The Dodd Family Abroad Volume I Part 8

"Dodd pre," said the president, solemnly, "you are trifling with the patience of the tribunal!" A grave edict, which the other judges responded to by a majestic inclination of the bead.

"If you are not," resumed he, slowly, and with great emphasis,--"if you are not a man of weak intellects and deficient reasoning powers, the conduct you have pursued is inexcusable,--it is a high contempt!"

"And we shall teach you, sir," said the red-eyed, "that no pretence of national eccentricity can weigh against the claims of insulted justice."

"Ay, sir," chimed in number three, who had not spoken before, "and we shall let you feel that the majesty of the law in this country is neither to be a.s.sailed by covert impertinence nor cajoled by a.s.sumed ignorance."

"My Lords," said I, "all this rebuke is a riddle to me. You asked me to tell you a story; and if it be not a very connected and consistent one, the fault is not mine."

"Let him stand committed for contempt," said the president. "The Pet.i.ts Carmes may teach him decorum."

Now, Tom, the Pet.i.te Carmes is Newgate, no less! and you may imagine my feelings at this announcement, particularly as I saw the clerk busily taking down, from dictation, a little history of my offence and its penalty. I turned to look for Van in my sore distress, and there he was, searching the volumes, briefs, and records, to find, as he afterwards said, "some clew to what I had been saying."

"By Heaven!" cried I, losing all patience, "this is too bad. You urge me into a long account of what I know nothing, and then to rescue _your_ own ignorance, you declare _me_ impertinent. There is not a lawyer's clerk in Ireland, there is no pettifogging pract.i.tioner for half-crown fees, there's not a brat that carries a blue bag down the Bachelor's Walk, could n't teach you all three. You go through some of the forms, but you know nothing of the facts of justice. You sit up there, like three stucco-men in mourning,--a perfect mockery of--"

I was not suffered to finish, Tom, for, at a signal from the president, two gendarmes seized me on either side, and, notwithstanding some demonstrations of resistance, led me off to prison. Ay, I must write the word again--to prison! Kenny, I, Dodd, of Dod s borough, Justice of the Peace, and chairman of the Union of Bruff, committed to jail like a common felon!

[Ill.u.s.tration: 142]

I 'm sorry I suffered my feelings to get the better--perhaps I ought to say the worse--of me. Now that it's all over, it were better that I had not knocked down the turnkey, and kicked Vanhoegen out of my cell. It would have been both more discreet and more decorous, to have submitted patiently. I know it's what _you_ would have done, Tom, and trusted to your action for damages to indemnify you; but I'm hasty, that's the fact; and if I wanted to deny it, the state of the jailer's nose, and my own sprained thumb, would give evidence against me. But are there no allowances to be made for the provocation? Perhaps not for a simple a.s.sault; but if I had killed the turnkey, I'm certain the jury would discover the "circonstances attnuantes."

Partly out of respect to my own feelings, partly out of regard to yours, I have not put the words "Pet.i.ts Carmes" at the top of this letter; but truth will out, Tom, and the real fact is that I date the present from cell No. 65, in the common prison of Brussels! Is not that a pretty confession? Is not that a new episode in this Iliad of enjoyment, cultivation, and Heaven knows what besides, that Mrs. D. projected by our tour on the Continent? But I swear to you, solemnly, as I write this, that, if I live to get back, I'll expose the whole system of foreign travel. I don't think I could write a book, and it's hard nowadays to find a chap to put down one's own sentiments fairly and honestly, neither overlaying them with bits of poetry, nor explaining them away by any garbage of his own; so that, maybe, I'll not be able to come out hot-pressed and lettered; but if the worst comes to it, I 'll go about the country giving lectures. I 'll hire an organ-man to play at intervals, and I 'll advertise, "Kenny Dodd on Men and Manners abroad--Evenings with Frenchmen, and Nights with Distinguished Belgians." I'll show up their cookery, their morals, their modesty, their sense of truth, and their notions of justice. And though I well know that I 'll expose myself to the everlasting hate of a legion of hairdressers, dancing-masters, and white-mice men, I'll do it as sure as I live. I have heard you and Peter Belton wax warm and eloquent about the disgrace to our laws in permitting every kind of quackery to prevail unhindered; but what quackery was ever the equal to this taste for the Continent? If people ate Morison's pills like green peas, they would n't do themselves as much moral injury as by a month abroad! And if I were called before a committee of the House to declare, on my conscience, what I deemed the most pernicious reading of the day, I 'd say--Murray's Handbooks! I give you this under my hand and seal. That fellow--Murray, I mean--has got up a kind of Pictorial Europe of his own, with bits of antiquarianism, history, poetry, and architecture, that serves to convince our vulgar, vagabondizing English that they are doing a refined thing in coming abroad. He half persuades them that it is not for cheap champagne and red partridges they 're come, but to see the Cathedral of Cologne and the Dome of St. Peter's, till he breeds up a race of conceited, ill-informed, prating c.o.xcombs, that disgrace us abroad and disgust us at home.

I think I see your face now, and I half hear you mutter, "Kenny's in one of his fits of pa.s.sion;" and you'd be right, too, for I have just upset my ink-bottle over the table, and there's scarcely enough left to finish this scrawl, as I must reserve a little for a few lines to Mrs. D.

Apropos to that same, Tom, I don't know how to break it to her that I'm in a jail, for her feelings will be terribly shocked at first; not but, between you and me, before a year's over, she 'll make it a bitter taunt to me whenever we have a flare-up, and remind me that, for all my justiceship of the peace, I was treated like a common felon in Brussels!

I believe that the best thing I can do is to send for Jellicot, since Vanhoegen and Draek have sent to say that they retire from my cause, "reserving to themselves all liberty of future action as regards the injury personally sustained;" which means that they require ten pounds for the kicking. Be it so!

When I have seen Jellicot, I 'll give you the result of the interview, that is, if there be any result; but my friend J. is a lawyer of the lawyers, and it is not only that he keeps his right hand on terms of distance with his left, but I don't believe that the thumb and the forefinger of the same side are ever acquainted. He is very much that stamp of man your English Protestants call a Jesuit. G.o.d help them, little they know what a real Jesuit is!

It's now a quarter to two in the morning, and I sit down to finish this with a heavy heart, and certainly no inclination for sleep. I don't know where to begin, nor how to tell you, what has happened; but the short of it is, Tom, I'm half ruined. Jellicot has been here for hours and gone over the whole case; he received the papers from D. and V.; and, indeed, everything considered, he has done the thing kindly and feelingly. I 'm sure my head would n't stand the task of telling you all the circ.u.mstances; the matter resolves itself simply into this: The "affaire de Dodd fils," instead of being James's duel, as I thought, is a series of actions against him for debt, amounting to upwards of two thousand pounds sterling! There is not an extravagance, from the ballet to the betting-book, that he has not tasted; and saddle-horses, suppers, velvet waistcoats, jewelry, and gimcracks are at this moment dancing an infernal reel through my poor brain.

He has contrived, in less than three months, to condense and concentrate wickedness enough for a lifetime; this is technically called "going fast." Egad, I should say it's a pace far too quick to last with any man, much less with the son of a broken-down Irish gentleman! You would not believe that the boy could know the very names of the things that he appears to have reckoned as mere necessaries of daily life; and how he contrived to raise money and contract loans--a thing that has been a difficulty to myself all my life long--is clean beyond me to explain. I 'll get a copy of the "claims" and send it over to you, and I feel that your astonishment will equal my own. It would appear that the young vagabond talked as if the Barings were his next of kin, and actually took delight in squandering money! Only think! all the time I believed he was hard at work at his French lessons, it was rattling a dice-box he was, and his education for the Board of Trade was going on in the side-scenes of the opera! Vickars has been the cause of all this. If he 'd have kept his promise, the boy wonld n't have been rained with rascally companions and spendthrift a.s.sociates.

Where's the money to come from, Tom? Have you any device in your head to get us out of this sc.r.a.pe? I suppose some, at least, of the demands will admit of abatement, and Lazarus, they say, always takes a fourth of his claim. You can estimate the pleasant game of cross-purposes I was playing all yesterday with the Court of Ca.s.sation, and what a chaotic ma.s.s of rubbish the field of Waterloo and the duel must have appeared in an action for debt! But why did n't they apprise me of what I was there for? Why did they go on with their ridiculous demand, "Racontez l'affaire"? Recount what? What should I know of the nefarious dealings of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? They torment me for six weeks by a daily examination, till it would be nothing singular if I became monomaniac, and could discuss no other theme than a duel and a gunshot wound, and then, without the slightest suggestion of a change, they launch me into a thing like a Court of Bankruptcy!

It appears that I have been committed for three days for my "contempt,"

and before that time elapses, there is no 'resource in Belgian law to compel them to bring up the body of Kenny Dodd; so that here I must stay, "chewing," as the poet says, "the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."

Not that I have not a great deal of business to transact in this interval. Jellicot's papers would fill a cart; besides which, I have in contemplation a letter for Mrs. D. that will, I suspect, astonish her. I mean briefly, but clearly, to place before her the state we are in, and her own share in bringing us to it. I'll let her feel that her own extravagance has given the key-note to the family, and that she alone is to blame for this calamity. Among the many fine things promised me for coming abroad, she forgot to say that I was to be like Silvio Pellico; but _I_ 'll not forget it, Tom!

Then, I have an epistle special for James. He shall feel that he has a share in the general ruin; for I will write to Vickars, and ask for a commission for him in a black regiment, or an appointment in the Cape Mounted Rifles,--what old Burrowes used to call the Blessed Army of Martyrs. I don't care a jot where he goes! But he 'll find it hard to give suppers at four pound a head in the Gambia, and ballet-dancers will scarcely be costly acquaintances on the banks of the Niger! And lastly, I mean to threaten a return to Ireland! "Only threaten," you say: "why not do it in earnest?" As I told you before, I'm not equal to it! I 've pluck for anything that can be done by one effort, but I have not strength for a prolonged conflict. I could better jump off the Tarpeian rock than I could descend a rugged mountain! Mrs. D. knows this so well that whenever I show fight, she lays down her parallels so quietly, and prepares for a siege with such deliberation, that I always surrender before she brings up her heavy guns. Don't prate to me of pusillanimity and cowardice! n.o.body is brave with his wife. From the Queen of Sheba down to the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, ay, and to our own days, if I liked to quote instances, history teaches the same lesson. What chance have you with one that has been studying every weak point, and every frailty of your disposition, for, maybe, twenty years? Why, you might as well box with your doctor, who knows where to plant the blow that will be the death of you.

I have another "dodge," too, Tom,--don't object to the phrase, for it's quite parliamentary; see Bernai Osborne, _pa.s.sim_. I 'll tell Mrs. D.

that I 'll put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in "Galignani," cautioning the public against giving credit to her, or her son, or her daughters; that the Dodd family is come abroad especially for economy, and has neither pretension to affluence, nor any claim to be thought rich. If that won't frighten her, my name is not Kenny! The fact is, Tom, I intend to pursue a very brave line of action for the three days I'm "in," since she cannot have access to me without my own request. You understand me.

I cannot bring my mind to answer your questions about Dodsborough; my poor head is too full of its own troubles. They 've just brought me my breakfast,--prison fare,--for in my indignation I have refused all other. Little I used to think, while tasting the jail diet at home, as one of the visitors, that I'd ever be reduced to eating it on less experimental grounds!

I must reserve all my directions about home affairs for my next; but bestir yourself to raise this money for us. Without some sort of a compromise we cannot leave this; and I am as anxious to "evacuate Flanders" as ever was Uncle Toby! Captain Morris told me, the other day, of a little town in Germany where there are no English, and where everything can be had for a song. The cheapness and the isolation would both be very advisable just now. I 'll get the name of it before I write next.

By the way, Morris is a better fellow than I used to think him: a little priggish or so, but good-hearted at bottom, and honest as the sun. I think he has an eye on Mary Anne. Not that at present he 'd have much chance in that quarter. These foreign counts and barons give a false glitter to society that throws into the shade all unt.i.tled gentility; and your mere country gentleman beside them is like your mother's old silver teapot on a table with a show specimen of Elkington's new galvanic plate. Not but if you wanted to raise a trifle of money on either, the choice would be very difficult.

I 'll keep anything more for another letter, and now sign myself

Your old and attached friend,

Kenny I. Dodd. Pet.i.ts Cabmes, Brussels, Tuesday Morning.

LETTER XII. MRS. DODD TO MISTRESS MARY GALLAGHER, DODSBOROUGH

Dear Molly,--The blessed Saints only can tell what sufferings I have gone through the last two days, and it's more than I 'm equal to, to say how it happened! The whole family has been turned topsy and turvy, and there's not one of us is n't upside down; and for one like me, that loves to live in peace and enmity with all mankind, this is a sore trial!

Many 's the time you heard me remark that if it was n't for K. I.'s temper, and the violence of his pa.s.sion, that we 'd be rich and well off this day. Time, they say, cures many an evil; but I 'll tell you one, Molly, that it never improves, and that is a man's wilful nature; on the contrary, they only get more stubborn and cross-grained, and I often think to myself, what a blessed time one of the young creatures must have had of it, married to some patriarch in the Old Testament; and then I reflect on my own condition,--not that Kenny Dodd is like anything in the Bible! And now to tell you, if I 'm able, some of my distresses.

You have heard about poor dear James, and how he was shot; but you don't know that these last six weeks he has never been off his back, with three doctors, and sometimes five-and-thirty leeches on him; and what with the torturing him with new-fashioned instruments, and continued "repletion," as they call it,--if it had n't been for strong wine-gruel that I gave him, at times, "unknownst,"--my sure belief is that he would n't have been spared to us. This has been a terrible blow, Molly; but the ways of Providence is unscrupulous, and we must submit.

Here it is, then. James, like every boy, spent a little more money than he had, and knowing well his father's temper, he went to the Jews to help him. They smarted the poor dear child, who, in his innocent heart, knew nothing of the world and its wicked ways. They made him take all kinds of things instead of cash,--Dutch tiles, paving-stones, an altar-piece, and a set of surveying-tools, amongst the rest; and these he had to sell again to raise a trifle of cash. Some of them he disposed of mighty well,--particularly the altar-piece,--but on others he lost a good deal, and, at the end, was a heavy balance in debt. If it had n't been for the duel, however, he says he 'd have no trouble at all in "carrying on,"--that's his own word, and I suppose alludes to the business. Be that as it may, his wound was his ruin. n.o.body knew how to manage his affairs but himself. It was the very same way with my grandfather, Maurice Lynch McCarthy; for when he died there wasn't a soul left could make anything of his papers. There was large sums in them,--thousands and thousands of pounds mentioned,--but where they were, and what's become of them, we never discovered.

And so with James. There he was, stretched on his bed, while villains and schemers were working his ruin! The business came into the courts here, which, from all I can learn, Molly, are not a bit better than at home with ourselves. Indeed, I believe, wherever one goes, lawyers is just the same for roguery and rampacity. To be sure, it 's comfort to think that you can have another, to the full as bad as the one against you; and if there is any abuse or bad language going, you can give it as hot as you get it; that's equal justice, Molly, and one of the proudest boasts of the British const.i.tution! And you 'd suppose that K. I., sitting on the bench for nigh four-and-twenty years, would know that as well as anybody. Yet what does he do?--you 'll not believe me when I tell you! Instead of paying one of these creatures to go in and torment the others, to pick holes in all he said, and get fellows to swear against them, he must stand out, forsooth, and be his own lawyer! And a blessed business he made of it! A reasonable man would explain to the judges how it all was,--that James was a child; that it was the other day only he was flying a kite on the lawn at home; that he knew as much about wickedness as K. I. did of paradise; that the villains that led him on ought to be publicly whipped! Faith, I can fancy, Molly, it was a beautiful field for any man to display every commotion of the heart; but what does he do? He gets up on his legs,--I did n't see, but I 'm told it,--he gets up on his legs and begins to ballyrag and blackguard all the courts of justice, and the judges, and the attorneys, down to the criers,--he spares n.o.body! There is nothing too dreadful for him to say, and no words too bad to express it in; till, their patience being all run out, they stop him at last, and give orders to have him taken from the spot, and thrown into a dungeon of the town jail,--a terrible old place, Molly, that goes by the name of the "Pet.i.t Carme!" and where they say the diet is only a thin sheet of paper above starving.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 152]

And there he is now, Molly; and you may picture to yourself, as the poet says, "what frame he's in"! The news reached me when we were going to the play. I was under the hands of the hairdresser, and I gave such a screech that he jumped back, and burned himself over the mouth with the curling-irons. Even that was a relief to me, Molly; for Mary Anne and myself laughed till we cried again!

I was for keeping the thing all snug and to ourselves about K. I.; but Mary Anne said we should consult Lord George, that was then in the house, and going with us to the theatre. They are a wonderful people, the great English aristocracy; and if it's anything more than another distinguishes them, 't is the indifference to every kind and description of misfortune. I say this, because, the moment Lord George heard the story, he lay down on the sofa, and laughed and roared till I thought he 'd split his sides. His only regret was that he had n't been there, in the courts, to see it all. As for James's share of the trouble, he said it "didn't signify a rush!"

He made the same remark I did myself,--that James was the same as an infant, and could, consequently, know nothing of the world and its pompous vanities.

"I 'll tell you how to manage it all," said he, "and how you 'll not only escape all gossip, but actually refute even the slightest scandal that may get abroad. Say, first of all, that Mr. Dodd is gone over to England--we 'll put it in the 'Galignani'--to attend his Parliamentary duties. The Belgian papers will copy it at once. This being done, issue invitations for an evening at home, 'tea and dance,'--that's the way to do it. Say that the governor hates a ball, and that you are just taking the occasion of his absence to see your friends without disturbing _him_. The people that will come to you won't be too critical about the facts. Believe me, the gay company will be the very last to inquire where is the head of the house. I 'll take care that you 'll have everybody worth having in Brussels, and with Latour's band, and the supper by Dubos, I 'd like to see who 'll have a spare thought for Mr.

Dodd the absent."

I own to you, Molly, the counsel shocked my feelings at first, and I asked my heart, "What will the world say, if it ever comes out that we had our house full of company, and the height of gayety going on, when the head of the family was, maybe, in chains in a dungeon?" "Don't you perceive," says Lord G., "that what I 'm advising will just prevent the possibility of all that,--that you are actually rescuing your family, by a master-stroke, from the evil consequences of Mr. D.'s rashness? As to the boldness of the policy," added he, "that is the only merit it possesses." And then he said something about the firing at St. Sebastian above somebody's head, that I didn't quite lightly understand. The upshot was, Molly, I was convinced, not, you may be sure, that I felt any pleasure or gratification in the prospect of a ball under such trying circ.u.mstances, but just as Lord G. said, I felt I was "rescuing the family."

When we came home, from the play,--for we went with heavy hearts, I a.s.sure you, though we afterwards laughed a great deal,--we set about writing the invitations for "Our Evening;" and although James and Mary Anne a.s.sisted Lord G., it was nigh daybreak when we were done. You 'll ask, where was Caroline? And you might well ask; but as long as I live I 'll never forget her unnatural conduct! It is n't that she opposed everything about the ball, but she had the impudence to say to my face "that hitherto we had been only ridiculous, but that this act would be one of downright shame and disgrace." Her language to Lord George was even worse, for she told him that his "counsel was a very sorry requital for the generous hospitality her father had always extended to him."

Where the hussey got the words so glibly, I can't imagine; but she, that rarely speaks at all, talked away with the fluency of a lawyer. As to helping us to address the notes, she vowed she 'd rather cut her fingers off; and what made this worse was, that she's the only one of them knows the genders in French, and whether a _soire_ is a man or a woman!

You may imagine the trouble of the next day; for in order to have the ball come off before K. I. was out, we were only able to give two days'

notice. Little the people that come to your house to dance or to sup know or think what a deal of trouble--not to say more--it costs to give a ball. Lord George tells me that even the Queen herself always gives it in another house, so she 's not put out of her way with the preparations,--and, to be sure, what is more natural?--and that she would n't like to be exposed to the turmoil of taking down beds, hanging l.u.s.tres, fixing sconces, raising a platform for the music, and settling tables for the supper. I 'm sure and certain, if she only knew what it was to pa.s.s such a day as yesterday was with me, she 'd never have a larger party than that lord that's always in waiting, and the ladies of the bedroom! As for regular meals, Molly, we had none. There was a ham and cold chickens in the lobby, and a veal pie and some sherry on the back stairs; and that's the way we breakfasted, dined, and supped. To be sure, we laughed heartily all the time, and I never saw Mary Anne in such spirits. Lord George was greatly struck with her,--I saw it by his manner,--and I would n't be a bit surprised if something came of it yet!

I have little time to say more now, for I 'm called down to see the flowerpots and orange-trees that's to line the hall and the stairs; but I 'll try and finish this by post hour.

As I see that this cannot be despatched to-day, I 'll keep it over, to give you a "full and true" account of the ball, which Lord George a.s.sures me will be the greatest _fte_ Brussels has seen this winter; and, indeed, if I am to judge from the preparations, I can well believe him! There are seven men cooks in the kitchen making paste and drinking sherry in a way that's quite incredible, not to speak of an elderly man in my own room that's doing the M'Carthy arms in spun-sugar for a temple that is to represent Dodsborough, in the middle of the table, with K.

I. on the top of it, holding a flag, and crying out something in French that means welcome to the company. Poor K. I., 'tis something else he's thinking of all the time!

Then, the whole stairs and the landing is all one bower of camellias and roses and lilies of the valley, brought all the way from Holland for another ball, but, by Lord George's ingenuity, obtained by us. As for ice, Molly, you 'd think my dressing-room was a Panorama of the North Pole; and there's every beast of that region done in strawberries or lemon, with native creatures, the color of life, in coffee or chocolate.

The music will be the great German Bra.s.s Band, fifty-eight performers, and two Blacks with cymbals. They 're practising now, and the noise is dreadful! Carts are coming in every moment with various kinds of eatables, for I must tell you, Molly, they don't do things here the way we used at Dodsborough. Plenty of cold roast chickens, tongues, and sliced ham, apple-pies, tarts, jelly, and Spanish flummery, with Naples biscuits and a plum-cake, is a fine supper in Ireland; and if you begin with sherry, you can always finish with punch: but here there's nothing that ever was eaten they won't have. Ice when they 're hot, soup when they 're chilly, oyster patties and champagne continually during the dancing, and every delicacy under the sun afterwards on the supper-table.