Sterne's Eliza : some account of her life in India, with her letters written between 1757 and 1774

Introduction

Eliza Draper, whose life, illustrated by her correspondence, is sketched in the subsequent pages, was born in India in 1744 and died in England in 1778 at the early age of 25- Her fame rests chiefly on her friendship with Laurence Sterne. But, remarkable as that association was in many ways, it was only a brief episode in her not long life, extending over but three months from the opening days of January 1767 to April the 3rd of the same year. The intimacy was broken by Eliza's embarkation for India, and as she did not return to England until 1774 and Sterne died in 1768 the two never met again.

Whether Eliza's friendship with Sterne exceeded the limits of Platonic affection must remain for ever doubtful, but it should be remembered in her favour that at the time of her meeting with the novelist she was only 24, while Sterne, much broken in health and prematurely aged, was even then entering upon the illness which terminated his existence. In such circumstances it is more difficult to imagine guilt than innocence, more especially when we find, as we do from Eliza's sprightly letters, that her impressionable nature was flattered by the attentions of Sterne, who was then at the height of his fame, a literary lion whose company was eagerly sought by those who occupied high social positions.

However this question of moral culpability may be decided, Eliza has a title to consideration quite apart from her intimacy with the author of The Sentimental Journey. Her letters — a number of which are printed in full for the first time in these pages, thanks to the courtesy of the late Lord Basing, amongst whose family papers they are preserved — show her to have possessed intellectual attainments of no mean order. She wrote with fluency and charm, and had a gift of graphic description which gives vitality to the scenes from Anglo-Indian life in the far-away days of the mid-eighteenth century in which she lived in Western India.

The period of Eliza's life in India coincided with the epoch-making change which converted the East India

VI INTRODUCTION

Company from a trading venture into a great administrative body charged with the affairs of an Empire. Her first letter here published was written in the same year as Plassey was fought, and her final letter from India was penned in 1774, the memorable year in which Warren Hastings issued the proclamation announcing that the Company henceforth would directly administer the territories it had conquered. Many interesting sidelights are thrown in Eliza's correspondence on the important events which marked the progress of British domination as, in spite of some notable vicissitudes, it extended westward beyond the limits of Bengal and Madras. We catch vivid glimpses of the critical conflict with Hyder Ali, of Mysore, in the height of his power, and we are given an insight into the causes of the " regrettable incidents " on the British side which checked our arms and postponed the day of final conquest until long after Eliza had passed from the scene. But high as is the historic value of these intensely human documents, their chief interest will probably be found by the reader to centre in the sketches of Anglo-Indian life which Eliza so deftly draws. These, with her own dramatic life story, unfolded with almost painful minuteness in her letters, constitute a record of the manners and habits of expatriated Britons in India a century and a half since, which is equal to anything that the literature of that period furnishes.

A.W.

July 1922 W.L.S.