Читать книгу The Journal to Eliza and Various letters by Laurence Sterne and Elizabeth Draper - Laurence Sterne - Страница 8

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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.^[13] Most important of all is the long ship-letter (forming a part of the Gibbs Manuscripts) 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.

One aspect of the self-drawn portrait has especial interest. Mrs. Draper was—I have said it—a blue-stocking. She was probably not acquainted with Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, whose assemblies of blue-stockings were then famous; but the Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear had reached India. After reading Mrs. Montagu’s book, Mrs. Draper declared that she “would rather be an Attendant on her Person, than the first Peeress of the Realm.” And so under this new inspiration Mrs. Draper resumed the scribbling to which she had been encouraged by Sterne. “A little piece or two” that she “discarded some years ago,” were completed; they were “not perhaps unworthy of the press,” but they were never printed. Though these efforts seem to be lost, Mrs. Draper took advantage of the occasion to weave into her letter to Mrs. James various little essays which may be described in her phrase as “of the moral kind,” because they have to do with practical conduct. Anxiety for the welfare of her daughter Betsey, who had been put to school at Kensington, leads to several pages on the boarding-school and the parlor-boarder, which are good enough to find a place in one of Mrs. Chapone’s letters. A little way on, she relates the “story of a married pair, which,” she says, “pleased me greatly, from the sensible singularity of it.” The tale tells of a wealthy and indolent man in North India who married a smart young woman to “rouse his mind from its usual state of Inactivity”—and he succeeded. The wife, too, discarded her light airs, and became a most agreeable woman. It all reads like a character sketch from Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. There is also an experiment in the sentimental style, wherein is told the story of “a smart pretty French woman,” who, shutting out all promiscuous loves and friendships, kept her heart for her dear husband alone and one “sweet woman” across the Alps. “The lovely Janatone,” writes Mrs. Draper, “died three Years ago—after surviving her Husband about a Week and her Friend a twelvemonth.” And besides these, there are other sketches from life, and vivid descriptions of society at Bombay. If Eliza did not write exactly, as Sterne flattered her, “with an angel’s pen,” she knew how to ramble agreably.

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.

Mrs. Draper’s career in India is brought to a close by the letters written on the eve of her elopement. Now in private hands at Bombay, they were published, with an introductory essay, in the Times of India for February 24, 1894, and in the overland weekly issue for March 3, 1894. In the first of them Mrs. Draper gives “a faithful servant and friend”—one Eliza Mihill—an order on George Horsley, Esq., in England for all her jewels, valued at 500l. or more. Accept them, the generous woman writes, “as the best token in my power, expressive of my good will to you.” Of the Mr. Horsley, one of Mrs. Draper’s closest friends, who had gone to England for his health, a pretty character-sketch was made two years before in the long letter to Mrs. James. To him she addressed a brief impassioned note—the second of the series—explaining what she has done for Betty Mihill and what she is about to do for her own freedom. The third letter, which is to her husband, in justification of her conduct, was composed under great agitation of mind, as she was awaiting the moment of the last perilous step. Her pearls and silk clothes she left behind, taking, of all her ornaments, only the picture of Betty—“my dearest girl,” far off in England.

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 Abbé 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

LORD APSLEY,

LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR

OF ENGLAND.^[14]

MY LORD,

The Editor of the following Letters is so far from having tasted your Lordship’s bounty, that he is, and perhaps ever must remain, a stranger to your person, consequently no adulation is to be apprehended from him——

He leaves it to the weak and oppressed, the widow and orphan, to proclaim your Lordship’s virtues in your public capacity; that which he would celebrate is of a private nature, namely, your filial affection, which is so conspicuous, that he flatters himself a Volume of Letters written by such a person as Mr. Sterne, in which your noble father^[15] is placed in a light so truly amiable, cannot fail of engaging your Lordship’s gracious acceptance and protection—in this hope, and upon this foundation, he presumes to dedicate these papers to your Lordship, and to have the honour of subscribing himself,

My Lord,

your Lordship’s

most obedient,

and most humble Servant,

THE EDITOR.