Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859

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Your banker, of course, stands first upon the list,--and to him
accordingly, with a beaming countenance, you present yourself. For him
you have a special letter of recommendation, and, however others may
fail, you consider him as sure as the trump of the deal at whist.
But why, alas, should people, who have gone through the necessary
disappointments of life, prepare for themselves others, which may be
avoided? Listen and learn. At the first visit, your banker is tolerably
glad to see you,--he discounts your modest letter of credit, and pockets
his two and a half _per cent._ with the best grace imaginable. If he
wishes to be very civil, he offers you a seat, offers you a cigar, and
mumbles in an indistinct tone that he will be happy to serve you in any
way. You call again and again, keeping yourself before his favorable
remembrance,--always the same seat, the same cigar, the same desire to
serve you, carefully repressed, and prevented from breaking out into any
overt demonstration of good-will. At last, emboldened by the brilliant
accounts of former tourists and the successes of your friends, you
suggest that you would like to see a plantation,--you only ask for
one,--would he give you a letter, etc., etc.? He assumes an abstracted
air, wonders if he knows anybody who has a plantation,--the fact being
that he scarcely knows any one who has not one. Finally, he will
try,--call again, and he will let you know. You call again,--"Next
week," he says. You call after that interval,--"Next week," again, is
all you get. Now, if you are a thoroughbred man, you can afford to
quarrel with your banker; so you say, "Next week,--why not next
year?"--make a very decided snatch at your hat, and wish him a very long
"good-morning." But if you are a snob, and afraid, you take his neglect
quietly enough, and will boast, when you go home, of his polite
attentions to yourself and family, when on the Island of Cuba.

_Our Consul_ is the next post in the weary journey of your hopes, and
to him, with such assurance as you have left, you now betake yourself.
Touching him personally I have nothing to say. I will only remark, in
general, that the traveller who can find, in any part of the world, an
American Consul not disabled from all service by ill-health, want of
means, ignorance of foreign languages, or unpleasant relations with the
representatives of foreign powers,--that traveller, we say, should go in
search of the sea-serpent, and the passage of the North Pole, for he
has proved himself able to find what, to every one but him, is
undiscoverable.

But who, setting these aside, is to show you any attention? Who will
lift you from the wayside, and set you upon his own horse, or in his
own _volante_, pouring oil and wine upon your wounded feelings? Ah! the
breed of the good Samaritan is never allowed to become extinct in this
world, where so much is left for it to do.

A kind and hospitable American family, long resident in Havana, takes us
up at last. They call upon us, and we lift up our heads a little; they
take us out in their carriage, and we step in with a little familiar
flounce, intended to show that we are used to such things; finally, they
invite us to a friendly cup of tea,--all the hotel knows it,--we have
tarried at home in the shade long enough. Now, people have begun to find
us out,--_we are going out to tea!_

How pleasant the tea-table was! how good the tea! how more than good
the bread-and-butter and plum-cake! how quaint the house of Spanish
construction, all open to the air, adorned with flowers like a temple,
fresh and fragrant, and with no weary upholstery to sit heavy on
the sight! how genial and prolonged the talk! how reluctant the
separation!--imagine it, ye who sing the songs of home in a strange
land. And ye who cannot imagine, forego the pleasure, for I shall tell
you no more about it. I will not, I, give names, to make good-natured
people regret the hospitality they have afforded. If they have
entertained unawares angels and correspondents of the press, (I use the
two terms as synonymous,) they shall not be made aware of it by the
sacrifice of their domestic privacy. All celebrated people do this, and
that we do it not answers for our obscurity.

The cup of tea proves the precursor of many kind services and pleasant
hours. Our new friends assist us to a deal of sight-seeing, and
introduce us to cathedral, college, and garden. We walk out with them
at sunrise and at sunset, and sit under the stately trees, and think it
almost strange to be at home with people of our own race and our own way
of thinking, so far from the home-surroundings. For the gardens, they
may chiefly be described as triumphs of Nature over Art,--our New
England horticulture being, on the contrary, the triumph of Art over
Nature, after a hard-fought battle. Here, the avenues of palm and cocoa
are magnificent, and the flowers new to us, and very brilliant. But
pruning and weeding out are hard tasks for Creole natures, with only
negroes to help them. There is for the most part a great overgrowth
and overrunning of the least desirable elements, a general air of
slovenliness and unthrift; in all artificial arrangements decay seems
imminent, and the want of idea in the laying out of grounds is a
striking feature. In Italian villas, the feeling of the Beautiful, which
has produced a race of artists, is everywhere manifest,--everywhere are
beautiful forms and picturesque effects. Even the ruins of Rome seem to
be held together by this fine bond. No stone dares to drop, no arch to
moulder, but with an exquisite and touching grace. And the weeds, oh!
the weeds that hung their little pennon on the Coliseum, how graciously
do they float, as if they said,--"Breathe softly, lest this crumbling
vision of the Past go down before the rude touch of the modern world!"
And so, one treads lightly, and speaks in hushed accents; lest, in the
brilliant Southern noon, one should wake the sleeping heart of Rome to
the agony of her slow extinction.

But what is all this? We are dreaming of Rome,--and this is Cuba, where
the spirit of Art has never been, and where it could not pass without
sweeping out from houses, churches, gardens, and brains, such trash as
has rarely been seen and endured elsewhere. They show us, for example,
some mutilated statues in the ruins of what is called the Bishop's
Garden. Why, the elements did a righteous work, when they effaced the
outlines of these coarse and trivial shapes, unworthy even the poor
marble on which they were imposed. Turning from these, however, we
find lovely things enough to rebuke this savage mood of criticism. The
palm-trees are unapproachable in beauty,--they stand in rows like Ionic
columns, straight, strong, and regular, with their plumed capitals. They
talk solemnly of the Pyramids and the Desert, whose legends have been
whispered to them by the winds that cross the ocean, freighted with the
thoughts of God. Then, these huge white lilies, deep as goblets, which
one drinks fragrance from, and never exhausts,--these thousand unknown
jewels of the tropic. Here is a large tank, whose waters are covered
with the leaves and flowers of beautiful aquatic plants, whose Latin
names are of no possible consequence to anybody. Here, in the very heart
of the garden, is a rustic lodge, curtained with trailing vines. Birds
in cages are hung about it, and a sweet voice, singing within, tells us
that the lodge is the cage of a more costly bird. We stop to listen,
and the branches of the trees seem to droop more closely about us, the
twilight lays its cool, soft touch upon our heated foreheads, and we
whisper,--"Peace to his soul!" as we leave the precincts of the Bishop's
Garden.

SOME INEDITED MEMORIALS OF SMOLLETT.

A hundred years and upwards have elapsed since Fielding and Smollett,
the fathers and chiefs of the modern school of English novel-writing,
fairly established their claims to the dignified eminence they have ever
since continued to enjoy; and the passage of time serves but to confirm
them in their merited honors. Their pictures of life and manners are no
longer, it is true, so familiar as in their own days to the great mass
of readers; but this is an incident that scarce any author can hope to
avert. The changes of habits and customs, and the succession of writers
who in their turn essay to hold the mirror up to Nature, must always
produce such a result. But while the mind of man is capable of enjoying
the most fortunate combinations of genius and fancy, the most faithful
expositions of the springs of action, the most ludicrous and the most
pathetic representations of human conduct, the writings of Fielding and
Smollett will be read and their memories kept green. Undeterred by those
coarsenesses of language and occasional grossnesses of detail (which
were often less their own fault than that of the age) that frequently
disfigure the pages of "Amelia" and "Roderick Random," men will always
be found to yield their whole attention to the story, and to recognize
in every line the touches of the master's hand.

Were any needed, stronger proof of the truth of this proposition could
not be given than is afforded by the zeal with which the greatest
novelists since their day have turned aside to contemplate and to
chronicle the career of this immortal pair, whose names, notwithstanding
the dissimilarity of genius and style, seem destined to be as eternally
coupled together as those of the twin sons of Leda. To the rescue
from oblivion of their personal histories, a host of biographers have
appeared, scattered over the whole period that has elapsed since their
deaths to the present time. The first life that appeared of Tobias
George Smollett came from the hands of his friend and companion, the
celebrated Dr. Moore, himself a novel-writer of no mean fame. To him
succeeded Anderson; who in turn was followed by Sir Walter Scott, the
fruits of whose unrivalled capacity for obtaining information are before
the world in the form of a most delightful memoir. So that when
Roscoe, at a later date, took up the same theme, he found that the
investigations of his predecessors had left him little more to do than
to make selections or abridgments, and to arrange what new matter he
had come into possession of. One would have thought that with all these
labors the public appetite should have been satisfied,--that everything
apt to be heard with interest of and about Smollett had been said. So
far from this being the case, however, it was but a few years ago, that,
as we all recollect, the brilliant pen of Thackeray was brought to bear
on the same subject, and the great humorist of this generation employed
his talents worthily in illustrating the genius of a past age.
"'Humphrey Clinker,'" says he, "is, I do believe, the most laughable
story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing
began." This is strong praise, though but of a single book; yet it falls
short of the general estimate that Walter Scott formed of the capacity
of our author. "We readily grant to Smollett," he says, "an equal rank
with his great rival, Fielding, while we place both far above any of
their successors in the same line of fictitious composition."

After the testimonies we have cited, it would be useless to seek other
approbation of Smollett's merits.

"From higher judgment-seats make no appeal
To lower."

Yet, with all his imaginative power and humorous perception, it cannot
be gainsaid that there was a great lack of delicacy in the composition
of his mind,--a deficiency which, even in his own days, gave just
offence to readers of the best taste, and which he himself was sometimes
so candid as to acknowledge and to correct. Its existence is too often
a sufficient cause to deter any but minds of a certain masculine vigor
from the perusal of such a work as "Roderick Random"; and yet this work
was an especial favorite with the most refined portion of the public in
the latter half of the last century. Burke delighted in it, and would
no doubt often read from it aloud to the circle of guests of both sexes
that gathered about him at Beaconsfield; and Elia makes his imaginary
aunt refer to the pleasure with which in her younger days she had read
the story of that unfortunate young nobleman whose adventures make such
a figure in "Peregrine Pickle." So great is the change in the habit of
thought and expression in less than half a century, that we believe
there is not in all America a gentleman who would now venture to read
either of these works aloud to a fireside group. Smollett's Muse was
free enough herself; in all conscience;--

"High-kirtled was she,
As she gaed o'er the lea";--

but in "Peregrine Pickle," beside the natural incidents, there are two
long episodes foisted upon the story, neither of which has any lawful
connection with the matter in hand, and one of which, indelicate and
indecent in the extreme, does not appear to have even been of his
own composition. Reference is here made to the "Memoirs of a Lady of
Quality," and to the passages respecting young Annesley; and since
biographers do not seem to have touched especially on the manner of
their introduction into the novel, we will give a word or two to this
point.

John Taylor, in the Records of his Life, states that the memoirs of Lady
Vane, as they appear in "Peregrine Pickle," were actually written by
an Irish gentleman of wealth, a Mr. Denis McKerchier, who at the time
entertained relations with that abandoned, shameless woman; so that, if,
as was probably the case, she paid Smollett a sum of money to procure
their incorporation in his pages, there could have been no other motive
to actuate her conduct than a desire to blazon her own fall or to
mortify the feelings of her husband. The latter is the more likely
alternative, if we are to believe that Lord Vane himself stooped to
employ Dr. Hill to prepare a history of Lady Frail, by way of retorting
the affront he had received. This Mr. McKerchier in season broke with
her Ladyship, and refused her admission to his dying bedside; but, in
the mean time, his Memoirs had gone out to the world, and had greatly
conduced to the popularity and sale of Smollett's novel. He was also the
patron of Annesley, that unfortunate young nobleman whose romantic
life has furnished Godwin and Scott with a foundation for their most
highly-wrought novels; and it was, we may judge, from his own lips that
Smollett received the narrative of his _protege_'s adventures. Whatever
we may think, however, of the introduction of scenes that were of
sufficient importance to suggest such books as "Cloudesley" and "Guy
Mannering," there can be but one opinion as to the bad taste which
governed Smollett, when he consented to overload "Peregrine Pickle"
with Lady Vane's memoirs; and if lucre were indeed at the bottom of the
business, it assumes a yet graver aspect.

But the business of this article is not to dwell upon matters that are
already in print, and to which the general reader can have easy access.
To such as are desirous of obtaining a full account of the life and
genius of Smollett, prepared with all the aids that are to be derived
from a thorough knowledge of the question, we would suggest the perusal
of an exceedingly well-written article in the London Quarterly Review
for January, 1858; and we will here heartily express a regret that the
unpublished materials which have found a place in this magazine could
not have been in the hands of the author of that paper. It is certain he
would have made a good use of them. As it is, however, they will perhaps
possess an additional interest to the public from the fact that they
have never before seen the light.

It is something, says Washington Irving, to have seen the dust of
Shakspeare. It is assuredly not less true that one can hardly examine
without a peculiar emotion the private letters of such a man as
Smollett. A strange sensation accompanies the unfolding of the faded
sheets, that have hardly been disturbed during the greater part of a
century. And as one at least of the documents in question is of an
almost autobiographical character, its tattered folds at once assume a
value to the literary student far beyond the usual scope of an inedited
autograph.

The first letter to which we shall call attention was written by
Smollett in 1763. It was in reply to one from Richard Smith, Esq., of
Burlington, New Jersey, by whose family it has been carefully preserved,
together with a copy of the letter which called it forth. Mr. Smith was
a highly respectable man, and in later years, when the Revolution broke
out, a delegate from his Province to the first and second Continental
Congress. He had written to Smollett, expressing his hopes that the
King had gratified with a pension the author of "Peregrine Pickle" and
"Roderick Random," and asking under what circumstances these books were
composed, and whether they contained any traces of his correspondent's
real adventures. He adverts to a report that, in the case of "Sir
Launcelot Greaves," Smollett had merely lent his name to "a mercenary
bookseller." "The Voyages which go under your name Mr. Rivington (whom
I consulted on the matter) tells me are only nominally your's, or, at
least, were chiefly collected by understrappers. Mr. Rivington also
gives me such an account of the shortness of time in which you wrote
the History, as is hardly credible." A list of Smollett's genuine
publications is also requested.

The Mr. Rivington referred to in the foregoing extract was probably the
well-known New York bookseller, whose press was so obnoxious to the
Whigs a few years later. To the letter itself Smollett thus replied:--

DR. SMOLLETT TO MR. SMITH.

"Sir,--I am favoured with your's of the 26th of February, and cannot
but be pleased to find myself, as a writer, so high in your esteem. The
curiosity you express, with regard to the particulars of my life and
the variety of situations in which I may have been, cannot be gratified
within the compass of a letter. Besides, there are some particulars of
my life which it would ill become me to relate. The only similitude
between the circumstances of my own fortune and those I have attributed
to Roderick Random consists in my being born of a reputable family in
Scotland, in my being bred a surgeon, and having served as a surgeon's
mate on board a man-of-war during the expedition to Carthagena. The low
situations in which I have exhibited Roderick I never experienced in my
own person. I married very young, a native of Jamaica, a young lady well
known and universally respected under the name of Miss Nancy Lassells,
and by her I enjoy a comfortable, tho' moderate estate in that island. I
practised surgery in London, after having improved myself by travelling
in France and other foreign countries, till the year 1749, when I took
my degree of Doctor in Medicine, and have lived ever since in Chelsea (I
hope) with credit and reputation.

"No man knows better than Mr. Rivington what time I employed in writing
the four first volumes of the History of England; and, indeed, the short
period in which that work was finished appears almost incredible to
myself, when I recollect that I turned over and consulted above three
hundred volumes in the course of my labour. Mr. Rivington likewise
knows that I spent the best part of a year in revising, correcting, and
improving the quarto edition; which is now going to press, and will be
continued in the same size to the late Peace. Whatever reputation I may
have got by this work has been dearly purchased by the loss of health,
which I am of opinion I shall never retrieve. I am now going to the
South of France, in order to try the effects of that climate; and very
probably I shall never return. I am much obliged to you for the hope you
express that I have obtained some provision from his Majesty; but the
truth is, I have neither pension nor place, nor am I of that disposition
which can stoop to solicit either. I have always piqued myself upon my
Independancy, and I trust in God I shall preserve it to my dying day.

"Exclusive of some small detached performances that have been published
occasionally in papers and magazines, the following is a genuine list of
my productions. Roderick Random. The Regicide, a Tragedy. A translation
of Gil Blas. A translation of Don Quixotte. An Essay upon the external
use of water. Peregrine Pickle. Ferdinand Count Fathom. Great part of
the Critical Review. A very small part of a Compendium of Voyages. The
complete History of England, and Continuation. A small part of the
Modern Universal History. Some pieces in the British Magazine,
comprehending the whole of Sir Launcelot Greaves. A small part of the
translation of Voltaire's Works, including all the notes, historical and
critical, to be found in that translation.

"I am much mortified to find it is believed in America that I have lent
my name to Booksellers: that is a species of prostitution of which I am
altogether incapable. I had engaged with Mr. Rivington, and made some
progress in a work exhibiting the present state of the world; which work
I shall finish, if I recover my health. If you should see Mr. Rivington,
please give my kindest compliments to him. Tell him I wish him all
manner of happiness, tho' I have little to expect for my own share;
having lost my only child, a fine girl of fifteen, whose death has
overwhelmed myself and my wife with unutterable sorrow.

"I have now complied with your request, and beg, in my turn, you will
commend me to all my friends in America. I have endeavoured more than
once to do the Colonies some service; and am, Sir, your very humble
servant,

"Ts. SMOLLETT.

"London, May 8, 1763."

* * * * *

The foregoing letter, though by no means confidential, must possess
considerable value to any future biographer of the writer. It very
clearly shows the light in which Smollett was willing to be viewed by
the public. It explains the share he took in more than one literary
enterprise, and establishes his paternity of the translation of "Gil
Blas," which has been questioned by Scott and ignored by other critics.
The travels in France, which, according to the letter, could not have
been posterior to 1749, seem unknown even to the Quarterly Reviewer; but
it is possible that here Smollett's memory may have played him false,
and that he confounded 1749 with the following year, when, as is well
known, he visited that kingdom. The reference to his own share in
furnishing the original for the story of "Roderick Random" is curious;
nevertheless it can no longer be doubted that very many of the persons
and scenes of that work, as well as of "Peregrine Pickle," were drawn,
with more or less exaggeration, from his actual experience of men and
manners. And the despondency with which he contemplates his shattered
health and the prospect of finding a grave in a foreign land explains
completely the governing motives that produced, in the concluding pages
of the history of the reign of George II., so calm and impartial a
testimony to the various worth of his literary compeers that it almost
assumes the tone of the voice of posterity. This is the suggestion of
the article in the "Quarterly Review," and the language of the letter
confirms it. Despairing of ever again returning to his accustomed
avocations, and with a frame shattered by sickness and grief, he passes
from the field of busy life to a distant land, where he thinks to leave
his bones; but ere he bids a last farewell to his own soil, he passes in
review the names of those with whom he has for years been on relations
of amity or of ill-will, in his own profession, and, while he makes
their respective merits, so far as in him lies, a part of the history of
their country, he seems to breathe the parting formula of the gladiator
of old,--_Moriturus vos saluto_.

In the first of the ensuing letters an amusing commentary will be found
on Smollett's assertion, that his independent spirit would not stoop to
solicit either place or pension. The papers of which it forms one appear
to have been selected from the private correspondence of Dr. Smollett,
and are preserved among the MSS. of the Library Company of Philadelphia,
to which they were presented by Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of
the Declaration of Independence, who may have obtained them in Scotland.
Like the letter to Mr. Smith, we are satisfied that these are authentic
documents, and shall deal with them as such here. Lord Shelburne (better
known by his after-acquired title of Marquis of Lansdowne) was the
identical minister whom Pitt, twenty years later, so highly eulogized
for "that capacity of conferring good offices on those he prefers," and
for "his attention to the claims of merit," of which we could wish to
know that Smollett had reaped some benefit. The place sought for was
probably a consulate on the Mediterranean, which would have enabled our
author to look forward with some assurance of faith to longer and easier
years. The Duchess of Hamilton, to whom his Lordship writes, and by whom
his letter seems to have been transmitted to its object, was apparently
the beautiful Elizabeth Gunning, dowager Duchess of Hamilton, but
married, at the date of the letter, to the Duke of Argyle. Having
an English peerage of Hamilton in her own right, it is probable she
preferred to continue her former title.

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