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Let us go, said I, together. Maria put her arm within mine, and lengthening the string, to let the dog follow, in that order we enter'd Moulines. Though I hate salutations and greetings in the market-place, yet, when we got into the middle of this, I stopp'd to take my last look and last farewell of Maria.
There is less of artistic trick, it seems to me, and more of natural foible, about Sterne's literary sentiment than Thackeray was ever willing to believe; and I can find nothing worse, though nothing better, in the dead ass of Nampont than in Maria of Moulines.
It is not merely that we don't want to know how the scene affected him, and that we resent as an impertinence the elaborate account of his tender emotions; we don't wish to be reminded of his presence at all. But, in truth, this whole episode of Maria of Moulines was, like more than one of Sterne's efforts after the pathetic, condemned to failure from the very conditions of its birth.
I touch'd upon the string on which hung all her sorrows: she look'd with wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then, without saying any thing, took her pipe and play'd her service to the Virgin. The string I had touched ceased to vibrate; in a moment or two Maria returned to herself, let her pipe fall, and rose up. And where are you going, Maria? said I. She said, to Moulines.
The portion of Shandy which is virtually a part of the Sentimental Journey, which Sterne, possibly to satisfy the demands of the publisher, thrust in to fill out volumes contracted for, was not long enough, nor distinctive enough in its use of sentiment, was too effectually concealed in its volume of Shandean quibbles, to win readers for the whole of Shandy, or to direct wavering attention through the mazes of Shandyism up to the point where the sentimental Yorick really takes up the pen and introduces the reader to the sad fate of Maria of Moulines.
When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar. She was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand: a small brook ran at the foot of the tree.
I bid the postilion go on with the chaise to Moulines and La Fleur to bespeak my supper; and that I would walk after him. She was dress'd in white, and much as my friend described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted within a silk net.
Somewhat akin to these attempts to incorporate Yorick’s ideas is the fantastic laying out of the park at Marienwerder near Hanover, of which Matthison writes in his “Vaterländische Besuche,” and in a letter to the Hofrath von Köpken in Magdeburg, dated October 17, 1785. After a sympathetic description of the secluded park, he tells how labyrinthine paths lead to an eminence “where the unprepared stranger is surprised by the sight of a cemetery. On the crosses there one reads beloved names from Yorick’s Journey and Tristram Shandy. Father Lorenzo, Eliza, Maria of Moulines, Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby and Yorick were gathered by a poetic fancy to this graveyard.” The letter gives a similar description and adds the epitaph on Trim’s monument, “Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness, for he was your brother,” a
Just heaven! it would fill up twenty volumes; and alas! I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into, and half of these must be taken up with the poor Maria my friend, Mr. Shandy, met with near Moulines.
An instance of the pliability of a French mob occurred a short time before our coming to Aix: When Napoleon, on his way to Elba, passed through Moulines, his carriage having halted at one of the inns, was immediately surrounded by a mob, amongst whom a cry of Vive l'Empereur was instantly raised.
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