I Had A Grey, Mourning Frock Under A Wide
Greatcoat, A Bob-Wig Without Powder, A Very Large Laced Hat, And
A Meagre, Wrinkled, Discontented Countenance."
From Lyons the traveller secured a return berline going back to
Avignon with three mules and a voiturier named Joseph.
Joseph,
though he turned out to be an ex-criminal, proved himself the one
Frenchman upon whose fidelity and good service Smollett could
look back with unfeigned satisfaction. The sight of a skeleton
dangling from a gibbet near Valence surprised from this droll
knave an ejaculation and a story, from which it appeared only too
evident that he had been first the comrade and then the
executioner of one of the most notorious brigands of the century.
The story as told by Smollett does not wholly agree with the best
authenticated particulars. The Dick Turpin of eighteenth century
France, Mandrin has engendered almost as many fables as his
English congener. [See Maignien's Bibliographie des Ecrits
relatifs a Mandrin.] As far as I have been able to discover, the
great freebooter was born at St. Etienne in May 1724. His father
having been killed in a coining affair, Mandrin swore to revenge
him. He deserted from the army accordingly, and got together a
gang of contrebandiers, at the head of which his career in Savoy
and Dauphine almost resembles that of one of the famous guerilla
chieftains described in Hardman's Peninsular Scenes and Sketches.
Captured eventually, owing to the treachery of a comrade, he was
put to death on the wheel at Valence on 26th May 1755. Five
comrades were thrown into jail with him; and one of these
obtained his pardon on condition of acting as Mandrin's
executioner. Alas, poor Joseph!
Three experiences Smollett had at this season which may well fall
to the lot of road-farers in France right down to the present
day. He was poisoned with garlic, surfeited with demi-roasted
small birds, and astonished at the solid fare of the poorest
looking travellers. The summer weather, romantic scenery, and
occasional picnics, which Smollett would have liked to repeat
every summer under the arches of the Pont du Gard - the monument
of antiquity which of all, excepting only the Maison Carree at
Nimes, most excited his enthusiastic admiration, all contributed
to put him into an abnormally cheerful and convalescent
humour. . . .
Smollett now bent his steps southwards to Montpellier. His
baggage had gone in advance. He was uncertain as yet whether to
make Montpellier or Nice his headquarters in the South. Like
Toulouse and Tours, and Turin, Montpellier was for a period a
Mecca to English health and pleasure seekers abroad. A city of no
great antiquity, but celebrated from the twelfth century for its
schools of Law and Physic, it had been incorporated definitely
with France since 1382, and its name recurs in French history
both as the home of famous men in great number and as, before and
after the brief pre-eminence of La Rochelle, the rival of Nimes
as capital of Protestantism in the South. Evelyn, Burnet, the two
Youngs, Edward and Arthur, and Sterne have all left us an
impression of the city. Prevented by snow from crossing the Mont
Cenis, John Locke spent two winters there in the days of Charles
II. (1675-77), and may have pondered a good many of the problems
of Toleration on a soil under which the heated lava of religious
strife was still unmistakeable. And Smollett must almost have
jostled en route against the celebrated author of The Wealth of
Nations, who set out with his pupil for Toulouse in February
1764. A letter to Hume speaks of the number of English in the
neighbourhood just a month later. Lomenie de Brienne was then in
residence as archbishop. In the following November, Adam Smith
and his charge paid a visit to Montpellier to witness a pageant
and memorial, as it was supposed, of a freedom that was gone for
ever, the opening of the States of Languedoc. Antiquaries and
philosophers went to moralise on the spectacle in the spirit in
which Freeman went to Andorra, Byron to the site of Troy, or De
Tocqueville to America. It was there that the great economist met
Horne Tooke.
Smollett's more practical and immediate object in making this
pilgrimage was to interview the great lung specialist, known
locally to his admiring compatriots as the Boerhaave of
Montpellier, Dr. Fizes. The medical school of Montpellier was
much in evidence during the third quarter of the eighteenth
century, and for the history of its various branches there are
extant numerous Memoires pour Servir, by Prunelle, Astruc, and
others. Smollett was only just in time to consult the reigning
oracle, for the "illustrious" Dr. Fizes died in the following
year. He gives us a very unfavourable picture of this "great
lanthorn of medicine," who, notwithstanding his prodigious age,
his stoop, and his wealth, could still scramble up two pairs for
a fee of six livres. More than is the case with most medical
patients, however, should we suspect Smollett of being unduly
captious. The point as to how far his sketch of the French doctor
and his diagnosis was a true one, and how far a mere caricature,
due to ill health and prejudice, has always piqued my curiosity.
But how to resolve a question involving so many problems not of
ordinary therapeutic but of historical medicine! In this
difficulty I bethought me most fortunately of consulting an
authority probably without a rival in this special branch of
medical history, Dr. Norman Moore, who with his accustomed
generosity has given me the following most instructive diagnosis
of the whole situation.
"I have read Smollett's account of his illness as it appears in
several passages in his travels and in the statement which he
drew up for Professor 'F.' at Montpellier.
"Smollett speaks of his pulmonic disorder, his 'asthmatical
disorder,' and uses other expressions which show that his lungs
were affected. In his statement he mentions that he has cough,
shortness of breath, wasting, a purulent expectoration, loss of
appetite at times, loss of strength, fever, a rapid pulse,
intervals of slight improvement and subsequent exacerbations.
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