CHAPTER IX: SMOLLETT
The great English novelists of the eighteenth century turned the courseof English Literature out of its older channel. Her streams haddescended from the double peaks of Parnassus to irrigate the enamelledfields and elegant parterres of poetry and the drama, as the critics ofthe period might have said. But Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, andSterne, diverted the waters, from poetry and plays, into the region ofthe novel, whither they have brought down a copious alluvial deposit.Modern authors do little but till this fertile Delta: the drama is now inthe desert, poetry is a drug, and fiction is literature. Among thewriters who made this revolution, Smollett is, personally, the least wellknown to the world, despite the great part which autobiography andconfessions play in his work. He is always talking about himself, andintroducing his own experiences. But there is little evidence fromwithout; his extant correspondence is scanty; he was not in Dr. Johnson'scircle, much less was he in that of Horace Walpole. He was not a popularman, and probably he has long ceased to be a popular author. About 1780the vendors of children's books issued abridgments of "Tom Jones" and"Pamela," "Clarissa" and "Joseph Andrews," adapted to the needs of infantminds. It was a curious enterprise, certainly, but the booksellers donot seem to have produced "Every Boy's Roderick Random," or "PeregrinePickle for the Young." Smollett, in short, is less known than Fieldingand Sterne, even Thackeray says but a word about him, in the "EnglishHumorists," and he has no place in the series of "English Men ofLetters."
What we know of Smollett reveals a thoroughly typical Scot of his period;a Scot of the species absolutely opposed to Sir Pertinax Macsycophant,and rather akin to the species of Robert Burns. "Rather akin," we maysay, for Smollett, like Burns, was a humorist, and in his humour far fromdainty; he was a personal satirist, and a satirist far from chivalrous.Like Burns, too, he was a poet of independence; like Burns, and even morethan Burns, in a time of patronage he was recalcitrant against patrons.But, unlike Burns, he was _farouche_ to an extreme degree; and, unlikeBurns, he carried very far his prejudices about his "gentrice," hisgentle birth. Herein he is at the opposite pole from the great peasantpoet.
Two potent characteristics of his country were at war within him. Therewas, first, the belief in "gentrice," in a natural difference of kindbetween men of coat armour and men without it. Thus Roderick Random, thestarving cadet of a line of small lairds, accepts the almost incredibleself-denial and devotion of Strap as merely his due. Prince Charlescould not have taken the devotion of Henry Goring, or of Neil MacEachain,more entirely as a matter of course, involving no consideration inreturn, than Roderick took the unparalleled self-sacrifice of his barberfriend and school-mate. Scott has remarked on this contemptuous andungrateful selfishness, and has contrasted it with the relations of TomJones and Partridge. Of course, it is not to be assumed that Smollettwould have behaved like Roderick, when, "finding the fire in my apartmentalmost extinguished, I vented my fury upon poor Strap, whose ear Ipinched with such violence that he roared hideously with pain . . . " Tobe sure Roderick presently "felt unspeakable remorse . . . foamed at themouth, and kicked the chairs about the room." Now Strap had rescuedRoderick from starvation, had bestowed on him hundreds of pounds, and hadcarried his baggage, and dined on his leavings. But Strap was not gentlyborn! Smollett would not, probably, have acted thus, but he did notconsider such conduct a thing out of nature.
On the other side was Smollett's Scottish spirit of independence. Asearly as 1515, James Ingles, chaplain of Margaret Tudor, wrote to AdamWilliamson, "You know the use of this country. . . . The man hath morewords than the master, and will not be content except he know themaster's counsel. There is no order among us." Strap had the instinctof feudal loyalty to a descendant of a laird. But Smollett boasts that,being at the time about twenty, and having burdened a nobleman with hisimpossible play, "The Regicide," "resolved to punish his barbarousindifference, and actually discarded my Patron." _He_ was not given to"booing" (in the sense of bowing), but had, of all known Scots, the most"canty conceit o' himsel'." These qualities, with a violence of temperwhich took the form of beating people when on his travels, cannot havemade Smollett a popular character. He knew his faults, as he shows inthe dedication of "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," to himself. "I have knownyou trifling, superficial, and obstinate in dispute; meanly jealous andawkwardly reserved; rash and haughty in your resentment; and coarse andlowly in your connections."
He could, it is true, on occasion, forgive (even where he had not beenwronged), and could compensate, in milder moods, for the fierce attacksmade in hours when he was "meanly jealous." Yet, in early life at least,he regarded his own Roderick Random as "modest and meritorious,"struggling nobly with the difficulties which beset a "friendless orphan,"especially from the "selfishness, envy, malice, and base indifference ofmankind." Roderick himself is, in fact, the incarnation of the basestselfishness. In one of his adventures he is guilty of that extremeinfamy which the d'Artagnan of "The Three Musketeers" and of the"Memoirs" committed, and for which the d'Artagnan of _Le Vicomte deBragelonne_ took shame to himself. While engaged in a virtuous passion,Roderick not only behaves like a vulgar debauchee, but pursues themeanest arts of the fortune-hunter who is ready to marry any woman forher money. Such is the modest and meritorious orphan, and mankind nowcarries its "base indifference" so far, that Smollett's biographer, Mr.Hannay, says, "if Roderick had been hanged, I, for my part, should haveheard the tidings unmoved . . . Smollett obviously died without realisinghow nearly the hero, who was in some sort a portrait of himself, came tobeing a ruffian."
Dr. Carlyle, in 1758, being in London, found Smollett "much of ahumorist, and not to be put out of his way." A "humorist," here, meansan overbearingly eccentric person, such as Smollett, who lived much in asociety of literary dependants, was apt to become. But Dr. Carlyle alsofound that, though Smollett "described so well the characters of ruffiansand profligates," he did not resemble them. Dr. Robertson, thehistorian, "expressed great surprise at his polished and agreeablemanners, and the great urbanity of his conversation." He was handsome inperson, as his portrait shows, but his "nervous system was exceedinglyirritable and subject to passion," as he says in the Latin account of hishealth which, in 1763, he drew up for the physician at Montpellier.Though, when he chose, he could behave like a man of breeding, and thoughhe undeniably had a warm heart for his wife and daughter, he did notalways choose to behave well. Except Dr. Moore, his biographer, he seemsto have had few real friends during most of his career.
As to persons whom he chose to regard as his enemies, he was beyondmeasure rancorous and dangerous. From his first patron, Lord Lyttelton,to his last, he pursued them with unscrupulous animosity. If he did notmean actually to draw portraits of his grandfather, his cousins, hisschool-master, and the apothecary whose gallipots he attended--in"Roderick Random,"--yet he left the originals who suggested hischaracters in a very awkward situation. For assuredly he did entertain aspite against his grandfather: and as many of the incidents in "RoderickRandom" were autobiographical, the public readily inferred that otherswere founded on fact.
The outlines of Smollett's career are familiar, though gaps in ourknowledge occur. Perhaps they may partly be filled up by the aid ofpassages in his novels, plays, and poems: in these, at all events, hedescribes conditions and situations through which he himself may, ormust, have passed.
Born in 1721, he was a younger son of Archibald, a younger son of SirJames Smollett of Bonhill, a house on the now polluted Leven, betweenLoch Lomond and the estuary of the Clyde. Smollett's father made animprudent marriage: the grandfather provided a small, but competentprovision for him and his family, during his own life. The father,Archibald, died; the grandfather left nothing to the mother of Tobias andher children, but they were assisted with scrimp decency by the heirs.Hence the attacks on the grandfather and cousins of Roderick Random: but,later, Smollett returned to kinder feelings.
In some ways Tobias resembled his old grandsire. About 1710 that
gentleman wrote a Memoir of his own life. Hence we learn that _he_, inchildhood, like Roderick Random, was regarded as "a clog and burden," andwas neglected by his father, ill-used by his step-mother. Thus Tobiashad not only his own early poverty to resent, but had a hereditary grudgeagainst fortune, and "the base indifference of mankind." The oldgentleman was lodged "with very hard and penurious people," at GlasgowUniversity. He rose in the world, and was a good Presbyterian Whig, but"had no liberty" to help to forfeit James II. "The puir child, his son"(James III. and VIII.), "if he was really such, was innocent, and it werehard to do anything that would touch the son for the father's fault." Theold gentleman, therefore, though a Member of Parliament, evaded attendingthe first Parliament after the Union: "I had no freedom to do it, becauseI understood that the great business to be agitated therein was to makelaws for abjuring the Pretender . . . which I could not go in with, beingalways of opinion that it was hard to impose oaths on people who had notfreedom to take them."
This was uncommonly liberal conduct, in a Whig, and our Smollett, thoughno Jacobite, was in distinct and courageous sympathy with JacobiteScotland. Indeed, he was as patriotic as Burns, or as his own Lismahago.These were times, we must remember, in which Scottish patriotism was morethan a mere historical sentiment. Scotland was inconceivably poor, andScots, in England, were therefore ridiculous. The country had, so far,gained very little by the Union, and the Union was detested even byScottish Whig Earls. It is recorded by Moore that, while at theDumbarton Grammar School, Smollett wrote "verses to the memory ofWallace, of whom he became an early admirer," having read "Blind Harry'stranslation of the Latin poems of John Blair," chaplain to that hero.There probably never were any such Latin poems, but Smollett began withthe same hero-worship as Burns. He had the attachment of a Scot to hisnative stream, the Leven, which later he was to celebrate. Now ifSmollett had credited Roderick Random with these rural, poetical, andpatriotic tastes, his hero would have been much more human and amiable.There was much good in Smollett which is absent in Random. But for somereason, probably because Scotland was unpopular after the Forty-Five,Smollett merely describes the woes, ill usage, and retaliations ofRoderick. That he suffered as Random did is to the last degreeimprobable. He had a fair knowledge of Latin, and was not destitute ofGreek, while his master, a Mr. Love, bore a good character both forhumanity and scholarship. He must have studied the classics at GlasgowUniversity, where he was apprenticed to Mr. Gordon, a surgeon. Gordon,again, was an excellent man, appreciated by Smollett himself in afterdays, and the odious Potion of "Roderick Random" must, like his rival,Crab, have been merely a fancy sketch of meanness, hypocrisy, andprofligacy. Perhaps the good surgeon became the victim of that "onecontinued string of epigrammatic sarcasms," such as Mr. Colquhoun toldRamsay of Ochtertyre, Smollett used to play off on his companions, "forwhich no talents could compensate." Judging by Dr. Carlyle's Memoirsthis intolerable kind of display was not unusual in Caledonianconversation: but it was not likely to make Tobias popular in England.
Thither he went in 1739, with very little money, "and a very largeassortment of letters of recommendation: whether his relatives intendedto compensate for the scantiness of the one by their profusion in theother is uncertain; but he has often been heard to declare that theirliberality in the last article was prodigious." The Smolletts were not"kinless loons"; they had connections: but who, in Scotland, had money?Tobias had passed his medical examinations, but he rather trusted in hisMS. tragedy, "The Regicide." Tragical were its results for the author.Inspired by George Buchanan's Latin history of Scotland, Smollett hadproduced a play, in blank verse, on the murder of James I. That a boy,even a Scottish boy, should have an overweening passion for this unluckypiece, that he should expect by such a work to climb a step on fortune'sladder, is nowadays amazing. For ten years he clung to it, modified it,polished, improved it, and then published it in 1749, after the successof "Roderick Random." Twice he told the story of his theatrical mishapsand disappointments, which were such as occur to every writer for thestage. He wailed over them in "Roderick Random," in the story of Mr.Melopoyn; he prolonged his cry, in the preface to "The Regicide," andprobably the noble whom he "lashed" (very indecently) in his two satires("Advice," 1746, "Reproof," 1747, and in "Roderick Random") was thepatron who could not get the tragedy acted. First, in 1739, he had apatron whom he "discarded." Then he went to the West Indies, and,returning in 1744, he lugged out his tragedy again, and fell foul againof patrons, actors, and managers. What befell him was the common fate.People did not, probably, hasten to read his play: managers and"supercilious peers" postponed that entertainment, or, at least, thenoblemen could not make the managers accept it if they did not want it.Our taste differs so much from that of the time which admired Home's"Douglas," and "The Regicide" was so often altered to meet objections,that we can scarcely criticise it. Of course it is absolutelyunhistorical; of course it is empty of character, and replete withfustian, and ineffably tedious; but perhaps it is not much worse thanother luckier tragedies of the age. Naturally a lover calls his woundedlady "the bleeding fair." Naturally she exclaims--
"Celestial powers Protect my father, shower upon his--oh!" (Dies).
Naturally her adorer answers with--
"So may our mingling souls To bliss supernal wing our happy--oh!" (Dies).
We are reminded of--
"Alas, my Bom!" (Dies). "'Bastes' he would have said!"
The piece, if presented, must have been damned. But Smollett was soangry with one patron, Lord Lyttelton, that he burlesqued the poor man'sdirge on the death of his wife. He was so angry with Garrick that hedragged him into "Roderick Random" as Marmozet. Later, obliged byGarrick, and forgiving Lyttelton, he wrote respectfully about both. But,in 1746 (in "Advice"), he had assailed the "proud lord, who smiles agracious lie," and "the varnished ruffians of the State." BecauseTobias's play was unacted, people who tried to aid him were liars andruffians, and a great deal worse, for in his satire, as in his firstnovel, Smollett charges men of high rank with the worst of unnamablecrimes. Pollio and Lord Strutwell, whoever they may have been, wereprobably recognisable then, and were undeniably libelled, though they didnot appeal to a jury. It is improbable that Sir John Cope had ever triedto oblige Smollett. His ignoble attack on Cope, after that unfortunateGeneral had been fairly and honourably acquitted of incompetence andcowardice, was, then, wholly disinterested. Cope is "a courtier Ape,appointed General."
"Then Pug, aghast, fled faster than the wind, Nor deign'd, in three-score miles, to look behind; While every band for orders bleat in vain, And fall in slaughtered heaps upon the plain,"--
of Preston Pans.
Nothing could be more remote from the truth, or more unjustly cruel.Smollett had not here even the excuse of patriotism. Sir John Cope wasno Butcher Cumberland. In fact the poet's friend is not wrong, when, in"Reproof," he calls Smollett "a flagrant misanthrope." The world was outof joint for the cadet of Bonhill: both before and after his very tryingexperiences as a ship surgeon the managers would not accept "TheRegicide." This was reason good why Smollett should try to make a littlemoney and notoriety by penning satires. They are fierce, foul-mouthed,and pointless. But Smollett was poor, and he was angry; he had theexamples of Pope and Swift before him; which, as far as truculence went,he could imitate. Above all, it was then the fixed belief of men ofletters that some peer or other ought to aid and support them; and, as nopeer did support Smollett, obviously they were "varnished ruffians." Heerred as he would not err now, for times, and ways of going wrong, arechanged. But, at best, how different are his angry couplets from thelofty melancholy of Johnson's satires!
Smollett's "small sum of money" did not permit him long to push thefortunes of his tragedy, in 1739; and as for his "very large assortmentof letters of recommendation," they only procured for him the post ofsurgeon's mate in the _Cumberland_ of the line. Here he saw enough ofthe horrors of naval life, enough of misery, brutal
ity, andmismanagement, at Carthagena (1741), to supply materials for the salutaryand sickening pages on that theme in "Roderick Random." He also saw andappreciated the sterling qualities of courage, simplicity, andgenerosity, which he has made immortal in his Bowlings and Trunnions.
It is part of a novelist's business to make one half of the world knowhow the other half lives; and in this province Smollett anticipatedDickens. He left the service as soon as he could, when the beaten fleetwas refitting at Jamaica. In that isle he seems to have practised as adoctor; and he married, or was betrothed to, a Miss Lascelles, who had asmall and far from valuable property. The real date of his marriage isobscure: more obscure are Smollett's resources on his return to London,in 1744. Houses in Downing Street can never have been cheap, but we find"Mr. Smollett, surgeon in Downing Street, Westminster," and, in 1746, hewas living in May Fair, not a region for slender purses. His tragedy wasnow bringing in nothing but trouble, to himself and others. His satirescannot have been lucrative. As a dweller in May Fair he could notsupport himself, like his Mr. Melopoyn, by writing ballads for streetsingers. Probably he practised in his profession. In "Count Fathom" hemakes his adventurer "purchase an old chariot, which was new painted forthe occasion, and likewise hire a footman . . . This equipage, thoughmuch more expensive than his finances could bear, he found absolutelynecessary to give him a chance of employment . . . A walking physicianwas considered as an obscure pedlar." A chariot, Smollett insists, wasnecessary to "every raw surgeon"; while Bob Sawyer's expedient of "beingcalled from church" was already _vieux jeu_, in the way of advertisement.Such things had been "injudiciously hackneyed." In this passage ofFathom's adventures, Smollett proclaims his insight into methods ofgetting practice. A physician must ingratiate himself with apothecariesand ladies' maids, or "acquire interest enough" to have an infirmaryerected "by the voluntary subscriptions of his friends." Here Smollettdenounces hospitals, which "encourage the vulgar to be idle anddissolute, by opening an asylum to them and their families, from thediseases of poverty and intemperance." This is odd morality for one whosuffered from "the base indifference of mankind." He ought to have knownthat poverty is not a vice for which the poor are to be blamed; and thatintemperance is not the only other cause of their diseases. Perhaps theunfeeling passage is a mere paradox in the style of his own Lismahago.
With or without a chariot, it is probable that Tobias had not aninsinuating style, or "a good bedside manner"; friends to support ahospital for his renown he had none; but, somehow, he could live in MayFair, and, in 1746, could meet Dr. Carlyle and Stewart, son of theProvost of Edinburgh, and other Scots, at the Golden Ball in CockspurStreet. There they were enjoying "a frugal supper and a little punch,"when the news of Culloden arrived. Carlyle had been a Whig volunteer:he, probably, was happy enough; but Stewart, whose father was in prison,grew pale, and left the room. Smollett and Carlyle then walked homethrough secluded streets, and were silent, lest their speech shouldbewray them for Scots. "John Bull," quoth Smollett, "is as haughty andvaliant to-day, as he was abject and cowardly on the Black Wednesday whenthe Highlanders were at Derby."
"Weep, Caledonia, weep!" he had written in his tragedy. Now he wrote"Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn." Scott has quoted, from Graham ofGartmore, the story of Smollett's writing verses, while Gartmore andothers were playing cards. He read them what he had written, "The Tearsof Scotland," and added the last verse on the spot, when warned that hisopinions might give offence.
"Yes, spite of thine insulting foe, My sympathising verse shall flow."
The "Tears" are better than the "Ode to Blue-Eyed Ann," probably Mrs.Smollett. But the courageous author of "The Tears of Scotland," hadmanifestly broken with patrons. He also broke with Rich, the manager atCovent Garden, for whom he had written an opera libretto. He had failedas doctor, and as dramatist; nor, as satirist, had he succeeded. Yet hemanaged to wear wig and sword, and to be seen in good men's company.Perhaps his wife's little fortune supported him, till, in 1748, heproduced "Roderick Random." It is certain that we never find Smollett inthe deep distresses of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith. Novels were now invogue; "Pamela" was recent, "Joseph Andrews" was yet more recent,"Clarissa Harlowe" had just appeared, and Fielding was publishing "TomJones." Smollett, too, tried his hand, and, at last, he succeeded.
His ideas of the novel are offered in his preface. The Novel, for him,is a department of Satire; "the most entertaining and universallyimproving." To Smollett, "Roderick Random" seemed an "improving" work!_Ou le didacticisme va t'il se nicher_? Romance, he declares, "arose inignorance, vanity, and superstition," and declined into "the ludicrousand unnatural." Then Cervantes "converted romance to purposes far moreuseful and entertaining, by making it assume the sock, and point out thefollies of ordinary life." Romance was to revive again some twenty yearsafter its funeral oration was thus delivered. As for Smollett himself,he professedly "follows the plan" of Le Sage, in "Gil Blas" (a plan asold as Petronius Arbiter, and the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius); but he givesmore place to "compassion," so as not to interfere with "generousindignation, which ought to animate the reader against the sordid andvicious disposition of the world." As a contrast to sordid vice, we areto admire "modest merit" in that exemplary orphan, Mr. Random. Thisgentleman is a North Briton, because only in North Britain can a poororphan get such an education as Roderick's "birth and character require,"and for other reasons. Now, as for Roderick, the schoolmaster "gavehimself no concern about the progress I made," but, "should endeavour,with God's help, to prevent my future improvement." It must have been atGlasgow University, then, that Roderick learned "Greek very well, and waspretty far advanced in the mathematics," and here he must have used hisgenius for the _belles lettres_, in the interest of his "amorouscomplexion," by "lampooning the rivals" of the young ladies who admiredhim.
Such are the happy beginnings, accompanied by practical jokes, of thisinteresting model. Smollett's heroes, one conceives, were intended to befine, though not faultless young fellows; men, not plaster images; brave,generous, free-living, but, as Roderick finds once, when examining hisconscience, pure from serious stains on that important faculty. To usthese heroes often appear no better than ruffians; Peregrine Pickle, forexample, rather excels the infamy of Ferdinand, Count Fathom, in certainrespects; though Ferdinand is professedly "often the object of ourdetestation and abhorrence," and is left in a very bad, but, as "HumphreyClinker" shows, in by no means a hopeless way. Yet, throughout, Smollettregarded himself as a moralist, a writer of improving tendencies; one who"lashed the vices of the age." He was by no means wholly mistaken, butwe should probably wrong the eighteenth century if we accepted allSmollett's censures as entirely deserved. The vices which he lashed arethose which he detected, or fancied that he detected, in people whoregarded a modest and meritorious Scottish orphan with base indifference.Unluckily the greater part of mankind was guilty of this crime, andconsequently was capable of everything.
Enough has probably been said about the utterly distasteful figure ofSmollett's hero. In Chapter LX. we find him living on the resources ofStrap, then losing all Strap's money at play, and then "I bilk mytaylor." That is, Roderick orders several suits of new clothes, andsells them for what they will fetch. Meanwhile Strap can live honestlyanywhere, while he has his ten fingers. Roderick rescues himself frompoverty by engaging, with his uncle, in the slave trade. We are apt toconsider this commerce infamous. But, in 1763, the Evangelical directorwho helped to make Cowper "a castaway," wrote, as to the slaver'sprofession: "It is, indeed, accounted a genteel employment, and isusually very profitable, though to me it did not prove so, the Lordseeing that a large increase of wealth could not be good for me." Thereverend gentleman had, doubtless, often sung--
"_Time for us to go_, _Time for us to go_, _And when we'd got the hatches down_, '_Twas time for us to go_!"
Roderick, apart from "black ivory," is aided by his uncle and his longlost father. The base world, in the persons of Strap,
Thompson, theuncle, Mr. Sagely, and other people, treats him infinitely better than hedeserves. His very love (as always in Smollett) is only an animalappetite, vigorously insisted upon by the author. By a natural reaction,Scott, much as he admired Smollett, introduced his own blameless heroes,and even Thackeray could only hint at the defects of youth, in "Esmond."Thackeray is accused of making his good people stupid, or too simple, oreccentric, and otherwise contemptible. Smollett went further: Strap, amodel of benevolence, is ludicrous and a coward; even Bowling has thestage eccentricities of the sailor. Mankind was certain, in the longrun, to demand heroes more amiable and worthy of respect. Ourinclinations, as Scott says, are with "the open-hearted, good-humoured,and noble-minded Tom Jones, whose libertinism (one particular omitted) isperhaps rendered but too amiable by his good qualities." To be sureRoderick does befriend "a reclaimed street-walker" in her worst need, butwhy make her the _confidante_ of the virginal Narcissa? Why reward Strapwith her hand? Fielding decidedly, as Scott insists, "places before usheroes, and especially heroines, of a much higher as well as morepleasing character, than Smollett was able to present."
"But the deep and fertile genius of Smollett afforded resourcessufficient to make up for these deficiencies . . . If Fielding hadsuperior taste, the palm of more brilliancy of genius, more inexhaustiblerichness of invention, must in justice be awarded to Smollett. Incomparison with his sphere, that in which Fielding walked was limited . . ."The second part of Scott's parallel between the men whom heconsidered the greatest of our novelists, qualifies the first. Smollett'sinvention was not richer than Fielding's, but the sphere in which hewalked, the circle of his experience, was much wider. One division oflife they knew about equally well, the category of rakes, adventurers,card-sharpers, unhappy authors, people of the stage, and ladies withoutreputations, in every degree. There were conditions of higher society,of English rural society, and of clerical society, which Fielding, bybirth and education, knew much better than Smollett. But Smollett hadthe advantage of his early years in Scotland, then as little known asJapan; with the "nautical multitude," from captain to loblolly boy, hewas intimately familiar; with the West Indies he was acquainted; and helater resided in Paris, and travelled in Flanders, so that he had moreexperience, certainly, if not more invention, than Fielding.
In "Roderick Random" he used Scottish "local colour" very little, but hislife had furnished him with a surprising wealth of "strange experiences."Inns were, we must believe, the favourite home of adventures, andSmollett could ring endless changes on mistakes about bedrooms. None ofthem is so innocently diverting as the affair of Mr. Pickwick and thelady in yellow curl-papers; but the absence of that innocence whichheightens Mr. Pickwick's distresses was welcome to admirers of what LadyMary Wortley Montagu calls "gay reading."
She wrote from abroad, in 1752, "There is something humorous in R.Random, that makes me believe that the author is H. Fielding"--herkinsman. Her ladyship did her cousin little justice. She did notcomplain of the morals of "R. Random," but thought "Pamela" and"Clarissa" "likely to do more general mischief than the works of LordRochester." Probably "R. Random" did little harm. His career is tooobviously ideal. Too many ups and downs occur to him, and few orphans ofmerit could set before themselves the ideal of bilking their tailors,gambling by way of a profession, dealing in the slave trade, andwheedling heiresses.
The variety of character in the book is vast; in Morgan we have anexcellent, fiery, Welshman, of the stage type; the different minormiscreants are all vividly designed; the eccentric lady author may havehad a real original; Miss Snapper has much vivacity as a wit; the Frenchadventures in the army are, in their rude barbaric way, a forecast ofBarry Lyndon's; and, generally, both Scott and Thackeray owe a good dealto Smollett in the way of suggestions. Smollett's extraordinary love ofdilating on noisome smells and noisome sights, that intense affection forthe physically nauseous, which he shared with Swift, is rather lessmarked in "Roderick" than in "Humphrey Clinker," and "The Adventures ofan Atom." The scenes in the Marshalsea must have been familiar toDickens. The terrible history of Miss Williams is Hogarth's Harlot'sProgress done into unsparing prose. Smollett guides us at a brisk pacethrough the shady and brutal side of the eighteenth century; his vivacityis as unflagging as that of his disagreeable rattle of a hero. Thepassion usually understood as love is, to be sure, one of which he seemsto have no conception; he regards a woman much as a greedy person mightregard a sirloin of beef, or, at least, a plate of ortolans. At hermarriage a bride is "dished up;" that is all.
Thus this "gay writing" no longer makes us gay. In reading "PeregrinePickle" and "Humphrey Clinker," a man may find himself laughing aloud,but hardly in reading "Roderick Random." The fun is of the cruelprimitive sort, arising merely from the contemplation of somebody'spainful discomfiture. Bowling and Rattlin may be regarded withaffectionate respect; but Roderick has only physical courage and vivacityto recommend him. Whether Smollett, in Flaubert's deliberate way,purposely abstained from moralising on the many scenes of physicaldistress which he painted; or whether he merely regarded them withoutemotion, has been debated. It seems more probable that he thought theycarried their own moral. It is the most sympathetic touch in Roderick'scharacter, that he writes thus of his miserable crew of slaves: "Our shipbeing freed from the disagreeable lading of negroes, _to whom indeed Ihad been a miserable slave since our leaving the coast of Guinea_, Ibegan to enjoy myself." Smollett was a physician, and had thepitifulness of his profession; though we see how casually he makes Randomtouch on his own unwonted benevolence.
People had not begun to know the extent of their own brutality in theslave trade, but Smollett probably did know it. If a curious propheticletter attributed to him, and published more than twenty years after hisdeath, be genuine; he had the strongest opinions about this form ofcommercial enterprise. But he did not wear his heart on his sleeve,where he wore his irritable nervous system. It is probable enough thathe felt for the victims of poverty, neglect, and oppression (despite hisremarks on hospitals) as keenly as Dickens. We might regard hisoffensively ungrateful Roderick as a purely dramatic exhibition of ayoung man, if his other heroes were not as bad, or worse; if their fewredeeming qualities were not stuck on in patches; and if he had omittedhis remark about Roderick's "modest merit." On the other hand, the goodside of Matthew Bramble seems to be drawn from Smollett's own character,and, if that be the case, he can have had little sympathy with his ownhumorous Barry Lyndons. Scott and Thackeray leaned to the favourableview: Smollett, his nervous system apart, was manly and kindly.
As regards plot, "Roderick Random" is a mere string of picturesqueadventures. It is at the opposite pole from "Tom Jones" in the matter ofconstruction. There is no reason why it should ever stop except theconvenience of printers and binders. Perhaps we lay too much stress onthe somewhat mechanical art of plot-building. Fielding was then settingthe first and best English example of a craft in which the very greatestauthors have been weak, or of which they were careless. Smollett wasalways rather more incapable, or rather more indifferent, inplot-weaving, than greater men.
In our day of royalties, and gossip about the gains of authors, it wouldbe interesting to know what manner and size of a cheque Smollett receivedfrom his publisher, the celebrated Mr. Osborne. We do not know, butSmollett published his next novel "on commission," "printed for theAuthor"; so probably he was not well satisfied with the pecuniary resultof "Roderick Random." Thereby, says Dr. Moore, he "acquired much morereputation than money." So he now published "The Regicide" "bysubscription, that method of publication being then more reputable thanit has been thought since" (1797). Of "The Regicide," and its unluckypreface, enough, or more, has been said. The public sided with themanagers, not with the meritorious orphan.
For the sake of pleasure, or of new experiences, or of economy, Smollettwent to Paris in 1750, where he met Dr. Moore, later his biographer, thepoetical Dr. Akenside, and an affected painter. He introduced the poetand painter into
"Peregrine Pickle"; and makes slight use of a group ofexiled Jacobites, including Mr. Hunter of Burnside. In 1750, there wereJacobites enough in the French capital, all wondering very much wherePrince Charles might be, and quite unconscious that he was theirneighbour in a convent in the Rue St. Dominique. Though Moore does notsay so (he is provokingly economical of detail), we may presume thatSmollett went wandering in Flanders, as does Peregrine Pickle. It iscurious that he should introduce a Capucin, a Jew, and a black-eyeddamsel, all in the Ghent diligence, when we know that Prince Charles didlive in Ghent, with the black-eyed Miss Walkenshaw, did go aboutdisguised as a Capucin, and was tracked by a Jewish spy, while the otherspy, Young Glengarry, styled himself "Pickle." But all those eventsoccurred about a year after the novel was published in 1751.
Before that date Smollett had got an M.D. degree from AberdeenUniversity, and, after returning from France, he practised for a year ortwo at Bath. But he could not expect to be successful among fashionableinvalids, and, in "Humphrey Clinker," he make Matthew Bramble give suchan account of the Bath waters as M. Zola might envy. He was still tryingto gain ground in his profession, when, in March 1751, Mr. D. Wilsonpublished the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle" "for the Author,"unnamed. I have never seen this first edition, which was "very curiousand disgusting." Smollett, in his preface to the second edition, talksof "the art and industry that were used to stifle him in the birth, bycertain booksellers and others." He now "reformed the manners, andcorrected the expressions," removed or modified some passages of personalsatire, and held himself exempt from "the numerous shafts of envy,rancour, and revenge, that have lately, both in private and public, beenlevelled at his reputation." Who were these base and pitiless dastards?Probably every one who did not write favourably about the book. PerhapsSmollett suspected Fielding, whom he attacks in several parts of hisworks, treating him as a kind of Jonathan Wild, a thief-taker, and anassociate with thieves. Why Smollett thus misconducted himself is aproblem, unless he was either "meanly jealous," or had taken offence atsome remarks in Fielding's newspaper. Smollett certainly began the war,in the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle." He made a kind of palinodeto the "trading justice" later, as other people of his kind have done.
A point in "Peregrine Pickle" easily assailed was the long episode abouta Lady of Quality: the beautiful Lady Vane, whose memoirs Smollettintroduced into his tale. Horace Walpole found that she had omitted theonly feature in her career of which she had just reason to be proud: thenumber of her lovers. Nobody doubted that Smollett was paid for castinghis mantle over Lady Vane: moreover, he might expect a success ofscandal. The _roman a clef_ is always popular with scandal-mongers, butits authors can hardly hope to escape rebuke.
It was not till 1752 that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in Italy, received"Peregrine," with other fashionable romances--"Pompey the Little," "TheParish Girl," "Eleanora's Adventures," "The Life of Mrs. TheresaConstantia Phipps," "The Adventures of Mrs. Loveil," and so on. Most ofthem contained portraits of real people, and, no doubt, most of them weretherefore successful. But where are they now? Lady Mary thought LadyVane's part of "Peregrine" "more instructive to young women than anysermon that I know." She regarded Fielding as with Congreve, the only"original" of her age, but Fielding had to write for bread, and that is"the most contemptible way of getting bread." She did not, at this time,even know Smollett's name, but she admired him, and, later, calls him "mydear Smollett." This lady thought that Fielding did not know what sorryfellows his Tom Jones and Captain Booth were. Not near so sorry asPeregine Pickle were they, for this gentleman is a far more atrociousruffian than Roderick Random.
None the less "Peregrine" is Smollett's greatest work. Nothing is sorich in variety of character, scene, and adventure. We are carried alongby the swift and copious volume of the current, carried into very queerplaces, and into the oddest miscellaneous company, but we cannot escapefrom Smollett's vigorous grasp. Sir Walter thought that "Roderick"excelled its successor in "ease and simplicity," and that Smollett'ssailors, in "Pickle," "border on caricature." No doubt they do: theeccentricities of Hawser Trunnion, Esq., are exaggerated, and Pipes isless subdued than Rattlin, though always delightful. But Trunnionabsolutely makes one laugh out aloud: whether he is criticising thesister of Mr. Gamaliel Pickle in that gentleman's presence, at apot-house; or riding to the altar with his squadron of sailors, tackingin an unfavourable gale; or being run away into a pack of hounds, andclearing a hollow road over a waggoner, who views him with "unspeakableterror and amazement." Mr. Winkle as an equestrian is not more entirelyacceptable to the mind than Trunnion. We may speak of "caricature," butif an author can make us sob with laughter, to criticise him solemnly isungrateful.
Except Fielding occasionally, and Smollett, and Swift, and Sheridan, andthe authors of "The Rovers," one does not remember any writers of theeighteenth century who quite upset the gravity of the reader. The sceneof the pedant's dinner after the manner of the ancients, does not seem tomyself so comic as the adventures of Trunnion, while the bride is at thealtar, and the bridegroom is tacking and veering with his convoy aboutthe fields. One sees how the dinner is done: with a knowledge ofAthenaeus, Juvenal, Petronius, and Horace, many men could have writtenthis set piece. But Trunnion is quite inimitable: he is a child ofhumour and of the highest spirits, like Mr. Weller the elder. Till Scottcreated Mause Headrig, no Caledonian had ever produced anything except"Tam o' Shanter," that could be a pendant to Trunnion. His pathos ispossibly just a trifle overdone, though that is not my own opinion. DearTrunnion! he makes me overlook the gambols of his detestable _protege_,the hero.
That scoundrel is not an impossible caricature of an obstinate, vain,cruel libertine. Peregrine was precisely the man to fall in love withEmilia _pour le bon motif_, and then attempt to ruin her, though she wasthe sister of his friend, by devices worthy of Lovelace at his last andlowest stage. Peregrine's overwhelming vanity, swollen by facileconquests, would inevitably have degraded him to this abyss. Theintrigue was only the worst of those infamous practical jokes of his, inwhich Smollett takes a cruel and unholy delight. Peregrine, in fact, isa hero of _naturalisme_, except that his fits of generosity are merepatches daubed on, and that his reformation is a farce, in which a modern_naturaliste_ would have disdained to indulge. Emilia, in her scene withPeregrine in the _bouge_ to which he has carried her, rises much aboveSmollett's heroines, and we could like her, if she had never forgivenbehaviour which was beneath pardon.
Peregrine's education at Winchester bears out Lord Elcho's description ofthat academy in his lately published Memoirs. It was apt to developPeregrines; and Lord Elcho himself might have furnished Smollett withsuitable adventures. There can be no doubt that Cadwallader Crabtreesuggested Sir Malachi Malagrowther to Scott, and that Hatchway and Pipes,taking up their abode with Peregrine in the Fleet, gave a hint to Dickensfor Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick in the same abode. That "Peregrine""does far excel 'Joseph Andrews' and 'Amelia'," as Scott declares, fewmodern readers will admit. The world could do much better without"Peregrine" than without "Joseph"; while Amelia herself alone is a studygreatly preferable to the whole works of Smollett: such, at least, is theopinion of a declared worshipper of that peerless lady. Yet "Peregrine"is a kind of Odyssey of the eighteenth century: an epic of humour and ofadventure.
In February 1753, Smollett "obliged the town" with his "Adventures ofFerdinand, Count Fathom," a cosmopolitan swindler and adventurer. Thebook is Smollett's "Barry Lyndon," yet as his hero does not tell his ownstory, but is perpetually held up as a "dreadful example," there is noneof Thackeray's irony, none of his subtlety. "Here is a really bad man, aforeigner too," Smollett seems to say, "do not be misled, oh maidens, bythe wiles of such a Count! Impetuous youth, play not with him atbilliards, basset, or gleek. Fathers, on such a rogue shut your doors:collectors, handle not his nefarious antiques. Let all avoid the pathand shun the example of Ferdinand, Count Fathom!"
Such is Smollett's sermon, but, after all, Ferdinan
d is hardly worse thanRoderick or Peregrine. The son of a terrible old sutler andcamp-follower, a robber and slayer of wounded men, Ferdinand had to liveby his wits, and he was hardly less scrupulous, after all, than Peregrineand Roderick. The daubs of casual generosity were not laid on, and thatis all the difference. As Sophia Western was mistaken for Miss JennyCameron, so Ferdinand was arrested as Prince Charles, who, in fact,caused much inconvenience to harmless travellers. People were oftenarrested as "The Pretender's son" abroad as well as in England.
The life and death of Ferdinand's mother, shot by a wounded hussar in hermoment of victory, make perhaps the most original and interesting part ofthis hero's adventures. The rest is much akin to his earlier novels, butthe history of Rinaldo and Monimia has a passage not quite alien to thevein of Mrs. Radcliffe. Some remarks in the first chapter show thatSmollett felt the censures on his brutality and "lowness," and hepromises to seek "that goal of perfection where nature is castigatedalmost even to still life . . . where decency, divested of all substance,hovers about like a fantastic shadow."
Smollett never reached that goal, and even the shadow of decency neverhaunted him so as to make him afraid with any amazement. Smollett aversthat he "has had the courage to call in question the talents of a pseudo-patron," and so is charged with "insolence, rancour, and scurrility." Ofall these things, and of worse, he had been guilty; his offence had neverbeen limited to "calling in question the talents" of persons who had beenunsuccessful in getting his play represented. Remonstrance merelyirritated Tobias. His new novel was but a fainter echo of his oldnovels, a panorama of scoundrelism, with the melodramatic fortunes of thevirtuous Monimia for a foil. If read to-day, it is read as a sketch ofmanners, or want of manners. The scene in which the bumpkin squire rooksthe accomplished Fathom at hazard, in Paris, is prettily conceived, andSmollett's indignation at the British system of pews in church isedifying. But when Monimia appears to her lover as he weeps at her tomb,and proves to be no phantom, but a "warm and substantial" Monimia,capable of being "dished up," like any other Smollettian heroine, thereader is sensibly annoyed. Tobias as _un romantique_ is absolutely tooabsurd; "not here, oh Tobias, are haunts meet for thee."
Smollett's next novel, "Sir Launcelot Greaves," was not published till1761, after it had appeared in numbers, in _The British Magazine_. Thiswas a sixpenny serial, published by Newbery. The years between 1753 and1760 had been occupied by Smollett in quarrelling, getting imprisoned forlibel, editing the _Critical Review_, writing his "History of England,"translating (or adapting old translations of) "Don Quixote," and drivinga team of literary hacks, whose labours he superintended, and to whom hegave a weekly dinner. These exploits are described by Dr. Carlyle, andby Smollett himself, in "Humphrey Clinker." He did not treat his vassalswith much courtesy or consideration; but then they expected no suchtreatment. We have no right to talk of his doings as "a blood-suckingmethod, literary sweating," like a recent biographer of Smollett. Not tospeak of the oddly mixed metaphor, we do not know what Smollett'srelations to his retainers really were. As an editor he had to see hiscontributors. The work of others he may have recommended, as "reader" topublishers. Others may have made transcripts for him, or translations.That Smollett "sweated" men, or sucked their blood, or both, seems acrude way of saying that he found them employment. Nobody says thatJohnson "sweated" the persons who helped him in compiling his Dictionary;or that Mr. Jowett "sweated" the friends and pupils who aided him in histranslation of Plato. Authors have a perfect right to procure literaryassistance, especially in learned books, if they pay for it, andacknowledge their debt to their allies. On the second point, Smollettwas probably not in advance of his age.
"Sir Launcelot Greaves" is, according to Chambers, "a sorry specimen ofthe genius of the author," and Mr. Oliphant Smeaton calls it "decidedlythe least popular" of his novels, while Scott astonishes us by preferringit to "Jonathan Wild." Certainly it is inferior to "Roderick Random" andto "Peregrine Pickle," but it cannot be so utterly unreal as "TheAdventures of an Atom." I, for one, venture to prefer "Sir Launcelot" to"Ferdinand, Count Fathom." Smollett was really trying an experiment inthe fantastic. Just as Mr. Anstey Guthrie transfers the mediaeval mythof Venus and the Ring, or the Arabian tale of the bottled-up geni (ordjinn) into modern life, so Smollett transferred Don Quixote. His hero,a young baronet of wealth, and of a benevolent and generous temper, iscrossed in love. Though not mad, he is eccentric, and commences knight-errant. Scott, and others, object to his armour, and say that, in hisordinary clothes, and with his well-filled purse, he would have been moresuccessful in righting wrongs. Certainly, but then the comic fantasy ofthe armed knight arriving at the ale-house, and jangling about the rose-hung lanes among the astonished folk of town and country, would have beenlost. Smollett is certainly less unsuccessful in wild fantasy, than inthe ridiculous romantic scenes where the substantial phantom of Monimiadisports itself. The imitation of the knight by the nautical CaptainCrowe (an excellent Smollettian mariner) is entertaining, and SirLauncelot's crusty Sancho is a pleasant variety in squires. The variousforms of oppression which the knight resists are of historical interest,as also is the contested election between a rustic Tory and a smoothMinisterialist: "sincerely attached to the Protestant succession, indetestation of a popish, an abjured, and an outlawed Pretender." Theheroine, Aurelia Darrel, is more of a lady, and less of a luxury, thanperhaps any other of Smollett's women. But how Smollett makes love! "Teawas called. The lovers were seated; he looked and languished; sheflushed and faltered; all was doubt and delirium, fondness and flutter."
"All was gas and gaiters," said the insane lover of Mrs. Nickleby, withequal delicacy and point.
Scott says that Smollett, when on a visit to Scotland, used to write hischapter of "copy" in the half-hour before the post went out. Scott wasvery capable of having the same thing happen to himself. "Sir Launcelot"is hurriedly, but vigorously written: the fantasy was not understood asSmollett intended it to be, and the book is blotted, as usual, withloathsome medical details. But people in Madame du Deffand's circle usedopenly to discuss the same topics, to the confusion of Horace Walpole. Asthe hero of this book is a generous gentleman, as the most of it is kindand manly, and the humour provocative of an honest laugh, it is by nomeans to be despised, while the manners, if caricatured, are based onfact.
It is curious to note that in "Sir Launcelot Greaves," we find acharacter, Ferret, who frankly poses as a _strugforlifeur_. M. Daudet's_strugforlifeur_ had heard of Darwin. Mr. Ferret had read Hobbes,learned that man was in a state of nature, and inferred that we ought toprey upon each other, as a pike eats trout. Miss Burney, too, at Bath,about 1780, met a perfectly emancipated young "New Woman." She had readBolingbroke and Hume, believed in nothing, and was ready to be a "Womanwho Did." Our ancestors could be just as advanced as we are.
Smollett went on compiling, and supporting himself by his compilations,and those of his vassals. In 1762 he unluckily edited a paper called_The Briton_ in the interests of Lord Bute. _The Briton_ was silenced byWilkes's _North Briton_. Smollett lost his last patron; he fell ill; hisdaughter died; he travelled angrily in France and Italy. His "Travels"show the choleric nature of the man, and he was especially blamed for notadmiring the Venus de Medici. Modern taste, enlightened by the works ofa better period of Greek art, has come round to Smollett's opinions. But,in his own day, he was regarded as a Vandal and a heretic.
In 1764, he visited Scotland, and was warmly welcomed by his kinsman, thelaird of Bonhill. In 1769, he published "The Adventures of an Atom," astupid, foul, and scurrilous political satire, in which Lord Bute, havingbeen his patron, was "lashed" in Smollett's usual style. In 1768,Smollett left England for ever. He desired a consulship, but noconsulship was found for him, which is not surprising. He died at MonteNova, near Leghorn, in September (others say October) 1771. He hadfinished "Humphrey Clinker," which appeared a day or two before hisdeath.
Thackeray thought "Humphrey Clinker" the mos
t laughable book that everwas written. Certainly nobody is to be envied who does not laugh overthe epistles of Winifred Jenkins. The book is too well known foranalysis. The family of Matthew Bramble, Esq., are on their travels,with his nephew and niece, young Melford and Lydia Melford, with MissJenkins, and the squire's tart, greedy, and amorous old maid of a sister,Tabitha Bramble. This lady's persistent amours and mean avarice scarcelystrike modern readers as amusing. Smollett gave aspects of his owncharacter in the choleric, kind, benevolent Matthew Bramble, and in thepatriotic and paradoxical Lieutenant Lismahago. Bramble, a goutyinvalid, is as full of medical abominations as Smollett himself, as readyto fight, and as generous and open-handed. Probably the author sharedLismahago's contempt of trade, his dislike of the Union (1707), his fieryindependence (yet he _does_ marry Tabitha!), and those opinions in whichLismahago heralds some of the social notions of Mr. Ruskin.
Melford is an honourable kind of "walking gentleman"; Lydia, thoughenamoured, is modest and dignified; Clinker is a worthy son of Bramble,with abundant good humour, and a pleasing vein of Wesleyan Methodism. Butthe grotesque spelling, rural vanity, and _naivete_ of Winifred Jenkins,with her affection for her kitten, make her the most delightful of thiswandering company. After beholding the humours and partaking of thewaters of Bath, they follow Smollett's own Scottish tour, and eachcharacter gives his picture of the country which Smollett had left at itslowest ebb of industry and comfort, and found so much more prosperous.The book is a mine for the historian of manners and customs: the novel-reader finds Count Fathom metamorphosed into Mr. Grieve, an exemplaryapothecary, "a sincere convert to virtue," and "unaffectedly pious."
Apparently a wave of good-nature came over Smollett: he forgaveeverybody, his own relations even, and he reclaimed his villain. Apatron might have played with him. He mellowed in Scotland: Matthewthere became less tart, and more tolerant; an actual English Matthewwould have behaved quite otherwise. "Humphrey Clinker" is an astonishingbook, as the work of an exiled, poor, and dying man. None of his worksleaves so admirable an impression of Smollett's virtues: none has so fewof his less amiable qualities.
With the cadet of Bonhill, outworn with living, and with labour, died theburly, brawling, picturesque old English novel of humour and of the road.We have nothing notable in this manner, before the arrival of Mr.Pickwick. An exception will scarcely be made in the interest of RichardCumberland, who, as Scott says, "has occasionally . . . becomedisgusting, when he meant to be humorous." Already Walpole had begun thenew "Gothic romance," and the "Castle of Otranto," with Miss Burney'snovels, was to lead up to Mrs. Radcliffe and Scott, to Miss Edgeworth andMiss Austen.