John Clark — was long believed to be haunted by her spirit, “flitting about in corridor or verandah in hoop and farthingale.” Sketches of Belvidere were brought to England by J. B. Fraser, the traveller and explorer; and from them Robert Burford painted a panorama for public exhibition in London. For nearly a century, it is said, a tree on the estate of her uncle Tom Whitehill at Masulipatam was called Eliza’s tree in memory of her sojourn there.
LETTERS FROM YORICK TO ELIZA.
AS narrated in the introduction to the first volume of Letters and Miscellanies, Mrs. Draper was induced to print some of the letters that she received from Sterne in the spring of 1767. The slight volume, with the dedication and preface reproduced here, made its appearance in February, 1775. Except for the ten letters that this volume contained, the correspondence between Sterne and Mrs. Draper seems to have been lost. Among the lost letters, were several from Sterne, and all of Mrs. Draper’s replies covering the same period. The latter were so many that Sterne spent an entire afternoon in sorting and arranging them. And to be lamented much more is the disappearance of the long ship letters that passed between the Bramin and Bramine in the summer and fall of the same year. In May, Sterne took four days for an overland letter to Mrs. Draper and in August he dispatched another to chaperon one from Mrs. James. While in his retreat at Coxwold he wept for an evening and a morning over Eliza’s narration of the dangers and miseries of her voyage. “Thou wouldst win me by thy Letters,” he records in his journal to her, “had I never seen thy face or known thy heart.”
The ten letters that have survived bore when written no date except the hour of the day or the day of the week, and they were published by Mrs. Draper without any indication of date whatever. The first brief note, sent with a present of the Sermons and Tristram Shandy, evidently belongs to January, perhaps to the last week of the month when appeared the ninth volume of Shandy. And very soon afterwards, no doubt, Sterne dispatched the second note in which he would persuade Eliza to admit him as physician in her illness, notwithstanding “the etiquettes of this town say otherwise.” The succeeding eight letters were daily missives from Sterne to Eliza while she was at Deal waiting for the signal of embarkation from the Earl of Chatham, which was to bear her to India. On her departure the blood broke from poor Yorick’s heart.
THE GIBBS MANUSCRIPTS.
THESE manuscripts are by far the most important Sterne discovery of the nineteenth century. They are named from their former owner, Thomas Washbourne Gibbs, a gentleman of Bath, into whose possession they came midway in the century. How this piece of good fortune happened to him, we leave to his own pen to relate:
“Upon the death of my father,” he writes, “when I was eleven years old, a pile of old account books, letters, commonplace books, and other papers of no documentary value was set aside as waste, and placed in a room where I used to play. I looked through the papers, and found the journal and letters. An early fondness for reading had made me acquainted with the well-known extracts from the writings of Sterne— ‘The Story of Maria,”The Sword,” The Monk, “Le Fevre,’ and a small book containing the ‘ Letters of Yorick and Eliza,’ and finding these names in the letters and book, I took all I could find, and obtained permission to preserve them, and they have been in my possession ever since. How they came into the hands of my father, who was a great reader, and had a large collection of books, I never had any means of knowing.”
Mr. Gibbs showed the curious manuscripts to his friends, and in May, 1851, sent a part of them to Thackeray, then at work upon the English Humourists. Except for a mention of this incident in a Roundabout (the pages were afterwards suppressed), nothing was publicly known concerning the manuscripts until March, 1878, when Mr. Gibbs read before the Bath Literary Institution a paper on “Some Memorials of Laurence Sterne,” the substance of which was printed in The Athenæum for March 30, 1878. On the death of Mr. Gibbs in 1894, the manuscripts passed under his bequest to the British Museum. They are numbered 34527 among the additional manuscripts acquired in 1894-1899. They contain:
1. — The Journal to Eliza.
2. — A Letter from Sterne at Coxwold to Mr and Mrs. James, dated August 10, 1767.
3. — A Letter from Sterne at York to Mr and Mrs. James, dated December 28, 1767.
4. — Draft of a Letter from Laurence Sterne to Daniel Draper.
5. — A Letter from Elizabeth Draper at Bombay to Anne James, dated April 15, 1772.
6. — Two Letters from W. M. Thackeray to J. W. Gibbs dated May 31, and September 12, [1851.]
About the genuineness of every part of this manuscript material there can be no doubt. The Journal to Eliza and the letters to Mr and Mrs. James and to Daniel Draper are in Sterne’s own hand-writing. The first letter “has been through the post, and is franked by Lord Fauconberg, the patron of the Coxwold living.” The second letter has also passed through the post. The letter from Mrs. Draper is likewise in her own hand. And to the Thackeray letters have been preserved the original covering envelopes.
THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA.
NEARLY one half of the manuscript volume just described is occupied by The Journal to Eliza, or The Bramble’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” — 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 from Mrs. 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 the first 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 the Sentimental 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, the Journal is 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 d
ying. 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 cent 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 called jL’Extraite de Saturne, and on the next day he was able to dine out once more.
During his illness his “room was allways full of friendly Visitors,” and the “rapper eternally going with Cards and enquiries.” With these friends, among whom were Lord 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 the Journal will 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 the Journal is a sentimental document. For just as in the Sentimental 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 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, wlî* all his sensibilities, to these resources — all powerful Eliza, that has had this magic! 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 a Soul I 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, his Lady 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 the Sentimental Journey, “I have brought yr name Eliza! 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. Mr s Draper had a great thirst for knowledge — was handsome — genteel — engaging — and of such gentle disposition & so enlightend an understanding, — That Yorick (whether he made much opposition is not known) fi*om 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 were unbounded — 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 of you. 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 his Sentimental 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 visit her 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 certainly the 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 v
ow’d, will give me another sorrowful or discontented hour.” These last weeks 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 the Sentimental Journey might be appropriately repeated here of the Journal 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 one object, 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 the Journal 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.
Complete Works of Laurence Sterne Page 115
