"We Are All Going to the Hot Well"
I have come back home to T******: to socialise with friends and family, stockpile on food and revise for my exams. I've been taking lots of notes on Shakespeare's problem and history plays, and eighteenth century novels - including but not limited to Tobias Smollett's, Humphry Clinker.
Its a travel narrative, following Matt Bramble and his party of nephews, nieces, siblings and servants around the British mainland, and is incredibly funny. I'm not usually the type to laugh aloud at books, but this one has had me sniggering and chuckling like nobodies business, which is more than I usually do. The story is related through letters from several different members of the group and the characters are expertly rendered through their writing. This variety of perspectives means that no single situation is presented the same way: Matt responds very differently to his nephew Jery at the fashionable soirees of London's social scene and the drinking water phenomenons of Bath, finding the intermingling of social stratas horrifying and the pomp devoid of substance. This method of telling the story does mean that in some instances you end up having to go over the same scene several times, which can become tedious, but not very often thankfully.
Winifred Jenkins has to be my favourite of the correspondents. She makes up for her crude grasp of the written language with some very inventive approximations of what she hears, and sends up many of the 'cultivated' continental references from the others in the process. For me, its her earthy undertones that make her so entertaining, and after a lengthy description of a country seat from Matt, the arrival of one of her letters is always welcome:
"- O, Mary Jones! Mary Jones! I have had trials and trembulation. God help me! I have been a vixen and a griffin these many days - Sattin has had power to temp me in the shape of Van Ditton, the young 'squire's wally de shamble (valet de chambre); but by God's grease he did not purvail - I thoft as how, there was no arm in going to a play at Newcastle, with my hair dressed in the Parish fashion; and as for the trifle of paint, he said as how my complexion wanted rouch, and so I let him put it on with a little Spanish owl (Spanish wool); but a mischievous mob of colliers, and such promiscous ribble rabble, that could bare no smut but their own, attacked us in the street, and called me hoar and painted Issabel, and splashed my close"
I feel an affection for Win because, of all the characters, she is the most unassuming and ungaurded in her letters. Mary Jones, as Win's closest friend, is privy to Win's concerns and delights at the encounters of the family on their travels - and so are we as a passive audience. The higher ranking Jery and Liddy treat the many sights that they write about in their letters with a cool detatchment: its all a bit passe and rustic for the urbane Jery, and the nervous Liddy is more concerned about the love pursuit of the sartorial chameleon, 'Wilson'. Mary, however, does not treat the trip with such a blinkered attitude: she combines an astute and unpretentious outlook with an enthusiasm that makes her the most familiar and charming of correspondents.
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If the 18th century doesn't do it for you, try the 80s.
Its a travel narrative, following Matt Bramble and his party of nephews, nieces, siblings and servants around the British mainland, and is incredibly funny. I'm not usually the type to laugh aloud at books, but this one has had me sniggering and chuckling like nobodies business, which is more than I usually do. The story is related through letters from several different members of the group and the characters are expertly rendered through their writing. This variety of perspectives means that no single situation is presented the same way: Matt responds very differently to his nephew Jery at the fashionable soirees of London's social scene and the drinking water phenomenons of Bath, finding the intermingling of social stratas horrifying and the pomp devoid of substance. This method of telling the story does mean that in some instances you end up having to go over the same scene several times, which can become tedious, but not very often thankfully.
Winifred Jenkins has to be my favourite of the correspondents. She makes up for her crude grasp of the written language with some very inventive approximations of what she hears, and sends up many of the 'cultivated' continental references from the others in the process. For me, its her earthy undertones that make her so entertaining, and after a lengthy description of a country seat from Matt, the arrival of one of her letters is always welcome:
"- O, Mary Jones! Mary Jones! I have had trials and trembulation. God help me! I have been a vixen and a griffin these many days - Sattin has had power to temp me in the shape of Van Ditton, the young 'squire's wally de shamble (valet de chambre); but by God's grease he did not purvail - I thoft as how, there was no arm in going to a play at Newcastle, with my hair dressed in the Parish fashion; and as for the trifle of paint, he said as how my complexion wanted rouch, and so I let him put it on with a little Spanish owl (Spanish wool); but a mischievous mob of colliers, and such promiscous ribble rabble, that could bare no smut but their own, attacked us in the street, and called me hoar and painted Issabel, and splashed my close"
I feel an affection for Win because, of all the characters, she is the most unassuming and ungaurded in her letters. Mary Jones, as Win's closest friend, is privy to Win's concerns and delights at the encounters of the family on their travels - and so are we as a passive audience. The higher ranking Jery and Liddy treat the many sights that they write about in their letters with a cool detatchment: its all a bit passe and rustic for the urbane Jery, and the nervous Liddy is more concerned about the love pursuit of the sartorial chameleon, 'Wilson'. Mary, however, does not treat the trip with such a blinkered attitude: she combines an astute and unpretentious outlook with an enthusiasm that makes her the most familiar and charming of correspondents.
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If the 18th century doesn't do it for you, try the 80s.
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