"When Two Natives Of Any Other Country Chance To Meet Abroad,
They Run Into Each Other's Embrace Like Old Friends,
Even though
they have never heard of one another till that moment; whereas
two Englishmen in the same situation maintain
A mutual reserve
and diffidence, and keep without the sphere of each other's
attraction, like two bodies endowed with a repulsive power."
Letter XXXVI gives opportunity for some discerning remarks on
French taxation. Having given the French king a bit of excellent
advice (that he should abolish the fermiers generaux), Smollett
proceeds, in 1765, to a forecast of probabilities which is deeply
significant and amazingly shrewd. The fragment known as
Smollett's Dying Prophecy of 1771 has often been discredited. Yet
the substance of it is fairly adumbrated here in the passage
beginning, "There are undoubtedly many marks of relaxation in the
reins of French government," written fully six years previously.
After a pleasing description of Grasse, "famous for its pomatum,
gloves, wash-balls, perfumes, and toilette boxes lined with
bergamot," the homeward traveller crossed the French frontier at
Antibes, and in Letter XXXIX at Marseille, he compares the galley
slaves of France with those of Savoy. At Bath where he had gone
to set up a practice, Smollett once astonished the faculty by
"proving" in a pamphlet that the therapeutic properties of
the waters had been prodigiously exaggerated. So, now, in the
south of France he did not hesitate to pronounce solemnly that
"all fermented liquors are pernicious to the human constitution."
Elsewhere he comments upon the immeasurable appetite of the
French for bread. The Frenchman will recall the story of the
peasant-persecuting baron whom Louis XII. provided with a
luxurious feast, which the lack of bread made uneatable; he may
not have heard a story told me in Liege at the Hotel Charlemagne
of the Belgian who sought to conciliate his French neighbour by
remarking, "Je vois que vous etes Français, monsieur, parceque
vous mangez beaucoup de pain," and the Frenchman's retort, "Je
vois que vous etes lye monsieur, parceque vous mangez beaucoup
de tout!" From Frejus
Smollett proceeds to Toulon, repeating the old epigram that "the
king of France is greater at Toulon than at Versailles." The
weather is so pleasant that the travellers enjoy a continual
concert of "nightingales" from Vienne to Fontainebleau. The
"douche" of Aix-les-Bains having been explained, Smollett and his
party proceeded agreeably to Avignon, where by one of the strange
coincidences of travel he met his old voiturier Joseph "so
embrowned by the sun that he might have passed for an Iroquois."
In spite of Joseph's testimonial the "plagues of posting" are
still in the ascendant, and Smollett is once more generous of
good advice. Above all, he adjures us when travelling never to
omit to carry a hammer and nails, a crowbar, an iron pin or two,
a large knife, and a bladder of grease. Why not a lynch pin,
which we were so carefully instructed how to inquire about in
Murray's Conversation for Travellers?
But-the history of his troublous travels is drawing to an end.
From Lyons the route is plain through Macon, Chalons, Dijon,
Auxerre, Sells, and Fontainebleau - the whole itinerary almost
exactly anticipates that of Talfourd's Vacation Tour one hundred
and ten years later, except that on the outward journey Talfourd
sailed down the Rhone.
Smollett's old mental grievances and sores have been shifted and
to some extent, let us hope, dissipated by his strenuous
journeyings, and in June 1765, after an absence of two years, he
is once more enabled to write,
"You cannot imagine what pleasure I feel while I survey the white
cliffs of Dover at this distance [from Boulogne]. Not that I am
at all affected by the nescio qua dulcedine natalis soli of
Horace.
"That seems to be a kind of fanaticism, founded on the prejudices
of education, which induces a Laplander to place the terrestrial
paradise among the snows of Norway, and a Swiss to prefer the
barren mountains of Soleure to the fruitful plains of Lombardy. I
am attached to my country, because it is the land of liberty,
cleanliness, and convenience; but I love it still more tenderly,
as the scene of all my interesting connections, as the habitation
of my friends, for whose conversation, correspondence, and esteem
I wish alone to live."
For the time being it cannot be doubted that the hardships
Smollett had to undergo on his Italian journey, by sea and land,
and the violent passions by which he was agitated owing to the
conduct of refractory postilions and extortionate innkeepers,
contributed positively to brace up and invigorate his
constitution. He spoke of himself indeed as "mended by ill-treatment"
not unlike Tavernier, the famous traveller, - said to
have been radically cured of the gout by a Turkish aga in Egypt,
who gave him the bastinado because he would not look at the head
of the bashaw of Cairo. But Fizes was right after all in his
swan-prescription, for poor Smollett's cure was anything but a
radical one. His health soon collapsed under the dreary round of
incessant labour at Chelsea. His literary faculty was still
maturing and developing. His genius was mellowing, and a later
work might have eclipsed Clinker. But it was not to be. He had a
severe relapse in the winter. In 1770 he had once more to take
refuge from overwork on the sunny coast he had done so much to
popularize among his countrymen, and it was near Leghorn that he
died on 17th September 1771.
ANNO AETATIS 51.
EHEV! QVAM PROCVL A PATRIA!
PROPE LIBVRNI PORTVM, IN ITALIA
JACET SEPVLTVS.
THOMAS SECCOMBE. ACTON, May 1907.
LETTER I
BOULOGNE SUR MER, June 23, 1763.
DEAR SIR, - You laid your commands upon me at parting, to
communicate from time to time the observations I should make in
the course of my travels and it was an injunction I received with
pleasure. In gratifying your curiosity, I shall find some
amusement to beguile the tedious hours, which, without some such
employment, would be rendered insupportable by distemper and
disquiet.
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