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Vignette: The Monk
Jacque and Fussell
Bastin and G. Nichols
1841
Engraving on wood
7.2 cm high by 6.3 cm wide
Seventh illustration for A Sentimental Journey (1841 edition), page 5.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The monk, as I judged by the break in his tonsure, a few scattered white hairs upon his temples, being all that remained of it, might be about seventy; — but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more temper’d by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty: — Truth might lie between — He was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seem’d to have been planting-wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account.
It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted, — mild, pale — penetrating, free from all commonplace ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth; — it look’d forwards; but look’d as if it look’d at something beyond this world. — How one of his order came by it, heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk’s shoulders best knows: but it would have suited a Bramin, and had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it. ["The Monk. Calais," pp. 5-6]
The noble head of the Franciscan friar, Father Lorenzo, brings to life the character, who moments ago was begging alms. This is the 1841 volume's introduction to the "poor monk of the order of St. Francis" (4) whose cavalier treatment Yorick almost instantly regrets. One studies the striking portrait of the grey-haired Franciscan as one assimilates Sterne's description of him. Sterne has provided an essential clue for interpreting the Monk visually: the Baroque religious works of Guido Reni (1575-1642), an allusion which anticipates the latter part of A Sentimental Journey, when Yorick intends to visit Rome. Unfortunately, Sterne died before he could get Yorick to Italy in the third volume, so that A Sentimental Journey has a highly misleading title as it stands, half-finished, with Yorick still in southern France at the close of the second volume.
The Monk — more properly, Franciscan Friar Lorenzo — remains one of Sterne's more memorable characters, partly because Yorick initially denies the Franciscan's petition for alms in a manner both pragmatic and patriotic:
— The monk made me a bow. — "But of all others," resumed I, "the unfortunate of our own country, surely, have the first rights; and I have left thousands in distress upon our own shore." — The monk gave a cordial wave with his head, as much as to say, "No doubt there is misery enough in every corner of the world, as well as within our convent." — "But we distinguish," said I, laying my hand upon the sleeve of his tunic, in return for his appeal, — "we distinguish, my good father, betwixt those who wish only to eat the bread of their own labour, and those who eat the bread of other people’s, and have no other plan in life but to get through it in sloth and ignorance for the love of God. ["The Monk. Calais," pp. 7-8]
From the earliest illustrated editions of the last decade of the eighteenth century, the visual interpreters of the novel (probably responding to the reactions of the novel's earliest readers) selected the scenes between the Monk and Yorick for full-page illustration. The single most popular scene seems to have been that in which, fearing that his treatment of the old Franciscan has made him appear callous and materialistic to the young lady who has observed the interaction between the English traveller and the Italian Monk, Yorick gives the Monk his valuable tortoise-shell snuff-box.
Left: The portrait of Sterne's Monk in the 1857 edition, illustrated by Tony Johannot, The Monk. Centre: Jacque and Fussell's wood-engraving of the snuff-box echange, Yorick and the Monk (1841). Right: Johannot's meeting of the Monk, the Lady, and Yorick, misentitled Sterne and The Monk. — The Snuff-Box (1857). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Illustrated with one hundred engravings on wood, by Bastin and G. Nichols, from original designs by Jacque and Fussell. London: Joseph Thomas, 1841.
Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. With 100 illustrations by Tony Johannot. London: Willoughby, 1857.
Last modified 12 September 2018