Jemima Dodd.
Mary Anne begs you will tell Kitty Doolan that she has not been able to write to her, with all the occupation she has lately had, but will take the very first moment to send her at least a few lines. As James's good luck will soon be no secret, you may tell it to Kitty, and I think it won't be thrown away on her, as I suspect she was making eyes at him herself, though she might be his mother!
LETTER XVI. MISS MARY ANNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN
Parma.
Dearest Kitty,—It is but seldom I have to bespeak your indulgence on the score of my brevity, but I must do so now, overwhelmed as I am with occupation, and scarcely a moment left me that I can really call my own. Mamma's letter to old Molly will have explained to you the great fortune which has befallen James, and, I might add also, all who belong to him. And really, dearest, with all the assurance the evidence of my own senses can convey, I still find it difficult to credit such unparalleled luck. Fancy beauty—and such beauty,—youth, genius, mind, rank, and a large fortune, thrown, I may say, at his feet! She is Spanish, by the mother's side; "Las Caldenhas," I think the name, whose father was a grandee of the first class. Her own father was the General Count de St. Amand, who commanded in the celebrated battle of Austerlitz in the retreat from Moscow. I 'm sure, dearest, you 'll be amazed at my familiarity with these historical events; but the truth is, she is a perfect treasury of such knowledge, and I must needs gain some little by the contact.
I am at a loss how to give you any correct notion of one whose universality seems to impart to her character all the semblance of contradictory qualities. She is, for instance, proud and haughty, to a degree little short of insolence. She exacts from men a species of deference little less than a slavish submission. As she herself says, "Let them do homage." All her ideas of life and society are formed on the very grandest scale. She has known, in fact, but one "set," and that has been one where royalties moved as private individuals. Her very trinkets recall such memories; and I have passed more than one morning admiring pearl ear-rings, with the cipher of the Czarawitsch; bracelets with the initials of an Austrian Archduke, and a diamond cross, which she forgot whether it was given her by Prince Metternich or Mehemet Ali. If you only heard her, too, how she talks of that "dear old thing, the ex-King of Bavaria," and with what affectionate regard she alludes to "her second self,—the Queen of Spain," you 'd feel at once, dearest Kitty, that you were moving amidst crowns and sceptres, with the rustle of royal purple beside, and the shadow of a thronely canopy over you. In one sense, this has been for us the very rarest piece of good fortune; for, accustomed as she has been to only one sphere,—and that the very highest,—she does not detect many little peculiarities in papa's and mamma's habits, and censure them as vulgar, but rather accepts them as the ways and customs among ordinary nobility. In fact, she thinks the Prince, as she calls papa, the very image of "Pozzo di Borgo;" and mamma she can scarcely see without saying, "Your Majesty," she is so like the Queen Dowager of Piedmont.
As to James, if it were not that I knew her real sentiments, and that she loves him to distraction,—merely judging from what goes on in society,—I should say he had not a chance of success. She takes pleasure, I almost think, in decrying the very qualities he has most pretension to. She even laughs at his horsemanship; and yesterday went so far as to say that activity was not amongst his perfections,—James, who really is the very type of agility! One of her amusements is to propose to him some impossible feat or other, and the poor boy has nearly broken his back and dislocated his limbs by contortions that nothing but a fish could accomplish. But the contrarieties of her nature do not end here! She, so grave, so dignified, so imperious, I might even call it, before others, once alone with me becomes the wildest creature in existence. The very moment she makes her escape to her own room, she can scarcely control her delight at throwing off the "Countess," as she says herself, and being once again free, joyous, and unconstrained.
I have told her, over and over again, that if James only knew her in these moods, that he would adore her even more than he does now; but she only laughs, and says, "Well, time enough; he shall see me so one of these days." It was not till after ten or twelve days that she admitted me to her real confidence. The manner of it was itself curious. "Are you sleepy?" said she to me, one evening as we went upstairs to bed; "for, if not, come and pay me a visit in my room."