Abandoned Classic.
I enjoyed Smollett’s first novel Roderick
Random, so in early 2018 I started Humphry Clinker, an epistolary novel.
Early on, this, from a wiseacre college boy, Jery Medford to his Oxford chum:
… I hope Mansel and I shall
always be good friends. I cannot, however, approve of his drowning my poor dog
Ponto, on purpose to convert Ovid’s pleonasm into a punning epitaph,—deerant
quoque Littora Ponto: for, that he threw him into the Isis, when it was so high
and impetuous, with no other view than to kill the fleas, is an excuse that
will not hold water—But I leave poor Ponto to his fate, and hope Providence
will take care to accommodate Mansel with a drier death.
Not having a classical education, I was intimidated by “Ovid’s
pleonasm” – using more words than are necessary to convey meaning – in the tag
for “all things were sea and the sea lacked shores.” And I wasn’t in the mood
for rough 18th century humor. Poor doggie. So, tender-hearted, I
bailed out.
The Expedition of
Humphry Clinker - Tobias Smollett
But hell, feeling rough and rugged due to this pandemic
shitshow, I got back into this 1771 novel of letters. Mainly for the sake of
getting out of the stern reality of July 2020, back to the Northern England and
Scotland of the late 18th century, a time of change insensible yet
relentless. The modern world was coming, but the world still smelled medieval.
This explanation of a fainting fit is from our hero Matthew Bramble, successful
farmer but middle-aged and gouty, on the resort city of Bath:
It was, indeed, a compound of
villainous smells, in which the most violent stinks, and the most powerful
perfumes, contended for the mastery. Imagine to yourself a high exalted essence
of mingled odours, arising from putrid gums, imposthumated lungs, sour
flatulencies, rank armpits, sweating feet, running sores and issues, plasters,
ointments, and embrocations, hungary-water, spirit of lavender, assafoetida
drops, musk, hartshorn, and sal volatile; besides a thousand frowzy steams,
which I could not analyse.
I do like a novel with smells. Nothing like the “impression
of fetid effluvia” to appeal to the senses of the reader, especially in a heat
wave.
Our hero Matt is traveling with his sister Tabitha,
nephew Jery Medford, niece Lydia Medford, and their maid Winifred Jenkins. They
are the letter-writers describing their adventures on this trip to Yorkshire
and Scotland. Jery has a typically touchy notion of honor and is always ready
to fight for his family but is overall a genial guy. Jery is not far wrong to
describe his aunt Tabitha as “a maiden of forty-five, exceedingly starched, vain,
and ridiculous.” His sister Lydia, a giddy 17-year-old, is lovesick over a
stroller (tramp actor), hardly a match to excite the family. Winifred Jenkins
is good-hearted but credulous:
I was shewn an ould vitch,
called Elspath Ringavey, with a red petticoat, bleared eyes, and a mould of
grey bristles on her sin.—That she mought do me no harm, I crossed her hand
with a taster, and bid her tell my fortune; and she told me such things
descriving Mr Clinker to a hair—but it shall ne’er be said, that I minchioned a
word of the matter.—As I was troubled with fits, she advised me to bathe in the
loff, which was holy water; and so I went in the morning to a private place
along with the house-maid, and we bathed in our birth-day soot, after the fashion
of the country; and behold whilst we dabbled in the loff, sir George Coon
started up with a gun; but we clapt our hands to our faces, and passed by him
to the place where we had left our smocks—A civil gentleman would have turned
his head another way.—My comfit is, he knew not which was which; and, as the
saying is, all cats in the dark are grey…
The Clinker of the title is a shadowy figure in the
novel. He is a jack of all trades that rescues the family with his mechanical
abilities. He is also a Methodist preacher of no uncommon skill. But he is also
rather dull-witted and highly emotional. Skeptical readers take Clinker with a
grain of salt the size of a brick, agreeing with Lismahago, Tabitha’s sour boyfriend,
who said “… he should have a much better opinion of [Clinker’s] honesty, if he
did not whine and cant so abominably; but that [Lismahago] had always observed
those weeping and praying fellows were hypocrites at bottom.” Clinker's origins are
revealed in a surprise at the end.
About travel, Smollett argues through Lydia this:
Besides it is impossible to
travel such a length of way, without being exposed to inconveniencies, dangers,
and disagreeable accidents, which prove very grievous to a poor creature of
weak nerves like me, and make me pay very dear for the gratification of my
curiosity.
But Smollett also asserts, through Jery, for thinking
people travel is salutary:
Without all doubt, the greatest
advantage acquired in travelling and perusing mankind in the original, is that
of dispelling those shameful clouds that darken the faculties of the mind,
preventing it from judging with candour and precision.
Smollett was a Scotsman so he uses the travel narrative
about Scotland to argue against the stupid, uninformed prejudices the English
had (have?) about Scotland. It’s
interesting to read the claim that union with England was mainly to the advantage of
(surprise!) the English. Smollett also gives scenes from unhappy marriages – “she
hung about his neck like a mill-stone (no bad emblem of matrimony)” - that give male types – clearly the target
audience of this novel - to think about avoiding matrimony altogether or
without fail marrying an amiable woman.
Of Smollett, George Orwell
wrote, “Inevitably a great deal that he wrote is no longer worth reading, even
including, perhaps, his most-praised book, Humphrey
Clinker, which is written in the form of letters and was considered
comparatively respectable in the nineteenth century, because most of its
obscenities are hidden under puns.” It’s true that Clinker is much more tame than Random,
but it has a few very funny scenes that I’m glad I read. Plus, it took me away from
the pandemic shitshow, which is what I wanted it to do.
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