LETTER X. MRS. DODD TO MRS. MARY GALLAGHER, DODSBOROUGH
My dear Molly,—I received your letter in due course, and if it was n't for crying, I could have laughed heartily over it! I don't know, I'm sure, where you got your elegant description of the Lake of Comus; but I am obliged to tell you it's very unlike the real article; at all events, there 's one thing I 'm sure of,—it's a very different matter living here like Queen Caroline, and being shut up in the same house with K. I.; and therefore no more balderdash about my "queenly existence," and so on, that your last was full of.
Here we are, in what they call the Villa of the Fountains, as if there was n't water enough before the door but they must have it spouting up out of a creature's nose in one corner, another blowing it out of a shell, and three naked figures—females, Molly—dancing in a pond of it in the garden, that kept me out of the place till I had them covered with an old mackintosh of K. I.'s. We have forty-seven rooms, and there's barely furniture, if it was all put together, for four; and there 's a theatre, and a billiard-room, and a chapel; but there 's not a chair would n't give you the lumbago, and the stocks at Bruff is pleasant compared to the grand sofa. The lake comes round three sides of the house, and a mountain shuts in the other one, for there 's no road whatever to it. You think I 'm not in earnest, but it's as true as I 'm here; the only approach is by water, so that everything has to come in boats. Of course, as long as the weather keeps fine, we 'll manage to send into the town; but when there comes—what we 're sure to have in this season—aquenoctial gales, I don't know what 's to become of us. The natives of the place don't care, for they can live on figs and olives, and those great big green pumpkins they call watermelons; but, after K. I.'s experience, I don't think we'll try them. It was at a little place on the way here, called Colico, that he insisted on having a slice of one of these steeped in rum for his supper, because he saw a creature eating it outside the door. Well, my dear, he relished it so much that he ate two, and—you know the man—would n't stop till he finished a whole melon as big as one of the big stones over the gate piers at home.
"Jemi," says he, when he'd done, "is this the place the hand-book says you should n't eat any fruit in, or taste the wines of the country?"
"I don't see that," said I; "but Murray says it's notorious for March miasma, which is most fatal in the fall of the year."
"What's the name of it?" said he.
I could n't say the word before he gave a screech out of him that made the house ring.
"I 'm a dead man," says he; "that's the very place I was warned about."
From that minute the pains begun, and he spent the whole night in torture. Lord George, the kindest creature that ever breathed, got out of his bed and set off to Milan for a doctor, but it was late in the afternoon when he got back. Half an hour later, Molly, and it would have been past saving him. As it was, he bled him as if he was veal: for that's the new system, my dear, and it's the blood that does us all the harm, and works all the wickedness we suffer from. If it's true, K. I. will get up an altered man, for I don't think a horse could bear what he 's gone through. Even now he 's as gentle as an infant, Molly, and you would n't know his voice if you heard it. We only go in one at a time to him, except Cary, that never leaves him, and, indeed, he would n't let her quit the room. Sometimes I fancy that he 'll never be the same again, and from a remark or two of the doctor's, I suspect it's his head they 're afraid of. If it was n't English he raved in, I 'd be dreadfully ashamed of the things he says, and the way he talks of the family.
As it is, he makes cruel mistakes; for he took Lord George the other night for James, and began talking to him, and warning him against his Lordship. "Don't trust him too far, Jemmy," said he. "If he was n't in disgrace with his equals, he 'd never condescend to keep company with us. Depend on 't, boy, he 's not 'all right,' and I wish we were well rid of him."
Lord George tried to make him believe that he did n't understand him, And said something about the Parliament being prorogued, but K. I. went on: "I suppose, then, our noble friend did n't get his Bill through the Lords?"
"His mind is quite astray to-night," said Lord George, in a whisper, and made a sign for us to creep quietly away, and leave him to Caroline. She understands him best of any of us; and, indeed, one sees her to more advantage when there 's trouble and misery in the house than when we 're all well and prosperous.
We came here for economy, because K. I. determined we should go somewhere that money couldn't be spent in. Now, as there is no road, we cannot have horses; and as there are no shops, we cannot make purchases; but, except for the name of the thing, Molly, might n't we as well be at Bruff? I would n't say so to one of the family, but to you, in confidence between ourselves, I own freely I never spent a more dismal three weeks at Dodsborough. Betty Cobb and myself spend our time crying over it the livelong day. Poor creature, she has her own troubles too! That dirty spalpeen she married ran away with all her earnings, and even her clothes; and Mary Anne's maid says that he has two other wives in his own country. She 's made a nice fool of herself, and she sees it now.
How long we're to stay here in this misery, I can't guess, and K. I.'s convalescence may be, the doctor thinks, a matter of months; and even then, Molly, who knows in what state he 'll come out of it! Nobody can tell if we won't be obliged to take what they call a Confession of Lunacy against him, and make him allow that he's mad and unfit to manage his affairs. If it was the will of Providence, I 'd just as soon be a widow at once; for, after all, it's uncertainty that tries the spirits and destroys the constitution worse than any other affliction.
Indeed, till yesterday afternoon, we all thought he was going off in a placid sleep; but he opened one eye a little, and bade Cary draw the window-curtain, that he might look out. He stared for a while at the water coming up to the steps of the door, and almost entirely round the house, and he gave a little smile. "What's he thinking of?" said I, in a whisper; but he heard me at once, and said, "I 'll tell you, Jemi, what it was. I was thinking this was an elegant place against the bailiffs." From that moment I saw that the raving had left him, and he was quite himself again.
Now, my dear Molly, you have a true account of the life we lead, and don't you pity us? If your heart does not bleed for me this minute, I don't know you. Write to me soon, and send me the Limerick papers, that has all the news about the Exhibition in Dublin. By all accounts it's doing wonderfully well, and I often wish I could see it. Cary has just come down to take her half-hour's walk on the terrace,—for K. I. makes her do that every evening, though he never thinks of any of the rest of us,—and I must go and take her place; so I write myself
Yours in haste, but in sorrow,
Jemima Dodd