ABSTRACT
When Laurence Sterne asked William Hogarth to illustrate Corporal Trim reading the sermon for the first edition of Tristram Shandy, he presented him with a passage pregnant with visual cues. Observing Trim, Tristram pauses in his narrative to provide a “description of his attitude” (TS II.17.140.8), a catalogue of exacting visual detail: “his body sway’d, and somewhat bent forwards” at a “precise angle of 85 degrees and a half”(II.17.141.1), “his right leg firm under him” (II.17.141.14), “the foot of his left leg . . . advanced a little” (II.17.142.47), and so on. Less specific, though still visually evocative, is Tristram’s mention that “Corporal Trim’s eyes and the muscles of his face” are “in full harmony with the other parts of him” (II.17.142.8-9). Tristram’s portrayal of Trim blends elements of detail and suggestion, on the one hand precisely posing his figure as one might an artist’s manikin, on the other prompting the reader to complete a mental image. The passage does not describe a complete image of the figure of Trim, much less one of the Shandy brothers and Dr. Slop-or, for that matter, the setting in the Shandy parlor. Yet the reader generates a mental picture of the scene, grounded in details and aided by a supplementary impetus subtly exerted by the text upon the receptive imagination. Dr. Slop had been described sparingly some twenty pages earlier: a “little, squat, uncourtly figure . . . of about four feet and a half perpendicular height” with a notable “sesquipedality of belly” (II.9.121.1-3). Like Trim, he is depicted as a brief ensemble of physical characteristics (Tristram states he “may as certainly be caracatur’d, and convey’d to the mind by three strokes as three hundred” [II.9.121.8-10]), less a fully realized portrait than a verbal doodle wittily embellished with aesthetic banter. Embedded in both of these descriptions are references to the theory and practice of the visual arts. Trim’s position is “within the limits of the line of beauty;— and I add, of the line of science too” (II.17.141.18-20), an obvious nod to Hogarth’s paradigmatic form in The Analysis of Beauty. Hogarth’s text is mentioned in an even more conspicuous reference accompanying Slop’s depiction, an unabashed recommendation to read the Analysis: “if you have not [read it], I wish you would” (II.9.121.7-8). These references to the visual arts are augmented by such practicalities as the recommendation of Trim’s pose to painters (II.17.141.26-28) and the comment that there was “such an oratorical sweep
throughout the whole figure,—a statuary might have modell’d from it” (II.17.142.15-17). Throughout, Tristram evokes the work of the painter’s easel through the mention of Trim’s “attitude” (II.17.140.8, 141.16), a term borrowed from the visual arts and equivalent to “pose” today. A marked degree of narrative reflexivity is apparent in the descriptions of both Trim and Slop. The passages are peppered with “I”s, affirming the centrality of the narrator in the descriptive process; this centrality is ironic in emphasizing the describer over the description as well as serving as a comic reminder that the narrator himself is yet to be born. More significantly, however, this reflexivity mirrors the “I” (and mental eye) of the reader, whose imagination is instrumental in assembling the assorted details into a visualized idea of character and scene. The fluid verbal description and references to the visual arts in this passage, combined with Sterne’s well-crafted request to have this specific scene illustrated and Hogarth’s intriguing response, make this scene a frequent crux for critical commentary about texts influenced by the visual arts as well as illustrations inspired by written texts. The scene of Trim reading the sermon tempts us in particular toward sometimes perplexing discussions of reciprocal theories of these sister arts. In the hope of presenting with more clarity the issues that surround the pictorialism of Sterne’s texts and the visual depictions of Sterne’s work, these frequently intertwined (and sometimes tangled) subjects will be presented separately here: the present chapter will address the visual elements within Sterne’s text, while those following will discuss the visual representations generated by his words. This is a crucial distinction for the lucid evaluation of Sterne’s visual rhetoric, and perhaps is most necessary to the examination of the description of Trim reading the sermon, where the contemporaneous illustration, in combination with references to the artist in the text, tends to suggest intriguing but often fanciful connections between word and image. Comparisons between the actual graphic techniques of the writer and the artist reveal (often unintentionally) just how unlike Hogarth’s (and in many ways, how unpictorial) Sterne’s approach actually is. R. F. Brissenden’s feeling that “Sterne has obviously amused himself by composing [the scene] as if it were a painting,”1
is only half true: the narrator indeed relishes his role as a describer of visual detail-further evidence of the intense reflexivity of Tristram Shandy-but the dozen verbal “lines” that make up the description of Trim are certainly inadequate to compose a complete picture by eighteenth-century (or just about any other) standards, 2 lacking, for instance, essential elements of coloration and background, and details such as costume, props, and setting. William V. Holtz views Trim’s portrait as “a close approximation of Hogarth’s actual style,” asserting that the figure is described in “exhaustive detail,”3 but the ten or so seemingly precise positionings conveyed by the text might be better defined as a rough sketch than a comprehensive vision, lacking the extensive symbolic detail portrayed in the work of Hogarth.4 As Robert E. Moore notes, “the very details of [Hogarth’s] settings or backgrounds are often endowed with important dramatic significance”5-a
difficult claim to make about Sterne’s descriptions. Frederick Antal’s comment that Trim’s “tottering pose is . . . minutely described in the novel”6 only accentuates the lack of other precise verbal portrayals that would make the written scene a stronger analogue to the work of a visual artist. The variety of visual interpretations of this scene in the form of book illustrations, most of them technically “correct” in that they adhere to the text, can be considered as an indication of the scarcity of precise visual detail in the text.7 However much we may agree with the spirit of Arthur Cash’s assessment that the scene is an “amusing ‘painting’” (LY 11), we are forced to concede that the visual impression we get of the scene is not the result of comprehensive and detailed description; Hogarth evidently needed to supplement Sterne’s description considerably in order to create his own portrayal. The problematic nature of this comparison becomes more apparent when specific aspects of the “illustrative” techniques of Hogarth and Sterne are evaluated side by side. Holtz maintains, “[t]here is a close affinity between Hogarth and Sterne in their presentation of the human face and figure,”8 yet Hogarth by necessity supplies a substantial amount of his own detail to bring the face and figure of Trim into visual being. Trim’s periwig, clothing, and footwear, for example, are rarely referred to in Sterne’s text. Furthermore, elements of Hogarth’s scene-the map on the wall, the clock, the mysterious swag over the mantel-are not mentioned in the passage at all.9 As previously mentioned, the reference to Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty in conjunction with his celebrated illustration casts a shadow over Sterne’s actual description, distorting its content as it merges in the commentator’s mind with the visual representation. This is not to deny that Sterne exhibits elements of pictorialism in his text, but rather to reconsider some basic assumptions that have been made regarding its characteristics. Sterne’s detail of Trim’s position is careful and fairly complete, yet other aspects of Trim’s character, as well as most of the scene’s “composition,” are primarily products of the reader’s imagination. This characteristic becomes especially apparent when compared with the amount and depth of visual description offered in the texts of Sterne’s contemporaries, Fielding and Smollett, as will be discussed shortly. Sterne’s allusions to the Analysis invite comparisons between the stylistic approaches of the writer and the artist, but the establishment of definitive common ground is difficult. Antal asserts that Sterne “was obviously influenced by Hogarth when conceiving the scene and the figures,”10 but does not cite particulars. Brissenden, however, notes specific parallels between Sterne and Hogarth. They both exhibit “an unusual combination of attitudes: a desire to be as realistic as possible, coupled with a delight in formal subtlety and complexity for its own sake,” as well as a shared interest in “intricacy and variety.”11 As enticing as these comparisons seem-after all, there is a strong inherent desire to find connections between two of the great comic minds of the mid-eighteenth century-they become problematic, as we shall see, under critical scrutiny.
