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

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Sterne felt sure that the marriage with Eliza would take place within three years. He had so written on the impulse of the moment in dedicating an almanac to her, and he believed that impulse came from heaven. In the meantime Eliza was omnipresent in the spirit. “In proportion,” writes Sterne, “as I am thus torn from y^r. embraces—I cling the closer to the Idea of you. Your Figure is ever before my eyes—the sound of y^r. voice vibrates with its sweetest tones the live long day in my ear—I can see & hear nothing but my Eliza.” As he sat down to his Sentimental Journey, Eliza entered the library without tapping, and he had to shut her out before he could begin writing. On another day, the dear Bramine was asked to stay that her presence might “soften and modulate” his feelings for a sentimental portrait—the fair Fleming, it may be, or the beautiful Grisette, or the heartbroken Maria. To Eliza he dedicated “a sweet little apartment” in his “thatched palace,” and entered there ten times every day to render his devotions to her in “the sweetest of earthly Tabernacles.” And for his future “Partner and Companion” he built a pavilion in “a retired corner” of his garden, where he sat in reverie, and longed and waited for that day’s sleep when he might say with Adam—“Behold the Woman Thou has given me for Wife.”