The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I

I thought a hundred times of you, Bob. How you would have enjoyed this strange fraternity. What amusement – not to say something better and higher – you would have abstracted from them. What traits of native humor, – what studies of character! As for me, much, by far the greater part, was lost upon me for want of previous knowledge of the subjects they discussed. Of the kingdoms whose politics they canvassed I scarcely knew the names; of the books, I had not even heard the titles! I have no doubt many of their opinions were incorrect; much of what they uttered might have been illogical or inaccurate; but making a wide allowance for this, I was struck by the general acuteness of their remarks, and the tone of moderation and forbearance that characterized all they said.

This brief intercourse has at least taught me one thing, – which is not to look down with any depreciating pity on the troops of these wayfarers we pass on the road, still less to ridicule their absurd appearance, or make a jest of their varied costume. I now know that amidst those motley figures are men of shrewd intelligence and cultivated minds, content to follow the very humblest callings, and quite satisfied if their share of this world's good things never rises higher than black bread and a cup of sour wine. I should like greatly to see something more of the gypsy life they lead, and if ever the opportunity offer, shall certainly not suffer it to escape me.

We left the inn of the Moorg Thal at daybreak, my mother and Mary Anne in one carriage, the governor and myself in a little open calèche. He spoke little, and seemed deep in thought all the way. From an occasional expression he dropped, I dreaded to surmise that he had resolved on returning to Ireland. One remark which he made of more than ordinary bitterness was: "If we go on as we are doing, we shall at length close every town of Europe against us. We left Brussels in shame, and now we quit Baden in disgrace: the sooner this ends the better."

We did not proceed the whole way to Baden, but stopped about a mile from it, at a village called Lichtenthal, where we found a comfortable inn, with moderate charges. From this I was despatched to our hotel, after nightfall, to arrange our affairs, settle our bill, fetch away our baggage, and make all necessary arrangements for departure.

I am free to own that I entered on my mission with no common sense of shame. I knew, of course, how our story had by this time become the table-talk of Baden, and how, from the prince to the courier, "the Dodds" were the only topic. Such notoriety as this is no boon, and I confess, Bob, that I believe I could have submitted my hand to the knife with less shrinking of the spirit than I raised it to pull the door-bell of the Hôtel de Russie.

When a man has to encounter an anticipated humiliation, he usually puts on an extra amount of offensive armor. I suppose mine, on this occasion, must have been of unquestionable strength. None seemed willing to put it to the proof. The host was humble, – the waiters cringing, – the very porter fawned on me! The secretary – at your flash hotels abroad they always have a secretary, usually a Pole, who has an immense estate under sequestration somewhere, – this dread functionary, who, in presenting you the bill, ever gives you to understand that he is quite prepared to afford you personal satisfaction for any item in the score, – even he, I say, was bland, courteous, and gentle. I little knew at the moment to what circumstance I owed all this unexpected politeness, and that this silky courtesy was a very different testimony from what I suspected; it being neither more nor less than the joyful astonishment of the household at seeing one of us again, and an amazement, rising to enthusiastic delight, at the bare possibility of our paying our bill! Already in their estimation the "Dodd family" had been pronounced swindlers, and various speculations were abroad as to the value of the several trunks, imperials, and valises we had left behind us.

My mother, in her abject misery, – you may imagine the amount of it from the circumstance, – had given me her bank-book, with full liberty to deal with the balance in her favor. In fact, such was her dread of encountering one of her former acquaintances, that I verily believe she would have agreed to an exile to Siberia rather than pass one more week at Baden. Our bill was a swingeing one. With all the external show of politeness, I plainly saw that they treated us just as Napoleon used to treat a conquered nation whose imputed misconduct had outlawed it! For us there was no appeal; we could not threaten the indignation of powerful friends, – the terrors of fashionable exposure, – not even the hackneyed expedient of a letter in the "Times"! Alas! we had ceased to be "reasonable and sufficient bail" for any statement.

Such charges never were seen before, I 'd swear. Dinners and suppers figured as unimportant matters. It was the "extraordinaires" that ruined us; for your hotel-keeper is obliged, for very shame's sake, to observe a semblance of decorum in his demands for recognized items. It is in the indefinable that he revels; just as your geographer indulges every caprice of his imagination when laying down the limits of land and water at the Pole!

It would not amuse, nor could it instruct you, were I to give the details of this iniquitous demand. I shall therefore spare you all, save the grand fact of the total, wherein something less than six weeks' living of four people, with as many servants, amounts to a fraction under three hundred pounds sterling! Meanwhile, the price of rooms, breakfasts, beds, &c, were all reasonable enough. It was "Éclairage," "Service," "Réceptions, Mardi," "Mercredi," and "Jeudi." These were the heavy artillery, to which all the rest was a light-dropping fire. This bill-settling is indeed an awful process; for when you rally from the first horror-stricken feelings that the sum total calls up, and are blandly asked by the smirking secretary, "To what is it that Monsieur objects?" you are totally powerless and prostrated. Your natural impulse would be to say, "To the whole of it, – to that infamous row of figures at the bottom!"

In all probability, you never made an hotel bill in your life. The wretches know this, and they feel the full force of your unhappy situation. Just fancy a surgeon saying, "What particular part of the operation do you dislike, sir? It can't be the first incision; I made it in Cooper's method, – one sweep of the knife. You surely have no complaint about the arteries, – I took them up in eighteen seconds by a stop-watch." "What do I care for all this?" you answer. "I know nothing about science, but I am fully open to the impression of pain." Nothing, however, kills me like the fellow saying, "If Monsieur thinks the lemonade too dear, we'll take off half a franc." Two-and-sixpence deducted from a bill of three hundred pounds!

I went through all this, and more. I went through special appeal cases, from twenty subordinates, on peculiar infractions of broken heads, smashed crockery, and damaged furniture, which each assured me in turn "would be charged against him" if Monsieur had not the honorable "consideration" – that's the formula – to pay it. I satisfied some, I compromised with others; I resisted none. No, Bob. There was no "locus standi," as you would call it, for opposition. None of the Dodds could come into court, and claim to be heard as witnesses.

This agreeable function concluded, I drove off to the Police Commissary about our passport. The "authorities" had finished the duties of the day. The bureau was closed. I asked where the "authorities" lived, and was told the street and the number. I went there, but the "authorities" were at their café. They liked "their dominos and their beer;" and why should they not have their weaknesses?

I hastened to the café; not one of those brilliantly decorated and lighted establishments where foreigners of all nations foregather, but a dim-looking, musty, sanded-floored, smoke-dried den, filled with a company to suit. There was that mysterious half-light, and that low whispering sound which seemed to form a fit atmosphere for spies and eavesdroppers, of which I need scarcely tell you government officials are composed.

By the guidance of the waiter, I reached the table where the Herr von Schureke was seated at his dominos. He was a beetle-browed, scowling, ill-conditioned-looking gent of about fifty, who had a trick of coughing a hard dry cough between every word he uttered.

"Ah," said he, after. I explained the object of my visit, "you want your passport. You wish to leave Baden, and you come here, to give your orders to the Polizey Beamten as if you were the Grand-Duke!"

I deprecated this intention in my politest German; but he went on.

"Es geht nicht" – literally, "It 's no go " – "my worthy friend. We are not the officials of England. We are Badenere. We are the functionaries of an independent sovereign. You can't bully us here with your line-of-battle ships, your frigates, and bomb-boats."

"No. Gott bewahr!" echoed the company; "that will do elsewhere, – but Baden is free!"

The enthusiasm, the sentiment evoked brought all the guests from the several tables to swarm around us.

I assured the meeting that Cobden and Co. were not more pacifically minded than I was; that as to anything like threat, menace, or insolence towards the Grand-Duchy, it never came within thousands of miles of my thoughts; that I came to make the civilest of requests, in the very humblest of manner; and if by ill-luck the distinguished functionary I had the honor to address should not deem either the time opportune, or the place suitable —

"You'll make it an affair for your House of Commons," broke he in.

"Or your 'Ti-mes' newspaper!" cried another, converting the title of the Thunderer into a strange dissyllable.

"Or your Secretary of State will tell us that you are a 'Civis Romanue,'" wheezed out a small man, that I heard was Archivist of something, somewhere.

"Britannia rule de waves, but do not rule de Grand-Duchy," muttered a fourth, in English, to show that he was thoroughly imbued, not alone with our language, but the spirit of our Constitution.

"Really, gentlemen," said I, "I am quite at a loss for any reason for this audible outburst of nationality. I dis-claim the very remotest idea of offending Baden, or anything belonging to it. I entertain no intention of converting my case into a question of international dispute. I simply wait my passport, and free permission to leave the Grand-Duchy and all belonging to it."

This declaration was unanimously pronounced insolent, offensive, and insulting; and a vast number of unpleasant remarks poured down upon England and Englishmen, which, I need not tell you, are not worth repetition. The end of all was that I lost temper too, – the wonder is how I kept it so long, – and ventured to hint that people of my country had sometimes the practice of righting themselves, when wronged, instead of tormenting their Government or pestering the "Times" newspaper; and that if they had any curiosity as to the how, I should be most happy to favor any one with the information that would follow me into the street.

There was a perfect Babel of angry vociferation as I said this; the meaning of which I might guess, though the words were unintelligible; and as I issued forth into the street, expressions of angry indignation and insult were actually showered upon me. I reached Lichtenthal late at night; the governor was in bed, and I hastened to "report myself" to him. This done, I sat down to give you this full narration of our doings; and only regret that I must conclude without telling you anything of our future plans, of which I know actually nothing. I should have spared you the uninteresting scene with the authorities, if you had not asked me, in your last, "Whether the respect felt towards England by every foreign nation did not invest the travelling Englishman with many privileges and immunities unknown to others?" I have heard that such was once the case. I believe, indeed, there was a time that any absurdity or excess of John Bull would have been set down as mere eccentricity, – a dash of that folly ascribable to our insular tastes and habits; but this is all changed now! Partly from our own conduct, in part from real and sometimes merely imputed acts of our rulers, and partly from the tone of our Press, which no foreigner can ever be brought to understand aright, we have got to be thought a set of spendthrift, wealthy, reckless misers, lavish and economical by tarns, socially proud and exclusive, but politically red republican and levelling, – tyrants in our families, and democrats in the world; in fact, a sort of living mass of contradictory qualities, not rendered more endurable by coarse tastes and rude manners! This, at least, Morris told me, and he is a shrewd observer, like many of those sleepy-eyed, quiet "coves" one meets with. Not that he reads individuals like Tiverton! No: George is unequalled in ready dissection of a man's motives, and will detect a dodge before another begins to suspect it. I wish he were back; I feel frequently so helpless without his counsel and advice. The turf is, surely, a wonderful school for sharpening a man's faculties, and it gives you the habit of connecting words with motives, and asking yourself, "What does So-and-so mean by that?" "What is he up to now?" that at last you decipher character, let its lines be written in the very faintest ink!

Our post leaves at daybreak, so that I shall just have time for this. When I write next, I 'll answer – that is, if I can – all your questions about myself, what I mean to do, and when to begin it.

Not, indeed, that they are themes I like to touch upon, for somehow all the quiet pursuits of life look wonderfully slow and tiresome affairs in comparison with the panoramic effects of travel. The perpetual change of scene, actors, and incidents supplies in itself that amount of excitement which, under other circumstances, calls for so much exertion and effort. There is another thing, also, which has always given me great discouragement. It is that the humbler walks of life require not only an amount of labor, but of actual ability, that are never called for in higher positions. Think of the work a fellow does as a doctor or a lawyer; and think of the brains, too, he has to bring to these careers, and then picture to yourself a man in a Government situation, some snug colonial governorship, or something at home, – say, he's Secretary-at-War, or has something in the household. He writes his name at the foot of an occasional report or a despatch, and he puts on his blue ribbon, or his grand cross, as it may be, on birthdays. There's the whole of it! As Tiverton says, "One needs more blood and bone nowadays for the hack stakes than the Derby;" he means, of course, in allusion to real life, and not to the turf! Don't fancy that I take it in ill part any remarks you make upon my idleness, nor its probable consequences. We are old friends, Bob; but even were we not, I accept them as sin-cere evidence of true interest and regard, though I may not profit by them as I ought. The Dodds are an impracticable race, and in nothing more so than by fully appreciating all their faults, and yet never making an effort for their eradication.

Some people are civil enough to say how very Irish this is; but I think it is only so in half, inasmuch as our perceptions are sharp enough to show us even in ourselves those blemishes which your blear-eyed Saxon would never have discovered anywhere. Do you agree with me? Whether or not, my dear Bob, continue to esteem and believe me ever your affectionate friend,

James Dodd.

Though I am totally innocent as to our future, it is better not to write till you hear again from me, for of course we shall leave this at once; but where for? that's the question.

LETTER XXXIII. KENNY JAMES DODD TO MR. PURCELL, OF THE GRANGE, BRUFF

My dear Tom, – I am not in a humor for letter-writing, nor, indeed, for anything else that I know of. I am sick, sore, and sorry, – sick of the world, sore in my feet, and sorry of heart that I ever consented to come out upon this touring expedition, every step and mile of which is marked by its own misery and misfortune. I got back – I won't say home, for it would be an abuse of the word – on Wednesday last I travelled all the way on foot, with something less than one-and-fourpence English for my daily expenses, and arrived to find my wife entertaining, at a picnic, all Baden and its vicinity, with pheasants and champagne enough to feast the London Corporation, and an amount of cost and outlay that would have made Dodsborough brilliant during a whole Assizes.

I broke up the meeting, perhaps less ceremoniously than a Cabinet Council is dissolved at Osborne House, where the Ministers, after luncheon, embark – as the "Court Journal" tells – on board the "Fairy," to meet the express train for London: valuable facts, that we never weary of reading! I routed them without even reading the Riot Act, and saw myself "master of the situation;" and a very pretty situation it was.

Now, Tom, when the best of two evils at a man's choice is to expose his family as vulgar pretenders and adventurers, – to show them up to the fine world of their fashionable acquaintances as a humbug and a sham, – let me tell you that the other side of the medal cannot have been very attractive. This was precisely the case here. "It is not pleasant," said I to myself, "to bring all the scandal and slander of professional bad tongues upon an unfortunate family, but ruin is worse still!" There was the whole sum and substance of my calculation, – "Ruin is worse still!" The picnic cost above a hundred pounds; the hotel expenses at Baden amounted to three hundred more; there are bills to be paid at nearly every shop in the town; and here we are, economizing, as usual, at a large hotel, at, to say the least, the rate of some five or six pounds per day. That I am able to sit down and write these items in a clear and legible hand, I take to be as fine an example of courage as ever was given to the world. Talk of men in a fire – an earthquake – a shipwreck – or even the "last collision on the South-Eastern" – I give the palm to the man who can be calm in the midst of duns, and be collected when his debts cannot be. To be credited when you can no longer pay, – to drink champagne when you have n't small change for small beer, is enough to shake the boldest nerves; it is exactly like dancing on a tight rope, from which you know in your heart you must ultimately come down with a crash. When one reads of any sudden calamity having befallen a man who has incurred voluntary peril, the natural question at once rises, "What did he want to do? What was he trying for?" Now, suppose this question to be addressed to the Dodd family, and that any one should ask, "What did we want to do?" I am sadly afraid, Tom, that we should be puzzled for the answer. I have no doubt that my wife would sustain a long and harassing cross-examination before the truth would come out I am well aware of all the specious illusions she would evoke, and what sagacious notions she would scatter about education, accomplishments, modern languages, and maybe – mother-like – great matches for the girls, but the truth would out, at last, – we came abroad to be something – whatever it might be – that we could n't be at home; we changed our theatre, that we might take a new line of parts. We wanted, in short, to be in a world that we never were in before, and we have had our wish. I am not going to rail at fashionable life and high society. I am sure that, to those brought up in their ways, they are both pleasant and agreeable; but they never were our ways, and we were too old when we began to learn them. The grand world, to people like us, is like going up Mont Blanc, – fatigue, peril, expense, injury to health, and ruin to pocket, just to have the barren satisfaction of saying,

"I was up there last August – I was at the top in June." "What did you get for your pains, Kenny Dodd? What did you see for all the trouble you had? Are you wiser?" "No." "Are you happier?" "No." "Are you better informed?" "No." "Are you pleasanter company for your old friends?" "No." "Are you richer?" "Upon my conscience, I am not! All I know is, that we were there, and that we came down again." Ay, Tom, there 's the moral of the whole story, – we came down again! Had we limited our ambition, when we came abroad, to things reasonably attainable, – had we been satisfied to know and to associate with people like ourselves, – had we sought out the advantages which certainly the Continent possesses in certain matters of taste and accomplishment, we might have got something, at least, for our money, and not paid too dearly for it But, no; the great object with us seemed always to be, swimming for our lives in the great ocean of fashion. And, let me tell you a secret, Tom; this grovelling desire to be amongst a set that we have no pretension to, is essentially and entirely English. No foreigner, so far as I have seen, has the vulgar vice of what is called "tuft-hunting." When I see my countrymen abroad, I am forcibly reminded of what I once witnessed at a show of wild beasts. It was a big cage full of monkeys, that were eating their dinner at a long trough, but none of them would taste what was before himself, but was always eating out of his neighbor's dish. It gave them the oddest look in the world; but it is exactly what you see on the Continent; and I 'll tell you what fosters this taste more strongly than all. Our titled classes at home are a close borough, that men like you and myself never trespass upon. We see a lord as we see a prize bull at a cattle show, once and away in our lives; but here the aristocracy is plentiful, – barons, counts, and even princes abound, and can be obtained at the "shortest notice, and sent to any part of the town." Think of the fascination of this; fancy the delight of a family like the Dodds, surrounded with dukes and marquises! One of the very first things that strikes a man on coming abroad is the abundance of that kind of fruit that we only see at home in our hot-houses. Every ragged urchin is munching a peach or a melon, and picking the big grapes off a bunch that he speedily flings away. The astonishment of the Englishman is great, and he naturally thinks it all paradise. But wait a bit. He soon discovers that the melon has no more flavor than a mangel-wurzel, and that the apricot tastes like a turnip radish. If they are plenty, they are totally deficient in every excellence of their kind; and it is just the same with the aristocracy. The climate is favorable to them, and the same sun and soil rears princes and ripens pineapples; but they 're not like our own, Tom, – not a bit of it. Like the fruit, they are poor, sapless, tasteless productions, and the very utmost they do for you is to give you a downright indifference to the real article. I know how it reads in the newspapers, in a letter dated from some far-away land, on a Christmas-day, – "As I write, my window is open; the garden is one sea of blossoms, and the perfume of the rose and the jasmine fills the room." Just the same is the effect of those wonderful paragraphs of distinguished and illustrious guests at Mrs. Somebody's soirée. They are the common products of the soil, and they do not rise to the rank of luxuries with even the poor! Don't mistake me; I am not depreciating what is called high society, no more than I would condemn a particular climate. All that I would infer is, simply, that it does not suit my constitution. It's a very common remark, how much more easily women conform to the habits and customs of a class above their own than men, and, so far as I have seen, the observation is a just one; but, let me tell you, Tom, the price they pay for this same plastic quality is more than the value of the article, for they lose all self-guidance and judgment by the change. Your quietly disposed, domestic ones turn out gadders, your thrifty housekeepers grow lavish and wasteful, your safe and cautious talkers become evil speakers and slanderers. It is not that these are the characteristics of the new sect they have adopted, but that, like all converts, they always begin their imitation with the vices of the faith they conform to, and by way of laying a good foundation, they start from the bottom!

If I say these things in bitterness, it is because I feel them in sincerity. Poor old Giles Langrishe used to say that all the expenses of contested elections, all the bribery and treating, all the cost of a Parliamentary life, would never have embarrassed him, if it was n't for his wife going to London. "It wasn't only what she spent," said he, "while there; but Molly brought Piccadilly back with her to the county Clare! She turned up her nose at all our old neighbors, because they did n't know the Prussian ambassador, or Chevalier Somebody from the Brazils. The only man that could fit her in shoes lived in Bond Street; and as to getting her hair dressed, except by a French scoundrel that made wigs for the aristocracy, it was clearly impossible." And I 'll tell you another thing, Tom, our wives get a kind of smattering of political knowledge by this trip to town, that makes them unbearable. They hear no other talk all the morning than the cant of the House and the slang of the Lobby. It's a dodge of Sir James, or a sly trick of Lord John, that forms the gossip at breakfast; and all the little rogueries of political life, all the tactics of party, are discussed before them, and when they take to that line of talk they become perfectly odious.