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,
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