I believe then she was partly determined to have
me, but would not say so. At her return she fell into a consumption,
and one evening that I was sitting by her, with an almost broken heart
to see her so ill, she said: 'My dear Laury, I never can be yours, for
I verily believe I have not long to live! But I have left you every
shilling of my fortune.' Upon that she showed me her will. This
generosity overpowered me. It pleased God that she recovered, and we
were married in 1741." The name of this lady was Elizabeth Lumley, and
it was to her that Sterne addressed those earliest letters which his
daughter included in the collection published by her some eight years
after her father's death. They were added, the preface tells us, "in
justice to Mr. Sterne's delicate feelings;" and in our modern usage
of the word "delicate," as equivalent to infirm of health and probably
short of life, they no doubt do full justice to the passion which they
are supposed to express. It would be unfair, of course, to judge any
love-letters of that period by the standard of sincerity applied in
our own less artificial age. All such compositions seem frigid and
formal enough to us of to-day; yet in most cases of genuine attachment
we usually find at least a sentence here and there in which the
natural accents of the heart make themselves heard above the affected
modulations of the style.
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