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Read Ebook: The Journal to Eliza and Various letters by Laurence Sterne and Elizabeth Draper by Sterne Laurence Cross Wilbur L Wilbur Lucius Author Of Introduction Etc Draper Elizabeth Contributor
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Ebook has 381 lines and 74233 words, and 8 pages
PAGE INTRODUCTION ii
LETTERS FROM YORICK TO ELIZA 15
THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 51
ORIGINAL LETTERS OF LAURENCE STERNE 155
LETTERS OF ELIZABETH DRAPER 165
AN EULOGY BY THE ABB? RAYNAL 281
FOOTNOTES 288
PAGE
Laurence Sterne. Etching by Frontispiece H?douin
Tomb of Eliza Draper in 50 Bristol Cathedral
Commodore James, by Sir Joshua 157 Reynolds
Belvidere House, by Lee 173 Woodward Zeigler, from an original sketch by J. B. Frazer
Abb? Raynal 279
INTRODUCTION
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."
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.
INTRODUCTION
LETTERS FROM YORICK TO ELIZA.
INTRODUCTION
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, common-place 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."
INTRODUCTION
THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA.
INTRODUCTION
THACKERAY AND THE JOURNAL.
Dear Sir
I thank you very much for your obliging offer, and the kind terms in w^h. 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 Serv^t.
W M THACKERAY
Kensington 12 September
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 w^h. 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.
With many thanks for your loan believe me Dear Sir
Very faithfully yours
W. M. THACKERAY
INTRODUCTION
THE AUTOGRAPH LETTERS.
INTRODUCTION
THE LETTERS OF ELIZABETH DRAPER.
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. Most important of all is the long ship-letter 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 close upon 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.
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. But their 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.
For Mrs. Draper after her escape to England, material is scant. There is really nothing very trustworthy except an undated letter 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 Abb? Raynal, the second ecclesiastic to be startled out of propriety by that oval face and those brilliant eyes.
W. L. C.
LETTERS
FROM
YORICK TO ELIZA.
TO THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE
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