Now, the extracts given above would seem to indicate that Smollett was, in the first place, in somewhat easy circumstances. As Mr. Hannay very justly remarks, houses in Downing Street, West, and glasses of wine for friends, were not to be enjoyed, even in the patriarchal times of last century, without a periodical production of the almighty dollar. Circumstances point to the fact that Smollett took the deceased surgeon’s house with the possible hope of dropping into his practice. But in addition to that very problematic source of income, there must have been some other, and that in some degree at least to be relied upon. Smollett would never have faced the future so gaily with such a millstone round his neck, unless he had clearly seen his way to a sure and steady means of revenue. To our mind, that revenue must either have been yielded by Mrs. Smollett’s property in Kingston, and the ceremony performed there, prior to Smollett’s departure, must have been regarded as a marriage, or his industry in hack work for the booksellers must have been phenomenal. Either alternative presents difficulties. Neither can be accepted without weighty reservations. Best, under all aspects of the case, is it to affirm nothing positively, in the absence at the present time of definite information, which, however, may yet be discovered.
The years 1745 and 1746 were stirring years in Britain. The rumours of a great Jacobite invasion of Scotland were rife while the year was young. They increased in number and definiteness as it gradually grew older, until, in August 1745, the intelligence reached London that Prince Charles Edward had actually landed in the Western Highlands. Smollett, though a sentimental Whig and an actual Tory, though, in other words, sympathising with the cause of the downtrodden and the laborious poor, while at the same time he heartily anathematised Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle, and at this time at least extolled the Tory Pitt the elder, was no Jacobite. True it was, his peppery nature was easily aroused by the flagrant and criminal neglect Scotland had received under Walpole’s administration. He was never done denouncing this ‘direct descendant of the impenitent thief’—a phrase afterwards borrowed, with a slight alteration, but without acknowledgment, by Dan O’Connell, and applied, as everybody knows, to Benjamin Disraeli. But however deeply Smollett was attached to his country, it was merely a sentimental attachment, akin to his Whiggery. He would not endanger his neck by ‘going out’ during the Rebellion of the ‘45, but he would have been guilty of a little harmless treason had he met with any kindred spirit with an enthusiasm strong enough to blow his own into flame. An evidence of the interest Smollett took in the Rebellion, and the indignation he felt over the atrocities perpetrated by the Duke of Cumberland on the hapless Highland prisoners that fell into his hands after the battle of Culloden, is found in the following anecdote related by Sir Walter Scott, on the authority of Robert Graham, Esq., of Gartmore, a particular friend and trustee of Smollett:—‘Some gentlemen, having met in a tavern, were amusing themselves before supper with a game at cards, while Smollett, not choosing to play, sat down to write. One of the company, who also was nominated one of his trustees (Gartmore himself), observing his earnestness, and supposing he was writing verses, asked him if it were not so. He accordingly read them the first sketch of his “Tears of Scotland,” consisting only of six stanzas, and on their remarking that the termination of the poem, being too strongly expressed, might give offence to persons whose political opinions were different, he sat down without reply, and with an air of great indignation subjoined the concluding stanza:—
“While the warm blood bedews my veins,
And unimpaired remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country’s fate
Within my filial breast shall beat.
Yes, spite of thine insulting foe,
My sympathising verse shall flow.
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!”’
To which Scott adds: ‘To estimate the generous emotions with which Smollett was actuated on this occasion, it must be remarked that his patriotism was independent of party feeling, as he had been bred up in Whig principles, which were those of his family. Although these appear from his historical works to have been in some degree modified, yet the author continued attached to the principles of the Revolution.’
The ‘Tears of Scotland,’ the poem written under the curious circumstances recounted above, was a generous outburst of patriotic indignation in favour of Scotland and the Scots, at a time when such manifestations, owing to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, were liable to be construed, by a Government as truculent and short–sighted as it was venal and corrupt, into treason. Notwithstanding the fact that the ‘Tears of Scotland’ was moderately popular in its day, the powers that were in those days decided to leave the peppery Scot severely alone.
At this period it is also that we obtain a pleasant side–light thrown upon Smollett’s life and work from the autobiography of Dr. ‘Jupiter’ Carlyle, the minister of Inveresk, in Midlothian, from 1748 to 1805, who was the friend and associate of nearly all the literary celebrities of the period—Home, Robertson, Blair, Logan, Henry Mackenzie, Lords Kames and Monboddo, etc. Fortunately, he preserved and noted down his impressions of all these great men, though, having done so only in extreme old age, many of the details are incorrectly stated. Dr. Carlyle remarks that with Smollett and one or two more he ‘resorted to a small tavern in the corner of Cockspur Street at the Golden Ball, where we had a frugal supper and a little punch, as the finances of none of the company were in very good order. But we had rich enough conversation on literary subjects, which was enlivened by Smollett’s agreeable stories, which he told with a peculiar grace. Soon after our acquaintance, Smollett showed me his tragedy of “James I. of Scotland,”[3] which he never could bring on the stage. For this the managers could not be blamed, though it soured him against them, and he appealed to the public by printing it; but the public seemed to take part with the managers.’
The following incident, detailed by Dr. Carlyle, also manifests Smollett in the light of a Scots patriot:—‘I was in the coffee–house with Smollett when the news of the battle of Culloden arrived, and when London all over was in an uproar of joy. It was then that Jack Stewart, the son of the Provost, behaved in the manner I before mentioned.[4] About nine o’clock I wished to go home to Lyon’s in New Bond Street, as I had promised to sup with him that night, it being the anniversary of his marriage–night, or the birthday of one of his children. I asked Smollett if he was ready to go, as he lived at Mayfair; he said he was, and would conduct me. The mob were so riotous and the squibs so numerous and incessant, that we were glad to go into a narrow entry to put our wigs in our pockets, and to take our swords from our belts, and to walk with them in our hands, as everybody then wore swords; and after cautioning me against speaking a word, lest the mob should discover my country and become insolent, “for John Bull,” said he, “is as haughty and valiant to–night as he was abject and cowardly on the Black Wednesday when the Highlanders were at Derby.” After we got to the head of the Haymarket through incessant fire, the doctor led me by narrow lanes, where we met nobody but a few boys at a pitiful bonfire, who very civilly asked us for sixpence, which I gave them. I saw not Smollett again for some time after, when he showed Smith and me the MS. of his “Tears of Scotland,” which was published not long after, and had such a run of approbation. Smollett, though a Tory, was not a Jacobite, but he had the feelings of a Scotch gentleman on the reported cruelties that were said to be exercised after the battle of Culloden.’
Sir Walter Scott, with his wonted charity, endeavours to account for Smollett’s lack of success as a physician. He did not succeed, because his haughty and independent spirit neglected the bypaths which lead to fame in that profession. Another writer ascribes it to his lack of consideration for his female patients, certainly not from want of address or figure, but from a hasty impatience in listening to petty complaints. Perhaps, finally, remarks Scott, Dr. Smollett was too soon discouraged, and abandoned prematurely a profession in which success is proverbially slow.
In these circumstances, conscious as he must have been of his own powers, Smollett could only look to his pen for the supply of his daily needs. And it did not disappoint him. In 1748, besides numerous ephemeral compilations for the booksellers, he produced his poetical satire Advice, a poem in the manner of Juvenal, wherein several of the leading political characters of the day were held up to scorn. Our author certainly did not spare his caustic sarcasm. The consequence was, Advice became so popular that he published a sequel, or rather continuation of it, in 1747, under the title of Reproof, both being bound and published together in the succeeding year. When another edition of each was called for, Smollett had made himself talked about and feared, in the hope that the Ministry of the day would see it to their advantage to pension him off with a sinecure office. No such fortune befell him. He had only sown dragon’s teeth, from which enemies sprang up to harass and vex him even to the end of his days.