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    A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
    A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
    A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
    Ebook166 pages2 hours

    A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy

    By Laurence Sterne

    3.5/5

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    Yorick's journey starts in Calais, where he meets a monk who begs for donations to his convent. Yorick initially refuses to give him anything, but later regrets his decision. He and the monk exchange their snuff-boxes. He buys a chaise to continue his journey. The next town he visits is Montreuil, where he hires a servant to accompany him on his journey, a young man named La Fleur.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSovereign
    Release dateOct 15, 2015
    ISBN9781911144229
    Author

    Laurence Sterne

    Irish-born Laurence Sterne was an eighteenth century English author and Anglican clergyman. Though he is perhaps best known as a novelist, Sterne also wrote memoirs, articles on local politics, and a large number of sermons for which he was quite well known during his lifetime. Sterne’s works include The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, and the satire A Political Romance (also known as The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat). Sterne died in 1768 at the age of 54.

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    Reviews for A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      A Sentimental Journey is the story of a man traveling from England to France and back and his adventures, or should I say, his encounters during the trip. We don't get a lot of "travel" descriptions, but rather descriptions of the carriages he takes, how he hires them, his servant, and the ladies he meets and endeavors to get to know better on the journey. It is 'sentimental' in the sense of a journal of his sentiments towards the women, the servants, the places he goes. Fairly short.
    • 3/5
      A serialized "Tristam Shandy" made the rural vicar "passing rich" and the talk of London. He balanced these with The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, a title apparently drawn from the "fellow of infinite jest". In 1762-64 and 1765-66, Sterne traveled through France and Italy. We find here the pretty observations and naif adages of a man who understood that the real criminals in our society are the bores. One of the favorite apothegmas of everyone except a good many people, is: "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb". I know, you thought it was Biblical....
    • 5/5
      As I mentioned before about Laurence Sterne, after I have read his books I wish I could write like him!
    • 4/5
      Another great example of why you need to really think about what a book's trying to do before you judge it. This is nice and subtle- on the one hand, it tugs the heart-strings unashamedly; on the other hand, it makes ruthless fun of you for having your heart-string tugged. Great stuff- unless you're expecting well rounded three dimensional characters and believable plot turns and a coherent narrative and so on. Not here, friendo. Here you get intriguing reflections on the general goodness/evilness of humankind, and jokes at the expense of people who think you can make general reflections on morality in that way. I wish he'd been able to add a couple of volumes to it; the whole enterprise is so clever and so much less brow-beating than Tristram Shandy that it might've ended up being one of the best books I'd read. As is, it's pretty darn-tootin good.
    • 2/5
      Within the genre of travelogues, two approaches can be distinguished. There are those authors who describe fore-mostly the places, and the habits of the people they visit, from an anthropological point of view, and there are those who describe the people they meet on their travels from a more humanistic point of view, as equals, so to speak. An example of the first type of travelogue would be Daniel Defoe's A tour through the whole island of Great Britain, which was published in 1724. Laurence Sterne's fictional A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy was published a few decades later in 1768. By this time, travel to the continent had become fashionable.In Sterne's A sentimental journey, his alter ego Yorick, which contemporary readers would know as a clergyman, travels to Paris, supposedly on his way to Italy. However, the story develops very slowly, and for the larger part the story is set in the environs of Paris, indicated but scantily.If the book is humourous or witty, it is not clear in which way. Supposedly, various sketches or situation would be humourous to contemporaries of Sterne but the humour is lost on contemporary readers. In fact, A sentimental journey seems a rather boring little book, and all pleasure to be had from it can only be found by studying the introduction carefully which explains where to look for it. Even then, the notes in the annotated Penguin edition merely clarified what should already be clear to the educated reader, while leaving many possible clues unexplained.
    • 3/5
      Sometimes, you read a book that is widely acclaimed as a classic, a masterpiece, a part of the literary canon, and your reaction is "Eh", or possibly "Meh". That's my reaction to "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy", which was a hit after it was published in 1768, and has been finding readers for almost 250 years. When something like this happens, I assume that the problem isn't with the novel, it's with me. I couldn't get involved in the book, but that may be because I depend too much on narrative tension, and not enough on just being there. Also, I couldn't figure out what was going on at times: again, I may be too literal. For those who like this sort of thing, this is clearly the sort of thing they like. Hats off to them: I am not up to it.
    • 2/5
      This is the tale of a monk, Yorick, who embarks on a journey across the English Channel to Calais and on to Paris. He then sets out through France towards Italy, meeting a variety of characters and getting into tricky situations along the way, and that is as far as the story gets. Unfortunately the author, Laurence Sterne, succumbs to consumption before he has finished his book.The book was first published in 1768 so pre-dates the golden age of classic literature. The language is hard to grasp to begin with although the story begins to flow better as the book goes on. The book has some humour in it and is one of the earliest forms of travel writing by the leisurely tourist - perhaps Sterne was the Bill Bryson of his day.I can't say I enjoyed this book. I can see that it stands as an early example of travel writing and is of interest to anyone who enjoyed Sterne's other work, principally Tristram Shandy (which I haven't read) but, for me, it didn't stand up as a novel to be read for pleasure. It ends so abruptly that I wondered what the point was of reading it at all. I was looking forward to an insight into 18th century France and Italy and I didn't really get that.
    • 4/5
      Sterne wanders around talking to swindlers and fops and very nice peasant folk, and keeps getting terribly attracted to women who he tells us of COURSE he did nothing with! A nice bit o' life-loving fluff from the guy who brought us Tristram Shandy. Too bad he didn't get to get into it further before he died.
    • 5/5
      Superb production!
    • 5/5
      The review refers to this edition:The Carlton Classics, 152pp, London : John Long Ltd., 1923A came across this little book by chance, an unassuming small 8vo hardback but carefully made, even a ribbon-marker sewed in, the smooth green and fairly ugly buckram brightened up by the publisher’s emblem in gold on the front that shows a snake curled around the letters J L and what presumably is an image of the tree of knowledge, holding a goblet in its mouth, tempting you, the reader, to drink from it.The edition is edited with a Biographical Introduction by Hannaford Bennett and been given an Index. This the editor must have added as none of the earlier editions I consulted include it; curiously, it lists only the Chapter headings and these in alphabetical order. Did Mr. Hannaford Bennett want to amuse himself and edit the edition in the playful spirit of Sterne? But an error: - the location for the chapter ‘The Riddle’ is given as Calais, it should be Paris - is repeated in the Index. His oversight? And at the end of ‘The Rose – Paris’, what reads in the 2nd edition of 1768: ‘Rien que pisser’ and two lines further on: ‘to let Madame de Rambouliet p...ss on.’, is given out of pudency as: ‘Rien que …’, and: ‘to let Madame Rambouliet …;’. This 2nd edition of 1768 (Vol. I, London: Becket & De Hondt) lists alphabetically the subscribers, 281 names in all, some with multiple subscriptions e.g. 20 sets to Mr. Crew, 5 sets to Mr. Ogilby etc., so perhaps 400 sets altogether. The first 2 volumes of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy of what was planned to be a 4 volume work were published shortly before Sterne’s death in 1768. So it remains unfinished and the protagonist, Yorick, Sterne’s alter ego, never reaches Italy. It is one of the first travel books but quite unlike any that follows (but then, after all, Sterne wrote it). Yorick, after listing all classes of travellers, calls himself a ‘Sentimental Traveller’. What he means by this he explains in his own words:"It is for this reason, Monsieur le Comte, continued I, that I have not seen the Palais Royal nor the Luxembourg, - nor the Façade of the Louvre, - nor have attempted to swell the catalogues we have of pictures, statues, and churches. I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings, and loose sketches, hung up in it, than the transfiguration of Raphael itself.The thirst of this, continued I, as impatient as that which inflames the breast of the connoisseur, has led me from my own home into France, and from France will lead me through Italy ;-‘tis a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of Nature, and those affections which arise out of her, which make us love each other, - and the world, better than we do."So it is his encounters, not with famous landmarks, but with men and women, Yorick talks about, foremost with women, because each one stirs his heart. Sterne’s unique prose cannot be read in haste, it demands time and leisure and the taste of each sentence. What I like best is a hint shining through of Yorick/Sterne laughing about himself. I will re-read Tristram Shandy. (VI-VII-10)

    Book preview

    A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy - Laurence Sterne

    désobligeant.

    PREFACE.

    IN THE DESOBLIGEANT.

    It must have been observed by many a peripatetic philosopher, That nature has set up by her own unquestionable authority certain boundaries and fences to circumscribe the discontent of man; she has effected her purpose in the quietest and easiest manner by laying him under almost insuperable obligations to work out his ease, and to sustain his sufferings at home. It is there only that she has provided him with the most suitable objects to partake of his happiness, and bear a part of that burden which in all countries and ages has ever been too heavy for one pair of shoulders. ’Tis true, we are endued with an imperfect power of spreading our happiness sometimes beyond her limits, but ’tis so ordered, that, from the want of languages, connections, and dependencies, and from the difference in education, customs, and habits, we lie under so many impediments in communicating our sensations out of our own sphere, as often amount to a total impossibility.

    It will always follow from hence, that the balance of sentimental commerce is always against the expatriated adventurer: he must buy what he has little occasion for, at their own price;—his conversation will seldom be taken in exchange for theirs without a large discount,—and this, by the by, eternally driving him into the hands of more equitable brokers, for such conversation as he can find, it requires no great spirit of divination to guess at his party—

    This brings me to my point; and naturally leads me (if the see-saw of this désobligeant will but let me get on) into the efficient as well as final causes of travelling—

    Your idle people that leave their native country, and go abroad for some reason or reasons which may be derived from one of these general causes:—

    Infirmity of body,

    Imbecility of mind, or

    Inevitable necessity.

    The first two include all those who travel by land or by water, labouring with pride, curiosity, vanity, or spleen, subdivided and combined ad infinitum.

    The third class includes the whole army of peregrine martyrs; more especially those travellers who set out upon their travels with the benefit of the clergy, either as delinquents travelling under the direction of governors recommended by the magistrate;—or young gentlemen transported by the cruelty of parents and guardians, and travelling under the direction of governors recommended by Oxford, Aberdeen, and Glasgow.

    There is a fourth class, but their number is so small that they would not deserve a distinction, were it not necessary in a work of this nature to observe the greatest precision and nicety, to avoid a confusion of character. And these men I speak of, are such as cross the seas and sojourn in a land of strangers, with a view of saving money for various reasons and upon various pretences: but as they might also save themselves and others a great deal of unnecessary trouble by saving their money at home,—and as their reasons for travelling are the least complex of any other species of emigrants, I shall distinguish these gentlemen by the name of

    Simple Travellers.

    Thus the whole circle of travellers may be reduced to the following heads:—

    Idle Travellers,

    Inquisitive Travellers,

    Lying Travellers,

    Proud Travellers,

    Vain Travellers,

    Splenetic Travellers.

    Then follow:

    The Travellers of Necessity,

    The Delinquent and Felonious Traveller,

    The Unfortunate and Innocent Traveller,

    The Simple Traveller,

    And last of all (if you please) The Sentimental Traveller, (meaning thereby myself) who have travell’d, and of which I am now sitting down to give an account,—as much out of Necessity, and the besoin de Voyager, as any one in the class.

    I am well aware, at the same time, as both my travels and observations will be altogether of a different cast from any of my forerunners, that I might have insisted upon a whole nitch entirely to myself;—but I should break in upon the confines of the Vain Traveller, in wishing to draw attention towards me, till I have some better grounds for it than the mere Novelty of my Vehicle.

    It is sufficient for my reader, if he has been a traveller himself, that with study and reflection hereupon he may be able to determine his own place and rank in the catalogue;—it will be one step towards knowing himself; as it is great odds but he retains some tincture and resemblance, of what he imbibed or carried out, to the present hour.

    The man who first transplanted the grape of Burgundy to the Cape of Good Hope (observe he was a Dutchman) never dreamt of drinking the same wine at the Cape, that the same grape produced upon the French mountains,—he was too phlegmatic for that—but undoubtedly he expected to drink some sort of vinous liquor; but whether good or bad, or indifferent,—he knew enough of this world to know, that it did not depend upon his choice, but that what is generally called choice, was to decide his success: however, he hoped for the best; and in these hopes, by an intemperate confidence in the fortitude of his head, and the depth of his discretion, Mynheer might possibly oversee both in his new vineyard; and by discovering his nakedness, become a laughing stock to his people.

    Even so it fares with the Poor Traveller, sailing and posting through the politer kingdoms of the globe, in pursuit of knowledge and improvements.

    Knowledge and improvements are to be got by sailing and posting for that purpose; but whether useful knowledge and real improvements is all a lottery;—and even where the adventurer is successful, the acquired stock must be used with caution and sobriety, to turn to any profit:—but, as the chances run prodigiously the other way, both as to the acquisition and application, I am of opinion, That a man would act as wisely, if he could prevail upon himself to live contented without foreign knowledge or foreign improvements, especially if he lives in a country that has no absolute want of either;—and indeed, much grief of heart has it oft and many a time cost me, when I have observed how many a foul step the Inquisitive Traveller has measured to see sights and look into discoveries; all which, as Sancho Panza said to Don Quixote, they might have seen dry-shod at home. It is an age so full of light, that there is scarce a country or corner in Europe whose beams are not crossed and interchanged with others.—Knowledge in most of its branches, and in most affairs, is like music in an Italian street, whereof those may partake who pay nothing.—But there is no nation under heaven—and God is my record (before whose tribunal I must one day come and give an account of this work)—that I do not speak it vauntingly,—but there is no nation under heaven abounding with more variety of learning,—where the sciences may be more fitly woo’d, or more surely won, than here,—where art is encouraged, and will so soon rise high,—where Nature (take her altogether) has so little to answer for,—and, to close all, where there is more wit and variety of character to feed the mind with:—Where then, my dear countrymen, are you going?—

    We are only looking at this chaise, said they.—Your most obedient servant, said I, skipping out of it, and pulling off my hat.—We were wondering, said one of them, who, I found was an Inquisitive Traveller,—what could occasion its motion.—’Twas the agitation, said I, coolly, of writing a preface.—I never heard, said the other, who was a Simple Traveller, of a preface wrote in a désobligeant.—It would have been better, said I, in a vis-a-vis.

    —As an Englishman does not travel to see Englishmen, I retired to my room.

    CALAIS.

    I perceived that something darken’d the passage more than myself, as I stepp’d along it to my room; it was effectually Mons. Dessein, the master of the hôtel, who had just returned from vespers, and with his hat under his arm, was most complaisantly following me, to put me in mind of my wants. I had wrote myself pretty well out of conceit with the désobligeant, and Mons. Dessein speaking of it, with a shrug, as if it would no way suit me, it immediately struck my fancy that it belong’d to some Innocent Traveller, who, on his return home, had left it to Mons. Dessein’s honour to make the most of. Four months had elapsed since it had finished its career of Europe in the corner of Mons. Dessein’s coach-yard; and having sallied out from thence but a vampt-up business at the first, though it had been twice taken to pieces on Mount Sennis, it had not profited much by its adventures,—but by none so little as the standing so many months unpitied in the corner of Mons. Dessein’s coach-yard. Much indeed was not to be said for it,—but something might;—and when a few words will rescue misery out of her distress, I hate the man who can be a churl of them.

    —Now was I the master of this hôtel, said I, laying the point of my fore-finger on Mons. Dessein’s breast, I would inevitably make a point of getting rid of this unfortunate désobligeant;—it stands swinging reproaches at you every time you pass by it.

    Mon Dieu! said Mons. Dessein,—I have no interest—Except the interest, said I, which men of a certain turn of mind take, Mons. Dessein, in their own sensations,—I’m persuaded, to a man who feels for others as well as for himself, every rainy night, disguise it as you will, must cast a damp upon your spirits:—You suffer, Mons. Dessein, as much as the machine—

    I have always observed, when there is as much sour as sweet in a compliment, that an Englishman is eternally at a loss within himself, whether to take it, or let it alone: a Frenchman never is: Mons. Dessein made me a bow.

    C’est bien vrai, said he.—But in this case I should only exchange one disquietude for another, and with loss: figure to yourself, my dear Sir, that in giving you a chaise which would fall to pieces before you had got half-way to Paris,—figure to yourself how much I should suffer, in giving an ill impression of myself to a man of honour, and lying at the mercy, as I must do, d’un homme d’esprit.

    The dose was made up exactly after my own prescription; so I could not help tasting it,—and, returning Mons. Dessein his bow, without more casuistry we walk’d together towards his Remise, to take a view of his magazine of chaises.

    IN THE STREET.

    CALAIS.

    It must needs be a hostile kind of a world, when the buyer (if it be but of a sorry post-chaise) cannot go forth with the seller thereof into the street to terminate the difference betwixt them, but he instantly falls into the same frame of mind, and views his conventionist with the same sort of eye, as if he was going along with him to Hyde-park corner to fight a duel. For my own part, being but a poor swordsman, and no way a match for Monsieur Dessein, I felt the rotation of all the movements within me, to which the situation is incident;—I looked at Monsieur Dessein through and through—eyed him as he walk’d along in profile,—then, en face;—thought like a Jew,—then a Turk,—disliked his wig,—cursed him by my gods,—wished him at the

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