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 manoeuvring 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!’