The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II

LETTER I. KENNY JAMES DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., OF THE GRANGE, BRUFF

My dear Tom, – I got the papers all safe. I am sure the account is perfectly correct. I only wish the balance was bigger. I waited here to receive these things, and now I discover that I can't sign the warrant of attorney except before a consul, and there is none in this place, so that I must keep it over till I can find one of those pleasant functionaries, – a class that between ourselves I detest heartily. They are a presumptuous, under-bred, consequential race, – a cross between a small skipper and smaller Secretary of Legation, with a mixture of official pedantry and maritime off-handedness that is perfectly disgusting. Why our reforming economists don't root them all out I cannot conceive. Nobody wants, nobody benefits by them; and save that you are now and then called on for a "consular fee," you might never hear of their existence.

I don't rightly understand what you say about the loan from that Land Improvement Society. Do you mean that the money lent must be laid out on the land as a necessary condition? Is it possible that this is what I am to infer? If so, I never heard anything half so preposterous! Sure, if I raise five hundred pounds from a Jew, he has no right to stipulate that I must spend the cash on copper coal-scuttles or potted meats! I want it for my own convenience; enough for him that I comply with his demands for interest and repayment. Anything else would be downright tyranny and oppression, Tom, – as a mere momentary consideration of the matter will show you. At all events, let us get the money, for I 'd like to contest the point with these fellows; and if ever there was a man heart and soul determined to break down any antiquated barrier of cruelty or domination, it is your friend Kenny Dodd! As to that printed paper, with its twenty-seven queries, it is positive balderdash from beginning to end. What right have they to conclude that I approve of subsoil draining? When did I tell them that I believed in Smith of Deanstown? Where is it on record that I gave in my adhesion to model cottages, Berkshire pigs, green crops, and guano manure? In what document do these appear? Maybe I have my own notions on these matters, – maybe I keep them for my own guidance too!

You say that the gentry is all changing throughout the whole land, and I believe you well, Tom Purcell. Changed indeed must they be if they subscribe to such preposterous humbug as this! At all events, I repeat we want the money, so fill up the blanks as you think best, and remit me the amount at your earliest, for I have barely enough to get to the end of the present month. I don't dislike this place at all. It is quiet, peaceful, – humdrum, if you will; but we've had more than our share of racket and row lately, and the reclusion is very grateful. One day is exactly like another with us. Lord George – for he is back again – and James go a-fishing as soon as breakfast is over, and only return for supper. Mary Anne reads, writes, sews, and sings. Mrs. D. fills up the time discharging Betty, settling with her, searching her trunks for missing articles, and being reconciled to her again, which, with occasional crying fits and her usual devotions, don't leave her a single moment unoccupied! As for me, I'm trying to learn German, whenever I'm not asleep. I've got a master, – he is a Swiss, and maybe his accent is not of the purest; but he is an amusing old vagabond, – an umbrella-maker, but in his youth a travelling-servant. His time is not very valuable to him, so that he sits with me sometimes for half a day; but still I make little progress. My notion is, Tom, that there's no use in either making love or trying a new language after you're five or six and twenty. It's all up-hill work after that, believe me. Neither your declensions nor declarations come natural to you, and it's a bungling performance at the best. The first condition of either is to have your head perfectly free, – as little in it as need be. So long as your thoughts are jostled by debts, duns, mortgages, and marriageable daughters, you 'll have no room for vows or irregular verbs! It's lucky, however, that one can dispense both with the love and the learning, and indeed of the two, – with the last best, for of all the useless, unprofitable kinds of labor ever pursued out of a jail, acquiring a foreign language is the most. The few words required for daily necessaries, such as schnaps and cigars, are easily learnt; all beyond that is downright rubbish.

For what can a man express his thoughts in so well as his mother tongue? with whom does he want to talk but his countrymen? Of course you come out with the old cant about "intelligent natives," "information derived at the fountain head," "knowledge obtained by social intimacy with people of the country." To which I briefly reply, "It's all gammon and stuff from beginning to end;" and what between your blunders in grammar and your informant's ignorance of fact, all such information is n't worth a "trauneen." Now, once for all, Tom, let me observe to you that ask what you will of a foreigner, be it an inquiry into the financial condition of his country, its military resources, prison discipline, law, or religion, he 'll never acknowledge his inability to answer, but give you a full and ready reply, with facts, figures, dates, and data, all in most admirable order. At first you are overjoyed with such ready resources of knowledge. You flatter yourself that even with the most moderate opportunities you cannot fail to learn much; by degrees, however, you discover errors in your statistics, and at last, you come to find out that your accomplished friend, too polite to deny you a reasonable gratification, had gone to the pains of inventing a code, a church, and a coinage for your sole use and benefit, but without the slightest intention of misleading, for it never once entered his head that you could possibly believe him! I know it will sound badly. I am well aware of the shock it will give to many a nervous system; but for all that I will not blink the declaration – which I desire to record as formally and as flatly as I am capable of expressing it – which is, that of one hundred statements an Englishman accepts and relies upon abroad, as matter of fact, ninety-nine are untrue; full fifty being lies by premeditation, thirty by ignorance, ten by accident or inattention, and the remainder, if there be a balance, for I 'm bad at figures, from any other cause you like.

It is no more disgrace for a foreigner not to tell the truth than to own that he does not sing, nor dance the mazurka; not so much, indeed, because these are marks of a polite education. And yet it is to hold conversation with these people we pore over dictionaries, and Ollendorfs, and Hamiltonian gospels. As for the enlargement and expansion of the intelligence that comes of acquiring languages, there never was a greater fallacy. Look abroad upon your acquaintances: who are the glib linguists, who are the faultless in French genders, and the immaculate in German declensions? the flippant boarding-school miss, or the brainless, unpaid attaché, that cannot, compose a note in his own language. Who are the bungling conversera that make drawing-rooms blush and dinner-tables titter? Your first-rate debater in the Commons, your leader at the bar, your double first, or your great electro-magnetic fellow that knows the secret laws of water-spouts and whirlpools, and can make thunder and lightning just to amuse himself. Take my word for it, your linguist is as poor a creature as a dancing-master, and just as great a formalist.

If you ask me, then, why I devote myself to such unrewarding labor, I answer, "It is true I know it to be so, but my apology is, that I make no progress." No, Tom, I never advance a step. I can neither conjugate nor decline, and the auxiliary verbs will never aid me in anything. So far as my lingual incapacity goes, I might be one of the great geniuses of the age; and very probably I am, too, without knowing it!

I have little to tell you of the place itself. It is a quaint old town on the side of the lake; the most remarkable object being the minster, or cathedral. They show you the spot in the aisle where old Huss stood to receive his sentence of death. Even after a lapse of centuries, there was something affecting to stand where a man once stood to bear that he was to be burned alive. Of course I have little sympathy with a heretic, but still I venerate the martyr, the more since I am strongly disposed to think that it is one of those characters which are not the peculiar product of an age of railroads and submarine telegraphs. The expansion of the intelligence, Tom, seems to be in the inverse ratio of the expansion of the conscience, and the stubborn old spirit of right that was once the mode, would nowadays be construed into a dogged, stupid bull-headedness, unworthy of the enlightenment of our glorious era. Take my word for it, there's a great many eloquent and indignant letter-writers in the newspapers would shrink from old Huss's test for their opinions, and a fossil elk is not a greater curiosity than would be a man ready to stake life on his belief. When a fellow tells you of "dying on the floor of the House," he simply means that he'll talk till there's a "count out;" and as for "registering vows in heaven," and "wasting out existence in the gloom of a dungeon," it's just balderdash, and nothing else.

The simple fact is this, Tom Purcell: we live in an age of universal cant, and I swallow all your shams on the easy condition that you swear to mine, and whenever I hear people praising the present age, and extolling its wonderful progress, and all that, I just think of all the quackery I see advertised in the newspapers, and sigh heartily to myself at our degradation! Why, man, the "Patent Pills for the Cure of Cancer," and the Agapemone, would disgrace the middle ages! And it is not a little remarkable that England, so prone to place herself at the head of civilization, is exactly the very metropolis of all this humbug!

To come back to ourselves, I have to report that James arrived here a couple of days ago. He followed that scoundrel "the Baron" for thirty hours, and only desisted from the pursuit when his horse could go no farther. The police authorities mainly contributed to the escape of the fugitive, by detaining James on every possible occasion, and upon any or no pretext. The poor fellow reached Freyburg dead beat, and without a sou in his pocket; but good luck would have it that Lord George Tiverton had just arrived there, so that by his aid he came on here, where they both made their appearance at breakfast on Tuesday morning.

Lord George, I suspect, had not made a successful campaign of it lately; though in what he has failed – if it be failure – I have no means of guessing. He looks a little out at elbows, however, and travels without a servant. In spirits and bearing I see no change in him; but these fellows, I have remarked, never show depression, and india-rubber itself is not so elastic as a bad character! I don't half fancy his companionship for James; but I know well that this opinion would be treated by the rest of the family as downright heresy; and certainly he is an amusing dog, and it is impossible to resist liking him; but there lies the very peril I am afraid of. If your loose fish, as the slang phrase calls them, were disagreeable chaps, – prosy, selfish, sententious, – vulgar in their habits, and obtrusive in their manners, one would run little risk of contamination; but the reverse is the case, Tom, – the very reverse! Meet a fellow that speaks every tongue of the Continent, dresses to perfection, rides and drives admirably, a dead shot with the pistol, a sure cue at billiards, – if he be the delight of every circle he goes into, – look out sharp in the "Times," and the odds are that there's a handsome reward offered for him, and he's either a forger or a defaulter. The truth is, a man may be ill-mannered as a great lawyer or a great physician; he may make a great figure in the field or the cabinet; there may be no end to his talents as a geometrician or a chemist; it's only your adventurer must be well-bred, and swindling is the soldiery profession to which a man must bring fascinating manners, a good address, personal advantages, and the power of pleasing. I own to you, Tom Purcell, I like these fellows, and I can't help it! I take to them as I do to twenty things that are agreeable at the time, but are sure to disagree with me – afterwards. They rally me out of my low spirits, they put me on better terms with myself, and they administer that very balmy flattery that says, "Don't distress yourself, Kenny Dodd. As the world goes, you 're better than nine-tenths of it. You'd be hospitable if you could; you'd pay your debts if you could; and there would n't be an easier-tempered, more good-natured creature breathing than yourself, if it was only the will was wanting!" Now, these are very soothing doses when a man is scarified by duns, and flayed alive by lawsuits; and when a fellow comes to my time of life, he can no more bear the candid rudeness of what is called friendship than an ex-Lord Mayor could endure Penitentiary diet!

I must confess, however, that whenever we come to divide on any question, Lord George always votes with Mrs. D. He told me once that with respect to Parliament he always sided with the Government, whatever it was, when he could, and perhaps he follows the same rule in private life. Last night, after tea, we discussed our future movements, and I found him strongly in favor of getting us on to Italy for the winter. I did n't like to debate the matter exactly on financial grounds, but I hazarded a half-conjecture that the expedition would be a costly one. He stopped me at once. "Up to this time," said he, "you have really not benefited by the cheapness of Continental living," – that was certainly true, – "and for this simple reason, you have always lived in the beaten track of the wandering cockney. You must go farther away from England. You must reach those places where people settle as residents, not ramble as tourists; you will then be rewarded, not only economically, but socially. The markets and the morals are both better; for our countrymen filter by distance, and the farther from home the purer they become." To Mrs. D. and Mary Anne he gave a glowing description of Trans-Alpine existence, and rapturously pictured forth the fascinations of Italian life. I can only give you the items, Tom; you must arrange them for yourself. So make what you can of starry skies, olives, ices, tenors, volcanoes, music, mountains, and maccaroni. He appealed to me by the budget. Never was there such cheapness in the known world. The Italian nobility were actually crashed down with house-accommodation, and only entreated a stranger to accept of a palace or a villa. The climate produced everything without labor, and consequently without cost. Fruit had no price; wine was about twopence a bottle; a strong tap rose to two and a half! Clothes one scarcely needed; and, except for decency, "nothing and a cocked hat" would suffice. These were very seductive considerations, Tom; and I own to you that, even allowing a large margin for exaggeration, there was a great amount of solid advantage remaining. Mrs. D. adduced an additional argument when we were alone, and in this wise: What was to be done with the wedding finery if we should return to Ireland; for all purposes of home life they would be totally inapplicable. You might as well order a service of plate to serve up potatoes as introduce Paris fashions and foreign elegance into our provincial circle. "We have the things now," said she; "let us have the good of them." I remember a cask of Madeira being left with my father once, by a mistake, and that was the very reason he gave for drinking it. She made a strong case of it, Tom; she argued the matter well, laying great stress upon the duty we owed our girls, and the necessity of "getting them married before we went back." Of course, I did n't give in. If I was to give her the notion that she could convince me of anything, we 'd never have a moment's peace again; so I said I 'd reflect on the subject, and turn it over in my mind. And now I want you to say what disposable cash can we lay our hands on for the winter. I am more than ever disinclined to have anything to say to these Drainage Commissioners. It's our pockets they drain, and not our farms. I 'd rather try and raise a trifle on mortgage; for you see, nowadays, they have got out of the habit of doing it, and there's many a one has money lying idle and does n't know what to do with it. Look out for one of these fellows, Tom, and see what you can do with him. Dear me, is n't it a strange thing the way one goes through life, and the contrivances one is put to to make two ends meet!

I remember the time, and so do you too, when an Irish gentleman could raise what he liked; and there was n't an estate in my own county wasn't encumbered, as they call it, to more than double its value. There's fellows will tell you "that's the cause of all the present distress." Not a bit of it. They 're all wrong! It is because that system has come to an end that we are ruined; that's the root of the evil, Tom Purcell; and if I was in Parliament I'd tell them so. Where will you find any one willing to lend money now if the estate would n't pay it? We may thank the English Government for that; and, as poor Dan used to say, "They know as much about us as the Chinese!"

I can't answer your question about James. Vickars has not replied to my last two letters; and I really see no opening for the boy whatever. I mean to write, however, in a day or two to Lord Muddleton, to whom Lord George is nearly related, and ask for something in the Diplomatic way. Lord G. says it's the only career nowadays does n't require some kind of qualification, – since even in the army they've instituted a species of examination. "Get him made an Attaché somewhere," says Tiverton, "and he must be a 'Plenipo' at last." J. is good-looking, and a great deal of dash about him; and I 'm informed that's exactly what's wanting in the career. If nothing comes of this application, I 'll think seriously of Australia; but, of course, Mrs. D. must know nothing about it; for, according to her notions, the boy ought to be Chamberlain to the Queen, or Gold-stick at least.

I don't know whether I mentioned to you that Betty Cobb had entered the holy bonds with a semi-civilized creature she picked up in the Black Forest. The orang-outang is now a part of our household, – at least so far as living at rack and manger at my cost, – though in what way to employ him I have not the slightest notion. Do you think, if I could manage to send him over to Ireland, that we could get him indicted for any transportable offence? Ask Curtis about it; for I know he did something of the kind once in the case of a natural son of Tony Barker's, and the lad is now a judge, I believe, in Sydney.

Cary is quite well. I heard from her yesterday, and when I write, I 'll be sure to send her your affectionate message. I don't mean to leave this till I heat from you. So write immediately and believe me,

Very sincerely your friend,

Kenny James.

LETTER II. JAMES DODD TO ROBERT DOOLAN, ESQ., TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN

My dear Bob, – I had made up my mind not to write to you till we had quitted this place, where our life has been of the "slowest;" but this morning has brought a letter with a piece of good news which I cannot defer imparting to you. It is a communication from the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the governor, to say that I have been appointed to something somewhere, and that I am to come over to London, and be examined by somebody. Very vague all this, but I suppose it's the style of Diplomacy, and one will get used to it. The real bore is the examination, for George told "dad" that there was none, and, in fact, that very circumstance it was which gave the peculiar value to the "service." Tiverton tells me, however, he can make it "all safe;" whether you "tip" the Secretary, or some of the underlings, I don't know. Of course there is a way in all these things, for half the fellows that pass are just as ignorant as your humble servant.

I am mainly indebted to Tiverton for the appointment, for he wrote to everybody he could think of, and made as much interest as if it was for himself. He tells me, in confidence, that the list of names down is about six feet long, and actually wonders at the good fortune of my success. From all I can learn, however, there is no salary at first, so that the governor must "stump out handsome," for an Attaché is expected to live in a certain style, keep horses, and, in fact, come it "rayther strongish." In some respects, I should have preferred the army; but then there are terrible drawbacks in colonial banishment, whereas in Diplomacy you are at least stationed in the vicinity of a Court, which is always something.

I wonder where I am to be gazetted for; I hope Naples, but even Vienna would do. In the midst of our universal joy at my good fortune, it's not a little provoking to see the governor pondering over all it will cost for outfit, and wondering if the post be worth the gold lace on the uniform. Happily for me, Bob, he never brought me up to any profession, as it is called, and it is too late now to make me anything either in law or physic. I say happily, because I see plainly enough that he 'd refuse the present opportunity if he knew of any other career for me. My mother does not improve matters by little jokes on his low tastes and vulgar ambitions; and, in fact, the announcement has brought a good deal of discussion and some discord amongst us.

I own to you, frankly, that once named to a Legation, I will do my utmost to persuade the governor to go back to Ireland. In the first place, nothing but a very rigid economy at Dodsborough will enable him to make me a liberal allowance; and secondly, to have my family prowling about the Legation to which I was attached would be perfectly insufferable. I like to have my father and mother what theatrical folk call "practicable," that is, good for all efficient purposes of bill-paying, and such-like; but I shudder at the notion of being their pioneer into fashionable life; and, indeed, I am not aware of any one having carried his parent on his back since the days of Æneas.

I am obliged to send you a very brief despatch, for I 'm off to-morrow for London, to make my bow at "F. O.," and kiss hands on my appointment. I 'd have liked another week here, for the fishing has just come in, and we killed yesterday, with two rods, eleven large, and some thirty small trout. They are a short, thick-shouldered kind of fish, ready enough to rise, but sluggish to play afterwards. The place is pretty, too; the Swiss Alps at one side, and the Tyrol mountains at the other. Bregenz itself stands well, on the very verge of the lake, and although not ancient enough to be curious in architecture, has a picturesque air about it. The people are as primitive as anything one can well fancy, and wear a costume as ungracefully barbarous as any lover of nationality could desire. Their waists are close under their arms, and the longest petticoats I have yet seen finish at the knee! They affect, besides, a round, low-crowned cap, like a fur turban, or else a great piece of filigree sliver, shaped like a peacock's tail, and fastened to the back of the head. Nature, it must be owned, has been somewhat ungenerous to them; and with the peculiar advantages conferred on them by costume, they are the ugliest creatures I 've ever set eyes on.

It is only just to remark that Mary Anne dissents from me in all this, and has made various "studies" of them, which are, after all, not a whit more flattering than my own description. As to a good-looking peasantry, Bob, it's all humbug. It's only the well-to-do classes, in any country, have pretensions to beauty. The woman of rank numbers amongst her charms the unmistakable stamp of her condition. Even in her gait, like the Goddess in Virgil, she displays her divinity. The pretty "bourgeoise" has her peculiar fascination in the brilliant intelligence of her laughing eye, and the sly archness of her witty mouth; but your peasant beauty is essentially heavy and dull. It is of the earth, earthy; and there is a bucolic grossness about the lips the very antithesis to the pleasing. I 'm led to these remarks by the question in your last as to the character of Continental physiognomy. Up to this, Bob, I have seen nothing to compare with our own people, and you will meet more pretty faces between Stephen's Green and the Rotunda than between Schaffhausen and the sea. I 'm not going to deny that they "make up" better abroad, but our boast is the raw material of beauty. The manufactured article we cannot dispute with them. It would be, however, a great error to suppose that the artistic excellence I speak of is a small consideration; on the contrary, it is a most important one, and well deserving of deep thought and reflection, and, I must say, that all our failures in the decorative arts are as nothing to our blunders when attempting to adorn beauty. A French woman, with a skin like an old drumhead, and the lower jaw of a baboon, will actually "get herself up" to look better than many a really pretty girl of our country, disfigured by unbecoming hairdressing, ill-assorted colors, ill-put-on clothes, and that confounded walk, which is a cross between the stride of a Grenadier and running in a sack!