This is one of a number of illustrations created by Véra Willoughby (1870-1939) for an edition of Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published in 1927. It was long considered that Willougby was born in Hungary but this was a fabrication apparently to appear more interesting. She was in fact from South Norwood and attended the Slade School of Art in London. In 1917 she met a much younger man, Peter Llewelyn Davies, who had been the inspiration for J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Davies went on to become a publisher, commissioning her to create the illustrations for A Sentimental Journey and other texts.

The image relates to the novel's final chapter, entitled The Case of Delicacy. Parson Yorick is obliged to share his hotel room with a lady and her maid, so they meet to draw up a set of house rules. "We sat down to supper; and had we not had more generous wine to it than a little inn in Savoy could have furnished, our tongues would have been tied up, till necessity herself had set them at liberty - but the lady having a few bottles of Burgundy in her voiture sent down her fille de chambre for a couple of them..." Yorick and the lady finally retire to separate beds and a night of erotic tension, with the maid close at hand.

Willoughby also produced a number of theatrical designs and illustrations in the early 1920s, using the name Vera Petrovna.