ABSTRACT
The illustration of Trim reading the sermon by William Hogarth is fundamental as one of the two illustrations of Sterne’s work in the author’s lifetime (the other, of course, was of Tristram’s christening, also by Hogarth).1 Aside from being a unique projection of Sterne’s own age, however, Hogarth’s seminal drawing also is the first in a long tradition of Sterne illustration in general and of the sermonreading scene in particular.2 This chapter will examine eight illustrations of this passage as projections of cultural and critical attitudes toward Sterne-and, in a sense, toward the broad idea of the text itself-over the course of a little more than a century. Several factors contributed to the increased popular and critical interest in Sterne’s work in the early-twentieth century: a more balanced, less Victorian perspective toward Sterne and his work as set forth by Wilbur L. Cross and others; new interest in prose stylistics and experimentation by modernists, for whom Sterne was an exemplar; and lastly, a renewed interest in the eighteenth century as a whole, as the seedbed for both modernist and post-modernist reactions against the nineteenth century. Each of these illustrations reflects a specific way of seeing Tristram Shandy, the result of what W. J. T. Mitchell calls “the artful planting of certain clues in a picture,” which “endows the picture with eloquence.”3 The elements within each illustration, the “pictured objects,” along with the “setting, compositional arrangement, and color scheme,” Mitchell asserts, “may all carry [an] expressive charge” that “convey[s] moods and emotional atmospheres.”4 I suggest that the “clues” that Mitchell endows with significant analytical value combine in an illustration to convey the idea of a system, a specific method of understanding the text. And, in the example of the illustrations of Trim reading the sermon, the perspectives expressed by these systems provide unique insight into how Sterne was viewed, critically and culturally, over the course of 110 years. Owing perhaps either to its potential for expressiveness or a sense of tradition, the scene of Trim reading the sermon is one of the most frequently illustrated passages from Sterne in the twentieth century, thus providing a broad range of
Fig. 10 Harry Furniss, illustration for Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (London: J. C. Nimmo and Bain, 1883)
material for analysis. This diverse sampling is further enhanced by contemporaneous discussions of the scene, and, more generally, of the goings-on in the Shandy parlor, and I will include excerpts from some of this relevant commentary to augment the perspectives suggested by the artwork. These contemporary criticisms, most published within a decade of the appearance of the illustrated editions (if not actually within the edition itself), reinforce the different systems suggested by the illustrations. As the first of the series under examination here, the illustration of the scene by Harry Furniss for an 1883 edition of Tristram Shandy [fig. 10] provides a useful starting point from which to start mapping changing attitudes toward Sterne. Furniss’s artwork appears at a time when several critics still found fault with Sterne and his work largely because of the circulation of unfavorable stories about the parson from York (some of them true); the period’s negative perspective is perhaps best represented by Thackeray’s quite thorough biographical and aesthetic condemnation of Sterne in his lectures published in 1853.5 By Furniss’s time, however, some gestures had appeared (such as Percy Fitzgerald’s apologetic biography, and the publication of new, but non-illustrated, editions of Tristram Shandy by David Herbert [1872] and James P. Browne [1873]) that reflected a possible reconciliation between Sterne and the reading public. By its very existence, Furniss’s illustration can be considered as one of these gestures, a careful negotiation of a subject by an author still deemed to be in questionable taste. Furniss’s depiction of the scene is somber, spare, and static. The parlor, framed vertically like Hogarth’s, is small and dark, the walls are unadorned, and the only pieces of furniture in evidence are chairs crowded next to each other. Furniss follows the rules of orthodoxy in his composition, depicting Trim in the center of the picture, standing in profile, although perhaps too stooped over the sermon; his position is contrived and awkward, belying Sterne’s contention of the corporal’s natural grace and suggesting that Sterne’s text is being somehow subverted. The face of Walter expresses unsmiling concern here, and Toby’s is nearly featureless, but clearly directed toward Trim. The grotesque quality of Slop’s expression suggests a more permanent repose, if not a caricature of Dr. Johnson. Still, although the illustration lacks liveliness (which admittedly may be accentuated by the comparison with Hogarth), it envisions a feeling moment in the intimate environment of the Shandy parlor. Walter and Toby form a contained unit with Trim leaning toward them, while Slop, on the other side of the room and emerging from behind Trim, is clearly outside this circle of intimacy. The interest of Walter and Toby in the sermon reinforces the centrality of the document to the scene, suggesting that the message conveyed by the sermon’s text is beginning to be heard over the tendency to emphasize individual characterization to mid-nineteenth-century audiences. The intense engagement of the Shandy brothers in the reading brings to mind the quality of absorption identified by Michael Fried in reference to Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s painting Un Père de famille qui lit la Bible à ses enfants. Although Furniss is not as “persuasive” (to use
Fried’s term) as Greuze in portraying his characters as “wholly absorbed in the reading itself,”6 the Shandys are indeed solely focused on Trim’s reading of a sacramentalized text, much as the family in Greuze’s painting is focused on the father’s reading of the Bible. No icons such as hats, maps, or footstools are present in Furniss’s portrayal, depriving the scene of reference points. (The lack of reminders of Toby’s wound in his groin might correspond with the admiration of the character by the Victorians, perhaps most famously portrayed in the image of a healthy, though still naïve, Toby in Charles Robert Leslie’s popular painting, where Toby’s cane is almost-but not quite-hidden.) Even Slop’s nonengagement serves a purpose, stressing the interest expressed by the other characters with a distinct contrast, and paralleling the role played by the small child in Un Père de famille. In contrast to the somber and thus un-Sternean atmosphere Furniss presents, one might also detect a comic contrast between the attentiveness of the Shandys and Slop’s state of oblivion. The gentle humor of the comparison ennobles Walter and Toby and recalls Sterne’s mockery of Slop; at the same time, it projects a “safe” (though admittedly low-key) humor that echoes Victorian perspectives toward Sterne, the rejection of bawdy or religiously irreverent aspects of Sterne’s comedy. Critics of the late-nineteenth century placed emphasis on the masculine intimacy of Shandy Hall and its gentle good humor, seeing it as a contrast to (and, to an extent, a remedy for) what was seen as Tristram Shandy’s unacceptable comic elements and Sterne’s own questionable history. Leslie Stephen praises that “wonderful group of characters who are antagonistic to the spurious wit based upon simple shocks to a sense of decency. That group redeems the book . . .. We must therefore admit that the creator of Uncle Toby and his family must not be unreservedly condemned.”7
