Sterne | Page 8

not, in his
opinion, sufficiently share. But this is quite consistent with the younger
man's having up to that time assisted the elder in his party polemics. He
certainly speaks in his "Letters" of his having "employed his brains for
an ungrateful person," and the remark is made in a way and in a
connexion which seems to imply that the services rendered to his uncle
were mainly literary. If so, his declaration that he "would not write
paragraphs in the newspapers" can only mean that he would not go on
writing them. Be this as it may, however, it is certain that the
Archdeacon for some time found his account in maintaining friendly
relations with his nephew, and that during that period he undoubtedly
did a good deal for his advancement. Sterne was ordained deacon by
the Bishop of Lincoln in March, 1736, only three months after taking
his B.A. degree, and took priest's orders in August, 1738, whereupon
his uncle immediately obtained for him the living of
Sutton-on-the-Forest, into which he was inducted a few days afterwards.
Other preferments followed, to be noted hereafter; and it must be
admitted that until the quarrel occurred about the "party paragraphs"
the Archdeacon did his duty by his nephew after the peculiar fashion of
that time. When that quarrel came, however, it seems to have snapped
more ties than one, for in the Memoir Sterne speaks of his youngest
sister Catherine as "still living, but most unhappily estranged from me
by my uncle's wickedness and her own folly." Of his elder sister Mary,
who was born at Lille a year before himself, he records that "she
married one Weemans in Dublin, who used her most unmercifully,
spent his substance, became a bankrupt, and left my poor sister to shift
for herself, which she was able to do but for a few months, for she went
to a friend's house in the country and died of a broken heart." Truly an
unlucky family.[1] Only three to survive the hardships among which
the years of their infancy were passed, and this to be the history of two
out of the three survivors!

[Footnote 1: The mother, Mrs. Sterne, makes her appearance once more
for a moment in or about the year 1758. Horace Walpole, and after him
Byron, accused Sterne of having "preferred whining over a dead ass to
relieving a living mother," and the former went so far as to declare "on
indubitable authority" that Mrs. Sterne, "who kept a school (in Ireland),
having run in debt on account of an extravagant daughter, would have
rotted in a gaol if the parents of her scholars had not raised a
subscription for her." Even "the indubitable authority," however, does
not positively assert--whatever may be meant to be insinuated--that
Sterne himself did nothing to assist his mother, and Mr. Fitzgerald
justly points out that to pay the whole debts of a bankrupt school might
well have been beyond a Yorkshire clergyman's means. Anyhow there
is evidence that Sterne at a later date than this was actively concerning
himself about his mother's interests. She afterwards came to York,
whither he went to meet her; and he then writes to a friend: "I trust my
poor mother's affair is by this time ended to our comfort and hers."]
CHAPTER III.
LIFE AT SUTTON.--MARRIAGE.--THE PARISH PRIEST.
(1738-1759.)
Great writers who spring late and suddenly from obscurity into fame
and yet die early, must always form more or less perplexing subjects of
literary biography. The processes of their intellectual and artistic
growth lie hidden in nameless years; their genius is not revealed to the
world until it has reached its full maturity, and many aspects of it,
which, perhaps, would have easily explained themselves if the gradual
development had gone on before men's eyes, remain often unexplained
to the last. By few, if any, of the more celebrated English men of letters
is this observation so forcibly illustrated as it is in the case of Sterne:
the obscure period of his life so greatly exceeded in duration the brief
season of his fame, and its obscurity was so exceptionally profound. He
was forty-seven years of age when, at a bound, he achieved celebrity;
he was not five-and-fifty when he died. And though it might be too
much to say that the artist sprang, like the reputation, full-grown into

being, it is nevertheless true that there are no marks of positive
immaturity to be detected even in the earliest public displays of his art.
His work grows, indeed, most marvellously in vividness and symmetry
as he proceeds, but there are no visible signs of growth in the
workman's skill. Even when the highest point of finish is attained we
cannot say that the hand is any more cunning than it was