LETTER XXXIII. 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 Assizes.
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 harassing 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 associate 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 titled classes at home are a close borough, that men like you and myself never trespass 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 illustrious guests at Mrs. Somebody's soirée. 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 constitution. It's a very common remark, how much more easily women conform to the habits and customs of a class 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 embarrassed 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 ambassador, 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 illustrious 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, associated 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 passport. The Commissary was at his café, 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 assemblage, 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 passage 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."
"Religion?"
"Catholic."
"Married or single?"
"Married."
"With children,—how many?"
"Three,—a boy and two girls."
"Do you follow any trade or profession?"
"No."
"Living upon private means?"
"Yes."
These, and a vast number of similar queries—they filled five sheets of long post—followed, touching where we came from, how we had travelled, our object in the journey, and twenty things of the like kind, till I began to feel that the examination in itself was not a small penalty for a light transgression. At last, after a close scrutiny into all my family matters, my money resources, and my habits, he entered upon another chapter, which I own I thought was pushing the matter rather far, by saying, "Apparently, Herr Dodd, you are one of those who think that the monarchies of Europe are obsolete systems of government, ill suited to the spirit and requirements of the age. Is it not so?"
If I had only a moment's time for reflection, I should have said, "What is it to you how I think on these subjects? I don't belong to your country, and will render no account of my private sentiments to you;" but, unfortunately, a discussion on politics is always "nuts" to me,—I can't resist it,—and in I went, with that kind of specious generality that lays down a broad and wide foundation for any edifice you like afterwards to rear.
"Kings," said I, "are pretty much like other men,—good, bad, or indifferent, and, like other men, they are not bettered by being left to the sway of their own unbridled passions and tempers. Wherever, therefore, there is no constitution to bind them, the chances are that they make ducks and drakes of their subjects."
I must tell you, Tom, that we conducted our interview in English, which the Commissary spoke fluently.
"The divine right of kings, then, you utterly overlook?"
"I deny it,—I laugh it to scorn," said I. "Look at the fellows we see on thrones,—one is a creature fit for Bedlam; another ought to be in Norfolk Island. If they possessed any of this divine right you talk of, should we have seen them scuttling away as they did the other day, because there was a row in their capitals?"
"That will do,—quite enough," said he, stopping me short. "Your sentiments are sufficiently clear and explicit. You are a worthy disciple of your friend Gauss."
"I never heard of him till now," said I.
"Nor of Isaac Henkenstrom?—nor Reichard Blitzler?—nor Johann von Darg?"
"Not one of them."
"This you swear?"
"This I swear," said I, firmly; but the words were not well out, when the door was opened at a signal made by the Commissary, and an old man, with a very white beard and in shabby black, was led forward.
"Do you know the Herr Professor now?" asked the Commissary of me.
"No," said I, stoutly,—"never saw him before."
"Bring in the others," said he; and, to my astonishment, came forward three of the young fellows I had travelled with on foot from Saxony, but whose names I had not heard, or, if I heard, had forgotten.
"Are these men known to you?" asked the Prefect, with a sneer.
"Yes," said I; "we travelled in company for some days."
"Ah! you acknowledge them at last?" said he, "although you swore you had never seen them."
"Are you so stupid," said I, "as not to distinguish between a man's knowledge of an individual and his remembrance of a name?"
"You yourself might be a puzzle in that respect," replied he, not heeding my taunt. "You assumed one appellation at Bonn, another at Ems, and your family are living under a third here."
"I deny it!" cried I, indignantly.
"Here 's the proof," said he. "Is this your wife's hand-writing? 'Mrs. Dodd M'Carthy requests the favor of having two gendarmes stationed at the hotel on each Wednesday evening, to keep order in the line of carriages at her receptions.' Is that authentic?"
What a shell exploded beneath me, as I saw that I was tracked by the spies of the police from town to village up the Rhine, and half across Germany! The three youths with whom I was confronted were already condemned to prison. One had a tobacco bag, with a picture of Blum on it; the other was detected with a case-knife, whose blade exceeded the regulation length by half an inch; and the third was heard to say, "Germany forever," as he tossed off a tumbler of beer; and I was the associate and trusted comrade of this combined Socialism and Democracy. It came out that amongst our fraternity of the road there had been a paid spy of the police, who kept a regular journal of all our wayside conversation; and from the singularity of an Englishman's presence in such a party, it was inferred that his object was to spread those infamous doctrines by which it is now well known England sustains her position in Europe.
The absurdity I could laugh at, but there were some things in the matter not to be treated lightly. With my name at Ems they had no possible concern. Ems was in Nassau, not Baden. What could have persuaded my wife to call herself Dodd M'Carthy? We were always Dodd; we never had any other name. I could n't explain this, nor even give it a coloring; but I grew angry, Tom, vexed and irritated by the pestering impertinence of this pumping scoundrel. I said a vast number of things which had been better unsaid. I gave a great deal of good advice, too, about legislation generally, that I might have known would not have been accepted; and, in fact, I was what would be called generally indiscreet; the more, since all my remarks were committed to paper as fast as I made them, the whole being courteously submitted to me for signature, as if I had been purposely making a confession of my political belief.
"Give me my passport," cried I, at last, "and let me quit your little rascally territory of spies and sharpers. I promise you sacredly I 'll never put foot in it again."
"Not so fast, my worthy friend," said he. "We must first know under which of your aliases you are to travel; meanwhile, we shall take the liberty of committing you to prison as Herr Dodd!"
"To prison!—for what crime?" cried I, nearly choking with passion.
"You 'll hear it all time enough," was the only response, as, ringing his bell, he summoned the gendarmes, who, advancing one to either side of me, led me away like a common malefactor.
The prison is a kind of Bridewell, over a livery-stable, and only meant as a "station" before being forwarded to the larger establishment at Carlsruhe. I suppose, had they wished it, they could not have accorded me any place of separate confinement; for there was but scanty space, and many occupants. As it was, my lot was to be put in the same cell with two fellows just apprehended for a murder, and who obligingly entered into a full narrative of their crime, believing that my revelations would be equally interesting. I lost no time in writing a note to James, and another to our English Chargé d'Affaires, a young attaché, I believe, of the Legation at Stuttgard.
James and the sucking diplomatist were both out, so that I had no answer from either till evening. During this interval I had much meditation over the state of politics in Germany, and the probable future of that country, of which I shall take another occasion to tell you.
At six o'clock came the following, enclosed in a very large envelope, and sealed with a very spacious impression of the English Arms:—
"The undersigned Attaché of H. B. M.'s Legation at the Court of Stuttgard has the honor to acknowledge receipt of Mr. Kenny J. Dodd's communication of this morning's date, and will lay it under the consideration of H. B. M.'s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs."
This was pleasant, forsooth! And was I to remain in jail till the despatch had reached London, a deliberation formed on it, and an answer returned? I was boiling over with rage at this thought, when James entered. He had just been with our illustrious Chargé d'Affaires, who received him with that diplomatic reserve so peculiar amongst the small fry of the Foreign Office. At the same time James saw a lurking satisfaction in his manner at the thought of having got up a case of international dispute, which might have his name mentioned in the House, and possibly a despatch with his signature printed in a Blue Book. He was dying for an opportunity of distinguishing himself, as Baden offered nothing to his ambition; and all his fear was, that the authorities might liberate me too soon. James perceived all this,—for the lad is not wanting in shrewdness, and his Continental life, if it has not bettered his morals, has certainly sharpened his wit; but all his arguments were unavailing, and all his reasonings useless. The despatch was already begun, and it was too good a grievance to let slip unprofitably.
James next called on a friend of his, a certain Mr. Milo Blake O'Dwyer, who is the correspondent of a great London paper called the "Sledge Hammer of Freedom;" but instead of advice and guidance, the worthy news-gatherer was taking down all the particulars for a grand letter to his journal; and he, too, it was plain to see, wished that some outrageous treatment of me by the authorities would make his communication the great event of that day's post in London. "I wish they 'd put him in irons,—in heavy irons," said he. "Are you sure that his cell is not eight feet below the surface of the earth? Be particular, I beg of you, about the depth. You saw how Gladstone destroyed that elegant case of Poerio, all for want of a little accuracy in his measurements; for, I must observe to you, in all our 'correspondence,' names, dates, and distances require to be true as the Bible. Facts admit of varnishing. They can be always stretched a little this way or that. Now, for instance, we 'll call the conduct of the authorities in this case brutal, cowardly, and disgraceful. We 'll appeal to the universally acknowledged right of Englishmen to do everything everywhere, and we 'll wind up with a grand peroration about Despotism and the glorious privileges of the British Constitution."
The fellow chuckled over my case with unfeigned satisfaction. He would n't listen to the real, plain facts of the matter at all. They were poor, meagre, and insignificant in themselves, till they had acquired the touch of genius to illustrate them; and though I was a gem, as he owned, yet, like the Koh-i-noor, I was nothing without cutting. He appears, besides, to think that he has a kind of vested interest in me, now that my case is to figure in his newspaper, and he contradicts my own statements flatly wherever they don't suit him.
I have just despatched James to assure him that I don't care a rush about the sympathy of the whole British public; that I have no taste for martyrdom; and that, as to expending any hopes in redress from our Foreign Office, I'd as soon make an investment in Poyais Scrip, or Irish Canal Debentures. I trust that he will be induced to leave me alone, and neither make me matter for the Press nor a speech in Parliament.
These reporters, or correspondents, or whatever they call them, are, in my mind, the greatest disturbers of the peace of Europe. The moment they assert anything, they set about looking for proofs of it; and they don't know how to praise themselves enough, whenever they are driven to confess that they were in the wrong; and then, if you mind, Tom, it is not to the public they excuse themselves,—not a bit of it; it's the King of Naples, or the Emperor of Russia, or the Bey of Tiflis, that "they sincerely hope will not be offended by statements made after mature reflection and painful consideration of the topic." They throw out sly hints of all the Royal attentions that have been bestowed upon them, and the intimate habits they have enjoyed of confidence with the Queen of this, and the Crown Prince of that Vulgar rapscallions! they have never seen more of Royalty than what a church or an opera admits; and though Majesty now and then may feel the sting, take my word for it, he never notices the mosquito.
If you, then, see me in print,—and be on the look-out,—just write a letter in my name from Dodsborough, to say that I am well and hearty on my paternal acres, and know nothing of politics, police, or reporters, and would rather the Government would reduce the county cess than prosecute every Grand-Duke in Europe.
I will write again to-morrow. Yours ever,
K. I. Dodd.