This book is quite literally the book from hell

A further episode in my adventures in pursuit of the strange and wonderful creation that was known as the three-volume novel.

There are perhaps too many words in that title but I'll leave them there since one of the main characteristics of the three-volume novel was the superadded quantity of its words. Incidentally, the word 'superadded' was first used by Laurence Sterne in his nine-volume novel, [b:The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|76527|The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Laurence Sterne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403402384l/76527._SY75_.jpg|2280279], a mere decade before Smollett published this three-volume novel.

Sterne and Smollett have other things in common besides their superadded words: they are both very funny, and not only because they offer amusing anecdotes about colorful characters but also because of the way they can laugh at themselves as writers. I remember thinking Sterne had inserted himself into Tristram Shandy as the eccentric character, Yorick, who liked to ride a bony old horse exactly like Don Quixote's horse, Rocinante. Well, Smollett goes a step further: he inserts himself into this novel under his own name (and makes himself sound a little eccentric too), plus there are lots of direct and indirect references to [b:Don Quixote|3836|Don Quixote|Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546112331l/3836._SX50_.jpg|121842] which Smollett had translated in the 1750s, the version Sterne may even have read.

Smollett's and Sterne's novels are further alike in that they both contain sections that can be classed as travel writing (and isn't Don Quixote about a journey too)—but they differ quite a bit as well. Sterne's has one first person narrator (who tells us of his own conception, birth and related matters), whereas The Expedition of Humphry Clinker is entirely composed of the letters of five different characters to five different recipients over a nine-month period during which they are traveling together across England, Scotland, and Wales. The letters manage to contain much more plot and intrigue than is found in Tristram Shandy—although exactly like the character Tristram Shandy, Humphry Clinker doesn't make an appearance in the book named for him until a third of the way in, and his conception and birth are significant to the working out of the intrigue.

But unlike Tristram, Humphry never becomes the main character and we rarely hear his opinions. You might say there are two main characters in Smollett's book, Matthew Bramble, the Squire of Brambleton-hall, and his nephew, Jery Melford, both of whose letters take up many pages of the book. The rest of the letters are written by the Squire's sister Tabatha, her maid, Winnifred Jenkins*, and Jery Melford's sister Liddy, niece to both Matthew and Tabatha Bramble, and those letters serve to fill the reader in on little aspects of plot which the Squire and his nephew couldn't know.

The Squire's and Jery's letters provide an interesting double record of the journey's progress because they write about exactly the same things. You might think that would make for a lot of repetition, and there is repetition, but it works because the two have very different perspectives on everything that happens.

Spoiler

Here's an example from the Squire's letters: my misanthropy increases every day – the longer I live, I find the folly, and the fraud of mankind grow more and more intolerable. I cannot bear the hurry and importance of the multitude; besides, everything is sophisticated in these crowded places. Snares are laid for our lives in everything we eat, or drink: the very air we breathe, slowed with contagion, we cannot even sleep, without risk of infection...I know, I know you will say I am rankled by the spleen — perhaps you are partly in the right; for I have perceived that my opinion of mankind, like mercury in the thermometer, rises and falls according to the variations of the weather.

And Jery includes a report of his uncle's prickly opinions on every stage of the journey so that the entertainment of the uncle's original account is tripled and quadrupled.

Spoiler

Those follies, that move my uncle's spleen, excite my laughter. He is as tender as a man without a skin; who cannot bear the slightest touch without flinching. What tickles another would give him torment; and yet he has what we may call lucid intervals, when he is remarkably facetious — Indeed, I never knew a hypochondriac so apt to be infected with good-humour. He is the most risible misanthrope I ever met with. A lucky joke, or any ludicrous incident, will set him a-laughing immoderately, even in one of his most gloomy paroxysms; and, when the laugh is over, he will curse his own imbecility.

.

As the story of a journey, Smollett's book reminded me of Gogol's [b:Dead Souls|28381|Dead Souls|Nikolai Gogol|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387201057l/28381._SY75_.jpg|1001298] from 1842. The resemblances were in the comedy but also in the accounts of all the eccentric landowners the main characters of both books meet on their journeys. And like [b:Don Quixote|3836|Don Quixote|Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546112331l/3836._SX50_.jpg|121842] and [b:Tristram Shandy|76527|The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Laurence Sterne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403402384l/76527._SY75_.jpg|2280279], the two books contain several inserted stories unrelated to the main narrative.

For a book published in 1770, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker feels very inventive and modern—though not more so than its predecessors Tristram Shandy and Don Quixote. But Smollett's book felt far more modern to me than George Gissing's, [b:New Grub Street|782519|New Grub Street|George Gissing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414700331l/782519._SY75_.jpg|768534] from 1880, the three-volume novel about three-volume novels that had sent me on the track of Smollett.

Incidentally, Smollett mentions old Grub Street, or the original Grub Street, the London street where small-time writers, hack journalists, and struggling publishers were based. I'm going to include a passage that describes Squire Bramble's opinion about the London publishing world after he meets a couple of celebrated writers, and although the passage is long, I think it is worth sharing. After reading it, you may conclude, as I did, that not a lot has changed in the book world in the last two hundred and fifty years :
Yesterday, I went to return an afternoon's visit to a gentleman of my acquaintance, at whose house I found one of the authors of the present age, who has written with some success — As I had read one or two of his performances, which gave me pleasure, I was glad of this opportunity to know his person; but his discourse and deportment destroyed all the impressions which his writings had made in his favour. He took upon him to decide dogmatically upon every subject, without deigning to shew the least cause for his differing from the general opinions of mankind...He rejudged the characters of all the principal authors, who had died within a century of the present time; and, in this revision, paid no sort of regard to the reputation they had acquired — Milton was harsh and prosaic; Dryden, languid and verbose; Butler and Swift without humour; Congreve, without wit; and Pope destitute of any sort of poetical merit — As for his contemporaries, he could not bear to hear one of them mentioned with any degree of applause — They were all dunces, pedants, plagiaries, quacks, and impostors; and you could not name a single performance, but what was tame, stupid, and insipid...This arrogance and presumption, in depreciating authors, for whose reputation the company may be interested, is such an insult upon the understanding, as I could not bear without wincing. I desired to know his reasons for decrying some works, which had afforded me uncommon pleasure; and, as demonstration did not seem to be his talent, I dissented from his opinion with great freedom. Having been spoiled by the deference and humility of his hearers, he did not bear contradiction with much temper; and the dispute might have grown warm, had it not been interrupted by the entrance of a rival bard, at whose appearance he always quits the place — They are of different cabals, and have been at open war these twenty years — If the other was dogmatical, this genius was declamatory: he did not discourse, but harangue; and his orations were equally tedious and turgid. He too pronounces ex cathedra upon the characters of his contemporaries; and though he scruples not to deal out praise, even lavishly, to the lowest reptile in Grubstreet who will either flatter him in private, or mount the public rostrum as his panegyrist, he damns all the other writers of the age, with the utmost insolence and rancour — One is a blunderbuss, as being a native of Ireland; another, a half-starved louse of literature, from the banks of the Tweed; a third, an ass, because he enjoys a pension from the government; a fourth, the very angel of dulness, because he succeeded in a species of writing in which this Aristarchus had failed; a fifth, who presumed to make strictures upon one of his performances, he holds as a bug in criticism, whose stench is more offensive than his sting — In short, except himself and his myrmidons, there is not a man of genius or learning in the three kingdoms. As for the success of those, who have written without the pale of this confederacy, he imputes it entirely to want of taste in the public; not considering, that to the approbation of that very tasteless public, he himself owes all the consequence he has in life...Every thing I see, and hear, and feel, in this great reservoir of folly, knavery, and sophistication, contributes to inhance the value of a country life, in the sentiments of
Yours always,
MATT. BRAMBLE.

And finally, here's Jery's view of the same occasion:
A confused hum of insipid observations and comments ensued; and, upon the whole, I never passed a duller evening in my life — Yet, without all doubt, some of them were men of learning, wit, and ingenuity. As they are afraid of making free with one another, they should bring each his butt, or whet-stone, along with him, for the entertainment of the company — My uncle says, he never desires to meet with more than one wit at a time — One wit, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a zest and flavour to the dish; but more than one serves only to spoil the pottage — And now I'm afraid I have given you an unconscionable mess, without any flavour at all; for which, I suppose, you will bestow your benedictions upon,
your friend and servant,
JERY MELFORD.

*Winnifred Jenkins's letters are full of malapropisms.
O Mary! the whole family have been in such a constipation! The 'squire did all in his power, but could not prevent his [Humphry Clinker] being put in chains, and confined among common manufactors, where he stood like an innocent sheep in the midst of wolves and tygers. — Lord knows what mought have happened to this pyehouse young man, if master had not applied to Apias Korkus, who lives with the ould bailiff, and is, they say, five hundred years old...The player man that came after Miss Liddy, and frightened me with a beard at Bristol Well, is now matthew-murphy'd into a fine young gentleman, son and hare of 'squire Dollison...
The word matthew-murphy'd for metamorphosed reminded me of how James Joyce had Molly Bloom pronounce the word metempsychosis in [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1428891345l/338798._SY75_.jpg|2368224]: met him pike hoses. And that lead me to wonder if Joyce wasn't inspired by the name Humphry Clinker when he named the main character of [b:Finnegans Wake|11013|Finnegans Wake|James Joyce|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1336408055l/11013._SX50_.jpg|322098] Humphry Earwicker...

This is part of the history of the novel list I'm working on. There's some entertaining stuff in here, but I'm not a big fan of the travelogue style. The characters bring their own spin to it, so it's not as tedious as it could be, but I feel like the style gets old after a while.

Reading the 18th Century novel is very much like riding a rambunctious horse. Actually, bowling along in a carriage; 100 years later, Eliot and the great Victorian novelists who were living with the noisy, fast, smoke-gouting trains would write with nostalgia of the grace and quietude and elegance of carriage travel. But the 17th Century novel depicts it as it more likely was, with is heat, travel-sickness from the jolts, and frequent breakdowns and overturns in the terrible roads, with highwaymen everywhere as there was no real law and order on the highway.

Matthew Bramble, his spinster sister, his well-bred niece and nephew, and their servants, set out from Wales to travel all over England and Scotland. Along the way they encounter many odd characters, and as they write home to friends about their adventures, the reader gets an agreeable picture of the action from several points-of-view. Funniest are the spinster sister's letters, with their Freudrian misspellings, and the even more unintentionally bawdy and scatological gaspers of Ms. Jenkins, her maid.

Duels that go awry, savage essays on hypocrisy in high society and about how fast cities change and become unrecognizable (and about the taste for speed with which city drivers careen their vehicles through London streets), about filthy germ-spreading habits in supposedly healthful spas (do NOT read the section on Bath right before a meal!), will whipsaw the reader between remote concerns and contemporary reactions. Smollett also writes himself into the story, as do 18th Century authors, and he doesn't forget to villify current writers, politicians, and other leaders against whom he has a grudge— and likewise to drape in flattering terms and oblique names his friends.

The group finds one Humphrey Clinker, an earnest young man with a religious bent. When he first drives for the family, his butt is hanging out of his rags, and the maid comments that she rather likes the sight. At the end, he turns out to be Bramble's long lost natural son, there are three weddings, and everyone is happy— with some very odd marriage customs described.

It's a deliciously fun novel, a vivid picture of England and Scotland at the time, and an excellent insight into how the times were changing toward modernity even then. Smollet's interests range between a vast and fascinating number of subjects: marriage customs, courting, medical technology (or lack of same); politics; the roads; the history of language (a good bit is when two characters are discussing how the words in Shakespear's plays have changed meaning); food; the strange justice system; education; and, of course, the dangers of travel.

Five different narrators (all related by blood, more or less) write to their bosom buds about their journey across Britain, which is taken for the health of elderly Mr. Bramble. Though they largely undergo the same adventures, they observe quite different things from their encounters, taking away quite different lessons. It's a cool concept, particularly considering Humphry Clinker was conceived in the early days of the novel. The trouble is that some of the characters (ahem, Mr. Bramble) have a pretty tedious voice and are used mostly as a mouthpiece for the author to preach at the audience. If we had more of the pompous Tabitha Bramble or the barely literate Winifred Jenkins, my attention might have been kept for longer.

As it was, I often found my mind wandering - not helped by the fact that there isn't really much of a plot, more a series of events that prove less inventive or amusing that either Henry Fielding or Charles Dickens, who show in Tom Jones and and Pickwick Papers respectively how a sequence of individual, sometimes absurd scenes can be linked into an overarching narrative with key motifs.

Still, the form of the novel is admirable. To put it in literary terms, the sujet is far superior to the fabula.

As an assigned reading for a college class (18th century literature, no less) this wasn't a bad read. There were some pretty funny parts in there, though there was quite a bit of dry stuff in between the good stuff. All in all, I enjoyed it though.