Dear Tom,—It 's no use in talking; I can't go over to Ireland now, and you know that as well as myself. Besides, what 's the good of me taking a part in the elections? Who can tell which side will be uppermost, after all? And if one is "to enter, it's as well to ride the winning horse." Vickars has behaved so badly that I don't think I'd support him; but there's a fortnight yet before the elections, and perhaps he may see the errors of his ways before that!
I 've little heart or spirits for politics, for my life is fairly bothered out of me with domestic troubles. James is going on very slowly. There was a bit of glove-leather round the ball—a most inexcusable negligence on the part of his second—that has given much uneasiness; and he has a kind of night fever that keeps him low and weak. With that, too, he has too many doctors. Three of them come every morning, and never go away without a dispute.
It strikes me forcibly, Tom, that medical science is one of the things that makes little progress, considering all the advantages of our century. I don't mean to say that they don't know better what's inside of you, what your bones are made of, that they have n't more hard names for everything than formerly; but that when it comes to cure you of a toothache, or a colic, or a fit of the gout, my sure belief is they made just as good a hand of it two hundred years ago. I won't deny that they 'll whip off your leg, tie one of your arteries, or take your hip out of the socket quicker than they used long ago; but how few of us, thank God, have need of that kind of skill! and if we have, what signifies a quarter of a minute more or less? Tim Hackett, that was surgeon to our County Infirmary forty years, never used any other tools than an old razor and a pair of pincers, and I believe he was just as successful as Astley Cooper; and yet these fellows that come to see James cover the table every day with instruments that would puzzle the Royal Society,—things like patent corkscrews, scissors with teeth like a saw, and one little crankum for all the world like a landing-net: James is more afraid of that than all the rest When I saw it first, I thought it was a new contrivance for taking the fees in. The Pharmacopoeia—I hope I spell it right—is greater, to be sure, than long ago, but what's the advantage of that? We never discover a new kind of beast for food, and I see little benefit in multiplying what only disgusts you. 'T is with medicine as with law, Tom; the more precedents we have, the more confused we get; and where our ignorant ancestors saw their way clearly, we, with all our enlightenment, never can hit on the right track at all. The mill-owner and the engineer, the tanner, the dyer, the printer, ay, even the fanner, picks up something every day that helps him in his craft. It's only the learned professions that never learn anything; maybe that's how they got the name "lucus à non," Tom, as Dr. Bell would say.
You keep preaching to me about economy and making "both ends meet," and all that kind of balderdash; and if you only saw the way we 're living, you 'd be surprised at our cheapness. Whenever a five-pound note sees me through our bill for the day, I give myself a bottle of champagne at night out of gratitude! You remember all Mrs D.'s promises about thrift and saving; and, faith, I must say that so far as cutting "down the estimates" for the rest of the family, she 's worthy of the Manchester school; but whenever it touches herself, her liberality becomes boundless.
I believe it would be cheaper to give the milliner a room in the house than pay her coach-hire, for she 's here every morning, and generally in my room when I 'm shaving, sometimes before I 'm up. Not that this trifling circumstance ever disconcerted her. On my conscience, I believe she 'd have taken Eve's measure before Adam, without a blush at the situation! So far as I have seen of foreign life, Tom, shamelessness is the grand characteristic, and I grieve to say that one picks up the indecency much easier than the irregular verbs. I wish, however, I had nothing to complain of but this.
I told you in one of my late letters that I was getting into law here; the plot is thickening since that, and I have now, I believe, four actions—I hope it is not five—pending in four different courts; in some I 'm the plaintiff, in some the defendant, and in another I 'm something between the two; but what that may be, or what consequences it entails, I know as much as I do about calculating the next eclipse! Indeed, to distinguish between the several suits and the advocates I have engaged is no small difficulty, and a considerable part of every conference is occupied with purely introductory matter. These foreign lawyers have a mysterious kind of way with them, too, that always gives you the impression that a law-suit is something like the Gunpowder Plot! There's a fellow comes to me every morning for instructions, as he calls it, muffled up in a great cloak, and using as many precautions against being seen by the servants as if he were going to blow up the Government. I 'd not be so sensitive on the subject, if it had n't provoked a species of annoyance, at which, perhaps, you 'll be more disposed to laugh than sympathize.
For the last week Mrs. D. has adopted a kind of warfare at which she, I 'll be bound to say, has few equals and no superior,—a species of irregular attack, at all times and on all subjects, by innuendo and insinuation, so dexterously thrown out as to defy opposition; for you might as well take your musket to keep off the mosquitoes! What she was driving at I never could guess, for the assault came on every flank, and in all manner of ways. If I was dressed a little more carefully than usual, she called attention to my "smartness;" if less so, she hinted that I was probably going out "on the sly." If I stayed at home, I was "waiting for somebody;" if I went out, it was to "meet them." But all this guerilla warfare gave way at last to a grand attack, when I ventured to remonstrate about some extravagance or other. "It came well from me," she burst forth, with indignant anger,—"it came well from me to talk of the little necessary expenses of the family,—the bit they ate, and the clothes on their backs." She spoke as if they were Mandans or Iraquois, and lived in a wigwam! "It came well from me, living the life I did, to grudge them the commonest requirements of decency!" "Living the life I did!" I avow to you, Tom, the words staggered me. Warren Hastings tells us that when Burke concluded his terrible invective, that he actually sat for five minutes overwhelmed with a sense of guilt; and so stunning was this charge that it took me full double as long to rally! for though Mrs. D.'s eloquence may not possess all the splendor or sublimity of the great Edmund, there is a homely significance, a kind of natural impressiveness, about it not to be despised. "Living the life I did," rang in my ears like the words of a judge in a charge. It sounded like—"Kenny Dodd, you have been fairly convicted by an honest and impartial jury!" and I confess I sat there expecting to hear "the last sentence of the law." It was only after some interval I was able to ask myself, "what was really the kind of life I had been leading." My memory assured me it was a very stupid, tiresome existence,—very good-for-nothing and un instructive. It was by no means, however, one of flagrant vice or any outrageous wickedness; and I could n't help muttering with honest Jack,—
"If sack and sugar be a sin, God help the wicked!"
The only things like personal amusements I had indulged in being gin-and-water and dominoes,—cheap pleasures, if not very fascinating ones!
"Living the life I did!" Why, what does the woman mean? Is she throwing in my teeth the lazy, useless, unprofitable course of my daily existence, without a pursuit, except to hear the gossip of the town,—without an object, except to retail it? "Mrs. D.," said I, at last, "you are, generally speaking, comprehensible. Whatever faults may attach to your parts of speech, it must be owned they usually convey your meaning. Now, for the better maintenance of this characteristic, will you graciously be pleased to explain the words you have just spoken? What do you mean by the 'life I am leading'?" "Not before the girls, certainly, Mr. D.," said she, in a Lady Macbeth whisper that made my blood curdle.