Florence, Lungo l'Arno.
My dear Tom,—It is nigh a month since I wrote to you last, and if I didn't "steal a few hours from the night, my dear," it might be longer still. The address will tell you where we are,—I wish anybody or anything else would tell you how or why we came here! I intended to have gone back from Genoa, nor do I yet understand what prevented me doing so. My poor head—none of the clearest in what may be called my lucid intervals—is but a very indifferent thinking machine when harassed, worried, and tormented as I have been latterly. You have heard how James's Countess, the Cardinal's niece and the betrothed of a Neapolitan Prince, turned out to be a circus woman, one of those bits of tawdry gold fringe and pink silk pantaloons that dance on a chalked saddle to a one-shilling multitude! By good fortune she had two husbands living, or she might have married the boy. As it was, he has gone into all manner of debt on her account; and if it was not that I can defy ruin in any shape,—for certain excellent reasons you may guess at,—this last exploit of his would go nigh to our utter destruction.
We hurried away out of Genoa in shame, and came on here by slow stages. The womenkind plucked up wonderfully on the way, and I believe of the whole party your humble servant alone carried abasement with him inside the gates of Florence.
My sense of sorrow and shame probably somehow blunted my faculties and dulled my reasoning powers, for I would seem to have concurred in a vast number of plans and arrangements that now, when I have come to myself, strike me with intense astonishment. For instance, we have taken a suite of rooms on the Arno, hired a cook, a carriage, and a courier; we are, I hear, also in negotiation for a box at the "Pergola," and I am credibly informed that I am myself looking out for saddle-horses for the girls, and a "stout-made, square-jointed cob of lively action," to carry myself.
It may be all true—I have no doubt it is more philosophical, as the cant phrase is—to believe Kenny Dodd to be mistaken rather than suppose his whole family deranged, so that if I hear to-morrow or next day that I 'm about to take lessons in singing, or to hire a studio as a sculptor, I 'm fully determined to accept the tidings with a graceful submission. There is only one thing, Tom Purcell, that passes my belief, and that is, that there ever lived as besotted an old fool as your friend Kenny D., a man so thoroughly alive to everything that displeased him, and yet so prone to endure it; so actively bent on going a road the very opposite to the one he wanted to travel; and that entered heart and soul into the spirit of ruining himself, as if it was the very best fun imaginable.
That you can attempt to follow me through the vagaries of this strange frame of mind is more than I expect, neither do I pretend to explain it to you. There it is, however,—make what you can of it, just as you would with a handful of copper money abroad, where there was no clew to the value of a single coin in the mass, but wherewith you are assured you have received your change.
With a fine lodging, smart liveries, a very good cook, and a well-supplied table, I thought it possible that though ruin would follow in about three months, yet in the interval I might probably enjoy a little ease and contentment. At all events, like the Indian, who, when he saw that he must inevitably go over the Falls, put his paddles quietly aside, and resolved to give himself no unnecessary trouble, I also determined I 'd leave the boat alone, and never "fash myself for the future." Wise as this policy may seem, it has not saved me. Mrs. D. is a regular storm-bird! Wherever she goes she carries her own hurricane with her! and I verily believe she could get up a tornado under the equator.
In a little pious paroxysm that seized her in the mountains, she, at the instigation of a stupid old lord there, must needs write a tract about certain miracles that were or were not—for I 'll not answer for either—performed by a saint that for many years back nobody had paid any attention to. This precious volume cost her three weeks' loss of rest, and me about thirty pounds sterling. It was, however, a pious work, and even as a kind of visa on her passport to heaven, I suppose it would be called cheap. I assure you, Tom, I spent the cash grudgingly; that I did pay it at all I thought was about as good "a miracle" as any in the book.
Armed with this tract, she tramped through the Lucchese mountains, leaving copies everywhere, and thrusting her volume into the hands of all who would have it. I 'm no great admirer of this practice in any sect. The world has too many indiscreet people to make this kind of procedure an over-safe one; besides, I 'm not quite certain that even a faulty religion is not preferable to having none at all, and it happens not unfrequently that the convert stops half-way on his road, and leaves one faith without ever reaching the other. I 'll not discuss this matter further; I have trouble enough on my hands without it.
These little tracts of Mrs. D.'s attracted the attention of the authorities. It was quite enough that they had been given away gratis, and by an Englishwoman, to stamp them as attempts to proselytize, and, although they could n't explain how, yet they readily adopted the idea that the whole was written in a figurative style purposely to cover its real object, and so they set lawyers and judges to work, and what between oaths of peasants and affirmations of prefects, they soon made a very pretty case, and yesterday morning, just as we had finished breakfast, a sergeant of the gendarmerie entered the room, and with a military salute asked which was la Signora Dodd? The answer being given, he proceeded to read aloud a paper, that he held in his hand, the contents of which Cary translated for me in a whisper. They were, in fact, a judge's warrant to commit Mrs. D. to prison under no less than nine different sections of a new law on the subject of religion. In vain we assured him that we were all good Catholics, kept every ordinance of the Church, and hated a heretic. He politely bowed to our explanation, but said that with this part of the matter he had nothing to do; that doubtless we should be able to establish our innocence before the tribunal; meanwhile Mrs. D. must go to prison.