THE WEARY TRAGEDY—SHIFTS TO LIVE
No sooner had Smollett returned to London than he resumed negotiations
with reference to his ill–fated tragedy. Authors are proverbially blind
to the true merits of their literary progeny. As each fond father’s
geese are swans, so, in the youthful Tobias Smollett’s eyes, fresh
from conquest in the matrimonial arena, this decided objection to have
anything to do with his play could only result from national antipathy
against the Scots. ‘My luckless tragedy is suffering for Bannockburn,’
he remarked on one occasion to Mallet. Our vanity will seize on
any reason rather than the right one to save our _amour–propre_.
Undoubtedly, Rich, Gifford, and Lacy’s treatment of Smollett was far
from generous, nor was Garrick wholly free from blame. They should
have declined the play at once. Let us take the better view of it,
however, and ascribe their action to a mistaken desire to save the
peppery Scotsman’s feelings. Better a hundred times if he had received
the plain, unvarnished truth about that wretchedly crude production
at the outset. A few pangs of wounded vanity, a curse or two at the
Southron’s lack of critical insight, and Tobias probably would have
buried or burned his MS. and forgotten all about it in another year,
while in the long–run his common sense would have come to see the
justice of the managerial decision. But for several years after his
return from Jamaica his expectations were raised and his hopes excited
by vague promises and vaguer hints as to what ‘we will do next year.’
The consequence of all this manœuvring was, that Tobias, with that
obstinate national pride characteristic of him, conceived that in some
occult way patriotic prestige was bound up in his publishing, by hook
or crook, a production so long withheld from a presumably expectant
public by Southron jealousy. More follies have been perpetrated under
the guise of patriotism than through all the vices combined. Let us
detail the finish of a foolish business. After _Roderick Random_ had
rendered him famous, Smollett, imagining that all he wrote or had
ever written would be eagerly devoured by an undiscriminating public,
published _The Regicide_ by subscription. Ten years afterwards he
cursed his indiscretion in no measured terms. The wisdom of thirty
became the folly of forty; and some time during the last two years of
his life, according to tradition, he committed to the flames two or
three dozen copies of the ill–digested tragedy that had entailed on him
so much trouble and brought him so little reputation.
Meantime, the worthy Tobias was oppressed with the all–absorbing
problem wherewithal to live. Rumour credited him with marrying an
heiress. Rumour, as usual, lied. If our ex–surgeon’s mate, whose
philosophy of life at that period seemed summed up in Horace’s
famous injunction, ‘Get money, honestly if you can, but without fail
get money,’ expected that in marrying Miss Nancy Lascelles he was
purchasing the fee–simple of future years of affluence and ease, never
man was more deceived. Let us credit the estimable Tobias, however,
with a moral code more elevated than that. Albeit in the years to
come Miss Nancy found she had not married a blood–relation of the
patient Job’s, and he, that passionate West Indian ‘heiresses’ are
not the ideal wives for hard–working literary men, on the whole the
marriage was as happy as are three out of every five contracted in
this working–day world. But the fortune of Miss Nancy, being invested
in sugar plantations and such accessories as are necessary for the
efficient production of this necessary staple of food, was, alas!
difficult of realisation, and in the end only rolled upon the already
heavily–burdened husband a quiverful of lawsuits. It was the old story!
The lawyers got the cash, the litigants—the unspeakable pleasure of
paying for their law with the object of their law–suit. Thus did Miss
Nancy’s fortune disappear!
From March 1744, when he returned to London, until January 1748, when
_Roderick Random_ was published, Smollett’s movements are involved in
obscurity. Only by means of meagre references in his own letters, and
chance allusions to him in those of such friends as, in days to come,
having carved their names in the Temple of Fame, had, in consequence,
the somewhat doubtful honour of having their lives written, are we able
to glean aught about his existence at this period. He was only a lad of
some three or four–and–twenty years, unknown, friendless, and left to
fight the great battle of life for himself. Little wonder is it, then,
if, among the half–million inhabitants constituting the population of
the British metropolis about the middle of the eighteenth century, the
young Scots surgeon felt himself lost—as though he had been cut off
from every kindly face and sympathetic voice. He probably was beginning
to form those connections with booksellers which led him, before many
years were over, to degenerate into a mere money–grubbing hack, not
above doing a little literary ‘sweating,’ by obtaining high prices
for work which he got executed by his slaves of the quill on terms
much lower. But of that in its place. Certain it is that during these
four years Smollett must have derived an income, and, what is more, a
moderately good income, from some source. His letters prove that. From
one addressed to his early friend, Richard Barclay, and dated London,
May 22, 1744, we quote the following autobiographical facts:—‘I am
this minute happy in yours, which affords me all the satisfaction
of hearing from you, without the anxiety naturally flowing from its
melancholy occasion, for I was informed of the decease of our late
friend by a letter from Mr. Gordon, dated the day after his death. All
those (as well as you, my dear Barclay) who knew the intimacy between
us must imagine that no stroke of fate could make a deeper impression
on my soul than that which severs me for ever from one I so entirely
loved, from one who merited universal esteem, and who, had he not been
cut off in the very blossom of his being, would have been an ornament
to society, the pride and joy of his parents, and a most inestimable
jewel to such as were attached to him as we were by the sacred ties
of love and friendship.... My weeping muse would fain pay a tribute
to his manes, and were I vain enough to think my verse would last, I
would perpetuate his friendship and his virtue. I wish I was near you,
that I might pour forth my heart before you, and make you judge of its
dictates and the several steps I have lately taken, in which case I am
confident you and all honest men would acquit my principles, however my
prudentials might be condemned. However, I have moved into the house
where the late John Douglas, surgeon, died, and you may henceforth
direct for Mr. Smollett, surgeon, in Downing Street, West.... Your own,
TS. SMOLLETT.
_N.B._—Willie Wood, who is just now drinking a glass with me, offers
you his good wishes, and desires you to present his compliments to Miss
Betty Bogle.—T. S.’
Now, the extracts given above would seem to indicate that Smollett
was, in the first place, in somewhat easy circumstances. As Mr. Hannay
very justly remarks, houses in Downing Street, West, and glasses of
wine for friends, were not to be enjoyed, even in the patriarchal
times of last century, without a periodical production of the almighty
dollar. Circumstances point to the fact that Smollett took the deceased
surgeon’s house with the possible hope of dropping into his practice.
But in addition to that very problematic source of income, there must
have been some other, and that in some degree at least to be relied
upon. Smollett would never have faced the future so gaily with such a
millstone round his neck, unless he had clearly seen his way to a sure
and steady means of revenue. To our mind, that revenue must either have
been yielded by Mrs. Smollett’s property in Kingston, and the ceremony
performed there, prior to Smollett’s departure, must have been regarded
as a marriage, or his industry in hack work for the booksellers must
have been phenomenal. Either alternative presents difficulties. Neither
can be accepted without weighty reservations. Best, under all aspects
of the case, is it to affirm nothing positively, in the absence at
the present time of definite information, which, however, may yet be
discovered.
The years 1745 and 1746 were stirring years in Britain. The rumours
of a great Jacobite invasion of Scotland were rife while the year was
young. They increased in number and definiteness as it gradually grew
older, until, in August 1745, the intelligence reached London that
Prince Charles Edward had actually landed in the Western Highlands.
Smollett, though a sentimental Whig and an actual Tory, though, in
other words, sympathising with the cause of the downtrodden and the
laborious poor, while at the same time he heartily anathematised
Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle, and at this time at least extolled
the Tory Pitt the elder, was no Jacobite. True it was, his peppery
nature was easily aroused by the flagrant and criminal neglect
Scotland had received under Walpole’s administration. He was never
done denouncing this ‘direct descendant of the impenitent thief’—a
phrase afterwards borrowed, with a slight alteration, but without
acknowledgment, by Dan O’Connell, and applied, as everybody knows, to
Benjamin Disraeli. But however deeply Smollett was attached to his
country, it was merely a sentimental attachment, akin to his Whiggery.
He would not endanger his neck by ‘going out’ during the Rebellion of
the ‘45, but he would have been guilty of a little harmless treason
had he met with any kindred spirit with an enthusiasm strong enough
to blow his own into flame. An evidence of the interest Smollett took
in the Rebellion, and the indignation he felt over the atrocities
perpetrated by the Duke of Cumberland on the hapless Highland prisoners
that fell into his hands after the battle of Culloden, is found in
the following anecdote related by Sir Walter Scott, on the authority
of Robert Graham, Esq., of Gartmore, a particular friend and trustee
of Smollett:—‘Some gentlemen, having met in a tavern, were amusing
themselves before supper with a game at cards, while Smollett, not
choosing to play, sat down to write. One of the company, who also
was nominated one of his trustees (Gartmore himself), observing his
earnestness, and supposing he was writing verses, asked him if it were
not so. He accordingly read them the first sketch of his “Tears of
Scotland,” consisting only of six stanzas, and on their remarking that
the termination of the poem, being too strongly expressed, might give
offence to persons whose political opinions were different, he sat
down without reply, and with an air of great indignation subjoined the
concluding stanza:—
“While the warm blood bedews my veins,
And unimpaired remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country’s fate
Within my filial breast shall beat.
Yes, spite of thine insulting foe,
My sympathising verse shall flow.
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!”’
To which Scott adds: ‘To estimate the generous emotions with which
Smollett was actuated on this occasion, it must be remarked that his
patriotism was independent of party feeling, as he had been bred up in
Whig principles, which were those of his family. Although these appear
from his historical works to have been in some degree modified, yet the
author continued attached to the principles of the Revolution.’
The ‘Tears of Scotland,’ the poem written under the curious
circumstances recounted above, was a generous outburst of patriotic
indignation in favour of Scotland and the Scots, at a time when such
manifestations, owing to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, were liable
to be construed, by a Government as truculent and short–sighted as it
was venal and corrupt, into treason. Notwithstanding the fact that the
‘Tears of Scotland’ was moderately popular in its day, the powers that
were in those days decided to leave the peppery Scot severely alone.
At this period it is also that we obtain a pleasant side–light thrown
upon Smollett’s life and work from the autobiography of Dr. ‘Jupiter’
Carlyle, the minister of Inveresk, in Midlothian, from 1748 to 1805,
who was the friend and associate of nearly all the literary celebrities
of the period—Home, Robertson, Blair, Logan, Henry Mackenzie, Lords
Kames and Monboddo, etc. Fortunately, he preserved and noted down
his impressions of all these great men, though, having done so only
in extreme old age, many of the details are incorrectly stated. Dr.
Carlyle remarks that with Smollett and one or two more he ‘resorted to
a small tavern in the corner of Cockspur Street at the Golden Ball,
where we had a frugal supper and a little punch, as the finances of
none of the company were in very good order. But we had rich enough
conversation on literary subjects, which was enlivened by Smollett’s
agreeable stories, which he told with a peculiar grace. Soon after
our acquaintance, Smollett showed me his tragedy of “James I. of
Scotland,”[3] which he never could bring on the stage. For this the
managers could not be blamed, though it soured him against them, and he
appealed to the public by printing it; but the public seemed to take
part with the managers.’
The following incident, detailed by Dr. Carlyle, also manifests
Smollett in the light of a Scots patriot:—‘I was in the coffee–house
with Smollett when the news of the battle of Culloden arrived, and when
London all over was in an uproar of joy. It was then that Jack Stewart,
the son of the Provost, behaved in the manner I before mentioned.[4]
About nine o’clock I wished to go home to Lyon’s in New Bond Street, as
I had promised to sup with him that night, it being the anniversary of
his marriage–night, or the birthday of one of his children. I asked
Smollett if he was ready to go, as he lived at Mayfair; he said he
was, and would conduct me. The mob were so riotous and the squibs so
numerous and incessant, that we were glad to go into a narrow entry to
put our wigs in our pockets, and to take our swords from our belts,
and to walk with them in our hands, as everybody then wore swords;
and after cautioning me against speaking a word, lest the mob should
discover my country and become insolent, “for John Bull,” said he, “is
as haughty and valiant to–night as he was abject and cowardly on the
Black Wednesday when the Highlanders were at Derby.” After we got to
the head of the Haymarket through incessant fire, the doctor led me by
narrow lanes, where we met nobody but a few boys at a pitiful bonfire,
who very civilly asked us for sixpence, which I gave them. I saw not
Smollett again for some time after, when he showed Smith and me the MS.
of his “Tears of Scotland,” which was published not long after, and had
such a run of approbation. Smollett, though a Tory, was not a Jacobite,
but he had the feelings of a Scotch gentleman on the reported cruelties
that were said to be exercised after the battle of Culloden.’
Sir Walter Scott, with his wonted charity, endeavours to account for
Smollett’s lack of success as a physician. He did not succeed, because
his haughty and independent spirit neglected the bypaths which lead
to fame in that profession. Another writer ascribes it to his lack
of consideration for his female patients, certainly not from want of
address or figure, but from a hasty impatience in listening to petty
complaints. Perhaps, finally, remarks Scott, Dr. Smollett was too soon
discouraged, and abandoned prematurely a profession in which success is
proverbially slow.
In these circumstances, conscious as he must have been of his own
powers, Smollett could only look to his pen for the supply of his
daily needs. And it did not disappoint him. In 1748, besides numerous
ephemeral compilations for the booksellers, he produced his poetical
satire _Advice_, a poem in the manner of Juvenal, wherein several of
the leading political characters of the day were held up to scorn. Our
author certainly did not spare his caustic sarcasm. The consequence
was, _Advice_ became so popular that he published a sequel, or rather
continuation of it, in 1747, under the title of _Reproof_, both being
bound and published together in the succeeding year. When another
edition of each was called for, Smollett had made himself talked about
and feared, in the hope that the Ministry of the day would see it to
their advantage to pension him off with a sinecure office. No such
fortune befell him. He had only sown dragon’s teeth, from which enemies
sprang up to harass and vex him even to the end of his days.
Of the literary merits of the Satires more will be said anon. One
quality in them may be noted here, however, and that was the absolute
fearlessness wherewith Smollett attacked those in power. His sting
was never sheathed out of dread of any man. None were exempt from
the lash of his sarcasm, whose wrong–doings came to his knowledge.
If the innocent sometimes were involved with the guilty in common
condemnation, in most cases the reason was because they continued
in association with the politically or morally depraved after being
cognisant of their character.
The sensation created by these trenchant Satires was great. Literary
London recognised that a new writer of great and varied powers
had risen. The old generation was dying out. Swift, Bolingbroke,
Congreve, Arbuthnot, Pope, were either dead or had ceased to write.
Goldsmith had not yet appeared. Johnson alone held the field; but
he was more of a moral censor than a satirist. There was really no
satirist of surpassing ability tickling the palate of the public,
which dearly loves censure—when directed against other people. The
coarse, sledge–hammer caricature of Tom D’Urfey and Tom Brown, though
still relished by a few, was gradually giving place to a more refined
and incisive, but none the less vitriolic type, wherein Smollett was
an acknowledged master. _Advice_ and _Reproof_ are readable yet for
the pungency of the sarcasm, united to absolute truth as regards the
facts adduced. One does not wonder at the popularity of these pieces.
They are thoroughly ‘live’ epigrammatic productions, aglow with
human interest, and palpitating with that vigorous, honest, healthy
indignation against wrong which awakens a reciprocal feeling in one’s
breast across the chasm of a hundred and fifty years. ‘Dost not fear
the Government, Smollett’? said a timid friend to him after their
publication. ‘Fear the Government?’ was the contemptuous reply of the
other. ‘I might if I showed I dreaded them; but no man need fear a
Government provided he does not show he fears it.’
During the publication of the second part of his Satires, Smollett was
joined in London by the lady who became his wife. In 1747 they set up
house, and for some months he enjoyed the luxury of his own fireside.
Fate was not long to leave him unassailed, but long enough, at least,
to give him a taste of that hymeneal heaven which follows the union
of two loving hearts—long enough for him to have experienced the
sentiments that found expression in the one love–poem he wrote, ‘Ode
to Blue–Eyed Ann.’ Miss Anne or Nancy Lascelles cannot have been the
unresponsive being some of Smollett’s biographers contend, in order to
excuse their hero’s ungallant conduct in later years, when every other
sentiment was sacrificed to ambition, otherwise she could not have
inspired feelings so passionate as these—
‘When rolling seasons cease to change,
Inconstancy forget to range;
When lavish May no more shall bloom
Nor gardens yield a rich perfume;
When Nature from her sphere shall start,
I’ll tear my Nanny from my heart.’
Smollett seemed to have all an Irishman’s love of a quarrel. He never
appeared happier than when he was ‘slangwhanging’ some unfortunate,
though it is a hundred to one the fault was on his own side. To be
‘slangwhanged’ in return, however, was altogether another matter.
Ridicule cut him to the raw. He had the idea that all the world should
submit to his animadversions patiently and uncomplainingly. But if any
dared to retaliate, instantly they were dubbed rogues, and fools, and
blockheads. An instance of this occurred in his relations with Rich,
the theatrical manager. The success of _Advice_ had induced the latter
to lend a favourable ear to Smollett’s proposal to write the libretto
of an opera called _Alceste_, which would have been produced at Covent
Garden, Handel being engaged to write the music for it. All went well,
and the work was actually in rehearsal, when Rich made some suggestions
to Smollett about altering one of the scenes. Immediately the peppery
poet was on his dignity. He declined to alter a line. Thereupon Rich,
preferring to quarrel with his author rather than offend the public,
rejected the piece, to Smollett’s intense chagrin. In vain his friends
begged of him to make some concession to Rich, who seems to have been
exceedingly forbearing all through. The poet declined, and thus another
chance of bettering his prospects was lost.
Handel, on hearing of the transaction, is reported to have remarked,
‘That Scotchman is ein tam fool; I vould have mate his vurk immortal,’
and immediately proceeded to alter the music so as to adapt it to
Dryden’s ‘Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day.’ Verily _Alceste_ would have been
immortal if wedded to those noble harmonies. But it was not to be.
The only result was the addition of another group of powerful social
personages to his already long list of enemies, for of course Tobias
could not refrain from lampooning Rich. ‘O the pity of it!’