ABSTRACT
Among the earliest book illustrations of A Sentimental Journey is a 1780 Edward Edwards portrayal of Yorick and Maria seated, their attention focused intently on the sentimental symbol of the handkerchief in Yorick’s hand [fig. 22]. Dense bushes and trees dominate the background, stretching to the very edges of the picture; the radiant, somewhat disordered appearance of the leaves and limbs evokes both a rural wildness and a mood of transcending the mundane setting. Sylvio lies placidly at Maria’s feet, suggesting a quieting of Yorick’s animal nature in the presence of sincere melancholy. The only hint of civilization is the rear of Yorick’s remise, partially visible in the distance, positioned almost as if it is looking away. The figures are placed in theatrically exaggerated poses which accentuate the drama of the moment, and they are dressed well, though not opulently; several distinguishing elements mentioned in the text (Yorick’s clerical garb and wig, Maria’s pipe and loose hair) are absent; instead, they seem to resemble members of the English middle class of the late-eighteenth century. Maria is calm, reserved-looking, and quietly introspective; Yorick appears engaged, but does not project the upheaval of “undescribable emotions”(ASJ 151.4) described in the text. By depicting the characters in the illustration as members of the same social and economic class as the readers of the book, Edwards creates a connection between the fictional and the real, and in doing so, draws attention to the sentimental benevolence implied in Sterne’s text. Contributing to the impact of this message is the quality of “absorption” identified by Michael Fried (after Denis Diderot) in relation to late-eighteenthcentury paintings: that is, the tendency of the figures in a picture to focus on a single object, which serves to enclose and dramatize the depicted moment.1 Edwards’s illustration demonstrates this quality both by asserting that “the supreme fiction that the beholder” does not exist and by creating an internal
“casual and instantaneous mode of unity.”2 The characters’ concentrated gaze on the handkerchief, then, not only reinforces the object’s centrality as a symbol of benevolence and fidelity, but, by promoting the quality of absorption, generates a unified, poignant, and ultimately more instructive moment than Sterne’s text by itself. David Fairer notes that “sentimental exchange is . . . focussed on the token, an evidential sign that carries translatable meaning between a thing and idea.”3 The pictured handkerchief, a representation of the capacity for feeling in the characters, thus becomes a symbolic invitation to the reader to join in the emotional communion. By stressing Yorick’s sympathy for the attractive (but vulnerable) Maria in a remote rural setting, Edwards portrays an exemplary moment of compassion and self-control. His flat, almost two-dimensional illustration conveys meaning beyond a simple description of character and scene, and contributes to an iconography of sentiment that will be visually reinforced over the next thirty years by the illustrators of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling. This chapter will analyze illustrations from these works and demonstrate their tendency toward the depiction of ethical behavior that is recommended by the texts. The contemporary illustrations of these works provide a historically privileged perspective on the texts that assigns a didactic role to sentimental expression; in both the written and visual depictions, this didacticism finds its metonym in specific locations. This chapter will first identify several different types of sentimental expression and, second, link them to the particular locations in which they occur. The close coordination between different types of sentimental behavior and different places denoted visually by several illustrators suggests that these scenes acted as lessons in sensibility for increasingly urbanized and tough-minded city dwellers. The illustrations, I propose, functioned not only as overall programs advocating the adoption of sympathetic perspectives, but also as models recommending appropriately moral behavior in certain circumstances that were associated with specific locations. The notion of the “sentimental” in the works of Sterne and Mackenzie is perhaps most fundamentally defined either as “possessing elevated and refined intellectual feeling” or simply as possessing “sympathy.”4
