Untitled, Portrait of Eliza, surmounted by Cupid — fifth illustration for "A Sentimental Journey" (1768)

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Untitled, Portrait of the Lady, surmounted by Cupid

Tony Johannot

J. Brevier

1857

Engraving on wood

5.5 cm high by 4.4 cm wide, vignetted

Second illustration for A Sentimental Journey (1857), page 2.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Suggested

— my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches, — portmanteau and all, must have gone to the King of France;—even the little picture which I have so long worn, and so often have told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me into my grave, would have been torn from — Ungenerous! to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your subjects had beckoned to their coast! — By heaven! Sire, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me, ’tis the monarch of a people so civilized and courteous, and so renowned for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with! [page 2]

Commentary

The illustration shows the reader an idealized miniature of Yorick's beloved, Eliza, in an ornate frame surmounted by Cupid. That is, by Droits d'aubaine or Right of Windfall, as Sterne himself notes, “All the effects of strangers (Swiss and Scotch excepted) dying in France, are seized by virtue of this law, though the heir be upon the spot — the profit of these contingencies being farm'd, there is no redress” (p. 2n). The little miniature in the ornate silver-filigree frame hardly seems like something that a man might wear about his neck, as Yorick stipulates, so that Janhannot's picture seems a bit far-fetched.

Katherine Turner in the Broadview edition notes that in "Eliza," idealised in the miniature that Yorick wears around his neck, Sterne is referring to Elizabeth Draper (1744-78), the wife of a British East India official; she was the object of Sterne's adoration from afar, conducting a romantic correspondence: "In the Journal that gathers together his letters to Eliza, he refers to the portrait 'which by the by, I have immortalzed in my Sentimental Journey' (Florida edition, volume VI, 201)" (p. 57n7).

Bibliography

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

Turner, Katherine. "Notes." Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2010.

Last modified 17 September 2018