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Volume 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Sentimental Journey, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sentimentality
Travel
Sexuality and Kindness
National vs. Personal Identity
Religion
Summary
Analysis
The old French soldier’s words on travel and toleration remind Yorick of Polonius’s speech to his son in Hamlet, so on the way home from the Opera, he visits a bookseller intending to buy Shakespeare’s complete works. The bookseller denies that he has Shakespeare’s complete works. When Yorick points to a copy on the counter, the bookseller tells him that it belongs to Count de B****, who only sent it to the shop to be bound. The bookseller goes on to say that Count de B**** adores both English literature and English people. Yorick says the bookseller’s courtesy makes him want to spend money in his store.
This passage alludes to Act 1, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, in which the king’s counselor Polonius gives advice to his son Laertes before Laertes travels abroad. Since the character Polonius is notoriously a braggart, the novel may be gently satirizing Yorick and the old French gentlemen’s pat pro-travel sentiments by comparing them to Polonius’s speech. On the other hand, the speech contains the famous advice “to thine own self be true,” which the novel may be unironically endorsing. This passage also introduces Count de B****, another major French character notable for his love of British culture.
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A chambermaid enters the bookstore, asks for Les Egarments du Coeur & de L’Esprit, and pays for it. Yorick questions why she’d be interested in such a book, unless she has fallen in love or someone has broken her heart. The girl prays that God will guard her from that. Yorick advises her to stick to that sentiment, puts a crown in her purse, and suggests that she will remember his advice so long as she has the money—so she shouldn’t spend it. The girl swears to save the money.
Les Egarments du Coeur & de L’Esprit is a French novel by Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, published 1736–1738. In English, the novel’s title translates roughly to “Distractions of the Heart and of the Mind.” In the 18th century, it was considered scandalous due to its sexual and romantic content. As Yorick did with the grisset earlier, here he also displays kindness toward a lower-class woman by giving her money. Yet the reader wonders whether he has ulterior sexual motives, given how he questions the chambermaid about her love life.
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Yorick and the chambermaid leave the bookshop. He asks her directions to the hotel de Modene. She gives two possible sets of directions, and Yorick chooses the one that allows him to walk with her longer. The chambermaid mentions that she serves Madame R—. Yorick, surprised, exclaims that he has a letter for Madame R—. He asks the chambermaid to send her mistress his good wishes and announce his intention to visit the next day. They walk along together a little longer. At one point, looking at her, Yorick wonders whether he and she could be related. When it comes time for them to part, Yorick considers kissing her but instead “bid[s] God bless her.”
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Back at the hotel, La Fleur tells Yorick that the police came looking for him. Yorick knows why: England and France are at war, and he has entered France without a passport. The hotelier comes into Yorick’s rooms to repeat La Fleur’s story about the police and expresses his hope that Yorick has a passport. Yorick admits he doesn’t. The hotelier asks whether Yorick has French friends who can help him get a passport, and Yorick says no. The hotelier suggests that Yorick will be thrown into the Bastile. Yorick says that as he’s rented his hotel room for a month, he won’t be leaving. The hotelier exclaims at Englishmen’s strangeness and exits.
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Downplaying his passport problem, Yorick chats with La Fleur over dinner. Once La Fleur has left, however, Yorick ponders his situation. He remembers his friend Eugenius offering him travel money before he set out. Refusing, Yorick made a joke that the French would likely put him in the Bastile, at which point he would live on France’s dime. Now, seriously threatened with the Bastile, Yorick takes the stairs to the courtyard while thinking that the Bastile is only as terrifying as the mind allows it to be.
On the stairs, Yorick hears someone say, “it could not get out.” He cannot see who it is and passes on. On his way back, he hears the same complaint, looks up, and recognizes it is a starling in a cage, repeating the same phrase over and over. Yorick tries and fails to open the cage. The bird’s distress makes Yorick realize that imprisonment in the Bastile would be terrible. He criticizes slavery, praises liberty, and prays to God for freedom.
Reentering his room, Yorick imagines how terrible imprisonment would be. At first he tries to imagine the world’s enslaved peoples, but he finds it difficult to pictures such a large number. Instead, he imagines “a single captive”—first the captive’s physical distress, emotional pain, and deprivation; then his time-keeping, his chains, his sighing—and bursts into tears. Yorick gets up, summons La Fleur, and announces that the next morning he will go visit Monsieur Le Duc de Choiseul.
The next morning, Yorick and La Fleur take a coach to Versailles. As Yorick doesn’t find the ride interesting enough to describe, he instead explains what happened to the starling. A young Englishman brought it over from Dover, bought it a cage in Paris, and taught it to speak its phrase. When the young Englishman’s master left for Italy, the young Englishman gave the bird to the hotelier. La Fleur ended up buying the starling from the hotelier for Yorick. After his travels, Yorick brings the bird home to England, where lord after lord asks for it and then gives it away. Yorick, in the bird’s honor, puts it upon his crest of arms.
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Yorick wonders with agitation how he should approach Le Duc de Choiseul. When he enters the Duc’s building, however, a servant or employee tells him the Duc is occupied and will be busy for the next two hours. Yorick decides to drive to the nearest hotel, thinking: “There is a fatality in it—I seldom go to the place I set out for.”
On second thought, Yorick orders the coachman to give him a driving tour of Versailles. He comments that Versailles is likely small. The coachman corrects him, saying many aristocrats have hotels there. Yorick thinks of contacting the Anglophile Count de B****, so he sends La Fleur to ask a man across the street where the Count de B**** has his hotel.
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When La Fleur comes back, he tells Yorick that the man across the street, though a Chevalier de St. Louis, is selling pastries. Yorick, curious, goes to ask the Chevalier his story. The Chevalier explains that “at the conclusion of the last peace,” he was left without a job or any money, as the King of France cannot reward everyone. He sells pastries to support himself and his wife. As an aside to the reader, Yorick mentions that nine months later, the King of France learned of the Chevalier’s plight and gave him 1,500 livres a year to live on.
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As another aside to the reader, Yorick tells the story of the Marquis d’E**** in Brittany. The Marquis’s aristocratic family left him in dire financial straits. The Marquis deposits his sword at the court at Rennes and enters business in Martinico. Two decades later, the Marquis has made enough money to return to Brittany with his family. Yorick is in Brittany to witness the Marquis return to Rennes. The Marquis touches his face with a handkerchief, takes his sword, examines it, and—seeing a spot of rust on it—weeps. Then he sheathes his sword and leaves with his family. Yorick recounts that he was jealous of the Marquis’s sentiments.
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Yorick, finding Count de B**** reading Shakespeare, announces that he is visiting without an introduction because Shakespeare would make the introductions for them. He then explains to the Count about the bookseller’s shop and his passport trouble. Making clear that he has “not come to spy the nakedness of the land,” he asks for the Count’s help.
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Count de B**** chats to Yorick about a variety of subjects, including women. Yorick confesses his great love of all women—a love he thinks is necessary for loving any individual woman properly. The Count replies jokingly that while Yorick may not have come “to spy the nakedness of the land,” if he happened to spy the nakedness of French women, it wouldn’t bother him. Shocked by the Count’s indelicacy, Yorick states that if he saw their physical nakedness he would cover it up, but that he is traveling in order “to spy the nakedness of their hearts”—that is, their true selves beneath “the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion.” He goes on to explain that that is why he has seen no famous building or monuments in his travels: he is interested in people, not artworks and architecture.
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Count de B**** points out that while Shakespeare has introduced him to Yorick, Shakespeare hasn’t mentioned Yorick’s name. Thrown in confusion, Yorick thinks: “there is scarce any body I cannot give a better account of than of myself.” Therefore, he opens the Count’s copy of Hamlet and points to the name Yorick in it. Though at first baffled by Yorick’s identification with “the king of Denmark’s jester,” the Count eventually realizes that Yorick’s name is Yorick. He hugs Yorick, pockets his Hamlet, and exits the room.
While waiting for Count de B****, Yorick reads Much Ado about Nothing and ponders the power of literature to transport us away from unpleasant realities. The Count returns with a passport for Yorick, saying that laughing men aren’t dangerous and that he could only have obtained the passport so quickly for “the king’s jester.” When Yorick objects that he isn’t a jester, the Count points out that his name is Yorick and he makes jokes. Yorick points out that, unlike a jester, no one pays him to make jokes. He explains that England hasn’t had a king’s jester since Charles the Second, and now English people are too good for anyone to make jokes about them. The Count comments on the irony of this.
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Yorick thinks that his identification with “the king’s jester” on his passport somewhat undermines his victory in obtaining it. He muses that “there is nothing unmixt in this world” and recalls a scholar named Bevoriskius who interrupted a serious treatise to complain about birds outside his window. Yorick then apologizes to the reader for the digression.
The Count de B**** asks Yorick what he thinks of French people and insists that he speak honestly. Yorick says he thinks the French are too suave and polite. He compares them to coins that have ground against one another in a pocket until they have lost their individuating marks. By contrast, the English are like coins kept out of circulation that have retained their individuating marks, though “they are not so pleasant to feel.” Feeling bad for this criticism, Yorick then enumerates French people’s virtues, concluding that their only vice is excessive seriousness. Shocked, the Count tells Yorick that he has to go but invites him to come defend that statement at a later time.
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Literary Devices
When he returns to his hotel, Yorick meets Madame R—’s chambermaid, who has come with a band box to ask whether Yorick has a letter for Madame R—. Yorick and the chambermaid go into his room while Yorick pens a note. Alone together, they both start blushing. Yorick feels some unvirtuous sensations, takes the chambermaid’s hand, leads her to the door, and asks her to remember his advice.
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Somehow—Yorick isn’t sure how—he and the chambermaid end up sitting on his bed together. The chambermaid shows him a purse she has made to hold the coin he gave her. Seeing some broken stitches on Yorick’s clothing, she sews them up. Then she shows him her shoe-strap, which has come loose. Yorick, trying to buckle her shoe for her, tips her over.
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Yorick breaks off his narration to give a speech about passion. He suggests that it isn’t bad to have passions unless they cause you to act badly, and that eliminating passion might eliminate goodness too: “If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece—must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?” Yorick prays that he may continue to feel manly passions and act well under temptation. Then he guides the chambermaid out of his room, locks the door behind them, kisses her on the cheek, and takes her out of the hotel.
Overwrought by the episode with the chambermaid, Yorick decides not to go immediately back to his room. Instead, he stands outside the hotel watching the street. Across the street, he sees a man begging exclusively from women and, in every case, receiving some money from them. Yorick wonders what the man could possibly be saying to beg so successfully from women and, pondering this question, goes back to his hotel room.
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The hotelier comes to Yorick’s room and demands that he leave the hotel, because he had the chambermaid with him in his room in the evening, which is against hotel rules. The hotelier says he wouldn’t have minded if the girl had visited in the morning. Yorick asks whether the time of day makes a difference, and the hotelier responds that it “made a difference […] in the scandal.”
The hotelier continues that foreigners should have opportunities to shop in Paris, so there would have been no problem if the girl had visited Yorick’s room with a band box. Yorick says the girl did have one, but he didn’t buy anything from her. The hotelier says that in that case, he’ll procure another girl. When the hotelier leaves, Yorick resolves to spite him by buying nothing. When a grisset arrives to sell him some lace, however, Yorick decides not to punish the grisset for the hotelier’s offense and buys some of her wares.
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La Fleur carries a message to Yorick at dinner that the hotelier apologizes for asking Yorick to change hotels. Yorick asks La Fleur to tell the hotelier that he is sorry for provoking the hotelier, and that he won’t see the chambermaid if she comes back. La Fleur tells Yorick that turning away the chambermaid would be impolite and that if Yorick wants to have fun—Yorick interrupts La Fleur, saying, “I find no amusement in it.”
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Later, putting Yorick to bed, La Fleur seems to want to ask something but doesn’t come out with it. Yorick, meanwhile, is puzzling over the man who begged so successfully from women.
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The next morning, Sunday, La Fleur comes to Yorick’s room excellently dressed, serves him his breakfast, and asks whether he can have the day off to spend time with his mistress. Yorick had planned to have La Fleur wait on him when he went to visit Madame R—. However, reminding himself that servants are people too, with desires of their own, Yorick grants La Fleur’s request. Then he asks La Fleur who his mistress is. La Fleur explains that she is a girl working at Count de B****’s, whom La Fleur met while Yorick was getting help with his passport.
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Yorick finds some mysterious writing on the piece of paper that La Fleur used to carry in his breakfast butter. In between and after writing letters to Eugenius and Eliza, Yorick puzzles out the writing, which is in “the old French of Rabelais’s time,” and translates it into English. It tells of a notary who has a fight with his wife and storms out of his house. Crossing a bridge over the Seine, the notary loses his hat in the wind. Lamenting his bad luck, he hears someone calling for a notary. He enters a room where he sees an old gentleman lying in bed. The old gentleman asks the notary to write down the story of his life, which he claims is extraordinary.
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Just as the gentleman is about to begin telling the story of his life, the writing breaks off. Yorick asks La Fleur, who has just come back to the hotel room, where the rest of the story is. La Fleur says he used the other two pages to wrap a bouquet that he gave to his mistress. Yorick asks him to get the pages back. La Fleur runs off and, shortly after, returns looking miserable. He says that his mistress gave the bouquet to a footman, who gave it to someone else, who in turn gave it to someone else, and so on. La Fleur laments his mistress’s infidelity, while Yorick laments his own bad luck.
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Outside the Opera comique, Yorick waits in line for a carriage behind two women, about 36 and 40 years old respectively, whom he judges to be spinsters. A man approaches and asks the women for 12 sous. They claim not to have money. Calling them “fair young ladies,” the man continues begging and mentions overhearing a marquis and his brother praising the women’s virtue and looks. The women each give the man 12 sous. Yorick realizes that the man is the beggar who only accosts women and that he succeeds by flattery.
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Count de B**** introduces Yorick into Parisian high society. An old womanizer, the Marquis de B****, asks Yorick about Englishwomen. When Yorick begs him not to visit England, because Englishmen would have difficulty with the competition, the Marquis invites him to dinner. A farmer-general asks Yorick about high English taxes, and when Yorick tells him the English don’t know how to collect taxes, the farmer-general invites him to some concerts. A woman named Madame de Q*** believes herself to be a wit. When Yorick allows her to talk at him without speaking at all, she tells everyone it’s the best conversation she’s ever had.
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Yorick theorizes that French women have three life phases: of flirtation, of religious skepticism, and of religious devotion. He meets Madame de V***, whom he diagnoses as wavering between the first two phases. When she tells him she has no traditional religious belief, he argues that religious skepticism is against her self-interest as a beautiful woman: only her religious sentiments can defend her against the passions she arouses in Yorick himself and in other men. Madame de V*** goes on to tell others that Yorick has been extremely convincing in defending religion.
At one of Madame de V***’s parties, while Yorick is discoursing about philosophy, the Count de Faineant gives him some advice on how to style his clothing. When Yorick compliments his wisdom, the Count hugs him. After three weeks of pleasing French society in episodes such as these, Yorick feels sick of high society and longs for nature. He decides to depart France for Italy.
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On his journey out of France, Yorick decides to stop near Moulines to ask after a girl named Maria, whom his friend Mr. Shandy has written about. When he reaches Maria’s parents’ house, Maria’s mother greets him and tells him that Maria’s father died of heartbreak after Maria went mad. Though her father’s death blunted Maria’s madness somewhat, she is still outside wandering around.
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Yorick rides off in his carriage and sees Maria sitting under a tree. He gets out of the carriage, orders the coachman and La Fleur on to Moulines, and approaches Maria. Maria has a dog attached to her belt by a string. Crying, she tells the dog, “Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio.” Yorick supposes she is crying over her father’s death. He sits beside her, wipes her tears with his handkerchief, and wipes his own. His strong emotions make him feel sure he has a soul.
Yorick asks Maria whether she recalls “a pale thin person of a man” who met her two years ago. Maria says she does, because the man was sympathetic to her and because her goat stole his handkerchief. Maria washed the handkerchief and kept it to return to the man in case he ever returns. Taking the handkerchief out of her pocket, she shows it to Yorick, who sees an S embroidered on it.
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Maria tells Yorick that she has walked to Rome, across the Apennines, to Lombardy, and to Savoy, all barefoot. Yorick exclaims that if they were in England, he would give her shelter, food, and drink, and would take care of her. He takes out his handkerchief. Noticing the handkerchief is soaked already, Maria offers to wash it. Yorick asks where she’ll dry it. When she says she’ll dry it in her bosom, Yorick asks whether her heart is warm. Distressed, Maria takes up her pipe and plays it instead of responding.
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After a moment of playing, Maria stands. Yorick asks where she’s going. When she tells him she’s going to Moulines, he offers to walk with her. Reaching Moulines, Yorick turns to say goodbye. He notes that Maria is so beautiful that if he could forget Eliza, Maria “should lay in my bosom, and be unto me as a daughter.”
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Continuing to travel through France, Yorick sees various happy scenes but continues to think of Maria’s sorrow. He muses that sentiment, in which he senses some “divinity,” causes both great happiness and unhappiness. He believes even the “roughest peasant” possesses sentiment, and he imagines that peasant finding and pitying an injured, dying lamb. Then he blesses his imaginary peasant and promises him that his happiness will “balance” the pain he feels.
As Yorick’s carriage is starting up mount Taurira, the horse drawing the carriage throws first one shoe and then another. Yorick climbs out of the carriage, sees a house in the distance, and tells the coachman to drive toward it. Getting closer, Yorick sees it is a nice farmhouse, surrounded by grapes, corn, a garden, and woods. He enters the house and finds a peasant family eating dinner: an old husband and wife, their children, and their children’s spouses. The old husband invites Yorick to eat with them. He sits down at table with them and greatly enjoys the meal—an enjoyment he attributes to the family’s wonderful hospitality.
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After dinner, the old husband gives the signal to his family to dance. He plays an instrument and his wife sings, while the rest of the family dances. Yorick senses some religious emotion in the dance. After the dance is over, the old husband tells Yorick that the family has always danced after dinner because “a chearful and contented mind was the best sort of thanks to heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay.” Yorick replies that it is the best thanks an educated priest could pay, too.
Yorick is traveling toward Turin when a large stone, having tumbled down a mountain, blocks the road his coachman planned to take. Because the peasant workers need more time to move the stone, Yorick and his coachman stop at a roadside inn for the night. After Yorick has occupied the only room, a lady and her maid arrive at the inn as well. The hostess tells them to share Yorick’s room, as it contains three beds.
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Yorick agrees to accommodate the lady and plays the host for her, giving her the best seat and ordering them some wine. Seeing her glance at the beds, Yorick becomes embarrassed. He notices the beds are close together, located in a kind of alcove, and too small for the lady and her maid to share one. Though the chambers contain another room, it’s a “damp cold closet” unsuited for any of them to sleep in. Yorick feels that the stone in the road is nothing compared to this problem. It doesn’t help that he and the lady, a woman from Piedmont of about 30 years old, feel too polite to discuss their predicament.
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Yorick and the lady eat dinner. The lady sends her maid to fetch some good wine from their carriage and, after drinking it over dinner, she and Yorick begin talking about their problem. After two hours, they come up with a kind of verbal contract: the maid will pin up the bed-curtains to create a division between the beds; Yorick will wear his black silk breeches all night; Yorick will not speak all night, except to say his prayers. Here, Yorick notes that he and the lady didn’t figure out, in their verbal contract, how they would unclothe themselves for bed, and he declines to tell the reader what they ended up doing.
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Once in bed, Yorick tosses and turns until out of frustration he lets slip, “O my God!” The lady points out that he has broken his promise not to speak. Yorick apologizes but points out it wasn’t a speech so much as an outcry. The lady reiterates that he has broken his promise. Yorick claims his outcry counts as a prayer. The lady refuses this excuse. Yorick hears several of the pins closing the bed-curtains fall to the ground.
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The maid, hearing that Yorick and the lady are arguing, has crept out of her own bed and interposed herself between their two beds. Yorick, swearing upon his “word and honour,” throws out his arm and accidentally catches some part of the maid’s body or clothing (the text breaks off before Yorick can say exactly what he grabbed).
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