CHAPTER IX.
These watering-place doctors have less tact than their confrères elsewhere: their theory is, “the Wells and Amusement;” they never strain their faculties to comprehend any class but that of hard-worked, exhausted, men of the world, to whom the regularity of a Bad-ort, and the simple pleasures it affords, are quite sufficient to relieve the load of over-taxed minds and bodies. The “distractions” of these places suit such people well; the freedom of intercourse, which even among our strait-laced countrymen prevails, is pleasant. My Lord refreshes in the society of a clever barrister, or an amusing essayist of the “Quarterly.” The latter puts forth all his agreeability for the delectation of a grander audience than he ever had at home. But to one who has seen all these ranks and conditions of men—who finds nothing new in the morgue of the Marquis, or the last mot of the Bench—it is somewhat too bad to be told that such intercourse is a part of your treatment.
My worthy friend Dr. Guckhardt has mistaken me; he fancies my weariness is the result of solitude, and that my exhaustion is but ennui; and, in consequence, has he gone about on the high roads and public places inquiring if any one knows Horace Templeton, who is “sick and ill.” And here is the fruit: a table covered with visiting cards and scented notes of inquiry. My Lord Tollington—a Lord of the Bedchamber, a dissolute old fop—very amusing to very young men, but intolerable to all who have seen anything themselves. Sir Harvey Clifford, a Yorkshire Jesuit, who travels with a socius from Oscot and a whole library of tracts controversial. Reginald St. John, a “levanter” from the Oaks. Colonel Morgan O’Shea, absent without leave for having shot his father-in-law. Such are among the first I find. But whose writing is this?... I know the hand well.... Frank Burton, that I knew so well at Oxford! Poor devil! he joined the 9th Lancers when he came of age, and ran through every thing he had in the world in three years. He married a Lady Mary somebody, and lives now on her family. What is his note about?
“Dear Tempy,
“I have just heard of your being here, and would have gone
over to see you, but have sprained my ancle in a hopping-
match with Kubetskoi—walked into him for two hundred,
nevertheless. Come and dine with us to-day at the France,
and we’ll shew you some of the folk here. That old bore,
Lady Bellingham Blakely, is with us, and gives a pic-nic on
Saturday at the Waterfall—rare fun for you, who like a
field-day of regular quizzes! Don’t fail—sharp seven—and
believe me,
“Yours,
“F. B.”
This requires but brief deliberation; and so, my dear Frank, you must excuse my company, both at dinner and pic-nic. What an ass he must be to suppose that a man of thirty has got no farther insight into the world, and knows no more of its inhabitants, than a boy of eighteen! These “quizzes,” doubtless, had been very amusing to me once—just as I used to laugh at the “School for Scandal” the first fifty times I saw it; but now that I have épuisé les ridicules—have seen every manner of absurdity the law of Chancery leaves at large—why hammer out the impression by repetition?
What is here by way of postscript?
“Lady B. has made the acquaintance of a certain Sicilian
Countess, the handsomest woman here, and has engaged her for
Saturday. If you be the man you used to be, you’ll not fail
to come.”
“Dear F——
“I cannot dine out. I can neither eat, drink, nor talk, nor
can I support the heat or ‘confaz’ of a dinner; but, if
permitted, will join your party on Saturday for half an
hour.
“Yours truly,
“H. Templeton.”
Now has curiosity—I have no worthier name to bestow on it—got the better of all my scruples and dislikes to such an agglomeration as a pic-nic! Socially I know nothing so bad: the liberty is license, and the license is an intolerable freedom, where only the underbred are at ease. N’importe—I’ll go; for while I now suspect that I was wrong in believing the Countess to have been my old acquaintance, Caroline Graham, I have a strange interest, at least, in seeing how one so like her, externally, may resemble her in traits of mind and manner. And then I’ll leave Baden.
I am really impatient to get away. I feel—I suppose there is nothing unusual in the feeling—that, as I meet acquaintances, I can read in their looks those expressions of compassion and pity by which the sick are admonished of their hopeless state; and for the very reason that I can dare to look it steadily in the face myself, I have a strong repugnance to its being forcibly placed before me. My greatest wish to live—if it ever deserved the name of wish—is to see the upshot of certain changes that time inevitably will bring out. I have watched the game in some cases so closely, I should like to know who rises the winner.
What will become of France under a regency? How will the new government turn the attention of the mauvaises têtes, and where will they carry their arms? What will Austria do, when the Pope shall have given the taste for free institutions, and the Italians fancy that they are strong enough for self-government? What America, when the government of her newly acquired territory must be a military dictation, with a standing army of great strength? What Ireland, when the landlords, depressed by an increasing poor-rate, have brought down the gentry to a condition of mere subsistence, with Romanism hourly assuming a bolder, higher tone, dictating its terms with the Minister, and treating the Government de pair?
What Prussia, when democracy grows quicker when Constitutional Liberty, and Freedom of the Press get ahead of the Censor?
For Belgium and Switzerland I have little interest. Priest-ridden and mob-ridden, they may indulge their taste for domestic quarrel so long as a general war is remote; let that come, and their small voices will be lost in the louder din of far different elements.
As for the Peninsula, Spain and Portugal are in as miserable a plight as free institutions combined with Popery can make them. If Romanism is to be the religion of the State, let it be allied with Absolutism. The right to think, read, and speak, are incompatible with the dictates of a Church that forbids all three. Rome is the type. It is a grand and a stupendous tyranny. Gare! to those who try to make it a popular rule!
So... I find that all Baden is full of our great picnic! Ours, I say, for here lies Lady B—— B——‘s respectful compliments, &c, and my own replication is already delivered. It seems that we have taken the true way to create popular interest, by trespassing on popular enjoyment. We have engaged M. Gougon, the chef of the Cursaal; engaged the band who usually perform before the promenade; engaged all the saddle-horses, and most of the carriages—in fact, we have enlisted every thing save the Genius Loci, the hump-backed croupier of the roulette table.
Why we should travel twelve miles or so, out of our way, to bring Baden with us I cannot so clearly see. Why we cannot be satisfied with vice without a change of venue I do not understand. But with this I have nothing to do. Like the Irishman, “I am but a lodger.” Indeed, I believe my own poor presence was less desired at this fête than that of my London phaeton and my two black ponies, which, I am told, are very much admired here—a certain sign that they are not in the most correct taste. However, I have my revenge. As Hussars, when invited to dine out at questionable places, always appear in plain clothes, so shall I come to the rendezvous in a fiacre; though, I own, it is very like obtaining a dinner under false pretences.
Already the little town is a-stir; servants are hastening to and fro; ominous-looking baskets and hampers are seen to pass and repass; strange quadrupeds are led by as saddle-horses, their gay headstalls and splendid saddle-cloths scarce diverting the eye from “groggy” fore-legs and drawn-up quarters; curiously dressed young gentlemen, queer combinations of Jockeyism with an Arcadian simplicity, stand in groups about; and, now and then, a carriage rolls by, and disappears up some steep street in search of its company.
Ah! there go the Tollingtons! and in a conveniency, too, they’d scarcely like to be seen with in Hyde Park. What a droll old rattle-trap! and what a pair of wretched hacks to draw it! After all, one cannot help avowing that these people, seated there in that most miserable equipage, where poverty exhibits its most ludicrous of aspects, even there, they preserve as decisive an air of class and rank as—as—yes, I have found the exact equivalent—as almost every foreigner seated in a handsome carriage does of the opposite. Prejudice, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, or any thing else of the same kind it may be; but, after a great part of a life spent abroad, my testimony is, that for one person of either sex, whose appearance unmistakeably pronounces condition, met, abroad—I care not where—at least one hundred are to be seen in England. So much for the nation of shopkeepers!
Ah! a tandem, by Jove! and rather well got up. Of course it could be no other than Burton—“the ruling passion strong in ‘debt!’” Well, he may have forgotten his creditors, but he has not forgotten how to hold the ribbons.
What’s this heavy old coach with a cabriolet over the rumble?—the Russian minister, Kataffsky! Lord bless us! from all the strong braces and bars of wood and iron, one would say that it was built to stand a journey to Siberia. Who knows, but it may travel that road yet!... Pretty woman the Princess, but with all the characteristic knavery of her race in the eyes. Paulwas right when he refused to license Jews in Russia, because he knew his subjects would cheat them!
“Bon jour, Marquis.” Monsieur de Tavanne, very absurd but a chivalrous Frenchman of the old school. They say that, meeting the late Duc d’Orléans at Lady Grenville’s, he took a very abrupt leave, expressing as his reason that he did not know her Ladyship received “des gens comme cela.”
A Vienna Coupé, with a Vienna Coachman, and a Vienna Countess inside, are very distinctive in their way. The Grafin von Lowenhaufen, one of those pretty intriguantes of modern political warfare who frequent watering-places and act as the tirailleurs for Metternich and Guizot. Talleyrand avowed the great advantage of such assistance, which he said was impossible for an English minister, for “les Anglaises” always fell in love and blabbed!
Here comes a showy affair!—a real landau with four horses, as fine as bouquets and worsted tassels can make them! No mistaking it—Erin go Brag! Sir Roger M’Causland and my lady, and the four Misses and the Master M’Causland. They are the invincibles of modern travel; they have stormed every court in Europe, and are the terror of Grand Maréchals from Naples to the Pole. Heaven help the English minister in whose city they squat for a winter! He would have less trouble with a new tariff or a new boundary than in arranging their squabbles with court functionaries and the police. Sir Roger must know the King and his Ministers, and expound to them his own notions of the government, with divers hints about free trade and other like matters. My Lady must be invited to all court balls and concerts, and a fair proportion of dinners; and this, “de droit,” because “the M’Causland” was a King of Ballyshandera in the year 4, and my Lady herself being an O’Dowde, also of blood royal. People may laugh at these absurd, shameless pretensions, but “il rit le mieux, qui rit le dernier,” says the proverb; and if the sentiment be one the M’Causlands’ dignity permit, they have the right to laugh heartily. Boredom, actual boredom—a perseverance that is dead to all shame—a persistance that no modesty rebukes—a steady resolve to push forward, wins its way socially as well as strategically; and even the folding-doors of court saloons fly open before its magic sésame.
And who are these gay equestrians with prancing hackneys, flowing plumes, and flaunting habits?—The Fothergills; four handsome, dashing, effronté girls, who, under the mock protection of a small schoolboy brother, are, really, escorted by a group of moustached heroes, more than one of whom I already recognise as scarcely fit company for the daughters of an English church dignitary. Mais que voulez-vous? They would not visit the curate’s wife and sister in Durham, but they will ride out at Baden with blacklegs and swindlers! The Count yonder, Monsieur de Mallenville, is a noted character in Paris, and is always attended, when there, by an emissary of the police, who, with what Alphonse Karr calls an empressement de bonne compagnie, never leaves him for a moment.
And here we have the “dons” of the entertainment, la Princesse de Rubetzki, as pretty a piece of devilry as ever Poland manufactured to sow treason and disaffection, accompanied by her devoted admirer the Austrian general, Count Cohary. Poor fellow! all his efforts to appear young and volage are as nothing to the difficulties he endures in steering between the fair Princess’s politics and her affection. An Austrian of the “vieille roche” he is shocked by the Liberalism of his lady-love; and yet, with Spielberg before him, he cannot tear himself away.
They who are not acquainted with the world of the Continent may think it strange that society, even in a watering-place, should assemble individuals so different in rank and social position; but a very little experience will always shew that intercourse is really as much denied between such parties as though they were in different hemispheres. As the Rhone rolls its muddy current through the blue waters of the Lake of Geneva, and never mingles its turbid stream with the clear waves beside it, so these people are seen pouring their flood through every assemblage, and never disturbing the placid surface in their course. To effect this, two requisites are indispensable to the company,—a very rigid good-breeding and a very lax morality. No one can deny that both are abundant.
And here, if I mistake not, comes my own cher-à-banc. Truly, my excellent valet has followed my directions to the letter. I said, “Something of the commonest,” and he has brought me a fiacre that seems as moribund and creaky as myself. No matter, I am ready. And now to be off!