The Journal to Eliza and Various letters by Laurence Sterne and Elizabeth DraperSterne, Laurence
General
The Journal to Eliza and Various letters by Laurence Sterne and Elizabeth Draper
Sterne, Laurence
Draper, Elizabeth, 1744-1778; Novelists, English -- 18th century -- Correspondence; Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768 -- Correspondence
NEARLY one half of the manuscript volume just described is occupied by
_The Journal to Eliza_, or _The Bramine’s Journal_, as Sterne perhaps
intended to call it. On the first page is a note by Sterne himself,
wherein it is said, with a characteristic attempt at mystification, that
the names “Yorick and Draper—and sometimes the Bramin and
Bramine”[3]—are fictitious, and that the entire record is “a copy from a
French manuscript—in Mr. S——’s hands.” Then follow seventy-six pages of
writing, with about twenty-eight lines to the page, and finally a page
with only a few words upon it. The leaves are folio in size, and except
in the case of the first and the last, both sides are written upon.
This curious diary was composed during the first months after Sterne’s
separation from Mrs. Draper. On a certain day late in March 1767, Sterne
handed Mrs. Draper into a postchaise for Deal, and turned away to his
London lodgings “in anguish.” Before parting, each promised to keep an
intimate journal that they might have “mutual testimonies to deliver
hereafter to each other,” should they again meet. While Mrs. Draper was
at Deal making preparations for her voyage to India, Sterne sent her all
that he had written; and on the thirteenth of April he forwarded by a
Mr. Watts, then departing for Bombay, a second instalment of his record.
These two sections of Sterne’s journal—and likewise all of Mrs.
Draper’s, for we know that she kept one—have disappeared. The extant
part begins on the thirteenth of April, 1767 and comes down to the
fourth of August in the same year. The sudden break was occasioned by
the expected return of Mrs. Sterne from France, where she had been
living for some time. After her arrival at Coxwold, the journal could be
carried on only by stealth; and besides that, Sterne felt her
presence—and even the thought of it—a restraint upon the fancy. A
postscript was added on the first of November announcing that Mrs.
Sterne and Lydia had just gone to York for the winter, while he himself
was to remain at Coxwold to complete the _Sentimental Journey_. There
were hints that the journal would be resumed as soon as he reached
London in the following January. But Sterne probably did not carry out
his intention. At least nothing is known of a later effort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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