Well that was a very tedious, boring book. I did not enjoy it at all but feel like if you are very interested in the day to day life of people from the 18th century then this book might be more up your alley.

Review preface:
So... there's something to be said for how books translate over time. And how, at the time, such and such a book was immensely popular, witty, funny, broke all boundaries, etc.; but in the present, those items seem to be lost on the contemporary reader. But, that's not the fault of the writer, and as the reader, I feel that it is my fault, and I'm plenty ashamed of it, thank you very much. I should also note that I probably promised myself somewhere along the way that I wasn't going to rate a book based on my own personal feelings about it, but base the rating on the book's merits. Well... oops.

Review:
Boring.

1

‘The Expedition of Humphry Clinker’ was the last book written by Scottish doctor-turned-writer, Tobias Smollett and published in the last year of his life. It charts the journey of a Welsh family group wandering the spa towns of England, before a quick tour into Scotland and a return back towards Wales. The journey is meandering but peppered with incident and the book is pretty much the same.

The main interest of the text was the opportunity for shedding light on interesting little details and the treatment of the characters. The book is written in an epistolary manner and the events and places viewed through the different prisms of character brought everything to life.

The main writer is Mathew Bramble, an ageing, grumpy man in pursuit of health. He is scornful of most of the English spas; his description of Bath, with it’s waters with layers of pus and scabs, is truly stomach churning, while his description of London’s adulterated (and truly undrinkable) milk even found it’s way into ‘The Horrible Histories’ books. There are hints that Matthew isn’t as misanthropic as he first appears, however, with secret works of charity and he cheers up abundantly when they rich the clean, healthy towns of Scotland. Shortly before this work, Smollett had written a dyspeptic book about a European tour and had been ridiculed by Laurence Sterne as ‘Smelfungus’, Matthew Bramble seems to be playing up, and setting rest that image.

The next writer is Jeremy, Matthew’s nephew. He’s just finished university and is always on the look out for ‘originals’, oddballs that he can ridicule. He has a quick temper and almost fights several duals. Jeremy’s sister Lydia is another writer. She’s an optimistic dreamer who has recently fallen in love with a player (who might be something greater than he appears - hint, hint.)

The two other main writers are Tabitha, Matthews unmarried sister who is now so desperate to wed that she hopelessly throws herself at almost any single man they come across. She is fussy, cantankerous and not very kind to her servant Win. Win is the last main letter writer and she is not as stupid as she first appears. These two later writers create letters full of misspellings and malapropisms.

Indeed, Smollett’s malapropisms are probably the most sustained and skilled that any in the group had ever read. The women talk about how they will ‘deify the Devil and his works’, fear people who are ‘devils in garnet’ and implore people to ‘employ your talons’. Nor does Smollett neglect the art of creative spelling, no references to accounts are left unmolested and sometimes the characters will ‘lay in damp shits’. We all wanted more of these letters, which sadly dipped in the middle. (Interestingly, a lot of these misspellings and such are linked to a representation of the women’s ‘Welshness’, with attention to detail into the accent.)

There was a big question of representation in this book, especially female representation. The three female characters had far fewer letters between them than the two male (a disparity still seen in modern fiction and tv) but more disappointingly, it seems to be the females we are encouraged to laugh at, rather than with. Add to that the adventure where Matthew finds an old school friend whose life has been ruined by his wife, a rant about evil wives, and shortly afterwards, when that wife dies, a joy about it. Matthew even stays on with his friend to encourage him to not miss her. There is clearly something amiss here.

But taken at that level, there is something amiss with much of Smollett’s presentation of people. Like Jeremy, he is searching for ‘originals’, odd little individualistic people to mock. The gang meet up with a Scottish veteran called Lismahago, he is a wizened, argumentative man whose head is all blotchy because he was once scalped. He is ugly and ridiculous, being mistaken for a ghost in one town - yet we warm to him. As we also warm to Tabitha and Win. It may be a weakness in this method of searching for ‘originals’ that it can turn over into nastiness at times.

Lismahago is a Scottish character, Smollett was a Scottish author and the Welsh family find themselves in Scotland towards the middle of the book. After Bath and London, it is an oasis of good behaviour, kind people and natural beauty. Glasgow is represented as the most beautiful town there has ever been - some contemporary reviews called foul and concluded that this was all secret Scottish propaganda. Indeed, modern fans of Scottish independence would probably enjoy looking at the chapters that talk about that topic, the arguments on both sides haven’t changed much in 250-odd years.

And what about Humphry Clinker? I have barely mentioned him for the good reason that he is barely in the book. Is he a symbol of deep-rooted nobility? A side-eye at Methodism? An important part of the plot that somehow got lost in rewrites? I really couldn’t decide.

Humphry Clinker is more of a series of vignettes and scenes than what we typically consider a novel; the plot of travelling through different spa towns and the eventual ridiculous marriage plot are primarily vehicles for Smollett to expound upon matters regarding health and medicine (the descriptions of the spa water, bleh!), nationalist feelings in England, Scotland, and Wales, and the general slow downfall of British society as it gives in to luxury. It can feel like a bit of a chore to read because of this lack of plot, but it is invaluable as a cultural study of Smollett and his time. The work is also quite amusing, even if the humour is slapstick and relatively grotesque.
Also worthy of note are the distinct voices Smollett writes; from an epistolary perspective, this work is quite interesting.
On a final note, Smollett has been quite influential on the genre of the novel more generally; he was a crucial influence, for example, on Dickens.
Read it if you are interested in the 18thC or epistolary fiction, or enjoy grotesque and dirty humour; the many "cuntry" descriptions may keep you amused.
Read for 18thC epistolary fiction class. It

I had to give Humprhy Clinker two stars as it was much better than two previous books of his that I read. It was kind of interesting to read of the many places that the family visited and gave a good overview of the times. I do have to say that Aunt Tabitha's character made me smile.

Parts were more entertaining than others. The “big reveal” didn’t really seem to phase many characters.

Read for:
EN3161: The Development of the Novel to 1840, 2012

I enjoyed this book initially, but ultimately I ended up getting rather frustrated with all the tangents that the book went off to, particularly the pages and pages devoted to detailing the way that people lived in certain parts of Britain. The parts about Scotland were interesting, particularly in comparison to Johnson's accounts from around the same time, but were tedious at times. I think that if the plots about Tabitha, Libby and Clinker himself had been expanded, and if Jery had been given more personality, this book could have been a lot more enjoyable. All of the characters had some real potential at the start of the novel and quite defined personalities, but they lost them as the novel spent more time dwelling on tangential details about the places and people the family visited in their journeys. Definitely more of a travelogue and social commentary than a novel. I'm not sure if this is representative of Smollett's work, but I would consider reading more of his novels if they were, well, more novel-like! I would have rated this novel higher if there had been more character development and more of a plot, so as it is I'm giving it 3 out of 5 stars.