Travels through France Italy | Page 7

Tobias Smollett
to be pleased
with nothing. We know little enough about Smollett intime. Only the
other day I learned that the majority of so- called Smollett portraits are
not presentments of the novelist at all, but ingeniously altered plates of
George Washington. An interesting confirmation of this is to be found
in the recently published Letters of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe to
Robert Chambers. "Smollett wore black cloaths--a tall man--and
extreamly handsome. No picture of him is known to be extant--all that
have been foisted on the public as such his relations disclaim--this I
know from my aunt Mrs. Smollett, who was the wife of his nephew,
and resided with him at Bath." But one thing we do know, and in these
same letters, if confirmation had been needed, we observe the statement
repeated, namely, that Smollett was very peevish. A sardonic, satirical,
and indeed decidedly gloomy mood or temper had become so habitual
in him as to transform the man. Originally gay and debonnair, his
native character had been so overlaid that when he first returned to

Scotland in 1755 his own mother could not recognise him until he
"gave over glooming" and put on his old bright smile. [A pleasant story
of the Doctor's mother is given in the same Letters to R. Chambers
(1904). She is described as an ill-natured-looking woman with a high
nose, but not a bad temper, and very fond of the cards. One evening an
Edinburgh bailie (who was a tallow chandler) paid her a visit. "Come
awa', bailie," said she, "and tak' a trick at the cards." "Troth madam, I
hae nae siller!" "Then let us play for a pound of candles."] His was
certainly a nervous, irritable, and rather censorious temper. Like Mr.
Brattle, in The Vicar of Bulhampton, he was thinking always of the evil
things that had been done to him. With the pawky and philosophic
Scots of his own day (Robertson, Hume, Adam Smith, and "Jupiter"
Carlyle) he had little in common, but with the sour and mistrustful
James Mill or the cross and querulous Carlyle of a later date he had, it
seems to me, a good deal. What, however, we attribute in their case to
bile or liver, a consecrated usage prescribes that we must, in the case of
Smollett, accredit more particularly to the spleen. Whether dyspeptic or
"splenetic," this was not the sort of man to see things through a veil of
pleasant self-generated illusion. He felt under no obligation whatever to
regard the Grand Tour as a privilege of social distinction, or its
discomforts as things to be discreetly ignored in relating his experience
to the stay-at-home public. He was not the sort of man that the Tourist
Agencies of to-day would select to frame their advertisements. As an
advocatus diaboli on the subject of Travel he would have done well
enough. And yet we must not infer that the magic of travel is altogether
eliminated from his pages. This is by no means the case: witness his
intense enthusiasm at Nimes, on sight of the Maison Carree or the Pont
du Gard; the passage describing his entry into the Eternal City; [Ours
"was the road by which so many heroes returned with conquest to their
country, by which so many kings were led captive to Rome, and by
which the ambassadors of so many kingdoms and States approached
the seat of Empire, to deprecate the wrath, to sollicit the friendship, or
sue for the protection of the Roman people."] or the enviable account of
the alfresco meals which the party discussed in their coach as described
in Letter VIII.
As to whether Smollett and his party of five were exceptionally

unfortunate in their road-faring experiences must be left an open
question at the tribunal of public opinion. In cold blood, in one of his
later letters, he summarised his Continental experience after this wise:
inns, cold, damp, dark, dismal, dirty; landlords equally disobliging and
rapacious; servants awkward, sluttish, and slothful; postillions lazy,
lounging, greedy, and impertinent. With this last class of delinquents
after much 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 disappear 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
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