“it is a pleasure to be wet.”
L. STERNE.
THE FRAGMENT.
CHAP. I. SHEWING TWO THINGS; FIRST, WHAT A RABELAIC FELLOW LONGINUS RABELAICUS IS, AND SECONDLY, HOW CAVALIERLY HE BEGINS HIS BOOK.
MY dear and thrice reverend brethren, as well archbishops and bishops, as the rest of the inferior clergy! would it not be a glorious thing, if any man of genius and capacity amongst us for such a work, was fully bent within himself, to sit down immediately and compose a thorough — stitch’d system of the KERUKOPAEDIA, fairly setting forth, to the best of his wit and memory, and collecting for that purpose all that is needful to be known, and understood of that art? — Of what art cried PANURGE? Good God! answered LONGINUS (making an exclamation, but taking care at the same time to moderate his voice) why, of the art of making all kinds of your theological, hebdodomical, rostrummical, humdrummical what d’ye call ‘ems — I will be shot, quoth EPISTEMON, if all this story of thine of a roasted horse, is simply no more than S — Sausages? quoth PANURGE. Thou hast fallen twelve feet and about five inches below the mark, answer’d EPISTEMON, for I hold them to be Sermons — which said word, (as I take the matter) being but a word of low degree, for a book of high rhetoric — LONGINUS RABELAICUS was foreminded to usher and lead into his dissertation, with as much pomp and parade as he could afford; and for my own part, either I know no more of Latin than my horse, or the KERUKOPAEDIA is nothing but the art of making ‘em — And why not, quoth GYMNAST, of preaching them when we have done? — Believe me, dear souls, this is half in half — and if some skilful body would but put us in a way to do this to some tune — Thou wouldst not have them chanted surely, quoth TRIBOULET, laughing? — No, nor canted neither, quoth GYMNAST, crying! — but what I mean, my friends, says LONGINUS RABELAICUS (who is certainly one of the greatest criticks in the western world, and as Rabelaic a fellow as ever existed) what I mean, says he, interrupting them both and resuming his discourse, is this, that if all the scatter’d rules of the KERUKOPAEDIA could be but once carefully collected into one code, as thick as PANURGE’s head, and the whole cleanly digested — (pooh, says Panurge, who felt himself aggrieved) and bound up continued Longinus, by way of a regular institute, and then put into the hands of every licensed preacher in Great Britain, and Ireland, just before he began to compose, I maintain it — I deny it flatly, quoth PANURGE — What? answer’d LONGINUS RABELAICUS with all the temper in the world.
CHAP. II. IN WHICH THE READER WILL BEGIN TO FORM A JUDGEMENT, OF WHAT AN HISTORICAL, DRAMATICAL, ANECDOTICAL, ALLEGORICAL, AND COMICAL KIND OF A WORK HE HAS GOT HOLD OF.
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 fast in the entrance upon his third general division, and finding himself unable to get either forwards or backwards with any grace —
“Curse it,” says he, (thereby excommunicating every mother’s son who should think differently) “why may not a man lawfully call in for help in this, as well as any other human emergency?”
— So without any more argumentation, except starting up and nimming down from the top shelf but one, the second volume of CLARK — tho’ without any felonious intention in so doing, he had begun to clap me in (making a joint first) five whole pages, nine round paragraphs, and a dozen and a half of good thoughts all of a row; and because there was a confounded high gallery — was transcribing it away like a little devil. — Now — quoth HOMENAS to himself
“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 Doctor CLARK’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 stories high. Alas! poor HOMENAS! HOMENAS has done his business! — HOMENAS will never preach more while breath is in his body. — No, faith, I shall never again be able to tickle it off as I have done. I may sit up whole winter nights baking my blood with hectic watchings, and write as solid as a FATHER of the church — or, I may sit down whole summer days evaporating my spirits into the finest thoughts, and write as florid as a MOTHER of it. — In a word, I may compose myself off my legs, and preach till I burst — and when I have done, it will be worse than if not done at all. — Pray Mr. Such-a-one, who held forth last Sunday? Doctor CLARK, I trow; says one. Pray what Doctor CLARK says a second?Why HOMENAS’s Doctor CLARK, quoth a third. O rare HOMENAS! cries a fourth; your servant Mr. HOMENAS, quoth a fifth.— ‘Twill be all over with me, by Heav’n — I may as well put the book from whence I took it. — Here HOMENAS burst into a flood of tears, which falling down helter skelter, ding dong without any kind of intermission for six minutes and almost twenty five seconds, had a marvellous effect upon his discourse; for the aforesaid tears, do you mind, did so temper the wind that was rising upon the aforesaid discourse, but falling for the most part perpendicularly, and hitting the spirits at right angles, which were mounting horizontally all over the surface of his harangue, they not only play’d the devil and all with the sublimity — but moreover the said tears, by their nitrous quality, did so refrigerate, precipitate, and hurry down to the bottom of his soul, all the unsavory particles which lay fermenting (as you saw) in the middle of his conception, that he went on in the coolest and chastest stile (for a soliloquy I think) that ever mortal man uttered.
“This is really and truly a very hard case, continued HOMENAS to himself”
— PANURGE, by the bye, and all the company in the next room hearing all along every syllable he spoke; for you must know, that notwithstanding PANURGE had open’d his mouth as wide as he could for his blood, in order to give a round answer to LONGINUS RABELAICUS’s interrogation, which concluded the last chapter — yet HOMENAS’s rhetoric had pour’d in so like a torrent, slap-dash thro’ the wainscot amongst them, and happening at that uncritical crisis, when PANURGE had just put his ugly face into the above-said posture of defence — that he stopt short — he did indeed, and tho’ his head was full of matter, and he had screw’d up every nerve and muscle belonging to it, till all cryed crack again, in order to give a due projectile force to what he was going to let fly, full in LONGINUS RABELAICUS’s teeth who sat over against him. — Yet for all that, he had the continence to contain himself, for he stopt short, I say, without uttering one word except, Z....ds — many reasons may be assign’d for this, but the most true, the most strong, the most hydrostatical, and the most philosophical reason, why PANURGE did not go on, was — that the foremention’d torrent did so drown his voice, that he had none left to go on with. — God help him, poor fellow! so he stopt short, (as I have told you before) and all the time HOMENAS was speaking he said not another word, good or bad, but stood gaping, and staring, like what you please — so that the break, mark’d thus — which HOMENAS’s grief had made in the middle of his discourse, which he could no more help than he could fly — produced no other change in the room where LONGINUS RABELAICUS, EPISTEMON, GYMNAST, TRIBOULET, and nine or ten more honest blades had got Kerukopaedizing together, but that it gave time to GYMNAST to give PANURGE a good squashing chuck under his double chin; which PANURGE taking in good part, and just as it was meant by GYMNAST, he forthwith shut his mouth — and gently sitting down upon a stool though somewhat excentrically and out of neighbours row, but listening, as all the rest did, with might and main, they plainly and distinctly heard every syllable of what you will find recorded in the very next chapter.
The Non-Fiction
Sterne, c.1762
JOURNAL TO ELIZA
When Elizabeth Draper returned to India in April 1767, Sterne was heartbroken and determined to maintain relations with the younger woman. As well as carrying a miniature portrait of his beloved around his neck, h
e kept a journal addressed to Eliza, full of his daily thoughts and sentimental declarations of love and melancholy. It spans the period 13th April to 4th August 1867, when Sterne abandoned it. In many ways, however, the journal would be continued in a fictionalised form as A Sentimental Journey, which contains frequent references to Eliza and the love that ‘Yorick’ bears her. Sterne sent a portion of this Journal to Eliza in India, but this part of the manuscript has not survived. The work is sometimes referred to as the ‘Bramine’s Journal’ in reference to Sterne’s habit of calling Eliza his ‘Bramine’ due to her connection with India. The surviving fragment of the journal was discovered in the mid-nineteenth century and was first published in 1904.
A curious mystery surrounding the journal is the fact that it appears to contain large sections of prose that are an almost verbatim copy of the love letters Sterne had written to his wife during their courtship. Sidney Lee, in his entry for the Dictionary of National Biography for 1911, suggests that it is ‘just possible that his daughter, who recklessly edited his correspondence, foisted some passages from the “Journal” on her mother’s love-letters’. Either way, the journal itself remains as a fascinating glimpse into the fervent sentimentality with which Sterne approached life not only in his fiction but also in his day to day affairs.
Title page of the first edition
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.
ELIZABETH DRAPER.
LETTERS FROM YORICK TO ELIZA.
THE GIBBS MANUSCRIPTS.
THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA.
THACKERAY AND THE JOURNAL.
THE AUTOGRAPH LETTERS.
THE LETTERS OF ELIZABETH DRAPER.
THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA
INTRODUCTION.
ELIZABETH DRAPER.
STERNE married Miss Lumley of York. He afterwards held sentimental converse with Miss Fourmantelle, Lady Percy, “ My witty widow Mrs. F — , “&c., &c. But his one passion was for the Eliza to whom this volume is dedicated. “Not Swift,” he wrote to her just before she sailed for India, “so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Sacharissa, as I will love and sing thee, my wife elect! All those names, eminent as they are, shall give place to thine, Eliza.”
Mrs. Elizabeth Draper was daughter to one May Sclater who went out to India when a mere boy. He married there a Miss Whitehill, and settled at Anjengo, a small factory on the coast of Malabar, where Elizabeth was born on April 5, 1744. In due time she was sent to England for the “frivolous education “accorded to “girls destined for India.”
“The generality of us,” she wrote in sorrowful retrospect, “* * * were never instructed in the Importance of any thing, but one Worldly Point, that of getting an Establishment of the Lucrative kind, as soon as possible, a tolerable complection, an Easy manner, some degree of taste in the adjustment of our ornaments, some little skill in dancing a minuet, and singing an air.” With no training in “useful Employments, “ she returned to India in her fourteenth year to become, six months later, the wife of Daniel Draper, her elder by some twenty years. Since 1750 Draper had been in the service of the East India Company, and in 1759, the year after his marriage, he was appointed Secretary to the Government at Bombay, where with some interruptions he continued for the rest of his life in India. His faithful services were eventually rewarded by a seat in the Council and the post of Accountant General. If a somewhat heavy official, he was described by a friend and admirer as “a very noble and good-humoured man.” There was nothing unusual about the Draper marriage, which now seems so ill-sorted in respect to age; and we may suppose that neither husband nor wife found it too uncomfortable. A boy was born in 1759, and two years later a girl, named for her mother — the Eliza or Betsey who figures in one of the letters. In 1765, the Drapers brought their children to England that they might be given an English education. Later in the same year Mr. Draper went back to Bombay, but his wife remained in England to recover her health, which had been much weakened by child-bearing and the heat of India.
There was then living in Gerrard Street, Soho, a retired Indian commodore named William James. After making a fortune in the Bombay Marine Service, he returned to England, married an attractive wife, and soon won a place in the “best “London society. Early in 1767, Sterne began going to the Jameses for dinner, especially of a Sunday; and the friendship quickly became intimate. Under date of February 23, Sterne wrote to his daughter Lydia: “I wish I had you with me — and I would introduce you to one of the most amiable and gentlest of beings, whom I have just been with — * * * a Mrs. James, the wife of as worthy a man as I ever met with — I esteem them both.” It was no doubt at the house of these “kind friends in Gerrard Street” that Sterne made the acquaintance of Mrs. Draper — and most likely on his arrival in London at the very beginning of January, 1767. Half in love on first sight, Sterne soon became completely engrossed with his new passion. And well he might, for though Eliza may not have been handsome, she was young, good looking at least, and most agreeable in manner. “Your eyes,” Sterne wrote to her, “and the shape of your face (the latter the most perfect oval I ever saw) * * * are equal to any of God’s works in a similar way, and finer than any I beheld in all my travels. “ Mrs. Draper was then called by her London friends, says one of her letters, the Belle Indian. Sterne saw much of her at the Jameses; she visited his lodgings in Old Bond Street; they made excursions together in and about London; and when separated from her, Sterne communed with her “sweet sentimental picture.” As the time was approaching for her to return to India — she sailed on April 3, 1767 — he addressed to her the extraordinary epistles that all the world knows, and for months afterwards he recorded his sensations in a journal which he hoped some day to place in her hands.
The sojourn of Mrs. Draper in England had been to the change and harm of her character. With her little knowledge of the world, she took Sterne and her flatterers too seriously. She was no doubt attractive in appearance, with her oval face and light airs, but her admirers said to her face that she was beautiful; and worse than that, they tried to make out that she possessed qualities of mind which, if cultivated, would surely lead to distinction in literature. They sent her back to the dull humdrum of India with the literary ambitions of Mrs. Montagu and the blue-stockings. Henceforth she was to find at Bombay a great “Dearth of every thing which could charm the Heart — please the Fancy, or speak to the judgment.” Still Mrs. Draper seems for a time to have made the best of the situation. Writing from Tellicherry in 1769 to a friend in England, she spoke with respect if not with enthusiasm of her husband, whom she was assisting in his official correspondence. But by 1772 she became thoroughly sick of India and of her husband in particular. In a letter to Mrs. James from Bombay she lamented that she was compelled to remain in a detestable country, where her health was declining, and her mind was tortured by the desire to return to England and be with her daughter. At this time she was no longer living with Draper as a wife, and for sufficient reasons, for he was engaged in open intrigue with an attendant — a Mrs. Leeds. In retaliation and despair, Mrs. Draper abruptly left her husband on the night of January 14-15, 1773, in company with Sir John Clark of the Navy, then in command of a frigate at Bombay. She sought refuge for a time with a “ kind uncle, “ Tom Whitehill, at Rajahmandry, and the next year she returned to England, where much attention was paid to her as Sterne’s Eliza. She associated, perhaps not to her good fame, with John Wilkes the politician; and, if an anecdote of Rogers is to be trusted, William Combe, the literary hack, could boast “that it was with him, not with Sterne, that Eliza was in love.” More to be pitied than to be censured, the unfortunate Mrs. Draper died at Bristol on August 3, 1778, in the thirty-fifth year of her age.
Mrs. Draper was buried in the cloisters of Bristol Cathedral, where to her memory stands a monument symbolizing in its two draped figures Genius and Benevolence, the qualities given her in the inscription. The next year the Abbé Raynal, the French historian of the Indies — over whom Mrs. Draper had
cast her spells, first in India and afterwards in England — wrote about her in mad eulogy. He had wept, he said, with Eliza over Sterne; and at the time of her death, she was intending to quit her country for a life with him in France. “A statuary,” he goes on to say in description of Mrs. Draper, “who would have wished to represent Voluptuousness, would have taken her for his model; and she would equally have served for him who might have had a figure of Modesty to display. * * * Every instant increased the delight she inspired; every instant rendered her more interesting. * * * Eliza then was very beautiful? No, she was simply beautiful: but there was no beauty she did not eclipse, because she was the only one that was like herself.” And long afterwards, James Forbes, to whose Oriental Memoirs we owe so much for the social India of those days, paid his tribute to Mrs. Draper. Anjengo he averred would ever be celebrated as the birthplace of Eliza: “ a lady with whom I had the pleasure of being acquainted at Bombay, whose refined tastes and elegant accomplishments require no encomium from my pen.” To the various places where Mrs. Draper lived in India the curious long made pilgrimages. Colonel James Welsh of the Madras infantry visited the house at Anjengo where she was supposed to be born, and carried away from a broken window pieces of oyster-shell and mother-of-pearl as mementos. He took pains to write also in his Memoirs that the house she lived in at Tellicherry was still standing in 1812. Belvidere House, at Mazagon, overlooking the harbour at Bombay — the house from an upper window of which Eliza escaped by a rope ladder to the ship of Sir
Complete Works of Laurence Sterne Page 114
