At
One Time It Was His Intention To Essay Yet Another Branch Of
Authorship And To Produce A Monograph On
The natural history,
antiquities, and topography of the town as the capital of this
still unfamiliar littoral; with the late-
Born modesty of
experience, however, he recoils from a task to which he does not
feel his opportunities altogether adequate. [See p. 152.] A
quarter of Smollett's original material would embarrass a
"Guide"-builder of more recent pattern.
Whenever he got near a coast line Smollett could not refrain from
expressing decided views. If he had lived at the present day he
would infallibly have been a naval expert, better informed than
most and more trenchant than all; but recognizably one of the
species, artist in words and amateur of ocean-strategy. [Smollett
had, of course, been surgeon's mate on H.M.S. Cumberland, 1740-41.]
His first curiosity at Nice was raised concerning the port,
the harbour, the galleys moored within the mole, and the naval
policy of his Sardinian Majesty. His advice to Victor Amadeus was
no doubt as excellent and as unregarded as the advice of naval
experts generally is. Of more interest to us is his account of
the slave-galleys. Among the miserable slaves whom "a British
subject cannot behold without horror and compassion," he observes
a Piedmontese count in Turkish attire, reminding the reader of
one of Dumas' stories of a count among the forcats. To learn that
there were always volunteer oarsmen among these poor outcasts is
to reflect bitterly upon the average happiness of mankind. As to
whether they wore much worse off than common seamen in the
British navy of the period (who were only in name volunteers and
had often no hope of discharge until they were worn out) under
such commanders as Oakum or Whiffle [In Roderick Random.] is
another question. For confirmation of Smollett's account in
matters of detail the reader may turn to Aleman's Guzman
d'Afarache, which contains a first-hand description of the life
on board a Mediterranean slave galley, to Archenholtz's Tableau
d'Italie of 1788, to Stirling Maxwell's Don John of Austria
(1883, i. 95), and more pertinently to passages in the Life of a
Galley Slave by Jean Marteilhe (edited by Miss Betham-Edwards in
1895). After serving in the docks at Dunkirk, Marteilhe, as a
confirmed protestant, makes the journey in the chain-gang to
Marseilles, and is only released after many delays in consequence
of the personal interest and intervention of Queen Anne. If at
the peace of Utrecht in 1713 we had only been as tender about the
case of our poor Catalan allies! Nice at that juncture had just
been returned by France to the safe-keeping of Savoy, so that in
order to escape from French territory, Marteilhe sailed for Nice
in a tartane, and not feeling too safe even there, hurried thence
by Smollett's subsequent route across the Col di Tende. Many
Europeans were serving at this time in the Turkish or Algerine
galleys. But the most pitiable of all the galley slaves were
those of the knights of St. John of Malta. "Figure to yourself,"
wrote Jacob Houblon [The Houblon Family, 1907 ii. 78. The
accounts in Evelyn and Goldsmith are probably familiar to the
reader.] about this year, "six or seven hundred dirty half-naked
Turks in a small vessel chained to the oars, from which they are
not allowed to stir, fed upon nothing but bad biscuit and water,
and beat about on the most trifling occasion by their most
inhuman masters, who are certainly more Turks than their slaves."
After several digressions, one touching the ancient Cemenelion, a
subject upon which the Jonathan Oldbucks of Provence without
exception are unconscionably tedious, Smollett settles down to a
capable historical summary preparatory to setting his palette for
a picture of the Nissards "as they are." He was, as we are aware,
no court painter, and the cheerful colours certainly do not
predominate. The noblesse for all their exclusiveness cannot
escape his censure. He can see that they are poor (they are
unable to boast more than two coaches among their whole number),
and he feels sure that they are depraved. He attributes both
vices unhesitatingly to their idleness and to their religion. In
their singularly unemotional and coolly comparative outlook upon
religion, how infinitely nearer were Fielding and Smollett than
their greatest successors, Dickens and Thackeray, to the modern
critic who observes that there is "at present not a single
credible established religion in existence." To Smollett
Catholicism conjures up nothing so vividly as the mask of comedy,
while his native Calvinism stands for the corresponding mask of
tragedy. [Walpole's dictum that Life was a comedy to those who
think, a tragedy for those who feel, was of later date than this
excellent mot of Smollett's.] Religion in the sunny spaces of the
South is a "never-failing fund of pastime." The mass (of which he
tells a story that reminds us of Lever's Micky Free) is just a
mechanism invented by clever rogues for an elaborate system of
petty larceny. And what a ferocious vein of cynicism underlies
his strictures upon the perverted gallantry of the Mariolaters at
Florence, or those on the two old Catholics rubbing their ancient
gums against St. Peter's toe for toothache at Rome. The recurring
emblems of crosses and gibbets simply shock him as mementoes of
the Bagne.
At Rome he compares a presentment of St. Laurence to "a barbecued
pig." "What a pity it is," he complains, "that the labours of
painting should have been employed on such shocking objects of
the martyrology," floggings, nailings, and unnailings...
"Peter writhing on the cross, Stephen battered with stones,
Sebastian stuck full of arrows, Bartholomew flayed alive," and so
on. His remarks upon the famous Pieta of Michael Angelo are frank
to the point of brutality. The right of sanctuary and its
"infamous prerogative," unheard of in England since the days of
Henry VII., were still capable of affording a lesson to the Scot
abroad.
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