Sterne and the Novel of his Times

 

(From the  

Concise Cambridge History of English Literature,  

by George Sampson, rev. R.C. Churchill, 1972)

THE AGE OF JOHNSON, III:

STERNE AND THE NOVEL OF HIS TIMES

During the twenty years that followed the death of Richardson new elements were added to the novel, and of these the chief is "sentiment" or "sensibility", the master in that kind being Sterne. Apart from him the writers of the time fall into three groups, (1) the novelists of sentiment and reflection, typified by Henry Mackenzie, (2) the novelists of home life, typified by Fanny Burney, and (3) the novelists of "Gothick" romance, typified by Horace Walpole and Clara Reeve.

Laurence Sterne (1713-68) was born at Clonmel, Tipperary [Ireland], the son of Ensign Roger Sterne and great-grandson of the Richard Sterne who was Archbishop of York 1664-83. He was educated at Cambridge, took holy orders and was made perpetual curate of Coxwold in Yorkshire in 1760. He was not the kind of priest in whom the Anglican Church can feel any pride. Little is known about his life, and even that little is not very reputable. Our concern, however, is with the writer. The publication of Tristram Shandy was begun in 1760 (Vols. I and II), and continued at intervals until the year before the author's death. In 1762 Sterne's health broke down, and he began the travels of which A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr Yorick (1768) is the delightful literary product. Save that Sterne died in London and not abroad, it will be noticed that his life roughly follows the Fielding-Smollett pattern. The author of Tristram Shandy, cool copyst of other men as he was, must be accepted as an original and originating power in literature. He showed that there were untried possibilities in the novel. He opened new fields of of humour. He created a style more subtle and a form more flexible than any found before him. The novel, as left by Fielding and Smollett, might have settled into a chronicle of contemporary life and manners. Richardson had struck memorably into tragedy, but his one great story stood alone. Sterne invented for English literature the fantasia-novel, which could be a channel for the outporing of the author's own personality, idiosyncrasy, humours and opinions. Instead of form, there was apparently formlessness; but only apparently, for Sterne was the master of his own improvisations. Sterne may therefore be called a liberator—even the first of the "expressionists". His success left the novel the most flexible of all literary forms. 

Sterne's odd humour appears in the very title of his book, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; for it has been truly remarked that the "life" is that of the gentleman's uncle and the "opinions" those of the gentleman's father. Tristram, titular hero and narrator, remains unborn during much of the story and plays no part in the rest. The undying trio, Walter Shandy, My Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim are humorous both in the narrow or Jonsonian sense, and in the larger or Shakespearean sense. My Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim are variations of genius upon Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. They are on a lower plane, but the relation between them is full of beauty, as well as of humour.

Of Sterne's indecency too much can be made. That he has not the broad humour of his other master, Rabelais—that his fun in this kind provokes the snigger rather than the hearty laugh, can be at once admitted. What is unfortunate about Sterne is that much of his own personal life seems to give unpleasant point to the least pleasant parts of his writing. We should like a priest to be more priestly. But actually the most offensive quality in Sterne is the new "sensibility" or "sentimentalism". When the "spot-lights" are manipulated with design so palpable as in the death of Le Fever or in the story of the dead ass, the author goes far to defeat his own purpose; for he at once calls in question his own artistic sincerity. The pathos of Dickens is naturally poured out; the pathos of Sterne is unnaturally put on. But his artistic sins can be forgiven for the sake of an insinuating, irresistible humour in which no English writer has excelled him. His Sermons of Mr Yorick (1760-9) and Letters from Yorick to Eliza (1775) have a biographical rather than a literary importance. 

Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831) carried the eighteenth century well into the nineteenth. After the publication of The Man of Feeling in 1771, the year of Scott's birth, he was recognized as the literary leader of Edinburgh society. The novel, intrinsically unremarkable, is notewworthy as a reversion to the Coverly type invented by Addison. The story is purely episodic. It is completely without humour, and owes nothing in form or in spirit to Fielding or Smollett. Mackenzie was, as Scott called him, "the northern Addison," though he comes near to Sterne in his working of the "sentimental" vein. in his next bok, The Man of the World (1773), Mackenzie achieved both a plot and a villain, though neither can be called important. His last and best book, Julia de Roubigné (1777), strikes a wholly different note and places him in the straight line of descent from Richardson. It owes much to Clarissa, and is one of the few tragedies to be found in the early stages of the English novel.

More genuinely important is Henry Brooke (1703-83), an Irishman, whose best known book The Fool of Quality (1766) has already been mentioned (pp. 397, 412). Brooke was a man of many activities, and deserves serious study. In The Fool of Quality the "free fantasia" form of discussion, diversion and sentiment indicates a debt to Sterne; the substance of the social discourses shows clear understanding of Rousseau; and the strain of exaltation comes from Law and the mystics. It is a remarkable compound. Brooke's other novel, Juliet Greenville (1774) does not call for notice.

From the novel of sentiment to the tale that sought to five both a sense of terror and a sense of the past is a startling transition. It began with The Castle of Otranto (1765) struck off at fever heat by Horace Walpole (1719-97). Though slight and more than a little absurd, it has the importance of being the first thing of its kind in English. It was written in conscious reaction against the domesticities of Richardson, and sought both to substitute for the interest of the present the appeal of the past, and to extend the wrold of experience by the addition of the mysterious and the supernatural. The performance is bungling; but the design is original and effective. Walpole gave us the first "Gothick" romance. He was followed by Clara Reeve (1729-1807) who wrote several stories of which only one is remembered, The Champion of Virtue, A Gothic Story (1777), the foolish title of which was happily changed to The Old English Baron in the second edition (1778). When it is remembered that another of her production is called Memoirs of Sir Roger de Clarendon, a Natural Son of Edward the Black Prince (1793), it will be seen that Clara Reeve through she had her feet firmly in the past, though, in fact, her fifteenth century conducts itself singularly like the eighteenth. Still, the attempt to recapture romance was made. If Horace Walpole and Clara Reee had done no more than claim that the boundaries of the novel might be extended to include the glamour of the past and the thrill of the supernatural, they would deserve remembrance; but their actual performances are not entirely contemptible. 

Wit hthe novels of Frances (Fanny) Burney (1752-1840) we pass into another world. Fanny was the daughter of Dr Burney, the amiable historian of music. During her youth, and until some years after the publication of her second novel, she lived in the most brilliant literary society of her day. In 1786 she was appointed second Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, a post which she held for four years, to her own great discomfort, but to the delight of those who read her fascinating Diary. After her release, she married (1793) General d'Arblay, an emigrant of the Revolution, and from 1802 to 1812 she lived in France, returning only to publish her last novel, The Wanderer (1814). In Evelina Fanny Burney wrote the first English novel of home life. The motherless Evelina goes out into the world, and her adventures are related in a series of letters with a vivacity and swift succession of incidents entierely original. Her way is beset with comic characters who are new creations in English fiction and foreshadow the far-off Dickens. Jonson aptly called Burney his "little character-monger". She was the first to give flesh and blood to sheer vulgarity. Her best qualities are seen in Evelina (1778). Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796) have stiffened into something unnatural, and The Wanderer (1814) scared even Macaulay, who was not easily frightened by anything in the shape of a book. Spontaneity is among the best gifts of the novelist; and few books are more spontaneous than Fanny's first novel. The same gift appears in her Diary with its brilliant and easy succession of characters and incidents. Fanny Burney was the first writer to see that the ordinary embarrassments of a girl's life would bear to be taken for the main theme of a novel. Macaulay justly saluted her as the first English novelist of her sex; he forgot that she was the first novelist of her kind, without respect of sex.

Daiches on Sterne

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