The Dodd Family Abroad Volume I Part 37

I hastened to the caf; not one of those brilliantly decorated and lighted establishments where foreigners of all nations foregather, but a dim-looking, musty, sanded-floored, smoke-dried den, filled with a company to suit. There was that mysterious half-light, and that low whispering sound which seemed to form a fit atmosphere for spies and eavesdroppers, of which I need scarcely tell you government officials are composed.

By the guidance of the waiter, I reached the table where the Herr von Schureke was seated at his dominos. He was a beetle-browed, scowling, ill-conditioned-looking gent of about fifty, who had a trick of coughing a hard dry cough between every word he uttered.

"Ah," said he, after. I explained the object of my visit, "you want your pa.s.sport. You wish to leave Baden, and you come here, to give your orders to the Polizey Beamten as if you were the Grand-Duke!"

I deprecated this intention in my politest German; but he went on.

"Es geht nicht"--literally, "It 's no go "--"my worthy friend. We are not the officials of England. We are Badenere. We are the functionaries of an independent sovereign. You can't bully us here with your line-of-battle ships, your frigates, and bomb-boats."

"No. Gott bewahr!" echoed the company; "that will do elsewhere,--but Baden is free!"

The enthusiasm, the sentiment evoked brought all the guests from the several tables to swarm around us.

I a.s.sured the meeting that Cobden and Co. were not more pacifically minded than I was; that as to anything like threat, menace, or insolence towards the Grand-Duchy, it never came within thousands of miles of my thoughts; that I came to make the civilest of requests, in the very humblest of manner; and if by ill-luck the distinguished functionary I had the honor to address should not deem either the time opportune, or the place suitable--

"You'll make it an affair for your House of Commons," broke he in.

"Or your 'Ti-mes' newspaper!" cried another, converting the t.i.tle of the Thunderer into a strange dissyllable.

"Or your Secretary of State will tell us that you are a 'Civis Romanue,'" wheezed out a small man, that I heard was Archivist of something, somewhere.

"Britannia rule de waves, but do not rule de Grand-Duchy," muttered a fourth, in English, to show that he was thoroughly imbued, not alone with our language, but the spirit of our Const.i.tution.

"Really, gentlemen," said I, "I am quite at a loss for any reason for this audible outburst of nationality. I dis-claim the very remotest idea of offending Baden, or anything belonging to it. I entertain no intention of converting my case into a question of international dispute. I simply wait my pa.s.sport, and free permission to leave the Grand-Duchy and all belonging to it."

This declaration was unanimously p.r.o.nounced insolent, offensive, and insulting; and a vast number of unpleasant remarks poured down upon England and Englishmen, which, I need not tell you, are not worth repet.i.tion. The end of all was that I lost temper too,--the wonder is how I kept it so long,--and ventured to hint that people of my country had sometimes the practice of righting themselves, when wronged, instead of tormenting their Government or pestering the "Times" newspaper; and that if they had any curiosity as to the _how_, I should be most happy to favor any one with the information that would follow me into the street.

There was a perfect Babel of angry vociferation as I said this; the meaning of which I might guess, though the words were unintelligible; and as I issued forth into the street, expressions of angry indignation and insult were actually showered upon me. I reached Lichtenthal late at night; the governor was in bed, and I hastened to "report myself"

to him. This done, I sat down to give you this full narration of our doings; and only regret that I must conclude without telling you anything of our future plans, of which I know actually nothing. I should have spared you the uninteresting scene with the authorities, if you had not asked me, in your last, "Whether the respect felt towards England by every foreign nation did not invest the travelling Englishman with many privileges and immunities unknown to others?" I have heard that such was once the case. I believe, indeed, there was a time that any absurdity or excess of John Bull would have been set down as mere eccentricity,--a dash of that folly ascribable to our insular tastes and habits; but this is all changed now! Partly from our own conduct, in part from real and sometimes merely imputed acts of our rulers, and partly from the tone of our Press, which no foreigner can ever be brought to understand aright, we have got to be thought a set of spendthrift, wealthy, reckless misers, lavish and economical by tarns, socially proud and exclusive, but politically red republican and levelling,--tyrants in our families, and democrats in the world; in fact, a sort of living ma.s.s of contradictory qualities, not rendered more endurable by coa.r.s.e tastes and rude manners! This, at least, Morris told me, and he is a shrewd observer, like many of those sleepy-eyed, quiet "coves" one meets with.

Not that he reads individuals like Tiverton! No: George is unequalled in ready dissection of a man's motives, and will detect a dodge before another begins to suspect it. I wish he were back; I feel frequently so helpless without his counsel and advice. The turf is, surely, a wonderful school for sharpening a man's faculties, and it gives you the habit of connecting words with motives, and asking yourself, "What does So-and-so mean by that?" "What is he up to now?" that at last you decipher character, let its lines be written in the very faintest ink!

Our post leaves at daybreak, so that I shall just have time for this.

When I write next, I 'll answer--that is, if I can--all your questions about myself, what I mean to do, and when to begin it.

Not, indeed, that they are themes I like to touch upon, for somehow all the quiet pursuits of life look wonderfully slow and tiresome affairs in comparison with the panoramic effects of travel. The perpetual change of scene, actors, and incidents supplies in itself that amount of excitement which, under other circ.u.mstances, calls for so much exertion and effort. There is another thing, also, which has always given me great discouragement. It is that the humbler walks of life require not only an amount of labor, but of actual ability, that are never called for in higher positions. Think of the work a fellow does as a doctor or a lawyer; and think of the brains, too, he has to bring to these careers, and then picture to yourself a man in a Government situation, some snug colonial governorship, or something at home,--say, he's Secretary-at-War, or has something in the household. He writes his name at the foot of an occasional report or a despatch, and he puts on his blue ribbon, or his grand cross, as it may be, on birthdays. There's the whole of it! As Tiverton says, "One needs more blood and bone nowadays for the hack stakes than the Derby;" he means, of course, in allusion to real life, and not to the turf! Don't fancy that I take it in ill part any remarks you make upon my idleness, nor its probable consequences.

We are old friends, Bob; but even were we not, I accept them as sin-cere evidence of true interest and regard, though I may not profit by them as I ought. The Dodds are an impracticable race, and in nothing more so than by fully appreciating all their faults, and yet never making an effort for their eradication.

Some people are civil enough to say how very Irish this is; but I think it is only so in half, inasmuch as our perceptions are sharp enough to show us even in ourselves those blemishes which your blear-eyed Saxon would never have discovered anywhere. Do you agree with me? Whether or not, my dear Bob, continue to esteem and believe me ever your affectionate friend,

James Dodd.

Though I am totally innocent as to our future, it is better not to write till you hear again from me, for of course we shall leave this at once; but where for? that's the question.

LETTER x.x.xIII. KENNY JAMES DODD TO MR. PURCELL, OF THE GRANGE, BRUFF

My dear Tom,--I am not in a humor for letter-writing, nor, indeed, for anything else that I know of. I am sick, sore, and sorry,--sick of the world, sore in my feet, and sorry of heart that I ever consented to come out upon this touring expedition, every step and mile of which is marked by its own misery and misfortune. I got back--I won't say home, for it would be an abuse of the word--on Wednesday last I travelled all the way on foot, with something less than one-and-fourpence English for my daily expenses, and arrived to find my wife entertaining, at a picnic, all Baden and its vicinity, with pheasants and champagne enough to feast the London Corporation, and an amount of cost and outlay that would have made Dodsborough brilliant during a whole a.s.sizes.

I broke up the meeting, perhaps less ceremoniously than a Cabinet Council is dissolved at Osborne House, where the Ministers, after luncheon, embark--as the "Court Journal" tells--on board the "Fairy," to meet the express train for London: valuable facts, that we never weary of reading! I routed them without even reading the Riot Act, and saw myself "master of the situation;" and a very pretty situation it was.

Now, Tom, when the best of two evils at a man's choice is to expose his family as vulgar pretenders and adventurers,--to show them up to the fine world of their fashionable acquaintances as a humbug and a sham,--let me tell you that the other side of the medal cannot have been very attractive. This was precisely the case here. "It is not pleasant,"

said I to myself, "to bring all the scandal and slander of professional bad tongues upon an unfortunate family, but ruin is worse still!" There was the whole sum and substance of my calculation,--"Ruin is worse still!" The picnic cost above a hundred pounds; the hotel expenses at Baden amounted to three hundred more; there are bills to be paid at nearly every shop in the town; and here we are, economizing, as usual, at a large hotel, at, to say the least, the rate of some five or six pounds per day. That I am able to sit down and write these items in a clear and legible hand, I take to be as fine an example of courage as ever was given to the world. Talk of men in a fire--an earthquake--a shipwreck--or even the "last collision on the South-Eastern"--I give the palm to the man who can be calm in the midst of duns, and be _collected_ when his debts cannot be. To be credited when you can no longer pay,--to drink champagne when you have n't small change for small beer, is enough to shake the boldest nerves; it is exactly like dancing on a tight rope, from which you know in your heart you must ultimately come down with a crash. When one reads of any sudden calamity having befallen a man who has incurred voluntary peril, the natural question at once rises, "What did he want to do? What was he trying for?" Now, suppose this question to be addressed to the Dodd family, and that any one should ask, "What did we want to do?" I am sadly afraid, Tom, that we should be puzzled for the answer. I have no doubt that my wife would sustain a long and hara.s.sing cross-examination before the truth would come out I am well aware of all the specious illusions she would evoke, and what sagacious notions she would scatter about education, accomplishments, modern languages, and maybe--mother-like--great matches for the girls, but the truth would out, at last,--we came abroad to be something--whatever it might be--that we could n't be at home; we changed our theatre, that we might take a new line of parts. We wanted, in short, to be in a world that we never were in before, and we have had our wish. I am not going to rail at fashionable life and high society. I am sure that, to those brought up in their ways, they are both pleasant and agreeable; but they never were our ways, and we were too old when we began to learn them. The grand world, to people like us, is like going up Mont Blanc,--fatigue, peril, expense, injury to health, and ruin to pocket, just to have the barren satisfaction of saying,

"I was up there last August--I was at the top in June." "What did you get for your pains, Kenny Dodd? What did you see for all the trouble you had? Are you wiser?" "No." "Are you happier?" "No." "Are you better informed?" "No." "Are you pleasanter company for your old friends?"

"No." "Are you richer?" "Upon my conscience, I am not! All I know is, that we were there, and that we came down again." Ay, Tom, there 's the moral of the whole story,--we came _down_ again! Had we limited our ambition, when we came abroad, to things reasonably attainable,--had we been satisfied to know and to a.s.sociate with people like ourselves,--had we sought out the advantages which certainly the Continent possesses in certain matters of taste and accomplishment, we might have got something, at least, for our money, and not paid too dearly for it But, no; the great object with us seemed always to be, swimming for our lives in the great ocean of fashion. And, let me tell you a secret, Tom; this grovelling desire to be amongst a set that we have no pretension to, is essentially and entirely English. No foreigner, so far as I have seen, has the vulgar vice of what is called "tuft-hunting." When I see my countrymen abroad, I am forcibly reminded of what I once witnessed at a show of wild beasts. It was a big cage full of monkeys, that were eating their dinner at a long trough, but none of them would taste what was before himself, but was always eating out of his neighbor's dish. It gave them the oddest look in the world; but it is exactly what you see on the Continent; and I 'll tell you what fosters this taste more strongly than all. Our t.i.tled cla.s.ses at home are a close borough, that men like you and myself never trespa.s.s upon. We see a lord as we see a prize bull at a cattle show, once and away in our lives; but here the aristocracy is plentiful,--barons, counts, and even princes abound, and can be obtained at the "shortest notice, and sent to any part of the town." Think of the fascination of this; fancy the delight of a family like the Dodds, surrounded with dukes and marquises! One of the very first things that strikes a man on coming abroad is the abundance of that kind of fruit that we only see at home in our hot-houses. Every ragged urchin is munching a peach or a melon, and picking the big grapes off a bunch that he speedily flings away. The astonishment of the Englishman is great, and he naturally thinks it all paradise. But wait a bit. He soon discovers that the melon has no more flavor than a mangel-wurzel, and that the apricot tastes like a turnip radish. If they are plenty, they are totally deficient in every excellence of their kind; and it is just the same with the aristocracy. The climate is favorable to them, and the same sun and soil rears princes and ripens pineapples; but they 're not like our own, Tom,--not a bit of it. Like the fruit, they are poor, sapless, tasteless productions, and the very utmost they do for you is to give you a downright indifference to the real article. I know how it reads in the newspapers, in a letter dated from some far-away land, on a Christmas-day,--"As I write, my window is open; the garden is one sea of blossoms, and the perfume of the rose and the jasmine fills the room." Just the same is the effect of those wonderful paragraphs of distinguished and ill.u.s.trious guests at Mrs.

Somebody's _soire_. They are the common products of the soil, and they do not rise to the rank of luxuries with even the poor! Don't mistake me; I am not depreciating what is called high society, no more than I would condemn a particular climate. All that I would infer is, simply, that it does not suit my const.i.tution. It's a very common remark, how much more easily women conform to the habits and customs of a cla.s.s above their own than men, and, so far as I have seen, the observation is a just one; but, let me tell you, Tom, the price they pay for this same plastic quality is more than the value of the article, for they lose all self-guidance and judgment by the change. Your quietly disposed, domestic ones turn out gadders, your thrifty housekeepers grow lavish and wasteful, your safe and cautious talkers become evil speakers and slanderers. It is not that these are the characteristics of the new sect they have adopted, but that, like all converts, they always begin their imitation with the vices of the faith they conform to, and by way of laying a good foundation, they start from the bottom!

If I say these things in bitterness, it is because I feel them in sincerity. Poor old Giles Langrishe used to say that all the expenses of contested elections, all the bribery and treating, all the cost of a Parliamentary life, would never have embarra.s.sed him, if it was n't for his wife going to London. "It wasn't only what she spent," said he, "while there; but Molly brought Piccadilly back with her to the county Clare! She turned up her nose at all our old neighbors, because they did n't know the Prussian amba.s.sador, or Chevalier Somebody from the Brazils. The only man that could fit her in shoes lived in Bond Street; and as to getting her hair dressed, except by a French scoundrel that made wigs for the aristocracy, it was clearly impossible." And I 'll tell you another thing, Tom, our wives get a kind of smattering of political knowledge by this trip to town, that makes them unbearable.

They hear no other talk all the morning than the cant of the House and the slang of the Lobby. It's a dodge of Sir James, or a sly trick of Lord John, that forms the gossip at breakfast; and all the little rogueries of political life, all the tactics of party, are discussed before them, and when they take to that line of talk they become perfectly odious.

Haven't they their own topics? Isn't dancing, dress, the drama, enough for them, I ask?--without even speaking of divorce cases,--that they won't leave bills, motions, and debates to their husbands? Whenever I see Mrs. Roney, of Bally Roney, or Mrs. Miles MacDermot, of Castle Brack, in the "Morning Post," among the ill.u.s.trious company at Lady Wheedleham's party, I say to myself, "I wish your neighbors joy of you when you go home again, that's all!"

And yet all this would have been better for me than this coming abroad!

I might have been member for Bruff for half the cost of this unlucky expedition! And this was economy, forsooth! Do you know how much we spent, hard cash, since March last? I am fairly ashamed to tell you, Tom; and though money lies mighty close to my heart, I don't regret the loss as much as I do that of many a good trait that we brought away with us, and have contrived to lose on the road. All this running about the world, this eternal change of place and people, imparts such an "Old Soldierism," if I may make the word, to a family, that they lose all that quiet charm of domesticity that forms the fascination of a home.

Fathers and mothers are worldly, as a matter of course. It comes upon them just like chronic rheumatism, or baldness, or any other infirmity of time and years, but it's hateful to see young people calculating and speculating; planning for this, and plotting for that. You ask, perhaps, "What has this to do with foreign travel?" and I say, "Everything." Your young lady that has polka'd at Paris, galloped up the Rhine, waltzed at Vienna, and bolero'd at Madrid, has about as much resemblance to an English or Irish girl brought up at home as the show-off horse of a circus has to a thoroughbred hunter. It's all training and teaching,--very graceful, perhaps, and pretty to look at,--but only fit for display, and worth nothing without lamps, sawdust, and spectators.

Now, these things are not native to us, partly from climate, partly from old habit, prejudice, and natural inclination. We like to have a home.

Our fireside has a kind of religious estimation in our eyes, a.s.sociated as it is with that family grouping that includes everything from two years and a half to eighty,--from the pleasant prattle of infancy to the harmless murmurings of grandpapa. The foreigner--I don't care of what nation, they are all alike--has no idea of this. His own house to him is only one remove above a prison. He has little light, and less fire; neither comfort nor companionship! For him, life means society, plenty of well-dressed people, handsome _salons_, wax-lights, movement, bustle, and confusion, the din of five hundred tongues that only wag for scandal, and the sparkle of eyes that are only brilliant for wickedness.

These foreigners are really wonderful people, so frivolous about all that is grave or serious, so sober-minded in every folly and absurdity, we never rightly understand them, and that is one reason why all our imitation of them is so ludicrous.

Have you ever seen a fellow in a circus, Tom, whose feat was to jump from a horse's back through some half-dosen hoops a little bigger than his body? He has kept this performance for his finish, for it is his _chef d'oeuvre_ and he wants to "sink in full glory resplendent."

Somehow or other, though, he can't summon up pluck for the effort. Now the horse goes wrong leg, now it's the fault of the fellows that hold the hoops, now the pace is not fast enough; in fact, nothing goes right with him, and there he spins round and round, wishing with all his heart it was done and over. I 'm pretty much in the same plight this moment, Tom, at least as regards hesitation and indecision; for while I have been rambling on about foreign life and manners, my mind was full of a very different theme; but from downright shame have I kept off it, for I 'm tired of recording all our miseries and misfortunes. Here goes, however, for the spring,--I can't defer it any longer.

Since I came back, I have n't exchanged ten words with Mrs. D. It is an armed truce between us, and each stands ready, and only waiting for the attack. If, however, I consign to oblivion all remembrance of _her_ extravagance, the chance is that she is to keep blind to my infidelity!

In a word, the picnic and Mrs. G. are to be buried together. Of course the terms of our convention prevented my learning much of the family doings in my absence. Even had I moved for any papers or correspondence on the subject, I should have been met by a flat refusal; and, in fact, I was left, the way poor Curran used to say of himself, to pick up my facts from the opposite counsel's statement. I was not long destined to the bliss of ignorance. Such a hurricane of bills and accounts I never withstood before. James, however, by what arts of flattery I know not, succeeded in getting bold of his mother's bank-book, and went out, a few evenings ago, and paid everything; and, that we might escape at once from this den of iniquity, went immediately to the Prefecture for our pa.s.sport. The Commissary was at his _caf_, whither James followed him, and, somehow or other, an angry discussion got up between them, and they separated, after exchanging something that was not the compliments of the season.

I 'm so used to rows and shindies that I went fast asleep while he was telling me of it; but the following morning I was to have a jog to my memory that I did n't expect,--no less than two gendarmes, with their carbines on their arms, having arrived to escort me to the "Bureau of the Police." I dressed accordingly, and set out alone; for although James might have been useful in many ways, I was too much afraid of his rashness and hot temper to take him. We arrived before the door was open, and spent twenty minutes in the street, surrounded by a mixed a.s.semblage, who commented upon me and my supposed crime with great freedom and impartiality.

After another long wait in a dirty ante-room, I was ushered into a large chamber, where the great functionary was seated at a table covered with papers, and at a smaller one, close by, sat what I perceived to be his clerk, or private secretary. Of course I imagined it was for something that James had said the previous evening that I was thus arraigned, and though I thought it was like reading the pa.s.sage in the Decalogue backwards, to make the father suffer for the children, I resolved to be patient and submissive throughout.

"Your name?" said the Commissary, bluntly, but never offering me a seat, nor even noticing my "Good-morning."

"Dodd," said I, as shortly.

"Christian name?"

"Kenny James."

"Where born?"

"At Bruff, in Ireland."

"How old?"

"Upwards of fifty,--not certain for a year, more or less."