This method of writing to you from time to time, without any hopes of an answer, affords me, I own, some ease and satisfaction in the midst of my disquiet, as it in some degree lightens the burthen of affliction; but it is at best a very imperfect enjoyment of friendship, because it admits of no return of confidence and good counsel—I would give the whole world to have your company for a single day—I am heartily tired of this itinerant way of life—I am quite dizzy with a perpetual succession of objects….
That is from a letter written by Lydia, Matthew Bramble’s niece, to her best friend Miss Willis, toward the end of their trip, and very well sums up the way the whole book works. The novel is episodic—the “perpetual succession of objects”—and each member of the party unburdens himself to a confidant, speaking his mind about the family and the trip, but without hope of a response.
In the essay “The Economy of Humphry Clinker,” Byron Gassman says that “the most obvious feature of Smollett’s multiple point of view is the manner in which each letter-writer characterizes himself though his reaction to the sights and scenes encountered on the expedition. At the same time that the reader is being given typical data about the social customs of Bath or the mushrooming growth of London, he is being intimately introduced to the personality of the observer.” The effect is multiplied when different characters describe the same scene. Matthew Bramble’s impressions of the social life in Bath are “strained through” his own sensibility; he is disgusted by the fatuousness of the balls, but Lydia describes the same events as wonderful. Her softness and excitement about the world counteract his prickliness; Win Jenkins’s rustic malapropisms have their own effect; Tabitha’s absurdness brings another perspective. You put together each episode from multiple angles.
Gassman finds the letters of Jeremy Melford, Bramble’s nephew, different:
It is not so true in the case of the fifth letter-writer, Jeremy Melford, who remains considerably less individualized, keeping free of the situations that embarrass and distress the others. He is tolerant and amused, but seldom carried away into excess of pleasure or displeasure, excitement or disgust, as are his fellow-writers. He is, in brief, a good reporter, narrating events without the embroidery of personal animus or affectation, describing scenes with affable objectivity, and, in direct contrast with the others, keeping his own personality and opinions fairly well in the background.
At first I was inclined to disagree with this—Jeremy does have a personality, and it comes out especially when the storyline of his sister’s love affair comes up. He can be impetuous and surprisingly hot-tempered, and in his letters to an Oxford school chum his individuality also comes through when talking about their college escapades. Gassman also says Jeremy does the least to propel the narrative, which seemed wrong to me. But when I thought about some examples, I decided this is really true.
That’s partly because propelling the narrative isn’t that important—this is a highly episodic novel. The excitement of the episodes is often told by other characters, or told by Jeremy in their voices, and it’s the characters that are foremost in these. And Jeremy provides the reporting that will crystallize each episode and therefore the characters of its participants. One of my favorite examples is in an early letter from Jeremy to his friend Phillips, written soon after the party’s arrival in Bath. They move into their accommodations and a ridiculous series of noisy and troublesome events disturbs them, after which:
My sister Liddy was frighted into a fit, from which she was no sooner recovered, than Mrs. Tabitha began a lecture upon patience; which her brother interrupted with a most significant grin, exclaiming, “True, sister, God increase my patience and your discretion. I wonder (added he) what sort of sonata we are to expect from this overture, in which the devil, that presides over horrid sounds, hath given us such variations of discord—The trampling of porters, the creaking and crashing of trunks, the snarling of curs, the scolding of women, the squeaking and squalling of fiddles and hautboys out of tune, the bouncing of the Irish baronet over-head, and the bursting, belching, and brattling of the French-horns in the passage (not to mention the harmonious peal that still thunders from the Abbey steeple) succeeding one another without interruption, like the different parts of the same concert, have given me such an idea of what a poor invalid has to expect in this temple, dedicated to Silence and Repose, that I shall certainly shift my quarters to-morrow, and endeavour to effectuate my retreat before Sir Ulic opens the ball with my lady Mc Manus; a conjunction that bodes me no good.” This intimation was by no means agreeable to Mrs. Tabitha, whose ears were not quite so delicate as those of her brother—She said it would be great folly to move from such agreeable lodgings, the moment they were comfortably settled. She wondered he should be such an enemy to musick and mirth. She heard no noise but of his own making: it was impossible to manage a family in dumb-shew.
For all of Bramble’s irascible nature, before this passage we have got the truth out of Jeremy himself: they really were hit by some outrageous people making absurd disturbances in and around the house. Tabitha is being deliberately stupid because of her all-encompassing desire to find a husband, and Bramble, while he may be more irritable than average, is not wrong.
The other day I was extolling the virtues of annotated editions, and I do love them, but here I have to digress and point out that sometimes they can be frustrating. One insight of Gassman’s essay is one I had myself before reading it, but now I can’t claim it so much as my own, what with him having put it into better words already and supporting it very well. So the answer to yesterday’s question will come from him:
To any reader of the novel it soon becomes obvious that Matthew Bramble has assumed for himself the role of moralist and social critic among the travelers, but it is perhaps not so immediately obvious how seriously Smollett intended his readers to respond to Bramble’s criticism of English society. It is at least possible for the reader to consider Bramble’s querulous denunciations as merely another characterizing device, emphasizing again his peevish and eccentric disposition. But even assuming that the reader is more convinced by the humors of Bramble’s character than by the soundness of his moral judgments, and that the reader concludes his pronouncements to be mere eccentricities to be smiled at rather than pondered over, there is another source of didactic effect that acts as a corroboration of Bramble’s pronouncements. This source is Jery’s objective reporting of events and situations which carry with them an implicit moral or comment on society.
That is to say, Bramble is forever complaining, and it’s easy to assume he’s always just being a gouty middle-aged man. But it often turns out, from the pen of our objective reporter, that he’s right. One of the best examples is then cited in the essay. In Bath, as everywhere else, Bramble complains of the mixing of the classes, and how it can only lead to the lowering of the upper classes. Jeremy gets a little individualized here by claiming it should have the opposite effect, and that the lower classes will be raised up by contact with better society. An experiment is conducted, and Bramble is vindicated—so much so that “he hung his head in manifest chagrin, and seemed to repine at the triumph of his judgment” because he was more right than he had even imagined about the bad conduct of even “good” people.
The general situation is repeated several times with the same outcome, and is magnified by the fact that before this trip, Jeremy doesn’t actually know his uncle. So he’s learning about Bramble’s personality for the first time as we go, just as we are, and explaining it to Phillips. Another reason to find Jeremy’s reporting generally accurate: he has the same idea of Matthew as we do. He thinks his prickliness is funny, is glad it isn’t directed at him, and also sees the good, generous side of his uncle.
Gassman notes that without using the epistolary form, the whole thing would have had significantly less effect. Using a single reporter could have given you the excellent personality of Matthew Bramble, but without enough context to know what it means. This is why I think this is the best use so far of the form: it’s really doing something. A question related to that tomorrow. And then, on Thursday, a curiosity. After that it will be the end of Humphry Clinker*, even though I want to write about practically every episode in the whole thing. There’s just an embarrassment of riches.
*Again without really talking about that pesky title character! There’s too much to say there, and he wasn’t my main interest for now at least.
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