No man’s, but any woman’s vassel,
If he could find a way to suit her”;
so he wrote himself down; and the description is good so far as it goes. But though “My Cousin Anthony” thus indicates that, unlike Sterne, he has no liking for field sports, he does not mention that he found his pleasure at home in the great library, that was so rich in what Bagehot has described as “old folio learning and the amatory reading of other days.” There the owner browsed for hours together, and he wrought better than he knew when he introduced his friend Sterne to the apartment and made him free of it, for there it was that Sterne found in many quaint forgotten volumes much of that strange lore with which the elder Shandy’s mind was packed. Dr Carlyle found Hall-Stevenson a “highly-accomplished and well-bred gentleman,” and Sterne’s opinion of his old college friend is clearly shown not only in his letters but in the character of “Eugenius” in “Tristram Shandy.” There must have been virtues in the man who stood for Eugenius, else Sterne, who had as keen an eye for the weaknesses of his fellows as any author that ever lived, would not have immortalised him as the wise, kindly counsellor of Yorick. How tenderly Sterne rallied “Cousin Anthony” upon his hypochondria.
“And so you think this [letter] cursed stupid—but that, my dear H., depends much upon the quotâ horâ of your shabby clock, if the pointer of it is in any quarter between ten in the morning or four in the afternoon—I give it up—or if the day is obscured by dark engendering clouds of either wet or dry weather, I am still lost—but who knows but it be five—and the day as fine a day as ever shone upon the earth since the destruction of Sodom—and peradventure your honour may have got a good hearty dinner to-day, and eat and drink your intellectuals into a placidulish and blandulish amalgama—to bear nonsense, so much for that.”
So he wrote from Coxwould in August 1761; and rather more than a year later, when he was at Toulouse, he reverted to the subject:
“I rejoice from my heart, down to my reins, that you have snatched so many happy and sunshiny days out of the hands of the blue devils. If we live to meet and join our forces as heretofore, we will give these gentry a drubbing—and turn them for ever out of their usurped citadel—some legions of them have been put to flight already by your operations this last campaign—and I hope to have a hand in dispersing the remainder the first time my dear cousin sets up his banners again under the square tower.”
Once, indeed, Sterne tried to cure his friend. Hall-Stevenson had a great fear of the effect of the east wind upon his health, and he had a weather-cock placed so that he could see it from the window of his room, and he would consult it every morning. When the wind blew from that quarter he would not get up, or, being up, would retire to bed. During one of Sterne’s visits to Skelton Castle he bribed a lad to climb up one night and tie the vane to the west; and Hall-Stevenson, after the customary inspection of the weather-cock, joined his guests the next day without any ill effect, although as a matter of fact an east wind was blowing. The trick was subsequently explained; but it is doubtful if it cured the malade imaginaire.
Hall-Stevenson was as devoted to Sterne as Sterne to him, and he made agreeable reference to their affection: