The life of Laurence Sterne Author:Percy Fitzgerald Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Love-making And Married Life MR. STERNE, who was destined through life to be eminent in what are called ' affairs of the heart,' had not been l... more »ong in York before he fell in love. The Lady of his affections was Miss Elizabeth Lumley, and in his autobiography he gives this sketch of the affair. 'At York I became acquainted with your mother, and courted her for two years. She owned she liked me, but thought herself not rich enough, or me too poor, to be joined together. She went to her sister's in S , and I wrote to her often. 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 Lawry, I can never be yours, for I verily believe I have not long to live, but I haveleft you every shilling of my fortune." Upon that she showed me her will. This generosity overpowered me. It pleased God that she recovered, and I married her in the year 1741.' Miss Lumley—' My L.' as she is called in the letters—came from Staffordshire, where she had a small property. Her father was Rector of Bedal. She is said to have had a 'fine voice' and a good taste in music. Some forty years later, his daughter published her father's love letters to her mother, and incurred much censure for her 'indelicacy" in so doing. But it should be said that Mrs Sterne herself had stipulated that if any letters of her husband were published these should be included. This daughter introduces them with this odd apology,— ' In justice to Mr Sterne's delicate feelings, I must here publish the following letters to Mrs Sterne, before he married her, when she was in Staffordshire. A good heart breathes in every line of them.' The intima...« less