The rapid journey to Paris by way of Montreuil, Amiens, and Clermont,
about one hundred and fifty-six miles from Boulogne, the last
thirty-six over a paved road, was favourable to superficial observation
and the normal corollary of epigram. Smollett was much impressed by the
mortifying indifference of the French innkeepers to their clients. "It
is a very odd contrast between France and England. In the former all
the people are complaisant but the publicans; in the latter there is
hardly any complaisance but among the publicans." [In regard to two
exceptional instances of politeness on the part of innkeepers, Smollett
attributes one case to dementia, the other, at Lerici, to mental shock,
caused by a recent earthquake.] Idleness and dissipation confront the
traveller, not such a good judge, perhaps, as was Arthur Young
four-and-twenty years later. "Every object seems to have shrunk in its
dimensions since I was last in Paris." Smollett was an older man by
fifteen years since he visited the French capital in the first flush of
his success as an author. The dirt and gloom of French apartments, even
at Versailles, offend his English standard of comfort. "After all, it
is in England only where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay
furniture, neatness, and convenience. There is a strange incongruity in
the French genius. With all their volatility, prattle, and fondness for
bons mots they delight in a species of drawling, melancholy, church
music. Their most favourite dramatic pieces are almost without
incident, and the dialogue of their comedies consists of moral insipid
apophthegms, entirely destitute of wit or repartee." While amusing
himself with the sights of Paris, Smollett drew up that caustic
delineation of the French character which as a study in calculated
depreciation has rarely been surpassed. He conceives the Frenchman
entirely as a petit-maitre, and his view, though far removed from
Chesterfield's, is not incompatible with that of many of his cleverest
contemporaries, including Sterne. He conceives of the typical Frenchman
as regulating his life in accordance with the claims of impertinent
curiosity and foppery, gallantry and gluttony. Thus:
"If a Frenchman is capable of real friendship, it must certainly be the
most disagreeable present he can possibly make to a man of a true
English character. You know, madam, we are naturally taciturn, soon
tired of impertinence, and much subject to fits of disgust. Your French
friend intrudes upon you at all hours; he stuns you with his loquacity;
he teases you with impertinent questions about your domestic and
private affairs; he attempts to meddle in all your concerns, and forces
his advice upon you with the most unwearied importunity; he asks the
price of everything you wear, and, so sure as you tell him, undervalues
it without hesitation; he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill contrived,
ill made; that you have been imposed upon both with respect to the
fashion and the price; that the marquis of this, or the countess of
that, has one that is perfectly elegant, quite in the bon ton, and yet
it cost her little more than you gave for a thing that nobody would
wear.
"If a Frenchman is admitted into your family, and distinguished by
repeated marks of your friendship and regard, the first return he makes
for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is handsome;
if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If he suffers a repulse
from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch your sister, or your
daughter, or your niece, he will, rather than not play the traitor with
his gallantry, make his addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one
but in one shape or another he will find means to ruin the peace of a
family in which he has been so kindly entertained. What he cannot
accomplish by dint of compliment and personal attendance, he will
endeavour to effect by reinforcing these with billets-doux, songs, and
verses, of which he always makes a provision for such purposes. If he
is detected in these efforts of treachery, and reproached with his
ingratitude, he impudently declares that what he had done was no more
than simple gallantry, considered in France as an indispensable duty on
every man who pretended to good breeding. Nay, he will even affirm that
his endeavours to corrupt your wife, or deflower your daughter, were
the most genuine proofs he could give of his particular regard for your
family.
"If there were five hundred dishes at table, a Frenchman will eat of
all of them, and then complain he has no appetite--this I have several
times remarked. A friend of mine gained a considerable wager upon an
experiment of this kind; the petit-maitre ate of fourteen different
plates, besides the dessert, then disparaged the cook, declaring he was
no better than a marmiton, or turnspit."
The gross unfairness, no less than the consummate cleverness, of this
caricature compels us to remember that this was written in the most
insular period of our manners, and during a brief lull in a century of
almost incessant mutual hostility between the two nations. Aristocrats
like Walpole, Gibbon, and Chesterfield could regard France from a
cosmopolitan point of view, as leading the comite of nations. But to
sturdy and true-born patriots, such as Hogarth and Smollett, reciprocal
politeness appeared as grotesque as an exchange of amenities would be
between a cormorant and an ape. Consequently, it was no doubt with a
sense of positive relief to his feelings that Smollett could bring
himself to sum up the whole matter thus. "A Frenchman lays out his
whole revenue upon taudry suits of cloaths, or in furnishing a
magnificent repas of fifty or a hundred dishes, one-half of which are
not eatable or intended to be eaten. His wardrobe goes to the fripier,
his dishes to the dogs, and himself to the devil."
These trenchant passages were written partly, it may be imagined, to
suit the English taste of the day. In that object they must have
succeeded, for they were frequently transcribed into contemporary
periodicals. In extenuation of Smollett's honesty of purpose, however,
it may be urged that he was always a thoroughgoing patriot, [Witness
his violently anti-French play, the Reprisal of 1757.] and that, coming
from a Calvinistic country where a measure of Tartufism was a necessary
condition of respectability, he reproduces the common English error of
ignoring how apt a Frenchman is to conceal a number of his best
qualities. Two other considerations deserve attention. The
race-portrait was in Smollett's day at the very height of its
disreputable reign. Secondly, we must remember how very profoundly
French character has been modified since 1763, and more especially in
consequence of the cataclysms of 1789 and 1870.
Smollett's vis comica is conspicuous in the account of the coiffure of
the period and of the superstitious reverence which a Frenchman of that
day paid to his hair. In tracing the origin of this superstition he
exhibits casually his historical learning. The crine profuso and barba
demissa of the reges crinitos, as the Merovingians were called, are
often referred to by ancient chroniclers. Long hair was identified with
right of succession, as a mark of royal race, and the maintenance of
ancient tradition. A tondu signified a slave, and even under the
Carolingians to shave a prince meant to affirm his exclusion from the
succession.
V
A general improvement in English roads, roadside inns, and methods of
conveyance commenced about 1715. The continental roads lagged behind,
until when Arthur Young wrote in 1788-89 they had got badly into
arrears. The pace of locomotion between Rome and England changed very
little in effect from the days of Julius Caesar to those of George III.
It has been said with point that Trajan and Sir Robert Peel, travelling
both at their utmost speed achieved the distance between Rome and
London in an almost precisely similar space of time. Smollett decided
to travel post between Paris and Lyons, and he found that the journey
lasted full five days and cost upwards of thirty guineas. [One of the
earliest printed road books in existence gives the posts between Paris
and Lyons. This tiny duodecimo, dated 1500, and more than worth its
weight in gold has just been acquired by the British Museum. On the old
Roman routes, see Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, 1842.] Of roads
there was a choice between two. The shorter route by Nevers and Moulins
amounted to just about three hundred English miles. The longer route by
Auxerre and Dijon, which Smollett preferred extended to three hundred
and thirty miles. The two roads diverged after passing Fontainebleau,
the shorter by Nemours and the longer by Moret. The first road was the
smoother, but apart from the chance of seeing the Vendange the route de
Burgoyne was far the more picturesque. Smollett's portraiture of the
peasantry in the less cultivated regions prepares the mind for Young's
famous description of those "gaunt emblems of famine." In Burgundy the
Doctor says, "I saw a peasant ploughing the ground with a jackass, a
lean cow, and a he-goat yoked together." His vignette of the fantastic
petit-maitre at Sens, and his own abominable rudeness, is worthy of the
master hand that drew the poor debtor Jackson in the Marshalsea in
Roderick Random.
His frank avowal of ill temper at the time deprives our entertainment
of the unamiable tinge of which it would otherwise have partaken. "The
truth is, I was that day more than usually peevish, from the bad
weather as well as from the dread of a fit of asthma, with which I was
threatened. And I daresay my appearance seemed as uncouth to him as his
travelling dress appeared to me. 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.
"This shortness of breath, he says, has steadily increased. This group
of symptoms makes it certain that he had tuberculosis of the lungs, in
other words, was slowly progressing in consumption.
"His darting pains in his side were due to the pleurisy which always
occurs in such an illness.
"His account shows also the absence of hopelessness which is a
characteristic state of mind in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis.
"I do not think that the opinion of the Montpellier professor deserves
Smollett's condemnation. It seems to me both careful and sensible and
contains all the knowledge of its time. Smollett, with an inconsistency
not uncommon in patients who feel that they have a serious disease,
would not go in person to the Professor, for he felt that from his
appearance the Professor would be sure to tell him he had consumption.
He half hoped for some other view of the written case in spite of its
explicit statements, and when Professor F-- wrote that the patient had
tubercles in his lungs, this was displeasing to poor Smollett, who had
hoped against hope to receive--some other opinion than the only
possible one, viz., that he undoubtedly had a consumption certain to
prove fatal."
The cruel truth was not to be evaded. Smollett had tuberculosis, though
not probably of the most virulent kind, as he managed to survive
another seven years, and those for the most part years of unremitting
labour. He probably gained much by substituting Nice for Montpellier as
a place to winter in, for although the climate of Montpellier is clear
and bright in the highest degree, the cold is both piercing and
treacherous. Days are frequent during the winter in which one may stand
warmly wrapped in the brilliant sun and feel the protection of a
greatcoat no more than that of a piece of gauze against the icy and
penetrating blast that comes from "the roof of France."
Unable to take the direct route by Arles as at present, the
eastward-bound traveller from Montpellier in 1764 had to make a
northerly detour. The first stone bridge up the Rhone was at Avignon,
but there was a bridge of boats connecting Beaucaire with Tarascon.
Thence, in no very placable mood, Smollett set out in mid-November by
way of Orgon [Aix], Brignolles and le Muy, striking the Mediterranean
at Frejus. En route he was inveigled into a controversy of unwonted
bitterness with an innkeeper at le Muy. The scene is conjured up for us
with an almost disconcerting actuality; no single detail of the
author's discomfiture is omitted. The episode is post-Flaubertian in
its impersonal detachment, or, as Coleridge first said, "aloofness." On
crossing the Var, the sunny climate, the romantic outline of the
Esterelles, the charms of the "neat village" of Cannes, and the first
prospect of Nice began gradually and happily to effect a slight
mitigation in our patient's humour. Smollett was indubitably one of the
pioneers of the Promenade des Anglais. Long before the days of "Dr.
Antonio" or Lord Brougham, he described for his countrymen the almost
incredible dolcezza of the sunlit coast from Antibes to Lerici. But how
much better than the barren triumph of being the unconscious fugleman
of so glittering a popularity must have been the sense of being one of
the first that ever burst from our rude island upon that secluded
little Piedmontese town, as it then was, of not above twelve thousand
souls, with its wonderful situation, noble perspective and unparalleled
climate. Well might our travel-tost doctor exclaim, "When I stand on
the rampart and look around I can scarce help thinking myself
enchanted." It was truly a garden of Armida for a native of one of the
dampest corners of North Britain.
"Forty or fifty years ago, before the great transformation took place
on the French Riviera, when Nizza, Villafranca, and Mentone were
antique Italian towns, and when it was one of the eccentricities of
Lord Brougham, to like Cannes, all that sea-board was a delightful
land. Only a hundred years ago Arthur Young had trouble to get an old
woman and a donkey to carry his portmanteau from Cannes to Antibes. I
can myself remember Cannes in 1853, a small fishing village with a
quiet beach, and Mentone, a walled town with mediaeval gates and a
castle, a few humble villas and the old Posta to give supper to any
passing traveller. It was one of the loveliest bits of Italy, and the
road from Nizza to Genoa was one long procession for four days of
glorious scenery, historic remnants, Italian colour, and picturesque
ports. From the Esterelles to San Remo this has all been ruined by the
horde of northern barbarians who have made a sort of Trouville,
Brighton, or Biarritz, with American hotels and Parisian boulevards on
every headland and bay. First came the half underground railway, a long
tunnel with lucid intervals, which destroyed the road by blocking up
its finest views and making it practically useless. Then miles of
unsightly caravanserais high walls, pompous villas, and Parisian
grandes rues crushed out every trace of Italy, of history, and
pictorial charm." So writes Mr. Frederic Harrison of this delectable
coast, [In the Daily Chronicle, 15th March 1898.] as it was, at a
period within his own recollection--a period at which it is hardly
fanciful to suppose men living who might just have remembered Smollett,
as he was in his last days, when he returned to die on the Riviera di
Levante in the autumn of 1771. Travel had then still some of the
elements of romance. Rapidity has changed all that. The trouble is that
although we can transport our bodies so much more rapidly than Smollett
could, our understanding travels at the same old pace as before. And in
the meantime railway and tourist agencies have made of modern travel a
kind of mental postcard album, with grand hotels on one side, hotel
menus on the other, and a faint aroma of continental trains haunting,
between the leaves as it were. Our real knowledge is still limited to
the country we have walked over, and we must not approach the country
we would appreciate faster than a man may drive a horse or propel a
bicycle; or we shall lose the all-important sense of artistic approach.
Even to cross the channel by time-table is fatal to that romantic
spirit (indispensable to the true magic of travel) which a slow
adjustment of the mind to a new social atmosphere and a new historical
environment alone can induce. Ruskin, the last exponent of the Grand
Tour, said truly that the benefit of travel varies inversely in
proportion to its speed. The cheap rapidity which has made our villes
de plaisir and cotes d'azur what they are, has made unwieldy boroughs
of suburban villages, and what the rail has done for a radius of a
dozen miles, the motor is rapidly doing for one of a score. So are we
sped! But we are to discuss not the psychology of travel, but the
immediate causes and circumstances of Smollett's arrival upon the
territory of Nice.