As To Whether Smollett And His Party Of Five Were Exceptionally
Unfortunate In Their Road-Faring Experiences Must Be Left An Open
Question At The Tribunal Of Public Opinion.
In cold blood, in one
of his later letters, he summarised his Continental experience
after this wise:
Inns, cold, damp, dark, dismal, dirty; landlords
equally disobliging and rapacious; servants awkward, sluttish,
and slothful; postillions lazy, lounging, greedy, and
impertinent. With this last class of delinquents after much
experience he was bound to admit the following dilemma: - If you
chide them for lingering, they will contrive to delay you the
longer. If you chastise them with sword, cane, cudgel, or
horsewhip (he defines the correctives, you may perceive, but
leaves the expletives to our imagination) they will either
disappear entirely, and leave you without resource, or they will
find means to take vengeance by overturning your carriage. The
only course remaining would be to allow oneself to become the
dupe of imposition by tipping the postillions an amount slightly
in excess of the authorized gratification. He admits that in
England once, between the Devizes and Bristol, he found this plan
productive of the happiest results. It was unfortunate that, upon
this occasion, the lack of means or slenderness of margin for
incidental expenses should have debarred him from having recourse
to a similar expedient. For threepence a post more, as Smollett
himself avows, he would probably have performed the journey with
much greater pleasure and satisfaction. But the situation is
instructive. It reveals to us the disadvantage under which the
novelist was continually labouring, that of appearing to travel
as an English Milord, en grand seigneur, and yet having at every
point to do it "on the cheap." He avoided the common conveyance
or diligence, and insisted on travelling post and in a berline;
but he could not bring himself to exceed the five-sou pourboire
for the postillions.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 14 of 535
Words from 3518 to 3834
of 143308
