The Dodd Family Abroad Volume I Part 14

Masters in German, music, and mathematics, and other little odds and ends, took a couple of pounds more; and I allowed myself ten shillings a week for what the doctor calls "my little charities," that now resolve themselves into threepenny whist, or a game of ninepins with the Professor of Oriental languages. Even _you_, Tom--"Joe" as you are about the budget--couldn't pick a hole in this! Not that I want to give myself credit for a measure absolutely imperative; for, to say the truth, our late performances in Brussels were of the very costliest, and even Lige ran away with a deal of money. Doctors have about the same ideas respecting your cash account as your const.i.tution. They never leave either in a state of plethora! Now, as I was saying, my letter, begun on Wednesday last, had all these details, and might have concluded with a flattering picture of James hard at his studies, and the girls not less diligently occupied with their music and embroidery,--the two resources by which modern ingenuity fancies it keeps female minds employed! As if Double-Ba.s.s or Berlin wool were disinfecting liquors! I could also have added that Mrs. D. had fallen into that peculiar condition which is natural to her whenever she finds a place stupid and unexciting, and what she fondly fancies to be a religious frame of mind; in other words, she took to reading her breviary, and worrying Betty Cobb about her duties; got up for five o'clock ma.s.s, and insisted upon Friday coming three times a week. I could bear all this for quietness' sake; and if fish diet could insure peace, I 'd be content to live upon isingla.s.s for the rest of my days.

Mrs. D., however, is not a woman to do things by halves; there's no John Russellism about her; and now that she had taken this serious turn, I saw clearly enough what was in store for us. I had actually ordered a small silk skull-cap, as a protection to my head, not knowing when I might be sent to do duty in a procession, when suddenly the wind veered round, and began to blow very fresh in exactly the opposite quarter.

You must know, Tom, that just before we left Cologne we chanced to make acquaintance with a certain very fashionable person,--a Mrs. Gore Hampton. She was standing disconsolately to be rained on, in the street, when Lord George brought her upstairs to our rooms, and introduced her to us. She was, I must say, what is popularly called a very splendid woman,--tall, dark-eyed, and dashing, with a bewitching smile, and that kind of voice that somehow makes commonplaces very graceful. She had, too, that wonderful tact--wherever it comes from I can't guess--to suit us all, without seeming to take the slightest trouble about the matter.

She talked to Mrs. D. about London fashionable life, just as if they had both been going out together for the last three or four seasons; ay, and stranger still, without even once puzzling her, or making her feel astray in the geography of this _terra incognita_. I conclude she was equally successful with the girls; and though she scarcely addressed a word to James, I suppose she must have made up for it by a look, for he has never ceased raving of her since.

I have n't told you how she "landed" me, for I 'm not above confessing that I was as bad as the rest; but the truth is, Tom, I don't really know how I was caught. I am too old for these blandishments; they no more suit me now than a tight boot or a runaway hack; one gets too rheumatic and too stiff in the joints for homage after fifty; and besides that, there's a kind of croaking conscience that whispers, "Don't be making a fool of yourself, Kenny James!" and, between you and me, Tom, 't is well for us when we 're not too deaf to hear it.

Besides this; Tom, it is only the fellows that never were in love when they were young that become irretrievably entangled in after life. If you want to see a true s.e.xagenarian victim, look out for some hang-dog, downcast, mopish creature, or some suspectful, wary, crafty, red-haired rascal, that thought every woman had a trap laid for him. These are your hopeless cases; these are the men that always die in some mysterious manner, and leave wills behind them to be litigated for half a century.

The Kenny Dodds of this world come into another category. They knew that love and the measles are mildest in young const.i.tutions, and so they began early. Maybe it was in a firm reliance on this that I felt so easy about the widow,--if widow she be; for, to tell the truth, I don't yet know if Mr. Gore Hampton be to the fore or only has left her a memory of his virtues.

I leave you to guess what impression she made upon me; for the more I go on trying to explain and refine upon it the less intelligible do I become. One thing, however, I must say,--these charming women are the ruin of Irishmen! Our own fair creatures, with a great share of good looks, and far more than ordinary agreeability, are not so dangerous as the English, and for this reason: in their demands for admiration they are too general; they--so to say--fire at the whole covey; now, your Englishwoman marks her bird,' and never goes home till she bags it!

We were to have left Cologne that morning for Bonn, but so agreeably did the time pa.s.s, that we did n't start till evening, and even then it was quite tearing ourselves away; for the delightful widow--for widow I must call her till she shows cause to the contrary--hourly gained on us.

She was obliged to wait there for some lawyers or men of business that were to follow her with papers to sign; and although Lord George did his best to persuade her that she might as well come on with us,--that Bonn was only fifteen miles farther,--she was firm, and said that "Old Mr.

For-dyce was a great prig, and when she had once named Cologne for their meeting, she would have travelled from Naples rather than break the appointment." I own to you, there was a tenacity and determination in all that which pleased me. Maybe the great charm of it was that it was very unlike what I 'd have done myself!

The whole way to Bonn we talked of nothing but her, the discussion being all the more unconstrained that Lord George had stayed behind, and was only to come up the next morning. We were agreed upon a number of points: her beauty, her elegance, the grace and fascination of her manner, and her high breeding; but we took different views as to her condition,--Mrs. D. and the girls thinking that she was married, James and I standing out for widowhood. Lord George joined us the next day; and although he could have resolved our doubts at once, Mary Anne stopped all inquiry, by a.s.suring us that nothing was so hopelessly vulgar as to display any ignorance about the family or connections of people of rank. "If she be in the peerage, we ought to know her, and all about her. She is, of course, some Augusta Louisa, b. 18 and dash; m. to the Honorable Leopold Conway Gore Hampton, third son, and so on." In a word, Tom, we had the whole family tree before us, from its old gnarled root to its last bud, and ours the shame if we were ignorant of its botanical properties!

A few quiet humdrum days of Bonn existence had almost obliterated our memory of the charming widow, and we were beginning to "train off"

our attachments to fashionable life, when, in all the splashing and whip-cracking of foreign posting, up dashes the dark green britschka to our hotel one fine evening; and before we could well recognize the carriage, the fair owner herself was making the tour of the Dodd family, embracing and hand-shaking, as age and s.e.x dictated!

I wish any physiologist would explain why the English, that are so proverbial for a cold and chilling demeanor at home, grow at once so cordial when they come abroad. Whether it be the fear of the damp, or the swell mob, I can't tell, but everybody in England goes about with his hands in his pockets, and only nods to a friend when he meets him; whereas here you start with a grin at fifty yards off, then off goes your hat with a flourish, that, if you have any tact, what with shaking your head, and looking overcome with delight, occupies you till you come up with him, when your greeting grows more enthusiastic,--lucky if it does not finish with a kiss on both cheeks.

I suppose it was the influence of habit betrayed me, for, in a fit of abstraction, I took the charming widow into my arms, and saluted her as if she were Mrs. Dodd. If this was in London, Tom, or even in Dublin, there 's no saying what mischief might not have grown out of it. I might have been fighting duels every day for the last week, not to mention still more formidable encounters of a domestic nature; but just to show you what the Continent does for us,--how instinctively, as it were, we rise above the little narrow prejudices of our insular situation,--she threw herself into a chair and laughed immoderately. Ay, and droller again, so did Mrs. D.! To tell you the truth, Tom, I could n't well believe my senses when I saw it. It would seem to be the same in morals as in murder,--you can dignify the offence by the rank of your victim; for if it had been one of the maids at home, Mrs. D. would have left my face like a piece of music paper!

[Ill.u.s.tration: 214]

There 's a great deal in how you open an acquaintance! You may be card-leaving, and bowing, and how-d'ye-doing for years, and never get farther; or, on the other hand, by some lucky accident, you come plump down into the right place, just as a chance sh.e.l.l will now and then drop into a magazine, and finish an engagement at once.

In less than an hour after her arrival, Mrs. Gore Hampton was one of ourselves. It was not that she was calling the girls dearest Cary, and darling Mary Anne, but she had got a regular sisterly tone with Mrs. D.

and myself--treating James all the while as if he was about twelve years old, and at home for the holidays. She had not only done all this, but before luncheon was on the table we had ratified a solemn league and covenant that she was to travel with us, and be one of us, going wherever we went, and living as we did. How the treaty was ever mooted, who proposed, and who signed it, I know no more than the man in the moon. It was done in a kind of rattling, bantering fashion; and when we rose from table it was all settled. Mrs. Gore Hampton was to take Cary and Mary Anne with her in the britschka; the "dear boy"--viz.

James--would be the "guard in the rumble." There was a place for everybody and everything; and I believe, if any one had proposed that I should ride the leader, it would have been carried without opposition.

Never was there such unanimity! The whole arrangement was huddled up like a road-presentment on a Grand Jury, or a private bill before the House on a "Wednesday afternoon. As for myself, if I had even the will, I could not have summoned the shamelessness to offer any opposition to the measure.

"Devilish good thing for you, Dodd!" whispered Lord George. "Mrs. G.

knows everybody in the world, and doesn't care for money."--"Oh, papa!

she is delightful; there never was such a piece of good fortune as our meeting with her," cried Mary Anne. And Mrs. D. a.s.sured me that, for the very first time in her life, she had met a person thoroughly companionable to her in all respects; in fact, a "kindred soul," though not a "blood relation."

Now, Tom, considering that we came abroad to enjoy the advantages of high society, fashionable habits, and * refined a.s.sociations, this accident did indeed seem a propitious one; for, disguise it how we may, the great world is a dangerous ocean to venture upon without a pilot.

Our own little experiences might teach that lesson. We sailed out in all the confidence of a stout crew and a safe vessel, and a pretty voyage we made of it! Perhaps we did not make more mistakes than our neighbors, but a.s.suredly our blunders were neither few nor insignificant!

Mrs G., however, would soon rectify all this. "No more making acquaintance with wrong people, K. I." says Mrs. D.; "no more getting into vulgar intimacies at the _caf_, and cementing friendships over a game of dominos. James will know the cla.s.s of young men that he ought to mix with, and the girls will only dance with suitable partners." It sounded well, Tom! It was a grand protective policy, that really secured the Dodd family in the possession of all home advantages, and relieved them of all aggressions "from the foreigner."

If we had fallen on a prize in the lottery, I don't think the joy of our circle could have been greater. I am not going to pretend that I did n't join in it! I make no affectation of prudent reserve and caution, and Heaven knows what other elegant qualities, that, however natural to other people, very seldom fall to the lot of an Irishman. I vow to you, Tom, I went off full cry like the rest of the pack. She is a fine woman, this Mrs. Gore Hampton; she has a low, soft voice, a very bewitching smile, and a way of looking at you while you are talking to her, that somehow half suggests to yourself that you must be making love without knowing it. Now, don't misunderstand me, Tom, and come out with one of your long whistles, as much as to say, "Kenny James is as great a fool as ever!" No such thing! a suit in Chancery, the repeal of the corn laws, and the Estates Court, have made me an altered man. The very nature of me is changed, and changed so much that many's the time I ask myself, "Is this Kenny Dodd? Where upon earth is that light-hearted, careless, hopeful vagabond, that always took the sunny road in life, though maybe it was n't exactly the way to the place he was going?" I'm another man now; I 'm wiser, as they call it; and, upon my conscience, I 'm mighty sorry for it!

But I hear you say, "Have n't you just confessed that you were--what shall I call it?--fascinated by the widow?"

And if I did, Tom Purcell, do you mean to tell me that you would have escaped her? Not a bit of it. The brown wig would have been set a little more forward, so as to bring one of those silky curls over your right eye. I think I see you exchanging your spectacles for a double eye-gla.s.s, and turning out your toes so as to display to the best advantage that shapely calf in its trim brown silk stocking. Ah, Tom!

not even quarter sessions and a rate in aid will drive these thoughts out of an Irishman's head.

From the moment that this new alliance was signed, we entered upon a new existence. Bonn, as I have told you, was a quiet little collegiate place, with primitive habits of no very expensive kind. The chief pleasures were weak wine in a garden, or small whist in a summer-house, with now and then an "aesthetic tea," as they phrase it, at the Pro-Rector's; of which, of course, I understand nothing, but sincerely hope the discourse was better than the beverage. It was, I own it, Tom, a strange kind of life, that seemed to me always like a moral convalescence, when you were only strong enough for small virtues. One undoubted advantage it had,--it was inexpensive, Tom. We were living, with few comforts and some privations, I confess, at only one-third more than we used to spend at Dodsbor-ough; and, considering that we know nothing of the language, I conclude that we were enjoying the Continent as cheaply as was practicable.

I won't pretend that it suited me. I don't want you to believe that I was taking a scientific or a studious turn. Still I liked the place for one thing, which was this,--its quiet monotony, its placid, unvarying simplicity was telling upon Mrs. D. and the children in an astonishing manner. It was exactly the way that the water-cure works its wonders with old drunkards; the mountain air, the light diet, and the early hours being the best of the remedy. They were getting into a healthy state of mind without ever suspecting it.

Our grand junction, as Cary calls it, finished this; from the day Mrs.

G. arrived our reforms began. First, we had to change our hotel, and betake ourselves to one on the river-side, three times as dear, and not one-fourth as good.

The second story was fine enough for us before; now we have the whole "premier," taking two rooms more than we want, lest anybody should live on the same floor with us. Instead of the _table d'hte_, that was cheap and cheerful, we were to dine upstairs,--"a particular dinner," as they call what is particularly bad, and costly besides. Then we have had to hire two lackeys, one of whom sits in an anteroom all day reading the newspaper, and only rises to make me a grand bow as I pa.s.s; which worries me so much that I usually go down by the back stairs to escape him.

We have two job coaches, for we are too many for one, and a boat hired by the week, with a considerable retinue of mountain ponies and donkeys, guides, goats, whey-sellers, and geological specimen-folk without end.

If Mrs. G. was only fashionable, we could n't be more than ruined; but she is learned and literary, and given to the "ologies," Tom, and that's what I fear will drive us clean mad. She has an eternal restlessness in her to be at something; one day, it's the date of a medal; the next, it is the family connections of a "moss," or the chemistry of a meteoric stone; and, shall I own to you, my dear friend, that I don't believe she either understands or cares one jot about them all? There 's a big herbarium bound in green, and a grand book of autographs in blue and gold, on the drawing-room table; there's a bit of "gneiss," a big beetle, and a fossil frog on the chimney-piece; but my name isn't Kenny Dodd if she has n't more sympathies with modern dandies than antediluvian monsters. That's my private opinion; and, of course, I mention it in confidence. You 'll say, "What matter is that to you?"

and, true enough, it is not, as regards her; but what will become of us, if Mrs. D. takes a turn for entomology or comparative anatomy, and worse, maybe? She's just the kind of woman to do it. She'd learn the tight-rope if she thought it was fashionable, or, as the newspapers say, "patronized by the aristocracy." Now, Tom, you can fancy the unknown sea upon which we have embarked. For, however unadapted we may be to fashionable life, one thing is quite clear,--we never were made for the abstract sciences; and it strikes me forcibly that the great lesson of Continental life is that everybody can do everything. I am not going to say that it is not a pleasant and a very flattering theory, but is it quite safe, Tom? That's the question. The highest step I ever attained in chemistry was how to concoct a tumbler of punch; and my knowledge of botany does not go far beyond distinguishing "greens" from geraniums; and it's not at my time of life that I'm to drive myself crazy with hard names and cla.s.sifications; and if I know anything of Mrs. D., her intellectual faculties have attained all the vigor that nature meant for them many a year ago.

My own private opinion about these sciences is, they 're capital things for employing young people, and keeping them out of wickedness! The fellows that teach them, too, are musty, snuff-taking, prosy old dogs, with heavy shoes and greasy cravats,--the very reverse of your race of dancing and music masters, who are a pestilent crew! So that, for a man who has daughters abroad, my advice is--stick to the sciences.

Gray sandstone is safer than the polka, and there's not as dangerous an experiment in all chemistry as singing duets with some black-bearded blackguard from Naples or Palermo. Now mind, Tom, this counsel of mine applies to the education of the young; for when people come to the forties, you may rely upon it, if they set about learning anything, they 'll have the devil for a schoolmaster. What does all the geology mean?

Junketing, Tom,--nothing but junketing! Primitive rock is another name for picnic, and what they call quartz is a figurative expression for iced champagne. Just reflect for a moment, and see what it comes to.

You can enter a protest against family extravagances when they take the shape of b.a.l.l.s and soirees, but what are you to do against botanical excursions and antiquarian researches? It 's like writing yourself down Goth at once to oppose these. "Oh, papa hates chemistry; he despises natural history," that's the cry at once, and they hold me up to ridicule, just in the way the rascally Protestant newspapers did Dr.

Cullen for saying that he did n't believe the world was round. If the liberty of the subject be worth anything,--if the right for which the same Protestants are always prating, private judgment, be the great privilege they deem it,--why should n't Dr. Cullen have his own opinion about the shape of the earth? He can say, "It suits _me_ to think I 'm walking erect on a flat surface, and not crawling along with my head down, like a fly on the ceiling! I 'm happier when I believe what does n't puzzle my understanding, and I don't want any more miracles than we have in the Church." He may say that, and I'd like to know what harm does that do you or me? Does it endanger the Protestant succession or the State religion? Not a bit of it, Tom. The real fact is simply this: private judgment is a boon they mean to keep for themselves, and never share with their neighbors. So far as I have seen of life, there's no such tyrant as your Protestant, and for this reason: it's bad enough to force a man to believe something that he doesn't like, but it's ten times worse to make him disbelieve what he's well satisfied with; and that's exactly what they do. Even on the ground of common humanity it is indefensible. If my private judgment goes in favor of saints' toe-nails and martyrs' shin-bones, I have a right to my opinion, and you have no right to attack it. Besides, I won't be badgered into what may suit somebody else to think. My opinion is like my flannel waistcoat, that I'll take off or put on as the weather requires; and I think it very cruel if I must wear _mine_ simply because _you_ feel cold.

I get warm--I almost grow angry--when I think of these things; and I wonder within myself why our people don't expose them as they might.

Not that some are not doing the duty well and manfully, Tom. M'Hale is a glorious fellow; and for blackguarding a Prime Minister, for a real good effective slanging, it's hard to find his equal. He never embarra.s.ses himself with logic,--he wastes no time in arguing, but "goes in" at once, and plants his blow between the eyes! That's what the English can't stand. They want discussion. They are always fishing for evidence for this, and a proof of that; but come down on them with a strong torrent of foul abuse, and you sweep them away like mud in a mill-race.

That's where we always beat them in our controversial discussions, Tom; and we never failed so long as we relied on this superiority. It was like the bayonet in the hands of our infantry.

Is n't it strange how I get back to Ireland in spite of me? I 'm like that madman in the story that can't keep Charles the First out of his memorial? And, after all, why should I? Is there anything more natural than to think of my country, if I can't manage to live in it? And this reminds me to ask you about home matters. What was it you wrote at the end of your letter about Jones McCarthy? I can't make out the word, whether it is his "death," or his "debts;" though, from my experience of the family, I surmise it to be the latter. If it's dead he is, I suppose we 'll come in for that blessed legacy that Mrs. D. has been talking about every day for the last twenty-five years, the history of which I have heard so often that I actually know nothing about it, except that it was the only bit of property possessed by my wife's relations they couldn't make away with. It was so strictly "tied up," as they call it in law, that n.o.body could ever get the use of it,--pretty much like the silver sixpence given to a schoolboy, with the express stipulation that he is never to change it.

I am rather curious to know what Mrs. D. will think of these "wise provisions" of her ancestors, if she succeeds to the bequest. To tell you the plain truth, Tom, I don't know a greater misfortune for a man that has married a wife without money, than to discover at the end of some fifteen or twenty years that somebody has left her a few hundred pounds! It is not only that she conceives visions of unbounded extravagance, and raves about all manner of expense, but she begins to fancy herself an heiress that was thrown away, and imagines wonderful destinies she might have arrived at, if she had n't had the bad luck to meet you. For a real crab-apple of discord, I 'll back a few hundreds in the Three per Cents against all the family jars that ever were invented.

Save us then from this, if you can, Tom. There must surely be twenty ways to avoid the legacy; and so that Mrs. D. does n't hear of it, I 'd rather you 'd prove her illegitimate than allow her to succeed to this bequest I 'll not enlarge upon all I feel about this subject, hoping that by your skill and address we may never bear more of it; but I tell you, frankly, I 'd face the small-pox with a stouter heart than the news of succeeding to the M'Carthy inheritance.

There are many other matters I intended to write about, but I believe I must keep them for the next time; such as the plan for taking away the Church property, and the income-tax for Ireland; and that business of the Madiais, that I read of in the papers. So far as I have seen, Tom, the King of Tuscany--if that be his name--was right. There were plenty of books the Madiais might have read without breaking the laws. There are translations of all the rascally French novels of the day, from Georges Sand down to Paul de k.o.c.k; and if they wanted mischief, might n't these have satisfied them? But the truth is, Protestants are never easy without they are attacking the true Church, and if there were more of them sent to the galleys, the world would be all the quieter.

You amaze me about the Great Exhibition for this year in Dublin. Faith!

I remember when I used to think that the less we exhibited ourselves the better! I suppose times are changed. I think, if I could send Mrs. D.

over as a specimen of Continental plating on Irish manufacture, she 'd deserve a place, and maybe a prize.

Well, well! it's a queer world we live in. They 've just come to tell me that the man of the post-office has shut up an hour earlier, as he is engaged out to dine, so that I 'll keep this open till to-morrow's mail.

Wednesday Morning. I suspect that the mischief is done, Tom,--I mean about the legacy. Mrs. D. received a strange-looking, square-shaped, formally addressed epistle this morning, the contents of which, not being a demand for money, she did not communicate to me. She and Mary Anne both retired to peruse it in secret, and when they again appeared in the drawing-room, it was with an air of conscious pride and self-possession that smacked terribly of a bequest I own to you, the prospect alarms me; it may be that my fears take an exaggerated shape, but I can't shake off the impression that this is the hardest trial I had ever to go through.

I know her in most of her moods, Tom, and have got a kind of way of managing her in each of them,--not very successful, perhaps, but sufficiently so to get on with. I have seen her in straits about money; I have seen her in her jealous fits; I have seen her in her moments of family pride; and I have repeatedly seen her on what she calls "her dying couch,"--an opportunity she always seizes to say the most disagreeable things she can think of, so that I often speculate what she 'd say if she was really going off: but all these convey no notion to me of how she 'd behave if she thought herself rich. As for our poverty, we never knew anything else; the jealousy I 'm getting used to; the family pride often gives me a hearty laugh when I 'm alone; and I am as hardened about death-bed scenes as if I was an undertaker. It's the prosperity I have n't strength for, Tom; and I feel it.

Maybe, after all, it's only false terror alarms me. I hope it may turn out so; and in this last wish I am sure of your hearty sympathy and good feeling.

Ever yours, most sincerely,