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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SOU-STE |
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STERNE, LAURENCE (1713-1768) , English humorist, was the son of Roger Sterne, an English officer, and great-grandson of an archbishop of York
jotted down by himself for the use of his daughter. It gives nothing but the barest facts, excepting three anecdotes about his infancy, his school days and his marriage. He was born at Clonmel, Ireland, on the 24th of November 1713, a few days after the arrival of his father's regiment from Dunkirk. The regiment was then disbanded, but very soon after re-established, and for ten years the boy and his mother moved from place to place after the regiment, from England to Ireland, and from one part of Ireland to another. The familiarity thus acquired with military life and character stood Sterne in good stead when he drew the portraits of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. After ten years of wandering, he was fixed for eight or nine years at a school at Halifax in Yorkshire. His father died when he was in his eighteenth year, and he was indebted for his university education to one of the members of his father's family. His great-grandfather the archbishop had been master of Jesus College, Cambridge , and to Jesus College he was sent. He was admitted to a sizarship in July 1733, took his B.A. degree in 1736 and proceeded M.A. in 1740. One of his uncles was precentor and canon of York
Sutton was Sterne's residence for twenty uneventful years. He kept up an intimacy which had begun at Cambridge with John Hall
Hall
earnest of Sterne's powers as a humorist. It was not published until after his death, when it appeared in 1769 under the title of A Political Romance, and afterwards the History of a Warm Watch-Coat. The first two volumes of Tristram Shandy were issued at York in 1759 and advertised in London on the 1st of January 1760, and at once made a sensation. York was scandalized at its clergyman's indecency, and indignant at his caricature as " Slop " of a local physician (Dr John Burton); London was charmed with his audacity, wit and graphic unconventional power. He went to London early in the year to enjoy his triumph, and found himself at once a personage in societywas called upon and invited out by lion-hunters, was taken to Windsor by Lord Rockingham, and had the honour of supping with the duke of York.For the last eight years of his life after this sudden leap out of obscurity we have a faithful record of Sterne's feelings and movements in letters to various persons, published in 1775 by his sole child and daughter, Lydia Sterne de Medalle, and in the Letters from Yorick to Eliza (1766-1767), also published in 1775. At the end of the sermon in Tristram he had intimated that, if this sample of Yorick's pulpit eloquence was liked, " there are now in the possession of the Shandy family as many as will make a handsome volume, at the world's service, and much good may they do it." Accordingly, when a second edition of the first instalment of Tristram was called for in three months, two volumes of Sermons by Yorick were announced. Although they had little or none of the eccentricity of the history, they proved almost as popular. Sterne's clerical character was far from being universally injured by his indecorous freaks as a humorist: Lord Fauconberg presented the author of Tristram Shandy with the perpetual curacy of Coxwold. To this new residence he went in high spirits with his success, " fully deter-mined to write as hard as could be," seeing no reason why he should not give the public two volumes of Shandyism every year and why this should not go on for forty years. By the beginning of August 176o he had another volume written, and was so " delighted with Uncle Toby's imaginary character that he was become an enthusiast." The author's delight in this wonderful creation was not misleading; it has been fully shared by every generation of readers since. For two years in succession Sterne kept his bargain with himself to provide two volumes a year. Vols. iii. and iv. appeared in 1761; vols. v. and vi. in January 1762. But his sanguine hopes of continuing at this rate were frustrated by ill-health. He was ordered to the south of France; it was two years and a half before he returned; and he came back with very little accession of strength. His reception by literary circles in France was very flattering. He was overjoyed with it. " 'Tis comme a Londres," he wrote to Garrick from Paris; " I have just now a fortnight's dinners and suppers upon my hands." Through all his pleasant experiences of French society, and through the fits of dangerous illness by which they were diversified, he continued to build up his history of the Shandy family, but the work did not progress as rapidly as it had done. Not till January 1765 was he ready with the fourth instalment of two volumes; and one of them, vol. vii., leaving the Shandy family for a time, gave a lively sketch of the writer's own travels to the south of France in search of health. This was a digression of a new kind, if any-thing can be called a digression in a work the plan of which is to fly off at a tangent whenever and wherever the writer's whim tempts him. In the first volume, anticipating an obvious complaint, he had protested against digressions that left the main work to stand still, and had boastednot without justice in a Shandean sensethat he had reconciled digressive motion with progressive. But in vol. vii. the work is allowed to stand still while the writer is being transported from Shandy Hall to Languedoc
illustration
sharp
Sterne's character defies analysis in brief space. It is too subtle and individual to be conveyed in general terms. For comments upon him from points of view more or less diverse the reader may be referred to Thackeray's Humourists, Professor Masson's British Novelists (18J9), and H. D. Traill's sketch in the " English Men of Letters " Series. The fullest biography is Mr Percy Fitzgerald's (1864). But the reader who cares to have an opinion about Sterne should hesitate till he has read and re-read in various moods considerable portions of Sterne's own writing. This writing is so singularly frank and unconventional that its drift is not at once apparent to the literary student. The indefensible indecency and overstrained sentimentality are on the surface; but after a time every repellent defect is forgotten in the enjoyment of the exquisite literary art. Li the delineation of character by graphically significant speech and action, introduced at unexpected turns, left with happy audacity to point their own meaning, and pointing it with a force that the dullest cannot but understand, he takes rank with the very greatest masters. In Toby Shandy he has drawn
A revised edition of Mr Percy Fitzgerald's Life of Sterne, containing much new information, appeared in 1896. There is also a valuable study of Sterne by M. Paul Stapfcr (187o, 2nd ed., 1882); and many fresh particulars as to Sterne's relations with his wife and daughter, and also with the lady known as " Eliza " (Mrs Elizabeth Draper
Draper
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