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WIT AND WORLDLING

STERNE AND ‘TRISTRAM SHANDY.’

[From the Melbourne ‘ Ago.’]

Thackeray, lodging in the old Hotel Dessein, at Calais, grew.apprehensive at midnight, lie. tells us in the ‘Roundabout Papers,’ lest he should see the ghost of Laurence Sterne. Sterne had visited tho hotel a hundred years before. Sterne had. written of it in ‘ A Sentimental Journey.’ And Thackeray, who admired tiro writer and disliked and abused the .worldling in the wig and cassock, conjectured fancifully, “ What if I should see the lean figure in the black satin breeches, his sinister smile, his long, thin linger pointing to me in the moonlight, and lie should say, ‘ You mistrust auo, you hate me, do you? And yon, don’t you know how your brother authors hate you?’ ” “ Oh, you ghost in black satin breeches and a wig!” cried Thackeray. “ I like to be hated by some men.”

“ My good sir,” said Sterne, with a ghastly grin on his lean /face, “you have your wish.” How Thackeray attacked Sterne, the maul Not a play of the wit of the i man—how should the greatest of j English satirical novelists fail to_ appreciate the satire and the fancy of the eighteenth century writer? But the rynic the cleric, who in passages of exquisite tenderness touches t..« heart; weeps as the chaplain Sampson of Castlowood might weep, his handkerchief hiding his sneering lips; the worldling, who from the pulpit would stir the soul of his congregation, and yet, as Gray tells in his letters, be seen “ tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of his audience.” Laurence Sterne was callous, insincere, and vicious. Thackeray’s estimate of him was just. Sterne’s letters—most, the addresses to Mrs Elizabeth Draper, wife of Daniel Draper, of Bombay—so reveal him, more than anything in ‘ Tristram Shandy’ or ‘A Sentimental Journey,’ more than ever the bitter sneers at Idnsfolk, who bad been generous to him, the sneers that lurk in the brief memoir he compiled for his daughter, Lydia. But the student in his estimate of the man must have regard for the conditions and the environment in j which Sterne grew up, and the state of the Church in which ho took orders. The English clergy of the early eighteenth century were “ the most lifeless in Europe, the most remiss of their labors, and the least severe in their lives.” Sterne was no worse than his time. The clergyman was no more \ and no less insincere, cynical, and self- j seeking than his fellow _ professional diviners and pluralist*. His private life then was selfish; his thonght was often I vicious, his expression foul; hut his | life and habit of mind wore the life I and' habit of mind of his contemporaries. His coarseness and his suggostiveness in his writing were accepted frankly in his ago as the broad humor of a Smollet or a Fielding—though the men were finer, saner, cleaner—was accepted without censure. Thackeray in ‘ The j Four Georges,’ in 1 The Virginians,’ in j 1 Barry Lyndon,’ or Horace Walpole ! in the letters, gives the period ami its j mind and manners. Sterne is in- ] separable from his time. | It would he well for Sterne’s repute if it were possible to forget the worldling in studying the author. It would i bo well to ignore him wholly in the delight of wit, the play of fancy, ‘ Tristram Shandy ’; i n_ the laughter that Mr Shandy and his wife, Undo Toby, the widow Wadrnan, Corporal Trim, and Dr Slop arouse ; or in the exquisite pathos of the sketches in ‘ A Sentimental Journey’—the poor Franciscan, the beggars at Mohtreuil, the famous passage concerning the dead ass —to have regard only for this comedy and this pathos, the fineness of styls, and the gift of expression, and always to exclude thought of the grinning figure in black, hastening soon to swift decay; the worn-out voluptuary, smirking, bowing, professing ardour with the hand of death upon him. The man is not to be effaced. While yet ho charms, as his eloquence and sensibility charmed his congregation, he sneers from his books as he sneered from his pulpit. Insincere, but self-doceptivo, no could weep over commonplacetragedy, delude himself info the belief of sincerity, blubber over a dead ass, i and neglect his nearest. “ The foul satyr’s eyes leer out of the leaves con- i stantly.” cries Thackeray. “ The last words the famous author wrote were I bad?and wicked—the last lines the poor, stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon.” Yet Sterne, by Ins wit of Swift and Rabelais, has his will and his way with his reader as with England of the seventeen sixties. He addresses the great Pitt in his dedication of ‘ Tristram Shandy.’ He has been told the work has made Pitt smile. He has the hope of preferment in his dedication while he asserts -that never had dedicator less hope. Doubtless he smiled as he wrote the lie. His health was wretched. His memoir telling of his birth on November 24, 1713, tells, too, of the births and the early deaths of brothers and sister. The son of Lieutenant Roger Sterne, he was dragged from barrack to barrack until; his cousin Sterne of Elvington saw to j His education at Halifax School, and i Jesus College, Cambridge, Iho young j

scholar took orders, and through the influence of his uncle, the W 7 liig cleric, Dr Sterne, ho obtained the living of Sutton. He wooed Elizabeth Lumlcy. He addressed tender letters to her. lie tells that she fell into a consumption—- “ one evening that 1 was sitting by her with an almost broken heart, she said, ‘My dear Laurey, I never can he yours, for I verily believe that. I have not long to live! But I have left you every shilling of my fortune.’ . . . It pleased God that she recovered, and wo were married in 1741.” Happier for her, doubtless, had she died at that time 1

With comfortable living then from dowry and benefice, association with his college friend Stevenson, of Skelton Castle, absorption of a vast amount of curious lore from the library of tho castle, pamphleteering, quarrels with the reverend uncle, Sterne lived obscurely till in 1759 he elected to put on paper his gift for Rabelaisian humor, his lively and ingenious fancy, his art of caricature, his strange knowledge. He completed his first two volumes of ‘ Tristram Shandy ’ that year. .On January 1, 1760, an advertisement in the ‘Public Advertiser ’ announced, “This day is published ( Tho Life and Opinions of Tristram Sandy,’ of York. Printed for, and sold by John Hinxham, bookseller in Stonogate,” Sterne said that ho had written for fame, not fortune. Ho achieved fortune and fame—permanence among English humorists. He came up to London by the York mail coach in 1760. Ho found the town laughing delightfully at his hook; he was patronised, courted, fed, and wined. He wrote volume after volume of 1 Tristram Sandy.’ Tho town laughed still, though not as heartily towards tho close. He published sermons, and he sold them. He drank to the dregs the cup the world hold out to him. He was man of tho world in the wig and gown of the divine. Ho fawned, courted, and made love to another man’s wife. He urged his beloved Eliza, if ever a. widow, not to giv® herself to some wealthy nabob, because he designed to marry her himself; His wife could not live long. He travelled on tho Continent in October, 1765, lie set out on the tour that was to give the world ‘ A Sentimental Journey.’ Disease had its claws upon him. All that we have of the ‘ Journey ’ was published about a - fortnight before his death on March IS, 1768. An exquisite piece of writing, this ‘ Sentimental Journey,’ charged with wit and tenderness, with beautiful little picture and character sketches. And Laurence Sterne, worldling and cynic, sneers through its tenderness and beauty, sneers to the last line.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19230704.2.4

Bibliographic details

Evening Star, Issue 18318, 4 July 1923, Page 1

Word Count
1,333

WIT AND WORLDLING Evening Star, Issue 18318, 4 July 1923, Page 1

WIT AND WORLDLING Evening Star, Issue 18318, 4 July 1923, Page 1

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