Sterne and the Monk — the Snuff-box — Second full-page illustration for "A Sentimental Journey" (1857)

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Sterne and the Monk — the Snuff-box

Tony Johannot

J. Brevier

1857

Engraving on wood

14.5 cm high by x 10 cm wide, vignetted

Initial illustration for A Sentimental Journey (1857), facing page 31.

[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.].

Passage Illustrated: The Snuff-box Exchange

— he begg’d we might exchange boxes. — In saying this, he presented his to me with one hand, as he took mine from me in the other, and having kissed it, — with a stream of good nature in his eyes, he put it into his bosom, — and took his leave.

I guard this box, as I would the instrumental parts of my religion, to help my mind on to something better: in truth, I seldom go abroad without it; and oft and many a time have I called up by it the courteous spirit of its owner to regulate my own, in the justlings of the world: they had found full employment for his, as I learnt from his story, till about the forty-fifth year of his age, when upon some military services ill requited, and meeting at the same time with a disappointment in the tenderest of passions, he abandoned the sword and the sex together, and took sanctuary not so much in his convent as in himself. ["The Snuff-Box. Calais," p. 28]

Commentary

Pre-Victorian illustrators such as Archer (1794) and Thomas Stothard (1792) clearly felt that the sentimental interaction between the Franciscan friar, Father Lorenzo, and Mr. Yorick, should be a subject for illustration, these standard scenes bearing such titles as The Snuff-box and Yorick and the Monk Exchanging Snuff Boxes. The scene involving the exchange of the English traveller's expensive tortoise-shell snuff-box for the Franciscan's humble horn container marks the turning point in Yorick's determining to become a better traveller — less callous, more sensitive, kinder, and more sentimental.

Other Scenes involving the Franciscan and Yorick (1841 and 1857)

Left: The portrait of Sterne's Monk in the 1841 edition, illustrated by Jacque and Fussell, Father Lorenzo. Centre: The same illustrators' wood-engraving of the Franciscan hearing Yorick's complaint about the necessity of first relieving poverty at home, Yorick and the Monk (1841). Right: Johannot's character study, Portrait of the Franciscan (1857). [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Bibliography

Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. With 100 illustrations by Tony Johannot. London: Willoughby, 1857.

Last modified 21 September 2018