Travels Through France And Italy by Tobias Smollett (beautiful books to read .txt) 📖
- Author: Tobias Smollett
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Experience He Was Bound To Admit The Following Dilemma:--If You
Chide Them For Lingering, They Will Contrive To Delay You The
Longer. If You Chastise Them With Sword, Cane, Cudgel, Or
Horsewhip (He Defines The Correctives, You May Perceive, But
Leaves The Expletives To Our Imagination) They Will Either
Part 2 Pg 8Disappear Entirely, And Leave You Without Resource, Or They Will
Find Means To Take Vengeance By Overturning Your Carriage. The
Only Course Remaining Would Be To Allow Oneself To Become The
Dupe Of Imposition By Tipping The Postillions An Amount Slightly
In Excess Of The Authorized gratification. He Admits That In
England Once, Between The Devizes And Bristol, He Found This Plan
Productive Of The Happiest Results. It Was Unfortunate That, Upon
This Occasion, The Lack Of Means Or Slenderness Of Margin For
Incidental Expenses Should Have Debarred him From Having Recourse
To A Similar Expedient. For Threepence A Post More, As Smollett
Himself Avows, He Would Probably Have Performed the Journey With
Much Greater Pleasure And Satisfaction. But The Situation Is
Instructive. It Reveals To Us The Disadvantage Under Which The
Novelist Was Continually Labouring, That Of Appearing To Travel
As An English Milord, En Grand Seigneur, And Yet Having at Every
Point To Do It "On The Cheap." He Avoided the Common Conveyance
Or Diligence, And Insisted on Travelling Post And In a Berline;
But He Could Not Bring Himself To Exceed the Five-Sou Pourboire
For The Postillions. He Would Have Meat Upon Maigre Days, Yet
Objected to Paying Double For It. He Held Aloof From The Thirty-Sou
Table D'Hote, And Would Have Been Content To Pay Three Francs
A Head For A Dinner A Part, But His Worst Passions Were Roused
When He Was Asked to Pay Not Three, But Four. Now Smollett
Himself Was Acutely Conscious Of The False Position. He Was By
Nature Anything But A Curmudgeon. On The Contrary, He Was, If I
Interpret Him At All Aright, A High-Minded, Open-Hearted,
Generous Type Of Man. Like A Majority, Perhaps, Of The Really
Open-Handed he Shared one Trait With The Closefisted and Even
With The Very Mean Rich. He Would Rather Give Away A Crown Than
Be Cheated of A Farthing. Smollett Himself Had Little Of The
Traditional Scottish Thriftiness About Him, But The People Among
Whom He Was Going--The Languedocians And Ligurians--Were
Notorious For Their Nearness In money Matters. The Result Of All
This Could Hardly Fail To Exacerbate Smollett'S Mood And To
Aggravate The Testiness Which Was Due Primarily To The Bitterness
Of His Struggle With The World, And, Secondarily, To The
Complaints Which That Struggle Engendered. One Capital
Consequence, However, And One Which Specially Concerns Us, Was
That We Get This Unrivalled picture Of The Seamy Side Of Foreign
Travel--A Side Rarely Presented with Anything Like Smollett'S
Skill To The Student Of The Grand Siecle Of The Grand Tour. The
Rubs, The Rods, The Crosses Of The Road Could, In fact, Hardly Be
Presented to Us More Graphically Or Magisterially Than They Are
In Some Of These Chapters. Like Prior, Fielding, Shenstone, And
Dickens, Smollett Was A Connoisseur In inns And Innkeepers. He
Knew Good Food And He Knew Good Value, And He Had A Mighty Keen
Eye For A Rogue. There May, It Is True, Have Been Something In
His Manner Which Provoked them To Exhibit Their Worst Side To
Him. It Is A Common Fate With Angry Men. The Trials To Which He
Was Subjected were Momentarily Very Severe, But, As We Shall See
In The Event, They Proved a Highly Salutary Discipline To Him.
Part 2 Pg 9
To Sum Up, Then, Smollett's Travels Were Written Hastily And
Vigorously By An Expert Man Of Letters. They Were Written Ad
Vivum, As It Were, Not From Worked-Up Notes Or Embellished
Recollections. They Were Written Expressly For Money Down. They
Were Written Rather En Noir Than Couleur De Rose By An
Experienced, And, We Might Almost Perhaps Say, A Disillusioned
Traveller, And Not By A Naif Or A Niais. The Statement That They
Were To A Certain Extent The Work Of An Invalid Is, Of Course,
True, And Explains Much. The Majority Of His Correspondents Were
Of The Medical Profession, All Of Them Were Members Of A Group
With Whom He Was Very Intimate, And The Letters Were By His
Special Direction To Be Passed Round Among Them. [We Do Not
Know Precisely Who All These Correspondents Of Smollett Were, But
Most Of Them Were Evidently Doctors And Among Them, Without A
Doubt, John Armstrong, William Hunter, George Macaulay, And Above
All John Moore, Himself An Authority On European Travel, Governor
On The Grand Tour Of The Duke Of Hamilton (Son Of "The Beautiful
Duchess"), Author Of Zeluco, And Father Of The Famous Soldier.
Smollett's Old Chum, Dr. W. Smellie, Died 5th March 1763.] In The
Circumstances (Bearing In Mind That It Was His Original Intention
To Prune The Letters Considerably Before Publication) It Was Only
Natural That He Should Say A Good Deal About The State Of His
Health. His Letters Would Have Been Unsatisfying To These Good
People Had He Not Referred Frequently And At Some Length To His
Spirits And To His Symptoms, An Improvement In Which Was The
Primary Object Of His Journey And His Two Years' Sojourn In The
South. Readers Who Linger Over The Diary Of Fielding's Dropsy And
Mrs. Fielding's Toothache Are Inconsistent In Denouncing The
Luxury Of Detail With Which Smollett Discusses The Matter Of His
Imposthume.
What I Claim For The Present Work Is That, In The First
Place, To Any One Interested In Smollett's Personality It
Supplies An Unrivalled Key. It Is, Moreover, The Work Of A
Scholar, An Observer Of Human Nature, And, By Election, A
Satirist Of No Mean Order. It Gives Us Some Characteristic Social
Vignettes, Some Portraits Of The Road Of An Unsurpassed Freshness
And Clearness. It Contains Some Historical And Geographical
Observations Worthy Of One Of The Shrewdest And Most Sagacious
Publicists Of The Day. It Is Interesting To The Etymologist For
The Important Share It Has Taken In Naturalising Useful Foreign
Words Into Our Speech. It Includes (As We Shall Have Occasion To
Observe) A Respectable Quantum Of Wisdom Fit To Become
Proverbial, And Several Passages Of Admirable Literary Quality.
In Point Of Date (1763-65) It Is Fortunate, For The Writer Just
Escaped Being One Of A Crowd. On The Whole, I Maintain That It Is
More Than Equal In Interest To The Journey To The Hebrides, And
That It Deserves A Very Considerable Proportion Of The Praise
That Has Hitherto Been Lavished Too Indiscriminately Upon The
Voyage To Lisbon. On The Force Of This Claim The Reader Is
Invited To Constitute Himself Judge After A Fair Perusal Of The
Following Pages. I Shall Attempt Only To Point The Way To A
Part 2 Pg 10Satisfactory Verdict, No Longer In The Spirit Of An Advocate, But
By Means Of A Few Illustrations And, More Occasionally,
Amplifications Of What Smollett Has To Tell Us.
Part 3 Pg 11
As Was The Case With Fielding Many Years Earlier, Smollett Was
Almost Broken Down With Sedentary Toil, When Early In June 1763
With His Wife, Two Young Ladies ("The Two Girls") To Whom She
Acted As Chaperon, And A Faithful Servant Of Twelve Years'
Standing, Who In The Spirit Of A Scots Retainer Of The Olden Time
Refused To Leave His Master (A Good Testimonial This, By The Way,
To A Temper Usually Accredited With Such A Splenetic Sourness),
He Crossed The Straits Of Dover To See What A Change Of Climate
And Surroundings Could Do For Him.
On Other Grounds Than Those Of Health He Was Glad To Shake The
Dust Of Britain From His Feet. He Speaks Himself Of Being
Traduced By Malice, Persecuted By Faction, Abandoned By False
Patrons, Complaints Which Will Remind The Reader, Perhaps, Of
George Borrow's "Jeremiad," To The Effect That He Had Been
Beslavered By The Venomous Foam Of Every Sycophantic Lacquey And
Unscrupulous Renegade In The Three Kingdoms. But Smollett's
Griefs Were More Serious Than What An Unkind Reviewer Could
Inflict. He Had Been Fined And Imprisoned For Defamation. He Had
Been Grossly Caricatured As A Creature Of Bute, The North British
Favourite Of George Iii., Whose Tenure Of The Premiership
Occasioned Riots And Almost Excited A Revolution In The
Metropolis. Yet After Incurring All This Unpopularity At A Time
When The Populace Of London Was More Inflamed Against Scotsmen
Than It Has Ever Been Before Or Since, And Having Laboured
Severely At A Paper In The Ministerial Interest And Thereby
Aroused The Enmity Of His Old Friend John Wilkes, Smollett Had
Been Unceremoniously Thrown Over By His Own Chief, Lord Bute, On
The Ground That His Paper Did More To Invite Attack Than To Repel
It. Lastly, He And His Wife Had Suffered A Cruel Bereavement In
The Loss Of Their Only Child, And It Was Partly To Supply A
Change From The Scene Of This Abiding Sorrow, That The Present
Journey Was Undertaken.
The First Stages And Incidents Of The Expedition Were Not Exactly
Propitious. The Dover Road Was A Byword For Its Charges; The Via
Alba Might Have Been Paved With The Silver Wrung From Reluctant
And Indignant Passengers. Smollett Characterized The Chambers As
Cold And Comfortless, The Beds As "Paultry" (With "Frowsy," A
Favourite Word), The Cookery As Execrable, Wine Poison,
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