RODERICK RANDOM

We reach now the most important period of Smollett’s life. That he had fully realised, long before, the splendid nature of the talents wherewith he was endowed, is more than probable, though he possibly was in doubt as to the precise outlet his genius would make for itself. He had tried tragedy, but had been roughly disillusionised as to his El Dorado being found on the stage. He had neither the power of compression nor the faculty of seizing upon one central idea and making all the others subservient and subordinate thereto, so necessary a qualification in the dramatist. His satire also was a little too ferocious and vitriolic to entirely please the taste of the English–reading public, that was gradually looking askance at the knockdown, sledge–hammer blows of Butler and Swift, and veering round to the more delicate but none the less effective style of Goldsmith, Gay, and Johnson. His poetry, moreover, was not sufficiently generous, either in quantity or quality, to secure for him even a low place in the Temple of Poesie. His genius, therefore, must find some other outlet. What was it to be?

In 1740, Samuel Richardson, the father of the English novel, had produced Pamela, a work which at once achieved a lasting success. Not that novel–writing was unknown previous to that date, as many writers suppose. The Italian novelli and the Spanish tales were known in Britain, and had inspired many imitators. While carefully dissociating the pastoral romances like Sidney’s Arcadia or those ‘romances’ proper, or fiction dealing with feudal customs and illustrative of the ‘virtues’ of chivalry, from ‘novels,’ which, in the early signification of the word at least, implied stories descriptive of domestic or everyday life in the period of the writer’s own immediate epoch, many of the stories written by Robert Greene, the dramatist, Thomas Nashe, and Nicolas Breton are novels of English life pure and simple, albeit foreign names may be used. So in Shakespeare all his plays are distinctively English in atmosphere and sympathies, to say nothing of sentiments, although Coriolanus, Julius CÆsar, Antony and Cleopatra, and the like, are selected as the nominal heroes and heroines of the piece. The English novel had long been in existence. The only difference was that the writers did not specialise any period as that wherein the incidents occurred. They preferred to leave themselves free, and to people with the creatures of their fancy that mysteriously delightful era vaguely shadowed forth by ‘long ago’ or ‘once upon a time.’

The surpassing virtue of Richardson and his successor Fielding was that they boldly seized upon the time wherein they lived as that which was to form the background of their stories. Their ‘to–day’ was to be painted as faithfully and as fondly as those earlier writers had depicted imaginary epochs. We can scarcely form any idea now of the overwhelming enthusiasm that greeted Richardson’s Pamela. For the first time readers saw their own age delineated with a fidelity and withal a fearlessness that had the effect of a supreme moral lesson. Of course, to our ideas of to–day, many of the descriptions in the novels of last century are simply revolting, and would be condemned amongst us as an outrage on good taste. ‘The morals of the young person’ are our nineteenth–century bogey, which ever and anon rises up to scare any luckless novelist who dares to paint life as it really is. Thackeray used to lament that he dared not paint Becky Sharp as she really was, because all the mammas in the British Islands would taboo his work. But midway the eighteenth century they were not so queasy–stomached. They called a spade a spade. If a man went to the devil with wine and women, they took a delight in chronicling the whole process—as a warning to others, be it noted, not like the leprous–minded, neurotic school in our own days, look you, because they wanted to rake in guineas by chronicling a brother’s or a sister’s shame.

Pamela, however, effected a higher purpose than merely affording pleasure to eager readers. Its exotic morality and exaggerated sentimentality stirred up into vigorous life the spirit of ridicule latent in the big, manly, kindly, but coarse–fibred nature of Henry Fielding. As a caricature of Pamela he produced his novel, Joseph Andrews, the hero of which was the brother of Pamela, and was made to exhibit the same exaggerated virtues as had characterised the latter. Fielding’s “skit” became the first great character–novel in the English language, and announced to the world the fact that the greatest master of contemporary literary portraiture that prose literature has yet seen, had appeared.

The publication of Clarissa Harlowe, by Richardson, towards the end of 1747, and the announcement made of the appearance of Fielding’s Tom Jones, in parts, seem to have raised the question in Smollett’s mind whether he also might not be able to create a gallery of fiction every whit as notable as ‘Pamela,’ or ‘Mr. B——,’ or ‘Parson Adams,’ or ‘Lovelace,’ or ‘Sophia Western.’ The flattering results of success in the improvement of the material prospects of both Richardson and Fielding could not but exercise a certain amount of influence on him. In the month of June 1747, as he tells us, he began the composition of a novel of his own time, very diffidently, and with the resolve firmly kept in view, that if the work did not come up to his own expectations, he would remorselessly burn it.

He was of too original a caste of genius to sink into the subordinate position of a mere imitator of either Richardson or Fielding. He noted carefully that the former had monopolised the novel of sentiment, as the latter had taken as his own the novel of character. But he also saw that the novel of incident was still unappropriated in English fiction. This department he determined to make his own. Taking the Gil Blas of Le Sage as his model, he endeavoured as far as possible to make his tale interesting by the number and variety of the events introduced, feeling assured that the portraiture of character would not be of an inferior type, if only he could draw on his past experiences for material. While by no means a slavish follower of Le Sage, the influence of the great French writer is very perceptible in Roderick Random. There is the same breathless succession of incidents, the same hairbreadth escapes, the same ready ingenuity on the part of the hero in extricating himself from awkward predicaments. In a word, Roderick is but a blood relation of Gil Blas, though his British parentage and rearing have modified some of the eccentricities and peccadilloes that would have scared even the purblind mammas and custodians of national virtue last century.

Roderick Random was published towards the end of January 1748, having occupied five months in its composition. Its success was instant and extraordinary. The British public recognised that a third had been added to the great masters of fiction—a third whose genius, though inferior in solidity and sublimity to that of either Richardson or Fielding, surpassed both in prodigality and wealth of invention. The first edition of the work did not bear the author’s name, but was published in two small duodecimo volumes by Osborn of Gray’s Inn Lane (the same individual knocked down by Dr. Johnson as a punishment for insolence), the price being six shillings. The interest excited by the book may be imagined when it was attributed by Lady Mary Wortley Montague to Fielding. In a letter to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, as recorded in her works, Lady Mary says: ‘Fielding has really a fund of true humour. I guessed Roderick Random to be his, though without his name.’ Later on she adds: ‘I cannot think Ferdinand Fathom wrote by the same hand, it is every way so much below it.’

The notices of the novel in any contemporary journals are but meagre. In the Gentleman’s Magazine and in the Intelligencer, short criticisms appear noting it as a work ‘full of ingenious descriptions and lively occurrences.’ Several of the other periodicals contented themselves with a mere intimation of its publication. Of puffing and pushing seemingly the work needed little. Its own merits carried it into all circles. Even Samuel Richardson, whose antipathy to Fielding may have inclined him to show favour to any possible rival of the man who had dared to caricature his pet creation, remarked of it in comparison with Tom Jones, published some months later, that Roderick Random was written by a good man to show the evils of vice, Tom Jones by a profligate to render vice more alluring. The infallible judgment of posterity will not confirm the criticism of the narrow–minded old bookseller, who abhorred anything that did not directly or indirectly reflect praise on himself. Edition after edition of this the latest success in literature was called for. Smollett’s name was placed on the title–page after the issue of the second edition, and the public then realised that the popular novel was the work of none of the elder writers, as was supposed, but of a young, impecunious surgeon, not yet thirty, who had exhibited a very pretty talent for satire, as the Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, the Earls of Bath, Granville, and Cholmondeley, Sir William Yonge, Mr. Pitt, and Rich the theatrical manager, could testify to their cost.

Thereupon the town sought to take the young surgeon up and patronise him, only to discover that he was far from being a patronisable party—nay, was somewhat akin to the frozen snake which the countryman, pitying, took up and hid in his bosom to warm it, only to be stung when the reptile recovered vitality. Smollett all his life was too apt to mistake genuine kindness for patronage, and to flash out hasty darts of sarcasm in response to heartfelt wishes to win his friendship. Many of the leading personages of London now sought to benefit him and to show him that they desired to count him among their friends. But Tobias, as already said, was like the fretful porcupine. He had been so long a stranger to disinterested kindness, so long treated as little better than a superfluous atom on the world’s surface, that affability towards him was construed into condescension—a thought which made each particular hair of his sensitive nature to stand on end. Curious though the fact, nevertheless it is true that Smollett’s friendship was in most cases extended to those who differed from him rather than to those who agreed with him, though at the same time he might be bespattering the former with all the terms of reprobation in his somewhat extensive vocabulary of vituperation.

Although Roderick Random, coming, as it did, sandwiched in, so to speak, between Clarissa Harlowe and Tom Jones, had to pass through a trying fire of literary comparison, it emerged from the ordeal more popular than ever. Readers realised that in him was a writer who was a story–teller pure and simple, whose moral lessons were conveyed rather by implication than by positive precept, and to whom the progress of his story was the prime consideration. The wearisome moralisings of Richardson and the tedious untwistings of motive so characteristic of Fielding were unknown in Roderick Random. The story for the story’s sake was evidently the writer’s aim throughout, and nobly he fulfilled it. By many of our latter–day novelists the imaginative swiftness of Smollett might with advantage be studied.

All criticism will be reserved for our closing chapters, but at this point it may not be out of place to state that, although Smollett’s characters are many of them drawn from life, it does not follow they are portrayed to the life. By this distinction I would seek to relieve him of the imputation, shameful in many cases beyond a doubt, of having deliberately drawn line for line the portraits of his relatives, of individuals met with on board the Cumberland, and other fellow–travellers with whom he had fallen in during his journey along the highway of existence. That suggestions were given to him by the actions of such men as the commander of the Cumberland, the staff of surgeons on board, and other personages with whom he came in contact, is perfectly probable. But that he noted through the microscope of his keen faculty of observation, every trait, every moral feature, and registered them on the debit or credit side of each character, I cannot admit, nor would such a course be consistent with the originality of his genius. The setting of incident may in some cases be drawn from his own experience, but that we can in any sense rely on each portrait in his works being a truthful representation of the prototype, that I deny. The assumption is negatived by his own confession with regard to his grandfather, and also by his action with reference to Gordon, his former employer. If the latter were drawn to the life under the character of either Potion or Crab in Roderick Random, as many biographers contend, Smollett completely ate his own words in Humphrey Clinker when he remarked that Gordon ‘was a patriot of a truly noble spirit,’ etc. There is nothing more misleading and at the same time more unfair to an author than to subject him to this sort of literary dissection. No author is without suggestions from without in limning his gallery of characters, but that he draws them wholly from without is as impossible as that a doctor’s diagnosis is based solely on what he observes, or on what is visible to the eye, and not also on what is the result of arguing from the known to the unknown. Captains Oakum and Whiffle, Squire Gawky, and others, are intentionally exaggerated for the purposes of literary effect. If they were drawn from nature, then they would have to be severely condemned as exaggerations.

Sir Walter Scott speaks very decidedly on this point in The Lives of the Novelists and Dramatists: ‘It was generally believed that Smollett painted some of his own early adventures under the veil of fiction; but the public carried the spirit of applying the characters of a work of fiction to living personages much farther than the author intended.’ Dr. Moore, also, while acknowledging that Smollett was not sufficiently careful to prevent such applications of his characters, yet denies that they were portraits of living personages.

Smollett now could contemplate the future with hopefulness. Roderick Random had achieved a success so extraordinary, that even at that early period in his literary career, the booksellers, or, as they would now be termed, ‘publishers,’ were bespeaking his wares ahead. Taken all in all, Smollett accepted his good fortune with conspicuous moderation. Success did not turn his head. He was not like his characters, Roderick Random or Peregrine Pickle, extravagantly uplifted by prosperity, plunged into despair by adversity. More akin to worthy old Matthew Bramble was he, who, while he took the world at no very high valuation, and was not averse to accepting its smile, yet did not break his heart over its frown.

The only foolish action to which he gave way at this period of popularity was the publication by subscription of The Regicide. The fame accruing to him from the success of his novel was, he reasoned, a favourable means whereby to enable him to launch his play upon the waters of public opinion. His reputation certainly ensured the sale of his play, but the sale of his play materially affected his reputation. That The Regicide was not a work of merit Smollett never could be brought to see, until he had criticised for some years the works of others in the Critical Review. Besides, he had sufficient of the old Adam in him that he wished ‘to have his knife’ into the offending theatrical managers, and the ‘great little men,’ as he called them, who had professed to take his play under their patronage. Therefore, when The Regicide was published in 1749, our author prefixed thereto a preface full of gall and vinegar—a piece of spleen, of which, in his later days, he was sincerely ashamed. That preface is not pleasant reading to those who love the genius of Smollett. A vindictive schoolboy in the first flush of resentment against his teacher for giving him a sound but deserved birching could not have perpetrated anything much worse.

In 1750, Smollett and his wife paid a visit to Paris, in order that the popular novelist might collect materials for his new work of fiction. The charms of the gay city, the kindness and consideration shown him by the Parisians, the adulation showered on him by the literary men of the French capital, all coloured Smollett’s estimate of the place and people. ‘To live in Paris,’ he says in one of his letters of the period, ‘is to live in heaven.’ That he saw reason slightly to alter his opinion afterwards, was only to be expected. But the delights of this first visit to Paris remained indelibly impressed on his memory.

He met many persons in France whose characters and circumstances afterwards suggested to him some of the most notable personages in his gallery of fiction. For example, Moore, in his memoirs of Smollett, states that the portrait of the Doctor in Peregrine Pickle was drawn in some respects from Dr. Akenside, the well–known poet, author of The Pleasures of Imagination, a man of true learning, culture, and high talents, but whose offence, in Smollett’s eyes, was that he had cast some sneering reflections upon Scotland in Smollett’s presence, although, on the other hand, Akenside had studied in Edinburgh, and acknowledged the excellence of its medical school. Pallet the painter, also, was suggested to him, adds Moore, by the coxcombry of an English artist, who used to declaim on the subject of Virtu, and often used the following expressions, familiar enough to readers of the novel in question—‘Paris is very rich in the arts; London is a Goth, and Westminster a Vandal, compared to Paris.’

But the most effective episode drawn by Smollett from his French experiences was, as Anderson says, the story of the Scottish Jacobite exiles, banished from their country for their share in the Rebellion of 1745. Readers of Peregrine Pickle will remember that at Boulogne the hero meets a body of these unfortunates, who daily made a pilgrimage to the seaside to view the white cliffs of Britain, which they were never more to approach. That incident was drawn from life. Mr. Hunter of Burnside was the individual amongst them who is mentioned as having wept bitterly over his misfortune of having involved a beloved wife and three children in misery and distress, and in the impatience of his grief, having cursed his fate with frantic imprecations. Dr. Moore heard Mr. Hunter express himself in this manner to Smollett, and at the same time relate the affecting visit which he and his companions daily made to the seaside when residing at Boulogne. From his visit, then, Smollett drew a wealth of incidents and characteristics, which he was able with surpassing skill to touch up, recolour, magnify, and exaggerate as he saw fit in the interests of his story.

At this period, John Home, author of Douglas, was paying a visit to London in order to try to induce Garrick to accept his tragedy of Agis. He met Smollett, introduced to him by their mutual friend ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle, and had much pleasant intercourse with him. From the Life[5] of Home by Henry Mackenzie, I extract the following details, as they throw a curious side–light on Smollett’s character. In his letter, dated 6th November 1749, to Carlyle, he remarks: ‘I have seen nobody yet but Smollett, whom I like very well.’ Farther on he adds: ‘I am a good deal disappointed at the mien of the English, which I think but poor. I observed it to Smollett, after having walked at High–Mall, who agreed with me.’ Then, a little later, Home writes to ‘Jupiter,’ evidently grateful for some kindnesses shown him by Tobias, in the following terms:—‘Your friend Smollett, who has a thousand good, nay, the best qualities, and whom I love much more than he thinks I do, has got on Sunday last three hundred pounds for his Mask.’ What this Mask was it is hard to say, but in all probability it referred to some work which Smollett was executing for Garrick. To the Alceste the allusion could not refer, nor to the Reprisals. The allusion, therefore, must be directed to some cobbling dramatic work, of which Smollett did a great deal for Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and Goodman’s Fields.

A testimony so independent as this from Home possesses the highest value. To the virtues and excellences of a much misunderstood man it offers a tardy but valuable vindication.

Of Smollett, David Hume, who met him somewhat later in life, said: ‘He is like the cocoa–nut, the outside is the worst part of him.’