Schummel was born in May, 1748, and hence was but twenty years of age when Germany began to thrill in response to Yorick’s sentiments. It is probable that the first volume was written while Schummel was still a university student in 1768–1770. He assumed a position as teacher in 1771, but the first volume came out at Easter of that year; this would probably throw its composition back into the year before. The second volume appeared at Michaelmas of the same year. His publisher was Zimmermann at Wittenberg and Zerbst, and the first volume at any rate was issued in a new edition. The third volume came out in the spring of 1772.[7] Schummel’s title, “Empfindsame Reisen,” is, of course, taken from the newly coined word in Bode’s title, but in face of this fact it is rather remarkable to find that several quotations from Sterne’s Journey, given in the course of the work, are from the Mittelstedt translation. On two occasions, indeed, Schummel uses the title of the Mittelstedt rendering as first published, “Versuch über die menschliche Natur.”[8]
These facts lead one to believe that Schummel drew his inspiration from the reading of this translation. This is interesting in connection with Böttiger’s claim that the whole cavalcade of sentimental travelers who trotted along after Yorick with all sorts of animals and vehicles was a proof of the excellence and power of Bode’s translation. As one would naturally infer from the title of Schummel’s fiction, the Sentimental Journey is more constantly drawn upon as a source of ideas, motifs, expression, and method, than Tristram Shandy, but the allusions to Sterne’s earlier book, and the direct adaptations from it are both numerous and generous. This fact has not been recognized by the critics, and is not an easy inference from the contemporary reviews.
The book is the result of an immediate impulse to imitation felt irresistibly on the reading of Sterne’s narrative. That the critics and readers of that day treated with serious consideration the efforts of a callow youth of twenty or twenty-one in this direction is indicative either of comparative vigor of execution, or of prepossession of the critical world in favor of the literary genre,—doubtless of both. Schummel confesses that the desire to write came directly after the book had been read. “I had just finished reading it,” he says, “and Heaven knows with what pleasure, every word from ‘as far as this matter is concerned’ on to ‘I seized the hand of the lady’s maid,’ were imprinted in my soul with small invisible letters.” The characters of the Journey stood “life-size in his very soul.” Involuntarily his inventive powers had sketched several plans for a continuation, releasing Yorick from the hand of the fille de chambre. But what he attempts is not a continuation but a German parallel.
In the outward events of his story, in the general trend of its argument, Schummel does not depend upon either Shandy or the Journey: the hero’s circumstances are in general not traceable to the English model, but, spasmodically, the manner of narration and the nature of the incidents are quite slavishly copied. A complete summary of the thread of incident on which the various sentimental adventures, whimsical speculations and digressions are hung, can be dispensed with: it is only necessary to note instances where connection with Sterne as a model can be established. Schummel’s narrative is often for many successive pages absolutely straightforward and simple, unbroken by any attempt at Shandean buoyancy, and unblemished by overwrought sentiment. At the pausing places he generally indulges in Sternesque quibbling.
A brief analysis of the first volume, with especial reference to the appropriation of Yorick features, will serve to show the extent of imitation, and the nature of the method. In outward form the Sentimental Journey is copied. The volume is not divided into chapters, but there are named divisions: there is also Yorick-like repetition of section-headings. Naturally the author attempts at the very beginning to strike a note distinctly suggesting Sterne: “Is he dead, the old cousin?” are the first words of the volume, uttered by the hero on receipt of the news, and in Yorick fashion he calls for guesses concerning the mien with which the words were said. The conversation of the various human passions with Yorick concerning the advisability of offering the lady in Calais a seat in his chaise is here directly imitated in the questions put by avarice, vanity, etc., concerning the cousin’s death. The actual journey does not begin until page 97, a brief autobiography of the hero occupying the first part of the book; this inconsequence is confessedly intended to be a Tristram Shandy whim.[9] The author’s relation to his parents is adapted directly from Shandy, since he here possesses an incapable, unpractical, philosophizing father, who determines upon methods for the superior education of his son; and a simple, silly mockery of a mother.
Left, however, an orphan, he begins his sentimental adventures: thrust on the world he falls in with a kindly baker’s wife whose conduct toward him brings tears to the eyes of the ten-year old lad, this showing his early appetite for sentimental journeying. A large part of this first section relating to his early life and youthful struggles, his kindly benefactor, his adventure with Potiphar’s wife, is simple and direct, with only an occasional hint of Yorick’s influence in word or phrase, as if the author, now and then, recalled the purpose and the inspiration. For example, not until near the bottom of page 30 does it occur to him to be abrupt and indulge in Shandean eccentricities, and then again, after a few lines, he resumes the natural order of discourse. And again, on page 83, he breaks off into attempted frivolity and Yorick whimsicality of narration. In starting out upon his journey the author says: “I will tread in Yorick’s foot-prints, what matters it if I do not fill them out? My heart is not so broad as his, the sooner can it be filled; my head is not so sound; my brain not so regularly formed. My eyes are not so clear, but for that he was born in England and I in Germany; he is a man and I am but a youth, in short, he is Yorick and I am not Yorick.” He determines to journey where it is most sentimental and passes the various lands in review in making his decision. Having fastened upon Germany, he questions himself similarly with reference to the cities. Yorick’s love of lists, of mock-serious discrimination, of inconsequential reasonings is here copied. The call upon epic, tragic, lyric poets, musicians, etc., which follows here is a further imitation of Yorick’s list-making and pseudo-scientific method.
On his way to Leipzig, in the post-chaise, the author falls in with a clergyman: the manner of this meeting is intended to be Sterne-like: Schummel sighs, the companion remarks, “You too are an unhappy one,” and they join hands while the human heart beams in the traveler’s eyes. They weep too at parting. But, apart from these external incidents of their meeting, the matter of their converse is in no way inspired by Sterne. It joins itself with the narrative of the author’s visit to a church in a village by the wayside, and deals in general with the nature of the clergyman’s relation to his people and the general mediocrity and ineptitude of the average homiletical discourse, the failure of clergymen to relate their pulpit utterance to the life of the common Christian,—all of which is genuine, sane and original, undoubtedly a real protest on the part of Schummel, the pedagogue, against a prevailing abuse of his time and other times. This section represents unquestionably the earnest convictions of its author, and is written with professional zeal. This division is followed by an evidently purposeful return to Sterne’s eccentricity of manner. The author begins a division of his narrative, “Der zerbrochene Postwagen,” which is probably meant to coincide with the post-chaise accident in Shandy’s travels, writes a few lines in it, then begins the section again, something like the interrupted story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles. Then follows an abrupt discursive study of his aptitudes and proclivities, interspersed with Latin exclamations, interrogation points and dashes. “What a parenthesis is that!” he cries, and a few lines further on, “I burn with longing to begin a parenthesis again.” On his arrival in Leipzig, Schummel imitates closely Sterne’s satirical guide-book description of Calais[10] in his brief account of the city, breaking off abruptly like Sterne, and roundly berating all “Reisebeschreiber.” Here in fitting contrast with this superficial enumeration of facts stands his brief traveler’s creed, an interest in people rather than in places, all of which is derived from Sterne’s chapter, “In the Street, Calais,” in which the master discloses the sentimental possibilities of traveling and typifies the superficial, unemotional wanderer in the persons of Smelfungus and Mundungus, and from the familiar passage in “The Passport, Versailles,” beginning, “But I could wish to spy out the nakedness, etc.” No sooner is he arrived in Leipzig, than he accomplishes a sentimental rescue of an unfortunate woman on the street. In the expression of her immediate needs, Schummel indulges for the first time in a row of stars, with the obvious intention of raising a low suggestion, which he contradicts with mock-innocent questionings a few lines later, thereby fastening the attention on the possibility of vulgar interpretation. Sterne is guilty of this device in numerous instances in both his works, and the English continuation of the Sentimental Journey relies upon it in greater and more revolting measure.
Once established in his hotel, the author betakes himself to the theater: this very act he feels will bring upon him the censure of the critics, for Yorick went to the theater too. “A merchant’s boy went along before me,” he says in naïve defense, “was he also an imitator of Yorick?” On the way he meets a fair maid-in-waiting, and the relation between her and the traveler, developed here and later, is inspired directly by Yorick’s connection with the fair fille de chambre. Schummel imitates Sterne’s excessive detail of description, devoting a whole paragraph to his manner of removing his hat before a lady whom he encounters on this walk to the theater. This was another phase of Sterne’s pseudo-scientific method: he describes the trivial with the attitude of the trained observer, registering minutely the detail of phenomena, a mock-parade of scholarship illustrated by his description of Trim’s attitude while reading his sermon, or the dropping of the hat in the kitchen during the memorable scene when the news of Bobby’s death is brought.
In Schummel’s narration of his adventures in the house of ill-repute there are numerous sentimental excrescences in his conduct with the poor prisoner there, due largely to Yorick’s pattern, such as their weeping on one another’s breast, and his wiping away her tears and his, drawn from Yorick’s amiable service for Maria of Moulines, an act seemingly expressing the most refined human sympathy. The remaining events of this first volume include an unexpected meeting with the kind baker’s wife, which takes place at Gellert’s grave. Yorick’s imitators were especially fond of re-introducing a sentimental relationship. Yorick led the way in his renewed acquaintance with the fille de chambre; Stevenson in his continuation went to extremes in exploiting this cheap device.
Other motifs derived from Sterne, less integral, may be briefly summarized. From the Sentimental Journey is taken the motif that valuable or interesting papers be used to wrap ordinary articles of trade: here herring are wrapped in fragments of the father’s philosophy; in the Sentimental Journey we find a similar degrading use for the “Fragment.” Schummel breaks off the chapter “La Naïve,”[11] under the Sternesque subterfuge of having to deliver manuscript to an insistent publisher. Yorick writes his preface to the Journey in the “Désobligeant,” that is, in the midst of the narrative itself. Schummel modifies the eccentricity merely by placing his foreword at the end of the volume. The value of it, he says, will repay the reader for waiting so long,—a statement which finds little justification in the preface itself. It begins, “Auweh! Auweh! Ouais, Helas! . . . Diable, mein Rücken, mein Fuss!” and so on for half a page,—a pitiful effort to follow the English master’s wilful and skilful incoherence. The following pages, however, once this outbreak is at an end, contain a modicum of sense, the feeble, apologetic explanation of his desire in imitating Yorick, given in forethought of the critics’ condemnation. Similarly the position of the dedication is unusual, in the midst of the volume, even as the dedication of Shandy was roguishly delayed. The dedication itself, however, is not an imitation of Sterne’s clever satire, but, addressed to Yorick himself, is a striking example of burning personal devotion and over-wrought praise. Schummel hopes[12] in Sterne fashion to write a chapter on “Vorübergeben,” or in the chapter “Das Komödienhaus” (pp. 185–210) to write a digression on “Walking behind a maid.” Like Sterne, he writes in praise of digressions.[13] In imitation of Sterne is conceived the digressive speculation concerning the door through which at the beginning of the book he is cast into the rude world. Among further expressions savoring of Sterne, may be mentioned a “Centner of curses” (p. 39), a “Quentchen of curses,” and the analytical description of a tone of voice as one-fourth questioning, five-eighths entreating and one-eighth commanding (p. 229).