Reading the Classics: THE EXPEDITION OF HUMPHREY CLINKER, by Tobias Smollett

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 its stuffy 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 roads.

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.