Not Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Sacharissa, as I will love, and sing thee, my bride elect! All these names, eminent as they were, shall give place to thine, Eliza.” Thus Sterne in a letter to Mrs Elizabeth Draper, written in the early part of the year 1767; and though, in spite of this fervent protestation, not Stella, nor Maintenon, nor Sacharissa has paled before Eliza, yet most assuredly Eliza has come to be ranked with them among the heroines of romance.

Of the antecedents of Mrs Draper nothing apparently was generally known to writers on the subject until 1897, when Mr Thomas Seccombe, in the article in the Dictionary of National Biography on William Sclater, Rector of Pitminster, showed that her descent could be traced from William’s father, Anthony. Anthony Sclater, born in 1520, was appointed in 1570 Rector of Leighton Buzzard, which benefice he held until his death in 1620, when he was succeeded in this clerical office by a younger son, Christopher. Christopher’s son William served in the Civil Wars as a Cornet of Horse, and subsequently entered the Church. He was presented in 1666 to the living of St James’s, Clerkenwell, and later became Rector of Hadley. He died in 1690, having outlived by five years his son Francis. Francis had a son Christopher, born in 1679, who held the livings of Loughton and Chingford, in Essex, married in 1707 Elizabeth, daughter of John May, of Working, Hants, and by her had thirteen children. The tenth son, May, born on 29th October 1719, went out to India, probably as a cadet in the service of the East India Company, and there married a Miss Whitehall, who bore him three daughters, Elizabeth (Sterne’s Eliza), born on 5th April 1744, Mary, and Louisa. The only other children of Christopher with which this narrative is concerned are Elizabeth, who married Dr Thomas Pickering, Vicar of St Sepulchre’s, and Richard, the fourth son, born in 1712, who became an alderman of the City of London.16

When his daughters were born, May Sclater was factor of Anjengo, on the Malabar coast, and it was long assumed that his girls were brought up there. Even so late as 1893, Mr James Douglas, the author of “Bombay and Western India,” gave credence to the legend, and after stating that there were very few Europeans at Anjengo, “it seems a marvel,” he added, “how, never having been in Europe, Eliza should yet have been able to carry herself and attract so much attention there from men who, whatever were their morals, claimed a first position in society and letters.” However, as a matter of fact, like most children born in India of English parents, Eliza and her sisters were at an early age sent home for the sake of their health.

In England Eliza stayed alternately with her aunt, Mrs Pickering, and with her uncle, Richard, for whose eldest children, Thomas Mathew and Elizabeth, she conceived an enduring affection. Not until she was in her fourteenth year did she return to her father, now a widower, and she arrived two days after Christmas, 1757, at Bombay, where he then resided.

“I was never half so much rejoiced at going to any ball in my life as when we first saw the land,” (she wrote to her cousin in England, Elizabeth Sclater, 13th March 1758). “The Dutch people are white, but their servants are all black, they wear nothing at all about them but a little piece of rag about their waist which to us at first appeared very shocking.”

“My Papa’s house is the best in Bombay, and where a great deal of company comes every day after dinner.”

Among the company that came to May Sclater’s house was Daniel Draper, who, entering the East India Company’s service in or about 1749, had in the intervening nine years risen to a fairly good position. In those days lads went out to India at an early age, and Draper, in 1757, may well have been no more than thirty, though Dr Sidney Lee has suggested that he was at least four years older. Draper fell in love with Eliza, and married her on 28th July 1758, she being then but fourteen. Such marriages, however, were not then uncommon in India. Two children were born of this union, a boy in 1759, and a girl in October 1761.

Mrs Draper suffered from ill-health, and in 1765, with her husband and children, she came to England. The children were taken to an establishment at Enfield, where Anglo-Indian children were cared for during the absence of their parents in the tropical zone, and presently Draper had to return to his post in Bombay. Mrs Draper, however, remained in England to recover her strength. She stayed with relatives of her mother and father, but with her movements we are not here concerned until she was temporarily domiciled in London during the winter of 1766. It was not until December of that year that she met Sterne, probably at the town house in Gerrard Street, Soho, of William James and his wife—the “Mr and Mrs J.” of Sterne’s published correspondence.

William James, Commodore of the Bombay Marine, having amassed a fortune by prize-money and mercantile enterprises, retired from the service at the age of eight and thirty, and came to England in 1759, when he purchased an estate at Eltham, near Blackheath, and married Anne, daughter of Edmund Goddard, of Hartham, in Wiltshire. Presently he became chairman of the East India Company, and in 1778, five years before his death, he was made a baronet. When Sterne first became acquainted with the Jameses cannot now be determined, but probably it was not earlier than after his return from the second visit to the Continent. It is evident, however, that he was on very intimate terms with them at the end of 1766, as his references to them in his letters to Mrs Draper show, though they are mentioned for the first time to his daughter, then with her mother at Marseilles, in a letter dated 23rd February 1767. In this letter we learn that the gossips were already busy coupling Sterne’s name with Mrs Draper’s.

“I do not wish to know who was the busy fool, who made your mother uneasy about Mrs Draper. ’Tis true I have a friendship for her, but not to infatuation—I believe I have judgment enough to discern hers, and every woman’s faults. I honour thy mother for her answer—‘that she wished not to be informed, and begged him to drop the subject.’ ”

Nor was Mrs Sterne’s informant the only person who disapproved of the relations of Sterne and Mrs Draper.

“The ——’s, by heavens, are worthless! I have heard enough to tremble at the articulation of the name.—How could you, Eliza, leave them (or suffer them to leave you, rather), with impressions the least favourable? I have told thee enough to plant disgust against their treachery to thee, to the last hour of thy life! Yet still, thou toldest Mrs James at last, that thou believest they affectionately love thee.—Her delicacy to my Eliza, and true regard to her ease of mind, have saved thee from hearing more glaring proofs of their baseness.—For God’s sake write not to them; nor foul thy fair character with such polluted hearts. They love thee! What proof? Is it their actions that say so? or their zeal for those attachments, which do thee honour, and make thee happy? or their tenderness for thy fame? No.—But they weep, and say tender things.—Adieu to such for ever. Mrs James’s honest heart revolts against the idea of ever returning them one visit. I honour her, and I honour thee, for almost every act of thy life, but this blind partiality for an unworthy being.”

The remonstrances of these friends of Eliza were not so outrageous as Sterne deemed them. There was, indeed, some ground for gossip, though perhaps not for scandal—enough, certainly, to alarm people interested in the lady: Sterne’s visits to Mrs Draper were too frequent, and Mrs Draper was so indiscreet as to visit Sterne at his lodgings in Old Bond Street and dine there with him tÊte-À-tÊte. There has been much discussion as to whether the relations of the Brahmin and the Brahmine, as they loved to call each other, were innocent or guilty; but there can be no doubt that the intimacy was not carried to the last extreme. “I have had no commerce whatever with the sex—not even with my wife—these fifteen years,” Sterne told his physicians shortly after Eliza had returned to India. This in itself would not be conclusive evidence, though there could have been no reason for him to lie to these people; but the fact that he wrote down this conversation in a Journal intended exclusively for the eye of Mrs Draper makes it certain that his assertion was accurate—at least, so far as he and she were concerned. A man would scarcely trouble falsely to tell his mistress in confidence that he had had no intimacy with her. The Jameses most certainly believed in the innocence of the friendship, else they could scarcely have countenanced it; and not even Thackeray, who shares with John Croft the distinction of being Sterne’s most envenomed critic, could have believed that the following letter (whether ultimately despatched or not) could have been written by a guilty man.

LAURENCE STERNE TO DANIEL DRAPER

“Sir, I own it, Sir, that the writing a Letter to a gentleman I have not the honour to be known to, and a Letter likewise upon no kind of business (in the Ideas of the World) is a little out of the common course of Things—but I’m so myself—and the Impulse which makes me take up my pen is out of the Common way too—for it arises from the honest pain I should feel in avowing in so great esteem and friendship as I bear Mrs Draper—If I did not wish and hope to extend it to Mr Draper also. I fell in Love with your Wife—but ’tis a Love you would honour me for—for ’tis so like that I bear my own daughter who is a good creature, that I scarce distinguish a difference betwixt it—the moment I had—that Moment would have been the last. I wish it had been in my power to have been of true use to Mrs Draper at this Distance from her best Protector—I have bestowed a great deal of pains (or rather I should say pleasure) upon her head—her heart needs none—and her head as little as any Daughter of Eve’s—and indeed less than any it has been my fate to converse with for some years.—I wish I could make myself of any Service to Mrs Draper whilst she is in India—and I in the world—for worldly affairs I could be of none.—I wish you, dear Sir, many years’ happiness. ’Tis a part of my Litany to pray for her health and Life—She is too good to be lost—and I would out of pure zeal take a pilgrimage to Mecca to seek a Medicine.”17

If the intimacy was, as is here contended, not carried to the last extreme, there is no doubt of the vigour with which Sterne and his Brahmine flirted, and therefore Sterne cannot be acquitted of insincerity when he wrote to Daniel Draper that he looked upon Eliza as a daughter. But if there is little that is paternal in the few letters of his to Mrs Draper that have been preserved, on the other hand there is nothing from which the conclusion of undue intimacy can be built up.

It may be taken for granted that Mrs Draper’s feelings were not very deeply engaged by Sterne. A woman of three and twenty does not often find such enduring attraction in a man of four and fifty as a man of that age does in a woman more than thirty years his junior. But Sterne had fame and undoubted powers of fascination, and Mrs Draper had in her composition an innocent vanity that induced her to encourage him. The homage of one of the most famous men in England was a compliment not lightly to be ignored; and, being flattered, Eliza, unhappy at home, was far from unwilling to enjoy herself abroad. She was clever and bright—perhaps a little bitter, too, remembering that she had been married before she was old enough to know what marriage meant, to a man with uncongenial tastes, dour, and bad-tempered. It is to her credit that she never told Sterne of her marital infelicity, though candid friends left him in no doubt as to her relations with her husband. “Mrs James sunk my heart with an infamous account of Draper and his detested character,” Sterne wrote in the “Journal to Eliza” on 17th April 1767, a few weeks after the lady to whom it was addressed had sailed for India.

Eliza is a figure so fascinating to the world interested in the personal side of literary history that a few pages may perhaps be devoted to tracing her life after her acquaintance with Sterne. She was undoubtedly an attractive woman, and made conquest of others than the author of “Tristram Shandy” during this visit to England. The AbbÉ Raynal, a man about the same age as Sterne, fell a victim to her charms, and expressed his passion in a strange and wild piece of bombast, which he inserted in the second edition of his “History of the Indies.”

It was not only to men of middle age that Mrs Draper appealed, for her cousin and playmate of her youth, Thomas Mathew Sclater, was one of her most devoted admirers. That she was fascinating may be taken for granted, but wherein lay her attractiveness is not so clear. Raynal laid more stress on the qualities of her mind than on her appearance. Sterne, too, by his own not too artless confession, was in the first instance drawn to her by something other than her good looks.

“I have just returned from our dear Mrs James’s, where I have been talking of thee for three hours” (he wrote to her when they had become well acquainted). “She has got your picture, and likes it; but Marriot, and some other judges, agree that mine is the better, and expressive of a sweeter character. But what is that to the original? yet I acknowledge that hers is a picture for the world, and mine is calculated only to please a very sincere friend, or sentimental philosopher.—In the one, you are dressed in smiles, and with all the advantage of silks, pearls, and ermine;—in the other, simple as a vestal—appearing the good girl nature made you: which, to me, conveys an idea of more unaffected sweetness, than Mrs Draper, habited for conquest, in a birthday suit, with her countenance animated, and her dimples visible.—If I remember right, Eliza, you endeavoured to collect every charm of your person into your face, with more than common care, the day you sat for Mrs James.—Your colour, too, brightened; and your eyes shone with more than usual brilliancy. I then requested you to come simple and unadorned when you sat for me—knowing (as I see with unprejudiced eyes) that you could receive no addition from the silk-worm’s aid, or jeweller’s polish. Let me now tell you a truth, which, I believe, I have uttered before. When I first saw you, I beheld you as an object of compassion, and as a very plain woman. The mode of your dress (though fashionable) disfigured you. But nothing now could render you such, but the being solicitous to make yourself admired as a handsome one.—You are not handsome, Eliza, nor is yours a face that will please the tenth part of your beholders—but are something more; for I scruple not to tell you, I never saw so intelligent, so animated, so good a countenance; nor was there (nor ever will be) that man of sense, tenderness, and feeling, in your company three hours, that was not (or will not be) your admirer, or friend, in consequence of it; that is, if you assume, or assumed, no character foreign to your own, but appeared the artless being nature designed you for. A something in your eyes, and voice, you possess in a degree more persuasive than any woman I ever saw, read, or heard of. But it is that bewitching sort of nameless excellence that men of nice sensibility alone can be touched with.”

While all are agreed that Mrs Draper had beauty of expression rather than perfectly formed features, there was given a description of her as having “an appearance of artless innocence, a transparent complexion, consequent upon delicate health, but without any sallowness, brilliant eyes, a melodious voice, an intellectual countenance, unusually lighted up with much animation and expressing a sweet gentleness of disposition.”18 She had, we are told, engaging manners and numerous accomplishments. She talked well and wrote well, and could play the piano and the guitar. Her faults were a tendency to pecuniary extravagance and a liking for admiration—which latter trait, in her correspondence, she admitted and bewailed. She was also, it must be admitted, a most arrant flirt.

MRS DRAPER TO HER COUSIN, THOMAS MATHEW SCLATER

“Earl Chatham, May 2nd, 1767.
(Off Santiago.)

“... From the vilest spot of earth I ever saw, and inhabited by the ugliest of Beings—I greet my beloved cousin—St Jago the place—a charming passage to it—fair winds and fine weather all the way. Health, too, my friend, is once more returned to her enthusiastic votary. I am all Life, air, and spirits—who’d have thought it—considering me in the light of an Exile. And how do you, my Sclater?—and how sat the thoughts of my departure on your Eyes? and how the reality of it? I want you to answer me a thousand questions, yet hope not for an answer to them for many, many months. I am.... Did you receive a letter I wrote you from the Downs, with a copy of one enclosed from Sterne to me with his sermons and ‘Shandy’? I sent such to you, notwithstanding the Bagatelle airs I give myself—my heart heaves with sighs, and my eyes betray its agitating emotions, every time I think of England and my valuable connections there—ah, my Sclater, I almost wish I had not re-visited that charming country, or that it had been my fate to have resided in it for ever, but in the first instance the Lord’s will be done, mine I hope may be accomplished in the second.”

MRS DRAPER TO THOMAS MATHEW SCLATER

“Earl Chatham, November 29th, 1767.
(Off the Malabar Coast.)

“They all tell me I’m so improved—nothing—I say to what I was in England—nobody can contradict the assertion—and if it adds to my consequence, you know—it is good policy. Always self to be the subject of your pen (you say) Eliza—why not, my dear cousin? Why have I not as good a right to tell you of my perfections as Montaigne had to divulge to the World he loved white wine better than red? with several other Whims, Capricios, bodily complaints, infirmities of temper, &c., &c.—of the old Gascoignes, not but I love his essays better than most modern ones—and think those that have branded him with the name of Egotist—deserve to be Debar’d the pleasure of speaking of—or looking at themselves—how is it we love to laugh, and yet we do not often approve the person who feeds that voracious passion? Human nature this! vile rogue!—’tis a bad picture—however there’s a great resemblance.... Once a year is tax enough on a tender Conscience, to sit down premeditatedly to write fibs—and let it not enter your imagination that you are to correspond with me in such terms as your heart dictates. No, my dear Sclater—such a conduct though perfectly innocent (and to me worth all the studied periods of Labour’d Eloquence) would be offensive to my Husband—whose humour I now am resolved to study—and if possible conform to if the most punctilious attention—can render me necessary to his happiness ... be so—Honour—prudence—and the interest of my beloved children ... and the necessary Sacrifice—and I will make it. Opposing his will will not do—let me now try, if the conforming to it, in every particular will better my condition—it is my wish, Sclater—it is my ambition (indeed it is)—to be more distinguished as a good wife than as the agreeable woman I am in your partial Eyes even—’tis true I have vanity enough to think I have understanding sufficient
to give laws to my Family, but as that cannot be, and Providence for wise purposes constituted the male the Head—I will endeavour to act an underpart with grace. ‘Where much is given, much is required.’ I will think of this proverb and learn humility.”

MRS DRAPER TO HER AUNT, MRS PICKERING

“Bombay, High Meadow, March 21st, 1768.

“I found my Husband in possession of health, and a good post. Providence will, I hope, continue to him the blessing of the one and the Directors at home, that of the other. My agreeable sister is now a widow, and so much improved in mind and person, as to be a very interesting object. May she be so far conscious of her own worth as to avoid throwing herself away a second time.”

MRS DRAPER TO THOMAS MATHEW SCLATER

“Tellichery, May 1769.

“Mr D. has lost his beneficial post at Bombay, and is, by order of the Company, now Chief in one of the Factories subordinate to it. This was a terrible blow to us at first, but use has in some measure reconciled the mortifying change, though we have no prospect of acquiring such an independence here as will enable us to settle in England for many, very many years, as the country for some time has been the seat of war, and still continues subject to frequent alarms from the growing power of an ambitious usurper. I’ve no doubt but a general massacre of the English will ensue, if he once more visits this coast. Our fortifications are a wretched burlesque upon such. Troops not better soldiers than trained Bands, and too few in number to cope with so able a general and politician.

“I was within an hour once of being his prisoner, and cannot say but I thought it a piece of good fortune to escape that honour, though he has promised to treat all English ladies well that cheerfully submit to the laws of his seraglio. The way of life I’m now in is quite new to me, but not utterly unpleasant. I’m by turns the wife of a Merchant, Soldier, and Innkeeper, for in such different capacities is the Chief of Tellichery destined to act. The War is a bar to Commerce, yet I do a great deal of business in the mercantile way, as my husband’s amanuensis. You know his inability to use the pen, and as he has lost his Clerks and Accountant, without any prospect of acquiring others, I’m necessitated to pass the greatest part of my time in his office, and consent to do so, as it gives me consequence and him pleasure. I really should not be unhappy here if the Motive for which we left England could be as easily accomplished as at Bombay, but that cannot be without an advantageous place—then indeed we should do very well.

“The country is pleasant and healthy (a second Montpelier), our house (a fort and property of the Company) a magnificent one, furnished, too, at our Master’s expense, and the allowance for supporting it creditably, what you would term genteelly, though it does not defray the charge of Liquors, which alone amount to six hundred a year, and such a sum, vast as it seems, does not seem extravagant in our situation. For we are obliged to keep a public table, and six months in the year have a full house of shipping Gentry, that resort to us for traffic and intelligence from all parts of India, China, and Asia. Our Society at other times is very confined, as it only consists of a few factors, and two or three families: and such we cannot expect great intercourse with on account of the heavy rains and terrible thunder with lightning to which this Coast is peculiarly subject six months in the year.... I flatter myself I’m beloved by such of the Malabars as are within reach of my notice. I was born upon their coast, which is an argument in my favour.... I never go out without a guard of six Sepoys (Mahomedan soldiers) armed with drawn sabres and loaded pistols, as some of the natives are treacherous and might be induced to insult a woman of my Consequence without a Veil.”

MRS DRAPER TO THOMAS MATHEW SCLATER

“Surat, April 5th, 1771.

“... I received your affectionate letter, my dear Coz, and I prophecy that I shall answer it very stupidly for I danced last night—supped on a cool terrace, and sat up till three o’clock this morning. This may appear nothing very extraordinary to you, my spirits and love of the graceful movement considered, but it was a very great undertaking, the climate, my plan of temperance and exercise considered; for you must know that I find it necessary to live simply mechanical, in order to preserve the remains of a broken constitution and some traces of my former appearance. I rise with the lark daily, and as constantly amble some eight or sixteen miles—after the fox too, occasionally, but field sports have something Royal with them here. What think you of hunting the Antelope with Leopards? This I have frequently done, and a noble diversion it is. Early hours and abstemious Diet are absolutely necessary to the possession of health in India, and I generally conform to the one, and invariably practise the other. Ten or eleven o’clock at the latest, is the usual time of retiring, and soup or vegetables with sherbet and milk constitutes the whole of my regimen. Still I cannot acquire anything like confirmed health or strength here; but if this mode of living preserves my being, my cheerfulness and natural disposition to make the best of things will I hope teach me to bear it.... At least I will not thro’ any fault of my own, return to Europe with the dregs of life only, but endeavour by every honest means to preserve such a position of animating spirit as may qualify me for the character of an agreeable companion; and then, who knows but cool weather, fashionable society and the animating presence of those I love may enable me

‘Formed by their converse happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe.’

“Do you know that I begin to think all praise foreign but that of true desert. It was not always so, but this same solitude produces reflection, and reflection is good.

“It is an enemy to everything that is not founded on truth, consequently I grow fond of my own approbation and endeavour to deserve it by such a mode of thinking and acting as may enable me to acquire it. Seriously, my dear Sclater, I believe I shall one day be a good moralist.”

MRS DRAPER TO MRS RICHARD SCLATER

“Bombay, February 6th, 1772.

“I cannot say that we have any immediate hopes of returning to England as independent people. India is not what it was, my dear Madam, nor is even a moderate fortune to be acquired here, without more assiduity and time than the generality of English persons can be induced to believe or think of as absolutely necessary; but this Idea, painful as it is to many adventurers who’ve no notion of the difficulties they are to encounter in the road to wealth, would not affect me considerably, if I had not some very material reasons for wishing to leave the Climate expeditiously. My health is much prejudiced by a Residence in it, my affection for an only child, strongly induces me to bid farewell to it before it is too late to benefit by a change of scene. Mr Draper will in all probability be obliged to continue here some years longer, but, as to myself, I hope to be permitted to call myself an inhabitant of your country before I am two years older.”

MRS DRAPER TO MRS ANNE JAMES

“Bombay, April 15th, 1772.

“You wonder, my dear, at my writing to Becket—I’ll tell you why I did so. I have heard some Anecdotes extremely disadvantageous to the Characters of the Widow and Daughter [of Sterne], and that from Persons who said they had been personally acquainted with them, both in France and England.... Some part of their Intelligence corroborated what I had a thousand times heard from the Lips of Yorick, almost invariably repeated.... The Secret of my Letters being in her hands, had somehow become extremely Public: it was noticed to me by almost every Acquaintance I had in the Ships, or at this Settlement—this alarmed me, for at that time I had never communicated the circumstance and could not suspect you of acting by me in any manner which I would not have acted in by myself—One Gentleman in particular told me that both you and I should be deceived, if we had the least reliance on the Honor or Principles of Mrs Sterne, for that, when she had secured as much as she could for suppressing the Correspondence she was capable of selling it to a Bookseller afterwards—by either refusing to return it to you—or taking Copies of it, without our knowledge—and therefore He advised me, if I was averse to its Publication, to take every means in my Power of Suppressing it—this influenced me to write to Becket and promise Him a reward equal to his Expectations if He would deliver the letters to you....

“My dear Friend, that stiffness you complain’d of, when I called you Mrs James I said I could not accost you with my usual Freedom entirely arose from a Depression of Spirits, too natural to the mortified, when severe Disappointments gall the Sense—You had told me that Sterne was no more—I had heard it before, but this Confirmation of it truly afflicted me; for I was almost an Idolator of his Worth, while I found Him the Mild, Generous, Good Yorick, We had so often thought Him to be—to add to my regret for his loss his Widow had my letters in her Power (I never entertained a good opinion of her), and meant to subject me to Disgrace and Inconvenience by the Publication of them. You know not the contents of these letters, and it was natural for you to form the worst judgment of them, when those who had seen ’em reported them unfavourably, and were disposed to dislike me on that Account. My dear girl! had I not cause to feel humbled so Circumstanced—and can you wonder at my sensations communicating themselves to my Pen?

“Miss Sterne’s did indeed, my dear, give me a great deal of pain—it was such a one as I by no means deserved in answer to one written in the true Spirit of kindness, however it might have been constructed.—Mr Sterne had repeatedly told me, that his Daughter was as well acquainted with my Character as he was with my Appearance—in all his letters wrote since my leaving England this Circumstance is much dwelt upon. Another, too, that of Mrs Sterne being in too precarious a State of Health, to render it possible that she would survive many months. Her violence of temper (indeed, James, I wish not to recriminate or be severe just now) and the hatefulness of her Character, are strongly urged to me, as the Cause of his Indifferent Health, the whole of his Misfortunes, and the Evils that would probably Shorten his Life—the visit Mrs Sterne meditated, some time antecedent to his Death, he most pathetically lamented, as an adventure that would wound his Peace and greatly embarrass his Circumstances—the former on account of the Eye Witness He should be to his Child’s Affections having been alienated from Him by the artful Misrepresentations of her Mother under whose Tutorage she had ever been—and the latter, from the Rapacity of her Disposition—for well do I know, says he, ‘that the sole Intent of her Visit is to plague and fleece me—had I Money enough, I would buy off this Journey, as I have done several others—but till my Sentimental Work is published I shall not have a single sou more than will Indemnify People for my immediate Expenses.’ The receipt of this Intelligence I heard of Yorick’s Death. The very first Ship which left us Afterwards, I wrote to Miss Sterne by—and with all the freedom which my Intimacy with her Father and his Communications warranted—I purposely avoided speaking of her Mother, for I knew nothing to her Advantage, and I had heard a great deal to the reverse—so circumstanced—how could I with any kind of Delicacy Mention a Person who was hateful to my departed Friend, when for the sake of that very Friend I wished to confer a kindness on his Daughter—and to enhance the value of it, Solicited her Society and consent to share my Prospects, as the highest Favor which could be shown to Myself—indeed, I knew not, but Mrs Sterne, from the Description I had received of her, might be no more—or privately confined, if in Being, owing to a Malady, which I have been told the violence of her temper subjects her to.”19

It has been stated by many writers that the cause of the unhappy life led by the Drapers at Bombay was the fault of Sterne, whose insidious flatteries undermined the lady’s moral rectitude. This, not to put too fine a point on it, is a conclusion as absurd as it is unwarrantable. Mrs Draper was far too intelligent not to realise that Sterne was a sentimentalist, and not to understand that such allusions as to her being his second wife were, if in bad taste, at least meant to be playful, seeing that he was, and knew he was, standing on the threshold of the valley of the shadow of death. Mrs Draper left her husband six years after she had said farewell to Sterne, not because of the author’s influence on her, but because her patience, weakened by a long course of unkind behaviour, was finally outraged by her husband’s obvious partiality for her maid, Mrs Leeds. She had long desired to leave Draper, and now a legitimate excuse was furnished, which in the eyes of all unprejudiced persons justified the step.

Draper, who seems to have had some suspicion of her intention, watched her closely, and for a while it was impossible for her to get away. At last she escaped from Mazagon on board a King’s cutter, and it was stated that she had eloped with one of her admirers, Sir John Clark. The truth was that she accepted his escort to the house of her uncle, Thomas Whitehall, who lived at Masulipatam.

MRS DRAPER TO THOMAS MATHEW SCLATER

“Rajahmundy, 80 miles from Masulipatam,
“January 20th, 1774.

“... I will let you into my present situation. I live entirely with my uncle, and I shall continue to do so to the last hour of my life if he continues to wish it as much as he does at present.”

Whether her uncle did not continue to desire her company, or whether she tired of the life, cannot be determined, but later, in the year 1774, Mrs Draper returned to England. There she took up her friendship with the Jameses from the point at which it had been interrupted by her departure seven years earlier for India, and she was soon the centre of a distinguished circle. The publication, in 1775, of some of Sterne’s letters to her made her somewhat unpleasantly notorious, and she withdrew from London to the comparative seclusion of Bristol, where she remained until her death, three years later. She was buried in Bristol Cathedral, where a monument, depicting two classical figures bending over a shield, one bearing a torch, the other a dove, was erected in her honour. The shield bore the inscription:

Sacred
To the Memory
of
Mrs Eliza Draper,
in whom
Genius and Benevolence
were united.
She died August 3, 1778,
aged 35.