The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I

LETTER X. CAROLINE DODD TO MISS COX, AT MISS MINCING'S ACADEMY

My dear Miss Cox, – I have long hesitated and deliberated with myself whether it were not better to appear ungrateful for my silence, than by writing inflict you with a very tiresome, good-for-nothing epistle; and if I have now taken the worst counsel, it is because I prefer anything rather than seem forgetful of one to whom I owe so much as to my dear, kind governess. Were I only to tell you of our adventures and mishaps since we came abroad, there might, perhaps, be enough to fill half a dozen letters; but I greatly doubt if the theme would amuse you. You were always too good-natured to laugh at anything where there was even one single feature that suggested sorrow; and I grieve to say that, however ludicrously many of our accidents might read, there is yet mixed with them too much that is painful and distressing. You will say this is a very gloomy opening, and from one whom you had so often to chide for the wild gayety of her spirits; but so it is: I am sad enough now, – sadder than ever you wished to see me. It is not that I am not in the very midst of objects full of deep interest, – it is not that I do not recognize around me scenes, places, and names, all of which are imbued with great and stirring associations. I am neither indifferent nor callous, but I see everything through a false medium, and I hear everything with a perverted judgment; in a word, we seem to have come abroad, not to derive the advantages that might arise from new sources of knowledge in language, literature, and art, but to scramble for a higher social position, – to impose ourselves on the world for something that we have no pretension to, and to live in a way that we cannot afford. You remember us at Dodsborough, – how happy we were, how satisfied with the world; that is, with our world, for it was a very little one. We were not very great folk, but we had all the consideration as if we were; for there were none better off than ourselves, and few had so many opportunities of winning the attachment of all classes. Papa was always known as the very best of landlords, mamma had not her equal for charity and kindness, James was actually adored by the people, and I hesitate not to say that Mary Anne and myself were not friendless. There was a little daily round of duties that brought us all together in our cares and sympathies; for, however different our ages or tastes, we had but one class of subjects to discuss, and, happily, we saw them always with the same light and shadow. Our life was, in short, what fashionable people would have deemed a very vulgar, inglorious kind of existence; but it was full of pleasant little incidents, and a thousand little cares and duties, that gave it abundant variety and interest. I was never a quick scholar, as you know too well. I have tried my dear Miss Cox's patience sorely and often, but I loved my lessons; I loved those calm hours in the summer-house, with the perfume of the rose and the sweetbrier around us, and the hum of the bee mingling its song with my own not less drowsy French. That sweet "Telemachus," so easy and so softly sounding; that good Madame de Genlis, so simple-minded when she thought herself most subtle! Not less did I love the little old schoolroom of a winter's day, when the pattering rain streamed down the windows, and gave, by contrast, all the aspect of more comfort within. How pleasant was it, as we gathered round the turf fire, to think that we were surrounded with such appliances against gloomy hours, – the healthful exercise of happy minds! Ah, my dear Miss Cox, how often you told us to study hard, since that, once launched upon the great sea of life, the voyage would exact all our cares; and yet see, here am I upon that wide ocean, and already longing to regain the quiet little creek, – the little haven of rest that I quitted!

I promised to be very candid with you, to conceal nothing whatever; but I did not remember that my confessions, to be thus frank, must necessarily involve me in remarks on others, in which I may be often unjust, – in which I am certain to be unwarranted, – since nothing in my position entitles me to be their censor. However, I will keep my pledge this once, and you will tell me afterwards if I should continue to observe it. And now to begin. We are living here as though we were people of vast fortune. We occupy the chief suite of apartments at the first hotel, and we have a carriage, with showy liveries, a courier, and are quite beset with masters of every language and accomplishment you can fancy, – expensive kind of people, whose very dress and style bespeak the terms on which their services are rendered. Our visitors are all titled: dukes, princes, and princesses shower amongst our cards. Our invitations are from the same class, and yet, my dear Miss Cox, we feel all the unreality of this high and stately existence. We look at each other and think of Dodsborough! We think of papa in his old fustian shooting-jacket, paying the laborers, and higgling about half a day to be stopped here, and a sack of meal to be deducted there. We think of mamma's injunctions to Darby Sloan about the price he is to get for the "boneens," – have you forgotten our vernacular for little pigs? – and how much he must "be sure to ask" or the turkeys. We think of Mary Anne and myself taking our lesson from Mr. Delaney, and learning the Quad – drilles as he pronounced it, as the last new discovery of the dancing art, and dear James hammering away at the rule of three on an old slate, to try and qualify himself for the Board of Trade. And we remember the utter consternation of the household – the tumult dashed with a certain sense of pride – when some subaltern of the detachment at Bruff cantered up to the door and sent in his name! Dear me, how the little words 25th Regiment, or 91st, used to make our hearts beat, suggestive as they were of gay balls at the Town-hall with red-coated partners, the regimental band, and the colors tastefully festooning the whitewashed walls. And now, my dear Miss Sarah, we are actually ashamed of the contact with one of those whom once it was our highest glory to be acquainted with! You may remember a certain Captain Morris, who was stationed at Bruff, – dark, with very black eyes, and most beautiful teeth; he was very silent in company, and, indeed, we knew him but slightly, for he chanced to have some altercation with pa on the bench one day, and, as I hear he was all in the right, pa did not afterwards forgive him. Well, here he is now, having left the army, – I don't know if on half-pay, or sold out altogether, – but here he is, travelling for the benefit of his mother's health, – a very old and infirm lady, to whom he is dotingly attached. She fretted so much when she discovered that his regiment was ordered abroad to the Cape, that he had no other resource than to leave the service! He told me so himself.

"I had nobody else in the world," said he, "who felt any interest in my fortunes; she had made a hundred sacrifices for me. It was but fair I should make one for her."

He knew he was surrendering position and prospect forever, – that to him no career could ever open again; but he had placed a duty high above all considerations of self, and so he parted with comrades and pursuit, with everything that made up his hope and his object, and descended to a little station of unobtrusive, undistinguished humility, satisfied to be the companion of a poor, feeble old lady! He has as much as confessed to me that their means are very small. It was an accidental admission with reference to something he thought of doing, but which he found to be too expensive; and the avowal was made so easily, so frankly, so free from any false shame on one side, or any unworthy desire to entrap sympathy on the other! It was as if he spoke of something which indeed concerned him, but in no wise gave the mainspring to his thoughts or actions! He came to visit us here; but his having left the service, coupled with our present taste for grand acquaintance, were so little in his favor that I believed he would not have repeated his call. An accidental service, however, that he was enabled to render mamma and Mary Anne at a railroad station the other day, and where but for him they might have been involved in considerable difficulties, has opened a chance of further intimacy, for he has already been here two mornings, and is coming this evening to tea.

You will, perhaps, ask me how and by what chain of circumstances Captain Morris is linked with the earlier portion of this letter, and I will tell you. It was from him that I learned the history of those high and distinguished individuals by whom we are surrounded; from him I heard that, supposing us to be people of immense wealth, a whole web of intrigue has been spun around us, and everything that the ingenuity and craft of the professional adventurer could devise put in requisition to trade upon our supposed affluence and inexperience! He has told me of the dangerous companions by whom James is surrounded; and if he has not spoken so freely about a certain young nobleman – Lord George Tiverton – who is now seldom or never out of the house, it is because that they have had something of a personal difference, – a serious one, I suspect, and which Captain Morris seems to reckon as a bar to anything beyond the merest mention of his name. It is not impossible, too, that though he might not make any revelations to me on such a theme, he would be less guarded with papa or James. Whatever may be the fact, he does not advance at all in the good graces of the others. Mamma calls him a dry crust, – a confirmed old bachelor. Mary Anne and Lord George – for they are always in partnership in matters of opinion – have set him down as a "military prig;" and papa, who is rarely unjust in the long run, says that "there 's no guessing at the character of a fellow of small means, who never goes in debt" This may or may not be true; but it is certainly hard to condemn him for an honorable trait, simply because it does not give the key to his nature. And now, my last hope is what James may think of him, for as yet they have not met. I think I hear you echo my words, "And why your 'last hope,' Miss Cary? What possible right have you to express yourself in these terms?" Simply because I feel that one man of true and honorable sentiments, one right-judging, right-feeling gentleman, is all-essential to us abroad! and if we reject this chance, I 'm not so sure we shall meet with another.

How ashamed I am not to be able to tell you of all I have seen! But so it is, – description is a very tame performance in good hands; it is a lamentable exhibition in weak ones! As to painters, I prefer Vandyk to Rubens; not that I have even the pretence of a reason for my criticism. I know nothing, whatever, of what constitutes excellence in color, drawing, or design. I understand in a picture only what it suggests to my own mind, either as a correct copy of nature, or as originating new trains of thought, new sources of feeling; and by these tests Vandyk pleases me more than his master. But, shall I own it, there is a class of pictures of a far inferior order that gives me greater enjoyment than either, I meau those scenes of real life, those representations of some little uneventful incident of the every-day world, – an old chemist at work in his dim old laboratory; an old house Vrow knitting in her red-tiled chamber, the sunlight slanting in, and tipping with an azure tint the tortoiseshell cat that purrs beside her; a lover teaching his mistress the guitar; an old cavalier giving his horse a drink at a fountain. These, in all the lifelike power of Gerard Dow, Teerburgh, or Mieris, have a charm for me I cannot express. They are stories, and they are better than stories; for oftentimes the writer conveys his meaning imperfectly, and oftentimes he overlays you with his explanations, stifling within you those expansive bursts of sentiment that ought to have been his aim to evoke, and thus, by elaborating, he obliterates. Now, your artist – I mean, of course, your great artist – is eminently suggestive. He gives you but one scene, it is true, but how full is it of the past, and the future too! Can you gaze on that old alchemist, with his wrinkled forehead, and dim, deep-set eyes, his threadbare doublet, and his fingers tremulous from age? Can you watch that countenance, calm but careworn, where every line exhibits the long struggle there has been between the keen perceptions of science and the golden dreams of enthusiasm, where the coldest passions of a worldly nature have warred with the most glorious attributes of a poetic temperament? Can you see him, as he sits watching the alembic wherein the toil of years is bubbling, and not weave within your own mind the life-long conflict he has sustained? Have you him not before you in his humble home, secluded and forgotten of men, yet inhabiting a dream-world of crowded images? What beautiful stories – what touching little episodes of domestic life – lie in the quiet scenes of those quaint interiors; and how deep the charm that attaches one to these peaceful spots of home happiness! The calm intellectuality of the old, the placid loveliness of the young, the air of cultivated enjoyment that pervades all, are in such perfect keeping that you feel as though they imparted to yourself some share of that gentle, tranquil pleasure that forms their own atmosphere!

Oh, my dear Miss Cox! if there be "sermons in stones," there are romances in pictures, – and romances far more truthful than the circulating libraries supply us with. And, to turn back to real life, shall I own to you that I am sadly disappointed with the gay world? I am fully alive to all the value of the confession. I appreciate perfectly how double-edged is the weapon of this admission, and that I am in reality but pleading guilty to my own unfitness for its enjoyments; but as I never tried to evade or deny that fact, I may be suffered to give my testimony with so much of qualification. When I compare the little gratification that society confers on the very highest classes, with the heartfelt delight intercourse imparts to the humble, I am at a loss to see wherein lies the advantage of all the exclusive regulations of fashionable life. Of one thing I feel assured, and that is, that one must be bora in a certain class, habituated from the earliest years to its ideas and habits, filled with its peculiar traditions, and animated by its own special hopes, to conform gracefully and easily to its laws. We go into society to perform a part, – just as artificial a one as any in a genteel comedy, – and consequently are too much occupied with "our character" to derive that benefit from intercourse which is so attainable by those less constrained by circumstances. If all this amounts to the simple confession that I am by no means at home in the great world, and far more at my ease with more humble associates, it is no more than the fact, and comes pretty near to what you often remarked to me, – that "in criticising external objects one is very frequently but delineating little traits and lineaments of one's own nature."

I am unable to answer your question about our future plans; for, indeed, they appear anything but fixed. I believe if papa had his choice he would go back at once.

This, however, mamma will not hear of; and, indeed, the word Ireland is now as much under ban amongst us as that name that is never "syllabled to ears polite." The doctors say James ought to pass a month or six weeks at Schwalbach, to drink the waters and take the baths; and, from what I can learn, the place is the perfection of rural beauty and quietude. Captain Morris speaks of it as a little paradise. He is going there himself; for I have learned – though not from him – that he was badly wounded in the Afghan war. I will write to you whenever our destination is decided on; and, meanwhile, beg you to believe me my dear Miss Cox's

Most attached and faithful pupil,

Caroline Dodd.

LETTER XI. MR. DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., OF THE GRANGE, BRUFF

Dear Tom, – I got the bills all safe, and cashed two of them yesterday. They came at the right moment, – when does not money? – for we are going to leave this for Germany, one of the watering-places there, the name of which I cannot trust myself to spell, being recommended for James's wound. I suppose I 'm not singular, but somehow I never was able to compute what I owed in a place till I was about to leave it. From that moment, however, in come a shower of bills and accounts that one never dreamed of. The cook you discharged three months before has never paid for the poultry, and you have as many hens to your score as if you were a fox. You 've lost the fishmonger's receipts, and have to pay him over again for a whole Lent's consumption. Your courier has run up a bill in your name for cigars and curaçoa, and your wife's maid has been conducting the most liberal operations in perfumery and cosmetics, under the title of her mistress. Then comes the landlord, for repairs and damages. Every creaky sofa and cracked saucer that you have been treating for six months with the deference due to their delicate condition must be replaced by new ones. Every window that would n't shut, and every door that would not open, must be put in perfect order; keys replaced, bells rehung. The saucepans, whose verdigris has almost killed you with colic, must be all retinned or coppered; and, lastly, the pump is sure to be destroyed by the housemaid, and vague threats about sinking a new well are certain to draw you into a compromise. Nor is the roguery the worst of it; but all the sneaking scoundrels that would n't "trouble you with their little demands" before, stand out now as sturdy creditors that would not abate a jot of their claims. Lucky are ye if they don't rake up old balances, and begin the score with "Restant du dernier compte."

The moralists say that a man should be enabled to visit the world after his death, if he would really know the opinion entertained of him by his fellows. Until this desirable object be attainable, one ought to be satisfied with the experience obtained by change of residence. There is no disguise, no concealment then! The little blemishes of your temper, once borne with such Christian charity, are remembered in a more chastening spirit; and it is half hinted that your custom was more than compensated for by your complaining querulousness. Is not the moral of all this that one should live at home, in his own place, where his father lived before him, and his son will live after him; where the tradespeople have a vested interest in your welfare, and are nearly as anxious about your wheat and potatoes as you are yourself? Unlike these foreign rascals, that think you have a manufactory of "Hemes and Farquhar's circular notes," and can coin at will, your neighbors know when and at what times it's no use to tease you, – that asking for money at the wrong season is like expecting new peas in December, or grouse in the month of May.

I make these remarks in all the spirit of recent suffering, for I have paid away two hundred pounds since yesterday morning, of which I was not conscious that I owed fifty. And, besides, I have gone through more actual fighting – in the way of bad language, I mean – than double the money would repay me for. In these wordy combats, I feel I always come off worst; for as my knowledge of the language is limited, I 'm like the sailor that for want of ammunition crammed in whatever he could lay hands on into his gun, and fired off his bag of doubloons against the enemy instead of round shot. Mrs. D., too, whom the sounds of conflict always "summon to the field," does not improve matters; for if her vocabulary be limited, it is strong, and even the most roguish shopkeeper does not like to be called a thief and a highwayman! These diversions in our parts of speech have cost me dearly, for I have had to compromise about six cases of "defamation," and two of threatened assault and battery, though these last went no further than demonstrations on Mrs. D.'s part, which, however, were quite sufficient to terrify our grocer, who is a colonel in the National Guard, and a gigantic hairdresser, whose beard is the glory of a "Sapeur company." I have discovered, besides, that I have done something, but what it is – in contravention to the laws – I do not know, and for which I am fined eighty-two francs five centimes, plus twenty-seven for contumacy; and I have paid it now, lest it should grow into more by to-morrow, for so the Brigadier has just hinted to me; for that formidable functionary – with tags that would do credit to a general – is just come to "invite me," as he calls it, to the Prefecture. As these invitations are like royal ones, I must break off now abruptly.

Here I am again, Tom, after four hours of ante-chamber and audience. I had been summoned to appear before the authorities to purge myself of a contempt, – for which, by the way, they had already fined me; my offence being that I had not exchanged some bit of paper for another bit of paper given me in exchange for my passport, the purport of which was to show that I, Kenny Dodd, was living openly and flagrantly in the city of Brussels, and not following out any clandestine pursuit or object injurious to the state, and subversive of the monarchy. Well, I hope they 're satisfied now; and if my eighty-two francs five centimes gave any stability to their institutions, much good may it do them! This, however, seems but the beginning of new troubles; for on my applying to have the aforesaid passport vised for Germany, they told me that there were two "detainers" on it, in the shape of two actions at law yet undecided, although I yesterday morning paid up what I understood to be the last instalment for compromising all suits now pending against said Kenny I. Dodd. On hearing this, I at once set out for the tribunal to see Vanhoegen and Draek, my chief lawyers. Such a place as the tribunal you never set eyes on. Imagine a great quadrangle, with archways all round crammed full of dirty advocates, – black-gowned, black-faced, and black-hearted; peasants, thieves, jailers, tip-staffs, and the general public of fruit-sellers and lucifer-matches all mixed up together, with a turmoil and odor that would make you hope Justice was as little troubled with nose as eyesight. Over the heads of this mob you catch glimpses of the several courts, where three old fellows, like the figures in a Holbein, sit behind a table covered with black cloth, administering the law, – a solemn task that loses some of its imposing influence when you think that these reverend seigniors, if wanting in the wisdom, are not free from one of the weaknesses of Bacon! By dint of great pressing, pushing, and perseverance, I forced my way forward into one of these till I reached a strong wooden rail, or barrier, within which was an open space, where the accused sat on a kind of bench, the witness under examination being opposite to him, and the procureur hard by in a little box like a dwarf pulpit I thought I saw Draek in the crowd, but I was mistaken, – an easy matter, they all look so much alike. Once in, however, I thought I 'd remain for a while and see the proceedings. It was a trial for murder, as well as I could ascertain the case. The prisoner, a gentlemanlike young fellow of six or seven and twenty, had stabbed another in some fit of jealousy. I believe they were at supper, or were going to sup together when the altercation occurred. There was a waiter in the witness-box giving evidence when I came up; and really the tone of deference he exhibited to the prisoner, and the prisoner's own off-hand, easy way of interrogating him, were greatly to be admired. It was easy to see that he had got many a half-crown from the accused, and had not given up hope of many more in future. His chief evidence was to the effect that Monsieur de Verteuil, the accused, had ordered a supper for two in a private room, the bill of fare offering a wide field for discussion, one of the points of the case being whether the guest who should partake of the repast was a lady or the deceased; and this the advocates on each side handled with wonderful dexterity, by inferences drawn from the carte. You see, Verteuil's counsel wanted to show that Bretigny was an intruder, and had forced himself into the company of the accused. The opposite side were for implying that he came there on invitation, and was murdered of malice aforethought I don't think the point would have been so very material with us; or, at all events, that we should have tried to elicit it in this manner; but they have their own way of doing things, and I suppose they know what suits them. After half an hour's very animated skirmishing, the president, with a sudden flash of intelligence, bethought him of asking the accused for whom he bespoke the entertainment.