A Little
Provocation And He Bristles And Stabs All Round.
He mounts the
hygienic horse and proceeds from the lack of implements of
cleanliness to the lack of common decency, and "high flavoured
instances, at which even a native of Edinburgh would stop his
nose." [This recalls Johnson's first walk up the High Street,
Edinburgh, on Bozzy's arm.
"It was a dusky night: I could not
prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh.
. . . As we marched along he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in
the dark!'"] And then lest the southrons should escape we have a
reference to the "beastly habit of drinking from a tankard in
which perhaps a dozen filthy mouths have slabbered as is the
custom in England." With all his coarsenesses this blunt Scot was
a pioneer and fugleman of the niceties. Between times most
nations are gibbetted in this slashing epistle. The ingenious
boasting of the French is well hit off in the observation of the
chevalier that the English doubtless drank every day to the
health of the Marquise de Pompadour. The implication reminded
Smollett of a narrow escape from a duello (an institution he
reprobates with the utmost trenchancy in this book) at Ghent in
1749 with a Frenchman who affirmed that Marlborough's battles
were purposely lost by the French generals in order to mortify
Mme. de Maintenon. 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. Thus:
"If a Frenchman is capable of real friendship, it must certainly
be the most disagreeable present he can possibly make to a man
of a true English character. You know, madam, we are naturally
taciturn, soon tired of impertinence, and much subject to fits of
disgust. Your French friend intrudes upon you at all hours; he
stuns you with his loquacity; he teases you with impertinent
questions about your domestic and private affairs; he attempts to
meddle in all your concerns, and forces his advice upon you with
the most unwearied importunity; he asks the price of everything
you wear, and, so sure as you tell him, undervalues it without
hesitation; he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill contrived, ill
made; that you have been imposed upon both with respect to the
fashion and the price; that the marquis of this, or the countess
of that, has one that is perfectly elegant, quite in the bon ton,
and yet it cost her little more than you gave for a thing that
nobody would wear.
"If a Frenchman is admitted into your family, and distinguished
by repeated marks of your friendship and regard, the first return
he makes for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she
is handsome; if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If
he suffers a repulse from your wife, or attempts in vain to
debauch your sister, or your daughter, or your niece, he will,
rather than not play the traitor with his gallantry, make his
addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one but in one shape or
another he will find means to ruin the peace of a family in which
he has been so kindly entertained.
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