The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Volume 01, Page 2

  INTRODUCTION

  The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Smollett's third novel, wasgiven to the world in 1753. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing to herdaughter, the Countess of Bute, over a year later [January 1st, 1755],remarked that "my friend Smollett . . . has certainly a talent forinvention, though I think it flags a little in his last work." Lady Marywas both right and wrong. The inventive power which we commonly think ofas Smollett's was the ability to work over his own experience intorealistic fiction. Of this, Ferdinand Count Fathom shows comparativelylittle. It shows relatively little, too, of Smollett's vigorouspersonality, which in his earlier works was present to give life andinterest to almost every chapter, were it to describe a street brawl, aludicrous situation, a whimsical character, or with venomous prejudice togibbet some enemy. This individuality--the peculiar spirit of the authorwhich can be felt rather than described--is present in the dedication ofFathom to Doctor ------, who is no other than Smollett himself, and acandid revelation of his character, by the way, this dedication contains.It is present, too, in the opening chapters, which show, likewise, in thepicture of Fathom's mother, something of the author's peculiar "talentfor invention." Subsequently, however, there is no denying that theSmollett invention and the Smollett spirit both flag. And yet, in a way,Fathom displays more invention than any of the author's novels; it isbased far less than any other on personal experience. Unfortunatelysuch thorough-going invention was not suited to Smollett's genius. Theresult is, that while uninteresting as a novel of contemporary manners,Fathom has an interest of its own in that it reveals a new side of itsauthor. We think of Smollett, generally, as a rambling storyteller, arational, unromantic man of the world, who fills his pages with his ownoddly-metamorphosed acquaintances and experiences. The Smollett of CountFathom, on the contrary, is rather a forerunner of the romantic school,who has created a tolerably organic tale of adventure out of his ownbrain. Though this is notably less readable than the author's earlierworks, still the wonder is that when the man is so far "off his beat," heshould yet know so well how to meet the strange conditions which confronthim. To one whose idea of Smollett's genius is formed entirely by Randomand Pickle and Humphry Clinker, Ferdinand Count Fathom will offer manysurprises.

  The first of these is the comparative lifelessness of the book. True,here again are action and incident galore, but generally unaccompanied bythat rough Georgian hurly-burly, common in Smollett, which is sointeresting to contemplate from a comfortable distance, and which goes sofar towards making his fiction seem real. Nor are the characters, forthe most part, life-like enough to be interesting. There is an apparentexception, to be sure, in the hero's mother, already mentioned, thehardened camp-follower, whom we confidently expect to become vitalisedafter the savage fashion of Smollett's characters. But, alas! we have nochance to learn the lady's style of conversation, for the few words thatcome from her lips are but partially characteristic; we have only toolittle chance to learn her manners and customs. In the fourth chapter,while she is making sure with her dagger that all those on the field ofbattle whom she wishes to rifle are really dead, an officer of thehussars, who has been watching her lucrative progress, unfeelingly puts abrace of bullets into the lady's brain, just as she raises her hand tosmite him to the heart. Perhaps it is as well that she is thus removedbefore our disappointment at the non-fulfilment of her promise becomespoignant. So far as we may judge from the other personages of CountFathom, even this interesting Amazon would sooner or later have turnedinto a wooden figure, with a label giving the necessary information as toher character.

  Such certainly is her son, Fathom, the hero of the book. Because he isplacarded, "Shrewd villain of monstrous inhumanity," we are fain toaccept him for what his creator intended; but seldom in word or deed ishe a convincingly real villain. His friend and foil, the noble youngCount de Melvil, is no more alive than he; and equally wooden are Joshua,the high-minded, saint-like Jew, and that tedious, foolish Don Diego.Neither is the heroine alive, the peerless Monimia, but then, in hercase, want of vitality is not surprising; the presence of it would amazeus. If she were a woman throbbing with life, she would be different fromSmollett's other heroines. The "second lady" of the melodrama,Mademoiselle de Melvil, though by no means vivified, is yet more realthan her sister-in-law.

  The fact that they are mostly inanimate figures is not the only surprisegiven us by the personages of Count Fathom. It is a surprise to find fewof them strikingly whimsical; it is a surprise to find them in some casesfar more distinctly conceived than any of the people in Roderick Randomor Peregrine Pickle. In the second of these, we saw Smollett beginningto understand the use of incident to indicate consistent development ofcharacter. In Count Fathom, he seems fully to understand this principleof art, though he has not learned to apply it successfully. And so, inspite of an excellent conception, Fathom, as I have said, is unreal.After all his villainies, which he perpetrates without any apparentqualms of conscience, it is incredible that he should honestly repent ofhis crimes. We are much inclined to doubt when we read that "his viceand ambition was now quite mortified within him," the subsequenttestimony of Matthew Bramble, Esq., in Humphry Clinker, to the contrary,notwithstanding. Yet Fathom up to this point is consistently drawn, anddrawn for a purpose:--to show that cold-blooded roguery, thoughsuccessful for a while, will come to grief in the end. To heighten theeffect of his scoundrel, Smollett develops parallel with him the virtuousCount de Melvil. The author's scheme of thus using one character as thefoil of another, though not conspicuous for its originality, shows adecided advance in the theory of constructive technique. Only, as I havesaid, Smollett's execution is now defective.

  "But," one will naturally ask, "if Fathom lacks the amusing, and notinfrequently stimulating, hurly-burly of Smollett's former novels; if itscharacters, though well-conceived, are seldom divertingly fantastic andnever thoroughly animate; what makes the book interesting?" The surprisewill be greater than ever when the answer is given that, to a largeextent, the plot makes Fathom interesting. Yes, Smollett, hithertoindifferent to structure, has here written a story in which the plotitself, often clumsy though it may be, engages a reader's attention. Oneactually wants to know whether the young Count is ever going to receiveconsolation for his sorrows and inflict justice on his basely ungratefulpensioner. And when, finally, all turns out as it should, one is amazedto find how many of the people in the book have helped towards thedesigned conclusion. Not all of them, indeed, nor all of the adventures,are indispensable, but it is manifest at the end that much, which, forthe time, most readers think irrelevant--such as Don Diego's history--is,after all, essential.

  It has already been said that in Count Fathom Smollett appears to someextent as a romanticist, and this is another fact which lends interest tothe book. That he had a powerful imagination is not a surprise. Any oneversed in Smollett has already seen it in the remarkable situations whichhe has put before us in his earlier works. These do not indicate,however, that Smollett possessed the imagination which could exciteromantic interest; for in Roderick Random and in Peregrine Pickle, thewonderful situations serve chiefly to amuse. In Fathom, however, thereare some designed to excite horror; and one, at least, is eminentlysuccessful. The hero's night in the wood between Bar-le-duc and Chalonswas no doubt more blood-curdling to our eighteenth-century ancestors thanit is to us, who have become acquainted with scores of similar situationsin the small number of exciting romances which belong to literature, andin the greater number which do not. Still, even to-day, a reader, withhis taste jaded by trashy novels, will be conscious of Smollett's power,and of several thrills, likewise, as he reads about Fathom's experiencein the loft in which the beldame locks him to pass the night.

  This situation is melodramatic rather than romantic, as the word is usedtechnically in application to eighteenth and nineteenth-centuryliterature. There is no little in Fathom, however, which is genuinelyromantic in the latter sense. Such is the imprisonment of the Countes
sin the castle-tower, whence she waves her handkerchief to the youngCount, her son and would-be rescuer. And especially so is the scene inthe church, when Renaldo (the very name is romantic) visits at midnightthe supposed grave of his lady-love. While he was waiting for the sextonto open the door, his "soul . . . was wound up to the highest pitch ofenthusiastic sorrow. The uncommon darkness, . . . the solemn silence,and lonely situation of the place, conspired with the occasion of hiscoming, and the dismal images of his fancy, to produce a real rapture ofgloomy expectation, which the whole world could not have persuaded him todisappoint. The clock struck twelve, the owl screeched from the ruinedbattlement, the door was opened by the sexton, who, by the light of aglimmering taper, conducted the despairing lover to a dreary aisle, andstamped upon the ground with his foot, saying, 'Here the young lady liesinterred.'"

  We have here such an amount of the usual romantic machinery of the"grave-yard" school of poets--that school of which Professor W. L. Phelpscalls Young, in his Night Thoughts, the most "conspicuous exemplar"--thatone is at first inclined to think Smollett poking fun at it. Thecontext, however, seems to prove that he was perfectly serious. It isinteresting, then, as well as surprising, to find traces of the romanticspirit in his fiction over ten years before Walpole's Castle of Otranto.It is also interesting to find so much melodramatic feeling in him,because it makes stronger the connection between him and hisnineteenth-century disciple, Dickens.

  From all that I have said, it must not be thought that the usual Smollettis always, or almost always, absent from Count Fathom. I have spoken ofthe dedication and of the opening chapters as what we might expect fromhis pen. There are, besides, true Smollett strokes in the scenes in theprison from which Melvil rescues Fathom, and there is a good deal of thesatirical Smollett fun in the description of Fathom's ups and downs,first as the petted beau, and then as the fashionable doctor. Inchronicling the latter meteoric career, Smollett had already observed thepeculiarity of his countrymen which Thackeray was fond of harping on inthe next century--"the maxim which universally prevails among the Englishpeople . . . to overlook, . . . on their return to the metropolis,all the connexions they may have chanced to acquire during theirresidence at any of the medical wells. And this social disposition isso scrupulously maintained, that two persons who live in the mostintimate correspondence at Bath or Tunbridge, shall, in four-and-twentyhours . . . meet in St. James's Park, without betraying the leasttoken of recognition." And good, too, is the way in which, as Dr. Fathomgoes rapidly down the social hill, he makes excuses for his decliningsplendour. His chariot was overturned "with a hideous crash" at suchdanger to himself, "that he did not believe he should ever hazard himselfagain in any sort of wheel carriage." He turned off his men for maids,because "men servants are generally impudent, lazy, debauched, ordishonest." To avoid the din of the street, he shifted his lodgings intoa quiet, obscure court. And so forth and so on, in the true Smollettvein.

  But, after all, such of the old sparks are struck only occasionally.Apart from its plot, which not a few nineteenth-century writers ofdetective-stories might have improved, The Adventures of Ferdinand CountFathom is less interesting for itself than any other piece of fictionfrom Smollett's pen. For a student of Smollett, however, it is highlyinteresting as showing the author's romantic, melodramatic tendencies,and the growth of his constructive technique.

  G. H. MAYNADIER

  THE ADVENTURES OF FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM