A regular Italian morning, Tom, and such a view! The mists are swooping down the Alps, and showing cliffs and crags in every tint of sunlit verdure. The lake is blue as a dark turquoise, reflecting the banks and their hundred villas in the calm water. The odor of the orange-flower and the oleander load the air, and, except my vagabonds under the window, there is not an element of the picture devoid of interest and beauty. There they are as usual; one of them has his arm in a bloody rag, I perceive, the consequence of a row last night,—at least, Paddy Byrne saw a fellow wiping his knife and washing his bands in the lake—very suspicious circumstances—just as he was going to bed.
I have been hearing all about our neighbors,—at least, Cary has been interrogating the gardener, and "reporting progress" to me as well as she could make him out. This Lake of Como seems the paradise of ci-devant theatrical folk; all the prima donnas who have amassed millions, and all the dancers that have pirouetted into great wealth, appear to have fixed their ambition on retiring to this spot. Of a truth, it is the very antithesis to a stage existence. The silent and almost solemn grandeur of the scene, the massive Alps, the deep dense woods, the calm unbroken stillness, are strong contrasts to the crash and tumult, the unreality and uproar of a theatre. I wonder, do they enjoy the change? I am curious to know if they yearn for the blaze of the dress-circle and the waving pit? Do they long at heart for the stormy crash of the orchestra and the maddening torrent of applause; and does the actual world of real flowers and trees and terraces and fountains seem in their eyes a poor counterfeit of the dramatic one? It would not be unnatural if it were so. There is the same narrowing tendency in every professional career. The doctor, the lawyer, the priest, the soldier,—ay, and even your Parliament man, if he be an old member, has got to take a House of Commons standard for everything and everybody. It is only your true idler, your genuine good-for-nothing vagabond, that ever takes wide or liberal views of life; one like myself, in short, whose prejudices have not been fostered by any kind of education, and who, whatever he knows of mankind, is sure to be his own.
They 've carried away my ink-bottle, to write acknowledgments and apologies for certain invitations the womenkind have received to go and see fireworks somewhere on the lake; for these exhibitions seem to be a passion with Italians! I wish they were fonder of burning powder to more purpose! I 'm to dine below to-day, so it is likely that I 'll not be able to add anything to this before to-morrow, when I mean to despatch it A neighbor, I hear, has sent us a fine trout; and another has forwarded a magnificent present of fruit and vegetables,—very graceful civilities these to a stranger, and worthy of record and remembrance. Lord George tells me that these Lombard lords are fine fellows,—that is, they keep splendid houses and capital horses, have first-rate cooks, and London-built carriages,—and, as he adds, will bet you what you like at piquet or écarté. Egad, such qualities have great success in the world, despite all that moralists may say of them!
The ink has come back, but it is I am dry now! The fact is, Tom, that very little exertion goes far with a man in this climate! It is scarcely noon, but the sultry heat is most oppressive; and I half agree with my friends under the window, that the dorsal attitude is the true one for Italy. In any other country you want to be up and doing: there are snipe or woodcocks to be shot, a salmon to kill, or a fox to hunt; you have to look at the potatoes or the poorhouse; there 's a row, or a road session, or something or other to employ you; but here, it's a snug spot in the shade you look for,—six feet of even ground under a tree; and with that the hours go glibly over, in a manner that is quite miraculous.
It ought to be the best place under the sun for men of small fortune. The climate alone is an immense economy in furs and firing; and there is scarcely a luxury that is not, somehow or other, the growth of the soil: on this head—the expense I mean—I can tell you nothing, for, of course, I have not served on any committee of the estimates since my illness; but I intend to audit the accounts to-morrow, and then you shall hear all. Tiverton, I understand, has taken the management of everything; and Mrs. D. and Mary Anne tell me, so excellent is his system, that a rebellion has broken out below stairs, and three of our household have resigned, carrying away various articles of wardrobe, and other property, as an indemnity, doubtless, for the treatment they had met with. I half suspect that any economy in dinners is more than compensated for in broken crockery; for every time that a fellow is scolded in the drawing-room, there is sure to be a smash in the plate department immediately afterwards, showing that the national custom of the "vendetta" can be carried into the "willow pattern." This is one of my window observations. I wish there were no worse ones to record.
"Not a line, not another word, till you take your broth, papa," says my kind nurse; and as after my broth I take my sleep, I 'll just take leave of you for to-day. I wish I may remember even half of what I wanted to say to you tomorrow, but I have a strong moral conviction that I shall not It is not that the oblivion will be any loss to you, Tom; but when I think of it, after the letter is gone, I 'm fit to be tied with impatience. Depend upon it, a condition of hopeless repining for the past is a more terrible torture than all that the most glowing imagination of coming evil could ever compass or conceive.
Sunday Afternoon.
I told you yesterday I had not much faith in my memory retaining even a tithe of what I wished to say to you. The case is far worse than that,—I can really recollect nothing. I know that I had questions to ask, doubts to resolve, and directions to give, but they are all so commingled and blended together in my distracted brain that I can make nothing out of the disorder. The fact is, Tom, the fellow has bled me too far, and it is not at my time of life—58° in the shade, by old Time's thermometer—that one rallies quickly out of the hands of the doctor.
I thought myself well enough this morning to look over my accounts; indeed, I felt certain that the inquiry could not be prudently delayed, so I sent for Mary Anne after breakfast, and proceeded in state to a grand audit. I have already informed you that all the material of life here is the very cheapest,—meat about fourpence a pound; bread and butter and milk and vegetables still more reasonable; wine, such as it is, twopence a bottle; fruit for half nothing. It was not, therefore, any inordinate expectation on my part that we should be economizing in rare style, and making up for past extravagance by real retrenchment. I actually looked forward to the day of reckoning as a kind of holiday from all care, and for once in my life revel in the satisfaction of having done a prudent thing.
Conceive my misery and disappointment—I was too weak for rage—to find that our daily expenses here, with a most moderate household, and no company, amounted to a fraction over five pounds English a day. The broad fact so overwhelmed me that it was only with camphor-julep and ether that I got over it, and could proceed to details. Proceed to details, do I say! Much good did it do me! for what between a new coinage, new weights and measures, and a new language, I got soon into a confusion and embarrassment that would have been too much for my brain in its best days. Now and then I began to hope that I had grappled with a fact, even a small one; but, alas! it was only a delusion, for though the prices were strictly as I told you, there was no means of even approximating to the quantities ordered in. On a rough calculation, however, it appears that my mutton broth took half a sheep per diem. The family consumed about two cows a week in beef; besides hares, pheasants, bams, and capons at will. The servants—with a fourth of the wine set down to me—could never have been sober an hour; while our vegetable and fruit supply would have rivalled Covent Garden Market.