Travels Through France and Italy

by Tobias Smollett, Frank Felsenstein (Editor)

Many pens have been burnished this year of grace for the purpose of celebrating with befitting honour the second centenary of the birth of Henry Fielding; but it is more than doubtful if, when the right date occurs in March 1921, anything like the same alacrity will be shown to commemorate one who was for many years, and by such judges as Scott, Hazlitt, and Charles Dickens, considered Fielding's complement and absolute co-equal (to say the least) in literary achievement. Smollett's fame, indeed, seems to have fallen upon an unprosperous curve. The coarseness of his fortunate rival is condoned, while his is condemned without appeal. Smollett's value is assessed without discrimination at that of his least worthy productions, and the historical value of his work as a prime modeller of all kinds of new literary material is overlooked. Consider for a moment as not wholly unworthy of attention his mere versatility as a man of letters.

Genres: Travel, Italy, France, Nonfiction, History, British Literature, Classics

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1766

About the author

Tobias George Smollett was born in Dalquhurn, now part of Renton, Scotland, to a prosperous family and educated at the University of Glasgow, where he studied to be a physician. Later he joined the British Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate. He was present at the disastrous battle against the Spanish at Cartagena in 1741.

He married a British woman named Anne " Nancy" Lascelles, in Jamaica, 1747,and settled in England. In London, as a writer, he became successful. The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), a picaresque novel - like most of his books - made him a well known author. It was followed by The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in 1751. But the failure of The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) caused financial difficulties for him. Publishing The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (1762) didn't help.

Writing poems, plays, travel and history books, essays, satires, doing translations and even becoming a literary critic and magazine editor, Dr. Smollett struggled all his short life against poverty, he traveled to Italy, to regain his health, but died of tuberculosis near Livorno, in 1771. Ironically finishing his masterpiece, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, a few months before his death.

Charles Dickens was a great admirer of Tobias Smollett, even visiting his grave site.

Reviews

[Henry Avila · Rating 5 out of 5]

The famous 18th century British author Tobias Smollett, (and infamous grouch) travels to France and Italy in 1763. Bringing along his wife Nancy and two young girls, of which Nancy was their guardian and a servant . What are the chances that disasters will ensue, for the party of five? Having recently lost their 15- year- old daughter Elizabeth and only child, the couple needs to leave England for a long trip. The writer and physician, also is hoping to recover his health in the warmer climate. The few friends he has left, encourage him to send letters describing Smollett's adventures. As soon as he crosses the English Channel and before everyone he discovers, has his hand out for some extra cash . Pay or they will make your vacation miserable, besides foreigners are hated everywhere. Nasty inns with "filth" all around you can imagine, bed bugs, floors that haven't been cleaned in years (not to mention rats), mosquitoes, gross meals no surprise left uneaten. It's no wonder that Tobias sleeps often on top of his luggage trunk, outside in the hall. In a memorable incident, Smollett threatens the owner of an inn with his cane when the landlord's bill is exorbitant .Coaches get stuck in the mud, wheels break in bad roads, many times there are none. Welcome to the 18th century...Well at least they see Rome, Florence, the leaning Tower of Pisa, Nice, Cannes on the Riviera before all the tourist arrive, Paris, a lot of old cathedrals and even older Roman ruins, the fabulous Sistine Chapel; of course Tobias Smollett didn't like Michelangelo's painting. A look at the past which is an accurate view by a man that lived it...but not happily. This writer demanded respect and didn't take kindly to those that lacked the wisdom to show it, at their peril was the result.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smollett's travel journal - written in epistolary form to an imaginary acquaintance back in England - is like a series of abominably bad Yelp reviews. One auberge after another is the dirtiest, most disgusting lodging he has ever seen or stayed at, until the next auberge, which is also the worst. The beds are covered with vermin, the sheets are filthy, he often sleeps atop boxes wrapped in his great coat. The food is barely edible, the natives grimy and lazy, the women pot-bellied. The chaises constantly break down on the stony or muddy roads. Blacksmiths have to be hired to forge new axles. There is the bane of traveling in this era, when horses must be changed at every post. If there are not fresh horses, the exhausted horses must be rested for hours. Smollett expends thousands of words on the relative costs of each manner of conveyance he is considering (chaise, calesse, cambiatura, felucca, etc.), as well as of lodgings and food. Every porter, innkeeper, coachman, boatman, guide, doctor, and vendor, he suspects, is trying to swindle him (given his naturally bilious temper, you can hardly blame them) and he would feel justified in caning them. For a man married to an heiress, he certainly is tightfisted.

He borrows heavily from the guide books of the day in order to describe landscape features, climate, or architecture, but his art criticism is his own, as when he recommends that Raphael's Transfiguration be cut in half and opines that Michelangelo's Pietà is displeasing. "The figure of Christ is as much emaciated, as if he had died of a consumption: besides, there is something indelicate, not to say indecent, in the attitude and design of a man's body, stark naked, lying upon the knees of a woman."

There are charming spellings and grammars. "Rain up to our ancles," mattrasses, cloaths, taylors, chymistry, crouded, intirely, aukward. "...it did not appear that [the waters] had ever been drank by the antients."

An interesting side note is that since Smollett was going to be sojourning at Nice for 18 months, he had brought a large number of books with him, which were detained in Boulogne in order to be sent to Amiens for examination to make sure there was nothing in them "contrary to the Religion or the state of France." The books included his twelve novels, Don Quixote in two languages, the works of Shakespear [sic] and Congreve, five foreign language dictionaries, 58 volumes of ancient and modern history, eight volumes of British history, 25 volumes of Voltaire, and more.

[Rob Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to the arts and “Frenchified Cuisine”, Smollett was undoubtedly a philistine, and he was also a curmudgeon par excellence. Fortunately, he was also a good writer with wit, an eye for detail, and dramatic incident too.

We join Tobias Smollett, already a famous novelist, and his wife and servants as they head off to Europe after their cruel bereavement of a beloved teenaged daughter, their only child, and when Smollett is really feeling the burn of criticism in the press, more political in its motivation than literary. He also suffers from rotten health and has had a warmer, dryer climate recommended for his pulmonary issues. The Smolletts sought escape, and solace.

However, travel in the 1760s was evidently an arduous business. If they sought relief, it could only come from the distraction offered by the constant travails of coach travel on muddy, deeply rutted roads, and then seeking even remotely decent accomodations; or from the frequent change of scene (occasionally, as in Lyon and Nimes, very diverting) until settling for some time in sunny Nice months later. The accounts of his travels make for great social history, especially if you’re an inveterate traveller and can ‘compare notes’ having been to some of the same places 250 years later. Choleric and constantly griping as he is, the travel conditions, available room and board (especially in the country), accidents to the coach requiring repair, or availability of post horses (often poached at the last minute by the local noblesse) requiring extended stays In filthy, verminous circumstances, sounds convincingly maddening and miserable. I can also believe that the aubergistes, postillions, and customs officials fleeced English travelers terribly, another recurring complaint (all foolish, spendthrift ‘Milords’ they thought, apparently). His account of Rome fascinated me, as I seem to have walked in his footsteps at the Capitoline Museum, the Vatican...seeing the same works...though he was left cold by the Pantheon, comparing it to a cock pit (!)
He’s a real classicist and augments his thoughts and experiences with citations from ancient Roman literature and histories, wherever he encounters antiquities in France and Italy.

Smollett’s health did indeed much improve in Nice, and remained reasonably hearty, but declined again on the return journey north to Britain. A last ditch effort to resettle in Livorno (known as Leghorn, then, to anglophones, and boasting a large English community) several years later proved too late, but we can be thankful he finished ‘Humphry Clinker’ before his death and burial there, in the famous Protestant cemetery. Like Dickens I might have sought out and put a flower on his grave when I was there in 2015; lord knows there’s not much left otherwise to see of old ‘Leghorn’, after its nearly complete obliteration by WWII bombings. It was once a destination and hub of expat British life in Italy, but sadly suffered like Milan and Dresden in that war.

Overall it’s a pretty visceral account of the highs and lows of a 1764-65 grand tour, and is recommended to fans of Smollett, and those with a love of the nitty-gritty of social history and/or great travel writing.

If you do want a copy, seek this edition out: from Marlboro Travel, an imprint of Northwestern University, it’s a cleanly edited reprint of a 1949 release, and as a bonus includes a clever, well-considered introduction written by Osbert Sitwell.

[Doubledf99.99 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smollett, has written a rich and highly detailed account of traveling in the mid-eighteenth century. He's very observant of everything going on around him, from the lands he's passing through, modes of transportation, farms, foods, lodgings, prices, art, architecture and the people, and he describes them all with a sharp wit, where nothing escapes his critical eye.

[Alice-Elizabeth (Prolific Reader Alice) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to be a little careful I feel whenever I sit down to review my thoughts on a Tobias Smollett book. Why so? Well, since I'm related to him. He is a distant ancestral connection through the maternal side of my family. Despite the hundreds of years between mine and his existence, I found lots of things we have in common. For starters, we both like visual aspects. Writing about travelling abroad back then is very different from now, since he didn't have a camera or social media. I liked the layout and how his travels were told in epistolary (letter form) rather than a straight-up essay. It was a little slow moving at times. I have a feeling that I will enjoy Tobias's fictional writings more since it was clear that he had a creative imagination for character names. I hope that I am not as harsh and brutal as Tobias sometimes was throughout XD

It is an interesting perspective on Europe during the 1760s.

[R.C.A. Nixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

As Henry wrote wonderfully above - Infamous grouch! Smollett provided the model of the wingeing tourist for the next 250 years. At times I wanted to belt the guy. Still, his descriptive powers are often brilliant, and his complaints fully merited. Since the places he visited often retain the very ruins and churches, castles and villas that he describes, it's possible to walk in his footsteps and mark the changes. See then, how quickly you acquire Smollett's grumpiness when every square you visit offers up the same dull vista of H&M and Zara chain stores.

[Huw Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smollett has to be seen as one of the xenophobic archetypal grumpy old men. At a time when well bred men and women were expected to travel through Europe to complete their education (which, let's face it, was pretty execrable). However, he travels throughout France and Italy with all his prejudices firmly to the fore. He is the Englishman Abroad, the Rosbif and everything that is awful about such people. He makes no attempt to integrate or comment favourably on what he sees, constantly comparing with Snodgrass upon Thames. This makes it very funny and ironic (situational). Little has changed as you watch drunken Chelsea supporters careening round Carrefour on trolleys. George Santayana was right!

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tobias Smollett traveled through France and Northern Italy from 1763-1765, and recounted his experiences in a series of letters. He is curmudgeonly, opinionated, and chauvinistic, but also enlightened and perceptive, and sardonically humorous, giving his account something of the flavor of the picaresque novel, of which he was a master. A good view of the life an English tourist on the Continent at the height of the Enlightenment.

[zunggg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a fan of Smollett's picaresques Roderick Random and Humphrey Clinker, and even more so of his Englishing of Don Quixote. I also adore his appearance as the cantankerous (Scottish) Brit abroad, "Smellfungus", in Sterne's Sentimental Journey, written in part as a satirical response to this, Smollett's vinegarish account of his two-year tour, an attempt to recover from the death at 15 of his only child and also to benefit his ailing respiratory system. And the dour Scot's antagonistic interactions with the innkeepers, postillions and landlords of the Continent, and his constant unfavourable comparisons of them with their British equivalents, are as much fun as I expected. The French come in for particular abuse, excoriated for their laziness, vanity and above all their shameless pursuit of other (i.e. British) men's wives. The Italians are slightly more agreeable, though sharing their Gallic cousins' absurd religious rituals. Smollett's philippic against duelling is a highlight, as is the incident where he upbraids at length a fellow traveler, believing the poor man to be the local postmaster responsible for assigning him less than adequate horses. There are certain observations on his own countrymen that hold as true today: their despair at not being provided milk for their tea; their self-sabotage through failure to adequately tip; their unaccountable habit of holding aloof each other when they meet by chance in a foreign town.

Smollett's account is dragged down by his fussy insistence on providing complete reports on the local economy and the price of everything everywhere he goes, as well as his meticulous detailing of the ancient ruins and monuments to be found in the South of France and every piece of art he views in Florence. But despite his acerbity and pedantry, he comes across as fundamentally honest and harsh but fair in his judgments. At the very least, dear Smellfungus can't be accused of "going native"!

[sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are certain mortifying views of human nature, which undoubtedly ought to be concealed as much as possible, in order to prevent giving offence: and nothing can be more absurd, than to plead the difference of custom in different countries, in defence of those usages which cannot fail giving disgust to the organs and senses of all mankind.

— i.

The truth is, I considered all the letters I have hitherto written on the subject of my travels, as written to your society in general, though they have been addressed to one individual of it; and if they contain any thing that can either amuse or inform, I desire that henceforth all I send may be freely perused by all the members.

So I’m going to try to make this review as short as possible. Tobias Smollett wrote letters documenting his travels through France and Italy (pretty self explanatory from the title). He begins travelling with his wife and a few others, rebounding after losing their child. If you want to read the rest of my review, click here.

—

I know no better way of estimating the strength, than by examining the face of the country, and observing the appearance of the common people, who constitute the bulk of every nation.

[Al Maki]

The price sticker on this book, bought in 2024, is dated 2010. So there’s not much chance it will be widely read these days. Who reads Tobias Smollett these days? I was curious because the people of Nice attribute the discovery of the Riviera as a tourist destination to this book. Having just returned from there I was curious about what it was like 260 yers ago. Much has changed with Nice having become part of France, the downfall of the aristos and the rise of mass tourism. But Smollett’s description of the old city still holds.
Smollett was an astute observer and clear writer so there is much to be learned about life in the years just before the fall of the ancien régime, before the consolidation of state power and before industrialization. To quote someone who experienced the same socio-economic conditions, for most people life was still ‘short, brutish and nasty’.
He appears to have been a cranky and belligerent man and his conflicts with the coachmen, ostlers and inn keepers of his time add enough spice to keep it interesting.

[Vincent Hernot · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very enjoyable first half, a much less interesting second.
This book if famous for having offended the French, the Italians, for having made a name of Smollett as your typical Englishman who likes nothing and nobody from abroad, who's always complaining...and there is much of that, yes - but then again, travel conditions in the 18th Cenruty were what they were, so causes for complaints were certainly numerous. He gets ripped off, what's new, but at the same time he looks around, pays attention, and even his dislikes inform us about what he saw and experienced.
The second half is made up of articles he wrote for publication, and often read like tourist guides about the south of France and Italy. But their very nature, these are much less lively, anecdotal and fresh, and so make a poor end to a brilliant first half.

[Undeleeb Din · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really funny and sarcastic first person account of a trip through France and Italy that details the misadventures of a grand tour during the 1700s. There are many vivid descriptions of the places visited en route but the real delight and humour is in the accounts of the travellers encounters with the locals, food and wine. It is particularly cruel to the French and Italians alike whom are ready to steal wives, daughters and money at an instant. Nothing is good as home in England in the characters eyes but there are also searing critiques of slavery, quack medicine, religious hypocrisy and poverty induced by the monarch. A fun read for 21st century travellers.

[Robert Poortinga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply a shocking account of travel circumstances during the 18th century, which is a better eye-witness account than many other dairies or letter books where most of these descriptions were omitted as paper was scarce, and these circumstances normal.

Travelling with guns, mules over meters of snow in the alps, fights and extortion along the way at postillions, a beast that died in a hotel-room (meaning an Englishman) in Italy…

He covered it all with exaggerations making it a never boring juicy read! Highly recommended.

[Eve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such drivel!!
I don't mind Smollett's letter, but the introduction was so boring and confusing. What was the purpose chapter title I to VII? I just couldn't bring myself to read those chapters. Often the sentences were the exact copy from the previous chapter, over and over again. It's off putting and wasting space.
My advice, just read the introduction, skip those I to VII and go directly to Smollett's letters.

[Christina Dudley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was skimming by 40%. Smollett suffers from tuberculosis and grumpiness as he travels from London to Nice, with stops in Boulogne and Paris (the highlights). He complains a LOT about everyone trying to swindle him.

Interesting to note that some of his complaints about French character seem to be upheld by the behavior of near contemporary characters in Dangerous Liaisons. This book has value in getting an idea of travel methods and costs.

[Magda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional. In addition to being an amusingly grouchy take on travel, it offers a first-hand view of France and Italy from a sociological perspective in the years 1763–65. The author, Tobias Smollett, also presents the Roman origins of southern France's many ruins and city names in a fascinating way. I was captivated.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very particular little book suitable for dipping in and out of rather than a 24 hour binge which is my normal method of reading. It’s broken up into themed chapters some of which I just skimmed but I found it to have delightful little turns of phrase that were so very cranky old man that it kept me coming back for more.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this. Smollet’s travels and the descriptions of places and all manner of things within that we are treated to via his letters are a delight. Funny, direct and informative, I found myself smiling as I was reading.

[Kathryn Baron]

Has Glossary. No notes.

[Kathryn Baron]

Keeping this one as well, because it has notes.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The practical purpose of Smollett's journey was to regain his health (and recover from the death of his only daughter Elizabeth) in the more temperate climate of the French Riviera. The majority of his time abroad was spent in Nice (where I believe he wrote most of the letters), and of which he has endless nasty things to say. More likely than not we are charmed by his perpetual complaining and faultfinding. As the introducer to the Broadway edition writes, no man has ever turned his spleen to such literary advantage. Of course, it is possible to overstate Smollett's resistance toward being impressed by what he saw. Occasionally, he makes concessions to some superiority of French manners or pastry making. (Mostly he heaps scorn on French foppery and Catholic superstition, contrasting it to English reserve and sound Protestantism.) He sees little to admire in the modern inhabitants of France and Italy, but is ready to praise the elegant simplicity of classical Roman architecture, as when he sees the Pont du Garde in Nimes. What's very apparent (and disappointing or amusing, depending on your pint of view) is how, in venturing into the continent, Smollett is ventures into all that is ideologically antithetical to English principles and morals. Sterne's Smellfungus is criticized for his inability to appreciate anything he encounters on his travels; and for his tendency to distort and discolor everything he sees with his own ceaseless misery. Before Sterne's damning parody, the Travels were adored by the English and resented bitterly by the French. No surprise. Ideologically, what the Travels does is perform national pride through its rhetorical resistance to all things Catholic, superstitious, "artificial"--Continental. As a document it participates in the longstanding rhetorical and historical rivalry between France and England.

[Ted Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Epistolary travelogue by eighteenth century surgeon, humorous novelist and outspoken art historian who was praised by Orwell and admired (see David Copperfield) and imitated by Dickens. Smollett was maligned by rivals in his lifetime and has taken more than two centuries to become appreciated .

[Helen McClory]

terrible, didn't finish. Read my partial review here: http://schietree.wordpress.com/2012/0...