Jemima Dodd.
P. S. If Mary Anne has finished her sketch of the castle, I'll send it with this. She 'd have done it yesterday, but, unfortunately, she had n't a bit of red she wanted for a fisherman's small-clothes,—for it seems they always wear red in a picture,—and had to send down to the town, eleven miles, for it.
Address me still here when you write, and let it be soon.
LETTER XXXVII. KENNY JAMES DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., OF THE GRANGE,
BRUFF.
The Castle of Wolfenfels.
My dear Tom,—I 'm glad old Molly has shown you Mrs. D.'s epistle, which, independent of its other claims, saves me all the trouble of explaining where we are, and how we came there. We arrived on Wednesday last, and since that have been living in a very quiet, humdrum kind of monotonous life, which, were it in Ireland, we should call, honestly, tiresome; but as the scene is Germany and the Black Forest, I suppose should be chronicled as highly romantic and interesting. To be plain, Tom, we inhabit a big house—they call it a castle—in the midst of a large expanse of maize and turnips, backed by a dense wood of pines. We eat and drink in a very plain sort of over-abundant and greasy fashion. We sleep in a thing like the drawer of a cabinet, with a large pincushion on our stomachs for covering. We smoke a home-grown weed, that has some of the bad properties of tobacco; and we ponder—at least I do—of how long it would take of an existence like this to make a man wish himself a member of the vegetable creation. Don't fancy that I'm growing exorbitant in my demands for pleasure and amusement, nor believe that I have forgotten the humdrum uniformity of my life at home. I remember it all, and well. I can recall the lazy hours passed in the sunshine of our few summer days; I can bring back to mind the wearisome watching of the rain as it poured down for a spell of two months together, when we asked each other every morning, "What's to become of the wheat? How are we to get in the turf, if this lasts?" The newspapers, too, only alternated their narratives of outrage with flood, and spoke of bridges, mills, and mail-coaches being carried away in all directions. I mention these to show you that, though "far from the land," not a trait of it is n't green in my memory. But still, Tom, there was, so to say, a tone and a keeping in the picture which is wanting here. Our home dulness impressed itself as a matter of necessity, not choice. We looked out of our window at a fine red-brick mansion, two miles away,—where we 've drunk many a bottle of claret, and in younger days danced the "White Cockade" till morning,—and we see it a police-station, or mayhap a union. A starved dog dashes past the door with a hen in his mouth; we recognize him as the last remnant of poor Fetherstone's foxhounds, now broken up and gone. The smoke does n't rise from the midst of the little copses of beech and alder, along the river side; no, the cabins are all roofless, and their once inhabitants are now in Australia, or toiling to enrich the commonwealth of America.
There is a stir and a movement going forward, it is true; but, unlike that which betokens the march of prosperity and gain, it only implies transition. Ay, Tom, all is changing around us. The gentry are going, the middle classes are going, and the peasant is going,—some of their free will, more from hard necessity. I know that the general opinion is favorable to all this,—in England, at least The cry is ever, "Ireland is improving,—Ireland will be better." But my notion is that by Ireland we should understand not alone the soil, the rocks, and the rivers, but the people,—the heart and soul and life-blood that made the island the generous, warm-hearted, social spot we once knew it. Take away these, and I no longer recognize it as my country. What matters it to me if the Scotchman or the Norfolk farmer is to prosper where we only could exist? My sympathies are not with him. You might as well try and console me for the death of my child by showing me how comfortably some other man's boy could sleep in his bed. I want to see Ireland prosper with Irishmen; and I wish it, because I know in my heart the thing is possible and practicable.
I 'm old enough—and, indeed, so are you—to remember when the English used to be satisfied to laugh at our blunders and our bulls, and ridicule our eccentricities; but the spirit of the times is changed, and now they 've taken to rail at us, and abuse us, as if we were the greatest villains in Europe. They assume the very tone the Yankee adopts to the Red Man, and frankly say, "You must be extirpated!" Hence the general flight that you now witness. Men naturally say, "Why cling to a land that is no longer secure to us? Why link our destinies to a soil that may be denied to us to-morrow?" And the English will be sorry for this yet. Take my word for it, Tom, they 'll rue it! Paddy, by reason of his poverty and his taste for adventure, and a touch of romance in his nature, was always ready to enlist. He did n't know what might not turn out of it. He knew that Wellington was an Irishman, and, faith, he had only to read very little to learn that most of the best men came from the same country. Luck might, then, stand to him, and, at all events, it was n't a bad change from four-pence a day, stone-breaking!