Part One
[A walled garden of York. It is an August Sunday, and the baying of deep church-bells is blown faintly in a warm wind. Laurence Sterne, prebendary, aged forty-six, and Catherine de Fromantel, a girl who sings at Ranelagh, are dawdling through the arbours, and pause at a path which runs between hedges and cypress-trees round a corner some fifty yards away. Catherine has walked down such a path before, it is to be feared, and halts cautiously upon its fringes.]
Laurence:
Nay, ’tis no Devil’s walk,
It leads to what? Some leaden Child with lips
Blown open, spouting fountain-dew on birds
That drowsily dive the pool . . . some secret Lawn
Tight locked away in mazes, and trod by none
Save one old crazy Gardener . . . aye, ’tis prick’d
In curious inks on charts of old, I’ll vow,
Drown’d in some careless Viscount’s library
Five hundred years, and like to rot five more.
Now we, my child, wait idly, toe to brink,
Whilst I must pray thee to walk hand-in-hand
Not fifty steps along a sanded alley. . . .
Catherine:
Such paths have led to dangerous lands before,
And many a maid’s marched less than fifty steps
To-day no maiden . . . ’tis a well-known Grove,
Thy maze of lime and bergamot, good priest . . .
Plump Notaries would buzz with ivory tablets,
Plaguing the round-tubb’d orange-trees to blab
Could they but speak. . . . Oh, trust me, sir, I know
Those leafy Rogues too well!
Laurence:
Nay, Kit, these trees
Are stout duennas, this garden a Dutch garden,
And sure the grass would rust to yellow stalks
If lovers betray’d its beaded innocence.
Come . . . seven steps . . . I’ll swear to coax no more. . . .
As far as the Cypress . . . not a bee’s foot further. . . .
As far as the Cypress. . . .
Catherine:
No, I tell you, no!
(She allows herself to be led a few steps.)
Laurence:
But here the spices of some little trees,
And certain hot, heavy orchard-essences
From fruits that have molten in their leaves, do tell
Stupendous tales of Paddocks round the turn-
Flat, knee-thick fields of laziness, piping all day
With flies and ants, and most bewhisker’d Bees-
Great solemn Bees, too plump to take a flower
Because their weight might shake the petals down-
Catherine:
Lord, where’s the maze, and little carven Lad
He-nay, I will not-nay, sir-fie, a priest,
A prebendary wrestling with a wench
Who’s like as not to quaver in dark Taverns-
Oh, sir, have done!
Laurence:
Now here’s a mystery-
She’ll dawdle from St. Michael’s with you, walk
With prinking flutters past the choristers,
And take the turnpike, handed by a priest,
But let that saintly gentleman divert
Her footsteps from the vulgar throng, to grant her
Five hundred feet of private ambulation-
Oh, no-those lanes of lime-trees tempt her not-
She’ll turn for home!
Catherine:
You know it’s not the lanes,
Nor lime-trees either that I like not-priests
Are sable Eunuchs in the public streets,
But passionate rascals in an orangery!
Laurence:
Passion? You tease me, Kit-I keep no passion
In these quiet deeps of Yorkshire-no, and passion
Runs not in veins that time and the church have froze
To pipes of ancient lead-ha, passion, ha, ha!
This torn Divine accus’d of gallantry!
No doubt, a charge of attempted defloration
Of nuns past counting in the convent close
Would next have been preferr’d, if my religion
Had but agreed with that of the old ladies!
“Alas, poor Yorick-here lies a three-nun man,”
I thank you for the compliment, dear Slut,
But Love’s a dissipation I’m denied-
My reasons are innumerable, chief amongst them
The fact that it disorders my digestion,
And also-most important-I’m a disciple
Of that delicious old philosophy
Which flings us womankind to prime and dandle
And dog forever in the name of Plato-
Yes, I-I’m a Platonic-and our friendship
Mere rubbing of dim, spiritual flanks
As legally prescribed in the Symposium . . . .
‘Tis writ, I warrant you, in authentic Greek,
And must disarm all scruples.
Catherine:
I’m no scholar,
And Greek’s but Greek. The body’s been my school,
Gilding it, dusting its rounds with Orris-root,
Waxing its lips and silencing its cries-
In Greek I’m lacking, but it seems to me
That when a lad stands tugging a maiden’s waist
Near snapping a Lace that oughtn’t to be snapp’d-
He may quote Plato, but his bent’s the same.
Laurence:
‘Tis monstrous wrong! I’ll swear no bones of mine
Have taboured it to Love-or if they have
They’ve groaned like skeletons in Holbein’s Dance-
Aye, creaked and jarred with miserable joy
To cheerless ends. I’m no Voluptary
New-greased with Love’s pomatum-look at me,
My name’s the Reverend Tristram . . . Laurie Sterne . . .
Or Yorick, as you like . . . aged in the suburbs
Of thirty-five or thereabouts . . . gaunt, long-legged,
Peruked grotesquely on the north-west border
With powdered wool, a trifle disarranged.
Poor Tristram . . . all he quests are cast-off things,
A smile tossed like a cherry to the birds,
The casual brush of eyes across a Counter,
Some careless touch of skin like flutter’d silk,
Or sweet munificence of Beauty thrown
Like pennies to the Post-boy . . . secret breasts
Like ivory fruits, unbared a bending-trice
Whilst Janatone leans over apricocks
To bite their stalks off . . . aye, and silken knees
Reveal’d in twinkling foams of Dimity
When Libertine winds run under maidens’ Frocks-
And when those Frocks are tugg’d, small naked shoulders
That suddenly rise from ruffs of Mechlin lace,
Veined with sly, riotous roses, then subside
In quicksands of wild Satin and bubbling Silk . . .
Poor Tristam . . . all he seeks are these, but Life
Bequeaths him only Sorrows . . . .
Do you call it weak to have one’s eyes brimmed up
With tears of pity . . . an ye do, I’m weak . . . .
Catherine:
Tears, Master Laurence?
Laurence:
I weep internally.
Taunt me not, Kit, my heart is old and broken.
Catherine:
But wherefore tears?
Laurence:
They rise like stones of crystal,
And whence they come, who knows? Perchance my Wife!
Catherine:
Poor man-she’s fast in France-
Laurence:
Her deeds remain.
Oh, pity me, sweet child, I need thy tears.
Catherine:
Come, let me take thee to this bench of stone,
I would thy heart were happier-
Laurence:
Nay, not here-
‘Tis cold-and there’s a mound of twisted flowers
Beyond the turn, five paces past the Fish-pond,
Would net no less than two, no more than one,
In most prodigious comfort-
Catherine:
Poor, poor Yorick,
I’ll dab thy tears upon my petticoat . . . .
Laurence:
Delightful Girl!
Catherine:
Nay, wait sir,-wait, sir-O!
(They are heard talking for a while behind the corner hedge.)
The Man of Sentiment
Part Two
[Meard’s Court, Soho. An August nightfall, . Catherine is seated at a small pianoforte, Catherine’s mother is examining the contents of a chest. “Tristram Shandy” has plunged Sterne into the drawing-rooms of London, and Catherine has followed.]
Mother:
Ten bottles of Calcavillo . . . one pot of Honey . . .
A jar of Comfits-(sniffs)-some Eau de Chypre . . .
The phial’s of Crystal-(sniffs)-some few dead Posies . . .
Fourteen Epistles, dabbed with gilded sand
And sealed with crusts of lilac wax beneath . . .
Three sheets of music . . . boughpots filled with flowers . . .
Cards for the F
(Kenneth Slessor)
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