[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Tony Johannot —> A Sentimental Journey —> Next]

Passage Suggested

It must have been observed by many a peripatetic philosopher, that nature has set up by her own unquestionable authority certain boundaries and fences to circumscribe the discontent of man; she has effected her purpose in the quietest and easiest manner by laying him under almost insuperable obligations to work out his ease, and to sustain his sufferings at home. It is there only that she has provided him with the most suitable objects to partake of his happiness, and bear a part of that burden which in all countries and ages has ever been too heavy for one pair of shoulders. ’Tis true, we are endued with an imperfect power of spreading our happiness sometimes beyond her limits, but ’tis so ordered, that, from the want of languages, connections, and dependencies, and from the difference in education, customs, and habits, we lie under so many impediments in communicating our sensations out of our own sphere, as often amount to a total impossibility.

It will always follow from hence, that the balance of sentimental commerce is always against the expatriated adventurer: he must buy what he has little occasion for, at their own price; — his conversation will seldom be taken in exchange for theirs without a large discount, — and this, by the by, eternally driving him into the hands of more equitable brokers, for such conversation as he can find, it requires no great spirit of divination to guess at his party — ["Preface. In the désobligeant," pp. 12-13]

Commentary: Introducing Sterne and Thirteen Characters

Johannot depicts Sterne in the guise of a genial philosopher, writing the novella, and thereby creating a cast of memorable characters, foremost among whom is the Franciscan friar that Yorick encounters in Calais (left). The other characters, however, are not so readily identifiable, except perhaps Maria wit her dog, Sylvio (upper left). One can identify the specific characters depicted with confidence only once he or she has read the entire work.

Likewise, the significance of the starling above a coat-of-arms bearing three crosses becomes apparent only once one has read "The Starling. The Road to Versailles," in which the caged bird represents both the Sterne family's heraldic coat of arms with three ecclesiastical crosses surmounted by a "starne" (Old English for "starling") and Yorick's contemplation of himself as a Bastille prisoner:

It is impossible but many of my readers must have heard of him; and if any by mere chance have ever seen him, I beg leave to inform them, that that bird was my bird, or some vile copy set up to represent him.

I have nothing farther to add upon him, but that from that time to this I have borne this poor starling as the crest to my arms.

And let the herald’s officers twist his neck about if they dare. ["The Starling. "The Road to Versailles," p. 130]

Balancing the Monk to the left, to whom Johannot devotes a full-page illustration — Sterne [sic] and the Monk — the Snuff-box", are a nobleman, his wife, and daughter — probably the subject of his eighth full-page illustration, The Marquis D'E—. — The Sword. The group of ne'er-do-wells between the friar and the aristocrat conveys the social range of the characters with whom Yorick interacts.

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.

---

Victorian
Web

Illus-
tration

Tony
Johannot

Laurence
Sterne

Next

Last modified 12 October 2018