One little volume, unmistakably produced under Yorick’s spell, is worthy of particular mention because at its time it received from the reviewers a more cordial welcome than was accorded to the rank and file of Sentimental Journeys. It is “M . . . R . . .” by E. A. A. von Göchhausen (1740–1824), which was published at Eisenach, 1772, and was deemed worthy of several later editions. Its dependence on Sterne is confessed and obvious, sometimes apologetically and hesitatingly, sometimes defiantly. The imitation of Sterne is strongest at the beginning, both in outward form and subject-matter, and this measure of indebtedness dwindles away steadily as the book advances. Göchhausen, as other imitators, used at the outset a modish form, returned to it consciously now and then when once under way, but when he actually had something to say, a message of his own, found it impracticable or else forgot to follow his model.
The absurd title stands, of course, for “Meine Reisen” and the puerile abbreviation as well as the reasons assigned for it, were intended to be a Sterne-like jest, a pitiful one. Why Goedeke should suggest “Meine Randglossen” is quite inexplicable, since Göchhausen himself in the very first chapter indicates the real title. Beneath the enigmatical title stands an alleged quotation from Shandy: “Ein Autor borgt, bettelt und stiehlt so stark von dem andern, dass bey meiner Seele! die Originalität fast so rar geworden ist als die Ehrlichkeit.”[65] The book itself, like Sterne’s Journey, is divided into brief chapters unnumbered but named. As the author loses Yorick from sight, the chapters grow longer. Göchhausen has availed himself of an odd device to disarm criticism,—a plan used once or twice by Schummel: occasionally when the imitation is obvious, he repudiates the charge sarcastically, or anticipates with irony the critics’ censure. For example, he gives directions to his servant Pumper to pack for the journey; a reader exclaims, “a portmanteau, Mr. Author, so that everything, even to that, shall be just like Yorick,” and in the following passage the author quarrels with the critics who allow no one to travel with a portmanteau, because an English clergyman traveled with one. Pumper’s misunderstanding of this objection is used as a farther ridicule of the critics. When on the journey, the author converses with two poor wandering monks, whose conversation, at any rate, is a witness to their content, the whole being a legacy of the Lorenzo episode, and the author entitles the chapter: “The members of the religious order, or, as some critics will call it, a wretchedly unsuccessful imitation.” In the next chapter, “Der Visitator” (pp. 125 ff.) in which the author encounters customs annoyances, the critic is again allowed to complain that everything is stolen from Yorick, a protest which is answered by the author quite naïvely, “Yorick journeyed, ate, drank; I do too.” In “Die Pause” the author stands before the inn door and fancies that a number of spies (Ausspäher) stand there waiting for him; he protests that Yorick encountered beggars before the inn in Montreuil, a very different sort of folk. On page 253 he exclaims, “für diesen schreibe ich dieses Kapitel nicht und ich—beklage ihn!” Here a footnote suggests “Das übrige des Diebstahls vid. Yorick’s Gefangenen.” Similarly when he calls his servant his “La Fleur,” he converses with the critics about his theft from Yorick.
The book is opened by a would-be whimsical note, the guessing about the name of the book. The dependence upon Sterne, suggested by the motto, is clinched by reference to this quotation in the section “Apologie,” and by the following chapter, which is entitled “Yorick.” The latter is the most unequivocal and, withal, the most successful imitation of Yorick’s manner which the volume offers. The author is sitting on a sofa reading the Sentimental Journey, and the idea of such a trip is awakened in him. Someone knocks and the door is opened by the postman, as the narrator is opening his “Lorenzodose,” and the story of the poor monk is touching his heart now for the twentieth time as strongly as ever. The postman asks postage on the letter as well as his own trivial fee. The author counts over money, miscounts it, then in counting forgets all about it, puts the money away and continues the reading of Yorick. The postman interrupts him; the author grows impatient and says, “You want four groschen?” and is inexplicably vexed at the honesty of the man who says it is only three pfennigs for himself and the four groschen for the post. Here is a direct following of the Lorenzo episode; caprice rules his behavior toward an inferior, who is modest in his request. After the incident, his spite, his head and his heart and his “ich” converse in true Sterne fashion as to the advisability of his beginning to read Yorick again. He reasons with himself concerning his conduct toward the postman, then in an apostrophe to Yorick he condemns himself for failing in this little test. This conversation occupies so much time that he cannot run after the postman, but he resolves that nothing, not even the fly that lights on his nose, shall bring him so far as to forget wherefore his friend J . . . . sent him a “Lorenzodose.” And at the end of the section there is a picture of the snuff-box with the lid open, disclosing the letters of the word “Yorick.” The “Lorenzodose” is mentioned later, and later still the author calms his indignation by opening the box; he fortifies himself also by a look at the treasure.[66]
Following this picture of the snuff-box is an open letter to “My dear J . . . ,” who, at the author’s request, had sent him on June 29th a “Lorenzodose.” Jacobi’s accompanying words are given. The author acknowledges the difficulty with which sometimes the self-conquest demanded by allegiance to the sentimental symbol has been won.
Yet, compared with some other imitations of the good Yorick, the volume contains but a moderate amount of lavish sentiment. The servant Pumper is a man of feeling, who grieves that the horses trod the dewdrops from the blades of grass. Cast in the real Yorick mould is the scene in which Pumper kills a marmot (Hamster); upon his master’s expostulation that God created the little beast also, Pumper is touched, wipes the blood off with his cuff and buries the animal with tenderness, indulging in a pathetic soliloquy; the whole being a variant of Yorick’s ass episode.
Marked with a similar vein of sentimentality is the narrator’s conduct toward the poor wanderer with his heavy burden: the author asserts that he has never eaten a roll, put on a white shirt, traveled in a comfortable carriage, or been borne by a strong horse, without bemoaning those who were less fortunately circumstanced. A similar and truly Sterne-like triumph of feeling over convention is the traveler’s insistence that Pumper shall ride with him inside the coach; seemingly a point derived from Jacobi’s failure to be equally democratic.[67]
Sterne’s emphasis upon the machinery of his story-telling, especially his distraught pretense at logical sequence in the ordering of his material is here imitated. For example: near the close of a chapter the author summons his servant Pumper, but since the chapter bore the title “Der Brief” and the servant can neither read nor write a letter, he says the latter has nothing to do in that chapter, but he is to be introduced in the following one. Yet with Yorick’s inconsequence, the narrator is led aside and exclaims at the end of this chapter, “But where is Pumper?” with the answer, “Heaven and my readers know, it was to no purpose that this chapter was so named (and perhaps this is not the last one to which the title will be just as appropriate)”, and the next chapter pursues the whimsical attempt, beginning “As to whether Pumper will appear in this chapter, about that, dear reader, I am not really sure myself.”
The whimsical, unconventional interposition of the reader, and the author’s reasoning with him, a Sterne device, is employed so constantly in the book as to become a wearying mannerism. Examples have already been cited, additional ones are numerous: the fifth section is devoted to such conversation with the reader concerning the work; later the reader objects to the narrator’s drinking coffee without giving a chapter about it; the reader is allowed to express his wonder as to what the chapter is going to be because of the author’s leap; the reader guesses where the author can be, when he begins to describe conditions in the moon. The chapter “Der Einwurf” is occupied entirely with the reader’s protest, and the last two sections are largely the record of fancied conversations with various readers concerning the nature of the book; here the author discloses himself.[68] Sterne-like whim is found in the chapter “Die Nacht,” which consists of a single sentence: “Ich schenke Ihnen diesen ganzen Zeitraum, denn ich habe ihn ruhig verschlafen.” Similar Shandean eccentricity is illustrated by the chapter entitled “Der Monolog,” which consists of four lines of dots, and the question, “Didn’t you think all this too, my readers?” Typographical eccentricity is observed also in the arrangement of the conversation of the ladies A., B., C., D., etc., in the last chapter. Like Sterne, our author makes lists of things; probably inspired by Yorick’s apostrophe to the “Sensorium” is our traveler’s appeal to the spring of joy. The description of the fashion of walking observed in the maid in the moon is reminiscent of a similar passage in Schummel’s journey.
Göchhausen’s own work, untrammeled by outside influence, is considerable, largely a genial satire on critics and philosophers; his stay in the moon is a kind of Utopian fancy.
The literary journals accepted Göchhausen’s work as a Yorick imitation, condemned it as such apologetically, but found much in the book worthy of their praise.[69]