"I haven't lived so long in Yorkshire to be trepanned by such vermin as you."
-- from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (p. 166)
I started this 1771 novel twice before I finally got very far into it, even though I'd found it fairly amusing. When you're used to modern narrative conventions, the picaresque can be a hard road to travel. The drive to know what happens next can push us through a book, and keeps us picking it back up every time we set it down. A narrative that's mainly a string of various incidents doesn't have that momentum, and it's easy to get distracted.
Surprisingly, it’s not really Humphry Clinker’s expedition, since he doesn’t show up until nearly a hundred pages in. Instead, it's the expedition of the Brambles, a wealthy Welsh family on a tour of Bath, London, and parts north, who describe their mostly ridiculous adventures in letters to various friends and confidants. The cantankerous uncle pens lengthy screeds against society and unsanitary conditions (his lengthy, vivid descriptions of foul odors are exactly what I expected, based on Smollett’s reputation); the prudish but husband-hunting aunt argues with everyone; the pretty niece, "as soft as butter, and as easily melted" (14), gets mixed up in romantic intrigue; and the college-aged nephew satirically describes their doings, metafictionally having a meal with his creator along the way.
When they finally meet the eponymous Clinker, a jack-of-all-trades servant, I certainly didn't expect him to be an aspiring Methodist preacher, but his illiterate religious enthusiasm does provide another target of satire.
As the family travels, the novel depicts a larger world in flux, with capitalist pleasure-centers like Bath turning out to be important social levelers, where all classes of society can meet, although no one knows yet whether this is going to be a good thing or not. It's also a world that's increasingly fast-paced, by the standards of the recent past: "All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine they were impelled by some disorder of the brain, that will not suffer them to be at rest" (88).
There's also recurring criticism about the way the corrupting influence of money leads to what we might now call gentrification: for example, a discussion of how people moved to Bath when it was affordable, but "the madness of the times has made the place too hot for them, and they are now obliged to think of other migrations ... Thither, no doubt, they will be followed by the flood of luxury and extravagance, which will drive them from place to place to the very Land's End" (57). That sounds familiar.
While the bitter Uncle Matthew generally insists that "the longer I live, I find the folly and the fraud of mankind grow more and more intolerable" (47), their visit to Scotland is accompanied by his musings on its natural beauties, and what are practically encyclopedia entries about the country's geography, industry, and population, I started to wonder. Fortunately, the footnotes identify the area as the author's home territory, among other historical factoids that provide context for many of the people they meet along the way.
Smollett's style isn't going to be for everyone, but he's definitely a window into a world both completely different and strangely familiar.
Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
-- from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (p. 166)
I started this 1771 novel twice before I finally got very far into it, even though I'd found it fairly amusing. When you're used to modern narrative conventions, the picaresque can be a hard road to travel. The drive to know what happens next can push us through a book, and keeps us picking it back up every time we set it down. A narrative that's mainly a string of various incidents doesn't have that momentum, and it's easy to get distracted.
Surprisingly, it’s not really Humphry Clinker’s expedition, since he doesn’t show up until nearly a hundred pages in. Instead, it's the expedition of the Brambles, a wealthy Welsh family on a tour of Bath, London, and parts north, who describe their mostly ridiculous adventures in letters to various friends and confidants. The cantankerous uncle pens lengthy screeds against society and unsanitary conditions (his lengthy, vivid descriptions of foul odors are exactly what I expected, based on Smollett’s reputation); the prudish but husband-hunting aunt argues with everyone; the pretty niece, "as soft as butter, and as easily melted" (14), gets mixed up in romantic intrigue; and the college-aged nephew satirically describes their doings, metafictionally having a meal with his creator along the way.
When they finally meet the eponymous Clinker, a jack-of-all-trades servant, I certainly didn't expect him to be an aspiring Methodist preacher, but his illiterate religious enthusiasm does provide another target of satire.
As the family travels, the novel depicts a larger world in flux, with capitalist pleasure-centers like Bath turning out to be important social levelers, where all classes of society can meet, although no one knows yet whether this is going to be a good thing or not. It's also a world that's increasingly fast-paced, by the standards of the recent past: "All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine they were impelled by some disorder of the brain, that will not suffer them to be at rest" (88).
There's also recurring criticism about the way the corrupting influence of money leads to what we might now call gentrification: for example, a discussion of how people moved to Bath when it was affordable, but "the madness of the times has made the place too hot for them, and they are now obliged to think of other migrations ... Thither, no doubt, they will be followed by the flood of luxury and extravagance, which will drive them from place to place to the very Land's End" (57). That sounds familiar.
While the bitter Uncle Matthew generally insists that "the longer I live, I find the folly and the fraud of mankind grow more and more intolerable" (47), their visit to Scotland is accompanied by his musings on its natural beauties, and what are practically encyclopedia entries about the country's geography, industry, and population, I started to wonder. Fortunately, the footnotes identify the area as the author's home territory, among other historical factoids that provide context for many of the people they meet along the way.
Smollett's style isn't going to be for everyone, but he's definitely a window into a world both completely different and strangely familiar.
Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment