The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom E-Book

Tobias Smollett

• Herausgeber: Tobias Smollett
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom is a novel by Tobias Smollett first published in 1753. It was Smollett's third novel and met with less success than his two previous more picaresque tales. The central character is a villainous dandy who cheats, swindles and philanders his way across Europe and England with little concern for the law or the welfare of others. The son of an equally disreputable mother, Smollett himself comments that "Fathom justifies the proverb, 'What's bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh". Sir Walter Scott commented that the novel paints a "complete picture of human depravity".The main character reappears as a minor character in Smollet's later novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. The novel's elements of terror and the supernatural have caused some historians of English literature to describe it as anticipating the themes of the Gothic novel.

Leseprobe

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom

by

Tobias Smollett

Preface

Some sage observations that naturally introduce our important history.

A superficial view of our hero’s infancy.

He is initiated in a military life, and has the good fortune to acquire a generous patron.

His mother’s prowess and death; together with some instances of his own sagacity.

A brief detail of his education.

He meditates schemes of importance.

Engages in partnership with a female associate, in order to put his talents in action.

Their first attempt; with a digression which some readers may think impertinent.

The confederates change their battery, and achieve a remarkable adventure.

They proceed to levy contributions with great success, until our hero sets out with the young

count for Vienna, where he enters into league with another adventurer.

Fathom makes various efforts in the world of gallantry.

He effects a lodgment in the house of a rich jeweller.

He is exposed to a most perilous incident in the course of his intrigue with the daughter.

He is reduced to a dreadful dilemma, in consequence of an assignation with the wife.

But at length succeeds in his attempt upon both.

His success begets a blind security, by which he is once again well-nigh entrapped in his

Dulcinea’s apartment.

The step-Dame’s suspicions being awakened, she lays a snare for our adventurer, from which he is delivered by the interposition of his good genius.

Our hero departs from Vienna, and quits the domain of Venus for the rough field of Mars.

He puts himself under the guidance of his associate, and stumbles upon the French camp, where he finishes his military career.

He prepares a stratagem but finds himself countermined — proceeds on his journey, and is

overtaken by a terrible tempest.

He falls upon Scylla, seeking to avoid Charybdis.

He arrives at Paris, and is pleased with his reception.

Acquits himself with address in a nocturnal riot.

He overlooks the advances of his friends, and smarts severely for his neglect.

He bears his fate like a philosopher; and contracts acquaintance with a very remarkable

personage.

The history of the noble Castilian.

A flagrant instance of Fathom’s virtue, in the manner of his retreat to England.

Some account of his fellow-travellers.

Another providential deliverance from the effects of the smuggler’s ingenious conjecture.

The singular manner of Fathom’s attack and triumph over the virtue of the fair Elenor.

He by accident encounters his old friend, with whom he holds a conference, and renews a

treaty.

He appears in the great world with universal applause and admiration.

He attracts the envy and ill offices of the minor knights of his own order, over whom he obtainsa complete victory.

He performs another exploit, that conveys a true idea of his gratitude and honour.

He repairs to bristol spring, where he reigns paramount during the whole season.

He is smitten with the charms of a female adventurer, whose allurements subject him to a new vicissitude of fortune.

Fresh cause for exerting his equanimity and fortitude.

The biter is bit.

Our adventurer is made acquainted with a new scene of life.

He contemplates majesty and its satellites in eclipse.

One quarrel is compromised, and another decided by unusual arms.

An unexpected rencontre, and a happy revolution in the affairs of our adventurer.

Fathom justifies the proverb, “What’s bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh.”

Anecdotes of poverty, and experiments for the benefit of those whom it may concern.

Renaldo’s distress deepens, and Fathom’s plot thickens.

Our adventurer becomes absolute in his power over the passions of his friend, and effects one half of his aim.

The art of borrowing further explained, and an account of a strange phenomenon.

Count Fathom unmasks his battery; is repulsed; and varies his operations without effect.

Monimia’s honour is protected by the interposition of heaven.

Fathom shifts the scene, and appears in a new character.

Triumphs over a medical rival.

Repairs to the metropolis, and enrols himself among the sons of paean.

53 .Acquires employment in consequence of a lucky miscarriage.

54. His eclipse, and gradual declination.

55. After divers unsuccessful efforts, he has recourse to the matrimonial noose.

56. In which his fortune is effectually strangled.

57. Fathom being safely housed, the reader is entertained with a retrospect.

58. Renaldo abridges the proceedings at law, and approves himself the son of his father.

59. He is the messenger of happiness to his sister, who removes the film which had long

Obstructedhis penetration, with regard to Count Fathom.

60. He recompenses the attachment of his friend; and receives a letter that reduces him to the

vergeof death and distraction.

61. Renaldo meets with a living monument of justice, and encounters a personage of some

note in these memoirs.

62. His return to England, and midnight pilgrimage to Monimia’s tomb.

63. He renews the rites of sorrow, and is entranced.

64. The mystery unfolded — another recognition, which, it is to be hoped, the reader could

not foresee.

65. A retrospective link, necessary for the concatenation of these memoirs.

66. The history draws near a period.

67. The longest and the last.

Preface

To Doctor

You and I, my good friend, have often deliberated on the difficulty of writing such a dedication as might gratify the self-complacency of a patron, without exposing the author to the ridicule or censure of the public; and I think we generally agreed that the task was altogether impracticable. — Indeed, this was one of the few subjects on which we have always thought in the same manner. For, notwithstanding that deference and regard which we mutually pay to each other, certain it is, we have often differed, according to the predominancy of those different passions, which frequently warp the opinion, and perplex the understanding of the most judicious.

In dedication, as in poetry, there is no medium; for, if any one of the human virtues be omitted in the enumeration of the patron’s good qualities, the whole address is construed into an affront, and the writer has the mortification to find his praise prostituted to very little purpose.

On the other hand, should he yield to the transports of gratitude or affection, which is always apt to exaggerate, and produce no more than the genuine effusions of his heart, the world will make no allowance for the warmth of his passion, but ascribe the praise he bestows to interested views and sordid adulation.

Sometimes too, dazzled by the tinsel of a character which he has no opportunity to investigate, he pours forth the homage of his admiration upon some false Maecenas, whose future conduct gives the lie to his eulogium, and involves him in shame and confusion of face. Such was the fate of a late ingenious author [the Author of the “Seasons”], who was so often put to the blush for the undeserved incense he had offered in the heat of an enthusiastic disposition, misled by popular applause, that he had resolved to retract, in his last will, all the encomiums which he had thus prematurely bestowed, and stigmatise the unworthy by name — a laudable scheme of poetical justice, the execution of which was fatally prevented by untimely death.