4 - Sterne and the invention of speed

Summary

The glory of motion

Early novelists such as Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding were concerned with issues of pace, in terms of how readers either skimmed or carefully considered their work, and how their characters moved through the landscape. Defoe contrasts a mad scramble on a strand in Robinson Crusoe with a Journal account of the same event, written from the comfort of a table and chair. Fielding promises to write a story that will sometimes seem to stand still, sometimes seem to fly, while depicting the different types of travel experienced by Tom Jones as he either moves painstakingly through country byways, or bowls along the turnpiked postroads to London. Smollett, after 20 years of modifying picaresque, ramble, and chivalric traditions, patterns the journey of Humphry Clinker according to the different rates of progress experienced by tourist, explorer, and traveller. However, it is only with Laurence Sterne and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67) that a physical sense of speed enters the novel.

The first injection of speed into narrative can be pinpointed quite accurately. Between January 1761, when volumes III and IV were published, and December of the same year, Tristram has an epiphany on the road between Stamford and Stilton that he believes will change his writing for ever. Right at the start of the next instalment, volume V, he declares his unease at rehearsing old ideas culled from earlier books. His vow to swap his library for new material is inspired by the excitement of a rapid coach journey. As he prepares to shock the world with a chapter on whiskers, Tristram claims that his originality is the result of the sensation of speed, which convinced him to write in a new way rather than go on at the old ‘pettifogging rate’. Tristram declares

If it had not been for those two mettlesome tits, and that madcap of a postilion, who drove them from Stilton to Stamford, the thought had never entered my head. He flew like lightning ––– there was a slope of three miles and a half ––– we scarce touched the ground ––– the motion was most rapid ––– most impetuous ––– ‘twas communicated to my brain ––– my heart partook of it –––