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Single Person record details
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Back
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Person Code
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NA17217
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Forenames
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Tobias George
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Surname
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Smollett
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Dates
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1721-1771
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Epithet
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novelist
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Activity
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He was educated at Dumbarton school and Glasgow University to qualify for the medical profession, and on 30 May 1736 he was apprenticed for five years to Dr. John Gordon, Marischal College, Aberdeen. During 1739 Smollett determined to seek his fortune in London. His journey southwards is described with infinite spirit in the earlier chapters of ?Roderick Random.? He obtained a post as surgeon on board a king's ship. Next year he sailed in the Cumberland to join Vernon's fleet in the West Indies, and served during the whole of the operations of the combined fleet and land forces against Carthagena in the spring of 1741. The fleet returned to Jamaica, where part remained for further service in the West Indies. Smollett was with this portion during 1741 and 1742. Residing for a while in Jamaica, he became enamoured of met Nancy Lascalles, daughter of an English planter, whom he married some time after his return to England, c1747. Smollett seems to have removed his name from the navy books in May 1744, whereupon he settled as a surgeon in Downing Street, Westminster. He was a great acquisition to the Scottish circle in London, and Dr. Alexander Carlyle, during his visit to the metropolis in 1746, dilates upon the charm of his society. His indignation was excited by the rigour with which the Highland rebellion was crushed in this year, and he penned the best remembered of his poems, ?The Tears of Scotland.? The years 1746 and 1747 saw his shilling satires ?Advice? and ?Reproof,? two admonitions to the whig party, with whom he was rapidly losing patience. In 1747 also appeared his ?Burlesque Ode on the Loss of a Grandmother?. He seems to have migrated from Downing Street to Mayfair in search of practice.
There was no author's name on the title-page of ?Roderick Random,? and Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu attributed the work to Fielding (in whose name it was actually translated into French). The first use Smollett made of his popularity was to publish ?The Regicide? by the ?author of Roderick Random.? Smollett himself seems to have still designed to combine the practice of medicine with authorship, and in June 1750 he obtained the degree of M.D. from Marischal College, Aberdeen. But in the autumn of this year he already had another novel in prospect, and went over to Paris with a new acquaintance, Dr. John Moore (his future biographer and author of ?Zeluco?), in quest of materials, or rather subjects for caricature. One of these was found in the person of Smollett's compatriot, Mark Akenside. Smollett published his second novel, ?The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle? (1751, 4 vols. 12mo) after his return. From the outset it met with an immense success, and was translated into French. Smollett was constantly in pecuniary difficulties. His embarrassments seem to have reached a climax in December 1754, when on the night of the 10th he was robbed of his watch and purse in the stage-coach between Chelsea and London. A few months later, in March 1755, appeared his translation of ?Don Quixote,? at which he had been working intermittently for many months, and for which he had been paid soon after the appearance of ?Roderick Random.? Though many of Smollett's humorous paraphrases are excellent, his claims to adequate knowledge of the original were at once questioned in ?A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to his Friend in Town? (anon. London, 1755). It was a commercial success and was for many years the reigning English version. In the summer that followed its publication Smollett revisited Scotland. His sister had married, in 1739, Alexander Telfer of Symington, Lanarkshire and in 1749 bought the estate of Scotston in Peeblesshire where Smollett's mother had removed in 1759, and there Tobias now directed his steps. Mrs. Smollett, runs the story, did not recognise her son at first, but he soon betrayed himself by his ?roguish smile.? Smollett seems to have consistently lived beyond his income but, despite debts and the harassing conditions of his work, he was happy in his Chelsea home. He was specially devoted to his little daughter, Elizabeth. When she died in April 1763, at the age of fifteen his grief was intense, and he was never the same man again. Following the advice of his wife, Smollett crossed the Channel to Boulogne in June 1763; he remained at Boulogne till September, and proceeded thence by Paris, Lyons, and Montpellier to Nice. A pioneer of the Riviera as a health resort, he made Nice his headquarters from November 1763 to May 1765 (during the greater part of which time he made careful observations of the weather). His shrewdness anticipated the great future that lay before the Cornice road (afterwards designed by Napoleon), and he foresaw the possibilities of Cannes, then ?a neat village,? as a sanatorium. From Nice he sailed in a felucca to Genoa, and thence visited Rome and other Italian cities, returning to England through France in June 1765. Early next year he published his ?Travels? in the form of letters sent home from Boulogne, Paris, Nice, and other places along his route. In spite of his profound mistrust of foreign doctors, Smollett had consulted physicians, and at first upon his return he seemed much better, but a few months in London undeceived him. His health was thoroughly undermined by chronic rheumatism, while the pain arising from a neglected ulcer, which had developed into a chronic sore, helped to sap his strength. As soon, therefore, as his ?Travels? were out of hand, he resolved on a summer journey to Scotland. He reached Edinburgh in June 1766, and stayed with his sister, Mrs. Telfer, in St. John Street. The society of Edinburgh, then at the apogee of its brilliance, paid due attention to ?the famous Dr. Smollett.? He was visited by Hume, Home, Robertson, Adam Smith, Blair, Dr. Carlyle, Cullen, the Monros, and many old friends. Smollett's mother died in the autumn, and, still in a very precarious state of health, he proceeded to Bath, spending the Christmas of 1766 in Gay Street, where his health at last took a turn for the better, and where it is quite possible that he may have commenced a rough draft of ?Humphrey Clinker.? In 1768 he was again in London, and with a return of vital energy came a recrudescence of his old savagery. His next work, ?The History and Adventures of an Atom,? is a kind of Rabelaisian satire on the whole course of public affairs in England from 1754 to the date of publication in 1769. He lashes out against king and ministers on both sides with equal venom. Its publication was followed by a serious relapse. His friends decided that he must return to Italy. Hume generously applied to Shelburne for a consulate; there were several vacancies in Italy, and Smollett was well qualified for such a post. But no such favour was forthcoming from a member of the ?pack,? as Smollett had designated all contemporary politicians (Shelburne's letter of refusal is printed among ?Some Inedited Memorials of Smollett? in the ?Atlantic Monthly,? June 1859). In December 1769 he left England for the last time, and proceeded to Lucca and Pisa, then the chief accredited health resort in the Mediterranean. Smollett seems to have acquired a fair knowledge of Italian. During the spring of 1770 he and his wife and two other compatriots secured contiguous villas about two miles out of Leghorn, near Antignano, under the shadow of Monte Nero. Here, while tended with devotion by his wife, he gradually became weaker. During the autumn he penned the bulk of the immortal ?Humphrey Clinker.' Smollett had the satisfaction of seeing his masterpiece in print, but not of hearing the chorus of praise that greeted it. He died at the age of fifty-one. His grave is in the old English cemetery in the Via degli Elisi at Leghorn (the only town in north Italy where protestants at that time had rights of burial). Three years later a monument was erected by the novelist's cousin, Commissary James Smollett, on the banks of the Leven a tall Tuscan column, which still attracts tourists between the Clyde and Loch Lomond. The inscription was revised and in part written by Dr. Johnson, who visited Bonhill with Boswell in 1773.
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Notes
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Lives of Smollett are numerous. A memoir was prefixed to an edition of his works in 1797 by Dr. John Moore (Zeluco), and this is to some extent the basis of all subsequent biographies. Another life by Dr. Robert Anderson was prefixed to the edition of 1796, but, though earlier in date, this is mainly a secondhand dissertation upon the novelist's character; to the fifth edition (1806) there is an interesting Appendix of Letters to Smollett from Robertson, Hume, Boswell, Armstrong, and others. A shrewd and sympathetic biography was prefixed by Scott to his edition of the Poems in 1821, and a more detailed memoir by Thomas Roscoe to the Works in one volume issued in 1841. Far more valuable than any of its predecessors in point of research is ?Smollett: his Life and a Selection from his Writings,? published by Robert Chambers in 1867. This was followed by a careful memoir by David Herbert for the Selected Works, Edinburgh, 1870. A Life by Mr. David Hannay (valuable especially for the naval bearings of Smollett's career) is included in the Great Writers Series, 1887 (with useful bibliography by Mr. J. P. Anderson). Prefixed to the 1895 edition of the novels is a life by Professor Saintsbury (with an interesting development of Scott's parallel between Fielding and Smollett), and a life by Mr. Oliphant Smeaton appeared in the Famous Scots Series, 1897. There are good notices in the Encyclopædia Britannica (by Professor Minto) and English Cyclopædia; but of more value perhaps than any of these is the admirable summary of facts and opinions in the Quarterly Review (vol. ciii.), though this must be corrected as regards some genealogical details by Joseph Irving's Book of Dunbartonshire, 1879, i. 290, ii. 175 seq. The writer is indebted to the Rev. R. L. Douglas for some interesting notes upon the place and circumstances of the novelist's death. See also Macleod's History. of Dumbarton, p. 157; Dr. A. Carlyle's Autobiography. passim; Anderson's Scottish Nation, iii. 483; Nichols's Literary Anecd. i. 302, iii. 346, 398, 759, vi. 459, viii. 229, 412, 497, ix. 261, 480; Literary Illustrations, v. 776, vii. 228, 268; Gent. Mag. 1771 p. 349, 1799 ii. 817, 899, 1810 i. 597, 1846 ii. 347; Fasti Aberdonenses, p. 374; Duncan's Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. 1896, p. 120; Wilkes's Correspondence, i. 50 (on Smollett's alleged duplicity towards Wilkes); Churchill's Works, 1892, i. 61, 65, 68, 74, 106, ii. 5, 10, 51; Grenville Papers, i. 415; Walpole's Correspondence, ed. Cunningham, ii. 242, 285, 341, v. 231; Walpole's History. of the Reign of George III, ed. Barker; Warburton's Horace Walpole and his Contemporaries, i. 393; Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu's Letters, 1837, iii. 106, 199; Mrs. Delany's Life and Correspondence, ii. 6, 7, iii. 34, 162, 216, 223; Davies's Garrick. 1780; Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, passim; Andrew Henderson's Second Letter to Dr. Johnson, 1775 (containing a coarse lampoon on Smollett); Memoirs of Lord Kames, i. 226, 447; Mathias's Pursuits of Literature, i. 26; Mahon's History. of England, vii. 325; Pope's Works, ed. Elwin, iii. 268, 468; Morrison's Autographs, vi. 146 (facsimile letter to Dr. George Macaulay requesting a loan); Brougham's Men of Letters under George III, 1855, p. 246 n.; Genest's History. of Stage, iv. 479, x. 175; Baker's Biogr. Dramatica, 1812, i. 677-9 (attributing to Smollett, without authority, a posthumous farce, ?The Israelites,? 1785); Wadd's Nugæ Chirurgicæ, p. 259; John Lawrence's British Historians, New York, 1855, vol. ii.; Laurence's Life of Fielding, 1855, pp. 308-11; Glaister's Dr. William Smellie and his Contemporaries, 1894, pp. 111-18; Burton's Hume, ii. 53; Hume's Letters to Strahan, ed. Hill, 1888, pp. 38, 66, 229, 258, 281; Allardyce's Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, i. 311; Chambers's Traditions of Old Edinburgh, p. 217; Forster's Life of Goldsmith, passim; Knights Shadows of the Old Booksellers, pp. 222-3; Babeau's Les Voyageurs en France, 1885: ?Un Anglais de mauvaise humeur,? pp. 213-34; Thicknesse's Correspondence; Stephens's Life of Horne Tooke, i. 356; A. Fraser-Tytler's (Lord Woodhouselee's) Essay on Translation, 1813, pp. 242, 266; Leigh Hunt's Table-Talk, 1870, p. 40; Hazlitt's Selections, ed. Ireland, pp. 159 seq.; Masson's British Novelists, 1859; Disraeli's Miscellanies of Literature, p. 54 (a sad picture of his suffering); Thackeray's English Humourists; Fox Bourne's History. of Newspapers, i. 154 seq.; Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, bk. xii. pp. 42-55, 58, 71; Taine's English Literature, ii. 176-9; Wright's Caricature Hist. pp. 271-4; Tuckerman's Hist. of English Fiction, pp. 211-17; Forsyth's Novels and Novelists, 1871, pp. 279-304; Craik's English Prose Selections, iv. 257-69; Quérard's France Littéraire, ix. 198; Ticknor's History. of Spanish Lit. 1888, iii. 513-14; Beaver's Memorials of Old Chelsea, 1892, pp. 90-2; Faulkner's Chelsea, pp. 266-72; Martin's Old Chelsea, 1888, pp. 138-42; Wheatley and Cunningham's London, i. 380, 439, 520; Hutton's Literary Landmarks, pp. 280-2; Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, s.v. ?Bonhill;? Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. iii. 326, 3rd ser. i. 232, viii. 393, xi. 491, 5th ser. i. 384, 6th ser. i. 330, xi. 487, xii. 349, 7th ser. i. 178, v. 58, ix. 408, xii. 205, 333; The Portfolio, Philadelphia, November 1811 (a comparison of Sterne, Fielding, and Smollett); Macmillan's Mag. xxi. 527 (an account of his doings on the Riviera, and a testimony to his accuracy in matters of detail); Atlantic Monthly, iii. 693; New York Nation, 30 May 1889
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Associated records
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GB233/MS.3430-518 | Correspondence and papers of the Very Rev John Lee, Principal of Edinburgh University, with the material collected by him | 1584-1873 |
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