The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I

LETTER XIII. FROM K. I. DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., OF THE GRANGE, BRUFF

My dear Tom, – Your reproaches are all just, but I really have not had courage to wield a pen these last three weeks, nor have I now patience to go back on the past. Perhaps when we meet – if ever that good time is to come round again – I may be able to tell you something of my final exit from Brussels; but now with the shame yet fresh, and the disgrace recent, I cannot find pluck for it.

Here we are at what they call the "Pavilion," having changed from the Hotel d'Angleterre yesterday. You must know, Tom, that this same city of Liège is the noisiest, most dinning, hammering, hissing, clanking, creaking, welding, smelting, and furnace-roaring town in Europe. Something like a hundred thousand tinkers are at work every day; and from an egg saucepan to a steam-boiler there is something to be hammered at by every capacity!

You would say that tumult like this might satisfy the most craving appetite for uproar; but not so: the Liégeois are regular gluttons for noise, and they insist upon having Verdi's new opera of "Nabuchodonosor" performed at their great theatre. Now, this same theatre is exactly in front of the Hôtel d'Angleterre, so that when, by dint of time, patience, and a partial dulness of the acoustic nerves, we were getting used to steam-factories and shot-foundries, down comes Verdi on us, with a din and clangor to which even the works of Seraing were like an Æolian harp! Now, of all the Pretenders of these days of especial humbug, with our "Long ranges," Morison's pills and Louis Napoleons, I don't think you could show me a greater charlatan than this same Verdi. I don't pretend to know a bit about music; I only knew two tunes all my life, "God save the King" and "Patrick's Day," and these only because we used to stand up and take off our hats to them in the Dublin theatre; but modulated, soft sounds have always had their effect on me, and I never heard a country girl singing as she beetled her linen beside a river's bank, or listened to the deep bay of an old fox-hound of a clear winter's morning, without feeling that there was something inside of me somewhere that responded to the note. But this fellow is all marrow-bones and cleavers! Trumpets, drums, big fiddles, and bassoons are the softest things he knows. I take it as a providential thing that his music cracks every voice after one season; for before long there will be nobody left in Europe to sing him, except it be the steam-whistle of an express-train!

But we live in strange times, Tom, that's the fact. The day was when our operas used to be taken from real life, – or what authors and poets thought was real life. We had the "Maid of the Mill," and the "Duenna," and "Love in a Village," and a score more, pleasant and amusing enough; and except that there was nothing wrong or incomprehensible in them, perhaps they might have stood their ground. There was the great failure, Tom; everybody could understand them, and nobody need be shocked. Now, the taste is, puzzle a great many, and shock every one!

A grand opera now must be from the Old Testament. Not even drums and kettle-drums would save you, if you haven't Moses or Melchisedek to sit down in white raiment, and see some twenty damsels, with petticoats about as long as a lace ruffle, capering and attitudinizing in a way that ought to make even a patriarch blush. Now, this is all wrong, Tom. The public might be amused without profanity, and even the most inveterate lover of dancing needn't ask David and Uriah for a pas de deux. And now, let me remark to you, that a great deal of that so-much-vaunted social liberty abroad is neither more nor less than this same latitude with respect to any and every thing. We at home were bred up to believe that good-breeding mainly consists in a certain reserve, – a cautious deference not alone for the feelings, but even the prejudices of others; that you have no right to offend your neighbor's sense of respect for fifty things that you held cheaply yourself. They reverse all this here. Everybody talks to you of yourself, ay, and of your wife and your mother, as frankly as though they were characters of the heathen mythology: they treat you like a third party in these discussions, and very likely it was a practice of this kind originally suggested the phrase of being "beside oneself."

You'll perhaps remark that my tone is very low and depressed, Tom; and I own to you I feel so. For a man that came abroad to enjoy himself, I am, to say the least, going a mighty strange way about it. The most rigid moralist couldn't accuse me of my epicurism, for I seem to be husbanding my Continental pleasures with a laudable degree of self-denial. Would you like a peep at us? Well, Mrs. D. is over there in No. 19, in bed with fourteen leeches on her temples, and a bottle as big as a black jack of camphor and sal-volatile beside her as a kind of table beverage; Mary Anne and Caroline are somewhere in the dim recesses of the same chamber, silent, if they 're not sobbing; James is under lock and key in No. 17, with Ollendorff's Method, and the Gospel of St. John in French; and here am I, trying to indite a few lines, with blast furnaces and brass instruments baying around me, and Paddy Byrne cleaning knives outside the door!

Mrs. D.'s attack is not serious, but it is very distressing. She has got the notion into her head that foreign apothecaries have a general pardon for poisoning, and so she requires that some of us should always take part of her physic before she touches it. The consequence is that I have been going through a course of treatment that would have pushed an elephant rather hard. I can stand some things pretty well; but what they call réfrigérants, Tom, play the devil with me! and I am driven to brandy and water to an extent that I can scarcely call myself quite sober at any time of the day. Were we at home in Dodsborough, there would be none of this; so that here, again, is another of the blessings of our foreign experiences! Ah, Tom! it's all a mistake from beginning to end. You would n't know your old friend if you saw him; and although they've padded me out, and squeezed me in, I 'm not the man I used to be!

You tell me that I'm not to expect any more money till November; but you forgot to tell me how I 'm to live without it. We compromised with the Jews for fifteen hundred.

Our "extraordinaries," as the officials would call them, amounted to three more; so that, taking all things into account, we have been living since April last at a trifle more than eleven thousand a year. It's a mercy that when they sell a man out by the Encumbered Estates Court, they ask no impertinent questions about how he contracted his debts. I 'd cut a sorry figure under such an examination.

We have begun the economy, Tom, and I hope that even you will be satisfied; for although this place is detestable to me, here I 'll stay, if my hearing can stand it, till winter. Mary Anne says we might as well be in Birmingham, and my reply is, I'm quite ready to go there! I own to you I have a kind of diabolical delight in seeing them all nonplussed. There are neither dukes nor marquises here, neither princesses nor ballet-dancers! The most reckless spendthrift could only ruin himself in steam-boilers, gun-barrels, and kitchen-rauges; there's nothing softer than cast-iron in the whole town.

Our rooms are in the third story. James and I dine at the public table. Our only piece of extravagance is the doctor that attends Mrs. D.; and if you saw him, you 'd scarcely give him the name of a luxury! I needn't say that there is very little pleasure in all this; indeed, for anything I see, I think we might be leading the same kind of life in Kilmainham Jail; and perhaps at last they 'll see this themselves, and consent to return home.

I go out for an hour's walk every day, but it does me little good. My usual stroll is to a shot factory, and back by a patent bolt and rivet establishment; but this avoids the theatre, for I own to you Nabucco, as they call him for shortness, shouts in a manner that makes me quite irritable.

James never leaves his room; he's studying hard at last; and although his health would be the better for a little exercise, I 'll just leave him to himself. It's right he should pay some penalty for his late conduct. As for the girls, Mary Anne is indignant with me, and only comes to say good-morning and good-night; and Cary, though she tries to look cheerful and happy, is evidently fretting in secret. Betty Cobb takes less trouble to repress her feelings, and goes howling about the hotel like a dog run over by the mail, and is always getting accompanied by strange and inquisitive travellers, who insist upon hearing her sorrows, and occasionally push their inquiries even as far as my room!

Paddy Byrne alone appears to have taken a philosophical view of his position, for he has been drunk ever since we arrived. He usually sleeps in the hall, on the stairs, or the lobbies; and although this saves the cost of a bedroom, the economy is counterbalanced by occasional little reprisals he takes, as stray gentlemen stumble over him with their bedroom candles. At such moments he smashes lamps and china ornaments, for which his wages will require a long sequestration to clear off. And now a word about home. Our English tenant, you tell me, is getting tired of Dodsborough; we guessed how it would be already. "He thinks the people lazy"! Ask him, did he ever try to cut turf, with two meals of wet potatoes per diem? "They are bigoted and superstitious too." How much better would they be if they knew all about Lord Rosse's telescope? "They won't give up their old barbarous ways." Is n't that the very boast of the Conservative party? Is n't that what Disraeli is preaching every day and every hour? – "Fall back upon this, – fall back upon that, – think of the spirit of your ancestors." Now they say, our ancestors yoked their horses by the tails to save a harness. It's rather hard that all the "progress," as they call it, must begin with the poor. It's a dead puzzle to me, Tom, to explain one thing. All the moralists, from the earliest ages, keep crying up humility, and telling you that true nobility of soul consists in self-denial and moderation, simple tastes, and so on; and yet, what is the great reproach they bring against Paddy? Is n't it that he is satisfied with the potato? There's the head and front of his offence. That he does n't want beef, like the Englishman, – nor soup and three courses, like "Mounseer" – nor sauerkraut and roast veal, like a German; "cups and cold water" being the food of a fellow that could thrash the whole three of them all round, and think it mighty good fun besides.

Poor Dan used to say that he was the best abused man in Europe: but I 'll tell you that the potato is the best abused vegetable in the universal globe. From the "Times" down to the Scotch farmers, it's one hue-and-cry after it, – "The filthy root" – "The disgusting tuber," – "The source of all Irish misery," – "The father of famine, and mother of fever," – on they go, blackguarding the only food of the people, till at last, as if it were a judgment on their bad tongues, it took to rot in the ground, and left us with nothing to eat. Now, Tom, you know as well as myself, Ireland is not a wheat country; it's one year in three that we can raise a crop of it; for our climate is as treacherous as the English Government. I hope you would n't have us live on oats, like the Scotch; nor on Indian com, like the savages; so what is there like the potato? And then, how easy the culture, and how simple the cookery! It does well in every soil, and agrees well with every constitution. It feeds the peasant, it fattens the pig, it rears the children, and supports the chickens. What can compare with that?

Do you know that there's no cant of the day annoys me more than that cry about model farming, and green crops, and rotations, and subsoiling, and so on. The whole ingenuity of mankind would seem devoted to ascertaining how much a bullock can eat, and how little will feed a laborer. Stuff one and starve the other, and you may be the President of an Agricultural Society, and Chairman of your Union. What treatises we have upon stock, and improving the breed of boars! Will you tell me who ever thought of turning the same attention to the condition of the people? and I'm sure, if you go into the county Galway, you 'll soon acknowledge that they need it. "Look at that lanky pig," calls out the Scotch steward, in derision; "his snout and his legs are fit for a greyhound!" But I say, "Look at Paddy, there. His neck is shrivelled and knotted, like an old vine-tree; his back rounded, and his legs crooked; all for want of care and nourishment. Is all your sympathy to be kept for the sheep, and have you none for the shepherd?"

I made some memorandums for you about Belgian farming, but Mary Anne curled her hair with them. It's no loss to you, however, for their system would n't do with us. Small tenures and spade husbandry do mighty well here, because there are great cities within a few miles of each other, and agriculture takes somewhat the character of market gardening; but their success would be far different were there long distances to be traversed with the produce.

This country is certainly prospering; but I 'm not so certain that it can continue to do so.' Their industry is now stimulated to a high state of productiveness, because they are daily extending their railroads; but there must come an end to that, and it strikes me that a country that only deals with itself is pretty much what the adage says of the "man that is his own doctor." They are now, however, enjoying what your political economists all agree in pronouncing to be the great test of prosperity. Everything has nearly doubled in price: house rent, meat, vegetables, wages, clothes, luxuries of all kind, and, of course, taxation. I own to you I never clearly understood this problem; it always seemed to me as if a whole population took to walk upon stilts, for the pleasure of thinking themselves nine feet high.

These matters put me in mind of Vickars. I now see that I was wrong in not going over to the election. His tone is quite changed, and he writes to me as if I were a deputation from the distressed hand-loom weavers. He acknowledges mine of the 5th ult, and he deplores, and regrets, and feels constrained to remind me, and so on, ending with being "humble and obedient," – two things that I believe his own mother never found him. The fact is, Tom, he's in Parliament, and he is a Lord of the Treasury, and he does n't care a brass farthing for one of us. Do you remark how the Ministerial papers praise the Government for promoting Irishmen? It is not on the ground of their superior capacity for office, their readiness and natural ability. Nothing of the kind; it is simply the unbounded generosity of the administration, and perhaps as a proof of their humility! They put an Irishman in the Cabinet, just as the Roman Conqueror took a slave in his chariot, to show that they don't intend to forget themselves!

I wish "Punch" would make a picture of it. Pat with his pipe in his mouth beside the Premier; the roguish leer of the eye, the careless ease of his crossed legs, and smallclothes open at the knee, would be a grand contrast to the high-bred air of his companion.

Don't bother me any more about the salmon weirs; make the best bargain you can, and I 'll be satisfied. It appears to me, however, the more laws we have, the less fish we catch. In my father's time there was no legislation at all, and salmon was a penny a pound. The fish seem to hate Acts of Parliament just as much as ourselves. And, talking of that, I 'm glad we 're out of our scrape with the Yankees.

Depend upon it, all the cod that ever was salted would n't pay for one collision. It would n't be like any other war, Tom, for French and Russians, Austrians and Italians, have each their separate peculiarities, – giving certain advantages in certain situations; but we – that is, English and Americans – fight exactly in the same way. Each knows every dodge of the other, – long sixty-fives and thirty-twos, boarders, riflemen, riggers, – all alike. It 's the old story of the Kilkenny cats, and I'm greatly afraid our "tail" would be nearly as much mauled as Jonathan's.

The longer I live, the nearer I find myself drawing to these Yankees; and I 've some notion of going over there to have a look at them. They tell me that the worst thing about them is the air of gravity, even of depression, that prevails, – a strange fault, considering how many Irish there are amongst them; but I suppose Paddy is like the rest of the world, and he loses his fun when he gets prosperous. There was Tom Martin, that went our circuit, and there was n't as pleasant a fellow at the bar till he got into business. There was no good asking him to dinner after that; as he owned himself, "he kept his jokes for his clients." Now, there may be something like this the case in America; at all events, Tom, I 'd have one advantage there, – I 'd know the language, what I 'm never likely to do here; not but I'm doing my best every day at the table d'hôte; occasionally, perhaps, with some sacrifice of the "propers;" but as a foreigner is too polite to laugh, the stranger has little chance to learn. For my own part, I 'd rather they 'd tell me when I was wrong, and give me some hope of going right I 'd think it more friendly of a man to say, "Kenny Dodd, you 're going into a hole," than if he smiled and simpered, and assured me that I was in the middle of the path, and getting on beautifully.