I ventured to hint that her mother entered the connubial state with a more modest preparation; and hereupon arose one of those lively discussions now so frequent between us, in which, amidst other desultory and miscellaneous remarks, she drew a graphic contrast between marrying a man of rank and title, and "making a low connection that has forever served to alienate the affection of one's family."
Will you tell me what peculiarity there is in the atmosphere, or the food, or the electric influences abroad, that have made a woman that was at least occasionally reasonable at home a most unmanageable fury on the Continent? I don't want to deny that we had our little differences at Dodsborough, but they were "tiffs,"—-mere skirmishes,—but here they are downright pitched battles, Tom. She will have it so, too. She won't exchange a few shots and retire, but she comes up in line, with her heavy artillery, and seems resolved to have a day of it! If this blessed tour brought me no other pleasures than these, I 'd have reason to thank it! You, of course, are quite ready to assert that the fault is as much mine as hers,—that I provoke contradiction,—that I even invite conflict! There you are perfectly in the wrong! I do, I acknowledge, intrench myself in a strong position, and only fire an occasional shot at any tempting exposure of the enemy; but she comes on by storm and escalade, and, sparing neither age nor sex, never stops till she's in the very heart of the citadel. That I come out maimed, crippled, and disabled from such encounters, is not to be wondered at.
Amongst the other signs of progress of our enlightened age, a very remarkable one is the habit, now become a law, for everybody with any pretensions to the rank of a gentleman, to live in the same style, or, at least, with as close an imitation as he can of it, as persons of large fortune. Men like myself were formerly satisfied with giving their friends a little sherry and port at dinner, continued afterwards, till some considerate friend begged, "as a favor," for a glass of punch. Now we start with Madeira after the soup, if you have n't had oysters and chablis before, hock with your first entrée, and champagne afterwards, graduating into Chambertin with "the roast," and Pacquarete with the dessert, claret, at double the price it costs in Ireland, closing the entertainment. Why, a duke cannot do more than Kenny Dodd at this rate! To be sure the cookery will be more refined, and the wines in higher condition. Moët will be iced to its due point, and Chateau Margaux will be served in a carefully aired decanter; but the cost, the outlay, will be fully as much in one case as the other. Have we—that is to say, humble men like myself—gained by this in an intellectual or social point of view? Not a bit of it! We have lost all that easy cordiality that was native to us in our former condition, and we have not become as coldly polite and elegantly tiresome as the grand folk.
The same system obtains in other matters. My daughter must be dressed on her wedding-day like Lady Olivia or Lady Jemima, who has a father a marquis, and fifty thousand pounds settled on her for pin-money.
The globe has to become tributary to the marriage of Mary Anne! Cashmere sends a shawl; Lyons, silk; and Genoa, velvet; furs from Hudson's Bay, and feathers from Mexico; Valenciennes and Brussels contribute lace; Paris reserving for her peculiar snare the architectural skill that is to combine these costly materials, and construct out of them that artistic being they call a "bride." Taking a wife with nothing "but the clothes on her back" used to be the expression of a most disinterested marriage. Now it might mean anything between Swan and Edgar's and Howell and James's, or, to state it differently, between moderate embarrassment and irretrievable ruin!
If you ask me how I am to pay for all this, or when, I tell you honestly and fairly, I don't know. As well as I can make out the last accounts you sent me, we 're getting deeper into debt every day; but as figures always distract and puzzle me, I'd rather you'd put the case into something like a statement in words, just saying when we may expect a remittance, and how much it will be. I find that I shall lose the mail if I don't cease at once; but I 'll send you a few lines by to-morrow's post, as I have something important to say, but can't remember it now.
Yours, ever sincerely,
Kenny James Dodd.