[155] Mrs. M. Robinson, his mother, inherited Coveney, Cambs, from her father, and the Kentish property as heiress of her mother, Sarah, daughter and heiress of Thomas Morris.
MRS. STERNE
On the subject of the Sterne marriage, in a note to Sarah from Elizabeth we see further—
“Dear Madam Sally,
“I am glad to hear you are well, and that your eyes are brilliant, but pray don’t use them too soon, for you will have reason to repent it. I never saw a more comical letter than my sweet cousin’s,[156] with her heart and head full of matrimony, pray do matrimonial thoughts come upon your recovery? for she seems to think it a symptom.”
Then after many cautions to her sister as to her health, and thankfulness at her being out of danger, she adds—
“Matt mentions Mrs. Sterne’s match, of which he had an account from Harry Goddard, who is at Bath. Mr. Sterne has a hundred a year living, with a good prospect of better preferment. He was a great rake, but being japanned and married, has varnished his character. I do not comprehend what my cousin means by their little desires, if she had said little stomachs, it had been some help to their economy, but when people have not enough for the necessaries of life, what avails it that they can do without the superfluities and pomps of it? Does she mean that she won’t keep a coach and six, and four footmen? What a wonderful occupation she made of courtship that it left her no leisure nor inclination to think of any thing else. I wish they may live well together.”
[156] Elizabeth Lumley had been very ill just before her engagement to Laurence Sterne: vide his life by Traill.
“TRISTRAM”
At this time Sterne was Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest,[157] some eight miles from York, and his uncle, Jacob Sterne, gave him a prebendal stall in York Cathedral about the same time. For two years he had courted Elizabeth Lumley. She was much in love with him, but from smallness of means on either side, deemed marriage imprudent. She, however, had a desperate illness, and informed Sterne she had made him her heir. His gratitude for this, and affection, recalled her to life and matrimony. For details of this I must refer the reader to the various lives written of “Tristram,” as his nickname was to be later in the Robinson family.