Tipp link of a great author
QUESTION What is the story of Clonmel’s Laurence Sterne, the writer of the great novel The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman?
LAURENCE Sterne, a great 18thcentury writer, was born in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, and became a clergyman before turning to literature.
He was born in Clonmel on November 13, 1713. His father, Roger, was the grandson of an Archbishop of York, but Roger was a low-ranking infantry officer.
In Flanders, Roger married Agnes, the widow of a fellow officer, and when the regiment he was in moved to Ireland, Roger and his wife followed suit.
During the first decade of Laurence Sterne’s life, the family moved from place to place in Ireland, never spending more than a year in one place.
In addition to Clonmel, the army family also lived in Dublin as well as in Annamoe, Co. Wicklow, where the young child Laurence nearly drowned in a mill stream.
They also lived in Wicklow town, as well as in Drogheda; Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath and Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim.
Virtually nothing is known of Laurence Sterne’s early life in Ireland and what few facts there are come from long-repeated traditional anecdotes about him and his family.
When Laurence was 11 years old, his father took him to his (Roger’s) wealthy brother, Richard, who lived in Yorkshire. Laurence was sent to Hipperholme Grammar School near Halifax. Laurence never saw his father again, as Roger was sent on military duty to Jamaica, where he died from a fever in 1731.
The young boy did so well at school that he won a scholarship and went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1733, when he was 20. It helped that his great-grandfather, Richard Sterne, had been a master of that college as well as archbishop of York.
Laurence graduated with a BA degree in 1737 and was awarded his master of arts degree three years later.
The same year that Laurence was awarded his BA degree, he was ordained a deacon and in 1738, he became a vicar in Yorkshire. In 1741, Laurence married Elizabeth Lumley; both of them suffered from consumption. In 1743, he was put in charge of a second parish in Yorkshire, combining his duties there with those in his first parish.
He also became closely linked to his uncle, Dr Jacques Sterne, who held high religious positions, including at York Minster.
His uncle was a powerful clergyman and also a rabid politician and Laurence wrote political articles for the newspaper founded by his uncle. But Laurence soon withdrew from politics in disgust, a decision that turned his uncle into his arch-enemy.
Laurence Sterne remained as a vicar in Yorkshire for the next 20 years but in 1759, to support his dean in a church squabble, he wrote a Jonathan Swift-style satire about the leaders of the church. The embarrassed churchmen demanded that Sterne burn his book.
Sterne may have lost his chances for advancement in the church, but at the age of 46 he discovered his literary talents.
He turned over his parishes to a curate and devoted the rest of his life to writing.
He soon began writing his bestknown work, The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the first volumes of which were published in 1759. The satire in the books mirrored Sterne’s own childhood and his eccentric family, and veered between comedy and melancholy. The publication of the novel made Sterne famous not only in London but in continental Europe – and Sterne himself said, in a comment that became notorious: ‘I wrote not to be fed but to become famous.’
In 1762, when Laurence was suffering badly from TB, he went to France with his wife Elizabeth and their only child, Lydia.
Elizabeth was a fellow sufferer from TB. She decided to stay in France with Lydia, while her husband eventually returned to London alone.
He published the final volume of Tristram Shandy in 1767; shortly afterwards, he fell in love with Eliza Draper, who was half his age and married to someone who worked for the East India Company.
In time, she declared that she was duty-bound to sail to India to join her husband, which she did, leaving Laurence to live alone in London, where his health continued to deteriorate.
His second novel, A Sentimental Journey Through France And Italy, was published in early 1768 and barely a month later, Laurence Sterne died in his lodgings in London, aged 54.
His body was stolen shortly after it was buried but soon afterwards, when it was presented at an anatomy lecture in Cambridge, it was recognised by a friend of his and the body was reburied in its original grave in London.
In his literary works, Laurence Sterne was very innovative, but in comparison with many other writers in the 18th century, he wrote comparatively little in a literary career that lasted less than a decade.
To this day, very few facts are known about his birth and upbringing in Clonmel and the various other places in Ireland where he was brought up as a child. Simon Boyd, by email.
QUESTION Is Eric Clapton the last living member of The Intro And The Outro list of personalities mentioned by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band?
THE previous answer overlooked the mention of ‘Lord Snooty and his pals’, who first appeared in the 1938 debut issue of The Beano comic by Dundee publisher DC Thomson.
To all intents and purposes, Snooty is still extant.
Lord Marmaduke of Bunkerton was drawn by Dudley D Watkins until his death in 1969, with successors including the late Robert Nixon.
The strip, which lasted until 1991, was The Beano’s longestrunning strip until that crown was usurped by Dennis The Menace.
In 2013, Lord Snooty was brought back as a special three-panel strip in Funsize Funnies, while 2008 saw a new version, Snooty The Third, Marmaduke’s grandson.
The original character is still in the comic’s online version and could be brought back at any time.
As one fan put it: ‘All Beano characters are immortal!’ David Robinson, Cambridgeshire.