Читать книгу The Journal to Eliza and Various letters by Laurence Sterne and Elizabeth Draper онлайн

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During his illness his “room was always full of friendly Visitors,” and the “rapper eternally going with Cards and enquiries.” With these friends, among whom were Lord and Lady Spencer, he had yet to dine; and then on the twenty second of May he set out for Yorkshire. On the twenty eighth he reached his “thatched cottage” at Coxwold, and began another course of corrosive Mercury. His “face as pale and clear as a Lady after her Lying in,” he rose from his bed to take the air every day in his postchaise drawn by “two fine horses,” and by the middle of June he was “well and alert.” So he went over to Hall-Stevenson’s at Crazy Castle, where on the neighboring beach, “as even as a mirrour of 5 miles in Length,” squire and parson ran daily races in their chaises, “with one wheel in the Sea, & the other in the Sand.” In the course of the summer, Sterne paid another visit to Crazy Castle; Hall-Stevenson came to Coxwold for a day or two, and they went together to Harrogate to drink the waters. By the 27th of July they were back at York for the races. At the beginning of the next month, Sterne was “hurried backwards and forwards ab^t. the arrival of Madame”—an event that had long been impending to the suspense and torture of his mind.