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The Mourner of the Dead Ass, Nampont.
Artist: Thomas Stothard
Engraver: Andrew Birrell
1792
Copper-engraving
11.1 cm high by 8.7 cm wide
Source: Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, facing page 48.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Stothard provided only six plates in the Good and Harding edition of 1792, reprinted by West, Hughes, and E. Harding in 1801.
The man seemed to lament it much; and it instantly brought into my mind Sancho’s lamentation for his; but he did it with more true touches of nature.
The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with the ass’s pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time — then laid them down — look’d at them, and shook his head. He then took his crust of bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it; held it some time in his hand — then laid it upon the bit of his ass’s bridle — looked wistfully at the little arrangement he had made — and then gave a sigh.
The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him, and La Fleur amongst the rest, whilst the horses were getting ready; as I continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could see and hear over their heads. ["The Dead Ass. Nampont," p. 56]
Whereas Sterne describes the mourner as surrounded by the sympathetic denizens of Nampont, Stothard focuses on the handsome young valet, La Fleur, who is the antithesis of the roughly dressed, white-haired muleteer sitting on the stone bench, sorrowfully contemplating the dead ass's bridle.
Although Sterne cites the precedent of Sancho's dead ass in Don Quixote (I. iii. 167-168), later critics ridiculed Sterne for excessive sentimentality as the chapter often appeared in sentimental anthologies. As Turner explains in the Broadview edition,
When rumours began to circulate a couple of years after Sterne's death that he had neglected his aging mother, Horace Walpole marvelled that "A dead ass was more important to him than a living mother," and Byron later referred to "that dog Sterne, who preferred whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother" (Howes, Yorick and the Critics, 89-90). [Note 2, p. 94]
In "Nampont. The Dead ass," later illustrators have captured the muleteer's ennui and sense of loss as he stares at the vacant harnass, but Stothard makes him old, dispirited, and ill-kempt; clearly he is in the throes of a deep depression as he mournfully regards the harness, not even bothering to look up at the fashionably dressed youth (La Fleur) who has addressed him, apparently offering to help him financially. Stothard employs the shadow cast by the hanging basket to imply both the muleteer's despondency and his morbid thoughts. He is indeed "so old and poor a man so far . . . from his own home" (48), bereft of family, friends, and his chief companion, his ass. In Stothard's character study of a "mourner."
The original Jacque and Fussell designs for this chapter: left, The mourner and the bridle (1841), which influenced Johannot's choice of subject; and, centre, Jacque and Fussell's interpretation of the owner separated from his ass in the Pyrenees, A Long Story of Mischance (1841). Right: Tony Jahannot's illustration of La Fleur's sympathizing with the inconsolable muleteer, with Yorick's carriage in the background, The Dead Ass (1857). [Click on these images to enlarge them.]
Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick. Illustrated by Thomas Stothard. London: J. Good, No. 159, New Bond Street; and E. and S. Harding, No. 102, Pall Mall, 1792; rpt., 1801].
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.
Stothard's Illustrations for Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick (1792). Accessed 26 September 2018. Available online at VTS: fulltable.com
Turner, Katherine. "Notes." Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2010.
Last modified 24 October 2018