The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I
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The scene changes, – we are away! The castle and its deep woods grow dim behind us; the wild mountains of the Schwartz Wald rise before and around us. The dark pines wave their stately tops, the wood-pigeon cries his plaintive note; rocky glen and rugged precipice, foaming waterfalls and wooded slopes, pass swiftly by, and on we hasten, – on and on; but, with all our speed, dark, brood-ing care can still outstrip us, and sorrow follows faster than the wind.
We arrived at Constance by midnight, when I soon betook me to bed, and cried myself to sleep. Sweet – sweet tears were they, flowing like the crystal drops from the margin of an overcharged fountain; for such was the heart of your afflicted Mary Anne.
It is not by any casuistry about the injustice I should have done, had I bestowed a moiety where I had promised a whole heart. It is not by any pretence that I felt this to be an unworthy artifice, that I now appeal to your merciful consideration. It is simply as one suddenly awakened to the terrible conviction that she cannot be loved as she is capable of loving; or, in other words, that she despairs of ever inspiring that passion which alone could requite her for the agony of love. Oh, Kitty, it is an agony, and such a one as no torture of human wickedness ever equalled. May you never feel it in that intensity of suffering which is alike its ecstasy and its woe!
Do not reproach me, Kitty; my heart has already done so, bitterly, – terribly! Again and again have I asked myself, "Who and what are you, that dare to reject rank, wealth, station, glorious lineage, and a noble name? If these and the most devoted love cannot move you, what are the ambitions that rise before you?" Over and over do I interrogate myself thus, and yet the only reply is, a heart-heaved sigh, – the spirit-wrung voice of inward suffering! You, dearest, who know your friend, will not accuse her of exaggerated or overwrought vanity. None so well as you are aware that these are not my characteristic failings.
An excess of humility may depreciate me, even to the lowliest condition of humble fortune; and if happiness be but there, I will not deem the choice a mean one! You will judge of the sincerity of my words, when I tell you that I have just been unpacking all my things, and putting them away in drawers and wardrobes; and oh, Kitty, if you could but see them! Papa was really splendid, and allowed me to order everything I could fancy. Of course his generosity fettered rather than stimulated my extravagance, so that I merely took the absolute nécessaire. Of these I may mention two cashmeres and three Brussels scarfs, one a perfect love; twelve morning, eighteen evening dresses, of which one for the altar is covered with Valenciennes, looped up with pearls and brilliants*, the corsage ornamented down the front with a bouquet of the same stones, arranged to represent lilies of the valley, with dewdrops, – a pretty device, and quite simple, to suit the occasion. The presentation robe is actually magnificent, and only needs a diamond parure to be queenly. How I dote, too, on these dear little bonnets! I never weary of trying them on; they sit so coquettishly on the back of the bead, and make one look sly and modest, and gentle and saucy, all at once! In this walk of art the French are incomparably above us. Dress with them observes all the harmony of color and the keeping of a great picture. No lilac bonnets and blue shawls, – no scarlets and pinks alternately killing and marring each other, – none of that false heraldry of costume by which your Englishwoman displays her vulgar wealth and ill-assorted finery. All is graceful, well toned, and harmonious. Your mise is, so to say, the declaration of your sentiments, just as the signal of a man-of-war proclaims her intention; and how ingenious to think that your stately cashmere suggests homage, your ermined mantle watchful devotion, your muslin peignoir confidence and intimate intercourse.
Now, your "English" must look all these to be intelligible, and constantly converts herself into a great staring, ogling, leering machine, very shocking to contemplate.
I need scarcely remark to you, dearest, that the step I have just taken has made my position in the family like that of the young lady who refused Louis Napoleon before Europe. Our situations, if you come to consider them, are wonderfully alike; and there are extraordinary points of resemblance between the gentlemen, to which I cannot at present more fully allude. The ungenerous observations and slighting allusions to which I am exposed would actually wring your heart. Even James remarked that the whole affair reminded him of Joe Hudson, who, after accepting an Indian appointment, refused to sail when he had obtained the outfit. "Mary Anne only wanted the kit," was the vulgar impertinence by which he closed this piece of flattery; and this was in allusion to the trousseau! Men are so shallow, so meanly minded, Kitty, and, above all, so ungenerous in the measure of our motives. They really think that we value dress for itself, and not as a means to an end, – that end being their own subjection! Mamma, I must say, is truly kind; she regrets, naturally enough you will think, the loss of a great alliance. She had pictured to herself the quartering of the M'Carthys with the house of W – , and ranged in imagination over various remote but ambitious contingencies; but, with true maternal affection, she has effaced all these memories from her heart, only to think of me and of my emotions. I have also been able to supply her with a consolation, no less great than unexpected, in this wise: papa, from one cause or other, had been of late seriously meditating a return to Ireland; I shame to say, Kitty, that he never valued, never understood the Continent; its habits, its ways, and its wines, all disagreed with him; financial reasons, too, influenced him; for somehow, up to this, we have been forced to overlook the claims of economy, and only regard those which refer to the station we are to maintain in society. Now, from all these causes, he had brought himself to think the only safety lay in a speedy retreat! Mamma had ascertained this beyond a doubt by some passages in Mr. Purcell's letters to papa; how obtained I know not. From these she gathered that at any moment he was capable of abandoning the campaign, and embarking the whole army! The misery such a course would entail upon us I have no need to enlarge upon; nor could I, if I tried, find words to depict the condition of suffering that would be ours if again domesticated in that dreadful island. Forgive me, dearest, if I wound one susceptibility of your tender heart, – I would not ruffle even a rose-leaf of your gentle nature; but I cannot refrain from saying that Ireland is very dreadful! Philosophers affect to tell us, Kitty, that from the chemical properties of meteoric stones we can predicate the nature of the planets from which they have fallen, and the most ingenious theories as to the structure, size, and conformation of their bodies are built upon such slender materials. Now, would it be too wide a stretch of ingenuity to apply this theory to home affairs, and argue, from the specimen one sees of the dear country, what must be the land that has reared them? And oh, Kitty, if so, what a sentence we should be condemned to pass!
But to the consolation of which I spoke, and which in this diversion I was nigh forgetting. Papa, as I mentioned, was bent on going home; and now these costly preparations of wedding finery offer the means of opposing him, for of what use could they possibly be at Dodsborough, Kitty? To what end that enormous outlay, if brought back to the regions of Bruff? Here is an expensive armament, – all the matériel of a campaign provided; who would counsel the consigning it to rust and decay? who would advise giving over to moths what might be made the adornment of some brilliant capital? Whether we consider the question morally, financially, or strategically, we arrive at the same conclusion. Such a display as this, if exhibited at home, would revolutionize the whole neighborhood, disgust them with home-grown gowns and bonnets, and lead to irrepressible extravagance, debt, and ruin. So far for moral considerations. Financially, the cost is incurred, and it only remains to make the outlay profitable; this, it is needless to say, cannot be done at Dodsborough. And now for the strategy, the tactical part, Kitty. We all know that whenever a marriage is broken off, scandal seizes the occasion for any reports she likes to circulate, and the good-natured world always agrees in condemning "the lady." If her character or conduct be unimpeachable, then they make searches as to her temper. She was a termagant that ruled her whole family, scolded her sisters, bullied her brothers, and was the terror of everyone. If this indictment cannot be sustained, they find a flaw in her fortune; her twenty thousand was "only ten;" ten, Irish currency; perhaps on an Irish mortgage of an Irish property, mayhap charged with Heaven knows what of annuities to Irish relations! Now, Kitty, it is essential to avoid every one of these evil imputations, and I have supplied mamma with so good a brief in the cause, so carefully drawn up, and so well argued, that I don't think papa will let the case go to a jury, or, in other words, that he will give in his submission at once. I have much more to tell you, and will write again to-morrow.
Ever yours in affection,
Mary Anne Dodd.
LETTER XLII. MARY ANNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN
Lake of ConstanceMy dearest Kittt, – True to my pledge, I sit down to continue the revelations, the first volume of which is already before you; and as I left off in a chapter of désagréables, let me finish the theme ere I proceed to pleasanter paths and greener pastures.
Betty Cobb has gone and taken to herself a husband; and such a husband as really I did not fancy could be found nearer us than the Waterkloof, if that be the correct spelling of the pleasant locality in Kaffirland where some of the something – Fifth or Eighth – are always getting surprised and cut to pieces. The creature is a swineherd, – one of those dreadful semi-savages that Germany rears out of respect to its ancient traditions about wood demons and kobolds. So terrific an object I never beheld, and his "get up," as James would call it, equals his natural advantages.
You may remember the wretches who are thrusting the page into the furnace in Retsch's illustrations of Schiller's poem, "Der Gang auf den Eisenhammer," – one of these is a flattering likeness of him. Betty, however, whose taste in manly beauty is not formed on the Antinous model, believes him to be perfection. At all events, no promise of double wages, presents, or other seductions could warp her allegiance from this seductive object; and as mamma suddenly discovered that she was quite indispensable to her, the consequence is that we have to accept the company and companionship of the graceful "Taddy," who is now part of our legation as a swineherd unattached. You must know, Kitty, that these worthy people, who are brought up from infancy to regard pigs as the most important part of the creation, are impressed with a profound contempt for the human species; that all their habits are imbued with swinish tastes, modes, and prejudices, – that they love to live in woods, sleep on the ground, and grunt their sentiments, when they have any. Whether these be the characteristics of conjugalism, or the features which, as the book says, "make home happy," time and Betty alone can tell. I must say that fear and disgust are, for the present, the impressions his appearance suggests to me; but Betty is clearly of a different mind.
Meanwhile, as regards ourselves, he is really a most embarrassing element of the state. He is totally unacquainted with all laws, divine and human, and only sufficiently gifted with speech to convey his commonest wishes; and, from what I can learn, Caspar Hauser was a man of the world in comparison to him. Papa is, of course, frantic at the thought of his pertaining to us, – but what is to be done? Betty has declared that she will follow him to Jericho; by which she means to some fabulous land of unreal geography; and mamma will not part with Betty. To-morrow, or next day, I expect to hear that Taddy protests he can't live without his pigs, and that a legion of swine become part of our travelling equipment. Already has his presence on our staff called for the attention of the authorities, who are, very naturally, curious to know what we mean by such a functionary. Papa, on his side, thinks it part of an Englishman's birthright to resist, oppose, and torment the police; and, of course, will give no information whatever as to why he is here, but avows his determination to retain him in his service just on that account.
These complications – to give them a mild name – have so absorbed me that I have forgotten to tell you about our present place of sojourn. The Lake of Constance sounds pretty, dearest. It seems to address itself at once to our sense of the beautiful, and our moral attachment to the true. As we approached it, I looked eagerly from the carriage, at each turning of the mountain road, for some glimpses of the scenery; but night fell suddenly, and closed all in darkness. Early on the following morning I arose, and taking Augustine with my sketch-book, hurried down to the border of the lake; for our most quaint and ancient "hostelry" stands in the very centre of the town, and fully fifteen minutes' walk from the water. We reached it suddenly, on turning the angle of a narrow lane, and came out upon a small stone pier projecting into the water, and this was the lake, – the Lake of Constance! Only think, Kitty, of a great wide expanse of bleak water, with low shores; no glaciers, no Alps, no sublimity! I could have cried with disappointment The custom-house people – very nice-looking men, with a becoming uniform of green and gold – assured me that at the upper end of the lake I should see the mountains of the Vorarlberg, and also the range of the Swiss Alps, and have abundant material for my pencil. Meanwhile they made an old boatman sit while I sketched him; he was mending his net, and with his long blue nightcap, and scarf of the same color, his snow-white beard, and fine Rembrandt color, he really made a charming study. The chief officer of the customs – a remarkably handsome man, with the very blackest moustaches – was in downright enthusiasm at the success of my little sketch; and really, as it was utterly valueless, I could not resist Augustine's entreaty to tear it out of my book and give it to him.
You can't think, Kitty' with what a graceful mixture of gratitude and dignity he accepted my worthless present. He might, so far as breeding went, have been a captain of hussars. He accompanied us all the way back to the hotel, having previously placed his boat and his boat's crew at my disposal during our stay here. Ah, Kitty, what a charm there is in the amiable tone of foreigners! How striking the contrast between their cultivated politeness and the rude barbarism of our own people! Fancy for a moment what is our home notion of a custom-house official! – a shabby genteel individual, with a week's beard and a brandy-and-water eye, that pokes into your trunk after French gloves, and searches your brother's pocket for cheroots. Imagine him beside one of these magnificently dressed and really splendid-looking men, with all the air of an aide-de-camp to the Queen! How naturally we are led to estimate the style in which people live by the dress and appointment of their household; and should we not pass a similar judgment on states, and argue, from the appropriate costume of the functionaries, to their own completeness and perfection of system?
I said nothing to mamma of our newly made acquaintance; for as I entered the inn I learned that James and another gentleman had just arrived, but so tired and fatigued that they both had given orders that they should not be disturbed on any account. You may be sure, Kitty, I was intensely curious to know who the stranger was; but all my inquiries were only so many additional provocatives to my eagerness, without any satisfaction! I learned, indeed, that he was young, handsome, tall, and spoke French and German fluently; so much so, indeed, that the waiter hesitated whether to call him English or not! James and his fellow-traveller had arrived by the diligence from Schaffhausen, so that there was really nothing by which we could catch a clew to his friend; and I was left to my patience and my conjectures till breakfast time.
I own to you, Kitty, the trial was too much for my nerves, overstrung as they have been by late events. I fancied a thousand things. I imagined incidents, events, casualties, of which, even to you, dearest, I cannot give the interpretation. Unable, at last, to resist the working of a curiosity that had risen to a torture, I took the resolution to awake James, and ask who was his friend. I traversed the corridor with stealthy footsteps, and sought out the number of his room. It was 43, the waiter said, and the last on the gallery; and so I found it. I turned the handle noiselessly, and entered. The window-curtains were closely drawn, and all was in deep shadow. In one corner of the chamber stood the bed, from which the deep respirations of the sleeper issued; and, poor fellow, it must have been more than common fatigue and weariness that could have caused such sounds. As with cat-like stillness I stole across the chamber, my eyes, growing accustomed to the dim half-light, began to discover objects on each side of me. For instance, I perceived a splendid dressing-gown of amber-colored silk, lined with pale blue, and gorgeously embroidered; a cap of the same colors, with a silver tassel of a foot in length, lay beside it Slippers of costly embroidery in silver thread, and a most magnificent meerschaum, with a mounting of gold and rubies, was on the table, beside a pair of pistols, whose carved stocks were inlaid with a tracery of the finest workmanship. These I knew to be James's, for I had seen them with him; and there were various other articles equally splendid and costly, all new to me, – such as card-cases, tablets, cigar-holders, and a most gorgeous dressing-case of gold and Bohemian glass, from which, really, I could scarcely tear myself away. I was well aware that James had set no limit to his personal extravagance; but these, and the display of rings, pins, buttons, shirt-studs, chains, and trinkets of all kinds, perfectly astounded me. And here let me remark, Kitty, that the young men of the present day far exceed us in all that pertains to this taste for ornamental jewelry. As my eyes ranged over these attractive and beautiful objects, I was particularly struck with an opal brooch, representing a parrot in the midst of palm-leaves. It was a most beautiful piece of enamel work, studded with gems of every brilliant hue.
It was, as you may imagine, far too pretty for a man's wear, and I resolved to profit by the occasion, to appropriate, or, as the Americans say, to "annex" it to my own possessions. I had just fastened it in the front of my dress, when the handle of the door turned, and – oh, Kitty! conceive my agony as I heard James's voice speaking from without! It was, therefore, not his chamber where I was standing, nor could the sleeper be he! Escape and concealment were my first thought, and I sprang behind a screen at the very moment the door opened. Should I live a hundred years, I shall never cease to remember the intense misery of that moment. You need only picture my situation to your own mind, to see how distressing it must have been. The certainty of being discovered if I made the slightest noise saved me from fainting, but I almost fancied that the loud beating of my heart might have betrayed me.
James came in without any peculiar deference for the sleeper's nerves, and, upsetting a chair or two, stumbled across the room towards the bed, on which he seated himself, calling out "George – Tiverton – old fellow! don't you mean to get up at all to-day?"
Oh, Kitty! fancy my trembling tenor as I heard that I was in the chamber of Lord George Tiverton. The very utmost I could do was to refrain from a scream; nor do I now know how I succeeded in repressing it.
It was not till after repeated efforts that James succeeded in awaking his friend, who at length, with a long-drawn sigh, exclaimed, "By Jove, Jemmy! I'm glad you routed me up. I 've had a horrid dream. Only think, I imagined that I was still in the House of Lords listening to that confounded case! I fancied that Scratchley was addressing their Lordships in reply, and pledging himself to show that gross neglect, and even cruelty, could be proved against me. The old scoundrel's harsh voice is still ringing in my ears, and I hear him tearing me to very tatters!"
"Was there anything of that sort?" said James, as he struck a light to his cigar and began smoking.
"Why, I must say, he was not complimentary. These fellows, you are aware, have a vocabulary of their own, and when setting up a defence for a pretty woman, married at seventeen, they pitch into one's little frailties at a very cruel rate. Not exactly that the narrative is very detrimental to a man's future prospects; what really damages you is what they call cruelty, and your wife's maid – particularly if she be a Frenchwoman – can always prove this."
"Indeed!" exclaimed James, in some astonishment.
"To be sure she can. Why, everything that thwarts her mistress in anything – good, bad, or indifferent – is cruelty in the French sense. You are rather given to fast acquaintances; you bring home with you to supper, some three or four times a week, detachments of that respectable company one meets at Tattersall's Yard, or in the Turf Club; chicken hazard and the coulisses of the opera are amongst your weaknesses; you have a taste for sport, and would rather take the odds against the favorite than lay out your spare cash at Howell and James's. That 's cruelty! When regularly done up in town, you make a bolt for Boulogne, or rush down to your shooting-box in the Highlands. That 's more cruelty, and neglect besides! Terribly pressed for money, you try to bully your wife's uncle, one of the trustees to her settlement, and threaten to kick him downstairs. Gross cruelty! Harder up again, you pledge her diamonds. Shocking cruelty! Cleared out and sold up, you suggest the propriety of her sending away the French maid, and travelling up to Paris alone. That's monstrous cruelty! And, in fact, all together establish a clear justification for anything that may befall you. Besides this, Jemmy, if you marry a girl of good family, she is sure to have either a father, an uncle, or a brother, or perhaps some three or four cousins in the Lords; now, whatever comes off, they oppose your bill, and as their Lordships only want to hear your story, to listen to the piquant narrative of domestic differences and conjugal jarrings, nobody cares a straw whether you succeed or not. Give me a light, Jim."
They both continued to puff their cigars for some time in silence, during which my sufferings rose to absolute torture; for, in addition to the shocking circumstances of my own situation, was now the fact of my having overheard a most private conversation.
"So they threw out your bill?" asked James, after a pause.
"Deferred judgment!" replied the other, puffing, "which comes to pretty nigh the same thing. Asked for further evidence, explanations, what not! Cursed cigars! don't draw at all."
"They 're Bollard's best Havannahs."
"Well, perhaps I've been unlucky in my choice; if so, it's not the first time, Jem;" and he laughed heartily at the notion. "I say, take care and don't say anything about this affair of mine."
"But it will be in all the papers. The 'Times' will give it to-morrow or next day."
"Not a bit of it, – had a private hearing, old fellow. Too many good names compromised to have the thing made town talk, – you understand."
"Ah, that's it!" said James.
"Yes, It 's one of the few privileges remaining to what Lord Grey calls 'our order,' except, perhaps, the judgments of the London magistrates. To do them justice, the fellows do know what a lord is, and 'they act accordingly.' There, it's out at last," – and he threw away his cigar, – "and I suppose I may as well think of getting up. Just draw that curtain, Jem, and open the shutter."