[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> A Sentimental Journey —> Next]
The Country Dance
Tony Johannot
Picard
1857
Engraving on wood
14.5 cm high by x 10 cm wide, vignetted
Eleventh full-page illustration for A Sentimental Journey (1857), facing page 207.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
When supper was over, the old man gave a knock upon the table with the haft of his knife, to bid them prepare for the dance: the moment the signal was given, the women and girls ran altogether into a back apartment to tie up their hair, — and the young men to the door to wash their faces, and change their sabots; and in three minutes every soul was ready upon a little esplanade before the house to begin. — The old man and his wife came out last, and placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sofa of turf by the door.
The old man had some fifty years ago been no mean performer upon the vielle, — and at the age he was then of, touch’d it well enough for the purpose. His wife sung now and then a little to the tune, — then intermitted, — and join’d her old man again, as their children and grand-children danced before them. ["The Grace," pp. 166-67]
These final scenes at the peasant farmhouse in the Bourbonnois district remind us that the Age of Sentiment, which A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, like Goldsmith's Deserted Village, exemplifies, anticipated in many ways the Romantic Revolution. Here, Sterne anticipates one of the salient characteristics of the literature of the Romantic Era, sympathy with those who live close to nature as part of its larger democratic ideallism and insistence on the rights of the individual, no matter what his or her class. Although Sterne does not betray an interest in the language of the peasantry, he effectively communicates their nobility of character, their emphasis on whole-hearted enjoyment of rustic pursuits and pastimes, and their family values. Sterne here presents these denizens of the unspoiled, natural world as a sharp contrast to the false sentiments of those who frequent the fashionable Paris salons.
Already by this point in the eighteenth century the cult of sensibility had captured the general imagination, and had established itself Victorian Sentimentality. The conclusion of the Sterne novella in a dance that encompasses the extended peasant family — even the children, and the family dog — involves a celebration of life, serving as a kind of Shakespearean anti-masque to the gentle melancholy of mad Maria of Moulines. The scene of the simple pleasures of life among the lower orders also anticipates the heart-warming resolutions of Dickens's Christmas Books in the Hungry Forties, particularly the out-of-doors celebration of Trotty Veck and his neighbours in The New Year's Dance in The Chimes (1844) and The Dance in The Cricket on the Hearth (1845).
Johannot's handling of the scene isolates the young peasant husband and his wife, as the others (including the elders and Yorick to the left, before the flower-covered lintel of the cottage) pause to admire their lithe forms and vigorous footing of the dance. The large-brimmed hat and mantle thrown down in the foreground add to the illustration's sense of exuberance, as do the vine-leaves in the husband's hair. Oddly, though, Johannot has omitted thge old man's playing his figure, which Stothard emphasizes in his 1792 copper-plate engraving of the charmed moment.
Left: The original Stohard copper-plate engraving which influenced later illustrators' interpretations of the peasant family's after-dinner dance, The Grace (1792). Right: Jacque and Fussell's wood-engraving focusses on the activity of the dancers, conveying a greater sense of exuberance than the 1792 copper-plate engraving of the old fiddler: The Grace (1841).
De Voogd, Peter. "Sterne and Visual Culture." The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne, ed. Thomas Keymer. Toronto and Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2009. Pp. 142-159.
"Elizabeth Jackaman looks at a painting ...Maria from Sterne, 1781 by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97)." Online version available from Derbyshire Life and Countryside, April 2010 [updated: 17:06 20 February 2013]. Web. 22 September 2018.
Insane Maria. Kauffman, Anna Angelica Maria. (1768-81). Pic234. Oil on metal, oval, 31.1 cm by 25.4 cm. Online version available from Burley Collections. Burghley House Stamford, Lincs PE9 3JY 01780 752451. Web. 22 September 2018. See also oil on canvas, 65.5 x 65.5 cm. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia.
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. "Introduction" to Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2010. Pp. 11-46.
Last modified 29 September 2018