"Dear Jemi,—We are waiting here for the Princess, who has not yet arrived, but is expected to-day or to-morrow at furthest You will be sorry to hear that I was ill and confined for more than a week to my bed at Ems." Will I, indeed? "It was a kind of low fever." I read it a love fever, Molly, when I saw it first "But I am now much better." You never were worse in your life, you old hypocrite, thinks I. "And am able to take a little exercise on horseback.
"The expense of this journey, unavoidable as it was! is very considerable, so that I reckon upon your practising the strictest economy during my absence." I thought I'd choke, Molly, when I seen this. Just think of the daring impudence of the man telling me that while he is lavishing hundreds on his vices and wickedness, the family is to starve to enable him to bear the expense. "The strictest economy during my absence." I wish I was near you when you wrote It!
Then comes in some balderdash about the scenery, and the place they 're at, just as coolly described as if it was talking of Bruff or the neighborhood; the whole winding up with, "Mrs. G. H. desires me to convey her tender regards"—what she can spare, I suppose, without robbing him—"to you and the girls. No time for more, from yours sincerely,
"Kenny James Dodd."
There's an epistle for you! You 'll not find the like of it in the "Polite Letter-Writer," I 'll wager. The father of a family—and such a family too!—discoursing as easily about the height of iniquity as if he was alluding to the state of the weather, or the price of sheep at the last fair. He flatters himself, maybe, that this free-and-easy way is the best to bamboozle me, and that by seeming to make nothing of it, I 'll take the same view as himself. Is that all he knows of me yet? Did he ever succeed in deceiving me during the last seventeen years? Did n't I find him out in twenty things when he did n't know himself of his own depravity? I tell you in confidence, Molly, that if coming abroad is an elegant thing for our sex, it's downright ruin to men of K. I.'s time of life! When they come to fifty, or thereabouts, in Ireland, they settle down to something respectable, either on the Bench, or Guardians to the Union. Their thoughts runs upon green crops and draining, and how to raise a trifle, by way of loan, from the Board of Works. But not having these things, abroad, to engage them, they take to smartening themselves up with polished boots and blackened whiskers, and what between pinching here, and padding there, they get the notion that they 're just what they were thirty years ago! Oh dear! oh dear! sure they 've only to go upstairs a little quick, to stoop to pick up a handkerchief, or button a boot, to detect the mistake, and if that won't do, let them try a polka with a young lady just out for her first season!
Of all the old fools, in this fashion, I never met a worse than K. I.! and what adds to the disgrace, he knows it himself, and he goes on saying, "Sure I 'm too old for this," or "I'm past that;" and I always chime in with, "Of course you are; you 'd cut a nice figure;" and so on. But what's the use of it, Molly? Their vanity and conceit sustains them against all the snubs in the world, and till they come down to a Bath-chair, they never believe that they can't dance a hornpipe! I could say a great deal more on this subject, but I must turn to other things. You must see Purcell and tell him the way we 're left, without a fraction of money, nor knowing where to get it Tell him that I wrote to Waters about a separation, which I would, only that K. I.'s affairs is in such a state, I 'd have to put up with a mere trifle. Say that I 'm going to expose him in the newspapers, and there's "no knowing where I 'll stop," for that's exactly the threat Tom Purcell will be frightened at.
Get him to send me a remittance immediately, and describe our distress and destitution as touchingly as you can.
Here 's more of it, Molly. James has just come in to say that the Ministry is out in England, and that the new Government is giving everything away to the Irish, and that old villain, K. I., not on the spot to ask for a place! James tells me it's the Brigade is to have the best things; but I don't remember if K. I. belongs to it, though I know he's in the Yeomanry. From Lord-Lieutenant down to the letter-carriers, they must be all Irish now, James says. We 're to have Ireland for ourselves, and as much of England as we can, for we 'll never rest till we get perfect equality, and I must say it 's time too!
K. I. is n't fit for much, but maybe he might get something. The Treasury is where he 'd like to be, but I 'm not certain it would suit him. At all events, he 's not to the fore, and I don't think they 'll send to look for him, as they did for Sir Robert Peel! Till we know, however, whether he has a chance of anything, it would be better to keep his present conduct a profound secret, for James remarks "that they make a great fuss about character nowadays;" and it comes well from them, Molly, if the stories I hear be true!
Ask Purcell what's vacant in K. I.'s line? which, you may say, goes from Lunatic Asylums to the Court of Chancery. I don't want James to have an Irish appointment, but he says there's something in Gambia—wherever that is—that he'd like.