The Dodd Family Abroad Volume I Part 34

"Give me up that inventory,--that bill of sale," cried I, perfectly wild with pa.s.sion.

He only gave a grim smile, while, by a significant gesture, he showed that the paper in question was in his breeches-pocket For a second, Bob, I was so thoroughly beside myself with pa.s.sion, that I determined to regain possession of it by force. To this end I went to the door, and locked it; but by the time I returned to him, I found that he had thrown up the window and addressed some words to the people in the courtyard.

This brought me to my senses, so I counted over my twenty-seven Naps., placed the bill on the chimney-piece, unlocked the door, and told him to go,--an injunction which, I a.s.sure you, he obeyed with such alacrity that had I been disposed to a.s.sist his exit I could not have been in time to do it.

For both our sakes I 'll not recall the state of mind in which this scene left me. As to going an excursion with such a sum, or rather with what would have remained of it after paying waiters, porters, and such-like, it was too absurd to think of, so that I coolly put it in my pocket, walked over to "the Rooms," threw it on the green cloth of the gaming-table--and--lost it! There ends the episode of my last fortnight's existence,--as dreary and disreputable a one as need be. As to how I have pa.s.sed the last four days I 'm not quite so clear! I have walked some twenty-five or thirty miles in each, dining at little wayside inns, and returning late at night to Baden.

Pa.s.sing through picturesque glens, and along mountain ridges of boldest outline, I have marked little. I remember still less. Still the play-fever is abating. I can sleep without dreaming of the croupier's chant, and I awake without starting at any imaginary loss! I feel as though great bodily exertion and fatigue would ultimately antagonize the excessive tension of nerves too long and too painfully on the stretch, and I am steadily pursuing this system for a cure.

When I come home--after midnight--I add some pages to this long epistle, which I sometimes doubt if I shall ever have courage to send you! for there is this poignant misery about one's play misfortunes, you never can expect a friend's sympathy, no matter how severe your sufferings be.

The losses at play are thoroughly selfish ills; they appeal to nothing for consolation!

You will have remarked how I have avoided all mention of the family in this epistle. The truth is, I scarcely ever see my mother or Mary Anne.

Caroline occasionally comes to me before I 'm up of a morning; but it is to sorrow over domestic griefs of one kind or other. My father is still away, and, strangely too, we do not hear from him; and, in fact, we are a most ill-ordered, broken-up household, each going his own road, and that being--in almost every case, I fear--a bad one.

This recital--if it be ever destined to come to hand--may possibly tend to reconcile you to home life, and the want of those advantages which you are so thoroughly convinced pertain to foreign travel. I know that in my present mood I am very far from being an impartial witness, and I am also aware that I am open to the reproach of not having cultivated those arts which give to Continental residence its peculiar value; but let me tell you, Bob, the ignorance with which I left home--the utter neglect of education in youth--left me unable to derive profit from what lay so seemingly accessible. You do not plate over cast-iron, and the thin lacquer of gold or silver would never even hide the base metal beneath. I haven't courage to go over and see Morris; and here I live, perfectly isolated and companionless.

Tiverton writes me word that he 'll be back in a few days. He went over to speak on the Jew Bill. He says that his liberal speech on that measure "stood to him" very handsomely in Lombard Street He has forwarded the report of his oration, but I have n't read it. His chief argument in favor of admitting them into Parliament is, "There are so few of them." It's very like the lady's plea,--of the child being a little one. However, I don't think it signifies much one way or t'other; but it seems strange to exclude men from legislation who claim for their ancestor the first Lawgiver.

I shall be all eagerness to hear what success you have had for the scholarship. You are a happy fellow to have heart and energy for an honorable ambition; and that you may have "luck"--for that is requisite, too--is the sincere wish of your attached friend,

James Dodd.

LETTER XXIX. CAROLINE DODD TO MISS c.o.x AT MISS MINCING'S ACADEMY, BLACK ROCK, IRELAND

The Moorg Thal.

My dear Miss c.o.x,--How happy would you be if only seated in the spot where I now write these lines! I am at an open window, the sill of which is a great rock, all covered with red-brown moss, and beneath, again, at some thirty feet lower, runs the clear stream of the Moorg River.

Two gigantic mountains, clad in pine forests to the summits, enclose the valley, the view of which, however, extends to full two miles, showing little peeps of farmhouses and mills along the river's bank, and high upon a great bold crag, the ducal castle of Eberstein. The day is hot but not sultry, for a light summer breeze is playing over the water, and, high up, the clouds move slowly on, now casting broad ma.s.ses of mellow shadow over the deep-tinted forest.

The stream here falls over some ma.s.ses of rock with a pleasant gushing music that harmonizes well with the songs of the peasant girls, who are what we should in Ireland call "beetling" their clothes in the water.

On the opposite bank some mowers are seated at their dinner, under the shadow of a leafy horsechestnut-tree, and, far away in the distance, a wagon of the newly cut hay is traversing the river; the horses stop to drink, and the merry children are screaming their laughter from the top of the load. I hear them even here.

That you may learn where I am, and how I have come hither, let me tell you that I am on a visit with Mrs. Morris, the mother of Captain M., at a little cottage they have taken for the season, about twelve miles from Baden, in a valley called the Moorg Thal. If its situation be the very perfection of picturesque choice, it contains within quite enough of accommodation for those who occupy it. The furniture, too, most simple though it be, is of that nice old walnut-wood, so bright and mellow-looking; and our little drawing-room is even handsomely ornamented by a richly carved cabinet and a centre-table, the support of which is a grotesque dwarf with four heads. Then we have a piano, a reasonably well-filled book-shelf, and a painter's easel, to which I turn at intervals, as I write, to give a pa.s.sing touch of light to those trees now waving in the summer's wind, and which I destine, when finished, for my dear, dear governess. All the externals of rural life in Germany are highly picturesque,--I might almost call them poetic.

The cottages, the costume, the little phrases in use amongst the people, their devotional offices, and, above all, their music, make up an ideal of country life such as I scarcely conceived possible to exist.

There is, too, I am told,--for my imperfect knowledge of the language does not permit me to state the fact of myself,--an amount of information amongst the people seldom found in a similar cla.s.s throughout the rest of Europe. I do not mean the peasantry here, but the dwellers in the small villages,--those, for instance, who follow handicrafts and small trades, and who are usually great readers and very acute thinkers. Denied almost entirely all access to that daily literature of newspapers on which our people feed, they fall back upon a very different cla.s.s of writing, and are conversant with the works of their great prose and verse writers. Their thoughts are thus idealized to a degree; they themselves become a.s.suredly less work-a-day and practical, but their hopes, their aspirations, and their ambitions take a higher flight than we could ever think possible from such humble resting-places. Mrs. Morris, who knew Germany many years ago, tells me that those fatal years of '48 and '49 have done them great injury.

Suddenly called upon to act, in events and contingencies of which they derived all their knowledge from some parallels in remote history, they rushed into the excesses of a medival period, as the natural consequences of the position; and all the atrocities of bygone centuries were re-enacted by a people who are unquestionably the most docile and law-obeying of the whole Continent. They are now calming down again, and there is every reason to think that, if, unshaken by troubles from without or within, Germany will again be the happy land it used to be.

Forgive me, my dear Miss c.o.x, if I grow tiresome to you, by a theme which now fills all my thoughts, and occupies so much of our daily talking. Captain M. has gone to England on some important matter of business, and the old lady is my only companion.

Oh, how you would like her! and how capable you would be of appreciating traits and features of her mind, of which I, in my insufficiency, can but dimly catch the meaning. She is within a year or two of eighty, and yet with a freshness of heart and a brightness of intellect that would shame one of _my_ age.

The mellow gayety of heart that, surviving all the trials of life, lives on to remote age, hopeful in the midst of disappointments, trusting even when betrayed, is the most captivating trait that can adorn our poor nature. The spirit that can extract its pleasant memories from the past, forgetting all their bitterness, is truly a happy one. This she seems to do in all grat.i.tude for what blessings remain to her, after a life not devoid of misfortune. She is devotedly attached to her son, who, in return, adores her. Probably no picture of domestic affection is more touching than that subsisting between a man already past youth and his aged and widowed mother,--the little tender attentions, the watchful kindnesses on both sides, those graceful concessions which each knows how and when to make of their own comfort, and, above all, that blending of tastes by which, at last, each learns to adopt some of the other's likings, and, even in prejudices, to become more companionable.

To me, the happiness of my present life is greater than I can describe to you. The peaceful quietude of an existence on which no shocks obtrude is unspeakably delightful. If the weather forbid us to venture abroad, which on fine days we do for hours together, our home resources are numerous. The little cares of a household, amusing as they are, a.s.sociated with so many little peculiar traits of nationality, help the morning to pa.s.s; after which I draw, or write, or play, or read aloud, mostly German, to the old lady. Whatever my occupation, be it at the easel, the desk, or the pianoforte, her criticisms are always good and just; for, strange to say, even on subjects of which she professes to know nothing, there is an instinctive appreciation of the right; and this would seem to result from an intense study, and deep love of nature. She herself was the first to show me that this was a charm which the Bible possessed in the most remarkable manner, and, unlike other literature, gave it the most uncommon value in the eyes of the humblest cla.s.ses, who are from the very accidents of fortune the deep students of nature. The language whose ill.u.s.trations are taken from objects and incidents that every peasant can confirm, has a direct appeal to a lowly heart; and there is a species of flattery to his intelligence in the fact that inspiration could not typify more strongly its conception than by a.n.a.logies open to the lowliest son of labor.

After this, she places Shakspeare, whose actual knowledge is miraculous, and whose immortality is based upon that very fact, since the true will be true to all ages and people; and, however men's minds may differ about the forms of expression, the fact will remain imperishable.

According to her theory, Shakspeare understood human nature as learned men do an exact science,--where certain results must follow certain premises and combinations inevitably and of necessity. How otherwise explain that intimate acquaintance with the habits and modes of thought of cla.s.ses of which he never made one? How account for the delineation of kingly feelings by him who scarcely saw the steps of a throne? "And yet," said Mrs. M., "Louis Philippe himself told me, that Shakspeare's kings were as true as his lovers. His Majesty once amused me much," said she, "by alluding to a pa.s.sage in 'Hamlet,' which a.s.suredly would never have occurred to me to notice. It is where the King and Queen are dismissing their attendants from further waiting. His Majesty says, 'Thanks, Rosenkrantz, and gentle Guildenstern;' on which the Queen adds, 'Thanks, Guildenstern, and gentle Rosenkrantz.' 'Now,' said Louis Philippe, 'one almost should have been a queen to know that it was needful to balance the seeming preference of the Royal epithet, by inverting the phrase.'"

While I ramble on thus, I may seem to be forgetting the subjects on which more properly I ought to dwell,--home and family. Our pursuit of greatness still continues, my dear Miss c.o.x. We are determined to be fine people; and I suppose, after all, that our shortcomings and disappointments are not greater than usually fall to the lot of those who aspire to what is beyond or above them. In England the gradations of rank are as fixed as the degrees of a service; and we, being who and what we are, could no more pretend to something else than could a subaltern pa.s.s off for a colonel to his own regiment. Here, however, there is a general scramble for position, and each seems to have the same privilege to call himself what he likes, that he exercises over the mere spelling of his name. I judge this to be the case from the anecdotes I have heard in society about the Count this, and the Baron that. Since papa's absence in the interior of Germany, whither he accompanied Mrs. Gore Hampton, to visit, I believe, some crowned head of her acquaintance, mamma has pursued a kind of royal progress towards greatness. Our style of living has been most expensive,--I might almost call it splendid. We have servants, horses, equipage,--everything, in fact, that appertains to a certain station, but one, and that one thing, unfortunately, is the grand requisite of all,--the air that belongs to it. The truth is, Miss c.o.x, as the old lawyer one day said at dinner to papa, "You prove too much, Mr. Dodd." That is exactly what mamma is doing. She dresses magnificently for small occasions; she insists too eagerly upon what she deems her due; and she is far too exclusive with respect to those who seek her acquaintanceship. Would you believe it, that though I am permitted to accept the kind hospitality which I at this moment enjoy, it is upon the condition that neither mamma nor Mary Anne are to "be dragged into the mire of low intimacies;" that Mrs.

Morris is to be "Cary's friend." Proud am I, indeed, if she will deign to consider me such!

I must acknowledge that mamma's "Wednesdays" collected all that was high and distinguished at Baden. We had the old Kurfurst of something, with a long white moustache, and thirty orders; an archd.u.c.h.ess with a humpback, and a mediatized prince with one eye. There were generals, marshals, ministers, envoys, and plenipos without end,--"your Highness" and "your Excellency" were household words round our tea-table. But I often asked myself, "Are not these great folk paying off in falsehood the imposition we are practising upon _them?_ Are they not laughing at the 'Dodds,' and their thousand solecisms in good breeding?" These would be very unworthy suspicions of mine if I did not feel convinced they were well founded; but more than once I have overheard chance words and phrases that have suffused my cheeks with "shame-red," as the Germans call it, for an hour after. Is it not an indignity to accept hospitality and requite it by ridicule? Is it not base to receive attentions, and repay them in scorn?

Whether it is from feeling as I do on the subject or not, I cannot say, but James rarely or never appears at mamma's receptions. He is among what is called "a fast set;" but I always incline to think that his nature is not corrupted, though doubtless sullied, by the tone of society around us.

You ask me about Mary Anne's appearance, and here I can speak without reserve or qualification. She is, indeed, the handsomest girl I ever saw; tall and well-proportioned, and with a carriage and a style about her that might grace a princess. A critic inclined to severity might say there was perhaps a slight tendency to haughtiness in the expression of the features, especially the mouth; the head, too, is a little, a very little, too much thrown back; but somehow these might be defects in another, and yet in her they seem to give a peculiar stamp and character to her beauty. All her gestures are grace itself, and her courtesy, save that it is a little too low, perfect. She speaks French and German fluently, and knows the precise t.i.tle of some hundred acquaintances, every one of whom would be distracted if defrauded in the smallest coin of his rank. I need not say how superior all these gifts make her to your humble and unlettered correspondent. Yes, my dear Miss c.o.x, the French "irregulars" are the same puzzle to me they used to be, and my mind will no more carry me on to the verb at the end of the German sentence than will my feet bear me over fifty miles a day. I am the stupid Caroline of long ago, and what renders the case so hopeless is, with the best of dispositions to do otherwise.

I am, however, improved in my painting, particularly in my use of color.

I begin at last to recognize the merits of harmony in tint, and see how Nature herself always contrives to be correct. I hope you will like the little sketch that accompanies this; the rock in the foreground is the spot on which I sit at every sunset. Would that I had you beside me there, to counsel, to guide, and to correct me!

When Captain Morris returns, I shall leave this, as Mrs. M. will not require my companionship any longer, although she is already planning twenty things we are to do then.

Pray, therefore, write to me, as before, to Baden; and with my most affectionate regards to all who may remember me, and my dearest love to yourself,

Believe me, yours ever,

Caroline Dodd.

LETTER x.x.x. MISS MARY ANNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN

My dearest Kitty,--It _was_ our names you saw in the "Morning Post"!

We are "The Dodd M'Carthys." It was no use deferring the decision for papa's return; and, as I observed to mamma, circ.u.mstances are often stronger than ourselves; for, in all likelihood, Louis Napoleon would not have declared the Empire so soon if it were not for the "Rouges,"

or the Orlaniste, or the others. Events, in fact, pressed us from behind,--go forward we must; and so, like the distinguished authority I have mentioned, we accepted greatness, in the shape of our present designation.

We took the great step on Monday evening last, and issued one hundred and thirty-eight cards for our Wednesday at home, as Madame Dodd M'Carthy. Of course, I conclude the new t.i.tle was amply discussed and criticised; but, as James remarked, the _coup d'tat_ succeeded perfectly. He sent me three different bulletins during the day from "the Rooms," where he was engaged at play. The first was briefly: "Great excitement, and much curiosity as to the reasons. Causes a.s.signed,--vague, various, and contradictory. Strict silence on my part"

The second ran: "Funds rising rapidly,--confidence restored." The third was: "Victory--opposition crushed, annihilated--dynasty secure. Send a card at once to the Crown Prince of Dalmatia, at the 'Lion.' He is just come."

Mamma's nervous tremors during this eventful day were dreadful. Nothing sustained her but a high consciousness, and some excellent curacoa.

Every cry in the street, every chance commotion, the slightest a.s.semblage, beneath our windows, she took for popular demonstrations.

You know, my dearest Kitty, we live in really eventful times, and n.o.body can answer for how the mere populace will receive any attempts to recover ancient feudal privileges. I own to you, frankly, the attempt was a bold one. We, so to say, stemmed the foamy torrent of Democracy at its highest flood; but the moment was also propitious. Now or never was the time for n.o.bility to raise its head again; and _we_, I am proud to say, have given the initiative to astonished Europe.

From the hour that we took the great step, Kitty, I felt my heart rise with the occasion. My spirit seemed to say, "Swell to the magnitude of those grand proportions around you;" and I really felt myself, as it were, disenthralled from the narrow limits of a mere Dodd, and expanding to the wide realms of a M'Carthy! If you only knew the sufferings and heart-burnings that plebeian appellation has cost us! The hateful monosyllable seemed to drop down like a sh.e.l.l in the midst of a company; and often has it needed a fortnight's dinners and evening parties, in a new place, to overcome the horrid impression caused by the name of Dodd!

Now, as it stands at present, it serves to give vigor and energy to the name. Dodd M'Carthy is like Gorman O'Moore, Grogan O' Dwyer, or any other of the patronymics of ancient Ireland.

From the deep interest caused by this decisive step, I was obliged at once to turn to the details of our great reception to be held on the Wednesday following, for it was necessary that in splendor and distinction it should eclipse all that had preceded it. Happily for us, dearest Caroline was absent as well as papa; she had gone to spend a week with a tiresome old lady some miles away, and we were therefore relieved from the annoyance of that vexatious restraint imposed by the mere presence of those whose thoughts and ideas are never yours. I have already told you that she has taken up a completely mistaken line, and utterly destroyed any natural advantages she possessed. I told her so myself over and over; I reasoned and argued the question deliberately.

"I see," said I, "your tastes are not those of high and fashionable society. You do not feel the instinctive fascination that comes of being admired by the distinguished cla.s.ses. Your ambitions do not soar to those aristocratic regions whose atmosphere breathes of royalty. Be it so; there is another path open to you,--the sentimental and the romantic. Your hair suits it, your complexion, your figure, your style generally, will easily adapt themselves to the character. If not a part that attracts general admiration, it is one which never fails, in every society, to secure some favorable notice; and elder sons, educated either 'at home or in clergymen's families,' are constantly captured by its fascination." This, I must remark to you, Kitty, is perfectly true, and it is of great consequence frequently to have a woman that suits shy men, and saves them the much-dreaded exhibition of themselves by talking aloud. I told her all this, and I even condescended to use arguments derived from her own narrow views of life, by showing that it is a style requiring little expense in the way of dress,--ringlets and a white muslin "peignoir" of a morning, a broad-leaved straw hat for the promenade,--something, in short, of the very simplest kind, and no ornaments. No! my dearest Kitty, it was of no use! She is one of those self-opinionated girls that reason never appeals to. She coolly replied to me, that all this would be unreal and unnatural,--"a mere piece of acting," as she said, and, consequently, unworthy of her, and unbecoming. I repeat the very words of her reply, to show you the great benefits she has derived from foreign travel! Why, dearest Kitty, n.o.body is real,--n.o.body pretends to be real abroad; if they were to do so, they 'd be shunned like wild beasts. What is it, I ask, that const.i.tutes the very essence of high breeding? Conventional usages, forms of expression, courtesies, attentions, flatteries, and observances,--all stimulated, all put on, to please and captivate. Reject this theory, and instead of society, you have a mob; instead of a _salon_, you have a wild-beast "menagerie." Caroline says she is Irish; she might as well say she was Cochin-Chinese. n.o.body can recognize any trait in that nationality but its uniform "savagery;" for I must tell you, Kitty, that Ireland itself--though politically deplored, pitied, and wept over, abroad--is enc.u.mbered by geographical doubts and difficulties like the North-West Pa.s.sage. Many suppose it to be a town in the West of England; others fancy it a barren tract along the coast; and a few, whose sympathies are more acute for suffering nations, fancy it to be a species of penal settlement in an unknown lat.i.tude.

If Caroline even developed the character--if she had, as the French say, _cr le rle_ of an Irish girl, what with eccentricities of dress, manner, and Moore's melodies, something might be made of it. It admits of all those extravagances that are occasionally admired, and any amount of liberty with the male s.e.x. Cary's reading of the part was very different; it was neither poetic nor pictorial; in fact, it was a mere vulgar piece of commonplace devotion to home and its tiresome a.s.sociations, and a clinging attachment to whatever recalled memories of our former obscurity,--these "national traits" being eked out with a most insolent contempt for the foreigner, and a compa.s.sionate sorrow for the patience with which _we_ endured him.

Pardon me, my dearest friend, if I weary you with this unpleasant theme; but I wish to satisfy your mind that if my sisterly affection be strong, it still does not tyrannize over my reason, and that increased powers of judgment, if they elevate the understanding, are frequently exercised at the cost of our tenderest feelings.