I confess that I'm not sure what I can say about “The Adventures Of Peregrine Pickle” that will distinguish it from other English novels of the period, including some other ones by Tobias George Smollett. Many of them start with, or close to, the birth of the title character. They tell us about events in that character's youth and education. Much of the time, the character either causes trouble, gets into trouble, or escapes trouble. Eventually, he earns the love of a young woman (that he's been in love with for ages, of course) and marries her, and the novel comes to a close.
Sure enough, that's how things go here for Peregrine Pickle. So what, if anything, is special about this piece? Well, let's see.
For one thing, young Peregrine is not always a very pleasant person. To be sure, he has some reason for being a jerk; his mother takes a violent dislike to him very quickly, which only gets worse when she gives birth to another baby boy. His father is too passive to do anything about this. So Peregrine gets sent off to live with a relative called the Commodore who is in fact a retired seaman and doesn't much care for children or for marriage. Fortunately, he takes a liking to Peregrine, but given the boy's early background it's no wonder that he grows up feeling defensive.
This defensiveness expresses itself frequently in his tendency to lie to people about what others have said about them, leading to various kinds of blistering arguments that Peregrine can laugh at. It helps a bit that the people he's laughing at are almost exclusively a bunch of haughty, vain types, but that doesn't make Peregrine any more pleasant. He's fun to read about, but I can't imagine he'd be much fun to hang around with. For instance, if you were in jail for playing a practical joke at this kid's encouragement, and the kid came and told you that you were about to be executed, and then you learned that you were instead about to be released and that the kid knew it all the time, would you be laughing? Me either.
As Peregrine travels through England, and occasionally through France, additional episodes pass by, as is typical in novels like this – he gains and loses money, love, amusements. He strikes us as vain and sometimes self-absorbed, but mostly intelligent and generous. I thought he might amount to a valuable person if he could get his head screwed on straight.
Then, just as we begin to worry that he'll never get a grip on himself, he loses most of his money and reputation through no fault of his own, and goes to debtor's prison. His opinion of himself takes a serious dive, though he manages to maintain a fairly cheerful attitude where most people would despair.
This is where the novel departs from the typical structure of its time. In most such stories, a virtuous main character goes through a number of serious tests, maintains his virtue, gains a little maturity. Because he's virtuous, he gets the reward his virtue deserves, but he doesn't really change all that much. Peregrine Pickle, on the other hand, actually learns something.
By today's standards, “Peregrine Pickle” is overly long and repetitive, but still entertaining, and as the hero learns and matures, the novel takes shape and pays off. In that way, it points into the future.
Benshlomo says, You never know when something will turn out to be a step forward.
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