CHAPTER IX

SMOLLETT A ‘SWEATER’—TRAVELS ABROAD—THE ADVENTURES OF AN ATOM—HUMPHREY CLINKER—LAST DAYS.

So deeply did grief over the death of his charming young daughter prey on his health and spirits, that there were for a time grave doubts whether his reason had not been slightly unsettled. Constitutionally of a nervously sensitive nature, excessive joy or sorrow had a thoroughly unhinging effect upon him. He had not the self–command requisite to look upon grief as one of those ills to which flesh is heir. In his estimation, everything affecting himself was in the superlative degree. Never were sorrows so overwhelming as his, he considered, and oftentimes he seriously mortified people by brusquely breaking in upon their anguish with the statement that they did not really know what grief meant in comparison with him.

After Elizabeth’s death, therefore, Smollett, entirely oblivious of his poor wife’s mental sufferings, seems to have abandoned himself to an excess of grief that seriously accelerated the progress of the maladies by which he was afflicted. Though he could not afford to stop work altogether, he appears from this date to have instituted a sort of literary factory, where works were turned out by the score. Smollett’s name was now so popular, that on a title–page it virtually meant success to the publication. He therefore contracted the habit of undertaking far more work than any man single–handed could accomplish, but getting it executed at a reduced rate by those whom he retained in his employment. He appears to have kept them in food and clothing, and to have been in the main exceedingly kind to many a struggling author, who would not otherwise have obtained employment; but one cannot approve of methods like these, which degrade the noble profession of ‘man of letters’ into that of a literary task–master. Dr. Carlyle gives a description of Smollett’s relations to what ‘Jupiter’ called his ‘myrmidons,’ which, however, affords a somewhat one–sided picture of the novelist’s methods, though the date is scarcely correct. Smollett, although he had employed others to do his work for him when he found it to be too onerous, did not really institute his ‘literary factory’ until well on in the ‘sixties’ of the eighteenth century, when his health was beginning to fail. ‘Jupiter’ describes the ‘factory’ as in full swing in 1758–59. But as the chatty old clerical gossip wrote his Autobiography after his seventy–ninth year, and as many of his dates with respect to other matters have been proved incorrect, we may, without much injustice to the best of Scots unepiscopal bishops, ascribe to the mental feebleness of age an error which otherwise would affix a serious stigma on Smollett’s name. Though every litterateur worth the name will reprobate such a blood–sucking method as literary ‘sweating,’ prosecuted though it has been by men to whom we owe so much as Smollett and Dumas (to say nothing of at least one ‘popular’ author in our own day who engages in the despicable practice), we would fain believe, in the former’s case, that it resulted from failing strength, and from the maddening consciousness of being obliged to leave his wife, if he died, dependent on strangers.

But let us to ‘Jupiter’:[9] ‘Principal Robertson had never met Smollett (though he had seen him at the Select Club), and was very desirous of his acquaintance. By this time the Doctor had retired to Chelsea, and came seldom to town. Home and I, however, found that he came once a week to Forrest’s Coffee–house, and sometimes dined there; so we managed an appointment with him on his day, when he agreed to dine with us. He was now become a great man, and, being a humorist, was not to be put out of his way. Home and Robertson and Smith and I met him there, when he had several of his minions about him, to whom he prescribed tasks of translation, compilation, or abridgment, which, after he had seen, he recommended to the booksellers. We dined together, and Smollett was very brilliant. Having to stay all night, that we might spend the evening together, he only begged leave to withdraw for an hour, that he might give audience to his myrmidons. We insisted that if his business permitted, it should be in the room in which we sat. The Doctor agreed, and the authors were introduced, to the number of five, I think, most of whom were soon dismissed. He kept two, however, to supper, whispering to us that he believed they would amuse us, which they certainly did, for they were curious characters. We passed a very pleasant and joyful evening. When we broke up, Robertson expressed great surprise at Smollett’s polished and agreeable manners, and the great urbanity of his conversation. He had imagined that a man’s manners must bear a likeness to his books, and as Smollett had described so well the characters of ruffians and profligates, that he must of course resemble them.’

In addition to the pitiful lack of taste and good feeling in making a raree–show of wretchedness, and holding up the misery of the unfortunate authors to a curiosity that was worse than contempt, the whole incident exhibits the characters of Smollett, Carlyle, Robertson, and Home in an exceedingly unfavourable aspect—the first–named as glorifying himself as the Mæcenas of starving Grub Street quill–drivers, the others because they could entertain any other feeling than that of sympathy for honest talent in tatters!

In June 1763, Smollett’s health and spirits became alike so unsatisfactory that his medical adviser informed Mrs. Smollett that change of air was the only chance for him. His sorrow was preying on his vitality. As that was low enough at any time, the prospect was grave indeed! Alas, poor Nancy! She pled with her obdurate husband for many a week before he consented to wind up his numberless projects in England and go abroad. His creditors also seem to have behaved with commendable consideration. Perhaps the fact that a small legacy of £1200 left to Mrs. Smollett by one of her relatives, and which, with true wifelike generosity, she at once applied to the relief of her unfortunate husband, may have facilitated matters. That he left England with arrangements made whereby his ‘myrmidons’ were to forward their ‘copy’ to him, whithersoever he might be, goes without the saying. The booksellers, also—Newbery, Baldwin, Dodsley, Cave (jr.), and others—all exhibited a willingness to assist the man who had done so much for them. But therein they did no more than their duty.

For nearly three years Smollett and his wife remained abroad, travelling in France and Italy, but allocating a portion of every day to the discharge of those tasks which kept the chariot rolling. When he returned to England in 1766, he published, as the fruit of his trip, Travels through France and Italy: containing Observations on Character, Customs, Religion, Government, Police, Commerce, Arts, Antiquities, with a Particular Description of the Town, Territory, and Climate of Nice; to which is added a Register of the Weather, kept during a Residence of Eighteen Months there. In 2 vols. 8vo. The book takes the form of letters written by Smollett to friends at home; and in the first letter he remarks: ‘In gratifying your curiosity I shall find some amusement to beguile the tedious hours, which without some employment would be rendered insupportable by distemper and disquiet.’ The spirit wherein Smollett went on tour is perceptible in the following passage: ‘I am traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, and overwhelmed by the sense of a domestic calamity which it was not in the power of fortune to repair.’

Travelling and brooding do not accord well together, if one is to receive any pleasure from the scenes passed through. As Dr. Anderson charitably puts it: ‘His letters afford a melancholy proof of the influence of bodily pain over the best disposition.’ Letters written under such circumstances should never have been published. In the exquisite scenery through which he passed, in the objects of interest in the galleries and museums, he appears only to have discovered subjects whereupon his bitter, acidulous humour could expend itself. Dr. Moore well observes: ‘Those who are disgusted with such descriptions are not the only people to whom Smollett gave offence: he exposed himself also to the reprehension of the whole class of connoisseurs, the real as well as the far more numerous body of pretenders to that science. For example, what is one to think of a man who likened the snow–clad glories of the Alps to frosted sugar; who said of the famous Venus de Medicis, that has awakened the admiration of ages, “I cannot help thinking there is no beauty in the features of Venus, and that the attitude is awkward and out of character”; and who remarked of the Pantheon, “I was much disappointed at sight of the Pantheon, which, after all that has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit open at the top”?’

The chastisement came, but from the one man who, of all others, should have remained silent—a man whose whole life was a pitiful epitome of those faults he sought to reprehend in Smollett—Laurence Sterne. Jealousy, of course, was the motive. The author of Tristram Shandy could never forgive the fact that the public preferred Peregrine Pickle to the prurient puerilities of Uncle Toby. Sterne did not take into consideration, moreover, the state of Smollett’s health, and how it would colour every estimate he formed of men, manners, and things. The last in the world was the author of Tristram Shandy to have sat as moral or æsthetic critic on Smollett. How the mighty sledge–hammer of contempt wielded by Sir Walter Scott crushed the unfeeling, though far from radically ill–natured critic! Sterne wrote: ‘The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and the jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured and distorted. He wrote an account of them, but it was nothing but an account of his miserable feelings. I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon. He was just coming out of it. “It is nothing but a huge cockpit,” said he. “I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus Medicis,” replied I—for in passing through Florence I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in nature. I popped upon Smelfungus again in Turin, in his return home, and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell, wherein he spoke of “moving accidents by flood and field, and of the cannibals which each other eat, the Anthropophagi.” He had been flayed alive and bedeviled, and worse used than Saint Bartholomew at every stage he had come at. “I’ll tell it,” said Smelfungus, “to the world.” “You had better tell it,” said I, “to your physician.”’ Now, though Smollett deserved castigation for inflicting his miseries on the public and ridiculing many of their most cherished ideals at a time when he was mentally unfit to judge, the passage cited above is not the manner in which such literary punishment should be given. Thereupon says Sir Walter: ‘Be it said without offence to the memory of that witty and elegant writer (Sterne), it is more easy to assume in composition an air of alternate gaiety and sensibility, than to practise the virtues of generosity and benevolence which Smollett exercised during his whole life, though often, like his own Matthew Bramble, under the disguise of peevishness and irritability. Sterne’s writings show much flourish concerning virtues of which his life is understood to have produced little fruit; the temper of Smollett was—

“Like a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.”’

Alas! not long now was the worn tenement of the great novelist to hold his fiery spirit. After 1766 the end was known to be only a question of a year or two at most. Manfully and nobly did he receive the intelligence. There was no repining at the hardness of his lot. ‘My poor Nancy; let me make the best use of the time for her.’ Constant rheumatism, and the pain arising from a neglected ulcer which had developed into a chronic sore, had so drained his strength that there was no recovering the lost ground. A premature break–up of the system, rather than the positive disease of consumption, numbered his days.

Soon after returning home from the Continent, he repaired to Scotland to visit his aged mother. Affecting in the last degree was that visit. To both the knowledge was present that never more on earth would they meet. The old lady, with that keen insight into the future which often distinguishes the aged, said, ‘We’ll no’ be long parted, any way. If you go first, I’ll be close on your heels: if I lead the way, ye’ll no’ be far behind me, I’m thinking.’ And so it proved. Though in Scotland he enjoyed a partial restoration to health that cheered some of his friends, his mother knew better. ‘The last flicker of the candle is aye the brightest,’ she said. While in Scotland he visited, with his sister Mrs. Telfer and his biographer Dr. Moore, the Smolletts of Bonhill, where he received a warm welcome from his cousin, who pressed him to stay there for some months and get his health thoroughly established.

But the treadmill in London was waiting for its victim. In the beginning of 1767 he returned to London, having sojourned at Bath for a time with Mrs. Smollett. Once more he was back tugging at the oar, doing odd work for the Critical Review, compiling travels, translating from French, Spanish, or Latin sundry books of merely ephemeral interest. Then he contributed to the periodical literature of the day—anything, in fact, to keep that wolf from the door which every year seemed to approach nearer and yet nearer.

Only two more works of any moment was he to live to accomplish—one, an indifferent production judged by his own high standard—the other, like the dying cygnet’s song in Grecian fable—the greatest and the last! In 1769 appeared The History and Adventures of an Atom, in 2 vols. 12mo. This is a politico–social satire, wherein are represented the several leaders of political parties from 1754 till the dissolution of Lord Chatham’s administration in 1762, but under the thin veil of Japanese names. George III. was consumed with the fallacy that he was the first statesman in the Europe of his day. His experiments in diplomacy nearly brought Britain to ruin. Had he not bullied and badgered the elder Pitt into resignation, America would have been to–day an integral part of the Empire, which would have feared no rival from pole to pole. But such was not to be. Besides, out of the blundering of the honest but short–sighted monarch the liberties of the English people were to be evolved. The History of an Atom was successful, but is to–day the portion of Smollett’s writings with which we could most comfortably dispense. It is a satire, or intended for such, but accommodates itself to none of the known rules of any school of satiric writing. Neither to Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, nor Butler does it exhibit affinity.

Towards the middle of 1768 the fact became evident to all, that if Smollett’s life was to be preserved, he must henceforth live far from the bitter winters of England. To leave his fatherland he was not sorry. Faction had embittered his existence during the past few years, and faction was jealously to pursue him with its malice even to the end. His only political friends neglected him who had fought so well and indefatigably for them. The Earl of Bute with but little exertion could have placed Smollett at once beyond the necessity of such killing labour. But the Butes, then, were proverbially notorious for their callousness and their ingratitude.

When the final verdict was given, Smollett endeavoured to obtain some consulship abroad, that would have lessened his labours. He was still dependent on his pen for daily bread. Almost despairingly he implored even his political enemies to help him to some means whereby he might demit some portion of his killing work. But his ‘noble’ friends were all deaf. Lord Shelburne was applied to, but stated the consulships at Nice and Leghorn were already promised to some of his own political creatures. One man only stood his friend; one man only, and he an opponent albeit a countryman, did his best for Smollett, but, alas! unavailingly. All honour to David Hume the historian, then Under Secretary of State! In the end the dying novelist was disappointed at all points. He had to go abroad depending on the staff that had supplied him with bread all through the long years until now—and which alone would not now fail him—his pen!

Smollett left England in December 1768, and proceeded to Leghorn via Lucca and Pisa. Here he settled at Monte Nova, a little township situated on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea. Dr. Armstrong, his friend and countryman, had secured for him a beautiful villa on the outskirts of the village. Here he gradually grew weaker, but was tended with the utmost devotion by his wife, and some of the English families in the neighbourhood. Here, too, he penned the greatest of his novels, the work that for its subtle insight into human nature, its keen and incisive studies of character, its delightful humour, its matchless bonhomie and raciness, takes rank amidst the treasured classics of our literature—the immortal Humphrey Clinker.

But with this exertion the feeble flame of the great novelist’s life slowly flickered out. His work was done, and nobly done. He had carved for himself an imperishable niche in the great Temple of Fame. His last words were spoken to his wife—‘All is well, my dear;’ and on the 21st October 1771, in the 52nd year of his age, Tobias George Smollett laid down the burden of that life which had pressed so wearily upon him, and passed—within the Silence!

He had the pleasure of seeing Humphrey Clinker in its published form a day or two before his death. When the public learned that the hand which so often had delighted them in the past would now delight them no more, a mournful interest was exhibited in his last work. Edition after edition was exhausted. But what booted it to him, then, when the strife and the anguish as well as the exultation born of success were all over? ‘After labour cometh rest, and after strife the guerdon.’ Alas! too late the latter came to cheer him whose life had been one long–drawn–out epic of anguish from the cradle to the grave!

Had Smollett lived four years longer, he would have inherited the estate of Bonhill and an income of £1000 per annum, which in default of him passed to Mrs. Telfer, his sister, and her heirs. O the irony of fate! Alas! the thorn of apprehension which disturbed his dying pillow proved too true a dread. His wife was left in Leghorn in dire penury, until relieved by the charity of friends who were not relatives, and also by the proceeds of a theatrical performance given in her aid after some years by Mr. Graham of Gartmore. An indelible stain is it upon the Telfers and the Smolletts that they should have allowed the widow of their most distinguished relative to die dependent on the charity of strangers. But relatives are proverbially the hardest–hearted of potential benefactors when the day of trouble comes. Poor “Narcissa”! the lines of her life were not cast in pleasant places.

Smollett was interred in the English cemetery at Leghorn, with the blue Mediterranean stretching in front of his last resting–place. Many are the pilgrims that journey to his tomb, and as the years roll on they increase rather than diminish. A plain monument was erected by his wife over the remains, the Latin inscription on which was written by his friend Dr. Armstrong, the poet. At Bonhill, a splendid obelisk, over sixty feet high, was raised on the banks of the Leven, by his cousin James Smollett (a few months before his own death), the inscription being revised and corrected by Dr. Johnson.

Dr. Moore, as the friend of Smollett, has preserved for us the appearance and portrait of the great novelist in the following description: “The person of Dr. Smollett was stout and well proportioned, his countenance engaging, his manner reserved, with a certain air of dignity that seemed to indicate that he was not unconscious of his own powers. He was of a disposition so humane and generous that he was ever ready to serve the unfortunate, and on some occasions to assist them beyond what his circumstances could justify. Though few could penetrate with more acuteness into character, yet none was more apt to overlook misconduct when attended by misfortune. Free from vanity, Smollett had a considerable share of pride and great sensibility; his passions were easily moved, and too impetuous when roused. He could not conceal his contempt of folly, his detestation of fraud, nor refrain from proclaiming his indignation against every instance of oppression. He was of an intrepid, independent, imprudent disposition, equally incapable of deceit and adulation, and more disposed to cultivate the acquaintance of those he could serve than of those who could serve him.”

Such being the character of the man, the key is obtained to the enigma of Smollet’s lack of political and social success. He was of too honest a nature to do the dirty work of the ‘Ministers’ of the time, amongst whom independence of character was rated as a sin of the first magnitude. But in the hearts of the admirers of his literary works, Smollett will also live as one of the greatest of our countrymen—a man whose virtues are yearly becoming recognised in their true light, as readers realise he is one of the world’s great moral teachers, whose lessons are communicated by exhibiting the naked hideousness of vice. And so the star of his fame will shine more and yet more clearly unto the perfect day!