8 - Prodigal Returns

Summary

The Author begs leave to acknowledge to his Subscribers, that they have a further claim upon him for Two Volumes more than these delivered to them now …

Laurence Sterne, loose leaf apology inserted into A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768)

The doldrums which initially plagued Smeathman in the West Indies returned with him to England. In his sister-in-law's words, he felt ‘his disappointments with their utmost poignancy’. As his ship arrived at Deal in August 1779, the Irishman Owen might have detected in the tall, thin Yorkshireman the dismal spectre of ‘the Mallato just come from Guinea’. The prize for eradicating the cane ants had proved illusory, and now Smeathman had to face his aggrieved subscribers. He had ignored the requests of Drury and Fothergill to return immediately to England, and his final consignment satisfied no one, being too large for some and too little too late for others. He had offended Fothergill by sending plants to Sweden which ought to have been sent to London. He had written an angry letter to Banks, thus offending one of his most powerful sponsors. And his growing suspicion that Drury doubted his integrity was probably now a reality. A few years earlier, when he first charged Drury with distrusting him, the latter had joked, ‘would I go into such debt for someone I thought to be a Villain?’ By 1777, pursued by one of Smeathman's creditors for £100, Drury refused to pay, arguing that only an ‘egregious Blockhead’ would have stood surety for all the flycatcher's debts. In self-defence against all the charges brought against him, Smeathman felt that his sponsors had no understanding of his physical and mental sufferings in West Africa, and that this incomprehension had led to a drastic undervaluing of his labours on their behalf.

For someone returning home to repair his fortunes, the country's economy in late 1779 was inauspicious. High Government borrowing for the war with America had created a liquidity crisis, and overseas trade was disrupted and contracting. As soon as his ship arrived in the Downs, Smeathman discharged some obligations. In particular he wrote to Banks to inform him that he had a ‘healthy and vigorous’ tree fern in a tub and a variety of other plants, in better condition than those sent already (he claimed), plus all his drawings, papers, and other materials which he hoped Banks would buy.