The Dodd Family Abroad Volume I Part 10

[Ill.u.s.tration: 168]

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 rfrigrants, 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 Enc.u.mbered 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 superst.i.tious 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 n.o.bility 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 const.i.tution.

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 p.r.o.nouncing 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 bra.s.s 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 sc.r.a.pe 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'hte_; 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 a.s.sured me that I was in the middle of the path, and getting on beautifully.

And there isn't any good-nature in it; not a bit. It's not good-heartedness, nor kindness, nor amiability. I don't believe a word of it; because the chap that does it isn't thinking of you at all,--he 's only minding himself; he 's fancying how he 's delighting you, or captivating your wife or your sister-in-law; or, if it's a woman, she wants to fascinate or make a fool of you.

The real and essential difference between us and all foreigners is that they are always thinking of what effect they are producing; they never for a single moment forget that there is an audience. Now we, on the contrary, never remember it. Life with them is a drama, in all the blaze of wax-lights and a crowded house; with us, it's a day-rehearsal, and we slip about, mumbling our parts, getting through the performance, unmindful of all but our own share in it.

More than half of what is attributed to rudeness and unsociality in us, springs out of the simple fact that we do not care to obtrude even our politeness when there seems no need of it. _Our_ civilities are like a bill of exchange, that must represent value one day or other. _Theirs_ are like the gilt markers on a card-table: they have a look of money about them, but are only counterfeit. Perhaps this may explain why our women like the Continent so much better than ourselves. All this mock interchange of courtesy amuses and interests _them_; it only worries _us_.

To come back to Vickars. He 'll do nothing for James. His "own list is quite full;" he "has mentioned his name," he says, "to the Secretary for the Colonies," and will speak of him "at the Home Office." But I know what that means. The party is safe for the present, and don't need our dirty voices for many a day to come. It's distressing me to find out what to do with him. Can you get me any real information about the gold diggings? Is it a thing that would suit him? His mother, I know well, would never consent to the notion of his working with his hands; but, upon my conscience, if it's his head he's to depend on, he'll fare worse! He is very good-looking, six foot one and a half, strong as a young bull; and to ride an unbroken horse, drive a fresh team, to shoot a snipe, or book a salmon, I 'll back him against the field. I hear, besides, he 's a beautiful cue at billiards. But what's the use of all these at the Board of Trade, if he had even the luck to get there?

Many 's the time I 've heard poor old Lord Kilmahon say that an Irish education was n't worth a groat for England; and I now see the force of the remark.

Not but he 's working hard every day, with French and fortification and military surveying, with a fine old officer that served in the wars of the Empire,--Captain de la Bourdonaye,--a regular old soldier of Bony's day, that hates the English as much as any Irishman going. He comes and sits with me now and then of an evening, but there 's not much society in it, since we can't understand each other. We have a bottle of rum and some cigars between us, and our conversation goes on somewhat in this fashion:--

"Help yourself, Mounseer."

A grin and bow, and something mumbled between his teeth.

"Take a weed?"

We smoke.

"James is getting on well, I hope? Mon fils James improving, eh? Grand general one of these days, eh?"

"Oui, oui." Fills and drinks.

"Another Bonaparte, I suppose?"

"Ah! le grand homme" Wipes his eyes, and looks up to the ceiling.

"Well, we thrashed him for all that! Faith, we made him dance in Spain and Portugal. What do you say to Talavera and Vittoria?"

Swears like a trooper, and rattles out whole volumes of French, with gestures that are all but blows. I wait till it 's over, and just say "Waterloo!"

This nearly drives him crazy, and he forgets to put water in his gla.s.s; and off he goes about Waterloo in a way that's dreadful to look at. I suppose, if I understood him, I 'd break his neck; but as I don't, I only go on saying "Waterloo" at intervals; but every time I utter it, he has to blow off the steam again. When the rum is finished, he usually rushes out of the room, gnashing his teeth, and screaming something about St. Helena. But it 's all over the next day, and he 's as polite as ever when we meet,--grins, and hands me his tin snuff-box with the air of an emperor. They 're a wonderful people, Tom; and though they 'd murder you, they 'd never forget to make a bow to your corpse.

You may imagine, from what I tell you, that I am very lonely here; and so I am. I never meet anybody I can speak to; I never see any newspaper I can read! I eat things without knowing the names of them, or, what's worse, what they are; and all this I must do for economy, while I could live for less than one-half the expense at Dodsburough!

Mary Anne has just come to say that the doctors are agreed Mrs. D. must be removed; the noise of the town will destroy her. My only surprise is that she did n't discover it sooner. They speak of a place called Chaude Fontaine, seven miles away, and of a little watering-place called Spa.

But I 'll not budge an inch till I have all the particulars, for I know well they 're all dying to be at the old work again,--tea-parties, and hired horses, and polkas, in the evening, and the rest of it. Lord George has arrived at Lige, and I would n't be astonished if he was at the bottom of it all; not but he behaved well in James's business. To deal with a Jew there 's nothing in the world like one of your young sprigs of n.o.bility! Moses does n't care a bulrush for you or me; but when he hears of a Lord Charles or Lord Augustus, he alters his tone.

It is that cla.s.s which supplies his customers, and he dares not outrage them.

I wish you saw the way he managed our friend Lazarus! He would n't look into his statement, read one of his accounts, or even bestow a glance at the bills.

"I 'm up to all those dodges, Lazzy," said he; "it's no use coming that over _me_. What 'll you do it for?"

"Ah, my good Lord Shorge, you know better as me, that we cannot give away our moneys. Here are all the bills--"

"Don't care for that, Lazzy,--won't look at 'em. What 'll you do it for?"

"If I lend my moneys at a fair per shent--"

"Well, what's the figure to be? Say it at once, or I'm off."