 Section 17 of the Expedition of Humphrey-Klinker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Expedition of Humphrey-Klinker by Tobias Smollett. Section 17. To Ms Willis at Gloucester. But April 26th. My dearest companion, the pleasure I received from yours which came to hand yesterday is not to be expressed. Love and friendship are, without doubt, charming passions, which absence serves only to heighten and improve. Your kind present of the garnished bracelets I shall keep as carefully as I preserve my own life. And I beg you will accept, in return, my heart housewife with the tortoise shell memorandum book as a trifling pledge of my unalterable affection. Bath is, to me, a new world. All is gaiety, good humour and diversion. The eye is continually entertained with the splendour of dress and equipage, and the ear with the sound of coaches, chairs and other carriages. The merry bells ring round from morn till night, then we are welcomed by the city wades in our own lodgings. We have music in the pump room every morning, cotylaunts every afternoon in the rooms, balls twice a week, and concerts every other night, besides private assemblies and parties without number. As soon as we were settled in lodgings, we were visited by the master of the ceremonies, so sweet, so fine, so civil and polite, that in our country he might pass for the prince of Wales. Then he talks so charmingly, both in verse and prose, that you would be delighted to hear him discourse. For you must know he is a great writer, and has got five tragedies ready for the stage. He did us the favour to dine with us by my uncle's invitation, and next day's quiet mount and me to every part of Bath, which, to be sure, is an earthly paradise. The square, the circus and the parades put you in mind of the sumptuous palaces represented in prints and pictures, and the new buildings, such as Princess Row, Harlequin's Row, Bladderd's Row, and twenty other rows look like so many enchanted castles raised on hanging terraces. At eight in the morning, we go indiscible to the pump room, which is crowded like a welch fair, and there you see the highest quality and the lowest trades folks jostling each other without ceremony. Hale fellow, well-met. The noise of the music playing at the gallery, the heat and flavour of such a crowd, and the hum and buzz of their conversation gave me the headache and vertigo the first day, but afterwards all these things became familiar and even agreeable. Right under the pump room windows is the King's Bath, a huge cistern where you see the patients up to their necks in hot water. The ladies wear jackets and petticoats of brown linen with chip hats in which they fix their handkerchiefs to wipe the sweat from their faces. But truly, whether it is owing to the steam that surrounds them or the heat of the water or the nature of the dress or to all these causes together, they look so flushed and so frightful that I always turn my eyes another way. My aunt, who says every person of fashion should make her appearance in the bath as well as in the Abbey Church, contrived a cap with cherry-coloured ribbons to suit my complexion and obliged Vinn to attend her yesterday morning in the water. But really, her eyes were so red that they made mine water as I viewed her from the pump room. And as for poor Vinn, she wore a hat trimmed with blue, what betwixt her van complexion and her fear, she looked like the ghost of some pale maiden who had drowned herself for love. When she came out of the bath, she took aphededa drops and was fluttered all the way so that we could hardly keep her from going into hysterics. But her mistress says it will do her good, and poor Vinn curtsies with the tears in her eyes. For my part, I content myself with drinking about half a pint of the water every morning. The pumper, with his wife and servant, attend within a bar, and the glasses of different sizes stand ranged in order before them, so you have nothing to do but to point at that which you choose, and it is filled immediately, hot and sparkling from the pump. It is the only hot water I could ever drink without being sick. Far from having that effect, it is rather agreeable to the taste, grateful to the stomach, and reviving to the spirits. You cannot imagine what colourful cures it performs. My uncle began with it the other day, but he made rye faces in drinking, and I am afraid he will leave it off. The first day we came to bath, he fell into a violent passion, beat two black amours, and I was afraid he would have fought with their master, but the stranger proved a peaceable man. To be sure, the gout had gotten to his head, as my aunt observed, but I believe his passion drove it away, for he has been remarkably well ever since. It is a thousand pities he should ever be troubled with that ugliest temper, for when he is free from pain, he is the best tempered man upon earth, so gentle, so generous, so charitable, that everybody loves him, and so good to me, in particular, that I shall never be able to shoe the deep sense I have of his tenderness and affection. Hard by the pump room is a coffee house for the ladies, but my aunt says young girls are not admitted in so much as the conversation turns upon politics, scandal, philosophy, and other subjects above our capacity, but we are allowed to accompany them to the bookseller shops which are charming places of resort, where we read novels, plays, pamphlets, and newspapers for so small a subscription as a crown, a quarter, and in these offices of intelligence, as my brother calls them, all the reports of the day and all the private transactions of the bath are first entered and discussed. From the bookseller shop, we make a tour through the milliners and Toymen, and commonly stop at Mr. Gills, the pastry cook, to take a jelly, a tart, or a small basin of vermicelli. There is, moreover, another place of entertainment on the other side of the water, opposite to the grove, to which the company cross over in a boat. It is called Spring Garden, a sweet retreat, laid out in woks and ponds and pyters or flowers, and there is a long room for breakfasting and dancing. At the situation is low and damp, and the season has been remarkably wet, my uncle won't suffer me to go thither, lest I should catch cold, but my aunt says it is all a vulgar prejudice, and, to be sure, a great many gentlemen and ladies of Ireland frequent the place without seeming to be the worst for it. They say dancing at Spring Gardens, when the air is moist, is recommended to them as an excellent cure for the rheumatism. I have been twice at the play, where, notwithstanding the excellence of the performers, the gaiety of the company, and the decorations of the theatre, which are very fine, I could not help reflecting, with a sigh upon our poor homely representations at Gloucester. But this, in confidence to my dear Willis, you know my heart and will excuse its weakness. After all, the great scenes of entertainment at Bath are the two public rooms, where the company meet alternately every evening. They are spacious, lofty, and, when lighted up, appear very striking. They are generally crowded with well-rested people, who drink tea in separate parties, play at cards, walk or sit and chat together, just as they are disposed. Twice a week there is a ball, the expense of which is defrayed by a voluntary subscription among the gentlemen, and every subscriber has three tickets. I was there Friday last, with my aunt, under the care of my brother, who is a subscriber. And Sir Ulick Makaligut recommended his nephew, Captain O'Donaghan, to me as a partner. But Jerry excused himself by saying I had got the headache. And, indeed, it was really so, though I can't imagine how he knew it. The place was so hot, and the smell so different from what we are used to in the country, that I was quite feverish when we came away. Aunt says it is the effect of a vulgar constitution, weird among woods and mountains. And, that as I become accustomed to gentile company, it will wear off. Sir Ulick was very complacent, made her a great many high-flown compliments, and, when we retired, handed her with great ceremony to her chair. The captain, I believe, would have done me the same favour, but my brother, seeing him advance, took me under his arm and wished him good night. The captain is a pretty man, to be sure, tall and straight and well-made, with light grey eyes and a Roman nose. But there is a certain boldness in his look and manner that puts one out of continence. But I am afraid I have put you out of all patience with this long, unconnected scrawl, which I shall therefore conclude with assuring you, that neither Bath nor London nor all the diversions of life shall ever be able to efface the idea of my dear Letty from the heart of forever affixionate Lydia Malford. End of section 17 For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libervox.org. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett Section 18 To Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall Dear Molly Jones, heaving God of Frank, I now return your fever, which I received by Mr. Higgins at the Hotwell, together with the stockings, which his wife footed for me. But now they are of no service. Nobody wears such things in this place. O Molly, you that live in the country have no deception of our doings at Bath. Here is such dressing and fiddling and dancing and gadding and courting and plodding. O gracious, if God had not given me a good stock of discretion, what a power of things might I not reveal concerning old mistress and young mistress, Jews with beards that were no Jews, but handsome Christians, without a hair upon their sin, strolling with spectacles to get speech of Miss Liddy. But she's a dear sweet soul, as innocent as a child unborn. She has told me all her inward thoughts and disclosed her passion for Mr. Wilson, and that's not his name, neither. And though he acted among the player men, he is meat for their masters, and she has given me her yellow trollopea, which Mrs. Drabb, the manty-maker, says will look very well when it is scoured and smoked with silver. You know as how yellow fits my fizzogminy. God knows what havoc I shall make among the male sex when I make my first appearance in this killing collar with a full suit of gauze as good as new that I bought last Friday of Madame Frippinot, the French Mulliner. Dear girl, I have seen all the fine shoes of Bath, the Prades, the Squires, and the Circles, the Crashet, the Hottigan, and Bloody Buildings, and Harry King's Row, and I have been twice in the Bath with Mistress, and Narra smoke upon our backs, Hussie. The first time I was mortally afraid and flustered all day, and afterwards made believe that I got the headache. But Mistress said if I didn't go I should take a dose of bum taffy, and so remembering how it worked, Mrs. Willem of Penarth, I chose rather to go again with her into the Bath, and then I met with an accident. I dropped my petticoat and could not get it up from the bottom. But what did that signify? They might laugh, but they could see nothing, for I was up to the sin in water. To be sure it threw me into such a combustion that I know not what I said nor what I did, nor how they got me out and wrapped me in a blanket. Mrs. Tabatha scolded a little when we got home, but she knows as I know what's what. Ah, Lord help you! There is Mr. Urie MacLiggett of Bell and Acklinge in the county of Callaway. I took down the name from his gentleman, Mr. O. Frizzle, and he has gotten a state of 1500 a year. I am sure he is both rich and generous. But you know, Molly, I was always famous for keeping secrets, and so he is very safe in trusting me with his phlegm for mistress, which, to be sure, is very honorable. For Mr. O. Frizzle assures me, he values not her portion of brass farthing, and indeed what's poor ten thousand pounds to a barren knight of his fortune. And truly I told Mr. O. Frizzle that it was all she had trust to. As for John Thomas, he is a morass fellow. I vow I thought he would have fit with Mr. O. Frizzle because he asked me to dance with him at Spring Garden. But God, he knows I have no thoughts either of one or t'other. As for house news, the worst is, Chowder has fallen off greatly from his stomach. He eats nothing but white meats, and not much of that, and wheezes, and seems to be much bloated. The doctors think he is threatened with a dropsy. Parson Marofat, who has got the same disorder, finds great benefit from the waters. But Chowder seems to like them no better than the squire. And Mistress says if his case don't take a favourable turn, she will certainly carry him to Aberadnie to drink goat's way. To be sure, the poor dear honymeal is lost for want of exercise, for which reason she intends to give him an earring once a day upon the downs in a post-chase. I have already made very creditable connections in this here place, where to be sure we have the very squint-a-sense of satiety. Mrs. Patcher, my Lady Kimma Collick's woman, and I are sworn sisters. She has shown me all her secrets, and learned me to wash gauze, and refresh rusty silks and bumble-scenes by boiling them with vinegar, chamberlite, and stale beer. My short-sackened apron luck as good as new from the shop, and my pumpy-door, as fresh as a rose, by the help of turtle water. But this is all Greek and Latin to you, Molly. If we should come to Aberadnie, you'll be within a day's ride of us, and then we shall see one another, please God. If not, remember me in your prayers, as I shall do by you in mine, and take care of my kitten, and give my kind service to Saul. And this is all at present from your beloved friend and servant, W. Jenkins, Bath, April 26. End of Section 18, Recording by Tricia G. Section 19 of the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. Section 19 To Mrs. Gwilliam, housekeeper at Brambleton Hall. I am astonished that Dr. Lewis should take upon him to give away Alderney, without my privity and concurrence. What signifies my brother's order? My brother is little better than Noncompoche. He would give away the shirt off his back and the teeth out of his head. Nay, as for that matter, he would have ruinated the family with his ridiculous charities, if it had not been for my four quarters. What between his wilfulness and his waist, his trumps and his frenzy, I lead the life of an indented slave. Alderney gave four gallons a day ever since the calf was sent to market. There is so much milk out of my dairy, and the press must stand still. But I won't lose a cheese-pairing, and the milk shall be made good if the sardines should go without butter. If they must needs have butter, let them make it of sheep's milk. But then my wool will suffer for want of grace, so that I must be a loser on all sides. Well, patience is like a stout Welshpony. It bears a great deal and trots a great way, but it will tire at the long run. Before it's long, perhaps I may show, Matt, that I was not born to be the household drudge to my dying day. Gwyn writes from Crick Howell that the price of flanneleth fallen three farthings in L, and that's another good penny out of my pocket. When I go to market to sell my commodity stinks, but when I want to buy the commonest thing, the owner pricks it up under my nose, and it can't be heard for love nor money. I think everything runs cross at Brambleton Hall. You say the gander has broke the eggs, which is a phenomenon I don't understand. For when the fox carried off the old goose last year, he took her place and hatched the eggs, and protected the gozzling as like a tender parent. Then you tell me the thunder has soured two barrels of beer in the cellar. But how the thunder should get there when the cellar was double-locked, I can't comprehend. How somover I won't have the beer thrown out till I see it with my own eyes. Perhaps it will recover. At least it will serve for vinegar to the servants. You may leave off the fires in my brother's chamber and mine, as it is unsartened when we return. I hope, Gwillim, you'll take care there is no waste, and have an eye to the maids and keep them to their spinning. I think they may go very well without beer in hot weather. It serves only to inflame the blood and set them a gorg after the men. Water will make them fair and keep them cool and tamper it. Don't forget to put up in the port mantle that comes with Williams, along with my riding habit, hat and feather, the vial of pearl water, and the tincture for my stomach, being as how I am much troubled with flutterances. This is all at present from yours, Tabitha Bramble, Bath, April 26. End of Section 19 Section 20 of the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Deborah Lynn. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. Section 20. To Dr. Lewis. Dear Dick, I have done with the waters. Therefore your advice comes a day too late. I grant that physics is no mystery of your making. I know it is a mystery in its own nature, and like other mysteries, requires a strong gulp of faith to make it go down. Two days ago I went into the king's bath by the advice of our French in order to clear the strainer of the skin for the benefit of a free perspiration. And the first object that saluted my eye was a child full of scrofulous ulcers carried in the arms of one of the guides under the very noses of the bathers. I was so shocked at the sight that I retired immediately with indignation and disgust. Suppose the matter of those ulcers floating on the water comes in contact with my skin. When the pores are all open, I would ask you what must be the consequence? Good heaven, the very thought makes my blood run cold. We know not what sores may be running into the water while we are bathing, and what sort of matter we may thus imbibe. The king's evil, the scurvy, the cancer and the pox. And no doubt the heat will render the virus more volatile and penetrating. To purify myself from all such contamination I went to the Duke of Kingston's private bath, and there I was almost suffocated for want of free air. The place was so small and the steam so stifling. After all, if the intention is no more than to wash the skin, I am convinced that simple element is more effectual than any water impregnated with salt and iron, which, being astringent, will certainly contract the pores and leave a kind of crust upon the surface of the body. But I am now as much afraid of drinking as of bathing, for after a long conversation with the doctor about the construction of the pump and the cistern, it is very far from being clear with me that the patients in the pump room don't swallow the scouring of the bathers. I can't help suspecting that there is, or may be, some regurgitation from the bath into the cistern of the pump. In that case, what a delicate beverage every day quaffed by the drinkers, medicated with the sweat and dirt and dandruff and the abominable discharges of various kinds from twenty different diseased bodies parboiling in the kettle below. In order to avoid this filthy composition, I had recourse to the spring that supplies the private baths on the Abbey Green. But I at once perceived something extraordinary in the taste and smell, and upon inquiry I find that the Roman baths quarter were found covered by an old burying ground belonging to the Abbey, through which, in all probability, the water drains in its passage. So that as we drink the decoction of living bodies at the pump room, we swallow the strainings of rotten bones and carcasses at the private bath. I vow to God the very idea turns my stomach. Determined as I am against any farther use of the bath waters, this consideration would give me little disturbance if I could find anything more pure or less pernicious to quench my thirst. But although the natural springs of excellent water are seen gushing spontaneous on every side from the hills that surround us, the inhabitants in general make use of well water, so impregnated with niter or alum or some other villainous mineral that it is equally ungrateful to the taste and mischievous to the constitution. It must be owned, indeed, that here in Milsham Street we have a precarious and scanty supply from the hill which is collected in an open basin in the circus, liable to be defiled with dead dogs, cats, rats, and every species of nastiness which thoracically populace may throw into it from mere wantonness and brutality. Well, there is no nation that drinks so hogishly as the English. What passes for wine among us is not the juice of the grape. It is an adulterous mixture brewed up of nauseous ingredients by dunces who are bunglers in the art of poison-making, and yet we and our forefathers are and have been poisoned by this cursed drench without taste or flavor. The only genuine and wholesome beverage in England is London Porter in Dorchester Table Beer, but as for your ale and your gin, your cider and your parry and all the trashy family of made wines, I detest them as infernal compositions contrived for the destruction of the human species. But what have I to do with the human species? Except a very few friends I care not if the whole was blank. Harky Lewis, my misanthropy increases every day. The longer I live, I find the folly and the fraud of mankind grow more and more intolerable. I wish I had not come from Bramilton Hall. After having lived in solitude so long I cannot bear the hurry and impertinence 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 is loaded with contagion. We cannot even sleep without risk of infection. I say infection. This place is the rendezvous of the diseased. You won't deny that many diseases are infectious. Even the consumption itself is highly infectious. When a person dies of it in Italy the bed and bedding are destroyed. The other furniture is exposed to the weather in the apartment whitewashed where it is occupied by any other living soul. You'll allow that nothing receives infection sooner or retains it longer than blankets, feather beds, and mattresses. Steath. How do I know what miserable objects have been stewing in the bed where I now lie? I wonder, Dick, you did not put me in mind of sending for my own mattresses. But if I had not been an ass I should not have needed a remembrance, sir. There is always some plaguey reflection that rises up in judgment against me and ruffles my spirits. Therefore let us change the subject. I have other reasons for abridging my stay at Bath. You know, Sister Tabby's complexion. If Mrs. Tabitha Bramble had been of any other race I should certainly have considered her as the most blank. But the truth is she has found means to interest my affection. Or rather she has beholden to the force of prejudice commonly called the ties of blood. Well, this amiable maiden has actually commenced a flirting correspondence with an Irish baronet of sixty-five. His name is Sir Ulick McGillicott. He is said to be much out at elbows and I believe has received false intelligence with respect to her fortune. Be that as it may the connection is exceedingly ridiculous and begins already to excite whispers. For my part I have no intention to dispute her free agency though I shall fall upon some expedient to un-deceive her paramour as to the point which he has principally in view. But I don't think her conduct is a proper example for Liddy who has also attracted the notice of some coxcombs in the rooms and Jerry tells me he suspects a strapping fellow, the knight's nephew, of some design upon the girl's heart. I shall therefore keep a strict eye over her aunt and her and even shift the scene if I find the matter grow more serious. Receive what an agreeable task it must be to a man of my kidney to have the cure of such souls as these. But hold, you shall not have another peevish word till the next occasion from yours, Matt Bramble, Bath, April twenty-eight. End of section twenty. Section twenty-one of the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Giesen. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. Section twenty-one to Swatkin Phillips of Jesus College, Oxford. Dear Knight, I think those people are unreasonable who complain that Bath is a contracted circle in which the same dull scenes perpetually revolve without variation. I am, on the contrary, amazed to find so small a place so crowded with entertainment and variety. London itself can hardly exhibit one species of diversion to which we have not something analogous at Bath, over and above those singular advantages that are peculiar to the place. Here, for example, a man has daily opportunities of seeing the most remarkable characters of the community. He sees them in their natural attitudes and true colours, descended from their pedestals and divested of their formal draperies, undisguised by art and affectation. Here we have ministers of state, judges, generals, bishops, projectors, philosophers, wits, poets, players, chemists, fiddlers and buffoons. If he makes any considerable stay in the place he is sure of meeting with some particular friend whom he did not expect to see and to me there is nothing more agreeable than such casual re-encounters. Another entertainment peculiar to Bath arises from the general mixture of all degrees assembled in our public rooms without distinction of rank or fortune. This is what my uncle reprobates as a monstrous jumble of heterogeneous principles, a vile mob of noise and impertinence without decency or subordination. But this chaos is to me a source of infinite amusement. I was extremely diverted last ball-night to see the master of the ceremonies leading with great solemnity to the upper end of the room, an antiquated Abigail dressed in her lady's cast clothes whom he, I suppose, mistook for some countess just arrived at the bath. The ball was opened by a scotch lord with a mulatto heiress from St. Christopher's and the gay colonel Tinsel danced all the evening with the daughter of an eminent tinman from the borough of Suddock. Yesterday morning at the pump room I saw a broken-winded whopping landlady squeeze through a circle of piers to salute her brandy merchant who stood by the window propped upon crutches and a paralytic attorney of Shulain in shuffling up to the bar kicked the shins of the Chancellor of England while his lordship in a cut bob drank a glass of water at the pump. I cannot account for my being pleased with these incidents any other way than by saying they are truly ridiculous in their own nature and serve to heighten the humour in the farce of life which I am determined to enjoy as long as I can. These 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 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. In conversing with strangers he betrays no marks of disquiet. He is splenetic with his familiars only and not even with them while they keep his attention employed but when his spirits are not exerted externally they seem to recoil and prey upon himself. He has renounced the waters with execration but he begins to find a more efficacious and certainly a much more palatable remedy in the pleasures of society. He has discovered some old friends among the invalids of Bath and in particular renewed his acquaintance with the celebrated James Quinn who certainly did not come here to drink water. You cannot doubt but that I had the strongest curiosity to know this original and it was gratified by Mr. Bramble who has had him twice at our house to dinner. So far as I am able to judge Quinn's character is rather more respectable than it has been generally represented. His Bourmeaux are in every Whitling's mouth but many of them have a rank flavour which one would be apt to think was derived from a natural grossness of idea. I suspect, however, that Justice has not been done the author by the collectors of those quiniana who have let the best of them slip through their fingers and only retained such as were suited to the taste and organs of the multitude. How far he may relax in his hours of jollity I cannot pretend to say but his general conversation is conducted by the nicest rules of propriety and Mr. James Quinn is certainly one of the best bread men in the kingdom. He is not only a most agreeable companion but, as I am credibly informed, a very honest man highly susceptible of friendship, warm, steady and even generous in his attachments disdaining flattery and incapable of meanness and dissimulation. Where I to judge, however, from Quinn's eye alone I should take him to be proud, insolent and cruel. There is something remarkably severe and forbidding in his aspect and I have been told he was ever disposed to insult his inferior and dependence. Perhaps that report has influenced my opinion of his looks. You know we are the fools of prejudice. Howsoever that may be I have as yet seen nothing but his favourable side and my uncle who frequently confers with him in a corner declares he is one of the most sensible men he ever knew. He seems to have a reciprocal regard for old square-toes. Whom he calls by the familiar name of Matthew and often reminds of their old tavern adventures. On the other hand, Matthew's eyes sparkle whenever Quinn makes his appearance. Let him be never so jarring and discordant Quinn puts him in tune and like treble and bass in the same concert they make excellent music together. To the day the conversation turning upon Shakespeare I could not help saying with some emotion that I would give in hundred guineas to see Mr. Quinn act the part of full staff upon which turning to me with a smile and I would give a thousand young gentlemen said he that I could gratify your longing. My uncle and he are perfectly agreed in their estimate of life which Quinn says would stink in his nostrils if he did not steep it in claret. I want to see this phenomenon in his cups and have almost prevailed upon uncle to give him a small turtle at the bear. In the meantime I must entertain you with an incident that seems to confirm the judgment of those two cynic philosophers. I took the liberty to differ in opinion from Mr. Bramble when he observed that the mixture of people in the entertainments of this place was destructive of all order and urbanity that it rendered the plebeians insufferably arrogant and troublesome and vulgarized the deportment and sentiments of those who moved in the upper spheres of life. He said such a preposterous coalition would bring us into contempt with all our neighbours and was worse, in fact, than debasing the gold coin of the nation. I argued, on the contrary, that those plebeians who discovered such eagerness to imitate the dress and equipage of their superiors would likewise, in time, adopt their maxims and their manners, be polished by their conversation and refined by their example. But when I appealed to Mr. Quinn and asked if he did not think that such an unreserved mixture would improve the whole mass, yes, said he, as a platter of marmalade would improve a pan of surveillance. I owned that I was not much conversant in high life, but I had seen what were called polite assemblies in London and elsewhere, that those of Bath seemed to be as decent as any and that upon the whole the individuals that composed it would not be found deficient in good manners and decorum. But let us have recourse to experience, said I. Jack Holder, who was intended for a parson, had succeeded to an estate of two thousand a year by the death of his elder brother. He is now at the bath, driving about in a fairton and four with French horns. He has treated with turtle and claret at all the taverns in Bath and Bristol, till his guests are gorged with good cheer. He has bought a dozen suits of fine clothes by the advice of the master of the ceremonies under whose tuition he has entered himself. He has lost hundreds at billiards to sharpers and has taken one of the nymphs of Avon Street into keeping. But finding all these channels insufficient to drain him of his current cash, his counsellor has engaged him to give a general tea-drinking to-morrow at Wiltshire's room. In order to give it the more ecla, every table is to be furnished with sweet-meats and nose-gays, which, however, are not to be touched till notice is given by the ringing of a bell, and then the ladies may help themselves without restriction. This will be no bad way of trying the company's breeding. I will abide by that experiment," cried my uncle, and if I could find a place to stand secure without the vortex of the tumult which I know will ensue, I would certainly go thither and enjoy the scene. Quinn proposed that we should take our station in the music gallery, and we took his advice. Holder had got thither before us, with his horns per due, but we were admitted. The tea-drinking passed as usual, and the company having risen from the tables were sauntering in groups, in expectation of the signal for attack. When the bell beginning to ring, they flew with eagerness to the dessert, and the whole place was instantly in commotion. There was nothing but jostling, scrambling, pulling, snatching, struggling, scolding, and screaming. The nose-gaze were torn from one another's hands and bosoms. The glasses and china went to wreck. The tables and floors were strewed with comforts. Some cried, some swore, and the tropes and figures of Billingsgate were used without reserve in all their native zest and flavour, nor with those flowers of rhetoric unattended with significant gesticulation. Some snapped their fingers, some forked them out, some clapped their hands, and some their backsides. At length they fairly proceeded to pulling caps, and everything seemed to presage a general battle. When Holder ordered his horns to sound a charge, with a view to animate the combatants and inflame the contest, but this manoeuvre produced an effect quite contrary to what he expected. It was a note of reproach that roused them to an immediate sense of their disgraceful situation. They were ashamed of their absurd deportment, and suddenly desisted. They gathered up their caps, ruffles and handkerchiefs, and great part of them retired in silent mortification. Quinn laughed at this adventure, but my uncle's delicacy was hurt. He hung his head in manifest chagrin, and seemed to repine the triumph of his judgment. Indeed, his victory was more complete than he imagined, for as we afterwards learned, the two Amazons, who singularized themselves most in the action, did not come from the Perlews of Puddle Dock, but from the courtly neighbourhood of St. James's Palace. One was a Baroness, and the other a wealthy knight's dowager. My uncle spoke not a word till we had made our retreat good to the coffee-house, where taking off his hat and wiping his forehead, "'I bless God,' said he, that Mistress Tabitha Bramble did not take the field to-day. "'I would pit her for a cool hundred,' cried Quinn, against the best shake-bag of the whole main. The truth is nothing could have kept her at home, but the accident of her having taken physics before she knew the nature of the entertainment. She has been for some days fervishing up an old suit of black velvet to make her appearance as Sir Ulick's partner at the next ball. I have much to say of this amiable kinswoman, but she has not been properly introduced to your acquaintance. She is remarkably civil to Mr. Quinn, of whose sarcastic humour she seems to stand in awe. But her caution is no match for her impertinence. "'Mr. Quinn,' said she the other day, "'I was once vastly entertained with your playing the ghost of Gimlet at Drury Lane, when you rose up through the stage with a white face and red eyes, and spoke of quails upon the frightful porcupine. Do pray, spout a little the ghost of Gimlet.' "'Madam,' said Quinn, with a glance of ineffable disdain, the ghost of Gimlet is laid, never to rise again.' Insensible of this check, she proceeded, "'Well, to be sure, you looked and talked so like a real ghost, and then the cock crowed so natural. I wonder how you could teach him to crow so exact, in the very nick of time. But I suppose he's game. Ain't he game, Mr. Quinn?' "'Dung Hill, Madam.' "'Well, Dung Hill, or not Dung Hill, he has got such a clear counter-tenor that I wish I had such another at Brambleton Hall to wake the maids of a morning. Do you know where I could find one of his brood?' "'Probably in the work-house at St. Giles's parish, Madam, but I protest I know not his particular mule.' My uncle, frying with vexation, cried, "'God, God, sister, how you talk! I have told you twenty times that this gentleman's name is not Gwyn. "'Hoyte, toyte, brother mine,' she replied. "'No offence, I hope. Gwyn is an honourable name of true old British extraction. I thought the gentleman had been come of Mistress Helen Gwyn, who was of his own profession, and if so be that were the case, he might be of King Charles's breed, and have royal blood in his veins.' "'No, Madam,' answered Gwyn with great solemnity, my mother was not a whore of such distinction. True it is, I am sometimes tempted to believe myself of royal dissent, for my inclinations are often arbitrary. If I was an absolute prince at this instant, I believe I should send for the head of your cook in a charger. She has committed felony on the person of that John Dory, which is mangled in a cruel manner, and even presented without source. O tempura! O mores!' This good-humoured sally turned the conversation into a less disagreeable channel. But lest you should think my scribble as tedious as Mistress Tabby's clack, I shall not add another word, but that I am as usual yours. J. Melford. April 30. End of Section 21. Dear Louis, I received your bill upon Wiltshire, which was punctually honoured, but as I don't choose to keep so much cash by me in a common lodging-house, I have deposited 2501 in the bank of Bath, and shall take their bills for it in London when I leave this place where the season draws to an end. You must know that now, being afoot, I am resolved to give Lydia a glimpse of London. She is one of the best-hearted creatures I ever knew, and gains upon my affection every day. As for Tabby, I have dropped such hints to the Irish baronet concerning her fortune, as, I make no doubt, will cool the ardour of his addresses. Then her pride will take the alarm, and the rancour of stale maidenhood being chafed, we shall hear nothing but slander and abuse of Sir Ulick McKilligut. This rupture, I foresee, will facilitate our departure from Bath, where at present Tabby seems to enjoy herself with peculiar satisfaction. For my part, I detest it so much that I should not have been able to stay so long in the place if I had not discovered some old friends whose conversation alleviates my disgust. Going to the coffee-house one forenoon, I could not help contemplating the company with equal surprise and compassion. We consisted of thirteen individuals, seven lameed by the gout, rheumatism or palsy, three maimed by accident, and the rest, either deaf or blind. One hobbled another hopped, a third dragged his legs after him like a wounded snake, a fourth straddled betwixt a pair of long crutches like the mummy of a felon hanging in chains, a fifth was bent into a horizontal position, like a mounted telescope shoved in by a couple of chairmen, and a sixth was the bust of a man set upright in a wheel-machine which the waiter moved from place to place. Being struck with some of their faces, I consulted the subscription book, and perceiving the names of several old friends began to consider the group with more attention. At length I discovered Rear Admiral Baldrick, the companion of my youth whom I had not seen since he was appointed Lieutenant of the Severed. He was metamorphosed into an old man with a wooden leg and a weather-beaten face which appeared the more ancient from his gray locks that were truly venerable. Sitting down at the table where he was reading a newspaper, I gazed at him for some minutes with a mixture of pleasure and regret which made my heart gush with tenderness. Then, taking him by the hand, ah, Sam, said I, forty years ago I little thought I was too much moved to proceed. An old friend sure enough cried he squeezing my hand and surveying me eagerly through his glasses. I know the looming of the vessel has been hard strange since we parted, but I can't heave up the name. The moment I told him who I was, he exclaimed, ah, my old fellow cruiser, still afloat, and, starting up, hugged me in his arms. His transport, however, boated me no good, for in saluting me he thrust the spring of his spectacles into my eye and, at the same time, set his wooden stump upon my gouty toe, an attack that made me shed tears in sad earnest. After the hurry of our recognition was over, he pointed out two of our common friends in the room. The bust was what remained of Colonel Cockrell, who had lost the use of his limbs in making an American campaign, and the telescope proved to be my college chum, Sir Reginald Bentley, who, with his new title and unexpected inheritance, commenced foxhunter without having served his apprenticeship to the mystery. And in consequence of following the hounds through a river, was seized with an inflammation of his bowels, which has contracted him into his present attitude. Our former correspondence was forthwith renewed with the most hearty expressions of mutual goodwill, and as we had met so unexpectedly, we agreed to dine together that very day at the tavern. My friend Quinn, being luckily unengaged, obliged us with his company, and truly this the most happy day I have passed these twenty years. You and I, Louis, having been always together, never tasted friendship in this high gout contracted from long absence. I cannot express the half of what I felt at this casual meeting of three or four companions who had been so long separated and so roughly treated by the storms of life. It was a renovation of youth, a kind of resuscitation of the dead that realized those interesting dreams in which we sometimes retrieve our ancient friends from the grave. Perhaps my enjoyment was not the less pleasing for being mixed with a strain of melancholy produced by the remembrance of past scenes that conjured up the ideas of some endearing connections which the hand of death has actually dissolved. The spirits and good humor of the company seemed to triumph over the wreck of their constitutions. They had even philosophy enough to joke upon their own calamities, such as the power of friendship, the sovereign cordial of life. I afterwards found, however, that they were not without their moments and even hours of disquiet. Each of them apart in succeeding conferences expatiated upon his own particular grievances and they were all malcontents at bottom. Over and above their personal disasters they thought themselves unfortunate in the lottery of life. Baldrick complained that all the recompense he had received for his long and hard service was the half-pay of a rear admiral. The colonel was mortified to see himself overtopped by upstart generals, some of whom he had once commanded, and being a man of a liberal turn could ill-put up with a moderate annuity for which he had sold his commission. As for the baronet, having run himself considerably in debt on a contested election, he has been obliged to relinquish his seat in Parliament and his seat in the country at the same time and put his estate to nurse. But his chagrin, which is the effect of his own misconduct, does not affect me half so much as that of the other two, who have acted honorable and distinguished parts on the great theatre and are now reduced to lead a weary life in this stupan of idleness and insignificance. They have long left off using the waters after having experienced their inefficacy, the diversions of the place they are not in a condition to enjoy. How then do they make shift to pass their time? In the forenoon, they crawl out to the rooms of the coffee house, where they take a hand at wist or discount upon the general advertiser, and their evenings they murder in private parties among peevish, invalids, and insipid old women. This is the case with a good number of individuals whom nature seems to have intended for better purposes. About a dozen years ago, many decent families restricted to small fortunes besides those that came hither on the score of health were tempted to settle at bath where they could then live comfortably and even make a gentile appearance at a small expense. But the madness of the times has made the place too hot for them, and they are now obliged to think of other migrations. Some have already fled to the mountains of Wales, and others have retired to Exeter. Thither, no doubt, they will be followed by the flood of luxury and extravagance which will drive them from place to place to the very land's end. And there, I suppose, they will be obliged to ship themselves to some other country. Bath has become a mere sink of profligacy and extortion. Every article of housekeeping is raised to an enormous price. A circumstance no longer to be wondered at when we know that every petty retainer of fortune peaks himself upon keeping a table and thinks it is for the honour of his character to wink at the navery of his servants who are in a confederacy with the market people and of consequence pay whatever they demand. Here is now a mushroom of opulence who pays a cook seventy guineas a week for furnishing him with one meal a day. This portentous frenzy has become so contagious that the very rabble and refuse of mankind are infected. I have known a negro driver from Jamaica pay overnight to the master of one of the room's sixty-five guineas for tea and coffee to the company and leave bath next morning in such obscurity that not one of his guests had the slightest idea of his person or even made the least inquiry about his name. Incidents of this kind are frequent and everyday teams with fresh absurdities which are too gross to make a thinking man marry. But I feel the spleen creeping on me apace and therefore will indulge you with a cessation that you may have no unnecessary cause to curse your correspondence with, dear Dick, yours ever, Matt Bramble, Bath, May Five. End of Section 22 My dear Letty, I wrote you at great length by the post the twenty-sixth of last month to which I refer you for an account of our proceedings at Bath and I expect your answer with impatience. But having this opportunity of a private hand I send you two dozen of Bath Rings, six of the best of which I desire you will keep for yourself and distribute the rest among the young ladies, our common friends, as you shall think proper. I don't know how you will approve of the motos. Some of them are not much to my own liking but I was obliged to take such as I could find ready manufactured. I am vexed that neither you nor I have received any further information of a certain person. Sure it cannot be willful neglect. Oh my dear Willis, I begin to be visited by strange fancies and to have some melancholy doubts which, however, it would be ungenerous to harbour without further inquiry. My uncle, who has made me a present of a very fine set of garnets talks of treating us with a jaunt to London which, you may imagine, will be highly agreeable but I like Bath so well that I hope you won't think of leaving it till the season is quite over and yet, betwixt friends, something has happened to my aunt which will probably shorten our stay in this place. Yesterday, in the fore known, she went by herself through a breakfasting in one of the rooms and, in half an hour, returned in great agitation having chowed her along with her in the chair. I believe some accident must have happened to that unlucky animal which is the great source of all her troubles. Dear Letty, what a pity it is that a woman of her years and discretion should place her affection upon such an ugly ill-conditioned cur that snarls and snaps at everybody. I asked John Thomas, the footman who attended her, what was the matter? And he did nothing but grin. A famous dog-doctor was sent for and undertook to cure the patient provided he might carry him home to his own house but his mistress would not part with him out of her own sight. She ordered the cook to warm clots which she applied to his bowels with her own hand. She gave up all thoughts of going to the ball in the evening and when Sir Ulick came to drink tea, refused to be seen so that he went away to look for another partner. My brother Jerry whistles and dances. My uncle sometimes shrugs up his shoulders and sometimes bursts at a laughing. My aunt sobs and scolds by turns and a woman, Wyn Jenkins, stares and wonders with the foolish face of curiosity and, for my part, I am as curious as she but ashamed to ask questions. Perhaps time will discover the mystery for if it was anything that happened in the rooms, it cannot be long concealed. All I know is that last night at supper Miss Bramble spoke very disdainfully of Sir Ulick MacKilligut and asked her brother if he intended to keep us sweltering all the summer at Bath. No, Sister Tabitha said he with an arch smile. We shall retreat before the dog-days begin though I make no doubt that with a little temperance and discretion our constitution might be kept good enough all the year, even at Bath. As I don't know the meaning of this insinuation I won't pretend to make any remarks upon it at present. Hereafter, perhaps, I may be able to explain it more to your satisfaction. In the meantime, I beg you will be punctual in your correspondence and continue to love your ever-faithful Lydia Malford. Bath, May 6th. End of Section 23 Section 24 of the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Giesen The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett Section 24 to Sir Watkin Phillips of Jesus College, Oxford So then Mistress Blackabbe's affair has proved a false alarm, and I have saved my money. I wish, however, her declaration had not been so premature, for though my being thought capable of making her a mother might have given me some credit, the reputation of an intrigue with such a cracked picture does me no honour at all. In my last I told you I had hopes of seeing Quinn in his hours of elevation, the tavern, which is the temple of Murth and Good Fellowship, where he as priest of Comus utters the inspirations of wit and humour. I have had that satisfaction. I have dined with his club at the three tonnes and had the honour to sit him out. At half an hour past eight in the evening he was carried home with six good bottles of cleric under his belt, and it being then Friday he gave orders that he should not be disturbed till Sunday at noon. You must not imagine that this dose had any other effect upon his conversation, but that of making it more extravagantly entertaining. He had lost the use of his limbs, indeed, several hours before we parted, but he retained all his other faculties in perfection. And as he gave vent to every whimsical idea as it rose I was really astonished at the brilliancy of his thoughts and the force of his expression. Quinn is a real voluptuary in the articles of eating and drinking, and so confirmed an epicure in the common acceptation of the term that he cannot put up with ordinary fare. This is a point of such importance with him that he always takes upon himself the charge of catering, and a man admitted to his mess is always assured of eating delicate vitals and drinking excellent wine. He owns himself addicted to the delights of the stomach and often jokes upon his own sensuality, but there is nothing selfish in this appetite. He finds that good cheer unites good company, exhilarates the spirits, opens the heart, banishes all restraint from conversation, and promotes the happiest purposes of social life. But Mr. James Quinn is not a subject to be discussed in the compass of one letter. I shall therefore at present leave him to his repose and call another of a very different complexion. You desire to have further acquaintance with the person of our aunt, and promise yourself much entertainment from her connection with Seulik McKilligate. But in this hope you are balked already. That connection is dissolved. The Irish Baronet is an old hound that finding her carrion has quitted descent. I have already told you that Mistress Tabitha Bramble is a maiden of forty-five. In her person she is tall, raw-boned, awkward, flat-chested, and stooping. Her complexion is sallow and freckled. Her eyes are not grey, but greenish, like those of a cat, and generally inflamed. Her hair is of a sandy or rather dusty hue. Her forehead low, her nose long, sharp, and towards the extremity always red in cool weather. Her lips skinny, her mouth extensive, her teeth straggling and loose, her various colours and conformation, and her long neck shriveled into a thousand wrinkles. In her temper she is proud, stiff, vain, imperious, prying, malicious, greedy, and uncharitable. In all likelihood her natural austerity has been soured by disappointment in love, for her long celibacy is by no means owing to her dislike of matrimony. On the contrary she has left no stone unturned to avoid the reproachful epithet of old maid. Before I was born she had gone such lengths in the way of flirting with a recruiting officer that her reputation was a little singed. She afterwards made advances to the curate of the parish who dropped some distant hints about the next presentation to the living which was in her brother's gift. But finding that was already promised to another he flew off at a tangent and Mistress Tabby in revenge found means to deprive him of his cure. Her next lover was a lieutenant of a man of war, a relation of the family who did not understand the refinements of the passion and expressed no aversion to grapple with Cousin Tabby in the way of marriage. But before matters could be properly adjusted he went out on a cruise and was killed in an engagement with a French frigate. Our aunt, though baffled so often, did not yet despair. She laid all her snares for Dr. Lewis, who is the feed of saccates of my uncle. She even fell sick upon the occasion and prevailed with mad to interpose in her behalf with his friend. But the doctor, being a shy cock, would not be caught with chaff and flatly rejected the proposal, so that Mistress Tabitha was content to exert her patience once more after having endeavoured in vain to effect a rupture betwixt the two friends, and now she thinks proper to be very civil to Lewis, who has become necessary to her in the way of his profession. These, however, are not the only efforts she has made towards a nearer conjunction with our sex. Her fortune was originally no more than a thousand pounds, but she gained an accession of five hundred by the death of a sister, and the lieutenant left her three hundred in his will. These sums she has more than doubled by living free of all expense in her brother's house, and dealing in cheese and Welsh flannel, the produce of his flocks and dairy. At present her capital is increased to about four thousand pounds, and her avarice seems to grow every day more and more rapacious. But even this is not so intolerable as the perverseness of her nature, which keeps the whole family in disquiet and uproar. She is one of those geniuses who find some diabolical enjoyment in being dreaded and detested by their fellow creatures. I once told my uncle I was surprised that a man of his disposition could bear such a domestic plague when it could be so easily removed. The remark made him soar because it seemed to tax him with want of resolution, wrinkling up his nose and drawing down his eyebrows. A young fellow said he, when he first thrust his snout into the world, is apt to be surprised at many things which a man of experience knows to be ordinary and unavoidable. This precious ant of yours has become insensibly a part of my constitution. Damn her! she's a nolly made tangary in my flesh which I cannot bear to be touched or tampered with. I made no reply, but shifted the conversation. He really has an affection for this original, which maintains its ground in defiance of common sense, and in despite of that contempt which she must certainly feel character and understanding. Nay, I am convinced that she has likewise a most virulent attachment to his person, though her love never shows itself but in the shape of discontent, and she persists in tormenting him out of pure tenderness. The only object within doors upon which she bestows any marks of affection in the usual style is her dark chowder, a filthy cur from Newfoundland, which she had in a present from the wife of a skipper in Swansea. One would imagine she had distinguished this beast with her favour on account of his ugliness and ill nature, if it was not indeed an instinctive sympathy between his disposition and her own. Certain it is she caresses him without ceasing, and even harasses the family in the service of this cursed animal, which indeed has proved the proximate cause of her breach with Sir Ulick McKilligot. You must know she yesterday wanted to steal a march of poor Liddy, and went to breakfast in the room without any other companion than her dog, in expectation of meeting with the Baronet, who had agreed to dance with her in the evening. Chowder no sooner made his appearance in the room than the master of the ceremonies incensed at his presumption, ran up to drive him away and threatened him with his foot. But the other seemed to despise his authority and displaying a formidable case of long white sharp teeth kept the puny monarch at bay. While he stood under some trepidation fronting his antagonist and bawling to the waiter, Sir Ulick McKilligot came to his assistance, and seeming ignorant of the connection between this intruder and his mistress, gave the former such a kick in the jaws as sent him howling to the door. Mistress Tabitha, incensed at this outrage, ran after him, squalling in a tone equally disagreeable, while the Baronet followed her on one side, making apologies for his mistake, and Derrick on the other, making remonstrances upon the rules and regulations of the place. Far from being satisfied with the night's excuses, she said she was sure he was no gentleman, and when the master of the ceremonies offered to hand her into the chair, she wrapped him over the knuckles with her fan. My uncle's footman, being still at the door, she and Chowder got into the same vehicle and were carried off amidst the jokes of the chairman and other populace. I had been riding out on Clarke and Down, and happened to enter just as the fracker was over. The Baronet, coming up to me with an affected air of chagrin, recounted the adventure, at which I laughed heartily, and then his countenance cleared up. My dear Saul, said he, when I saw a sort of wild baste snarling with open mouth at the master of the ceremonies, like the red cow going to devour Tom's thumb, I could do no less than to go to the assistance of the little man, but I never dreamt the baste was one of Mistress Bramble's attendants. Oh, if I had, he might have made his breakfast upon Derrick and welcome. But, you know, my dear friend, how natural it is for a soirish man to blunder and to take the wrong sow by the ear. However, I will confess judgment and cry her mercy, and it is to be hoped a penitent sinner may be forgiven. I told him that as the offence was not voluntary of his side, it was to be hoped he would not find her implacable. But in truth all this concern was dissembled. In his approaches of gallantry to Mistress Tabitha he had been misled by a mistake of at least six thousand pounds in the calculation of her fortune, and in this particular he was just undeceived. He therefore seized the first opportunity of incurring her displeasure decently. In such a manner as would certainly annihilate the correspondence, and he could not have taken a more effectual method than that of beating her dog. When he presented himself at our door to pay his respect to the offended fair, he was refused admittance and given to understand that he should never find her at home for the future. She was not so inaccessible to Derrick, who came to demand satisfaction for the insult she had offered to him even in the verge of his own court. She knew it was convenient to be well with the master of the ceremonies while she continued to frequent the rooms, and having heard he was a poet, began to be afraid of making her appearance in a ballad or lampoon. She therefore made excuses for what she had done, imputing it to the flutter of her spirits, and subscribed handsomely for his poems, so that he was perfectly appeased and overwhelmed her with a profusion of compliment. He even solicited a reconciliation with Chowder, which, however, the latter declined, and he declared that if he could find a precedent in the annals of the bath, which he would carefully examine for that purpose, her favourites should be admitted to the next public breakfasting. But I believe she will not expose herself or him to the risk of a second disgrace. Who will supply the place of McKilligot in her affections? I cannot foresee. But nothing in the shape of man can come amiss. Though she is a violent churchwoman of the most intolerant zeal, I believe in my conscience she would have no objection at present to treat on the score of matrimony with an anabaptist, quaker, or Jew, and even ratify the treaty at the expense of her own conversion. But perhaps I think too hardly of this kinswoman, who I must own is very little beholden to the good opinion of yours, J. Melford. Bath. May 6. End of Section 24. You ask me why I don't take the air a horseback during this fine weather? In which of the avenues of this paradise would you have me take that exercise? Shall I commit myself to the high roads of London or Bristol to be stifled with dust, or pressed to death in the midst of post-chases, flying machines, wagons, and coal horses, besides the troops of fine gentlemen that take to the highway to shoe their horsemanship, and the coaches of fine ladies who go thither to shoe their equipages? Shall I attempt the downs and fatigue myself to death in climbing up an eternal ascent without any hopes of reaching the summit? No, then, I have made diverse desperate leaps at those upper regions, but always fell backward into this vapor pit, exhausted and dispirited by those ineffectual efforts. And here we pour valetudinarians pant and struggle like so many Chinese gudgens, gasping in the bottom of a punch-bowl. By heaven it is a kind of enchantment. If I did not speedily break the spell and escape, I may chance to give up the ghost in this nauseous stew of corruption. It was but two nights ago that I had liked to have made my public exit at a minute's warning. One of my greatest weaknesses is that of suffering myself to be overruled by the opinion of people whose judgment I despise. I own, with shame and confusion of face, that importunity of any kind I cannot resist. This want of courage and constancy is an original flaw in my nature, which you must have often observed with compassion, if not with contempt. I am afraid some of our boasted virtues may be traced up to this defect. Without further preamble, I was persuaded to go to a ball on purpose to see Liddy dance a minuet with the young petulant jack-in-apes, the only son of a wealthy undertaker from London, whose mother lodges in our neighborhood and has contracted an acquaintance with Tabby. I sat a couple of long hours, half stifled in the midst of a noisome crowd, and could not help wondering that so many hundreds of those that rank as rational creatures could find entertainment in seeing a succession of insipid animals describing the same dull figure for a whole evening on an area not much bigger than a tailor's shop board. If there had been any beauty, grace, activity, magnificent dress, or variety of any kind have so ever absurd to engage the attention and amuse the fancy, I should not have been surprised. But there was no such object. It was a tiresome repetition of the same languid frivolous scene performed by actors that seemed to sleep in all their motions. The continual swimming of these phantoms before my eyes gave me a swimming of the head, which was also affected by the fouled air circulating through such a number of rotten human bellows. I therefore retreated towards the door and stood in the passage to the next room talking to my friend Quinn. When an end being put to the minuettes, the benches were removed to make way for the country dances, and the multitude rising at once the whole atmosphere was put in commotion. Then all of a sudden came rushing upon me an Egyptian gale so impregnated with pestilential vapors that my nerves were overpowered, and I dropped senseless upon the floor. You may easily conceive what a clamor and confusion this accident must have produced in such an assembly. I soon recovered, however, and found myself in an easy chair supported by my own people. Sister Tabby, in her great tenderness, had put me to the torture, squeezing my hand under her arm and stuffing my nose with a spirit of heart shorn till the hole inside was excoriated. I no sooner got home than I sent for Dr. Che who assured me I needed not be alarmed for my swooning was entirely occasioned by an accidental impression of fetidifluvia upon nerves of uncommon sensibility. I know not how other people's nerves are constructed, but one would imagine they must be made of very coarse materials to stand the shock of such a torrid assault. It was indeed a compound of villainous smells in which the most violent stinks and the most powerful perfumes contended for the mastery. Imagine to yourself a high exalted essence of mingled odors arising from putrid gums, impostumated lungs, sour flatulences, rank armpits, sweating feet, running sores and issues, plasters, ointments and dembrocations, hungry water, spirit of lavender, as a fetida drops, musk, heart shorn and sal volatile. Besides a thousand frowsy steams which I could not analyze. Dr. Odick is the fragrant ether we breathe in the polite assemblies of bath, such as the atmosphere I have exchanged for the pure, elastic, animating air of the Welsh mountains. Olrus quando tiepsicium. I wonder what the devil possessed me. But few words are best. I have taken my resolution. You may well suppose I don't intend to entertain the company with a second exhibition. I have promised in an evil hour to proceed to London and that promise shall be performed, but my stay in the metropolis shall be brief. I have, for the benefit of my health, projected an expedition to the north which I hope will afford some agreeable pastime. I have never traveled farther that way than Scarborough and I think it is a reproach upon me as a British freeholder to have lived so long without making an excursion to the other side of the tweed. Besides, I have some relations settled in Yorkshire to whom it may not be improper to introduce my nephew and his sister. At present I have nothing to add but that Tabby is happily disentangled from the Irish baronet and that I will not fail to make you acquainted from time to time with the sequel of our adventures. A mark of consideration which perhaps you would willingly dispense within your humble servant, M. Bramble, Bath, May 8. End of Section 25. Section 26 of the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Geeson. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. Section 26 to Sir Watkin Phillips of Jesus College, Oxford. Dear Phillips, a few days ago we were terribly alarmed by my uncle's fainting at the ball. He has been ever since cursing his own folly for going thither at the request of an impertinent woman. He declares he will sooner visit a house infected with the plague than trust himself in such a nauseous spittle for the future, for he swears the accident was occasioned by the stench of the crowd, and that he would never desire a stronger proof of our being made of very gross materials than our having withstood the annoyance by which he was so much discomposed. For my part I am very thankful for the coarseness of my organs being in no danger of ever falling a sacrifice to the delicacy of my nose. Mr. Bramble is extravagantly delicate in all his sensations, both of soul and body. I was informed by Dr. Lewis, that he once fought a duel with an officer of the horse-guards for turning aside to the park-wall on a necessary occasion when he was passing with a lady under his protection. His blood rises at every instance of insolence and cruelty, even where he himself is no way concerned, and in gratitude makes his teeth chatter. On the other hand the recital of a generous, humane or grateful action never fails to draw from the ears of approbation, which he is often greatly distressed to conceal. Yesterday one Pawnsford gave tea on particular invitation. This man, after having been long buffeted by adversity, went abroad, and fortune, resolved to make him immense for her former coiness, set him all at once with very ears in affluence. He has now emerged from obscurity and blazes out in all the tinsel of the times. I don't find that he is charged with any practices that the law deems dishonest, or that his wealth has made him arrogant and inaccessible. On the contrary, he takes great pains to appear affable and gracious. But they say he is remarkable for shrinking from his former friendships, which were generally too plain and homespun to appear amidst his present brilliant connections. And that he seems uneasy at sight of some old benefactors, whom a man of honour would take pleasure to acknowledge. Be that as it may, he had so effectively engaged the company at Bath that when I went with my uncle to the coffee-house in the evening, there was not a soul in the room but one person, seemingly in years, who sat by the fire, reading one of the papers. Mr. Bramble, taking his station close by him, there is such a crowd and confusion of chairs in the passage to Simpsons, said he, but we could hardly get along. The fortune would fall upon more laudable ways of spending their money. I suppose, sir, you like this kind of entertainment as little as I do. I cannot say I have any great relish for such entertainment," answered the other, without taking his eyes off the paper. Mr. Searle, resumed my uncle, I beg pardon for interrupting you, but I can't resist the curiosity I have to know if you received a card on this occasion. The man seemed surprised at this address and made some pause as doubtful what answer he should make. I know my curiosity is impertinent," added my uncle, but I have a particular reason for asking the favour. If that be the case, replied Mr. Searle, I shall gratify you without hesitation by owning that I have had no card, but give me leave, sir, to ask in my turn what reason you think I have to expect such an invitation from the gentleman who gives tea. I have my own reasons, cried Mr. Bramble with some emotion, and am convinced more than ever that this Pondsford is a contemptible fellow. Sir," said the other, laying down the paper, I have not the honour to know you, but your discourse is a little mysterious and seems to require some explanation. The person you are pleased to treat so cover-learly is a gentleman of some consequence in the community, and for ought you know I may also have my particular reasons for defending his character. If I was not convinced of the contrary, observed the other, I should not have gone so far. Let me tell you, sir," said the stranger raising his voice, you have gone too far in hazarding such reflections. Here he was interrupted by my uncle, who asked peevishly if he was not done quicksut enough at this time of day to throw down his gauntlet as champion for a man who had treated him with such ungrateful neglect. For my part, added he, I shall never quarrel with you again on this subject, and what I have said now has been suggested as much by my regard for you as by my contempt of him. Mr. Searle, then pulling off his spectacles, eyed Uncle very earnestly, saying in a mitigated tone, surely I am much obliged. Ah! Mr. Bramble, I now recollect your features, though I have not seen you these many years. We might have been less strange as to one another," answered the squire, if our correspondence had not been interrupted in consequence of a misunderstanding occasioned by this very but no matter. Mr. Searle, I esteem your character, and my friendship such as it is you may freely command. The offer is too agreeable to be declined," said he. I embrace it very cordially, and as the first fruits of it I request that you will change this subject, which with me is a matter of peculiar delicacy. My Uncle owned he was in the right, and the discourse took a more general turn. Mr. Searle passed the evening with us at our lodgings and appeared to be intelligent and even entertaining, but his disposition was rather of a melancholy hue. My Uncle says that he was a man of uncommon parts and unquestioned probity that his fortune, which was originally small, has been greatly hurt by a romantic spirit of generosity, which he has often displayed even at the expense of his discretion in favour of worthless individuals, that he had rescued Pondsford from the lowest distress when he was bankrupt both in business and reputation. That he had espoused his interests with the degree of enthusiasm broke with several friends and even drawn his sword against my Uncle, who had particular reasons for questioning the moral character of the said Pondsford. That without Searle's countenance and assistance, the other never could have embraced the opportunity which has raised him to this pinnacle of wealth. That Pondsford, in the first transports of his success, had written from abroad letters to different correspondence, owning his obligations to Mr. Searle in the warmest terms of acknowledgement and declared he considered himself only as a factor for the occasions of his best friend. But without doubt he had made declarations of the same nature to his benefactor himself, though this last was always silent and reserved on the subject. But for some years those tropes and figures of rhetoric had been disused. But upon his return to England he had been lavish in his caresses to Mr. Searle, invited him to his house and pressed him to make it his own. That he had overwhelmed him with generous professions and affected to express the warmest regard for him in company of their common acquaintance, so that everybody believed his gratitude was liberal as his fortune, and some went so far as to congratulate Mr. Searle on both. All this time Pondsford carefully and artfully avoided particular discussions with his old patron who had too much spirit to drop the most distant hint of balancing the account of obligation, that nevertheless a man of his feelings could not but resent this shocking return for all his kindness, and therefore he withdrew himself from the connection without coming to the least explanation or speaking a syllable on the subject to any living soul, so that now their correspondence is reduced to a slight salute with the hat when they chance to meet in any public place. An accident that rarely happens for their walks lie different ways. Mr. Pondsford lives in a palace, feeds upon dainties, is arrayed in sumptuous apparel, appears in all the pomp of equipage, passes his time among the nobles of the land. Sirle lodges in Stahl Street, up two pair of stairs backwards, walks a foot in a bath-rug, eats for twelve shillings a week, and drinks water as preservative against the gout and gravel. Mark the vicissitude! Pondsford once resided in a palace where he subsisted upon sheep's trotters and cow-heel from which commons he was translated to the table of Sirle that ever abounded with good cheer, until one of economy and retention reduced him to a slender annuity in his decline of years, that scarce affords the bare necessaries of life. Pondsford, however, does him the honour to speak of him still with uncommon regard, and to declare what pleasure it would give him to contribute in any shape to his convenience. But, you know, he never fails to add, he's a shy kind of a man, and then such a perfect philosopher that he looks upon all superfluities with the most sovereign contempt. Having given you this sketch of Squire Pondsford, I need not make any comment on his character, but leave it at the mercy of your own reflection. From which I dare say it will meet with as little quarter as it has found with yours always J. Melford. Bath. May 10th. End of section 26 section 27 of the expedition of Humphrey Clinker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett section 27 to Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall. Dear Molly, we are all upon being. Hey, for London, girl. Fex, we have been long enough here, for we're all turned topsy-turvy. Mistress has escarded Sir Ulick for kicking of Chowder, and I have sent O'Frizzle away with a flee in his ear. I've shown him how little I minded his tinsy and his long tail. A fellow who would think for to go, for to offer to take up with a dirty trollop under my nose, I carry feet coming out of the housemaid's garret. But I have given the dirty slut a scissorery. Oh, Molly, the servants at Bath are devils in garnet. They light the candle at both ends. Here's nothing but jinketing and wasting and thieving and tricking and tricking, and then they are never content. They won't suffer the squire and mistress to stay any longer because they have been already and they look for a couple of guineas apiece that are going away and this is a park visit they expect every month in the season, being as how no family has a right to stay longer than four weeks in the same lodgings, and so the cuck swears she will pin the dish-clout to mistress's tail, and the housemaid vows she'll put cow-wich in master's bed if so be he don't discount without further ado. I don't blame them for making most of their market in the way of veils and park visits, and I defy the devil to say I am a tail carrier or ever brought a poor servant into trouble, but then they opt to have some conscience in wronging those that be servants like themselves. For you must know, Molly, I missed three quarters of blond lace and a remnant of muslin and my silver thimble, which was the gift of true love. They were all in my work and the table in the Sarventshal when mistress's bell rung, but if they had been under lock and K, it would have been all the same, for there are double keys to all the locks in bath, and they say as how the very teeth on it safe in your head if you sleep with your mouth open, and so says I to myself, them things could not go without hands, and so I'll watch their waters, and so I did with a witness. For then it was I found bet with old Frizzle, and as the cuck had thrown her slush at me because I had taken part with Chowder when he fit with the turnspit, I resolved to make a clear kitchen and throw some of her fat into the fire. I catched the charwoman coming out with her load in the morning before she thought I was up, and brought her to mistress with her whole cargo. Mary, what dust think she got in the name of God? Her buckets were foaming full of our best fear, and her lap was stuffed with a cold tongue part of a buttock of beef, half a turkey, and a swinging lump of butter, and the matter of ten mold candles that had scarce ever been lit. The cuck brazened it out, and said it was her right to rummage the pantry, and she was ready for to go before the mayor, that he had been her potecary many years and would never think of herding a poor sarvend kitchen. I went another way to work with Madame Betty because she had been saucy and called me scandalous names, and said, oh, Frizzle couldn't abide me, and twenty other odorous falsehoods. I got a warrant from the mayor, and her box being searched by the constable, my things came out sure enough besides a full pound of vax candles and a nightcap of mistress that I could swear to on my coop-roll oaf. Madame Mopstick came upon her merry bones, and as the squire wouldn't care of a persecution she escaped a skewering, but the longest day she has to live she'll remember your humble servant, W. Jankin's Bath, May 15. If the hind should come again before we are gone, pray send me the shift and apron with the vite gallo-mankey shoes which you'll find in my pillow-bear Sarves to Saul. End of Section 27. Recording by Tricia G. Section 28 of the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Giesen. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. By Tobias Smollett. Section 28 to Suwatkin Philips Barrenet of Jesus College, Oxford. You are in the right, dear Philips. I don't expect regular answers to every letter. I know a college life is too circumscribed to afford materials for such quick returns of communication. For my part, I am continually shifting the scene and surrounded with new objects, some of which are striking enough. I shall therefore conclude my journal for your amusement. And though in all appearance it will not treat a very important or interesting particulars, it may prove perhaps not altogether uninstructive and unentertaining. The music and entertainments of Bath are over for this season and all our gay birds of passage have taken their flight to Bristol Well, Tumbridge, Brightamston, Scarborough, Harrogate, etc. Not a soul is seen in this place, but a few broken winded Parsons waddling like so many crows along the North Parade. There is always a great show of the clergy at Bath. None of your thin puny yellow hectic figures exhausted with abstinence and hardy study, laboring under the morby eruditorum, but great overgrown dignitaries and rectors with rubric and noses and gouty ankles, or broad bloated faces dragging along great swag bellies the emblems of sloth and indigestion. Now we are on the subject of Parsons I must tell you a ludicrous adventure which was achieved the other day by Tom Eastgate whom you may remember on the foundation of Queens. He had been very assiduous to pin himself upon George Prankley who was a gentleman governor of Christchurch knowing the said Prankley was heir to a considerable estate and would have the advousen of a good living the incumbent of which was very old and infirm. He studied his passions and flattered them so effectually as to become his companion and counselor and at last obtained of him a promise of the presentation that he should fall. Prankley, on his uncle's death quitted Oxford and made his first appearance in the fashionable world at London. From whence he came lately to Bath where he has been exhibiting himself among the Bucks and Gamesters of the place. Eastgate followed him hither but he should not have quitted him for a moment at his first emerging into life. He ought to have known he was a fantastic foolish fickle fellow who would forget his college attachments the moment they ceased appealing to his senses. Tom met with a cold reception from his old friend and was moreover informed that he had promised the living to another man who had a vote in the county where he proposed to offer himself a candidate at the next general election. He now remembered nothing of Eastgate but the freedoms he had used to take with him while Tom had quietly stood his butt with an eye to the benefits and those freedoms he began to repeat in common place sarcasms on his person and his cloth which he uttered in the public coffee-house for the entertainment of the company. He was egregiously mistaken in giving his own wit credit for that tameness of Eastgate which had been entirely owing to prudential considerations. These being now removed he retorted his repartee with interest and found no great difficulty in turning the laugh upon the aggressor who losing his temper called him names and asked if he knew what he talked to. After much altercation prankly shaking his cane bid him hold his tongue otherwise he could dust his cassock for him. I have no pretensions to such a valet said Tom, but if you should do me that office and overheat yourself I have here a good oaken towel at your service. Prankly was equally incensed and confounded at this reply. After a moment's pause he took him aside towards the window and pointing to a clump of furs on Clarkendown, asked in a whisper if he had spirit enough to meet him there with a case of pistols at six o'clock tomorrow morning. Eastgate answered in the affirmative and with a steady countenance assured him he would not fail to give him the rendezvous at the hour he mentioned. So saying he retired and the challenger stayed some time in manifest agitation. In the morning Eastgate, who knew his man and had taken his resolution went to prankly's lodgings and roused him by five o'clock. The squire in all probability cursed his punctuality in his heart but he affected to talk big and having prepared his artillery overnight they crossed the water at the end of the south parade. In their progress up the hill prankly often eyed the parson in hopes of perceiving some reluctance in his countenance but as no such marks appeared he attempted to intimidate him by word of mouth. If these flints do their office said he, I'll do thy business in a few minutes. I desire you will do your best," replied the other. For by part I come not here to trifle. Our lives are in the hands of God and one of us already totters on the brink of eternity. This remark seemed to make some impression upon the squire who changed countenance and with a faltering accent observed that it ill became a clergyman to be concerned in quarrels and bloodshed. Your insolence to me," said Eastgate, I should have bore with patience had you not cast the most infamous reflections upon my order the honor of which I think myself in duty bound to maintain even at the expense of my heart's blood and surely it can be no crime to put out of the world a profligate wretch without any sense of principal morality or religion. Thou mayst take away my life," cried frankly in great perturbation, but don't go to murder my character. What has got no conscience? My conscience is perfectly quiet," replied the other. We are upon the spot. Take your ground as near as you please. Prime your pistol and the lord of his infinite mercy have compassion upon your miserable soul. This ejaculation he pronounced in a loud solemn tone with his hat off and his eyes lifted up. Then drawing a large horse-pistol he presented and put himself in a posture of action. Frankly took his distance and endeavoured to prime, but his hand shook with such violence, but he found this operation impracticable. His antagonist, seeing how it was with him offered his assistance and advanced for that purpose. When the poor squire exceedingly alarmed at what he had heard and seen, desired the action might be heard till next day as he had not settled his affairs. A hunt made my will, said he. My sisters are not provided for and I just now recollect an old promise which my conscience tells me I ought to perform. I'll first convince thee that I'm not a wretch without principle, and then I shall have an opportunity to take my life, which thou seems to thirst legally. Eastgate understood the hint and told him that one day should break no squares, adding, God forbid that I should be the means of hindering you from acting the part of an honest man and a dutiful brother. By virtue of this cessation they returned peaceably together. Frankly forthwith made out the presentation of the living and delivered it to Eastgate, telling him at the same time he had now settled his affairs and was ready to attend him to the fur-grove. But Tom declared he could not think of lifting his hand against the life of so great a benefactor. He did more. When they next met at the coffee-house he asked pardon of Mr. Prankley, passion he had said anything to give him offence. And the squire was so gracious as to forgive him with a cordial shake of the hand, declaring that he did not like to be at variance with an old college companion. Next day, however, he left Bath abruptly and then Eastgate told me all these particulars not a little pleased with the effects of his own fugacity, by which he has secured a living worth a hundred and sixty pounds per annum. Of my uncle I have nothing at present to say, but that we set out to-morrow for London on famille. He and the ladies with the maid and chowder in a coach, I and the manservant a horseback. The particulars of our journey you shall have by next provided no accident happens to prevent yours ever J. Melford Bath May 17th End of section 28