WANDERJAHRE
Smollett’s _Lehrjahre_ were over, his _Wanderjahre_ were about to
commence. After passing his examination in Glasgow, he returned for a
time to his mother’s house at Dalquharn, glad once more to feel himself
among the scenes of his early boyhood. Changes great and manifold had,
however, taken place there. His grandfather had, as we have seen,
died some years before, so had his uncle, James Smollett; and now
another James, the son of the old Commissary’s second son, George, and
therefore a full cousin of Tobias, was laird of Bonhill. His mother,
though still undisturbed in her tenancy of Dalquharn, was preparing to
spend at least one half of each year with her daughter Jane, Smollett’s
only sister, who had a month or two before been married to Mr. Telfer.
Home was no longer home to him. His eldest brother was away with his
regiment, the friends of boyhood’s years were either scattered or had
formed new ties. He felt, as he said in one of his letters, ‘like a
bird that returns to find its nest torn down and harried.’
For him in his new profession there was of course no opening in his
native district. The thriving village of Renton did not come into
existence until 1782, eleven years after Smollett’s death. Dumbarton
also was well supplied with medical practitioners; therefore his only
chance lay in going farther afield. His mother would have liked to
keep her Benjamin near her, but Benjamin had all the prodigal son’s
love of roving without his vices. Besides, his studies in English
literature had inflamed him with the desire to throw himself into the
great literary gladiatorial arena—London. His friends were overborne
by his enthusiasm. He was brimming over with all youth’s sanguine
hopes. He would succeed, in fact, he could not fail to succeed, was his
insistent assurance. Alas! he had yet to learn in the hard school of
disappointment that in nine cases out of ten the battle is not to the
strong, nor the race to the swift, but that literary success then as
now was a lottery, wherein the least worthy often bears away the prize.
The days were past when the head of the family, the laird of Bonhill,
could afford material assistance to any youthful scion of the house
proceeding out into the battle of life. Beyond good wishes and a bulky
sheaf of introductions, his cousin, James Smollett, had little to give
Tobias. As it was, however, the future novelist carried away from
his native place the best of all recommendations and heritages, an
unsullied character, with an indomitable love of honest independence
that atones for a multitude of less lovely traits. ‘What kind of work
you individually can do ... the first of all problems for a man to find
out, that is the thing a man is born to in all epochs,’ were the wise
and weighty words of Thomas Carlyle in his Rectorial address. To Tobias
Smollett the problem in question was one whereto he applied himself
with all youth’s jaunty assurance. At nineteen the point at issue
usually is not ‘What career am I fit for?’ but ‘What career shall I
choose?’ a faculty, a capacity for all being confidently presupposed as
a precedent certainty. Youth can make no calculation of probabilities.
The ratios of chance are always esteemed likely to favour the young
gladiator. So with Smollett. With a light heart he went forth to the
deadly battle of life, recking not that the Goliath of failure and
disappointment was waiting for him almost at the parting of the ways,
and that the only pebbles in his bag were a boyish tragedy, and the
certificate of surgical proficiency from an obscure Scottish medical
school. With such weapons, would he prove successful in the impending
strife? From this second point of view the aphorism is once more
apposite, that the battle is not to the strong.
In 1740, therefore, Tobias Smollett took farewell of his Dumbartonshire
home, and turned his face Londonwards—one more tiny unit to be sucked
down for a time into the moiling, whirling, indistinguishable crowd
revolving in the vortex of the mighty social maelstrom. Fearlessly as
Schiller’s ‘Diver’ did the youth plunge into ‘the howling Charybdis
below’; but, alas! the effects of the sufferings, both mental and
physical, which he underwent ere ‘he rose to the surface again,’
were to follow hard on his footsteps, even to the end of life. Even
as Thomas de Quincey, sixty years after, was to find Oxford Street a
stony–hearted stepmother, so Smollett, alone in the mighty metropolis,
was made to realise, with an insistence that burned itself into his
inmost heart, that no solitary in the Sahara is more isolated than he
who is, unknowing and unknown, an atom in a vast London crowd. Men in
after years talked glibly of the irritability of the great novelist.
They could not realise in their shallow complacency what a crucifixion
those years of failure were to the proud, unbending spirit. Had
Smollett been less self–confident, he would have suffered less. To a
mind like his, it was the crushing consciousness of a mistaken estimate
of his own powers that infused into his nature that strain of gall
that manifests itself even in the brightest of his writings.
To London therefore Smollett repaired with high hopes. That these were
based upon his tragedy rather than on his medical acquirements is
evident from his letters of this period, as well as from the preface to
_The Regicide_, when, later on, it was published. Like another Scot,
who nine years afterwards was to ‘hasten’ to London with his tragedy
of _Agis_, only to meet with like mortification, to wit, John Home,
Smollett imagined he had only to present his play to the managers of
the leading theatres to secure its instant acceptance. He was roughly
disillusionised. In the first place, the merits of _The Regicide_ are
of the scantiest. Its boyishness and immaturity, its stiffness and
bombast, are perceptible on every page. The characters, again, are
perpetually firing off such exclamations and expletives as, ‘Tremendous
powers!’ ‘O fatal chance!’ ‘Mysterious fate!’ ‘Infernal homicide!’ and
the like, scarce a speech being ungarnished by one of them. No sooner
had Smollett arrived in London than he hastened to lay his tragedy
before the managers of the theatres. After prolonged delays it was
returned to him declined. Though his vanity was cut to the quick by
this neglect of his genius, as he considered it, he looked so far to
the main chance that he endeavoured to induce Lord Lyttleton to use his
interest with Mr. Rich, Mr. Garrick, or Mr. Lacy, the great theatrical
managers of the day. The only particular wherein that nobleman seems
to have been blameworthy was that, out of excess of amiability, he did
not care to wound the author’s feelings by telling him of the lack of
merit in his play. Smollett, however, accused him and the managers,
along with his other patrons, of well–nigh all the crimes under heaven,
because of their failure to perceive in his tragedy beauties that
had no place there. To resurrect the whole controversy would be as
unprofitable as to retail one of last century’s stale jokes. Those
who desire to pursue the investigation will find the circumstances
recounted by Smollett in his silly preface to _The Regicide_, when,
some years subsequent, he published it by subscription—that is,
after the success of _Roderick Random_ had rendered him famous. He
was weak enough, also, to endeavour to satirise the parties to his
disappointment in the novel in question. The story of Melopoyn and
his attempt to obtain recognition of his dramatic genius is, _mutatis
mutandis_, intended to represent Smollett’s own case.
The small store of guineas which the youth had brought with him from
Scotland were meantime fast vanishing. Any remunerative employment
seemed as far distant as ever. The prejudice in London against
impecunious Scots was then at its height. All very well was it for such
men as Arbuthnot, Thomson, Mallet, and Mickle to speak of the favour
shown them in London by King, Court, and Government. Against these
four, who were wafted into the haven of popularity by propitious gales
almost at the very outset of their literary career, how many scores are
there, little inferior to them in genius, as well as learning, who sank
into Grub Street hacks through not having any patron to recommend their
productions? The patronless man was a pariah, even as in feudal days a
villein without a lord was ranked as a wild beast.
Although the narrative in _Roderick Random_ of the hero’s treatment
at the Navy Office, the examination he passed, the means whereby he
was enabled in the end to get appointed as surgeon’s assistant, are
exaggerated, still there must have been a solid substratum of fact
drawn from the author’s own experience in similar circumstances.
Regarding this period of Smollett’s life the information is exceedingly
meagre. That he went through terrible privations, can be guessed from
the fact that he informed John Home he shuddered whenever he remembered
those days. How he obtained a position on board the _Cumberland_,
an eighty–gun vessel in the fleet commanded by Sir Challoner Ogle,
there is now no means of ascertaining. Whether through the pressgang,
like Roderick Random, or by some other channel more legitimate and
honourable, is unknown. Mr. David Hannay, in his admirable and valuable
life of Smollett, states that there is no certainty which of the
sixteen ships in Ogle’s fleet he served on. Dr. Anderson, in his life
of the novelist, relates that Smollett left his name carved on the
timbers of the _Cumberland_. But an examination of her books reveals no
such name as _Smollett_, though a _Smalley_ does occur, and the shadow
of a probability is thereby raised that a mistake in names may have
been made.
Be this as it may, one fact is certain,—Smollett was present at the
expedition to Carthagena, whatever might be the ship in which he
sailed, and whatsoever the capacity wherein he served. On this point
Carlyle’s statements in _Frederick the Great_ (to be cited further on),
though pronounced by some critics only another example of Carlylean
exaggeration, are by no means wide of the mark. The expedition to
Carthagena was one of the most gigantic crimes ever perpetrated by
a Government, while its mismanagement is an ineffaceable blot on
the British army and navy. Spain had looked with a jealous eye upon
the progress of the British American colonies. All that lay in her
power she did to harass them. British commerce was suffering, but the
Ministry of Sir Robert Walpole seemed utterly indifferent to the
prestige of the national arms, or even to the safety of the colonial
possessions. As Smollett long years afterwards stated in his _History
of England_, ‘no effectual attempt had been made to annoy the enemy.
Expensive squadrons had been equipped, had made excursions, and had
returned without striking a blow. Admiral Vernon had written from
the West Indies to his private friends that he was neglected and in
danger of being sacrificed. Notwithstanding the numerous navy of Great
Britain, Spanish privateers made prizes of the British merchant ships
with impunity.’ A complete paralysis seemed to have fallen on the
national energies, consequent on the _laissez–faire_ policy of the
peace–loving Whig Premier, Sir Robert Walpole. At last the exasperation
of the nation, with the disgraces that had fallen upon it, both in
Europe and South America, burst all bounds, and swept Minister and
Government along with the popular enthusiasm.
As Jamaica had long been threatened by certain Spanish ships of war
with land forces on board, Sir Challoner Ogle was ordered to proceed
with his vessels thither to effect a junction with Admiral Vernon.
Accordingly, the fleet, of which the _Cumberland_ was one, set sail
in November, and reached Jamaica on the 9th January 1741. Vernon
now found himself at the head of the most formidable naval force
that had ever visited those seas, while the land forces were also
strong in proportion. Had this armament been ready to act under the
command of wise and experienced commanders, united in counsels and
steadily attached to the honour and interests of their country, the
whole of Spain’s possessions in the Western Hemisphere would now have
belonged to Britain. But, owing to the death of Lord Cathcart, the
general in command of the land forces, the command devolved on General
Wentworth, a man utterly unfit for the position. Admiral Vernon (also
a nincompoop) and he spent their time and energies in counteracting
each other’s influence, and actually taking steps to frustrate each
other’s plans. Finding that the Spanish admiral, De Torres, had
retired from Jamaica, in place of following him to Havannah, Vernon
decided to attack Carthagena, and sailed thither, despite Wentworth’s
remonstrances. This was blunder No. 1. The second was in attempting
to prosecute the enterprise in the face of such divided counsels. The
consequence was a terrible loss of life by disease and the risks of
war, because neither commander seemed to care how many were killed,
provided they were not his own men. Therefore neither supported the
other. The horrors of that expedition are past belief. Smollett’s
grim and ghastly picture of them, in his ‘Account of the Expedition
against Carthagena,’ in the _Compendium of Voyages and Travels_, and
in _Roderick Random_, is not over–coloured. We shall note it in its
place, but meantime let us see what Carlyle has now to say to the
case. In chapter xii. of _Frederick the Great_, under the heading
‘Sorrows of Britannic Majesty,’ he writes of the Carthagena expedition:
‘Most obscure among the other items in that Armada of Sir Challoner’s
just taking leave of England; most obscure of the items then, but
now most noticeable or almost alone noticeable, is a young surgeon’s
mate—one Tobias Smollett, looking over the waters there and the fading
coasts, not without thoughts. A proud, soft–hearted, though somewhat
stern–visaged, caustic, and indignant young gentleman; apt to be
caustic in speech, having sorrows of his own under lock and key, on
this and subsequent occasions. Excellent Tobias, he has, little as he
hopes it, something considerable by way of mission in this expedition
and in this universe generally. Mission to take portraiture of English
seamen, with the due grimness, due fidelity, and convey the same to
remote generations before it vanish. Courage, my brave young Tobias,
through endless sorrows, contradictions, toils, and confusions. You
will do your errand in some measure, and that will be something.’
To describe in detail the hideous drama of mismanagement and sacrifice
of valuable lives that ensued in consequence of Wentworth’s incapacity,
and of the strained relations between him and Admiral Vernon, would
be out of place here. Suffice it to say that, though British valour,
in spite of adverse circumstances, gained one or two successes, the
expedition as a whole was a ghastly failure. Let us instead exhibit
the awful picture Smollett afterwards drew of the condition of things
immediately prior to the breaking up of the siege—a picture that
thrilled England with horror, and led eventually, along with one or
two other contributory circumstances, to the complete reorganisation
of the naval service of the country. In addition, it blasted for ever,
and deservedly so, the careers of monsters so inhuman as Wentworth
and Vernon. ‘As for the sick and wounded,’ says Smollett, ‘they were
next day sent on board of the transports and vessels called hospital
ships, where they languished in want of every necessary comfort and
accommodation. They were destitute of surgeons, nurses, cooks, and
proper provision; they were pent up between decks in small vessels,
where they had not room to sit upright; they wallowed in filth;
myriads of maggots were hatched in the putrefaction of their sores,
which had no other dressing than that of being washed by themselves
with their own allowance of brandy; and nothing was heard but groans,
lamentations, and the language of despair, invoking death to deliver
them from their miseries. What served to encourage this despondence
was the prospect of those poor wretches who had the strength and
opportunity to look about them. For there they beheld the naked bodies
of their fellow–soldiers and comrades floating up and down the harbour,
affording prey to the carrion crows and sharks, which tore them in
pieces without interruption, and contributing by their stench to the
mortality that prevailed. The picture cannot fail to be shocking to
the humane reader, especially while he is informed that while these
miserable objects cried in vain for assistance, and actually perished
for want of proper attendance, every ship of war in the fleet could
have spared a couple of surgeons for their relief; and many young
gentlemen of that profession solicited their captains in vain for leave
to go and administer help to the sick and wounded; but the discord
between the chiefs was inflamed to such a degree of diabolical rancour,
that the one chose rather to see his men perish than ask help of the
other, who disdained to offer his assistance unasked, though it might
have saved the lives of his fellow–subjects.’
Such, then, was the frightful fiasco of the Carthagena expedition,
in which the young Tobias served, and, by his serving as a humble
surgeon’s mate, was able to render a service to his country, the
beneficial effects of which are felt to this day. Not only did he
expose the awful consequences of personal animosity between the leaders
of a great naval–military expedition. Great as was that service, the
second was greater still. David Hannay felicitously remarks: ‘It was
Smollett’s good fortune that he saw the navy at the very lowest ebb
it has reached since there was a navy in England. In 1740 it was as
little organised as it had been in the seventeenth century. There was
more flogging and more callous cruelty in every way than there had
been a century earlier.’ A truer statement of fact could scarcely be
made. The navy at that period was suffering in common with the army
from the disastrous effects of the Whig Walpole’s peace–at–any–price
policy. In fact, there was no proper Admiralty supervision by permanent
officials. Everything was at the mercy of party scheming and intrigue.
Incompetency ruled in all departments. Not until the accession of the
elder Pitt was there a change for the better. British prestige was
dragged through the mire of disgrace in every corner of the world, and
the affairs of the navy were simply left to direct themselves, while
the individuals nominally in charge squabbled and plotted for place and
power.
It was by his immortal pictures in _Roderick Random_ and _Peregrine
Pickle_ of the horrors of navy service, and of the ignorance and
brutality characterising the men who were proudly termed ‘the tars of
Old England,’ that Smollett really revolutionised the navy. Slow though
the improvements might be in filtering through the various strata of
the service, from Admiralty to seamen, the first note of reform was
struck when Smollett penned that awfully realistic picture of life on
board the _Thunder_ man–of–war, with the characters of Captain Oakum,
Surgeon MacShane, and the others connected with that floating hell. In
our concluding chapters we shall examine the truthfulness or otherwise
of Smollett’s character–painting. Here, however, it may be remarked
that the description of the facts, as well as the local ‘atmosphere,’
have been reported by those present at the attack on Carthagena, and
serving in the navy at the time, to be absolutely correct.
After the failure of the expedition, the shattered and disgraced fleet
betook itself to Jamaica to refit. While here, Smollett decided that
he had seen enough of navy life, and that henceforth his labours
would lie ashore. The beauty of the island tempted him to settle
there. Accordingly, he retired from the service after fifteen months’
experience of it, and started practice as a doctor in the island. What
his success was cannot now be ascertained. In less than two years he is
found in London, namely, in the beginning of 1744, striving once more
to gain a living in the great metropolis.
Only one influence followed him into life from the sunny island of
Jamaica. He there wooed and won Miss Anne or Nancy Lascelles, a young
Kingston heiress. When he returned to London, he returned as an engaged
man. In one of his unpublished letters, he expressly states that he was
not married until 1747, when Miss Lascelles came to England. But, on
the other hand, there is evidence in Jamaica that some sort of ceremony
was performed before Smollett left the island in the end of 1743.
However this may be, Smollett’s _Wanderjahre_ or years of wandering
were now over. He settled down straightway to do the work Heaven laid
to his hand, with all the energy that in him lay.