The Adventures of Roderick Random

Fellow Labourer Describes Upper Dining Guests

In the coffee-room, Mr. Medlar eagerly satisfies the narrator’s curiosity about the quality of the upper-dining guests, revealing to the narrator’s astonishment that the supposed prince is a theatre dancer and the ambassador a mere opera fiddler. The “doctor,” he explains, is a Roman Catholic priest who impersonates an officer or, more often, a physician, wheedling weak-minded people into converting from their religion; though he has repeatedly faced justice, his craftiness has limited his punishments to short imprisonments. The “general,” Medlar continues, owes his rank to influence rather than ability; now struck off the list with only a pension, he has become a malcontent railing indiscreetly against the government—spared only by his insignificance. His service is slight, yet he claims a role in every great action since the Revolution, matching every general’s story with one of his own full of gross blunders, and name-dropping Caesar, Pompey, and Alexander endlessly. Medlar notes the only way to silence him is to seize on some incongruity or ask the meaning of a difficult term, citing how the general was once silenced by a question about an “epaulement.”

Old Gentleman Questions Narrator on Travel and Jewels

Having satisfied the narrator’s curiosity, Mr. Medlar begins questioning him in turn, receiving only ambiguous answers. Assuming the narrator has travelled and that such travel is expensive, Medlar then notices a stone in his ring, mistakes it for a French composition resembling a diamond, and is corrected—somewhat sharply—when the narrator insists it is a genuine brilliant of immense value. To further impress Medlar, the narrator displays a watch with a gold chain, three gold-mounted seals, and an opal ring, claiming they cost a mere sixty or seventy guineas. Medlar, increasingly astonished, attempts to guess the narrator’s nationality—Englishman, Irishman, colonist—but each guess is denied. Exasperated, Medlar finally begs the narrator to disclose his situation and, by way of encouragement, reveals his own: a single man living comfortably on a considerable annuity, with no estate to leave and no troublesome relations, who treats the world as made for him and resolves to enjoy it while he can.

Doctor Tells Absurd Oyster Check Story for Medlar

While Medlar is still talking, a young man in black velvet and an enormous tie-wig enters, his air a confused jumble of levity and affected solemnity. He dances over to their table, makes grimaces, addresses Medlar by name, and asks if they are engaged on business, requesting permission to whisper. When Medlar curtly refuses whispering, the “doctor” profusely apologizes to the narrator and proceeds aloud. After ceremonial hems, the doctor recounts that he has just dined with Lady Flareit, naming several fashionable guests (Lady Stately, Lady Larum, Mrs. Dainty, Miss Biddy Giggler, Lord Straddle, Sir John Shrug, Master Billy Chatter) and emphasizing his exhaustion after visiting fifteen patients. He then explains that Mr. Chatter, alarmed at not having seen Medlar for nineteen and a half hours, fears he must be very ill from having eaten a vast quantity of raw oysters the previous night, and has sent the doctor to check on him. Medlar, expecting something momentous, erupts angrily at the triviality, curses the oysters, and storms off. The doctor, protesting his amazement, follows Medlar to the bar and whispers so loudly that the narrator overhears him asking who the gentleman is; Medlar, irritated, blames the intrusion for not having learned earlier and departs in disappointment.

Doctor Rambles About Coffee and Drink Etymology

Returning to the narrator’s table with a thousand pardons, the doctor explains that what he had communicated to Medlar was an affair of the last importance admitting no delay, then calls for coffee and launches into its praises. He claims the berry is beneficial in cold phlegmatic constitutions like his own, drying superfluous moisture and bracing the nerves, and asserts it was utterly unknown to the ancients, deriving its name from an Arabian word evident from the sound. He then shifts to a learned disquisition on the verb “drink,” arguing it is improperly applied to coffee, since people sip rather than drink it; he maintains the true meaning is either to quench thirst or to debauch oneself with wine. He distinguishes the Latin bibere and potare and the Greek pinein and poteein, conjecturing that potare and poteein signify vast quantities (a river being potamos), while bibere and pinein denote moderate use, the latter supported by “bibulous” applied to pores that can imbibe only small amounts of surrounding moisture.