Mr. Robert Chambers, in his excellent biography of Smollett, in many respects still one of the best accounts of the great novelist’s life and works, regards the influence of the surrounding scenery as being the main factor in turning Smollett’s ideas towards imaginative and romantic themes. To a certain extent, as we have already pointed out, the charms of the district must have produced a deep impression on him. The vividness of his recollections of them in after years, and the terms of passionate delight wherewith he spoke of them, all go to prove this. But there was another agency at work. The charms of our immortal English literature were slowly but surely casting their glamour over him. From the study of classics he had passed to that of Milton, Dryden, and of the Restoration drama, with close attention paid to that great period which had closed but a few years before his birth—the reign of Queen Anne. Chambers also states that ‘Smollett, like Burns, was at a very early period struck with admiration of the character of Wallace, whose adventures, reduced from the verse of Blind Harry by Hamilton of Gilbertfield, were in every boy’s hand, and formed a constant theme of fireside and nursery stories. To such a degree arose Smollett’s enthusiasm on this subject, that, ere he had quitted Dumbarton School, he wrote verses to the memory of the Scottish champion.’
But schooldays could not last for ever. Besides, the young Tobias ere long lost interest in the Dumbarton Grammar School. John Love had been translated to Edinburgh, and a new pedagogue had arisen who knew not Tobias. Accordingly, the lad began to plague his mother to allow him to become a soldier like his elder brother James. The matter, of course, had to be referred to the family dictator—the old Commissary. But that stern incarnation of Puritanic duty decided that while the family interest might procure the advancement of one soldier, two were beyond its exercise of patronage. Hence he insisted on Tobias being sent to Glasgow University, to prepare for one of the learned professions, offering to bear a share in the expense of his education. But as the old man died almost immediately afterwards, namely, in 1733, before the youth was actually sent to college, the latter benefited little from his grandfather’s intentions, because in his will no provision was made for the children of his youngest son. But his uncle James appears to have proved more kind–hearted than was anticipated, and to have assisted him, at least during the first years of his course.
During his attendance on the Arts classes in Glasgow University,—only one of which seems to have made any deep impression on him, namely, the lectures of Francis Hutcheson, Professor of Moral Philosophy, and father of Scots Philosophy,—he made the acquaintance of several medical students, who were then going through their curriculum, with a view to graduation in medicine. As in the case of Sir James Y. Simpson[2] it was the fact of lodging in the same house with two medical students from Bathgate, to wit, Drs. Reid and M’Arthur, which gave him the bias towards medicine that was to make the world so much his debtor, so in Smollett’s case his association with these youths directed his thoughts also towards the prosecution of medicine as a career in life. In those days the difficulties of carrying out such an intention were not so great as now. Medicos were not then as plentiful as leaves in Vallombrosa, so much so that the great degree–granting institutions must for their own protection make the examinations increasingly severe, in order that the survival only of the scientifically fittest may in time relieve the congestion. When, therefore, Smollett announced his intention to his mother and his uncle James (who only recently had succeeded to the family honours), they appeared to consider that the proposal was one to which they could give a cordial assent, although surgery had not yet commenced the wonderful march of progress achieved by it later on in the same century, and though the prestige of the craft, sadly tarnished by its association with the trade of the barber and of the phlebotomist, was by no means one calculated as yet to render its members proud of their connection with it—in Scotland at least. The genius of the three Alexander Monroes,—grandfather, father, and son, who consecutively held the chair of Anatomy in Edinburgh University for a hundred and twenty–six years, namely, from 1720 to 1846,—of Gregory, of Cullen, and of other illustrious knights of the knife, was needed to efface the lingering associations of the razor and basin, and to crown the name of surgeon with undying laurels.
This, then, was the career which Tobias George Smollett marked out for himself, hoping in the course of time, by hard work and assiduity, to obtain a position, first as surgeon’s mate and afterwards as surgeon, in the navy. Only qualified surgeons were accepted by the Admiralty, and the prospect stimulated him to put forth all his exertions to qualify for the post. The friends in the Vale of Leven amongst them managed to provide the necessary funds. Tobias, in addition, was also apprenticed to a worthy man, Mr. John Gordon, who, in the quaint old Trongate of Glasgow, during the fourth, fifth, and sixth decades of the eighteenth century, discharged the dual vocations of medical practitioner and apothecary. Smollett’s meagre salary or wage, eked out by what his mother and the Bonhill folks could furnish, was made to serve the purpose of paying his way through the medical classes in the University and of supplying himself with clothing. Mr. Gordon, his master, gave him a room in his house, and a cover was always laid for him at the good old surgeon’s table.
A striking insight is thus afforded into the proud, irritable nature of the youth, whom poverty, in place of teaching lessons of patience and gratitude to the kindly hearts that were smoothing his life’s path for him, rather stung into angry repining against such indebtedness, as well as into emphatic asseveration of their action being no more than what was due to him. Humility was at no time one of the virtues in which Smollett excelled. His amour–propre was of so sensitive a composition that the least breath of contradiction made, so to speak,
‘Each particular hair to stand an–end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.’
That Smollett studied hard during these years, that, moreover, he took every means lying within his power to increase his fund of general knowledge, as well as to amass stores of that information which lay in the line of his own special studies in medicine and science, has been recorded for us by some of his early companions. Neither a laggard nor a dullard in his work was he, as is evinced by the fact that he was devoting attention to Latin, Greek, and philosophy at the same time that he was endeavouring to master anatomy and medicine. How he was able to accomplish the achievement of acquiring even a superficial acquaintance with the subjects named, at the identical period that he was serving in his master’s shop from eight in the morning till nine at night, is a mystery. Strong evidence is it of his zeal in the pursuit of knowledge, that he cheerfully prosecuted labours so onerous and so prolonged at a time when his age, according to the most liberal scale of calculation, could not have exceeded from fifteen to seventeen years. But through the gates of knowledge he already saw a means of escape for himself from the grinding penury wherein it was his lot to be cast.
John Gordon, surgeon and apothecary, to whom so beautiful a tribute is paid in Humphrey Clinker, appears to have shown the youthful Tobias substantial kindness. A sincere affection, on his side at least, existed towards Smollett. The latter, however, seems to have made him somewhat of a poor return for his benevolent disposition towards him, though really it is questionable whether Smollett was responsible for his frigid temperament, which showed no interest in anyone whose goodwill would not in some way react advantageously on himself. Notwithstanding that Gordon aided Smollett both by precept and purse during his years of study, the latter was in the habit of satirising him behind his back in juvenile pasquinades. The same evil spirit of social Ishmaelitism, the feeling that the world had been hard on him, and that he was therefore justified by satire and sneers in ‘taking it out’ of anyone else who might have relations with him, was present with him until a year or two of his death. Shortly before the great end came, this vitriolic acidulousness, as well as the saturnine bitterness of his nature, became somewhat softened. He then wrote in Humphrey Clinker, under the character of ‘Matthew Bramble,’ as follows:—‘I was introduced to Mr. Gordon, a patriot of a truly noble spirit, who is father of the linen manufactory in that place, and was the great promoter of the city workhouse, infirmary, and other works of public utility. Had he lived in ancient Rome, he would have been honoured with a statue at the public expense.’ Thus he made the amende honorable, but the description in the first instance of Gordon as ‘Potion’ in Roderick Random was cruelly unjust, though Smollett in later years declared the portraits of both ‘Crab’ and ‘Potion’ to be imaginary. In early years such was the ‘sheer cussedness’ of his disposition, that even at the risk of offending his dearest friends, he could not refrain from firing off some of his satirical pasquinades. In fact, until the offending devil was whipped out of him by the lash of John Wilkes’ stronger controversial pen, Smollett was too ready to indulge in satirical outbursts against friend and foe alike, where his fancied infallibility chanced to be impugned.
Dr. John Gordon seemed to have had some dim, undefinable consciousness that his proud, irritable, unmanageable apprentice was destined yet to do something in the world of worthy work. Sir Walter Scott, in his Lives of the Novelists, remarks: ‘His master expressed his conviction of Smollett’s future eminence in very homely but expressive terms, when some of his neighbours were boasting the superior decorum and propriety of the pupils they possessed. “It may be all very true,” said the keen–sighted Mr. Gordon; “but give me before them all my own bubbly–nosed callant with the stane in his pouch.”’ And Scott adds that, without attempting to render the above into English, Southern readers ought to be informed that the words contain a faithful sketch of a negligent, unlucky, but spirited urchin, never without some mischievous prank in his head, and a stone in his pocket ready to execute it. Better portrait than this of the young Tobias could not be desired. Only one other boyish trait shall we add to illustrate his readiness of resource in extricating himself and others from awkward predicaments. From Dr. Moore’s Life of Smollett we take it—a volume upon which all succeeding biographers have had to draw, as he had the privilege of personal intercourse with the novelist. ‘On a winter evening, when the streets were covered with snow, Smollett happened to be engaged in a snowball fight with a few boys of his own age. Among his associates was the apprentice of that surgeon who is supposed to have been delineated under the name of “Crab” in Roderick Random. He entered his shop while his apprentice was in the heat of the engagement. On the return of the latter, the master remonstrated with him severely for his negligence in quitting the shop. The youth excused himself by saying, that while he was employed in making up a prescription, a fellow hit him with a snowball in the teeth, and that he had been in pursuit of the delinquent. “A mighty probable story, truly,” said the master in an ironical tone. “I wonder how long I should stand here,” added he, “before it would enter into mortal man’s head to throw a snowball at me.” While he was holding his head erect with a most scornful air, he received a very severe blow in the face by a snowball. Smollett, who stood concealed behind the pillar at the shop door, had heard the dialogue, and, perceiving that his companion was puzzled for an answer, he extricated him by a repartee equally smart and àpropos.’