The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

292 TOBIAS SMOLLETT
by a custom-house cutter; so that they lost the whole cargo, which
had cost them above eight hundred pounds.
It now appeared, that her travels had produced no effect upon
her, but that of making her more expensive and fantastic than ever:
—She affected to lead the fashion, not only in point of female dress,
but in every article of taste and connoisseurship. She made a draw-
ing of the new façade to the house in the country; she pulled up
the trees, and pulled down the walls of the garden, so as to let in
the easterly wind, which Mr. Baynard’s ancestors had been at
great pains to exclude. To shew her taste in laying out ground, she
seized into her own hand a farm of two hundred acres, about a mile
from the house, which she parcelled out into walks and shrub-
beries, having a great bason in the middle, into which she poured
a whole stream that turned two mills, and afforded the best trout
in the country. The bottom of the bason, however, was so ill
secured, that it would not hold the water, which strained through
the earth, and made a bog of the whole plantation: in a word, the
ground which formerly paid him one hundred and fifty pounds
a year, now cost him two hundred pounds a year to keep it in
tolerable order, over and above the first expence of trees, shrubs,
flowers, turf, and gravel. There was not an inch of garden-ground
left about the house, nor a tree that produced fruit of any kind;
nor did he raise a truss of hay, or a bushel of oats for his horses, nor
had he a single cow to afford milk for his tea; far less did he ever
dream of feeding his own mutton, pigs, and poultry: every article
of house-keeping, even the most inconsiderable, was brought from
the next market town, at the distance of five miles, and thither they
sent a courier every morning to fetch hot rolls for breakfast. In
short, Baynard fairly owned that he spent double his income, and
that in a few years he should be obliged to sell his estate for the
payment of his creditors. He said his wife had such delicate nerves,
and such imbecillity of spirit, that she could neither bear remon-
strance, be it ever so gentle, nor practise any scheme of retrench-
ment, even if she perceived the necessity of such a measure. He
had therefore ceased struggling against the stream, and endea-
voured to reconcile himself to ruin, by reflecting that his child at
least, would inherit his mother’s fortune, which was secured to him
by the contract of marriage.
The detail which he gave me of his affairs, filled me at once with
grief and indignation. I inveighed bitterly against the indiscretion