A couple of months later, Sterne, still at Toulouse, addressed Hall-Stevenson:
“If I had nothing to stop me I would engage to set out this morning, and knock at Crazy Castle gates in three days less time—by which time I should find you and the Colonel, Panty, &c. all alone—the season I most wish and like to be with you.”
Again and again are allusions to the Crazelites, as Sterne often called them:
“I send all compliments to Sir C. D[ashwoo]d and G——s. I love them from my soul. If G[ilber]t is with you, him also” (he wrote from Coxwold, 4th September 1764; and from Naples, two years later:). “Give my kind services to my friends—especially to the household of faith—my dear Garland—to the worthy Colonel—to Cardinal S[croope], and to my fellow-labourer Pantagruel.”
Even in the last year of his life he looked forward to being present at a reunion at the castle: “We shall all meet from the east, and from the south, and (as at the last) be happy together.”
Faults the Demoniacs certainly had; but there is no reason to believe, indeed there is not a jot or tittle of evidence to support the suggestion, that they performed the blasphemous rites associated with the more famous institutions that served as their model. Their indulgences were limited to coarse stories and deep potations; which, after all, were regarded as venial sins in the eighteenth century. Even so, of course, it must be admitted they were not fit company for clergymen, and it is a matter for regret that Sterne should have been of the party. Doubtless Laurence told his story of “A Cock and a Bull” with the best of them; but he was no drunkard, and tried to induce Hall-Stevenson to give up the habit of heavy drinking.
“If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water, Eugenius” (so runs a passage in “Tristram Shandy”). “And, if I was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I.”
On the other hand, several of the Demoniacs were men of intelligence. With all his vices, Dashwood had brains of no mean order; Irvine, the schoolmaster, and a Cambridge D.D., had, at least, some reading; and Lascelles, a keen fisherman, could write verses—not very good verses, it is true—in Latin and English. It is doubtful, however, if he was that Robert Lascelles who in 1811 wrote the “Letters on Sporting,” in which he treated of angling, shooting, and coursing; although this rare work has been attributed to him. William Hewett, too, was a cultured man; he had been tutor to the Marquis of Granby, and was a friend of Voltaire. He had a pretty wit. It has been told how being in the Campidoglio at Rome, Hewett, who owned “no religion but that of nature,” made up to the bust of Jupiter, and, bowing very low, exclaimed in the Italian language, “I hope, sir, if ever you get your head above water again, you will remember that I paid my respects to you in your adversity.” Indeed that carousals at Skelton Castle were confined to the evening is shown by Hall-Stevenson’s account of his guest’s occupations during the day.
“Some fell to fiddling, some to fluting,