Sterne | Page 2

to have "anticipated the labours"
of the biographer--"my birthday was ominous to my poor father, who
was the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and
sent adrift into the wide world with a wife and two children."
Roger Sterne, however, now late ensign of the 34th, or Chudleigh's
regiment of foot, was after all in less evil case than were many,
probably, of his comrades. He had kinsmen to whom he could look for,
at any rate, temporary assistance, and his mother was a wealthy widow.
The Sternes, originally of a Suffolk stock, had passed from that county
to Nottinghamshire, and thence into Yorkshire, and were at this time a
family of position and substance in the last-named county. Roger's
grandfather had been Archbishop of York, and a man of more note, if
only through the accident of the times upon which he fell, than most of
the incumbents of that see. He had played an exceptionally energetic

part even for a Cavalier prelate in the great political struggle of the
seventeenth century, and had suffered with fortitude and dignity in the
royal cause. He had, moreover, a further claim to distinction in having
been treated with common gratitude at the Restoration by the son of the
monarch whom he had served. As Master of Jesus College, Cambridge,
he had "been active in sending the University plate to his Majesty," and
for this offence he was seized by Cromwell and carried in military
custody to London, whence, after undergoing imprisonment in various
goals, and experiencing other forms of hardship, he was at length
permitted to retire to an obscure retreat in the country, there to
commune with himself until that tyranny should be overpast. On the
return of the exiled Stuarts Dr. Sterne was made Bishop of Carlisle, and
a few years later was translated to the see of York. He lived to the age
of eighty-six, and so far justified Burnet's accusation against him of
"minding chiefly enriching himself," that he seems to have divided no
fewer than four landed estates among his children. One of these, Simon
Sterne, a younger son of the Archbishop, himself married an heiress,
the daughter of Sir Roger Jaques of Elvington; and Roger, the father of
Laurence Sterne, was the seventh and youngest of the issue of this
marriage. At the time when the double misfortune above recorded
befell him at the hands of Lucina and the War Office, his father had
been some years dead; but Simon Sterne's widow was still mistress of
the property which she had brought with her at her marriage, and to
Elvington, accordingly, "as soon," writes Sterne, "as I was able to be
carried," the compulsorily retired ensign betook himself with his wife
and his two children. He was not, however, compelled to remain long
dependent on his mother. The ways of the military authorities were as
inscrutable to the army of that day as they are in our day to our own.
Before a year had passed the regiment was ordered to be re-established,
and "our household decamped with bag and baggage for Dublin." This
was in the autumn of 1714, and from that time onward, for some eleven
years, the movements and fortunes of the Sterne family, as detailed in
the narrative of its most famous member, form a history in which the
ludicrous struggles strangely with the pathetic.
A husband, condemned to be the Ulysses-like plaything of adverse
gods at the War Office; an indefatigably prolific wife; a succession of

weak and ailing children; misfortune in the seasons of journeying;
misfortune in the moods of the weather by sea and land--under all this
combination of hostile chances and conditions was the struggle to be
carried on. The little household was perpetually "on the move"--a little
household which was always becoming and never remaining
bigger--continually increased by births, only to be again reduced by
deaths--until the contest between the deadly hardships of travel and the
fatal fecundity of Mrs. Sterne was brought by events to a natural close.
Almost might the unfortunate lady have exclaimed, Quae regio in
terris nostri non plena laboris? She passes from Ireland to England,
and from England to Ireland, from inland garrison to sea-port town and
back again, incessantly bearing and incessantly burying children--until
even her son in his narrative begins to speak of losing one infant at this
place, and "leaving another behind" on that journey, almost as if they
were so many overlooked or misdirected articles of luggage. The tragic
side of the history, however, overshadows the grotesque. When we
think how hard a business was travel even under the most favourable
conditions in those days, and how serious even in our own times, when
travel is easy, are the discomforts of the women and children