THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA.
NEARLY one half of the manuscript volume just described is occupied byThe Journal to Eliza, orThe Bramine’s Journal, as Sterne perhaps intended to call it. On the first page is a note by Sterne himself, wherein it is said, with a characteristic attempt at mystification, that the names “Yorick and Draper—and sometimes the Bramin and Bramine”[3]—are fictitious, and that the entire record is “a copy from a French manuscript—in Mr. S——’s hands.” Then follow seventy-six pages of writing, with about twenty-eight lines to the page, and finally a page with only a few words upon it. The leaves are folio in size, and except in the case of the first and the last, both sides are written upon.
This curious diary was composed during the first months after Sterne’s separation fromMrs. Draper. On a certain day late in March 1767, Sterne handed Mrs. Draper into a postchaise for Deal, and turned away to his London lodgings “in anguish.” Before parting, each promised to keep an intimate journal that they might have “mutual testimonies to deliver hereafter to each other,” should they again meet. While Mrs. Draper was at Deal making preparations for her voyage to India, Sterne sent her all that he had written; and on the thirteenth of April he forwarded by a Mr. Watts, then departing for Bombay, a second instalment of his record. These two sections of Sterne’s journal—and likewise all of Mrs. Draper’s, for we know that she kept one—have disappeared. The extant part begins on the thirteenth of April, 1767 and comes down to the fourth of August in the same year. The sudden break was occasioned by the expected return of Mrs. Sterne from France, where she had been living for some time. After her arrival at Coxwold, the journal could be carried on only by stealth; and besides that, Sterne felt her presence—and even the thought of it—a restraint upon the fancy. A postscript was added on thefirst of November announcing that Mrs. Sterne and Lydia had just gone to York for the winter, while he himself was to remain at Coxwold to complete theSentimental Journey. There were hints that the journal would be resumed as soon as he reached London in the following January. But Sterne probably did not carry out his intention. At least nothing is known of a later effort.
In Sterne’s introductory note, theJournalis described as “a Diary of the miserable feelings of a person separated from a Lady for whose Society he languish’d.” Already worn out by a long stretch of dinners, Sterne completely broke down under the strain of Mrs. Draper’s departure for India. “Poor sick-headed, sick-hearted Yorick!” he exclaims, “Eliza has made a shadow of thee.” As his illness increased, the Sunday visits in Gerrard Street were broken-off, and the sick and dejected lover shut himself up in his lodgings to abstinence and reflection. To allay the “fever of the heart” with which he was wasting, he had recourse to Dr. James’s Powder, a popular remedy of the period which, so said the advertisement,would cure “any acute fever in a few hours, though attended with convulsions.” On going out too soon after taking the nostrum, Sterne caught cold and came near dying. Physicians were called in, and twelve ounces of blood were taken from the patient in order “to quiet,” says Sterne, “what was left in me.” The next day the bandage on his arm broke loose and he “half bled to death” before he was aware of it. Four days later he found himself much “improved in body and mind.” On feeling his pulse, the doctors “stroked their beards and look’d ten per ct. wiser.” The patient was now in condition for their last prescription: I “am still,” he writes, “to run thro’ a Course of Van Sweeten’s corrosive Mercury, or rather Van Sweeten’s Course of Mercury is to run thro’ me.” The doctors dismissed, Sterne finally experimented at his own risk with a French tincture calledL’Extrait de Saturne, and on the next day he was able to dine out once more.
During his illness his “room was always full of friendly Visitors,” and the “rapper eternally going with Cards and enquiries.” With these friends, among whom wereLord and Lady Spencer, he had yet to dine; and then on the twenty second of May he set out for Yorkshire. On the twenty eighth he reached his “thatched cottage” at Coxwold, and began another course of corrosive Mercury. His “face as pale and clear as a Lady after her Lying in,” he rose from his bed to take the air every day in his postchaise drawn by “two fine horses,” and by the middle of June he was “well and alert.” So he went over to Hall-Stevenson’s at Crazy Castle, where on the neighboring beach, “as even as a mirrour of 5 miles in Length,” squire and parson ran daily races in their chaises, “with one wheel in the Sea, & the other in the Sand.” In the course of the summer, Sterne paid another visit to Crazy Castle; Hall-Stevenson came to Coxwold for a day or two, and they went together to Harrogate to drink the waters. By the 27th of July they were back at York for the races. At the beginning of the next month, Sterne was “hurried backwards and forwards abt. the arrival of Madame”—an event that had long been impending to the suspense and torture of his mind.
To some theJournalwill be most interesting for the light it sheds upon Sterne’s doings for four months in the last year of his life. By it may be determined the dates of letters and the order of Sterne’s movements in London and then in Yorkshire. It is no doubt a fragment of trustworthy autobiography. To others it may appeal as a Shandean essay. Indeed Sterne himself thought the story of his illness—especially in its first stages—as good as any of the accidents that befell Mr. Tristram Shandy. All will see that theJournalis a sentimental document. For just as in theSentimental Journey, Sterne here lets his fancy play about trivial incidents and trivial things. A cat as well as a donkey may become an emotional theme:
“Eating my fowl,” he records for July 8, “and 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 insome pathetic sinkings I feel even some support from this poor Cat—I attend to her purrings—& think they harmonize me—they arepianissimoat least, & do not disturb me.—poor Yorick! to be driven, wth. all his sensibilities, to these resources—all powerful Eliza, that has had this magicl. authority over him; to bend him thus to the dust.”
With him was always the picture of Eliza, who had sat for him just before going down to Deal. It may have been one of Cosway’s; but we do not know, for it has disappeared along with all other portraits of Mrs. Draper. It rested upon his table as he wrote his daily record of incident and emotion. To it he said his matins and vespers, and felt all his murmurs quieted by the spirit that spoke to him from the “gentle sweet face.” “I’ve been,” he says, “as far as York to day with no Soul with me in my Chase, but yr. Picture—for it has aSoulI think—or something like one which has talk’d to me, & been the best Company I ever took a Journey with.” He showed the portrait to the Archbishop of York—“his Grace, hisLady and Sister”—and told them “a short but interesting Story” of his “friendship for the original.” It was taken over to Crazy Castle where it went round the table after supper and Eliza’s health with it. And finally, says Sterne, in allusion to theSentimental Journey, “I have brought yr. nameEliza!and Picture into my work—where they will remain—when you and I are at rest for ever.” But with Sterne sentiment must end in humor; and so came that daring fancy of some Dryasdust commenting in a far distant time on Yorick and Eliza: “Some Annotator,” says Sterne, “or explainer of my works in this place will take occasion to speak of the Friendship wch. 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 her over to England for the recovery of her health in the Year 65—where She continued to April the year 1767. It was abt. three months before her Return to India, That our Author’s acquaintance & hers began. Mrs. Draper had a great thirst for knowledge—washandsome—genteel—engaging—and of such gentle disposition & so enlightened an understanding,—That Yorick (whether he made much opposition is not known) from an acquaintance—soon became her Admirer—they caught fire, at each other at the same time—& they wd. often say, without reserve to the world, & without any Idea of saying wrong in it, That their Affections for each other wereunbounded—Mr. Draper dying in the Year * * * * * This Lady return’d 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.”
Sterne felt sure that the marriage with Eliza would take place within three years. He had so written on the impulse of the moment in dedicating an almanac to her, and he believed that impulse came from heaven. In the meantime Eliza was omnipresent in the spirit. “In proportion,” writes Sterne, “as I am thus torn from yr. embraces—I cling the closer to the Idea ofyou. Your Figure is ever before my eyes—the sound of yr. voice vibrates with its sweetest tones the live long day in my ear—I can see & hear nothing but my Eliza.” As he sat down to hisSentimental Journey, Eliza entered the library without tapping, and he had to shut her out before he could begin writing. On another day, the dear Bramine was asked to stay that her presence might “soften and modulate” his feelings for a sentimental portrait—the fair Fleming, it may be, or the beautiful Grisette, or the heartbroken Maria. To Eliza he dedicated “a sweet little apartment” in his “thatched palace,” and entered there ten times every day to render his devotions to her in “the sweetest of earthly Tabernacles.” And for his future “Partner and Companion” he built a pavilion in “a retired corner” of his garden, where he sat in reverie, and longed and waited for that day’s sleep when he might say with Adam—“Behold the Woman Thou has given me for Wife.”
The woman that had been given him for wife twenty-five years before was still in France. But she was then about to visither husband for the purpose of obtaining from him provision for the support of herself and daughter in southern France. After repeated delays Mrs. Sterne reached Coxwold on the second of October. As Sterne looks forward to this visit, his “heart sinks down to the earth.” He would be in health and strength, if it were not for this cloud hanging over him with “its tormenting consequences.” Taking this distress for theme, his friend Hall-Stevenson wrote “an affecting little poem” which Sterne promised to transcribe for Eliza. When illness prevented Mrs. Sterne from setting out from France as soon as she expected, her husband became impatient at the detention, for he was anxious “to know certainlythe day and hour of this Judgment.” “The period of misery,” covering a month at length came and passed. Half in love with her husband because of his humanity and generosity, Mrs. Sterne went to York to spend the winter. In the spring she was to retire into France, “whence,” says Sterne, “she purposes not to stir, till her death.—& never, has she vow’d, will give me another sorrowful or discontented hour.” These lastweeks with his wife brought to Sterne one consolation more.—Mrs. Sterne confessed to her husband that at the time of her marriage she made herself out ten years younger than she really was. “God bless,” he writes to Eliza, “& make the remainder of her Life happy—in order to wch. I am to remit her three hundred guineas a year.”
Much that was said, in an earlier volume, of theSentimental Journeymight be appropriately repeated here of theJournal to Eliza. Once Sterne was at the point of dying broken hearted because of his separation from Miss Lumley. Twenty-five years after marriage she became “a restless unreasonable Wife whom neither gentleness or generosity can conquer.” With Mrs. Draper, Sterne was no doubt more deeply in love than he had ever been with his wife. He would have married her, but for the barriers. And yet, had he married her, the time must surely have come when even Eliza would have found her place supplanted. For sincere as Sterne may have been for the moment, his emotions were fugitive and volatile. If one woman were not at hand for evoking them, another would answer as well; if not oneobject, why then another. Whole passages—and this is one of the Sterne curiosities—are taken from the letters to Miss Lumley and carried over into theJournal to Eliza, as applicable, with a few minor changes, to the new situation. It was hardly more than writing “Molly” for “Fanny,” or “our faithful friend Mrs. James” for “the good Miss S——” and the old “sentimental repasts” once graced by Miss Lumley could be served anew for Eliza.[4]
To explain these remarkable parallelisms,—sometimes word for word—Mr. Sidney Lee has recently suggested that Mrs. Medalle, in editing her father’s correspondence, “foisted some passages from theJournalon her mother’s love-letters.”[5]Mrs. Medalle was certainly unscrupulous enough for that; but it is more likely that Sterne deliberately adjusted the letters to theJournalfrom copies preserved at Coxwold. Miss S—— of York consoled with him in the earlier days while Miss Lumley was away in Staffordshire. Mrs. James now consoles withhim for the loss of Eliza. The situations are similar; and why should not the same or similar language be used in describing them. Sterne’s plagiarism from himself in theJournalis by no means confined to the sentimental passages. The letter dated June 7, 1767, to A. Lee Esq., descriptive of the golden age at Coxwold, was worked into theJournalfor the second of July. And in reverse order, the Shandean story of Sterne’s illness recorded in theJournalfor the twenty-second of April, was retold on the twenty-first of May in a letter to the Earl of S——. This was, as has been seen, the manner of the sermons, of which two were nearly alike except for the different texts.
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
WHILE Thackeray was preparing his lectures on theEnglish Humourists, Mr. Gibbs sent him theJournal to Elizain a parcel which seems to have contained also the copy of theLetters from Yorick to Elizanow bound with the Gibbs Manuscripts. Surprise has been expressed by Sterne’s biographers—Mr. Percy Fitzgerald and Mr. Sidney Lee—that Thackeray “made no use” of theJournal, as if he thought it “of slight importance.” The biographers also say that it was lent to Thackeray “while he was lecturing on Sterne.” As a matter of fact, Thackeray must have received the Manuscripts nearly a month before his lecture; and as will be seen, he did make some use of them. But we will let Thackeray first speak for himself. The following letter to Mr. Gibbs is postmarked May 31, 1851 and June 1, 1851.
13 Young St.
Kensington
May 31 [1851.]
Dear Sir
I thank you very much for your obliging offer, and the kind terms in wh. you make it. If you will send me the MSS I will take great care of them, and gratefully restore them to their owner.
Your very faithful Servt.
W M Thackeray
It may be taken for granted that the Manuscripts reached Thackeray in the course of a week. The lecture on Sterne and Goldsmith—the last of the series—was read at Willis’s Rooms on the afternoon of Thursday July 3, 1851.[6]After a long delay, the Manuscripts were returned to Mr. Gibbs, with a comment on the man Sterne as revealed by theJournal. I give the letter just as Thackeray wrote it, save for erasures and substitutions:
Kensington
12 September [1851.]
Dear Sir
Immediately after my lectures I went abroad and beg your pardon for having forgotten in the hurry of my departure to return the MSS wh. you were good enough to lend me. I am sorry that reading the Brahmin’s letters to his Brahmine did not increase my respect for the Reverend Laurence Sterne.
In his printed letters there is one XCII[7]addressed to Lady P. full of love and despair for my Lady & pronouncing that he had got a ticket for Miss xxx benefit that night, which he might use if deprived of the superior delight of seeing Lady P. I looked in the Dramatic Register (I think is the name of the book) to find what lady took a benefit on a Tuesday, & found the names of2, 1 at Covent Garden, & one at Drury Lane, on the same Tuesday evening, and no other Miss’s benefit on a Tuesday during the Season. Miss Poyntz I think is one of the names, but I’m 5 miles from the book as Iwrite to you, and forget the lady’s name & the day.
However on the day Sterne was writing to Lady P., and going to Miss ——’s benefit, he isdyingin his Journal to the Brahmine, can’t eat, has the Doctor, & is in a dreadful way.
He wasn’t dying, but lying I’m afraid—God help him—a falser & wickeder man its difficult to read of. Do you know the accompanying pamphlet.[8](My friend Mr. Cooper gave me this copy, whhe had previously sent to the Reform club, & has since given the club another copy) there is more of Yorick’s love making in these letters, with blasphemy to flavor the compositions, and indications of a scornful unbelief. Of course any man is welcome to believe as he likes for meexcepta parson, and I can’t help looking upon Swift & Sterne as a couple of traitors and renegades (as one does upon Bonneval or poor Bem the other day,) with a scornful pity for them in spite of all their genius and greatness.
With many thanks for your loan believe me Dear Sir
Very faithfully yours
W. M. Thackeray
It may be that Thackeray left theJournalunread until after the lecture on Sterne and Goldsmith. No positive statement can be made about that. But it is not probable that he would fail to examine at once Sterne manuscripts that he “gratefully” received. True, no quotation is made from theJournalfor the lecture—and in that sense Thackeray “made no use of it”—but a careless perusal of the document is precisely what would lead one to the unreasonable view that Thackeray took of Sterne. He was evidently much amused by the account Sterne gives of a fever brought on by the loss of Eliza—the minute circumstances of the blood letting and the wise physicians, the farewell to Eliza and the announcement on an evening that “I am going,” to be corrected the next morning by “So shall not depart as I apprehended.” At this point Thackeray turned to that famous letter written on anafternoon at the Mount Coffee-house to Lady P., which bears no date except “Tuesday, 3 o’clock,” though in the standard editions of Sterne it is among the letters for April 1767. Sterne writes to “my dear lady” that if she will permit him to spend the evening with her, he will gladly stay away from Miss * * * * * * *’s benefit, for which he has purchased a box ticket. On consulting the Dramatic Register, Thackeray discovered that the only actresses to receive benefits on a Tuesday in April 1767 were Miss Pope at Drury Lane and Miss Poitier at Covent Garden. The date for each was the twenty-first. The very day then, that Sterne was dying for Eliza, he was also dining in the Mount Coffee-house and trying to make an assignation with Lady P. Cleverly forged as Thackeray’s chain may seem, it has one weak link. The date of the letter to Lady P. is undetermined. In Mrs. Medalle’s edition of the correspondence, the letter was placed near the end as if it belonged to December 1767 or to January 1768. In the collected edition of Sterne’s works, it first appeared with the letters for April 1767.April 21, 1767 is impossible, for Sterne was surely too ill then to leave his lodgings. On that very day, as Thackeray might have observed, Sterne wrote to Mr. and Mrs. James that he was “almost dead” from the bleeding. It may be supposed, if you like, that Sterne could exaggerate or even sham an illness to awaken Eliza’s pity for him, but he could have had no motive for deceiving his friends in Gerrard street. Without much doubt the correct date for the letter is Tuesday, April 23, 1765. As he sat in the Mount Coffee-house, Sterne was debating within himself whether he should pass the evening with Lady Percy, or attend the benefit to be given at Covent Garden to Miss Wilford, a popular dancer, who was to appear on that evening as Miranda in Mrs. Centlivre’sBusy Body.[9]
How much Thackeray’s unfortunate mistake may have contributed to the violence of his essay in theHumouristswe shall never know. It may have been the very thing which clenched his opinion that Sterne’s word was never to be trusted. At any rate, no one can longer say that Thackeray“made no use of” theJournal to Eliza. Thereafter Thackeray usually assumed a more genial tone when Sterne became the theme. Nobody can object to that letter he wrote in Sterne’s room at Dessein’s Hôtel for Miss Baxter in America. “Sterne’s picture”—to quote a sentence or two from the delightful passage—“Sterne’s picture is looking down on me from the chimney piece at which he warmed his lean old shanks ninety years ago. He seems to say ‘You are right. Iwasa humbug: and you, my lad, are you not as great?’ Come, come Mr. Sterne none of these tu quoques. Some of the London papers are abusing me as hard as ever I assaulted you.” Then there is this same fancy elaborated into aRoundabout: Thackeray is again in Sterne’s room at midnight, when a lean figure in black-satin breeches appears in the moonlight to call him to account with menacing finger for that mistrust and abuse of ten years back. But there is also anotherRoundaboutin which Sterne figures—Notes of a Week’s Holiday,[10]wherein Thackeray returns to the old assault with terrific fury. TheJournal toEliza, there mentioned by title, is focussed with an anecdote misread from Dutens’Memoirs, for a scathing portrait of a “wretched old sinner.” Thackeray seems to have immediately repented of his loss of temper, for the passage—two pages in length—was not allowed to go into the collectedRoundabouts. It has, I think, never been reprinted. Hence the biographers may be pardoned for saying that Thackeray made no use of “Sterne’s own Journal to Eliza,” sent him by “a gentleman from Bath.”
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
THE two letters from Sterne to Mr. and Mrs. James are not original drafts that were, according to the usual statement, afterwards recast and elaborated. They are the very letters that went through the mails to their destination; and their counterparts found in the printed collections are only mutilated forms for which Sterne’s daughter is responsible. Mrs. Medalle possessed every quality that should damn the editor. She was ignorant; she was careless; she was dishonest. That the letters as Sterne wrote them may be easily compared with the mutilations, I have printed the two sets side by side in their due place among theLetters and Miscellanies; and I here reprint the authentic copies, that the material of the Gibbs Manuscripts may be all together. To both letters Mrs. Medalle gave wrong dates. Words and phrases were inserted for the improvement of her father’s style. Anamusing passage on the impending visit of Mrs. Sterne was stricken out. And the references to Mrs. Draper—her journal, letters, and Sterne’s anxiety for her—were either deleted or emasculated. This want of the literary conscience no doubt vitiates the entire Sterne correspondence that appeared under the supervision of Mrs. Medalle.
In the Sterne curiosity-shop, where one strange thing lies hidden beneath another, nothing has been uncovered quite so curious as the draft of a letter to Daniel Draper, Esq., of Bombay. Sterne evidently found it difficult to explain to the husband of Eliza the kind of love he felt for her; for he begins a sentence, breaks it off, starts in anew, draws pen through word and phrase once more, and finally passes into chaos on arriving at the verge of a proposal that Mrs. Draper shall be permitted to return to England and live under his platonic protection. The letter bears no date, but as its substance is contained in theJournalfor the second of June, it was probably written soon after Sterne’s coming to Coxwold in the early summer of 1767.That Sterne completed the sketch and sent it off to Draper may seem improbable. But Sterne was certainly corresponding with Draper at this time.[11]A photograph of the letter is given here along with Mr. Gibbs’s own version.[12]
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
NO apology is necessary for including in the works of Sterne the letters of Mrs. Draper. If the journal she kept for him on the voyage to India and the letters to him covering the year 1767 may not be recovered, we have in their stead several letters, of which some have appeared in print and others are in manuscripts that are accessible.[13]Most important of all is the long ship-letter (forming a part of the Gibbs Manuscripts) from Bombay to Mrs. James in London. It is really the fragment of an autobiography, down to 1772. Now thoroughly disillusioned, Mrs. Draper passes in review her early education, the ill-starred marriage, the friendship with Sterne, the efforts to aid widow and daughter, her literary aims and ambitions, and the sorrow that was fast settling closeupon her. Of Sterne she says: “I was almost an Idolator of His Worth, while I fancied Him the Mild, Generous, Good Yorick, We had so often thought him to be.” But “his Death,” she must add with words underscored, “gave me to know, that he was tainted with the Vices of Injustice, meanness & Folly.” Of her treatment by Mrs. Sterne and Lydia she makes bitter complaint, and for the best of reasons. For them she collected, with the aid of Colonel Campbell, twelve hundred rupees among her friends in India; and Lydia she invited to come and live with her. Her kindness was met with a threat to publish her letters to Sterne, then in the hands of the widow and daughter. The sad record is relieved by many charming feminine traits of character, and it is ennobled by the mother yearning to be with her children left behind in England.
One aspect of the self-drawn portrait has especial interest. Mrs. Draper was—I have said it—a blue-stocking. She was probably not acquainted with Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, whose assemblies of blue-stockings were then famous; but theEssay on the Writings andGenius of Shakespearhad reached India. After reading Mrs. Montagu’s book, Mrs. Draper declared that she “would rather be an Attendant on her Person, than the first Peeress of the Realm.” And so under this new inspiration Mrs. Draper resumed the scribbling to which she had been encouraged by Sterne. “A little piece or two” that she “discarded some years ago,” were completed; they were “not perhaps unworthy of the press,” but they were never printed. Though these efforts seem to be lost, Mrs. Draper took advantage of the occasion to weave into her letter to Mrs. James various little essays which may be described in her phrase as “of the moral kind,” because they have to do with practical conduct. Anxiety for the welfare of her daughter Betsey, who had been put to school at Kensington, leads to several pages on the boarding-school and the parlor-boarder, which are good enough to find a place in one of Mrs. Chapone’s letters. A little way on, she relates the “story of a married pair, which,” she says, “pleased me greatly, from the sensible singularity of it.” The tale tells of a wealthy and indolent man inNorth India who married a smart young woman to “rouse his mind from its usual state of Inactivity”—and he succeeded. The wife, too, discarded her light airs, and became a most agreeable woman. It all reads like a character sketch from Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. There is also an experiment in the sentimental style, wherein is told the story of “a smart pretty French woman,” who, shutting out all promiscuous loves and friendships, kept her heart for her dear husband alone and one “sweet woman” across the Alps. “The lovely Janatone,” writes Mrs. Draper, “died three Years ago—after surviving her Husband about a Week and her Friend a twelvemonth.” And besides these, there are other sketches from life, and vivid descriptions of society at Bombay. If Eliza did not write exactly, as Sterne flattered her, “with an angel’s pen,” she knew how to ramble agreably.
Of other letters by Mrs. Draper, thirteen are now owned by Lord Basing of Hoddington, a descendant of Mrs. Draper’s uncle, Richard Sclater. These letters, which are said to relate mostly to family affairs, have not been procured for this collection. Buttheir tenor may perhaps be inferred from the letter dated Tellicherry, April 1769, which is here printed from the autograph copy in the British Museum. Though the name of the man to whom it was addressed is left blank, the contents show that he was a friend of the Drapers who had retired from the service and returned to England. The letter presents a portrait of Mrs. Draper, not the blue-stocking but the sensible wife who has resolved to adjust herself to the humdrum and drudgery of official India. Her husband, she says, has lost his two clerks, and so she is “maintaining his correspondence for him.” Quite remarkable, too, as her good sense, is the knowledge she shows of the intrigues and blunders that culminated in the troubles with Hyder Ali, then besieging Madras and striking terror throughout South India.
Mrs. Draper’s career in India is brought to a close by the letters written on the eve of her elopement. Now in private hands at Bombay, they were published, with an introductory essay, in theTimes of Indiafor February 24, 1894, and in the overland weekly issue for March 3, 1894. In thefirst of them Mrs. Draper gives “a faithful servant and friend”—one Eliza Mihill—an order on George Horsley, Esq., in England for all her jewels, valued at 500l.or more. Accept them, the generous woman writes, “as the best token in my power, expressive of my good will to you.” Of the Mr. Horsley, one of Mrs. Draper’s closest friends, who had gone to England for his health, a pretty character-sketch was made two years before in the long letter to Mrs. James. To him she addressed a brief impassioned note—the second of the series—explaining what she has done for Betty Mihill and what she is about to do for her own freedom. The third letter, which is to her husband, in justification of her conduct, was composed under great agitation of mind, as she was awaiting the moment of the last perilous step. Her pearls and silk clothes she left behind, taking, of all her ornaments, only the picture of Betty—“my dearest girl,” far off in England.
For Mrs. Draper after her escape to England, material is scant. There is really nothing very trustworthy except an undatedletter to Wilkes the politician, thanking him for a “French volume” and beseeching him to cease from his flattery. This letter, of which the original is in the British Museum, is here printed from Mr. Fitzgerald’s copy. A degrading anecdote of Combe’s is omitted, as it seems more likely to be false than true. We conclude with the eulogy on Eliza by the Abbé Raynal, the second ecclesiastic to be startled out of propriety by that oval face and those brilliant eyes.
W. L. C.
LETTERSFROMYORICK TO ELIZA.
LETTERSFROMYORICK TO ELIZA.
LETTERS
FROM
YORICK TO ELIZA.
TO THERIGHT HONOURABLELORD APSLEY,LORD HIGH CHANCELLOROF ENGLAND.[14]
TO THERIGHT HONOURABLELORD APSLEY,LORD HIGH CHANCELLOROF ENGLAND.[14]
TO THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE
LORD APSLEY,
LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR
OF ENGLAND.[14]
MY LORD,
The Editor of the following Letters is so far from having tasted your Lordship’s bounty, that he is, and perhaps ever must remain, a stranger to your person, consequently no adulation is to be apprehended from him——
He leaves it to the weak and oppressed, the widow and orphan, to proclaim yourLordship’s virtues in your public capacity; that which he would celebrate is of a private nature, namely, your filial affection, which is so conspicuous, that he flatters himself a Volume of Letters written by such a person as Mr.Sterne, in which your noble father[15]is placed in a light so truly amiable, cannot fail of engaging your Lordship’s gracious acceptance and protection—in this hope, and upon this foundation, he presumes to dedicate these papers to your Lordship, and to have the honour of subscribing himself,
My Lord,
your Lordship’s
most obedient,
and most humble Servant,
THE EDITOR.
PREFACE.[16]
THE foul and infamous traffic, between dishonest booksellers, and profligate scribblers, which has subsisted for more than a century, has justly brought posthumous publications under suspicion, in England, France, and more especially in Holland: ministers of state in every European court, great generals, royal mistresses, authors of established reputation, in a word, all such as have had the misfortune to advance themselves to eminence, have been obliged to leave behind them parcels of letters, and other memoirs, of the most secret and important transactions of their times, in which, every fact beyond the information of a news-paper, or coffee-house chat, is so faithfully misrepresented, every character delineated with such punctual deviation from the truth, and causes andeffects which have no possible relation, are with such amazing effrontery obtruded upon the public, that it is no wonder if men of sense, who read for instruction as well as entertainment, generally condemn them in the lump, never, or very rarely, affording them the honour of a perusal,—the publisher of these letters, however, has not the smallest apprehension that any part of this well grounded censure can fall to his share; he deals not in surprising events to astonish the reader, nor in characters (one excepted) which have figured on the great theatre of the world; he purposely waves all proofs which might be drawn concerning their authenticity, from the character of the gentleman who had the perusal of the originals, and, with Eliza’s permission, faithfully copied them at Bombay in the East Indies; from the testimony of many reputable families in this city, who knew and loved Eliza, caressed and admired Mr. Sterne, and were well acquainted with the tender friendship between them; from many curious anecdotes in the letters themselves, any one of which were fully sufficient to authenticate them, and submits his reputation to thetaste and discernment of the commonest reader, who must, in one view, perceive that these letters are genuine, beyond any possibility of doubt,—as the public is unquestionably entitled to every kind of information concerning the characters contained in these letters, which consists with the duties of humanity and a good citizen, that is, a minute acquaintance with those of whom honourable mention is made, or the publisher is furnished with authorities to vindicate from Mr. Sterne’s censures, which as a man of warm temper and lively imagination, he was perhaps sometimes hurried into without due reflection, he persuades himself that no party concerned, will or can be offended with this publication, especially if it is considered that without such information it would be cold and unentertaining; that by publishing their merits he cannot be understood to intend them any injury, and without it, he would in himself fail in his duty to the public.——Eliza, the lady to whom these letters are addressed, is Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife of Daniel Draper, Esq. counsellor at Bombay, and at present chief of the English factory at Surat,a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the globe—she is by birth an East-Indian; but the circumstance of being born in the country not proving sufficient to defend her delicate frame against the heats of that burning climate, she came to England for the recovery of her health, when by accident she became acquainted with Mr. Sterne. He immediately discovered in her a mind so congenial with his own, so enlightened, so refined, and so tender, that their mutual attraction presently joined them in the closest union that purity could possibly admit of; he loved her as his friend, and prided in her as his pupil; all her concerns became presently his; her health, her circumstances, her reputation, her children, were his; his fortune, his time, his country, were at her disposal, so far as the sacrifice of all or any of these might, in his opinion, contribute to her real happiness. If it is asked whether the glowing heat of Mr. Sterne’s affection never transported him to a flight beyond the limits of pure Platonism, the publisher will not take upon him absolutely to deny it; but this he thinks, so far from leaving anystain upon that gentleman’s memory, that it perhaps includes his fairest encomium; since to cherish the seeds of piety and chastity in a heart which the passions are interested to corrupt, must be allowed to be the noblest effort of a soul fraught and fortified with the justest sentiments of religion and virtue.—Mr. and Mrs. James, so frequently and honourably mentioned in these letters, are the worthy heads of an opulent family in this city: their character is too well established to need the aid of the publisher in securing the estimation they so well deserve, and universally possess, yet he cannot restrain one observation; that to have been respected and beloved by Mr. Sterne and Mrs. Draper, is no inconsiderable testimony of their merit, and such as it cannot be displeasing to them to see published to the world.——Miss Light, now Mrs. Stratton, is on all accounts a very amiable young lady—she was accidentally a passenger in the same ship with Eliza, and instantly engaged her friendship and esteem; but being mentioned in one of Mrs. Draper’s letters to Mr. Sterne, in somewhat of a comparative manner with herself, his partialityfor her, as she modestly expressed it, took the alarm, and betrayed him into some expressions, the coarseness of which cannot be excused. Mrs. Draper declares that this lady was entirely unknown to him, and infinitely superior to his idea of her: she has been lately married to George Stratton, Esq. counsellor at Madrass.—The manner in which Mr. Sterne’s acquaintance with the celebrated Lord Bathurst, the friend and companion of Addison, Swift, Pope, Steele, and all the finest wits of the last age, commenced, cannot fail to attract the attention of the curious reader: here, that great man is social and unreserved, unshackled with that sedulity in supporting a feigned character which exposes most of his rank to the contempt of wise men, and the ridicule of their valets de chambre; here he appears the same as in his hours of festivity and happiness with Swift and Addison, superior to forms and ceremonies, and, in his eighty-fifth year, abounding in wit, vivacity, and humanity: methinks, the pleasure of such a gentleman’s acquaintance resembles that of conversing with superior beings; but it is not fit to dwell longer on this pleasingtopic, lest it should anticipate the reader’s pleasure in perusing the letter itself. One remark however it suggests, which may be useful to old men in general, namely, that it appears by his Lordship’s example, the sour contracted spirit observable in old age, is not specifically an effect of years, altho’ they are commonly pleaded in its excuse. Old men would therefore do well to correct this odious quality in themselves; or, if that must not be, to invent a better apology for it. It is very much to be lamented, that Eliza’s modesty was invincible to all the publisher’s endeavours to obtain her answers to these letters: her wit, penetration, and judgment, her happiness in the epistolary style, so rapturously recommended by Mr. Sterne, could not fail to furnish a rich entertainment for the public. The publisher could not help telling her, that he wished to God she was really possessed of that vanity with which she was charged; to which she replied, that she was so far from acquitting herself of vanity, that she suspected that to be the cause why she could not prevail on herself to submit her letters to the public eye; for altho’ Mr. Sternewas partial to every thing of her’s, she could not hope that the world would be so too. With this answer he was obliged to be contented; yet cannot reflect without deep concern, that this elegant accomplishment, so peculiarly adapted to the refined and delicate understandings of ladies should be yet so rare, that we can boast of only one Lady Wortley Montagu among us; and that Eliza, in particular, could not be prevailed on to follow the example of that admired lady.—The reader will remark that these letters have various signatures; sometimes he signs Sterne, sometimes Yorick, and to one or two he signs Her Bramin. Altho’ it is pretty generally known who the Bramins are, yet lest any body should be at a loss, it may not be amiss to observe, that the principal cast or tribe among the idolatrous Indians are the Bramins, and out of the chief class of this cast comes the priests so famous for their austerities, and the shocking torments, and frequently death, they voluntarily expose themselves to, on a religious account. Now, as Mr. Sterne was a clergyman, and Eliza an Indian by birth, it was customary with her to call him her Bramin,which he accordingly, in his pleasant moods, uses as a signature.——
It remains only to take some notice of the family, marked with asterisks, on whom Mr. Sterne has thought proper to shed the bitterest gall of his pen. It is however evident, even from some passages in the letters themselves, that Mrs. Draper could not be easily prevailed on to see this family in the same odious light in which they appeared to her perhaps over-zealous friend. He, in the heat, or I may say, hurry of his affection, might have accepted suspicious circumstances as real evidences of guilt, or listened too unguardedly to the insinuations of their enemies.
Be that as it may, as the publisher is not furnished with sufficient authorities to exculpate them, he chuses to drop the ungrateful subject, heartily wishing, that this family may not only be innocent of the shocking treachery with which they are charged, but may be able to make their innocence appear clearly to the world; otherwise, that no person may be industrious enough to make known their name.