"The Muses O'lio ": Satire, Food, and Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

"The Muses O'Uo": Satire, Food, and Tobias Smollett's The Expedition ofHumphry Clinker Nicholas D. Smith The multiple references to food in TL·Expedition ofHumphry Clinker are integral to Tobias Smollett's satiric recipe, and they relate both to the culinary etymologies of classical satura (and thence to satire's traditional preoccupation wiüi food) and to die culinary politics of eighteenth-century England, which centred on the opposition between English and French cookery styles. Classical scholarship has long acknowledged the symbolic importance offood in Roman satire.1 Studies ofthe eighteenth-century English novel, however, have left the topic offood and its connection with saturalargely unexplored (in spite of Ronald Paulson's classic study of satire and the novel), although outside the generic context ??satura, some critics have shown interest in food and its functions.2 Smollettdoes notconfine himselfexclusively 1 See Nicola A. Hudson, "Food in Roman Satire," Satire and Society in Ancient Rome, ed. S.H. Braund, Exeter Studies in History No. 23 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1989), pp. 69-87, and Emily Cowers, The Loaded Table: Representations ofFood in Roman Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Aversion of the following article was read at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference (January 2003), at St Hugh's College, Oxford. I am grateful to Dr Tom Keymer and the two anonymous referees of Eighteenth-Century Fiction for their helpful comments and suggestions. 2 Margaret Anne Doody, Vie True Story of tlte Novel (London: Fontana Press, 1998), pp. 420-31, Charlotte Sussman, "Lismahago's Captivity: Transculturation in Humphry Clinker," Engtish Literary History61:3 (1994), 597-618, and Peter Sabor, "Feasting and Fasting: Nourishment in the Novels ofSamuel Richardson," Eigliteentli-Century Fiction 14:2 (2002), EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 16, Number 3, April 2004 402 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION to classical approaches to eating/writing satire. His literary and metaphorical treatment offood may be indebted to the Roman satirists' exploitation ofthe food-satire conjunction, but he adds extra spice for his eighteenth-century reader by setting his dietetic criticism in a contemporary cultural context. Historians of food have shown how culinary styles and practices were important in shaping and promoting asense ofnational identity.3Byadoptingsatire's traditional xenophobic (in this case "Antigallican") pose, Humphry Clinker enters into the culinary debate over "substantial" English fare versus French haute cuisine. Within these two intersecting literary and cultural approaches to food, I propose to situate my reading ofHumphry Clinkerand in so doing shed further light on the importance of satura to the development of the eighteenth-century novel by demonstrating that when Paulson describes saturaas "a form with ... even (itis impossible not to conclude) a preoccupation with food as symbol," the very prominence offood in satire is not nearly as extraordinary as Paulson's adverbial "even" would suggest.4 The culinary origins of classical satura exerted an important and enduring influence over the theory and practice of satire. In his Discourse concerning tL· Original and Progress of Satire, John Dryden surveys the four possible etymologies of satura: the first, which he rejects, is that satire takes its name from saturi, satyrs ("the Lechery of ... Fauns"); the second, that it derives from satura, "a Roman word, which signifies Full, and Abundant; and full also ofVariety"—satura lanx, the third explanation is related to the second, that satura designates "a kind of OIL·, or hotch-potch, made of several sorts of Meats"; and the fourth, that satura is named after legal bills {"Leges Satura") comprising "several Heads and Titles."5 Three of these 141-58. For a study offood inJane Austen's novels, see Maggie Lane,JaneAusten and Food (London: Hambledon Press, 1995). 3 See Stephen Mennell, AU Manners ofFood: Eating and Taste in England and Francefrom tlte Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), chaps. 4-5, and Gilly Lehmann, "Politics in the Kitchen," Eigliteenth-Century Li/i>23:2 (1999), 71-83. 4 Ronald Paulson, Satire and tlte Novel in Eigliteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 21. 5 John Dryden, Discourse concerningtlte Original and Progress ofSatire (1693), The Works ofJohn Dryden, vol. 4: Poems 1693-1696, ed. A.B. Christmas, William Frost, and Vinton A. Dearing (Berkeley...

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