Two incidents of some importance to Smollett
occurred during the three months' sojourn at Boulogne.
Through
the intervention of the English Ambassador at Paris (the Earl of
Hertford) he got back his books, which had been impounded by the
Customs as likely to contain matter prejudicial to the state or
religion of France, and had them sent south by shipboard to
Bordeaux. Secondly, he encountered General Paterson, a friendly
Scot in the Sardinian service, who confirmed what an English
physician had told Smollett to the effect that the climate of
Nice was infinitely preferable to that of Montpellier "with
respect to disorders of the breast." Smollett now hires a berline
and four horses for fourteen louis, and sets out with rather a
heavy heart for Paris. It is problematic, he assures his good
friend Dr. Moore, whether he will ever return. "My health is very
precarious."
IV
The rapid journey to Paris by way of Montreuil, Amiens, and
Clermont, about one hundred and fifty-six miles from Boulogne,
the last thirty-six over a paved road, was favourable to
superficial observation and the normal corollary of epigram.
Smollett was much impressed by the mortifying indifference of the
French innkeepers to their clients. "It is a very odd contrast
between France and England. In the former all the people are
complaisant but the publicans; in the latter there is hardly any
complaisance but among the publicans." [In regard to two
exceptional instances of politeness on the part of innkeepers,
Smollett attributes one case to dementia, the other, at Lerici,
to mental shock, caused by a recent earthquake.] Idleness and
dissipation confront the traveller, not such a good judge,
perhaps, as was Arthur Young four-and-twenty years later. "Every
object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was last in
Paris." Smollett was an older man by fifteen years since he
visited the French capital in the first flush of his success as
an author. The dirt and gloom of French apartments, even at
Versailles, offend his English standard of comfort. "After all,
it is in England only where we must look for cheerful apartments,
gay furniture, neatness, and convenience. There is a strange
incongruity in the French genius. With all their volatility,
prattle, and fondness for bons mots they delight in a species of
drawling, melancholy, church music. Their most favourite dramatic
pieces are almost without incident, and the dialogue of their
comedies consists of moral insipid apophthegms, entirely
destitute of wit or repartee." While amusing himself with the
sights of Paris, Smollett drew up that caustic delineation of the
French character which as a study in calculated depreciation has
rarely been surpassed. He conceives the Frenchman entirely as a
petit-maitre, and his view, though far removed from
Chesterfield's, is not incompatible with that of many of his
cleverest contemporaries, including Sterne. He conceives of the
typical Frenchman as regulating his life in accordance with the
claims of impertinent curiosity and foppery, gallantry and
gluttony.
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