Yorick holding the Lady's hand — headpiece for "The Remise Door, Calais" in Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, first published in 1768. Wood-engraving, 5.1 cm high by 7.3 cm wide, top of p. 34. Johannot manages to show Yorick's courting the Lady without implying lasciviousness. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Holding the Lady's Hand
I had never quitted the lady’s hand all this time, and had held it so long, that it would have been indecent to have let it go, without first pressing it to my lips: the blood and spirits, which had suffered a revulsion from her, crowded back to her as I did it.
Now the two travellers, who had spoke to me in the coach-yard, happening at that crisis to be passing by, and observing our communications, naturally took it into their heads that we must be man and wife at least; so, stopping as soon as they came up to the door of the Remise, the one of them who was the I=inquisitive traveller, ask’d us, if we set out for Paris the next morning? I could only answer for myself, I said; and the lady added, she was for Amiens. "We dined there yesterday," said the simple traveller. "You go directly through the town," added the other, "in your road to Paris. I was going to return a thousand thanks for the intelligence, that Amiens was in the road to Paris; but, upon pulling out my poor monk’s little horn box to take a pinch of snuff — I made them a quiet bow, and wishing them a good passage to Dover — they left us alone. ["The Remise Door, Calais," pp. 34-35]
Bibliography
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.
Turner, Katherine. "Notes." Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2010.
Last modified 21 September 2018