The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

342 TOBIAS SMOLLETT
clothes, laces, and linen of her deceased mistress, to the value of
five hundred pounds, at a moderate computation.
The next step I took was to disband that legion of super-
numerary domestics, who had preyed so long upon the vitals of
my friend: a parcel of idle drones, so intolerably insolent, that they
even treated their own master with the most contemptuous neglect.
They had been generally hired by his wife, according to the recom-
mendation of her woman, and these were the only patrons to whom
they paid the least deference. I had therefore uncommon satis-
faction in clearing the house of those vermin. The woman of the
deceased, and a chambermaid, a valet de chambre, a butler, a
French cook, a master gardener, two footmen, and a coachman, I
paid off, and turned out of the house immediately, paying to each
a month’s wages in lieu of warning. Those whom I retained, con-
sisted of a female cook, who had been assistant to the Frenchman,
a house maid, an old lacquey, a postilion, and under-gardener.
Thus I removed at once a huge mountain of expence and care from
the shoulders of my friend, who could hardly believe the evidence
of his own senses, when he found himself so suddenly and so
effectually relieved. His heart, however, was still subject to vibra-
tions of tenderness, which returned at certain intervals, extorting
sighs, and tears, and exclamations of grief and impatience: but
these fits grew every day less violent and less frequent, ’till at length
his reason obtained a complete victory over the infirmities of his
nature.
Upon an accurate inquiry into the state of his affairs, I find his
debts amount to twenty thousand pounds, for eighteen thousand
pounds of which sum his estate is mortgaged; and as he pays five
per cent. interest, and some of his farms are unoccupied, he does
not receive above two hundred pounds a year clear from his lands,
over and above the interest of his wife’s fortune, which produced
eight hundred pounds annually. For lightening this heavy burthen,
I devised the following expedient.—His wife’s jewels, together with
his superfluous plate and furniture in both houses, his horses and
carriages, which are already advertised to be sold by auction, will,
according to the estimate, produce two thousand five hundred
pounds in ready money, with which the debt will be immediately
reduced to eighteen thousand pounds—I have undertaken to find
him ten thousand pounds at four per cent. by which means he will
save one hundred a-year in the article of interest, and perhaps we