Friday's Forgotten Book: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (Tobias Smollett)

I have said it before and I'll say it again: I am never disappointed when I read a classic. Always there is at least historical interest to be gotten out of them, and usually a great deal more than that.

Despite a good grounding in 18th Century British fiction, I had somehow failed to explore the works of Tobias Smollett up until now, so when I spotted the Heron Books hardcover reprint of Smollett's final novel, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, on a sale table at one of the weekend book fairs here in Queretaro, naturally I snapped it up. (The frontispiece illustration below is from a different edition of approximately the same vintage, the Folio Society printing of 1955.)

Humphry Clinker draws in genial fashion on several literary traditions - the travelogue, the picaresque, and the epistolary novel.

The story follows the peregrinations of a Welsh squire, Matthew Bramble of Brambleton Hall, his husband-hunting sister Tabitha, his nephew and niece Jeremy and Lydia Melford, and their servants and occasional fellow-travelers, as they make their way in literally roundabout fashion through various spa towns - Bath, Harrogate, Scarborough - and prominent cities - Gloucester, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow - across the whole Island of Britain. This positions the book in the company of such non-fictional specimens as Daniel Defoe's A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain.

Smollett wrote an account of his own travels in France and Italy just a few years before Clinker, and apparently was an even more dyspeptic chronicler than his own Matt. Bramble, who may be taken as a somewhat autobiographical portrait. Bramble finds travel a great fuss and bother, but is willing to undertake it for the possibly salutary effects on his health - he suffers from gout - and the edification of his younger relations.

As an epistolary novel, Humphry Clinker is perhaps unusual for highlighting letters by men - in most novels of this kind, the women are the more enthusiastic correspondents. By my count, there are 27 letters by Bramble here; 28 by Jery Melford; and a total of 28 by four others - Tabitha, Lydia, Tabitha's scattered servant Winifred Jenkins, and Lydia's now-you-see-him-now-you-don't suitor Wilson (who gets but a single brief missive). The letters by Matt. Bramble and Jery Melford are epically longer than those by the others, which together can't take up more than 15% or so of the word-count of the novel. The novel belongs to the two men.

Matt. Bramble's letters to his friend Dr. Lewis are a combination of the philosophical and the somewhat petulant; Jery Melford's letters to his fellow Oxonian Watkin Phillips are observant, amused, and largely carry the thread of the narrative.

Matthew characterizes his nephew as a "pert jackanapes, full of college-petulance and self-conceit; proud as a German count, and as hot and hasty as a Welch mountaineer." Jery is a splendid depiction of a post-collegian male who would seem at home in any era, but oddly perhaps, he is not especially lusty. Oh, he makes the occasional admiring comment about this or that woman. But he is skeptical about the "permanence" of female charms, and to that extent resistant of them. Although Humphry Clinker is full of love and lust - all the women are hot for beaux in one way or another - it is decidedly not a tale of Jery Melford's love-life.

And what, you may wonder, of Humphry Clinker himself? He does not, surprisingly, figure very largely in the book named for him. He comes on the scene late, insinuates himself into the family's graces as a manservant for Squire Bramble, has a few misadventures, writes no letters, and makes a pretty minor character overall.

So why is this novel titled The Expedition of Humphry Clinker? It may have to do with the picaresque element, which is the weakest of the major strands here. A picaro is a rogue who lives by his wits. Humphry Clinker is lower-class and marginally roguish, with a penchant for getting into scrapes - but is also very religious. Nothing in "his" novel is related from anything close to his POV, which would ordinarily be standard in a picaresque narrative. So I am afraid he is a half-picaro at best - but apparently just enough of one to score a title. Frankly, I would have named the novel something else.

No matter ultimately, for this is a joyous book despite all of Matt. Bramble's grousing. It has high spirits for days. The late-arriving character who stands out is not actually Clinker, but the Scotsman Lieutenant Lismahago, who once spent an extended period with a Native American tribe, thereby securing a "colorful" status for all time, and who although interesting to talk to is confoundedly contradictory of whatever position one might choose to take. Matt. Bramble can't quite decide whether he likes this fellow or not, but sister Tabitha has no such qualms - he is an available male of appropriate age and social class, and she moves in for the kill.

All resolves nicely, as is appropriate for a comedy - although one must admit that the long-term prospects for a couple of the couplings do not look all that bright.