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The Marquess d' E—, "The Sword. Rennes."
Jacque and Fussell
1841
15.4 x 10.8 cm, vignetted
Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, London: Joseph Thomas, page 115.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The Marquis and his whole family embarked the next day for Martinico, and in about nineteen or twenty years of successful application to business, with some unlook’d for bequests from distant branches of his house, return home to reclaim his nobility, and to support it.
It was an incident of good fortune which will never happen to any traveller but a Sentimental one, that I should be at Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition: I call it solemn; — it was so to me.
The Marquis entered the court with his whole family: he supported his lady, — his eldest son supported his sister, and his youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his mother;—he put his handkerchief to his face twice.
There was a dead silence. When the Marquis had approached within six paces of the tribunal, he gave the Marchioness to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before his family, — he reclaim’d his sword. His sword was given him, and the moment he got it into his hand he drew it almost out of the scabbard: ’twas the shining face of a friend he had once given up — he look’d attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the same, when, observing a little rust which it had contracted near the point, he brought it near his eye, and bending his head down over it, I think I saw a tear fall upon the place. I could not be deceived by what followed. —
“I shall find,” said he, “some other way to get it off.”
When the Marquis had said this, he returned his sword into its scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it; and, with his wife and daughter, and his two sons following him, walked out.
O, how I envied him his feelings! ["The Sword. Rennes," pp. 116-17]
"The Marquess d' E—," "The Sword. Rennes." — The headpiece showing the Marquis drawing his sword in vignette. The fragment ends with a tailpiece, focussing on the sword itself for Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, first published in 1768. Wood-engraving, 6.5 cm high by 5.2 cm wide, p. 115. In the 1841 edition, the sword represents the aristocratic status of the Marquess d' E—, which, well into middle age, he recovers after engaging in commerce (probably sugar-cane production) for two decades on Martinique. Having scrutinized the tip and found it slightly rusty, he determines to restore the weapon — and his family's honour.
Above: Tony Jahannot's illustration of the Marquis and his family returning to Rennes to recover his sword from the President of the Breton assembly.
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
