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

22 страница из 31

INTRODUCTION

ssss1

THE two letters from Sterne to Mr. and Mrs. James are not original drafts that were, according to the usual statement, afterwards recast and elaborated. They are the very letters that went through the mails to their destination; and their counterparts found in the printed collections are only mutilated forms for which Sterne’s daughter is responsible. Mrs. Medalle possessed every quality that should damn the editor. She was ignorant; she was careless; she was dishonest. That the letters as Sterne wrote them may be easily compared with the mutilations, I have printed the two sets side by side in their due place among the Letters and Miscellanies; and I here reprint the authentic copies, that the material of the Gibbs Manuscripts may be all together. To both letters Mrs. Medalle gave wrong dates. Words and phrases were inserted for the improvement of her father’s style. An amusing passage on the impending visit of Mrs. Sterne was stricken out. And the references to Mrs. Draper—her journal, letters, and Sterne’s anxiety for her—were either deleted or emasculated. This want of the literary conscience no doubt vitiates the entire Sterne correspondence that appeared under the supervision of Mrs. Medalle.