as well as amusing to think, sermons by the author of _Tristram Shandy_.
People wonder at the rise of Methodism; but ought they to wonder? If
a clergyman publishes his sermons because he has written an indecent
novel—a novel which is purely pagan—which is outside the ideas of
Christianity, whose author can scarcely have been inside of them—if a man
so made and so circumstanced is _as such_ to publish Christian sermons,
surely Christianity is a joke and a dream. Wesley was right in this at
least; if Christianity be true, the upper-class life of the last century
was based on rotten falsehood. A world which is really secular, which
professes to be Christian, is the worst of worlds.
The only point in which Sterne resembles a clergyman of our own time is,
that he lost his voice. That peculiar affection of the chest and throat,
which is hardly known among barristers, but which inflicts such suffering
upon parsons, attacked him also. Sterne too, as might be expected, went
abroad for it. He ‘spluttered French,’ he tells us, with success in
Paris; the accuracy of the grammar some phrases in his letters would lead
us to doubt; but few, very few Yorkshire parsons could then talk French
at all, and there was doubtless a fine tact and sensibility in what he
said. A literary phenomenon wishing to enjoy society, and able to amuse
society, has ever been welcome in the Parisian world. After Paris, Sterne
went to the south of France, and on to Italy, lounging easily in pretty
places, and living comfortably, as far as one can see, upon the profits
of _Tristram Shandy_. Literary success has seldom changed more suddenly
and completely the course of a man’s life. For years Sterne resided in
a country parsonage, and the sources of his highest excitement were a
country town full of provincial oddities, and a ‘Crazy Castle’ full of
the license and the whims of a country squire. On a sudden London, Paris,
and Italy were opened to him. From a few familiar things he was suddenly
transferred to many unfamiliar things. He was equal to them, though the
change came so suddenly in middle life—though the change from a secluded
English district to the great and interesting scenes was far greater,
far fuller of unexpected sights and unforeseen phenomena, than it can
be now—when travelling is common—when the newspaper is ‘abroad’—when
every one has in his head some feeble image of Europe and the world.
Sterne showed the delicate docility which belongs to a sensitive and
experiencing nature. He understood and enjoyed very much of this new and
strange life, if not the whole.
The proof of this remains written in the _Sentimental Journey_. There is
no better painting of first and easy impressions than that book. After
all which has been written on the _ancien régime_, an Englishman at least
will feel a fresh instruction on reading these simple observations. They
are instructive _because_ of their simplicity. The old world at heart
was not like that; there were depths and realities, latent forces and
concealed results, which were hidden from Sterne’s eye, which it would
have been quite out of his way to think of or observe. But the old world
_seemed_ like that. This was the spectacle of it as it was seen by an
observing stranger; and we take it up, not to know what was the truth,
but to know what we should have thought to be the truth if we had lived
in those times. People say _Eöthen_ is not like the real East; very
likely it is not, but it is like what an imaginative young Englishman
would _think_ the East. Just so, the _Sentimental Journey_ is not the
true France of the old monarchy, but it is exactly what an observant
quick-eyed Englishman might fancy that France to be. This has given it
popularity; this still makes it a valuable relic of the past. It is not
true to the outward nature of real life, but it is true to the reflected
image of that life in an imaginative and sensitive man.
Here is the actual description of the old chivalry of France; the ‘cheap
defence of nations,’ as Mr. Burke called it a little while afterwards:
‘When states and empires have their periods of declension, and
feel in their turns what distress and poverty is—I stop not
to tell the causes which gradually brought the house d’E—— in
Brittany into decay. The Marquis d’E—— had fought up against
his condition with great firmness; wishing to preserve, and
still show to the world, some little fragments of what his
ancestors had been—their indiscretions had put it out of his
power. There was enough left for the little exigencies of
_obscurity_. But he had two boys who look’d up to him for
_light_—he thought they deserved it. He had tried his sword—it
could not open the way—the _mounting_ was too expensive—and
simple economy was not a match for it—there was no resource
but commerce.
‘In any other province in France, save Brittany, this was
smiting the root for ever of the little tree his pride and
affection wish’d to see reblossom. But in Brittany, there
being a provision for this, he avail’d himself of it; and
taking an occasion when the states were assembled at Rennes,
the Marquis, attended with his two boys, entered the court;
and having pleaded the right of an ancient law of the duchy,
which, though seldom claim’d, he said, was no less in force,
he took his sword from his side—Here, said he, take it; and be
trusty guardians of it, till better times put me in condition
to reclaim it.
‘The president accepted the Marquis’s sword—he stayed a few
minutes to see it deposited in the archives of his house—and
departed.
‘The Marquis and his whole family embarked the next day for
Martinico, and in about nineteen or twenty years of successful
application to business, with some unlook’d-for bequests from
distant branches of his house, return’d home to reclaim his
nobility and to support it.
‘It was an incident of good fortune which will never happen
to any traveller but a sentimental one, that I should be at
Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition: I call it
solemn—it was so to me.
‘The Marquis enter’d the court with his whole family: he
supported his lady—his eldest son supported his sister, and
his youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his
mother—he put his handkerchief to his face twice—
‘—There was a dead silence. When the Marquis had approach’d
within six paces of the tribunal, he gave the Marchioness
to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before his
family—he reclaim’d his sword. His sword was given him; and the
moment he got it into his hand he drew it almost out of the
scabbard—’twas the shining face of a friend he had once given
up—he look’d attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, as
if to see whether it was the same—when observing a little rust
which it had contracted near the point he brought it near his
eye, and bending his head down over it—I think I saw a tear
fall upon the place: I could not be deceived by what followed.
‘“I shall find,” said he, “some _other way_ to get it off.”
‘When the Marquis had said this, he return’d his sword into its
scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it—and with his wife
and daughter, and his two sons following him, walk’d out.
‘O how I envied him his feelings!’
It shows a touching innocence of the imagination to believe—for probably
Sterne did believe—or to expect his readers to believe, in a _noblesse_
at once so honourable and so theatrical.
In two points the _Sentimental Journey_, viewed with the critic’s eye,
and as a mere work of art, is a great improvement upon _Tristram Shandy_.
The style is simpler and better; it is far more connected; it does not
jump about, or leave a topic _because_ it is interesting; it does not
worry the reader with fantastic transitions, with childish contrivances
and rhetorical intricacies. Highly elaborate the style certainly is,
and in a certain sense artificial; it is full of nice touches, which
must have come only upon reflection—a careful polish and judicious
enhancement, in which the critic sees many a trace of time and toil. But
a style delicately adjusted and exquisitely polished belongs to such
a subject. Sterne undertook to write, _not_ of the coarse business of
life—very strong common sort of words are best for that—_not_ even of
interesting outward realities, which may be best described in a nice
and simple style; but of the passing moods of human nature, of the
impressions which a sensitive nature receives from the world without;
and it is only the nicest art and the most dexterous care which can
fit an obtuse language to such fine employment. How language was first
invented and made we may not know; but beyond doubt it was shaped and
fashioned into its present state by common ordinary men and women using
it for common and ordinary purposes. They wanted a carving-knife, not a
razor or lancet. And those great artists who have to use language for
more exquisite purposes, who employ it to describe changing sentiments
and momentary fancies and the fluctuating and indefinite inner world,
must use curious nicety, and hidden but effectual artifice, else they
cannot duly punctuate their thoughts, and slice the fine edges of their
reflections. A hair’s-breadth is as important to them as a yard’s-breadth
to a common workman. Sterne’s style has been criticised as artificial;
but it is justly and rightly artificial, because language used in its
natural and common mode was not framed to delineate, cannot delineate,
the delicate subjects with which he occupies himself.
That contact with the world, and with the French world especially,
should teach Sterne to abandon the arbitrary and fantastic structure of
_Tristram Shandy_ is most natural. French prose may be unreasonable in
its meaning, but is ever rational in its structure; it is logic itself.
It will not endure that the reader’s mind should be jarred by rough
transitions, or distracted by irrelevant oddities. _Antics_ in style
are prohibited by its severe code, just as eccentricities in manner are
kept down by the critical tone of a fastidious society. In a barbarous
country oddity may be attractive; in the great world it never is, except
for a moment; it is on trial to see whether it is really oddity, to see
if it does not contain elements which may be useful to, which may be
naturalised in society at large. But inherent eccentricity, oddity _pur
et simple_, is _immiscible_ in the great ocean of universal thought; it
is apart from it, even when it floats in and is contained in it; very,
very soon it is cast out from the busy waters, and left alone upon the
beach. Sterne had the sense to be taught by the sharp touch of the world;
he threw aside the ‘player’s garb’ which he had been tempted to assume.
He discarded too, as was equally natural, the ugly indecency of _Tristram
Shandy_. We will not undertake to defend the morality of certain scenes
in the _Sentimental Journey_; there are several which might easily do
much harm; but there is nothing displeasing to the natural man in them.
They are nice enough; to those whose æsthetic nature has not been laid
waste by their moral nature, they are attractive. They have a dangerous
prettiness, which may easily incite to practical evil; but in itself,
and separated from its censurable consequences, such prettiness is an
artistic perfection. It was natural that the aristocratic world should
easily teach Sterne that separation between the laws of beauty and the
laws of morality which has been familiar to it during many ages—which
makes so much of its essence.
Mrs. Sterne did not prosper all this time. She went abroad and stayed
at Montpellier with her husband; but it is not wonderful that a mere
‘wife,’ taken out of Yorkshire, should be unfit for the great world. The
domestic appendices of men who rise much hardly ever suit the high places
at which they arrive. Mrs. Sterne was no exception. She seems to have
been sensible, but it was _domestic_ sense. It was of the small world,
small: it was fit to regulate the Yorkshire parsonage, it was suitable
to a small _ménage_ even at Montpellier. But there was a deficiency in
general mind. She did not, we apprehend, comprehend or appreciate the new
thoughts and feelings which a new and great experience had awakened in
her husband’s mind. His mind moved, but hers could not; she was anchored,
but he was at sea.
To fastidious writers who will only use very dignified words, there is
much difficulty in describing Sterne’s life in his celebrity. But to
humbler persons, who can only describe the things of society in the
words of society, the case is simple. Sterne was ‘an old flirt.’ These
are short and expressive words, and they tell the whole truth. There
is no good reason to suspect his morals, but he dawdled about pretty
women. He talked at fifty with the admiring tone of twenty; pretended
to ‘freshness’ of feeling; though he had become mature, did not put
away immature things. That he had any real influence over women is
very unlikely; he was a celebrity, and they liked to exhibit him; he
was amusing, and they liked him to amuse them. But they doubtless felt
that he too was himself a joke. Women much respect real virtue; they
much admire strong and successful immorality; but they neither admire
nor respect the timid age which affects the forms of vice without its
substance; which preserves the exterior of youth, though the reality
is departed; which is insidious but not dangerous, sentimental but not
passionate. Of this sort was Sterne, and he had his reward. Women of the
world are willing to accept any admiration, but this sort they accept
with suppressed and latent sarcasm. They ridiculed his imbecility while
they accepted his attentions and enjoyed his society.
Many men have lived this life with but minor penalties, and justly; for
though perhaps a feeble and contemptible, it is not a bad or immoral
life. But Sterne has suffered a very severe though a delayed and
posthumous penalty. He was foolish enough to write letters to some of his
friends, and after his death, to get money, his family published them.
This is the sort of thing:
‘Eliza will receive my books with this. The sermons came all
hot from the heart: I wish that I could give them any title to
be offered to yours.—The others came from the head—I am more
indifferent about their reception.
‘I know not how it comes about, but I am half in love with
you—I ought to be wholly so; for I never valued (or saw more
good qualities to value) or thought more of one of your sex
than of you; so adieu.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘if not affectionately,
‘L. STERNE.’
‘I cannot rest, Eliza, though I shall call on you at half-past
twelve, till I know how you do.—May thy dear face smile,
as thou risest, like the sun of this morning. I was much
grieved to hear of your alarming indisposition yesterday; and
disappointed too, at not being let in. Remember, my dear, that
a friend has the same right as a physician. The etiquettes
of this town (you’ll say) say otherwise.—No matter! Delicacy
and propriety do not always consist in observing their frigid
doctrines.
‘I am going out to breakfast, but shall be at my lodgings by
eleven, when I hope to read a single line under thy own hand,
that thou art better, and wilt be glad to see thy Bramin.’
This Eliza was a Mrs. Draper, the wife of a judge in India, ‘much
respected in that part of the world.’ We know little of Eliza, except
that there is a stone in Bristol cathedral—
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
MRS. ELIZABETH DRAPER,
IN WHOM
GENIUS AND BENEVOLENCE
WERE UNITED.
SHE DIED AUGUST 3, 1778, AGED 35.
Let us hope she possessed, in addition to genius and benevolence, the
good sense to laugh at Sterne’s letters.
In truth, much of the gloss and delicacy of Sterne’s pagan instinct had
faded away by this time. He still retained his fine sensibility, his
exquisite power of entering into and of delineating plain human nature.
But the world had produced its inevitable effect on that soft and
voluptuous disposition. It is not, as we have said, that he was guilty of
grave offences or misdeeds; he made what he would have called a ‘splutter
of vice,’ but he would seem to have committed very little. Yet, as with
most minds which have exempted themselves from rigid principle, there was
a diffused texture of general laxity. The fibre had become imperfect; the
moral constitution was impaired; the high colour of rottenness had come
at last out, and replaced the delicate bloom and softness of the early
fruit. There is no need to write commonplace sermons on an ancient text.
The beauty and charm of natural paganism will not endure the stress and
destruction of this rough and complicated world. An instinctive purity
will preserve men for a brief time, but hardly through a long and varied
life of threescore and ten years.
Sterne, however, did not live so long. In 1768 he came to London for
the last time, and enjoyed himself much. He dined with literary friends
and supped with fast friends. He liked both. But the end was at hand.
His chest had long been delicate; he got a bad cold which became a
pleurisy, and died in a London lodging—a footman sent by ‘some gentlemen
who were dining,’ and a hired nurse, being the only persons present.
His family were away; and he had devoted himself to intellectual and
luxurious enjoyments, which are at least as sure to make a lonely
death-bed as a refined and cultivated life. ‘Self-scanned, self-centred,
self-secure,’ a man may perhaps live, but even so by _himself_ he will
be sure to die. For self-absorbed men the world at large cares little;
as soon as they cease to amuse, or to be useful, it flings them aside,
and they die alone. Even Sterne’s grave, they say, was so obscure and
neglected that the corpse-stealers ventured to open it, and his body was
dissected without being recognised. The life of literary men is often a
kind of sermon in itself; for the pursuit of fame, when it is contrasted
with the grave realities of life, seems more absurd and trifling than
most pursuits, and to leave less behind it. Mere _amusers_ are never
respected. It would be harsh to call Sterne a mere amuser, he is much
more; but so the contemporary world regarded him. They laughed at his
jests, disregarded his death-bed, and neglected his grave.
What, it may be asked, is there in such a career, or such a character
as this, to remind us of the great writer whom we have just lost? In
externals there seems little resemblance, or rather there seems to be
great contrast. On the one side a respected manhood, a long industry, an
honoured memory; on the other hand a life lax, if not dissolute, little
labour, and a dishonoured grave. Mr. Thackeray, too, has written a most
severe criticism on Sterne’s character. Can we, then, venture to compare
the two? We do so venture; and we allege, and that in spite of many
superficial differences, that there was one fundamental and ineradicable
resemblance between the two.
Thackeray, like Sterne, looked at everything—at nature, at life, at
art—from a _sensitive_ aspect. His mind was, to some considerable extent,
like a woman’s mind. It could comprehend abstractions when they were
unrolled and explained before it, but it never naturally created them;
never of itself, and without external obligation, devoted itself to them.
The visible scene of life—the streets, the servants, the clubs, the
gossip, the West End—fastened on his brain. These were to him reality.
They burnt in upon his brain; they pained his nerves; their influence
reached him through many avenues, which ordinary men do not feel much,
or to which they are altogether impervious. He had distinct and rather
painful sensations where most men have but confused and blurred ones.
Most men have felt the _instructive_ headache, during which they are more
acutely conscious than usual of all which goes on around them,—during
which everything seems to pain them, and in which they understand it,
because it pains them, and they cannot get their imagination away from
it. Thackeray had a nerve-ache of this sort always. He acutely felt
every possible passing fact—every trivial interlude in society. Hazlitt
used to say of himself, and used to say truly, that he could not enjoy
the society in a drawing-room for thinking of the opinion which the
footman formed of his odd appearance as he went upstairs. Thackeray
had too healthy and stable a nature to be thrown so wholly off his
balance; but the footman’s view of life was never out of his head. The
obvious facts which suggest it to the footman poured it in upon him;
he could not exempt himself from them. As most men say that the earth
_may_ go round the sun, but in fact, when we look at the sun, we cannot
help believing it goes round the earth,—just so this most impressible,
susceptible genius could not help half accepting, half believing the
common ordinary sensitive view of life, although he perfectly knew in his
inner mind and deeper nature that this apparent and superficial view of
life was misleading, inadequate, and deceptive. He could not help seeing
everything, and what he saw made so near and keen an impression upon him,
that he could not again exclude it from his understanding; it stayed
there, and disturbed his thoughts.
If, he often says, ‘people could write about that of which they are
really thinking, how interesting books would be!’ More than most writers
of fiction, he felt the difficulty of abstracting his thoughts and
imagination from near facts which _would_ make themselves felt. The
sick wife in the next room, the unpaid baker’s bill, the lodging-house
keeper who doubts your solvency; these, and such as these,—the usual
accompaniments of an early literary life,—are constantly alluded to
in his writings. Perhaps he could never take a grand enough view of
literature, or accept the truth of ‘high art,’ because of his natural
tendency to this stern and humble realism. He knew that he was writing
a tale which would appear in a green magazine (with others) on the 1st
of March, and would be paid for perhaps on the 11th, by which time,
probably, ‘Mr. Smith’ would have to ‘make up a sum,’ and would again
present his ‘little account.’ There are many minds besides his who feel
an interest in these realities, though they yawn over ‘high art’ and
elaborate judgments.
A painfulness certainly clings like an atmosphere round Mr. Thackeray’s
writings, in consequence of his inseparable and ever-present realism. We
hardly know where it is, yet we are all conscious of it less or more.
A free and bold writer, like Sir Walter Scott, throws himself far away
into fictitious worlds, and soars there without effort, without pain,
and with unceasing enjoyment. You see as it were between the lines of
Mr. Thackeray’s writings, that his thoughts were never long away from
the close proximate scene. His writings might be better if it had been
otherwise; but they would have been less peculiar, less individual; they
would have wanted their character, their flavour, if he had been able
while writing them to forget for many moments the ever-attending, the
ever-painful sense of himself.
Hence have arisen most of the censures upon him, both as he seemed to be
in society and as he was in his writings. He was certainly uneasy in the
common and general world, and it was natural that he should be so. The
world poured in upon him, and _inflicted_ upon his delicate sensibility
a number of petty pains and impressions which others do not feel at all,
or which they feel but very indistinctly. As he sat he seemed to read
off the passing thoughts—the base, common, ordinary impressions—of every
one else. Could such a man be at ease? Could even a quick intellect
be asked to set in order with such velocity so many data? Could any
temper, however excellent, be asked to bear the contemporaneous influx
of innumerable minute annoyances? Men of ordinary nerves who feel a
little of the pains of society, who perceive what really passes, who are
not absorbed in the petty pleasures of sociability, could well observe
how keen was Thackeray’s _sensation_ of common events, could easily
understand how difficult it must have been for him to keep mind and
temper undisturbed by a miscellaneous tide at once so incessant and so
forcible.