himself, he records that "she married one Weemans in Dublin, who used
her most unmercifully, spent his substance, became a bankrupt, and
left my poor sister to shift for herself, which she was able to do but
for a few months, for she went to a friend's house in the country and
died of a broken heart." Truly an unlucky family.[1] Only three to
survive the hardships among which the years of their infancy were
passed, and this to be the history of two out of the three survivors!

[Footnote 1: The mother, Mrs. Sterne, makes her appearance once more
for a moment in or about the year 1758. Horace Walpole, and after him
Byron, accused Sterne of having "preferred whining over a dead ass to
relieving a living mother," and the former went so far as to declare
"on indubitable authority" that Mrs. Sterne, "who kept a school (in
Ireland), having run in debt on account of an extravagant daughter,
would have rotted in a gaol if the parents of her scholars had not
raised a subscription for her." Even "the indubitable authority,"
however, does not positively assert--whatever may be meant to be
insinuated--that Sterne himself did nothing to assist his mother, and
Mr. Fitzgerald justly points out that to pay the _whole_ debts of a
bankrupt school might well have been beyond a Yorkshire clergyman's
means. Anyhow there is evidence that Sterne at a later date than this
was actively concerning himself about his mother's interests. She
afterwards came to York, whither he went to meet her; and he then
writes to a friend: "I trust my poor mother's affair is by this time
ended to _our_ comfort and hers."]




CHAPTER III.