so ill — If you knew the cause of my
illness Sheba, said I, you would quarrel but the more with
me — You lie, Solomon ! answered Sheba, for I know the
cause already — & am so little out of charity with you upon
it That I give you leave to come & drink Tea with me before
you leave town — you're a good honest creature Sheba — No !
you Rascal, I am not — but I'm in Love, as much as you can
be for your Life — I'm glad of it Sheba ! said I — You lie,
said Sheba, & so canter'd away. Oh my Eliza, had I ever
truly loved another (wch I never did) Thou hast long
ago cut the root of all affection in me — & planted &
water'd & nourish'd it to bear fruit only for thyself —
Continue to give me proofs I have had & shall preserve
the same rights over thee my Eliza ! & if I ever murmur
at the sufferings of Life after that Let me be numbered
with the ungrateful. I look now forwards with impatience
to the day thou art to get to Madras — & from thence
shall I want to hasten thee to Bombay — where heaven will
make all things conspire to lay the Basis of thy health and
future Happiness — be true my dear Girl to thyself — & to
the rights of self preservation which Nature has given thee
— persevere — be firm — be pliant — be placid — be courteous

310 STERNE

— but still be true to thyself — & never give up your life, or
suffer the [a word illegible] altercations, or small outrages you
may undergo in this momentous point to weigh a scruple in
the Ballance — Firmness — & fortitude & perseverance gain
almost impossibilities — & " Skin for skin, saith Job, nay all
that a man has, will he give for his Life " — Oh my Eliza !
that I could take the wings of the Morning and fly to aid
thee in this virtuous Struggle, went to Ranelagh at 8 this
night, & sat still till ten — came home ill.

May 2d. — I fear I have relapsed — sent afresh for my
Doctor — who has confined me to my Sopha — being neither
able to walk stand or sit upright without aggravating my
symptoms. — I'm still to be treated as if I was a sinner — &
in truth have some appearances so strongly implying it
That was I not conscious .... I would decamp tomorrow
for Montpellier in the South of France .... but If I
continue being ill — I am still determined to repair there —
not to undergo a cure of a distemper I cannot have, but for
the bettering my constitution by a better climate. I write
this as I lie upon my back in wch posture I must continue,
I fear some days. If I am able will take up my pen again
before night —

4 o'clock. — An hour dedicated to Eliza! for I have
dined alone — & ever since the cloath has been laid have
done nothing but call upon thy dear Name — and ask why
'tis not permitted thou shouldst sit down, & share my
Macarel & fowl — there would be enough, said Molly as
she placed it on the table, to have served both you &
poor Mrs Draper — I never bung in the knives & forks,
added she, but I think of her — There was no more trouble
with you both, than wth one of you — I never heard a high
or a hasty word from either of you — You were surely
made, added Molly, for one another. You are both so kind
so quiet & so friendly. — Molly furnished me with Sause

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 311

to my meat — for I wept my plate full, Eliza ! & now I
have begun, could shed tears till supper again — & then go
to bed weeping for thy absence till morning. Thou hast
bewitch'd me with powers, my dear Girl, from which no
power shall unlose me — and if Fate can put this Journal of
my Love into thy hands, before we meet I know with what
warmth it will inflame the kindest of hearts to receive me.
peace be with thee, my Eliza, till that happy moment !

9 at night. — I shall never get possession of myself, Eliza !
at this rate — I want to call off my thoughts from thee, that
I [may] now & then apply them to some concerns wch
require both my attention & genius, but to no purpose — I
had a letter to write to Lord Shelburn — & had got my
apparatus in order to begin — when a Map of India coming
in my way — I begun to study the length & dangers of
my Eliza's voyage to it, and have been amusing &
frightening myself by turns, as I traced the pathway of the
Earl of Chatham, the whole afternoon — good god ! what
a voyage for any one ! — but for the poor relaxed frame of
my tender Bramine to cross the Line twice ! & be subject
to the Intolerant heats, & the hazards which must be the
consequence of em to such an unsupported Being ! — O Eliza !
tis too much — & if thou conquerest these, & all the
other difficulties of so tremendous an alienation from thy
country, thy children & thy friends, 'tis the hand of
Providence wch watches over thee for most merciful
purposes. — Let this persuasion, my dear Eliza, stick close to
thee in all thy tryals — as it shall in those thy faithful Bramin
is put to — till the mark'd hour of deliverance comes. I'm
going to sleep upon this religious Elixir — may the Infusion
of it distil into the gentlest of hearts — for that Eliza ! is
thine — sweet, dear, faithful Girl, most kindly does thy
Yorick greet thee with the wishes of a good night, & of
millions yet to come

3i2 STERNE

May 3rd. Sunday. — what can be the matter with me !
Something is wrong, Eliza, in every part of me — I do not
gain strength ; nor have I the feelings of health returning
back to me, even my best moments seem merely the efforts
of my mind to get well again, because I cannot reconcile
myself to the thought of never seeing thee Eliza more. —
for something is out of tune in every chord of me — still
with thee to nurse and sooth me I should soon do well —
The want of thee is half my distemper — but not the whole
of it — I must see Mrs James tonight, tho I know not
how to get there — but I shall not sleep, if I don't talk of
you to her — so shall finish this Day's Journal on my return —

May 4. — Directed by Mrs James how to write Over-
land to thee, my Eliza ! — would gladly tear out this much
of my Journal to send to thee — but the chances are
too many against its getting to Bombay — or of being
deliver' d into your own hands — shall write a long long letter
— & trust it to Fate & thee, was not able to say three
words to Mrs James thro' utter weakness of body & mind ;
& when I got home could not get upstairs without Molly's
aid — have rose a little better my dear Girl — & will live
for thee — do the same for thy Bramin, I beseech thee, a
Line from thee now in this state of my dejection, would be
worth a kingdom to me !

May 4. — Writing by way of Vienna & Bussorah, my
Eliza. — this & Company took up the day.

j» — Writing to Eliza — & trying l'Extraite de
Saturne [?] 1 upon myself — (a french nostrum)

6th. — Dined out for the 1st time — came home to enjoy
a more harmonious evening wth my Eliza than I could
expect at Soho Concert — every Thing my dear Girl, has
lost its former relish to me — and for thee alone does it
quicken ! writing to thee over Land all day.

1 The sheet has been mended here, and a syllable expunged.

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 313

7. — continue poorly, my dear ! — but my blood runs
every momfc I think of our future scenes, so must grow
strong upon the Idea — what shall I do upon the Reality ?
— O God !

Sth. — employed in writing to my Dear all day — &
in projecting happiness for her — tho in misery myself.
O I have undergone Eliza. — but the worst is over (I hope)
— so adieu to these Evils, & let me hail the happiness to
come.

9'*, io'A, 11th. — So unaccountably disordered — I cannot
say more — but that I w. suffer ten times more with wishes
for my Eliza — adieu bless'd Woman !

1 2th. — O Eliza ! that my weary head was now laid
upon thy Lap — (tis all that's left for it) — or that I had thine
reclining upon my bosome, and there resting all its dis-
quietudes, my Bramine — the world or Yorick must perish,
before that foundation shall fail thee ! — I continue poorly —
but I turn my eyes Eastward the oftener, & with more
earnestness for it — Great God of Mercy ! shorten the
space betwixt us — Shorten the space and our miseries !

13th. — Could not get the General Post Office to take
charge of my Letters to you — so gave thirty shillings to
a Merchant to further them to Aleppo, & from thence to
Bussorah — so you will receive em (I hope in god) by
Christmas — Surely tis not impossible but I may be made
as happy as my Eliza, by some transcript from her by
that time — If not I shall hope — & hope every week & every
hour of it for Tidings of comfort — we taste not of it now
my dear Bramine — but we will make full meals upon it
hereafter. — Cards from 7 or 8 of our Grandees to dine with
them before I leave Town — shall go like a lamb to the
slaughter — " Man delights not me — nor Woman."

14. — a little better today — & would look pert if
my heart would but let me — dined with Lord & Lady

3i4 STERNE

Bellasis. — so beset with Company — not a moment to
write.

15. — Undone with too much Society yesterday —
You scarce can conceive, my dear Eliza, what a poor Soul
I am — how I shall be got down to Coxwould heaven knows
— for I am as weak as a child — You would not like me the
worse for it Eliza, if you was here — My friends like me
the more, — & I swear I shew more true fortitude &
evenness of temper in my suffering than Seneca or Socrates
— I am, my Bramine, resigned.

16. — Taken up all day with worldly matters just
as my Eliza was the week before her departure — break-
fasted with Lady Spencer — caught her with the Character
of yr Portrait — caught her passions still more with that
of yrself & my attachment to the most amiable of
Beings — drove at night to Ranelagh — staid an hour —
returned to my lodgings dissatisfied.

17. — At Court — everything in this world seems in
masquerade, but thee dear Woman, and therefore 1 am sick
of all the world but thee — one Evening so spent as the
Saturday's which preceded our separation would sicken
all the conversation of the world — relise no converse since
— when will the like return ? — tis hidden from us both for
the wisest ends — And the hour will come my Eliza ! when
we shall be convinced that every event has been ordered for
the best for us — Our fruit is not ripen'd — the accidents of
time & Seasons will ripen every Thing Together for Us
— a little better today — or could not have wrote this, dear
Bramine rest thy Sweet Soul in peace !

18. — Laid sleepless all the night thinking of the
many dangers & sufferings, my dear Girl ! that thou art
exposed to — from thy Voyage & thy sad state of health —
but I find I must think no more upon them — I have rose
wan & trembling with the Havock they have made upon

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 315

my nerves — tis death to me to apprehend for you — I must
flatter my Imagination, That every Thing goes well with
you — Surely no evil can have befallen you — for if it had —
I had felt some monitory sympathetic shock within me wch
would have spoke like Revelation. — So farewell to all
tormenting may-be s in regard to my Eliza — she is well —
she thinks of her Yorick with as much affection & true
esteem as ever — and values him as much above the world
as he values his Bramine

19. — Packing up, or rather Molly for me, the
whole day — tormenting ! had not Molly all the time talked
of poor Mrs Draper & recounted every Visit she had
made me, and every repast she had shared with me — how
good a Lady ! — How sweet a temper ! — how beautiful ! —
how genteel ! — how gentle a carriage — & how soft & engag-
ing a look ! — the poor girl is bewitched with us both —
infinitely interested in our story, tho' she knows nothing of
it but from her penetration & conjectures — She says how-
ever 'tis impossible not to be in love with her — In heart-
felt truth, Eliza ! I'm of Molly's opinion

20. — Taking Leave of all the Town, before my de-
parture tomorrow.

2 1 . — detained by Lord & Lady Spencer who had made
a party to dine & sup on my Ace*. Impatient to set out
for my Solitude — there the mind, Eliza, gains strength
& learns to lean upon herself, — & seeks refuge in its own
Constancy & Virtue — in the world it seeks or accepts of a
few treacherous supports — the feigned compassion of one
— the flattery of a second — the civilities of a third — the
friendship of a fourth — they all deceive — & bring the mind
back to where mine is retreating — that is, Eliza, to itself — to
thee who art my second self — to retirement, reflection and
Books — when the stream of things dear Bramine, Brings us
both together to this Haven — will not your heart take up

316 STERNE

its rest for ever ? & will not your head Leave the world to
those who can make a better thing of it — if there are any
who know how. — Heaven take thee Eliza ! under its wing
— adieu ! adieu !

22^. — Left Bond Street & London with it this
morning. — What a Creature I am ! my heart has ached
this week to get away — & still was ready to bleed in
quiting a Place where my connection with my dear dear
Eliza began — Adieu to it ! till I am summoned up to the
Downs by a message to fly to her — for I think I shall not
be able to support Town without you — & wd. chuse
rather to sit solitary here till the End of the next Summer
— to be made happy altogether,- — than seek for happiness —
or even suppose I can have it, but in Eliza's Society.

23rd. — Bear my Journey badly — ill — & dispirited all
the way — staid two days on the road at the A-Bishops
of Yorks — shew'd his Grace & his Lady and Sister yr
portrait — wth a short but interesting story of my friendship
for the Original. — kindly nursed and honored both —
arrived at my thatched Cottage the 28 th of May.~

29^ & 30^. — confined to my bed — so emaciated, & un-
like what I was, I could scarse be angry with thee Eliza,
if thou shouldst not remember me, did heaven send me
across thy way — Alas ! poor Yorick ! — remember thee !
Pale Ghost ! — remember thee — whilst Memory holds a seat
in this distracted world — Remember thee — Yes, from the
Table of her Memory, shall just Eliza wipe away all trivial
men & leave a throne for Yorick — adieu dear constant
Girl — adieu — adieu — & Remember my Truth & eternal
fidelity — Remember how I Love — remember what I suffer.
— Thou art my Eliza by Purchase — had I not earned thee
with a bitter price.

31. — Going this day upon a long course of corrosive
Mercury — wch in itself is deadly poyson, but given in a

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 317

certain preparation, not very dangerous — I was forced to
give it up in Town, from the horrible Cholick both in
Stomach & Bowels — but the Faculty thrust it down my
Throat again — These Gentry have got it into their Noddies
That mine is an Eccliviastick Rhounn as the french call it —
god help em ! I submit as my Uncle Toby did in drinking
Water, upon the wound he received in his Groin — merely
for quietness sake.

June 1. — The Faculty, my dear Eliza ! have mistaken
my Case — why not Yrs ? I wish I could fly to you &
attend you but one month as a Physician — you'l Languish
& dye where you are, — (if not by the climate) — most
certainly by their Ignorance of f Case, & the unskilful
Treatment you must be a martyr to in such a place as
Bombay — I'm Languishing here myself with every Aid &
help — & tho I shall conquer it — yet have had a cruel
struggle — wd my dear friend I could ease yrs, either by
my Advice — my attention — my Labour — my praise — They
are all at yr Service, such as they are — & that you know,
Eliza — or my friendship for you is not worth a rush.

June 2. — This morning surprised with a Letter from my
Lydia — that She & her Mama are coming to pay me a
Visit — but on Condition I promise not to detain them in
England beyond next April — when they purpose, by my
Consent to retire into France & establish themselves for
Life — To all which I have freely given my parole of Honour
— & so shall have them with me for the Summer — from
Oct1" to April — they take lodgings in York — When they

leave me for good & all I suppose. Every thing for the

best ! Eliza.

This unexpected visit is neither a visit of friendship or
form — but tis a visit such as I know you would never make
me, — of pure Interest — to pillage what they can from me.
In the first place to sell a small estate I have of sixty pd8

3tl STERNE

a year — & lay out the purchase money in joint annunitys
for them in the french Funds ; by this they will obtain
200 pds a year to be continued to the longer Liver — and as
it rids me of all future care, and moreover transfers their
Income to the Kingdom where they purpose to live — I'm
truely acquiescent — tho I lose the contingency of surviving
them — but tis no matter — I shall have enough — & a
hundred or two hundred Pounds for Eliza whenever she will

honour me by putting her hand into my Purse In the

mean time I am not sorry for this Visit, as every Thing will
be finally settled between us by it — only as their Annuity
will be too strait — I shall engage to remit them a 100
Guineas a year more, during my Wife's Life — & then I
will think Eliza, of living for myself & the Being I love
as much. — But I shall be pillaged in a hundred small Items
by them — wch I have a Spirit above saying No — to ; as
Provisions of all sorts of Linnens — for house use — body
use — printed Linnens for Gowns — Magazeens of Teas —
Plate all I have, (but 6 silver spoons) — In short I shall be
plucked bare — all but of yr Portrait & snuff Box & other
dear Presents — & the neat furniture of my thatch'd Palace
— & upon these I set up Stock again, Eliza. What say
you, Eliza ! shall we join our little Capitals together ? — will
Mr Draper give us leave ? — he may safely — if your Virtue
& Honour are only concerned, 'twould be safe in Yorick's
hands as in a Brother's — I w'd not wish Mr Draper to allow
you above half I allow Mrs Sterne — Our Capital would be
too great & tempt us from the Society of poor Cordelia —
who begins to wish for you.

By this time I trust you have doubled the Cape of good
hope — sat down to your writing Drawer, & looked in
Yorick's face, as you took out your Journal to tell him so
— I hope he seems to smile as kindly upon you Eliza, as
ever — yr attachment & Love for me, will make him do

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 319

so to eternity — if ever he shd change his Air, Eliza ! — I
charge you catechize your own Heart — Oh ! twill never
happen !

June 3d. — Cannot write my Travels, or give one half
hours close attenion to them, upon Thy Accfc my dearest
friend — Yet write I must, & what to do with you whilst I
write — I declare I know not — I want to have you ever
before my Imagination — & cannot keep you out of my
heart or head — In short thou enters my Library Eliza 1 (as
thou one day shalt) without tapping — or sending for — by
thy own Right of ever being close to thy Bramine — now I
must shut you out sometimes — or meet you Eliza ! with an
empty purse upon the Beach — pity my entanglements from
other passions — my Wife with me every moment of the
Summer — think w* restraint upon a Fancy that should
sport & be in all points at its ease — O had I my dear
Bramine this Summer, to soften— & modulate my feelings
— to enrich my Fancy & fill my heart brim full with bounty
— my Book wd be worth the reading

It will be by stealth if I am able to go on with
my Journal at all — It will have many Interruptions — &
Heyho's most sentimentally uttered — Thou must take it as
it pleases God. — as thou must take the Writer — eternal
blessings be about you Eliza ! I am a little better, & now
find I shall be set right in all points — my only anxiety is
about you — I want to prescribe for you my Eliza — for I
think I understand your Case better than the Faculty,
adieu, adieu.

June 4. — Hussy ! — I have employed a full hour upon
yr sweet sentimental Picture — and a couple of hours upon
yourself — & with as much kind friendship as the hour
You left me. — I deny it — Time lessens no affections wch
Honour & merit have planted — I wd give more, and
hazard more now for your happiness than in any one period

320 STERNE

since I first learn'd to esteem you — is it so with my friend ?
has absence weaken'd my Interest ? — has time worn out any
Impression — or is Yorick's name less musical in Eliza's
ears ? — my heart smites me for asking the question — tis
Treason ag8t thee, Eliza, and Truth — Ye are dear Sisters
and yr Brother Bramin can never live to see a separation
amongst us. — What a similitude in our Trials whilst
asunder ! — Providence has ordered every step better than
we could have ordered them, for the particular good we
wish each other — This you will comment upon & find the
sense of without my explanation.

I wish this Summer & Winter wth all I am to go
through with in them in business & Labour & Sorrow,
well over — I have much to compose — & much to dis-
compose me — with my Wife's projects & my own views
arising out of them, to harmonize & turn to account — I
have Millions of heart aches to suffer & reason with — &
in all this Storm of Passions I have but one small anchor,
Eliza ! to keep this weak vessel of mine from perishing —
I trust all I have to it — as I trust Heaven which cannot
leave me without a fault to perish. — may the same just
Heaven my Eliza, be that eternal canopy wch shall shelter
thy head from evil till we meet — adieu — adieu

June 5. — I sit down to write this day in good earnest —
so read Eliza ! quickly besides me — I'll not give you a
look — except one of kindness — dear Girl ! if thou lookest
so bewitching once more — I'll turn thee out of my Study —
You may bid me defiance, Eliza — You cannot conceive how
much & how universally I am pitied, upon the score of
this unexpected visit from france — my friends think it will
kill me — If I find myself in danger I'll fly to you to Bom-
bay— will M1' Draper receive me ? — he ought — but he
will never know what reasons make it his Interest & Duty
— We must leave all all to that Being who is infinitely

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 321

removed above all straitness of heart — & is a friend to
the friendly, as well as to the friendless.

June 6. — am quite alone in the depth of that sweet
Recesse I have so often described to you — tis sweet in
itself — but You never come across me — but the perspective
brightens up & every Tree & Hill & Vale & Ruin ab* me
smiles as if you was admist 'em — delusive moments ! —
how pensive a price do I pay for you — fancy sustains the
Vision whilst she has strength — but Eliza ! Eliza is not
with me ! — I sit down upon the first Hillock solitary as a
sequestered Bramin — I wake from my delusion to a thousand
disquietudes which many talk of — my Eliza ! — but few feel
— then weary my Spirit with thinking, plotting & pro-
jecting— & when I've brought my System to my mind —
am only Doubly miserable That I cannot execute it. Thus
— thus my dear Bramine are we tost at present in this
Tempest — Some Haven of rest will open to us assuredly
— God made us not for Misery & Ruin — he has ordered
all our steps — & influenced our attachments for what is
worthy of Them — It must end well. — Eliza I

June 7. — I have this week finished a sweet little apart-
ment which all the time it was doing I flattered the most
delicious of ideas in thinking I was making it for you — Tis
a neat little simple elegant room, overlooked only by the
Sun — just big enough to hold a Sopha — for us — [long erasure']
a Table, four Chairs, a Bureau & a Book case. — They are
to be all yours, Room & all — & there Eliza ! shall I enter
ten times a day to give thee Testimonies of my devotion —
wast thou this moment sat down it wd be the sweetest of
earthly Tabernacles — I shall enrich it from time to time for
thee — till Fate lets me lead thee by the hand into it — &
then it can want no Ornament. — tis a little oblong room
with a large Sash at the end — a little elegant fireplace —
wth as much room to dine around it as in Bond Street — But

21

322

STERNE

in sweetness & Simplicity & silence beyond anything — Oh
my Eliza ! — I shall see thee surely Goddesse of this Temple
— & the most sovereign one of all I have — & of all the
powers Heaven has trusted me with — They were lent me
Eliza ! only for thee — & for thee my dear Girl shall be
kept & employed. — You know what rights You have over
me — wish to heaven I could convey the Grant more amply
than I have done — but tis the same — tis registered where
it will longest last — & that is in the most feeling & most
sincere of human hearts — You know I mean this recipro-
cally— & whenever I mention the Word Fidelity & Truth
in Speaking of yr reliance on mine, I always Imply the
same Reliance upon the same Virtues in my Eliza. — I love
thee Eliza ! & will love thee for ever. Adieu.

June 8. — Begin to recover & sensibly to gain strength
every day — & have such an appetite as I have not had for
years — I prophecy I shall be the better for the very
Accident which has occasioned my Illness — & that the
Medicines and Regimen I have submitted to will make a
thorough Regeneration of me, & that I shall have more
health and strength than I have enjoy'd these ten years. —
Send me such an account of thyself Eliza, by the first sweet
Gale — but tis impossible you shd from Bombay — 'twil be
as fatal to You as it has been to thousands of yr Sex —
England & Retirement in it can only save you — Come ! —
Come away !

June 9*\ — I keep a post chaise & a couple of fine horses,
& take the Air every day in it — I go out — & return to
my Cottage Eliza ! alone — tis melancholly, what shd be

matter of enjoyment ; & the more so far that reason

I have a thousand things to remark & say as I roll along —
but I want You to say them to — I could sometimes be wise
— & often witty — but I feel it a reproach to be the latter
whilst Eliza is so far from hearing me — & what is wisdom

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 323

to a foolish weak heart like mine ! 'Tis like the Song of
Melody to a broken Spirit — You must teach me fortitude
my dear Bramine — for with all the tender qualities which
make you the most precious of Women — & most wanting
of all other Women of a kind Protector — yet you have a
passive kind of sweet courage wch bears you up — more
than any one Virtue I can summon up in my own Case — We
were made with Tempers for each other Eliza ! & you are
blessed with such a certain turn of mind & reflection —
that if self love does not blind me — I resemble no Being in
the world so nearly as I do you — do you wonder then I
have such friendship for you ? — for my own part I shd not
be astonished Eliza, if you was to declare " You was up to
the ears in Love with me."

June 10th. — You are stretching over now in the Trade
Winds from the Cape to Madrass — (I hope) — but I know
it not. some friendly ship you possibly have met wth, &
I never read an ace* of an India Man arrived — but I
expect that it is the Messenger of the news my heart is
upon the rack for. — I calculate That you will arrive at
Bombay by the beginning of October — by February I shall
surely hear from you thence — but from Madrass sooner —
I expect you Eliza in person, by September & shall scarce
go to London till March — for what have I to do there when
(except printing my Books) I have no Interest or Passion
to gratify — I shall return in June to Coxwould — & there
wait for the glad Tidings of your arrival in the Downs —
wont you write to me Eliza by the first Boat ? would not
you wish to be greeted by yr Yorick upon the Beach ? — or
be met by him to hand you out of yr post chaise, to pay
him for the Anguish he underwent in handing you into it ?
— I know your answers — my Spirit is with you. — Farewel
dear friend

June 11. — I am every day negociating to sell my little

324

STERNE

Estate besides me — to send the money into France to
purchase peace to myself — & a certainty of never having
it interrupted by Mr8 Sterne — who when she is sensible I
have given her all I can part with — will be at rest herself —
Indeed her plan to purchase Annuity s in France — is a pledge
of Security to me — That she will live her days out there —
otherwise she could have no end in transporting this two
thousand pounds out of England — nor wd I consent but
upon that plan — but I may be at rest ! — if my Imagination
will but let me — Hall says tis rte> matter where she lives ;
if we are but separate, tis as good as if the Ocean rolled
between us — & so I should argue to another Man — but tis
an Idea which wont do so well for me — & tho nonsensical
enough — Yet I shall be most at rest when there is that Bar
between us — was I never so sure, I shd never be interrupted
by her in England — but I may be at rest I say on this head —
for they have left all their cloaths & plate & Linnen behind
them in france — & have joined in the most earnest Entreaty
That they may return & fix in france — to wch I have given
my word & honour — You will be bound with me Eliza ! I
hope for performance of my promise — I never yet broke
it in Cases where Interest or pleasure could have tempted
me — and shall hardly do it [many words erased] now when
tempted only by misery. — In Truth Eliza ! thou art the
object to wch every act of mine is directed — You interfere
in every Project — I rise — I go to sleep with this in my
brain — how will my dear Bramine approve of this ? — wch
way will it conduce to make her happy ? & how will it be
a proof of my affection to her ? are all the enquiries I make
— Yr Honour, yr Conduct, yr Truth & regard for my
esteem — I know will equally direct every step — & move-
ment of your desires — & with that Assurance is it my dear
Girl, That I sustain Life — But when will those sweet eyes
of thine run over these Declarations ? — how — & with whom

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 325

are they to be entrusted to be conveyed to you ? — Unless
Mr3 James's friendship to us finds some expedient — I must
wait — till the first evening I'm with You — when I shall
present you with them as a better Picture of me than Cosway
could do for you . . . . — have been dismally ill all day —
owing to my course of Medicines wch are too strong &
forcing for this gawky constitution of mine. — I mend with

them however — good God ! how is it with you ?

June 12. — I have returned from a delicious walk of
Romance, my Bramine, which I am to tread a thousand times
over with you swinging upon my arm — 'tis to my Convent
— & I have plucked up a score Bryars by the roots wch
grew near the edge of the foot-way that they might not
scratch or incommode you — had I been sure of your taking
that walk with me the very next day I could not have been
more serious in my employmfc — dear Enthusiasm ! — thou
bring'st things forward in a moment wch Time keeps for
ages back — I have you ten times a day besides me — I talk
to you Eliza for hours together — I take yr Council — I hear
your reasons — I admire you for them ! — to this Magic of
a warm (?) Mind I owe all that's worth living for during the
state of our Trial — Every Trincket you gave or exchanged
wth me has its force — yr Picture is Yrself — all Sentiment
Softness, & Truth — It speaks — it listens — 'tis convinced —
it resignes — Dearest Original ! how like unto thee does it
seem — & will seem — till thou makest it vanish by thy
presence — I'm but so, so — but advancing in health — to meet
you — to nurse you — to nourish you agst you come. — for
I fear You will not arrive but in a state that calls out to
Yorick for support — Thou art Mistress, Eliza of all the
powers he has to sooth & protect thee — for thou art Mistress
of his heart, his affections, & his reason, — & beyond that,
except a paltry purse, he has nothing worth giving
thee

326 STERNE

June 13. — This has been a year of presents to me, my
Bramine — How many presents have I recd from you in the
first place ? — Ld Spencer has loaded me with a grand
Escritoire of 40 Guineas — & I am to receive this week a
fourty Guinea present of a gold Snuff Box, as fine as Paris
can fabricate one — with an Inscription on it more valuable
than the Box itself — I have a present of a Portrait (which
by the by I have immortalized in my Sentimental Journey)
worth them both — I say nothing of a gold Stock buccle &
buttons — though I rate them above rubies, because they
were consecrated by the hand of Friendship, as she fitted
them to me. — 1 have a present of the Sculptures upon poor
Ovid's Tomb, who died in exile tho' he wrote so well
upon the Art of Love — These are in six beautiful Pictures
executed on Marble at Rome — & these, Eliza, I keep sacred
as Ornaments for yr Cabinet, on condition I hang them up.
— And last of all, I have had a present Eliza ! this year of
a Heart so finely set — with such rich materials — & Work-
manship— that Nature must have have had the chief hand
in it — If I am able to keep it — I shall be a rich Man — If I
lose it — I shall be poor indeed — so poor ! I shall stand
begging at your gates. — But what can all these presents
portend — That it will turn out a fortunate earnest of what
is to be given me hereafter

June 14. — I want you to comfort me, my dear Bramine
— & reconcile my mind to 3 months misery — some days
I think lightly of it — on others — my heart sinks down to
the earth — but tis the last Trial of conjugal Misery — & I
wish it was to begin this moment That it might run its
period the faster — for sitting as I do, expecting sorrow — is
suffering it — I am going to Hall to be philosophical with
for a week or ten days on this point — but one hour with
you would calm me more & furnish me with stronger
supports under this weight upon my Spirits than all the

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 327

world put together — Heaven ! to what distressful En-
counters hast thou thought fit to expose me — & was it not
that thou hast blessed me with a chearfulness of disposition
— & thrown an object in my Way That is to render that
Sunshine perpetual — Thy dealings with me would be a
mystery. —

June 15. — From morning to night every mom* of this
day held in Bondage at my friend Ld ffauconberg's — so
have but a moment left to close the day as I do every one —
with wishing thee a sweet night's rest — would I was at the
feet of your bed — fanning breezes to you in yr slumbers —
Mark ! — you will dream of me this night — & if it is not
recorded in your Journal — I'll say, you could not recollect
it the day following — adieu. —

June 16. — My chaise is so large — so high — so long —
so wide — so Crawford's like, that I am building a coach-
house on purpose for it — do you dislike it for this gigantick
size ? — now I remember I heard you once say — You hated
a small post chaise — wch you must know determined my
Choice to this — because I hope to make you a present of
it — & if you are squeamish I shall be as squeamish as You
& return You all yr presents — but one — wch I cannot
part with and what that is — I defy you to guess. I have
bought a milch Asse this afternoon — & purpose to live by
Suction to save the expenses of housekeeping — & have a
score or two guineas in my purse next September

June 17. — I have brought yr name Eliza! and Picture
into my work — where they will remain, when you & 1
are at rest for ever — Some Annotator or explainer of my
works in this place will take occasion to speak of the
Friendship which subsisted so long & faithfully betwixt
Yorick & the Lady he speaks of — Her Name he will tell
the world was Draper — a Native of India — married there to
a gentleman in the India service of that Name, who brought

328 STERNE

her over to England for the recovery of her health in the
year 6$ — where she continued to April the year 1767. It
was about three months before her return to India That our
Author's acquaintance & hers begun. — M™ Draper had a
great thirst for knowledge — was handsome — genteel — en-
gaging— and of such gentle dispositions & so enlightened
an understanding — That Yorick (whether she made much
opposition is not known) from an acquaintance — soon
became her Admirer — they caught fire at each other at the
same time — & they would often say, without reserve to
the world, & without any Idea of saying wrong in it, That
their affections for each other were unbounded {several words
blacked out] — Mr Draper dying in the year . . . . — This lady
returned to England — & Yorick the year after becoming
a Widower — They were married — & retiring to one of his
Livings in Yorkshire where was a most romantic Situation —
they lived & died happily — and are spoke of with honour
in the parish to this day

June 18. — How do you like the History of this couple,
Eliza ? — is it to your mind ? — or shall it be written better
some sentimental evening after your return — tis a rough
sketch — but I could make it a pretty Picture as the outlines
are just — we'll put our heads together & try what we can
do. This last sheet has put it out of my power, ever to
send you this Journal to India — I had been more guarded —
but that you have often told me 'twas in vain to think of
writing by ships which sail in March, — as you hoped to be
on your return again by their arrival at Bombay. — If I can
write a letter I will — but this Journal must be put into
Eliza's hands by Yorick only — God grant you to read it
soon.

June 19. — I never was so well & alert as I find myself
this day — tho' with a face as pale & clear as a Lady after
her Lying-in, Yet you never saw me so young by 5 years —

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 329

If you do not leave Bombay soon — you'l find me as young

as Yrself — at this rate of going on Summoned from

home, adieu.

June 20. — I think, my dear Bramine, that nature is
turned upside down — for Wives go to visit Husbands at
greater perils & take longer Journeys to pay them this
civility now a days out of ill will — than good. Mine is
flying post a Journey of a thousand miles — with as many
miles to go back — merely to see how I do & whether I am
fat or lean — & how far are you going to see your Helpmate
— and at such hazards to Yr Life, as few Wives & best
affections wd be able to surmount — But Duty & Sub-
mission, Eliza, govern thee — by what impulses my Rib is
bent towards me — I have told you — & yet I wd to God
Draper but recd & treated you with half the courtesy &
good nature — I wish you was with him — for the same
reason I wish my Wife at Coxwould — That she might the
sooner depart in peace — She is ill — of a Diarhea which she
has from a weakness in her bowels ever since her paralitic
Stroke — Travelling post in hot weather is not the best
remedy for her — but my girl says — she is determined to
venture — She wrote me word in Winter she wd not leave
f ranee till her end approached — surely this journey is not
prophetick ! but 'twould invert the order of things on the
other side of this Leaf — and what is to be on the next Leaf
— The Fates, Eliza, only can tell us — rest satisfied.

June 21. — have left off all medecines — not caring to tear
my frame to pieces with 'em — as I feel perfectly well — set
out for Crasy Castle tomorrow morning — where I stay ten
days — take my sentimental voyage — and this Journal with
me, as certain as the two first wheels of my Chariot — I
cannot go on without them — I long to see Yr8 — I shall
read it a thousand times over If I get it before your arrival
— What wd I now give for it — tho' I know there are

330 STERNE

circumstances in it that will make my heart bleed & waste
within me — but if all blows over — tis enough — we will not
recount our sorrows but to shed tears of Joy over them— O
Eliza ! Eliza ! Heaven not any Being it created never so
possess'd a Man's heart — as thou possessest mine — use it
kindly — Hussy — that is, eternally be true to it. —

June 22. — I've been as far as York today with no Soul
with me in my Chaise, but yr Picture — for it has a Soul I
think — or something like one which has talked to me &
been the best Company I ever took a Journey with (always
excepting a Journey I once took with a friend of yrs to
Salt Hill, & Enfield Wash — The pleasure I had in those
Journies have left Impressions upon my Mind which will
last my Life — You may tell her as much when you see her
— she will not take it ill — I set out early tomorrow morning
to see Mr Hall — but take my Journal along with me.

June 24^. — As pleasant a Journey as I am capable of
taking Eliza ! without thee — Thou shalt take it with me
when time & tide serve hereafter, & every other Journey
which ever gave me pleasure shall be rolled over again with
thee besides me. — Arno's Vale shall look gay again upon
Elizas visit — & the Companion of her Journey will grow
young again as he sits upon her Banks with Eliza seated
besides him. I have this & a thousand little parties of
pleasure — & systems of living out of the comon high road
of Life hourly working in my Fancy for you — there want
only the T)ramatis Personee for the performance — the play is
wrote — the scenes are painted — & the curtain ready to be
drawn up : — the whole Piece waits for thee my Eliza

June 25. — In a course of continual visits & Invitations
here — Bombay Lascelles dined here today — (his Wife
yesterday brought to bed) — (he is a poor sorry soul !) but
has taken a house two miles from Crasy Castle — What a
stupid selfish unsentimental set of Beings are the bulk of

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 331

our Sex ! by Heaven ! not one man out of 50 informed
with feelings — or endow'd either with heads or hearts able
to possess & fill the mind of such a Being as thee with
one vibration like its own — I never see or converse with
one of my Sex — but I give this point a reflection — how
would such a creature please my Bramine ? I assure thee,
Eliza, I have not been able to find one whom I thought
could please You — the turn of Sentiment with which I left
your Character possess'd — must improve hourly upon You —
Truth, fidelity, honour & Love, mixed up with Delicacy,
guarantee one another — & a taste so improved as Yrs by
so delicious fare can never degenerate — I shall find you my
Bramine if possible more valuable & lovely than when
you first caught my esteem & Kindness for You — and tho'
I see not this change — I give you so much credit for it —
that at this moment my heart glows more warmly as I think
of you — & I find myself more your Husband than
Contracts can make us — I stay here till the 29th — had
intended a longer stay — but much Company & Dissipation
rob me of the only comfort my mind takes, wch is in retire-
ment where I can think of you Eliza ! and enjoy you
quietly & without interruption — tis the way we must
expect all that is to be had of real enjoyment in this vile
world — which being miserable itself — seems so confederated
ag8fc the happiness of the Happy that they are forced to
secure it in private — Variety must still be had ; — & that,
Eliza ! & every thing wth it wch Yorick's sense or gener-
osity has to furnish to one he loves so much as thee —
need I tell thee — Thou wilt be as much a Mistress of — as

thou art eternally of thy Yorick — adieu, adieu.

June 26. — eleven at night — out all the day — dined with
a large Party — shew'd yr Picture from the fullness of my
heart — highly admired — Alas ! said I, did you but see the
Original ! — good night.

332 STERNE

June 27. — Ten in the morning, with my Snuff open at
the top of this sheet, — & your gentle sweet face opposite
to mine & saying " what I write will be cordially read " —
possibly you may be precisely engaged at this very hour the
same way — and telling me some interesting Story ab* your
health, yr sufferings — yr heart aches — and other sensations
wch friendship, absence and uncertainty create within you.
for my own part my dear Eliza, I am a prey to every thing
in its turn — & was it not for that sweet clew of hope wch
is perpetual opening me a way which is to lead me to thee
through all this Labyrinth — was it not for this, my Eliza !
how could I find rest for this bewildered heart of mine ? —
I shd wait for you till September came — and if you did not
arrive with it — shd sicken & die. — but I will live for thee
— so count me Immortal — 3 India Men arrived within ten
days — will none of em bring me Tidings of You ? — but I
am foolish — but ever thine — my dear, dear Bramine.

June 28. — O what a tormenting night have my dreams
led me abt you, Eliza — Mrs Draper a Widow ! — with a hand
at Liberty to give ! and gave it to another ! She told me
I must acquiesce it could not be otherwise. Acquiesce,
cried I waking in agonies — God be praised cried I, tis a
dream — fell asleep after — dream'd You was married to the
Captain of the Ship — I waked in a fever — but twas the
Fever in my blood which brought on this painful chain of
Ideas — for I am ill today — & for want of more cheary Ideas
I torment my Eliza with these — whose Sensibility will suffer
if Yorick could but dream of her Infidelity ! & I suffer,
Eliza, in my turn to think myself at pres* little better than
an old Woman or a Dreamer of Dreams in the Scripture
language.

I am going to ride myself into better health & better
fancies with Hall whose Castle lyes near the Sea. We have
a Beach as even as a mirrour of 5 miles in length before it,

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 333

where we daily run races in our Chaises, with one wheel in
the sea & the other in the sand — O Eliza with what fresh
ardour & impatience when I'm viewing this element do I
sigh for thy return — But 1 need no mementos of my
Destitution & misery for want of thee — I carry them about
me, & shall not lay them down (for I worship & Idolize
these tender sorrows) till I meet thee upon the Beach &
present the handkerchiefs stained with blood wch broke out
from my heart upon yr departure — This token of what I
felt at that crisis, Eliza, shall never never be washed out.
Adieu my dear Wife — you are still mine — notwithstanding
all the Dreams & Dreamers in the world. — Mrs Lascelles
dined with us — I have to tell you a conversation — I will not

write it

June 29. — am got home from Hall's — to Coxwould — O
tis a delicious retreat ! both from its beauty & air of
Solitude, & so sweetly does every thing abfc it invite your
mind to rest from its labours & be at peace with itself &
the world — That tis the only place Eliza I could live in at
this juncture — I hope one day You will like it as much as
yr Bramine — It shall be decorated & made more worthy
of you by the time Fate encourages me to look for you — I
have made you a sweet Sitting-room (as I told you already)
— & am projecting a good bed-chamber adjoining it, with a
pretty Dressing-room for You which connects them together
— & when they are finished will be as sweet a set of romantic
apartments, as you ever beheld — the sleeping room will be
very large — The dressing room thro which you pass into
your Temple will be small — but big enough to hold a
Dressing Table, a couple of chairs, with room for yr
Nymph to stand at her ease both behind and on either side
of you — wth spare room to hang a dozen petticoats, gowns,
&c. — & shelves for as many Bandboxes — Yr little Temple
I have described — & what it will hold — but if it ever holds

334

STERNE

You & I, my Eliza, the room will not be too little for us —

but we shall be too big for the Room.

June 30. — Tis now a quarter of a year (wanting 3 days)
since You sail'd from the Downs — in one month more
you will be (I trust) at Madras — & there you will stay
I suppose 2 long long months before you set out for
Bombay. Tis there I shall want to hear from you most
impatiently — because the most interesting letters must come
from my Eliza when she is there — at present I can hear of
your health, & though that of all Accts affects me most —
yet still I have hopes taking their rise from that — & those
are — what Impression you can make upon Mr Draper
towards setting you at Liberty — & leaving you to pursue
the best measures for yr preservation — and those are points
I would go to Aleppo to know certainly : I have been
possessed all this day & night with an opinion That Draper
will change his behaviour totally towards you — That he will
grow friendly & caressing — and as he knows your Nature
is easily to be won by gentleness he will practise to turn
you from your purpose of quitting him — In short when it
comes to the point of yr going from him to England it
will have so much the face if not the reality of an alienation
on yr side from India for ever, as a place you cannot live
at — that he will part with you by no means he can prevent
— You will be caj oiled, my dear Eliza, thus out of your
Life — but what serves it to write this, unless means can
be found for You to read it — If you come not I will
take the safest cautions to have it got to you — & risk
everything rather than you should not know how much
I think of you. — & how much stronger hold you have
got of me than ever. — Dillon has obtained his fair Indian —
& has this post wrote a kind Letter of enquiry after
Yorick & his Bramine — he is a good soul — & interests
himself much in our fate — I have wrote him a whole sheet

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 335

of paper ab* us — it ought to have been copied into this
Journal — but the uncertainty of yr ever reading it makes
me omit that with a thousand other things, which when
we meet shall beguile us of many a long winter's night. —
those precious Nights ! — my Eliza ! — You rate them as
high as I do — & look back upon the manner the hours
glided over our heads in them with the same Interest &
Delight as the Man you spent them with — They are all
that remains to us except the Expectation of their return —
the space between is a dismal void — full of doubts, suspence
— Heaven & its kindest Spirits, my dear, rest over yr
thoughts by day & free them from disturbance at night —
adieu, adieu, Eliza ! — I have got over this month, so
farewel to it & the sorrows it has brought with it — the

next month I prophecy will be worse.

July 1. But who can foretell what a month may pro-
duce— Eliza — I have no less than seven different chances
— not one of wcb is improbable — & any one of wch would
set me much at Liberty — & some of em render me com-
pletely happy, as they would facilitate & open the road
to thee — what these chances are I leave thee to conjecture,
my Eliza, — some of them you cannot divine — tho' I once
hinted them to you — but these are pecuniary chances arising
out of my Prebend — & so not likely to stick in thy brain
— nor could they occupy mine a moment but on thy ace1.
... I hope before I meet thee Eliza, on the Beach, to have
every thing planned that depends on me properly — & for
what depends on him who orders every Event for us, to
him I leave & trust it — We shall be happy at last I know
— tis the corner stone of all my Castles & tis all I bargain
for. I am perfectly recovered — or more than recovered —
for never did I feel such Indications of health & strenght
and promptness of mind — notwithstanding the cloud hanging
over me of a Visit & all its tormenting consequences —

336 STERNE

Hall has written an affecting little poem upon it — the next
time I see him I will get it & transcribe it in this Journal
for you. . . . He has persuaded me to trust her with no
more than fifteen hundred pounds into france — 'twil purchase
150 pds a year — & to let the rest come annually from
myself, the advice is wise enough, If I can get her off
with it — I'll summon up the Husband a little (if I can)
& keep the 500 pds remaining for emergencies. — who
knows Eliza, what sort of Emergencies may cry out for
it — I conceive some — & you Eliza are not backward in
conception — so may conceive others. / wish I was in
Amos Vale I

July 2nd. But am in the Vale of Cowould & wish you

saw in how princely a manner I live in it — tis a Land of
Plenty — I sit down alone to Venison, fish or wild fowl,
or a couple of fowls — with curds & strawberries & cream
and all the simple clean plenty wch a rich vally can pro-
duce— with a Bottle of wine on my right hand (as in Bond
Street) to drink yr health — I have a hundred hens &
chickens about my yard — & not a parishioner catches a hare
a rabbit or a trout but he brings me an offering — In short
tis a golden vally — & will be the golden age when you
govern the rural feast my Bramine, & are the Mistress
of my table, & spread it with elegancy and that natural
grace & bounty wth wch heaven has distinguished You. . . .
Time goes on slowly — every thing stands still — hours seem
days & days seem years whilst you lengthen the distance
between us — from Madras to Bombay — I shall think it
shortening — and then desire & expectation will be upon
the rack again — Come — Come

July 3d. — Hail ! Hail ! my dear Eliza — I steal some-
thing every day from my Sentimental Journey — to obey a
more sentimental impulse in writing to you — & giving you
the present Picture of myself — my wishes — my Love — my

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 337

Sincerity — my hopes — my fears. Tell me have I varied
in any one Lineament from the first Sitting — to this last —
have I been less warm — less tender & affectionate than you
expected or could have wished in any one of em — or
however varied in the expressions of what I was & what
I felt have I not still presented the same Air and face
towards thee ? — take it as a sample of what I ever shall
be — My dear Bramine — & that is — such as my honour,
my Engagements, & promises & desires, have fiVd me — I
want you to be on the other side of my little table, to hear
how sweetly yr voice will be in unison with all this — I
want to hear what you have to say to Yr Yorick upon this
test — what heavenly Consolation wd drop from your lips —
& how pathetically you wd enforce yr Truth & Love
upon my heart to free it from every aching doubt — Doubt !
did I say — but I have none — and as soon wd I doubt the
Scripture I have preached on— as question thy promises
or suppose one Thought in thy heart during thy absence
from me, unworthy of my Eliza. — for if thou wert false,
my Bramine — the whole world — and Nature itself are lyars
— & I shall trust to nothing this side of heaven — but turn
aside from all commerce with expectation, & go quietly
on my way alone towards a state where no disappointments
can follow me — you are grieved when I talk thus ; it implies
what does not exist in either of us — so cross it out if thou
wilt — or leave it as a part of the Picture of a heart that
again Languishes for Possession & is disturbed at every
Idea of its uncertainty. — So heaven bless thee — & ballance
thy passions better than I have power to regulate mine
— farewel my dear Girl — I sit in dread of tomorrow's
post which is to bring me an Ace1 when Madame is to
arrive. — —

July 4*\ — Hear nothing of her — so am tortured from post

to post for I want to know certainly the day 6? hour of this

22

338 STERNE

Judgment. She is moreover ill as my Lydia writes me
word — & I'm impatient to know whether tis that or what
other Cause detains her & keeps me in this vile state of
Ignorance — I'm pitied by every Soul in proportion as her
Character is detested — & her errand known — she is
coming every one says to flea from Yorick or slay him —
& I am spirited up by every friend I have to sell my Life
dear & fight valiantly in defence both of my property &
my Life — Now my Maxim Eliza is quietly in three —
Spare my Life & take all 1 have — If she is not content to
decamp with that — One kingdom shall not hold us — for if
she will not betake herself to France — I will, but these I
verily (?) believe my fears & nothing more — for she will
be as impatient to quit England as I could wish her — but of
this, you will know more before I have gone through this
months Journal. — I get 2000 pounds for my estate — that
is I had the offer this morning of it — & think tis enough. —
when that is gone — I will begin saving for thee — but in saving
myself for thee That & every other kind act is implied.

get on slowly with my work — but my head is too

full of other matters — yet will I finish it before I see
London — for I am of too scrupulous honour to break faith
with the world — great Authors make no scruple of it — but
if they are great Authors I'm sure they are little Men. —
I'm sure also of another point which concerns Yrself — &
that is Eliza, that you shall never find me one hair breadth
a less Man than you [blacked out] — farewell — I love thee
eternally.

July 5. — Two Letters from the South of France by this
post by which by some fatality I find that not one of my
Letters have got to them this month — This gives me con-
cern— because it has the aspect of an unseasonable unkind-
ness in me — to take no notice of what has the appearance at
least of a civility in desiring to pay me a Visit — my daughter

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 339

besides has not deserved it of me — & tho' her Mother has,
I wd not ungenerously take that opportunity which would
most overwhelm her to give any mark of my resentment —
I have besides long since forgiven her — & am the more
inclined now as she proposes a plan by which I shall never
more be disquieted — in these two last she renews her
request to have leave to live where she has transferred her
fortune — & purposes with my leave, she says, to end her
days in the South of France — to all which I have just been
writing her a Letter of Consolation & good will — & to
crown my professions entreat her to take post with my girl
to be here time enough to enjoy York races — & so having
done my duty to them — I continue waiting to do it to thee
Eliza who art the Woman of my heart & for whom I am
ordering & planning this & every Thing else — be assured my
Bramine that ere everything is ripe for our Drama I shall
work hard to fit out & decorate a little Theatre for
us to act on — but not before a crowded House — no,
Eliza — it shall be as secluded as the Elysian fields — retire-
ment is the nurse of Love & kindness — & I will Woo &
caress thee in it in such sort that every thicket & grotto
we pass by shall sollicit the remembrance of the mutual
pledges We have exchanged of Affection with one another
— Oh ! these expectations make me sigh as I recite them —
& many a heartfelt Interjection do they cost me as I
saunter alone in the tracks we are to tread together here-
after— still I think thy heart is with me — & whilst I think
so, I prefer it to all the Society this world can offer — & tis
in truth my dear oweing to this — That tho' Fve recd half
a dozen Letters pressing me to join my friends at Scar-
borough— that Fve found pretences not to quit You here &
sacrifice the many sweet Occasions I have of giving my
thoughts up to You — for Company I cannot relish since
I have tasted my dear Girl the sweets of thine.

34o STERNE

July 6. — Three long months & three long days are
passed & gone since my Eliza sighed on taking her Leave
of Albion's Cliffs, & of all in Albion which was dear to her
— How oft have I smarted at the Idea of that last longing
look by wch thou badest adieu to all thy heart suffered at
that dismal Crisis — 'twas the Separation of Soul & Body
— & equal to nothing but what passes at that tremendous
moment, & like it in one consequence that thou art in
another World ; where I wd give a world, to follow thee
— for this I shall write in a few days to our dear friend
Mrs James — she may have possibly heard a single syllable
or two ab* you — but it cannot be ; the same must have
been directed towards Yorick's ear, to whom you wd have
wrote the name of Eliza, had there been no time for more.
I wd almost now compound with Fate — & was I only sure
Eliza only breath'd — I wd thank heaven & acquiesce. I
kiss your Picture — your Shawl — & every trinket I
exchanged with You — every day I live — alas ! I shall soon
be debarr'd of that — in a fortnight I must lock them up
& clasp my seal & Yrs upon them in the most secret
Cabinet of my Bureau — You may divine the reason, Eliza !
adieu — adieu !

July 7. But not yet — for I will find means to write to

you every night whilst my people are here — if I sit up till
midnight, till they are asleep — I should not dare to face
you if I was worse than my word in the smallest Item — &
this Journal I promised you Eliza should be kept without
a chasm of a day in it — had I my time to myself & nothing
to do but to gratify my propensity, I sM write from
sunrise to sunset to thee — But a Book to write — a Wife to
receive & make Treaties with — an estate to sell — a Parish
to superintend — and a disquieted heart perpetually to reason
with, are eternal calls upon me — & yet I have you more in
my mind than ever — and in proportion as I am thus torn

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 341

from yr embraces — / cling the closer to the Idea of you — Your
Figure is ever before my eyes — the sound of your voice
vibrates with its sweetest tones the livelong day in my ear
— I can see & hear nothing by my Eliza, remember this
when you think my Journal too short & compare it not
with thine, which tho' it will exceed it in length can do no
more than equal it in Love & truth of esteem — for esteem
thee I do beyond all the powers of eloquence to tell thee
how much — & I love thee, my dear Girl, and prefer thy
Love to me more than the whole world.

Night. — Have not eat or drunk all day through vexation
of heart at a couple of ungrateful unfeeling Letters from
that Quarter, from whence had it pleased God I should
have looked for all my Comforts — but he has will'd
they should come from the East — & he knows how I am
satisfied with all his Dispensations — but with none my dear
Bramine so much as this — with wch Cordial upon my
Spirits, I go to bed in hopes of seeing thee in my
Dreams.

July 8'\ — eating my fowl & my trouts & my cream
& my strawberries, as melancholly as a Cat, for want of
you — by the by I have got one which sits quietly besides
me purring all day to my sorrows — & looking up gravely
from time to time in my face, as if she knew my Situation. —
how soothable my heart is Eliza, when such little things
sooth it ! for in some pathetic sinkings I feel even some
support from this poor Cat — I attend to her purrings, &
think they harmonize me — they are pianissimo at least & do
not disturb me. — poor Yorick ! to be driven with all his
sensibilities to these resources — all powerful Eliza, that has
had this Magic1 authority over him to bend him thus to
the dust — But I'll have my revenge, Hussy !

July 9. — I have been all day making a sweet Pavillion
in a retired Corner of my garden — but my Partner &

342 STERNE

Companion & friend for whom I make it is fled from me,
& when she returns to me again, Heaven who first brought
us together, best knows — When that hour is foreknown
what a Paradise will I plant for thee — till then I walk as
Adam did whilst there was no help-meet found for it, &
could almost wish a day's sleep would come upon me till
that Moment when I can say as he did " Behold the Woman
Thou hast given me for Wife'' She shall be called ' La
Bramine.' Indeed, Indeed Eliza ! my life will be little
better than a dream, till we approach nearer to each other —
I live scarce conscious of my existence — or as if I wanted a
vital part & could not live above a few hours. & yet I
live & live & live on for thy sake & the sake of thy
truth to me which I measure by my own — & I fight agsfc
every evil & every danger that I may be able to support &
shelter thee from danger & evil also. — upon my word
dear Girl, thou owest me much — but tis cruel to dun thee
when thou art not in a condition to pay — I think Eliza has

not run off in her Yorick's debt

July 10. — I cannot suffer you to be longer on the Water
— in 10 days time you shall be at Madrass — the element
rolls in my head as much as yours, & I am sick at the sight
& smell of it — for all this my Eliza I feel in Imagination
& so strongly, I can bear it no longer — on the 20th there-
fore Ins* I begin to write to you as a terrestrial Being — I
must deceive myself — & think so I will, notwithstanding all
that Lascelles has told me — but there is no truth in him. —
I have just kissed yr Picture — even that sooths many an
anxiety — I have found out the Body is too little for the
Head — it shall not be rectified, till I sit by the Original &
direct the Painter's pencil. And that done will take a scamper
to Enfield & see yr dear Children — if you tire by the way
there are one or two places to rest at. — I never stand out.
God bless thee. I am thine as ever.

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 343

July 1 1 . — Sooth me — calm me — pour thy healing balm
Eliza into the sorest of hearts — I'm pierced with the Ingrati-
tude & unquiet Spirit of a restless unreasonable Wife
whom neither gentleness or generosity can conquer — She
has now entered upon a new plan of waging War with me
a thousand miles off — thrice a week this last month has the
quietest man under heaven been outraged by her Letters — I
have offered to give her every shilling I was worth except
my preferment, to be let alone & left in peace by her —
Bad Woman ! nothing must now purchase this unless I
borrow 400 pds to give her & carry into france — I wd
perish first, my Eliza ! ere I would give her a shilling of
another man's, which I must do if I give her a shilling more
than I am worth — How I feel the want of thee, my Bramine
— my generous unworldly honest creature — I shall die for
want of thee for a thousand reasons — every emergency &
every Sorrow each day brings along with it tells me what a
Treasure I am bereft of — whilst I want thy friendship &
Love to keep my head up from sinking — God's will be
done. But I think she will send me to my grave — she will
now keep me in torture till the end of September — &
writes me word today, she will delay her Journey two
months beyond her first intention — it keeps me in eternal
suspense all the while — for she will come unawares at
last upon me — & then adieu to the dear Sweets of my
retirement.

How cruelly are our Lots drawn my dear, — both made
for happiness — & neither of us made to taste it. In feeling
so acutely for my own disappointment I drop blood for
thine — I call thee in to my Aid — & thou wan test mine as
much — Were we together we should recover — but never
never till then nor by any other recipe.

July 12. — Am ill all day with the Impressions of
Yesterday's account — can neither eat nor drink nor sit still

344 STERNE

to write or read — I walk like a disturbed Spirit ab* my
garden calling upon heaven & thee to come to my succour.
— Couldst thou but write one word to me it would be
worth the world to me — my friends write me millions — &
every one invites me to flee from my Solitude & come to
them — I obey the commands of my friend Hall who has sent
over on purpose to fetch me — or he will come himself for
me — so I set off tomorrow morning to take Sanctuary in
Crasy Castle — The newspapers have sent me there already
by putting in the following paragraph.

"We hear from Yorkshire That Skelton Castle is the
present Rendezvous of the most brilliant Wits of the Age —
the admired Author of Tristram, Mr Garrick &c. being
there, & Mr Coleman & many other men of Wit &
Learning being every day expected " — when I get there,
wch will be tomorrow night my Eliza will hear from her
Yorick — her Yorick who loves her more than ever.

July 13. — Skelton Castle. . . . Your Picture has gone
round the table after supper — & your health after it, my in-
valuable friend ! — even the Ladies who hate grace in another
seemed struck with it in You — but alas ! you are as a dead
person — & Justice (as in all such cases) is paid you in course
— when thou returnest it will be rendered more sparingly —
but I'll make up all deficiencies by honouring you more than
ever Woman was honoured by man — every good quality
that ever good heart possessed, thou possessest my dear Girl,
& so sovereignly does thy temper & sweet sociability, which
harmonize all thy other properties make me thine, that
whilst thou art true to thyself & thy Bramin — he thinks
thee worth a world — & would give a world was he Master
of it for the undisturbed possession of thee — Time &
Chance are busy throwing this Die for me — a fortunate Cast,
or two, at the most, makes our fortune & gives us each
other — & then for the world — I w11 not give a pinch of

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 345

snuff. — Do take care of thyself — keep this prospect before
thy eyes — have a view to it in all yr transactions, Eliza, —
In a word Remember You are Mine — and stand answerable
for all you say & do to me — I govern myself by the same
rule — & such a History of myself can I lay before you as
shall create no blushes but those of pleasure — tis midnight
— & so sweet sleep to thee the remaining hours of it. I am
more thine my dear Eliza ! than ever — but that cannot
be

July 14. — Dining & feasting all day at Mr Turner's -
his Lady, a fine Woman herself, is in love with your Picture
— O my dear Lady cried I, did you but know the Original
— but what is she to you, Tristram ? — nothing ; but that I

am in Love with her — etceetera said she — No I

have given over dashes — replied I I verily think my

Eliza I shall get this Picture set, so as to wear it as I at
first proposed — about my neck— I do not like the place
tis in — it shall be nearer my heart — Thou art ever in its
centre — good night

July 15. — From home (Skelton Castle) from 8 in the
morning till late at supper — I seldom have put thee so off
my dear Girl — & yet tomorrow will be as bad.

July 16. — for Mr Hall has this Day left his Crasy
Castle to come & sojourn with me at Shandy Hall for a
few days — for so they have long christened our retired
Cottages — we are just arrived at it & whilst he is admiring
the premises — I have stole away to converse a few minutes
with thee and in thy own dressing-room — for I make every
thing thine & call it so beforehand that thou art to be
mistress of hereafter. The Hereafter Eliza is but a melan-
cholly term — but the certainty of its coming to us brightens
it up. Pray do not forget my prophecy in the Dedication
of the Almanack — I have the utmost faith in it myself — but
by whose impulse my mind was struck with 3 years, heaven

346 STERNE

whom I believe its author best knows — but I shall see your
face before — but that I leave to you — & to the Influence
such a Being must have over all inferior ones — We are
going to dine with the Arch Bishop tomorrow — & from
thence to Harrogate for three days, whilst thou dear Soul
art pent up in a sultry nastiness — without variety or change
of face or conversation. — Thou shalt have enough of both
when I cater for thy happiness Eliza — & if an affectionate
husband & 400 pds a year in a sweeter vally than that of
Jehosophat will do — less thou shalt never have — but I hope
more — & were it millions tis the same — twould be laid at
thy feet — Hall has come in in raptures with every thing —
& so I shut up my Journal for today and tomorrow for I
shall not be able to open it where I go. Adieu my dear
Girl

18. — Was yesterday all the day with our A. Bishop

this good Prelate who is one of our most refined

Wits & the most of a gentleman of our order — oppresses
me with his kindness — he shews in his treatment of me
what he told me on taking my Leave — that he loves me &
has a high Value for me — his chaplains tell me he is perpetu-
ally talking of me — & has such an opinion of my head &
heart that he begs to stand Godfather for my next Literary
production — so has done me the honr of putting his name
on a List which I am most proud of because my Eliza's
name is on it. — I have just a moment to scrawl this to thee,
being at York — where I want to be employ'd in taking you
a little house, where the prophet may be accommodated
with a Chamber in the Wall apart with a stool 6? a Candle-
stick." where his soul can be at rest from the distractions
of the world, & lean only upon his kind hostesse, & repose
all his cares & melt them along with hers in her sympathetic
bosom.

July 19. — Harrogate Spaws. — drinking the waters here

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 347

till the 26th — to no effect, but a cold dislike to every one of
your sex — I did nothing but make comparisons betwixt thee
my Eliza & every Woman 1 saw and talk'd to — thou hast
made me so unfit for every one else — that I am thine as
much from necessity as Love — I am thine by a thousand
sweet ties, the least of which shall never be relaxed — be
assured my dear Bramine of this — & repay me in so doing
the confidence I repose in thee — Yr Absence, Yr distresses,
your sufferings, your conflicts all make me rely but the more
upon that fund in you wch is able to sustain so much weight
— Providence I know will relieve you from one part of it —
& it shall be the pleasure of my days to ease my dear friend
of the other — I love thee Eliza, more than the heart of Man
ever loved Woman's — I even love thee more than I did the
day thou badest me farewel ! — Farewell ! — Farewell ! to
thee again — I'm going from hence to York Races.

July 27. — Arrived at York — where I had not been two
hours before my heart was overset with a pleasure wch
beggared ever other that fate could give me — save thyself —
It was thy dear Packets from Iago — I cannot give vent to
all the emotions I felt even before I opened them — for I knew
thy hand — & my seal — which was only in thy possession —
O tis from my Eliza, said I. — I instantly shut the door of
my Bedchamber & ordered myself to be denied — & spent
the whole evening, & till dinner the next day, in reading
over & over again the most interesting Ace1 & the most
endearing one that ever tried the tenderness of Man — I read
& wept — and wept & read till I was blind — then grew
sick & went to bed — & in an hour called again for the
Candle — to read it once more — as for my dear Girl's pains
& her dangers I cannot write about them — because I cannot
write my feelings or express them any how to my mind — O
Eliza ! but I will talk them over with thee with a sympathy
that shall woo thee so much better than I have ever done —

348 STERNE

That we will both be gainers in the end — c Fit love thee for
the dangers thou hast past ' — and thy affection shall go hand
in hand with me because I'll pity thee as no man ever pitied
Woman — but Love like mine is never satisfied — else your
2nd Letter from Iago — is a Letter so warm, so simple, so
tender ! I defy the world to produce such another — by
all that's kind & gracious ! I will entreat thee Eliza so
kindly — that thou shalt say, [erasure'] I merit much of it —
nay all — for my merit to thee is my truth.

I now want to have this week of nonsensical festivity
over — that I may get back with thy Picture w(h 1 ever
carry abfc me — to my retreat & to Cordelia — when the days
of our afflictions are over, I oft amuse my fancy with an
Idea, that thou wilt come down to me by stealth, [erasure]
& hearing where I have walked out to — surprise me some
sweet moonshiney Night at Cordelia's grave, & catch me in
thy arms over it — O my Bramin ! my Bramin !

July 3 1 . — am tired to death with the hurrying pleasures
of these Races — I want still & silent ones — so return home
tomorrow in search of them — I shall find them as I sit
contemplating over thy passive picture, sweet Shadow of
what is to come ! for tis all I can now grasp — first & best
of Womankind ! remember me, as I remember thee — tis
asking a great deal my Bramine ! but I cannot be satisfied
with less — farewell — fare — happy till Fate will let me cherish
thee myself. — O my Eliza ! thou writest to me with an
angel's pen — & thou wouldst win me by thy Letters, had I
never seen thy face or known thy heart.

Augst i. — What a sad Story thou hast told me of thy
sufferings & Despondences from Sfc Iago, till thy meeting
with the Dutch ship — twas a sympathy above tears — I
trembled every nerve as I went from line to line — & every
moment the Ace* comes across me — I suffer all I felt, over
& over again — will providence suffer all this anguish

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 349

without end — & without pity ? — " it no can be" — I am tried
my dear Bramine in the furnace of Affliction as much as
thou — by the time we meet we shall be fit only for each
other — & should cast away upon any other Harbour.

Aug* 2. — my wife [line and a half of erasures} uses me
most unmercifully — every soul advises me to fly from her —
but where can I fly if I fly not to thee ? The Bishop of
Cork & Ross has made me great offers in Ireland — but I
will take no step without thee — and till heaven opens us
some track — He is the best of feeling tender hearted men
— knows our Story — sends You his blessing — & says if the
Ship you return in touches at Cork (wch many India Men
do) — he will take you to his Palace till he can send for me
to join you — he only hopes he says, to join us together for
ever — but more of this good man & his attachment to me
— hereafter.

And oft a couple of Ladies in the family &c. &C.1

Aug* 2d. — I have had an offer of exchanging two pieces
of preferment I hold here (but sweet Cordelia's Parish is
not one of them) for a Living of 350 pds a year in Surry
ab* 30 miles from London — & retaining Coxwould & my
Prebendaryship — wch are half as much more — the Country
also is sweet — but I will not — I cannot take any step unless
I had thee my Eliza for whose sake I live to consult with —
& till the road is open for me as my heart wishes to advance
— with thy sweet light Burden in my Arms I could get up
fast the hill of Preferment if I chose it — but without thee
I feel Lifeless — and if a Mitre was offered me 1 would not
have it till I could have thee too, to make it sit easy upon
my brow — I want kindly to smooth thine, & not only
wipe away the tears but dry up the Source of them for ever.

Aug" 4. — Hurried backwards & forwards abfc the arrival

1 This line is evidently an after- interpolation, and seems to have been
introduced in^the wrong place.

350 STERNE

of Madame this whole week — & then farewel I fear to this
Journal — till I get up to London — & can pursue it as I wish
— at present all I can write would be but the History of my
miserable feelings — She will be ever present — & if I take up
my plea for thee — something will jaw [? jar] within me as I
do it — that I must lay it down again — I will give you one
gen1 Accfc of all my sufferings together — but not in Journals
— I shall set my wounds a-bleeding every day afresh by it —
& the Story cannot be too short — so worthiest & best,
kindest & affectionate of Souls farewell — every Moment
will I have thee present & sooth my sufferings with the
looks my fancy shall cloath thee in — Thou shalt lye down
& rise up with me — ab* my bed & ab* my paths, & shalt
see out all my ways. — adieu — adieu — & remember one
eternal truth My dear Bramine, wch is not the worse because
I have told it thee a thousand times before — That I am
thine — & thine only & for ever

L. Sterne.

Nov. ist. — All my dearest Eliza has turnd out more

favourable than my hopes — Mrs S & my dear Girl have

been 2 months with me & they have this day left me to
go to spend the Winter at York, after having settled every
thing to their hearts content — Mrs Sterne retires into france
whence she purposes not to stir till her death — & never, has
she vowed, will she give me another sorrowful or discon-
tented hour — I have conquered her as I wd every one else
by humanity and Generosity — & she leaves me more than
half in Love with me — she goes into the South of france
her health being insupportable in England — & her age, as
she now confesses ten years more than I thought, being on
the edge of sixty — so God bless — & make the remainder of
her life happy — in order to wch I am to remit her three
hundred guineas a year — and give my dear Girl two

JOURNAL TO ELIZA 351

thousand pds — wch wth all joy I agree to, — but tis to be

sunk into an annuity in the french Loans

And now Eliza ! Let me talk to thee — But what

can I say, what can I write — But the Yearnings of heart
wasted with looking & wishing for thy Return — Return
— Return ! my dear Eliza ! May heaven smooth the Way
for thee to send thee safely to us, & Soj[ourn]

for Ever

INDEX

Aboyne, Lord, appoints Sterne his

chaplain, 54.
^Eschylus cited, 174.
Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton's, 24.
Angel and the Curate, The, 97 (note).
Angouleme, Lydia Sterne at, 125,

286.
Anjengo, Eliza Draper's birthplace,

256.
Archivist, The, an undated letter

from, cited, 151.
Artist, an impressionist, 175.

Bath, Lord, Reynolds's portrait of,

166.
Bath, Sterne at, 237.
Bathurst, Lord, 142, 262.
Bayswater, burial-ground of St.

George's, Hanover Square,

Sterne interred in, 284.
Becket, 228, 284.

and Dehondt, 164.
Bellasis, Lord and Lady, Sterne

dines with, 313.
Belle of the Blue Stockings {cf.

Vesey, Mrs).
Berenger, Richard, 132, 135.
Bible, the, its influence on impres-
sionism, 173, 175.
Sterne and, 175.
Blackburne, Francis, Archdeacon of

Cleveland, 90.
Blackburne, Lancelot, Archbishop of

York, 27.
Blake, John, headmaster of York

Grammar School, 4, 67, 105.
Blues, the Fairy of the (cf. Vesey,

Mrs).
Body-snatchers, Sterne's, 284.

Bolingbroke and Bishop Warburton,

154.
Bradshaw, John, Sterne's opinion of,

21 (note).
Bramin and Bramine {see "Journal

to Eliza").
Bridges, Thomas, 4, 67.
Burns as plagiarist, 88.
Burton, Dr Thomas, pilloried as Dr

Slop, 92.
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,

24.
Byron cited, 290.
Byron's epigram on Sterne, 98.

Calais, Sterne at, 243.

Cambridge, Sterne at Jesus College,

20.
the Tree of Knowledge at, 24.
Carlisle House, Madam Corneilly's

assemblies at, 258.
Carlyle on Sterne, 13.
Carmontelle's water-colour drawing

of Sterne, 219.
Chatham, Lord, 141.
Chesterfield, Lord, and Sterne, 141.
Citizen of the World, 7^*?, cited, 152.
Clarke, Dr, 88, 89.
Coke, Lady Mary, 284.
Combe, William, Sterne's letters to,

7 (note), 15.
" Conscience" sermon, the, 78, 81.
Cork, Lady, 80.
Cork and Ross, Bishop of, 349.
Coronation festivities at Coxwold,

163.
Cotes, Francis, and his crayons of

the Sternes, 29, 30, 65.
Cowper, 252.

352

INDEX

353

Coxwold, Sterne at, 160 et passim.

church, 162.
Crawfurd, John, 248, 284.
Crazy Castle, 113-115, 277, 329, 344

(cf. Demoniac brotherhood).
Crazy Tales, Hall-Stevenson's, 11,24,

113-115, 1 16 (note).
Croft, John, 78, 103 (note), 122, 123,

124, 125, 131, 159.
Croft, Stephen, 64, 136, 138, 139, 141.
Crofts, the, 4.

Cross, Professor, cited, 3, 25, 34.
Cumberland, Richard, on Romney,

68.

Dashwood, Sir Francis, 116.
Deffand, Madame du, 248.
Deism, Sterne on, 218.
Delany, Mrs, 80.
Delaval, 164.

Demoniac brotherhood, the, 22, 35,
113 (note), 1 1 5-1 19, 162, 199,
266, 297 (cf Crazy Castle).
Dessein, 244.
Diderot, 215, 217.
Dijon, Sterne at, 254.
Dinner, a memorable, 284.
Doctors, Sterne on, 164 (cf. also

"Journal to Eliza," passim).
Dodsley, Robert, 137, 138, 139, 156

(note), 163.
Dover, Sterne at, 169, 170.
Draper, Daniel, 257, 263, 268.
Draper, Eliza, 5, 29, 42, 242.
a pioneer of women's rights, 257.
birth and education, 257.
censures Sterne, 273.
elopement of, 256, 286.
letter to Mrs James, 257 (note),
marriage, 257.
meets Sterne, 258.
presents of, to Sterne, 275, 318,

326, 340.
returns to India, 263 et seq. {cf.

"Journal to Eliza").
Sterne sends her his sermons, 262.
Sterne's dream of, 265.
Sterne's letters to, 62, 260, 262,
264, 265, 266, 267 et seq. (cf.
"Journal to Eliza").
Sterne's philanderings with, 259
et seq. (cf. " Journal to Eliza ").
Drummond, Archbishop, letter from
Sterne, 228.

Drury Lane Theatre, Sterne at, 140.
Dutens, Louis, and Sterne, 221.

Eckermann's Gesprdche mit Goethe,
47 (note).

Effingham, Earl of, Sterne's corre-
spondence with, 25.

Egerton MSS., Sterne's letter, 93
et seq.

Eglinton, Earl of, 284.

Eliza, letters to (cf. Draper, Eliza,
and " Journal to Eliza ").

Elizabeth Montagu, 67 (note), no,
in (note), 1 12 (note), 121, 124.

English literary impressionism, 173.

" Eugenius " (cf. Hall- Stevenson).

Fagniani, Marchesa, 251.
Fauconberg, Earl of, 91, 277, 327.

as the saviour of Sterne's genius,
162.

presents Sterne to the living of
Coxwold, 146.
Ferdinand of Brunswick, Prince, 141.
Ferguson, Mrs, 49, 237.
Fitzgerald's Life of Sterne, 62 (note).
Florence, Sterne at, 251, 255.
Foley, Mr, 220, 228, 235, 236, 241.
Foley, Mrs, 231.

a present from Sterne, 220 (note).
Foote, 164, 248.
Fothergill, Marmaduke, 4, 68.
Foundling Hospital, the, Sterne at,

77-
Fountayne, Dean, 90.
and Dr Topham, 108.
Sterne hacks for, 1 10.
Fourmentelle, Kitty de, 5, 42, 127.
at Covent Garden, 147.
at Ranelagh, 131, 147.
Berenger a probable kinsman of,

132.
comes to London, 145.
descent, 128.
her motto, 132.
influence on Sterne, 130.
meets Sterne, 128.
recommends Sterne's coming novel
(Tristram Shandy), 132, 135,
136, 138 (note),
sinks into oblivion, 150.
Sterne sends her his pet sermons,

133, 134. ,. e

Sterne writes some lines for, 147.

23

354

INDEX

Fourmentelle, Kitty de, Sterne's
"dear, dear Jenny," vii, 127,

1 29 et seq.
love-letters to, 133, 134, 143, 145,
146, 148, 149, 150.
the probable cause of split between
Jaques and Laurence Sterne,

131-
Fox, Charles James, II.
Francavilla, Princess, as Sterne's

hostess, 253.
French Heptameron, a, 254.

Gainsborough, music and, 175.

Sterne's friendship with, 68.
Galiani, the Neapolitan envoy, 254.
Gallic writers and Sterne, 22, 23.
Garrick and Bishop Warburton, 1 58.

and Sterne, viii, 136, 140, 151.

at a memorable dinner, 284.

finances Sterne, 104, 169.

introduces Sterne to Bishop
Warburton, 155 et seq.

Sterne's letters to, 136, 155, 156,
290 (note).
Garrick, Mrs, and Sterne, 140.
Garrick's friend Berenger, 132, 135.

recommendation of Tristram
Shandy, 140.
Gilbert of York cited, 5.
Goethe and Sterne, 47, 82.
Goethe's philanderings, 18, 19.
Goldsmith on Sterne, 80, 152.
Gordon, Lord William, 248.
Gore, Mrs, 237.
Graeme, Miss, 49, 240.
Grafton, Duke of, 284.
Graves on Sterne's sentimentality,

207.
Gretchen's impressionism, 175.
Greuze, 248.

Hall, Colonel Lawson, 116.
Hall, John (cf. Hall-Stevenson).
Hall-Stevenson, John, 4, 7, 20, 64,
65, 117-119, 169, 235, 236,
326, 332, 335, 344, 345, 346.
and Sterne at Shandy Hall, 345.
and Sterne's widow and daughter,

286.
and The Sentimental Journey, 255,

286 (note),
anecdote of Sterne, 66.
character of, 21.

Hall-Stevenson, John, essays to
continue The Sentimental
Journey, 285.
influence over Sterne, 22.
meets Sterne at Cambridge, 21.
on the separation of the Sternes,

324.
Sir Walter Scott on, 21.
Sterne's intimacy with, interrupted,

64, 65.
Sterne's opinion of, 21.
Sterne's renewed intimacy with,
112.
Hall-Stevenson's Crazy Tales, 11,
24, 113-115, no.
"Two Lyric Epistles," 156.
Harland, Philip, 65.
Harriot, Sterne's, 26, 41.
Harrogate, Sterne drinks the waters

"at the Spaws," 346.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, on Cotes's
crayon, 65.
on Mrs Sterne, 30.
Hazlitt cited, 200.
Heine cited, 13, 14, 60.
Heine's apology in his will compared
with Sterne's, 283.
estimate of Sterne, 2.
Herring, Archbishop, 90.
Herring, Dr, Chancellor of York, lit.
Hertford, Lord, 232.
Hewitt, 116, 235.
Hildyard, the York bookseller, 93,

94.
Hinxman, Hildyard's successor, 135,

138.
History oja Good Warm Watch-coat,
The, 106, 109, no.
originals of characters, 109.
Hogarth's sketches for Tristram

Shandy, 159 (note).
Homer cited, 174.
Horace cited, 174.
Hume, David, 232, 284.
Hutton, Matthew, 90.

Impressionism, definition of, 173.
divine, 197.
founded by music and the Bible,

m, 175-

in lyrical poetry, 174.
in prose, 175.
literary, 173.
— modern, Sterne the founder of, 3.

INDEX

355

Impressionism, modern ideas of, 175.

music and, 173, 175.

pathetic, 180-182.

philosophic, 199.

profane, 197.

realistic, 48, 186, 191.

romantic, 176.

sentimental, 174, 176.

Sterne's, 47 et seq., 173, 289.
Impressionist, Keats as an, 174, 197.

Shakespeare as an, 175.

Stevenson as an, 191.
Irony, Sterne's power of, 13, 58, 176,

196.
Irvine, 116.

James, Commodore, 258, 282, 283-4.
James, Mrs, 29, 259, 279 et seq., 285,

299.
Janatone, the Montreuil beauty, 49,

172, 213-214, 245.
Job, the Book of, cited, 174.
Johnson, Dr, and Sterne, 77, 80, 81,

164.
"Journal to Eliza," 17, 297-351 {cf

Draper, Eliza).
Author's prefatory note, 293.
Sterne's preface, 297.

Kaufmann, Angelica, 180.

Keats, as an impressionist, 174, 197.

cited, 163.
Kirke, Lydia, 30, 31.

La Bruyere's Caracteres cited, 117.
Lamberti, Marquise de, 245, 246.
Lascelles, Bombay, 330.
Lascelles, Rev. Robert, 116.
Lavater on Sir Joshua Reynolds's

portrait of Sterne, 142.
Lee, Arthur, 279.
Lee, Charles, 116.
Lee, Mr, subsidises Sterne, 137.
Lessing, 36, 288.
Letters, Sterne's {cf. Sterne, letters ;

and Sterne, love-letters).
London : Sterne's " Jerusalem," 240.
Lumley, Elizabeth, 20, 28 et seq., 32.

marries Sterne, 53.

meeting with Sterne, 31.

pedigree of, 28.

proposes marriage to Sterne, 53.

Sterne's letter to, 44.

(cf. Sterne, Mrs Laurence).

Lumley, Lydia, 31.
Lumley, Rev. Robert, 30.
Lumleys, descent of the, 30.

Macdonald, Sir James, 250, 251, 253.

Mann, Horace, 252.

Mannerisms, Sterne's, 186.

March, Earl of, 284.

Martini's concerts at Milan, 251.

Medalle, J. B. A., marries Lydia

Sterne, 287.
Medalle, Mrs, 147 (note), 219, 220.

death of, and burial-place, 287 (cf.
Sterne, Lydia).
Milan, Sterne at, 251.
Monckton, Mrs (Lady Cork), 80.
Montagu, Mrs Elizabeth, vii, 4, 28
et seq., 52, 241, et passim.

as peacemaker, 1 1 1.

godmother to Lydia Sterne, 65.

letter from Sterne, 166.
Montauban, Lydia Sterne at, 233.
Monthly Review cited, 285.
Montpellier, Smollett at, 229.

Sterne at, 229, 231.
Montreuil revisited, 245.
Moore, Mrs, 237.
Moore, Zachary, 116.
Moral Tales, Hall- Stevenson's, 55.
Mortality, the sentiment of, 184.
Mundungus, original of, 200.
Music, Gainsborough and, 175.

its influence on impressionism,

173, 175-
Sterne and, 175.
" My Cousin's Tale " cited, 11, 24 {cf.
Crazy Tales).

Newnhams, the, 258.

Nollekens models a bust of Sterne,

253-
Nunnery, the, at York, 17.
Nuns, Sterne's Reverie of the, viii,

15 et seq., 274.

Orleans, Duke of, 219.
Osbaldestone, John, 90.
Ossory, the Earl of, 248, 280, 284.
Ousebridge jail, Sterne's mother in,
103.

Paris Embassy, Sterne preaches
before the, 85, 232, 233.

356

INDEX

Paris pictures, Sterne's, 192 et seq.

Sterne at, 170, 214, 231.

theatres, Sterne at, 217.
Passing bell, the, Sterne's verses on,

74-
Patch's caricature of Sterne, 255.
Penniman, Sir Walter, appoints

Sterne as his chaplain, 91.
Percy, Lady, 5, 238, 270.
Pitt accepts dedication to Tristram

Shandy, 159.
Plagiarism, Burns's, 88.

Sterne's, 88, 285.

Thackeray's, 209.

Trollope's, 108.
Pluralist, a legal, 107 et seq.

Sterne as, 64, 146, 349.
Political troubles of 1745, the, 65.
Pope and Bishop Warburton, 1 54.

cited, 69.
Portland, Duke of, 252.
Preaching by proxy, 93 et seq.
Pringle, 1 16.
Proverb, a famous, 87, 176.

"Queen of Sheba," Sterne's, 5, 166,

270, 309.
" Queen of the Blue-stockings," the

{cf. Montagu, Mrs).
Queensberry, Duke of, 280, 284.

Rabelais and his contemporaries, 22.
Rambouiliet, Madame de, 247.
Raynal, the Abbe, 43, 256.
Realism, ideal, 186.
Renaissance writers, Sterne and the,

22.
"Reverie of the Nuns," Sterne's, 15

et seq., 274.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, and Sterne,
141, 142.
paints portrait of Lord Bath, 166.
paints portraits of Sterne, 65, 66,

234.
Robinson, Matthew, 52.
Rockingham, Lord, and Sterne, 141,

235-
Rogers, Samuel, 1 5 (note).
Rome, Sterne at, 252.
Romney, 4, 68.
-—'Rousseau compared with Sterne, 15.
Ruskin, John, 45.

St Ives, Sterne's first curacy at, 26.
Satires, polemical, 107.
Scott, Sir Walter, compared with
Sterne, 173.
on J. Hall-Stevenson, 21.
Scrapeana, Croft's, 124.
Scripture, Sterne and, 175.
Scroope, 116.
Selwyn, George, 251, 280.
Sensationalism, Sterne's, 3, 177.
Sensibility, Sterne's, 69, 279 et passim.
" Sentimental," first use of the word,

42, 44.
'Sentimental Journey, The, 256 et seq.
analysed, 172.
cited, 43, 48, 58, 61, 78, 183 et seq.,

192, 223, 265, 269, 273.
Hall- Stevenson essays to continue,
after Sterne's death, 255, 286
(note),
publication of, 243, 280.
Sterne on, 12.
Sentimentalism, 288.

Sterne's, 12, 15, 42, 168.
Sermons, Sterne's, JJ et seq., 133,

134, 262.
Seven Years' War, the, 164.
Shakespeare as an impressionist, 175.-;

cited, 38, 95, 96, 175.
" Shandy," definition of, 67.
Shandy Hall, 162, 169 (note), 273, 345

{cf. Crazy Castle).
Sheba, Sterne's London Queens of, 5,

166, 270, 309.
Shelburne, Lord, 235, 278.

intimacy with Sterne, 141.
Sheridan on Lydia Sterne's marriage,

287.
Simplicity, Sterne on, 60.
Skelton Castle, 21, 344 {cf. Crazy

Castle).
Smelfungus, original of, 200.
Smollett at Montpellier, 229.
Smollett's incessant grumbles, 229,

252 {cf. Smelfungus).
Spencer, Lady, 163, 314, 315.
Spencer, Lord, "loads" Sterne with an

escritoire, 275, 326.
Spiritual Quixote, The, 207.
Stanhope, Sir William, 279.
Stars and Second Stars, 69 et seq.
Steele, Christopher, 4, 68.
Sterne, Agnes, mother of " Laurey,"
8, 98 et seq.

INDEX

357

Sterne, Agnes, and Dr Jaques, 101
et seq.
as laundress, 103.
death and burial, 105.
in jail, 103.
Sterne, Catherine, 9, 98, 100, 101, 102.
Sterne, Jaques, 26, 27, 65, 91, 92, 100

et seq., 131.
Sterne, Laurence {pseud. " Yorick "),
a double incumbent, 64, 146.
a dreamer of images, 17.
a fresh enchantress, 240.
a hedonist, 13.

a loan from Garrick, 104, 169.
a master of sentimental chiaroscuro,

60.
a neurotic, 1 1 {cf. Sterne, ill-health

of),
a prebend, 64.
a verbose ecclesiastical certificate,

65.
additional preferment (to Coxwold),

146.
affinities, 195.
amateur theatricals at Toulouse,

227.
an American admirer of, 276.
an anecdote of, 66.
-an ironist, 13, 58, 176, 196.
and David Hume, 232, 284.
and Dean Osbaldestone, 90, 91.
• and Dr Johnson, 77, 80, 81, 164.
and Dr Topham, 108.
and Eliza Draper, 5, 29, 42, 62, 258
et seq., 262, 264 (cf. Draper,
Eliza, and " Journal to Eliza ").
and Garrick, 104, 136, 140, 151, 155,

169, 290.
and Hall-Stevenson, 64, 65 (cf.

Hall-Stevenson),
and his sister, 102.
and his wife, bickerings with, 29,
53, 121, 122, 123, 126, 230,

343-
and Kitty de Fourmentelle, 5, 42,

128 et seq.
and Lord Spencer, 275, 326.
and Mrs Vesey, 165, 237, 242.
and prose fiction, 2.
and Reynolds, 141, 142.
and Thackeray, 1, 36, 209.
and the Demoniacs, 117-119 (cf

also Crazy Castleand Demoniac

brotherhood).

Sterne, Laurence, and the peopling
of the stars, 69.
and the political troubles of 1745,

and the Renaissance writers, 22.
and Wilkes (cf. Wilkes, John),
appearance of, 5.
as a dreamer, 17, 290 (cf. Sterne,

dreaminess of),
as a man, 288.
as agriculturist, 75.
as artist and draughtsman, 32, 289.
as author, 36, 171 et seq., 288.
as fantacist, 290.
as gardener, 65.
as impressionist, 47 et seq., 289.
as musician, 32.
as pamphleteer, 91, 92.
as philosopher, 69 et seq.
as plagiarist, 88, 285.
as pluralist, 64, 146, 349.
as poet, 74.
as preacher, tj et seq. (cf. Sermons,

Sterne's),
as romantic impressionist, 1 76.
as traveller, 55.
as tutor, 54.

as urban parson, 160 et seq.
as word-painter, 178, 179, 187.
as the " King's Chief Jester," 55.
at Bath, 237.
at Cambridge, 20.
at Court, 140.

at Coxwold, 160, et passim.
at Florence, 251, 255.
at Harrogate " Spaws," 346.
at Ranelagh, 147, 310.
at the height of his popularity, 140

et seq.
at Windsor, 141.
at York races, 235, 240, 278, 347,

348.
authorship, 36, 171 et seq., 288.
bad French of, 216.
birth of, 8, 9.
birth of Lydia Sterne, 65.
Blake Wirgman's portrait of, 17

(note),
body of, snatched and sold for

dissection, 284.
Carlyle on, 13.
characteristics of, 2 et seq., 16, 26,

40,133, 165, l68> 176,196,235,

237, 241, 261, 267, 276.

3S»

INDEX

Sterne, Laurence, charms of, for the
fair sex, 40, 41, 49.
coins the word " sentimental," 42,

44-
colour of his eyes, 17.
*" compared with Hall-Stevenson and

Goldsmith, 37.
courtship of, 32 et seq., 50 et seq.
creative faculty of, 3 {cf Im-
pressionism),
crest of, 7.
death of, 284.
defence of, against his critics and

censors, 152, 153.
departure of, from Paris, 222.
descent of, 7.

dissipation in London, 163 et seq.
dreaminess of, 12 et seq. , 265, 274,

279, 288.
education of, 9, 20.
elements that shaped his whimsical

mind, 24.
employs a curate, 62.
father of, 8.

favourite authors of, 22 et seq.
favourite sermons of, 81.
fee for Tristram Shandy, 1 39.
first curacy of, 26.
first cure of souls, 27.
first letter to his wife, 53.
flirtations of, 18 et seq. {cf. Sterne,

philanderings of),
friendship with Gainsborough, 68.
funeral of, 284.
gains a scholarship, 20.
Goethe on, 47.

graduates as Master of Arts, 25.
great-grandfather of, 7.
has offer of exchange of preferment,

349-

his antecedents, 7.
' his ideal of a man, 201.

History of a Good Warm Watch-
coat, 106, 109, no.

humanitarian influence of, 5.
• humour, 184.

ill-health of, 5, 13, 25, 35, 55, 59,
62, 165, 219, 230, 241, 266,
269, 278, 280, 282, 298, 301,
302, et passim.

impressionism of, 47, 173, 289.

imprudence of, 33.

in Denmark, 55 et seq.

influence of the Bible on, 11.

Sterne, Laurence, influence of Hall-
Stevenson on, 22.

influence of music on, n.

invites Mrs Montagu to Coxwold,
241.

in shadow-land, 5.

in the mountains, 248.

"Journal to Eliza," 17, 297-351.

last appearance at Bond Street,
279.

last request of {cf Heine's apology).

last words of, 284.

Latin ebullition of, 126, 130.

letters from, 7, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19,
21, 22, 32, 33, 41, 42 (note),
44, 59, 6°, 62, 88, 103, 136,

155, 156, 164, 212, 219, 220,

226, 237, 238, 240, 253, 283,

290 {cf "Journal to Eliza"),
libertinage of, 36.
literary moods of, 196.
love-letters of, 44, 48, 50, 51, 87,

133, 134, 143, 145, H6, 148,
149, 150, 237 et seq., 260-261
et seq., 267, 272, 276, and
" Journal to Eliza " passim.
loveliness and its strong appeal,

13.
" Love's Alphabet," 39.
lung troubles, 25, 165, 219 {cf

Sterne, ill-health of),
makes his will, 167.
mannerisms, 186.
marriage of, 52, 53.
meets Kitty de Fourmentelle,

128.
meets Romney, 68.
meets Mrs Vesey, 165.
"mortgages his brains," 139.
mother of, 8, 98 et seq.

in jail, 103 {cf. Sterne, Agnes),
narrow escape from death, 9.
new publishers, 164.
on the ice at Flanders, 55.
on the ice at Stillington, 67.
on the vanity of a successful author,

159.
ordination of, 26, 27.
outlook on love, 37 et seq.
Parisian acquaintances, 215 et seq.
pathetic wit of, 285.
pathos of, 2, 176, 180 et seq.
personality of, 3.
peruses his own obituary, 234.

INDEX

359

Sterne, Laurence, philanderings of,
1 6 et seq., 26, 40, 133 et seq.,
165, 235, 237, 261 et seq., 267,
276.

philosophy of, 206.

plagiarism of, 88, 285.

posthumous publications, 285.

preaches before the Paris Embassy,
85, 232, 233.

publishes Sentimental Journey,
243, 280.

publishes Tristram Shandy, 137.

punctiliousness of, 62.

returns to London from Paris, 234.

"Reverie of the Nuns," 15 et seq.,

274-

Reynolds's portraits of, 65, 66, 234.

romances in the air of, 42.

search for his family, 254.

sends Eliza Draper his sermons,
262.

sends Kitty Fourmentelle his ser-
mons, 133, 134.
— » sentimentalism of, 12, 15, 42, 168.
-""" sentimentality of, 207.

separates from his wife, 231, 240,
278, 324, 339, 350.

stipend at Coxwold, 160.

stipend at Sutton, 27.

Sunday partridge- shooting, 68.

tears and " sensibility," 33, 59, et
Passim.
■ the Abbe* Raynal on, 43.

the child of reverie, 15.

three literary faces of, 199.

tombstone of, 284.

unfriendly critics, 151.

unreality of, 35.

vanity of, 241.

"vivacity" of, 20.

whimsicality of, 188.

word-curiosities of, 208.

York sermons of, 65, 90. J*

Sterne, Lydia, 4, 125, 126, 254, 317.

and her father's posthumous publi-
cations, 267, 285, 287.

assists "Laurey "with Tristram,
161.

at Coxwold, 273, 274.

at Montauban, 233.

at Montpellier, 231.

at Shandy Hall, 273.

birth of, 65.

cited, 211-212.

Sterne, Lydia, her father's fondness
for, 125, 219, 220, 231, 254,
255, 280-281.

her father's last request concerning,
280 et seq.

her father's letters to, 231, 233,
253,281.

her father's presents and advice, 233.

her godmother, 65.

her ill- health, 125, 219 et seq.

" Laurey's " correspondence with,
231, 233, 253, 281.

marriage of, 287.

Sterne's last gift to, 350.
last thoughts for, 282, 283.

{cf. Medalle, Mrs).
Sterne, Mary (Mrs Weemans), 8.
Sterne, Mrs Laurence, 258, 343.

a character sketch of, 28 et seq.

a novel form of exercise, 124.

and Hall- Stevenson, 113.

and the " Letters to Eliza," 286.

and Sterne's posthumous publica-
tions, 285.

at Shandy Hall, 273.

bickerings with her husband, 29,
53, 121, 122, 123, 126,230, 343,

349-
cousin to Mrs Montagu, vii, 4, 28

et seq., 52.
death of, 287.
hallucinations of, 123.
Hawthorne on, 29, 30.
her "arm of flesh," 29, 53, 123, 126,

230.
her dairy, 75.

illness of, 123, 138, 329, 338.
letters to Mrs Montagu, 120, 121.
paralysed, 123.
removes to Vaucluse, 240.
separation from " Laurey," 231,240,

278, 324, 339, 350.
winters at York, 350.
Sterne, Richard, 9.

the original of the elder " Tristram
Shandy," 20.
Sterne, Roger, 8, 9.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, as an im-
pressionist, 191.
Stothart illustrates Tristram Shandy,

180.
Suard, 3, 175.

Sunday partridge-shooting, Sterne's,
68.

36°

INDEX

Sutton-on-the-Forest, Sterne's first
living, 27.
vicarage burnt down, 240.

Tarare, Sterne ascends, 248.

Tavistock, Lord, 232.

Temple, Lord, 141.

Thackeray and Sterne, 1, 36, 209.

Thackeray's tale of Sterne, 221.

Thornhill, 230, 234.

Tollot, 227, 230, 232, 234, 235.

Tooke, Home, 248.

Topham, Dr, 107 et seq.

Torriano, Sam, the London dandy,

32.
Toulouse, Sterne at, 226.
Townshend, Charles, 164, 252.
Travel, the delights of, 184.
Tristram Shandy analysed, 172.
begun, 124.

cited, 7, 10, 14, 20, 25, 35, 37, 38,
39, 55, 73, 89, 90, 152, 160,
161, 169, 171, 177, 178 et seq.,
184-186, 198, 200, 201 et seq.,
224.
Hogarth's sketches for, 159.
illustrated by Stothart, 1 80.
MS. thrown into the fire by Sterne

and rescued by Croft, 136.
publication of, 137.
Trollope plagiarises Sterne, 108.
Turin, Sterne at, 250.
Turner the impressionist artist, 47.
Tuting, Miss, Sterne's recommenda-
tion to Foley, 235.
"Two Lyric Epistles," Hall-Steven-
son's, 156.

Uncle Toby, the original of, 200.

Vaucluse, Mrs Sterne at, 240.

Vesey, Mrs, vii, 49, 165, 242.

at Bath, 237.

meets Sterne, 165.

Sterne's letter to, 165.
Vesuvius, eruption of, 252.
Virgil cited, 174.

Voltaire commends and purchases
Sterne's sermons, 79.

Walpole, Horace, 248.
Walpole's epigram on Sterne, 98.
War of Succession, the, Roger

Sterne's adventures in, 8.
Warburton, Bishop, 64 (note), 154

et seq.
Weekes, Nathaniel, satire in verse,

97 (note).
Weemans, Mrs (Mary Sterne), 8.
Weston, Agnes, 129.
Whitefoord, Caleb, 64.
"Widow Wadman," the original of,

202.
Wilford, Miss, 239, 240.
Wilkes, John, 116, 164, 232, 248, 285,

286, 287.
Windsor, Sterne at, 141.
Wirgman's portrait of Sterne, T7

(note).
Women's rights, Eliza Draper a

pioneer of, 257.

Yorick (cf. Sterne, Laurence).

York, Archbishop of, 27, 316, 346.

York, the Duke of, patronises Sterne,
141.

York races, Hall-Stevenson's collec-
tion at, for Sterne's widow and
daughter, 286.
Sterne attends the, 235, 240, 278,
347, 348.

York sermons, Sterne's, 65, 90.

PRINTED BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH.

14 DAY USE

RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED

LOAN DEPT.

This book is due on the last date stamped below, or

on the date to which renewed.

Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.

4jan'52LUW

*fe£.

; "

EToJ

*?

»S2

..

■ v.-.-» .:-.-t , ;-

HAU7'64»8

PF

tUet'65Mg

R.ECD LP

FEB 19 '68 -2PM

LD 21A-50m-8,'61
(C1795sl0)476B

General Library

University of California

Berkeley

S

f

/

Jffw

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

■

•V*