Part 1 (1/2)

Sterne

by HD Traill

PREFATORY NOTE

The raphy of Sterne are by no means abundant

Of the earlier years of his life the only existing record is that preserved in the brief autobiographical memoir which, a few months before his death, he composed, in the usual quaint _staccato_ style of his fahter Of his childhood; of his school-days; of his life at Cae; of his whole history, in fact, up to the age of forty-six, we know nothing e in the year 1759; and at this date begins that series of his _Letters_, from which, for those who have the patience to sort thehter and editress involved theood deal to be learnt These letters, however, which extend down to 1768, the year of the writer's death, contain pretty nearly all the contemporary material that we have to depend on Freely as Sterne ularly little to be gathered about him, even in the way of chance allusion and anecdote, from the memoirs and _ana_ of his time Of the raphy while the facts were yet fresh, but one, John Wilkes, ever entertained--if he did seriously entertain--the idea of perfor this pious work; and he, in spite of the entreaties of Sterne'sand daughter, then in straitened circumstances, left unredeemed his promise to do so The brief memoir by Sir Walter Scott, which is prefixed to many popular editions of _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentiraphy in full, but for the rest is mainly critical; Thackeray's well-known lecture essay is alnified by the name of a _Life of Sterne_, seems ever to have been published, until the appearance of Mr Percy Fitzgerald's two stout voluo Of this work it is hardly too much to say that it contains (no doubt with the adood deal of superfluous matter) nearly all the information as to the facts of Sterne's life that is now ever likely to be recovered The evidence for certain of its stateht have been; and with soree But no one interested in the subject of this erald for the fruitful diligence hich he has laboured in a too long neglected field

HDT

CHAPTER I

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS

(1713-1724)

Towards the close of the iments which had been detained in Flanders to supervise the execution of the treaty of Utrecht arrived at Cloniment was disbanded; and yet a few days later, on the 24th of the ave birth to a son The child who thus early displayed the perversity of his humour by so inopportune an appearance was Laurence Sterne ”My birthday,” he says, in the slipshod, loosely-strung notes by which he has been sorandiloquently said to have ”anticipated the labours” of the biographer--”my birthday was ominous to my poor father, as the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the orld with a wife and two children”

Roger Sterne, however, now late ensign of the 34th, or Chudleigh's regiment of foot, was after all in less evil case than were many, probably, of his comrades He had kinsmen to whom he could look for, at any rate, temporary assistance, and his inally of a Suffolk stock, had passed frohamshi+re, and thence into Yorkshi+re, and were at this time a family of position and substance in the last-narandfather had been Archbishop of York, and a h the accident of the times upon which he fell, than most of the incuetic part even for a Cavalier prelate in the great political struggle of the seventeenth century, and had suffered with fortitude and dignity in the royal cause He had,been treated with coratitude at the Restoration by the son of the e, Ca the University plate to his Majesty,” and for this offence he was seized by Cromwell and carried ini other forth permitted to retire to an obscure retreat in the country, there to commune with himself until that tyranny should be overpast On the return of the exiled Stuarts Dr Sterne was made Bishop of Carlisle, and a few years later was translated to the see of York He lived to the age of eighty-six, and so far justified Burnet's accusation against hi himself,” that he see his children One of these, Sier son of the Archbishop, hier Jaques of Elvington; and Roger, the father of Laurence Sterne, was the seventh and youngest of the issue of this e At the time when the double misfortune above recorded befell him at the hands of Lucina and the War Office, his father had been some years dead; but Simon Sterne's as still ht with her at her ly, ”as soon,” writes Sterne, ”as I was able to be carried,” the con betook himself with his wife and his two children He was not, however, co dependent on his mother The ways of the military authorities were as inscrutable to the army of that day as they are in our day to our own Before a year had passed the regiment was ordered to be re-established, and ”our household decae for Dublin” This was in the autumn of 1714, and from that time onward, for some eleven years, the movements and fortunes of the Sterne family, as detailed in the narrative of its most fales strangely with the pathetic

A husband, conde of adverse Gods at the War Office; an indefatigably prolific wife; a succession of weak and ailing children; ; misfortune in the moods of the weather by sea and land--under all this cole to be carried on The little household was perpetually ”on theand never reain reduced by deaths--until the contest between the deadly hardshi+ps of travel and the fatal fecundity of Mrs Sterne was brought by events to a natural close Alio in terris nostri non plena laboris?_ She passes froland to Ireland, froain, incessantly bearing and incessantly burying children--until even her son in his narrative begins to speak of losing one infant at this place, and ”leaving another behind” on that journey, almost as if they were so ic side of the history, however, overshadows the grotesque When we think how hard a business was travel even under the most favourable conditions in those days, and how serious even in our own times, when travel is easy, are the discoi followers of the drum As to Mrs Sterne herself, she seeh fibre, and she ca stock Her father was a ”noted suttler” of the name of Nuttle, and her first husband--for she was a hen Roger Sterne married her--had been a soldier also She had, therefore, served some years' apprenticeshi+p to the an; and she herself was destined to live to a good old age But so with her own robust constitution and powers of endurance ”My father's children were,” as Laurence Sterne gri;” but one cannot help suspecting that it was the hardshi+ps of those early years which carried theularity and despatch, and that it was to the sas of that fatal malady by which his own life was cut short

The diary of their travels--for the early part of Sterne's memoirs amounts to scarcely more--is the more effective for its very brevity and abruptness Save for one interval of soer sojourn than usual at Dublin, the reader has throughout it all the feeling of the traveller who never finds tiiment in 1714, ”our household,” says the narrative, ”decae for Dublin Within aordered to Exeter; where, in a sad winter,froave birth to a son, christened Joram; and, ”in twelve months time ere all sent back to Dublin My mother,” with her three children, ”took shi+p at Bristol for Ireland, and had a narrow escape fro up in the vessel At length, after ot to Dublin” Here intervenes the short breathing-space, of which er Sterne in ”spending a great deal of e house,” which he hired and furnished; and then ”in the year one thousand seven hundred and nineteen, all unhinged again” The regiht, thence to eo Expedition,” and ”ho accompanied it, ”were driven into Milford Haven, but afterwards landed at Bristol, and thence by land to Ply on this expedition ”poor Joraht, Mrs Sterne and her fao Expedition returned ho her stay there ”poor Jorairl, Anne,” a ”pretty blossoe of three years” On the return of the regiain sent to collect his family around him ”We embarked for Dublin, and had all been cast away by a h the intercession of my mother, the captain was prevailed upon to turn back into Wales, where we stayed a ot into Dublin, and travelled by land to Wicklohere iven us over for lost”

Here a year passed, and another child, Devijeher--so called after the colonel of the regiment--was born ”From thence we decay a relative of e at Aniiain ”we lay in the barracks a year” In 1722 the regiot no further than Drogheda; thence ordered to Mullingar, forty miles west, where, by Providence, we stumbled upon a kind relation, a collateral descendant from Archbishop Sterne, who took us all to his castle, and kindly entertained us for a year” Thence, by ”a us, where ”we arrived in six or seven days” Here, at the age of three, little Devijeher obtained a happy release from his name; and ”another child, Susan, was sent to fill his place, who also left us behind in this weary journey” In the ”autu of the next”--Sterne'sin exactitude at the very point where we should have expected it to be most precise--”my father obtained permission of his colonel to fix me at school;” and henceforth the boy's share in the fas was at an end But his father had yet to be ordered frous to Londonderry, where at last a permanent child, Catherine, was born; and thence to Gibraltar, to take part in the Defence of that fah the body in a duel, ”about a goose” (a thoroughly Shandian catastrophe); and thence to Jamaica, where, ”with a constitution impaired” by the sword-thrust earned in his anserine quarrel, he was defeated in a more deadly duel with the ”country fever,” and died ”Histhrough his dislocated grammar, ”took away his senses first, andabout continually without co, till the moment he sat down in an arm-chair and breathed his last”

[Footnote 1: ”It was in this parish,” says Sterne, ”that I had that wonderful escape in falling through ataken up unhurt; the story is incredible, but known to all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people flocked to seeme” More incredible still does it seem that Thoresby should relate the occurrence of an accident of precisely the sarandfather, the Archbishop ”Playing near a mill, he fell within a claw; there was but one board or bucket wanting in the whole wheel, but a gracious Providence so ordered it that the void place came down at that moment, else he had been crushed to death; but was reserved to be a grand benefactor afterwards” (Thoresby, ii 15) But ill probably strike the reader as more extraordinary even than this coincidence is that Sterne should have been either unaware of it, or should have oe]

There is, as has been observed, a certain mixture of the comic and the pathetic in the life-history of this obscure father of a famous son His life was clearly not a fortunate one, so far as external circunity about theer Sterne's lot in the world was not so much an unhappy as an uncomfortable one; and discomfort earns little sympathy, and absolutely no admiration, for its sufferers He soood-natured, peppery, debt-loaded, light-hearted, shi+ftless--whose fortunes we folloith es of Thackeray He was obviously a typical specimen of that class of s of the ”respectable” and successful; whom many people love and no one respects; wholes and difficulties, but whom few pity without a smile

It is evident, however, that he succeeded in winning the affection of one who had not too much affection of the deeper kind to spare for any one The figure of Roger Sterne alone stands out with any clearness by the side of the ceaselessly flitting mother and phantasmal children of Laurence Sterne's Memoir; and it is touched in with strokes so vivid and characteristic that critics have been teinal of the allery ”My father,” says Sterne, ”was a little, sree in all exercises, ue and disappointive him full measure He was, in his temper, somewhat rapid and hasty, but of a kindly, sweet disposition, void of all design, and so innocent in his own intentions, that he suspected no one; so that you ht have cheated him ten times a day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose” This is a captivating little picture; and it no doubt presents traits which ination which was afterwards to give birth to ”My Uncle Toby” The simplicity of nature and the ”kindly, sweet disposition” are con of real life and to the immortal Captain Shandy of fiction; but the criticiser Sterne's ”rapid and hasty temper” in my Uncle Toby is compelled to strain itself considerably And, on the whole, there seems no reason to believe that Sterne borrowed more from the character of his father than any writer must necessarily, and perhaps unconsciously, borrow from his observation of the moral and mental qualities of those hom he has come into most frequent contact

That Laurence Sterne passed the first eleven years of his life with such an exeuilelessness, and courage ever before him, is perhaps the best that can be said for the lot in which his early days were cast In almost all other respects there could hardly have been--for a quick-witted, precocious, iine, ever more needed discipline in his youth than Sterne; and the camp is a place of discipline for the soldier only To all others who especially, it is rather a school of license and irregularity It is fair to reing of the many defects as a man, and laxities as a writer, which h, on the other hand, there is no denying the reality and value of soes which cas The conception of er Sterne, or froiht of, and converse with, many captains and many corporals our and vitality of Toby Shandy and Corporal Trim So far as the externals of portraiture were concerned, there can be no doubt that his art benefited much from his early military life His soldiers have the true stae; and when his captain and corporal fight their Flehly conscious that we are listening, under the dramatic form, to one who must himself have heard many a chapter of the same splendid story from the lips of the very men who had helped to break the pride of the Grand Monarque under Marlborough and Eugene

CHAPTER II

SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY--HALIFAX AND CAMBRIDGE

(1723-1738)

It was not--as we have seen fro of the following year,” that Roger Sterne obtained leave of his colonel to ”fix” his son at school; and this would bring Laurence to the tolerably advanced age of ten before beginning his education in any systematic way He records, under date of 1721, that ”in this year I learned to write, &c;” but it is not probable that the ”&c”--that indolent sy use in all his fa--covers, in this case, any wide extent of educational advance The boy, most likely, could just read and write, and no more, at the time when he was fixed at school, ”near Halifax, with an able master:” a judicious selection, no doubt, both of place as well as teacher Mr Fitzgerald, to whose researches e as ht as is ever likely to be thrown upon this obscure and probably not very interesting period of Sterne's life, has pointed out that Richard Sterne, eldest son of the late Simon Sterne, and uncle, therefore, of Laurence, was one of the governors of Halifax Grammar School, and that he may have used his interest to obtain his nephew's adrandson of a Halifax man, and so, constructively, a child of the parish But, be this as it may, it is more than probable that from the time when he was sent to Halifax School the whole care and cost of the boy's education was borne by his Yorkshi+re relatives The Memoir says that, ”by God's care of ton, became a father to me, and sent me to the University, &c, &c;” and it is to be inferred frouardianshi+p of Sterne's uncle Richard (who died in 1732, the year before Laurence was ade) must have been taken up by his son Of his school course--though it lasted for over seven years--the autobiographer has little to say; nothing, indeed, except that he ”cannot o” that anecdote hich everybody, I suppose, who has ever come across the briefest notice of Sterne's life is fa of the schoolroom neashed, and the ladder remained there I, one unlucky day, e capital letters, LAU STERNE for which the usher severely whipped me My master was very much hurt at this, and said before me that never should that naenius, and he was sure I should coet the blows I had received” It is hardly to be supposed, of course, that this story is pure romance; but it is difficult, on the other hand, to believe that the incident has been related by Sterne exactly as it happened That the recorded prediction may have beenteachers have these prophetic moments sometimes)--is, of course, possible; but that Sterne'sbeen justly punished for an act of wanton e of nascent genius to deface neashed ceilings, must have been a delusion of the humourist's later years The extreme fatuity which it would compel us to attribute to the school intellectual capacity in any one else On the whole, one inclines to suspect that the reed to that order of half sardonic, half kindly jest which a certain sort of pedagogue sometimes throws off, for the consolation of a recently-caned boy; and that Sterne's vanity, either then or afterwards (for it remained juvenile all his life), translated it into a serious prophecy In itself, however, the urchin's freak was only too unhappily characteristic of theas clean (and because it was clean) clung to him most tenaciously all his days; and many a fair white surface--of huured by him in after-years with stains and splotches in which we can all too plainly decipher the literary signature of Laurence Sterne

At Halifax School the boy, as has been said, reht years; that is, until he was nearly nineteen, and for some months after his father's death at Port Antonio, which occurred in March, 1731 ”In the year '32,” says the Memoir, ”my cousin sent me to the University, where I stayed some time” In the course of his first year he read for and obtained a sizarshi+p, to which the college records show that he was duly ade was a natural one: Sterne's great-grandfather, the afterwards Archbishop, had been its Master, and had founded scholarshi+ps there, to one of which the young sizar was, a year after his admission, elected No inference can, of course, be drawn from this as to Sterne's proficiency, or even industry, in his academical studies: it is scarcely ular behaviour He was _bene natus_, in the sense of being related to the right man, the founder; and in those days he need be only very _modice doctus_ indeed in order to qualify himself for admission to the enjoyment of his kinsman's benefactions Still he must have been orderly and well-conducted in his ways; and this he would also seeh his University course without any apparent break or hitch, and having been adree after no more than the normal period of residence The only remark which, in the Memoir, he vouchsafes to bestow upon his academical career is, that ”'twas there that I com on both sides;” and it may, perhaps, be said that this _was_, froe life For Mr