Though I am totally innocent as to our future, it is better not to write till you hear again from me, for of course we shall leave this at once; but where for? that's the question.
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.