The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I

"Mary Jane thinks so!" said I, with my hand to my temples to collect myself. Ah, Tom! it would have required a cooler head than mine was at that moment to go hunting through the old archives of memory! Nor will I torment you with even a narrative of my struggles. I passed that evening and the night in a state of half distraction; and it was only when I was giving one of our lawyers a check the next morning that I unravelled the mystery, for, as I wrote down his name, I perceived it was Marie Jean de Rastanac, – a not uncommon Christian name for men, though, considering the length and breadth of the masculine calendar; a very needless appropriation.

This was "Mary Jane," then, and this the origin of as pretty a conjugal flare-up as I remember for the last twelvemonth!

Mrs. D. reminds me of the Opposition, and the Opposition of Vickars. I suppose he wants to be a Lord of the Treasury. It's very like what old Frederick used to call making a "goat a gardener." What rogues the fellows are! You write to them about your son or your nephew, and they answer you with some tawdry balderdash about their principles, as if any one of us ever believed they were troubled with principles! I'm all for fair straightforward dealing. Put James in the Board of Trade, and you may cut up the Caffres for ten years to come. Give us something in the Customs, and I don't care if New Zealand never has a constitution! 'Tis only the fellows that have no families ask questions at the hustings! Show me a man that wants pledges from his representative, and I 'll show you one that has got none from his wife!

And there's Vickars writing to me, as if I was a fool, about all the old clap-traps that we used to think were kept for the election dinner; and these chaps, like him, always spoil a good argument when they get hold of it. Now, when a parson has n't tact enough to write his sermons, he buys a volume of Tillotson or Blair, or any other, and reads one out as well as he can; but your member – God bless the mark! – must invent his own nonsense. How much better if he 'd give you Peel, or Russell, or Ben Disraeli in the original! There are skeleton sermons for drowsy curates; I wish any one would compose skeleton speeches for the county members. You 'll say that I 'm unreasonably testy about these things; but I 've got a letter this instant from Vickers, expressing his hope that I 'll be satisfied with the view he has taken on the "question of free-labor sugar." Did I ever dispute it, Tom? I drink no tea, – I hate sweet things, and, except a lump, and that a small one, that I take in my tumbler of punch, I never use sugar; and I care no more what 'a the color of the man that raises it than I do for the name of the supercargo that brought it over. Don't put cockroaches in it, and sell it cheap, and I don't care a brass farthing whether it grew in Barbary or Barbadoes! Not, my dear Tom, but it's all gammon, the way they discuss the question; for the two parties are always debating two different issues; one crying out cheap sugar, the other no slavery! and the consequence is, they never meet in argument As to the preference Vickars insists should be given to free-labor sugar, carry out the principle and see what it comes to. I ought to receive eight or ten shillings a barrel more for my wheat than old Joe M'Curdy, because I always gave my laborers eight-pence a day, and he never went higher than sixpence, more often fourpence. Is not that free labor and slavery, just as well exemplified as if every man in the barony was a black?

They tell me the niggers won't work if you don't thrash them, and I don't wonder, when I think of the heat of the climate; but sure if they've more idleness, they ought to get less money; and lastly, I take the Abolitionists – bother it for a long word! – on their own ground, and are they prepared to say that if you impose a duty on slave sugar, the Cubans and the rest of them won't only take more out of the niggers to meet "the exigency of the market," as the newspapers call it? If they do so, they 'll only be imitating our own farmers since the repeal of the corn law. "You must bestir yourselves," says Lord Stanley; "competition with the foreigner will demand all your activity. It won't do to go on as you used. You must buy guano, take to drainage, study Smith of Deanstown, and mind the rotation of your crops." Don't you think that some enlightened Cuban will hit upon the same train of argument, and make a fresh investment in whipcord? Ah, Tom! these are only party squabbles, after all; and so I told Vickars. I don't know why, but it always seemed to me that the blacks absorb a very unfair amount of our loose sympathies; whether it's the color of them, or that they 're so far away, or because they 're naked, I never knew; but certain it is, we pity them far more than our own people, and I back myself to get up a ladies' committee for a nigger question, before you collect three people to hear you discuss a home grievance.

I have just been interrupted to receive Monsieur Jellicot, my defender in action No. 3, a suit preferred by my late courier, "François Tehetuer, born in the canton of Zug, aged thirty-seven years, single, and a Protestant, against Monsieur Kenyidod, natif d'Irlande, près de Dublin, dans le Royaume de la Grande Bretagne," &c., &c.; the demand being for a year's wages, bed, board, and travelling expenses to his native country. He, the aforesaid François, having been sent away for a disgraceful riot in my house, in which he beat Pat, the other servant, and smashed about five-and-twenty pounds' worth of glass and china. A very pretty claim, Tom, – the preliminary resistance to which has already cost me about one hundred and fifty francs to remove the litigation into an upper court, where the bribery is higher, and consequently deemed more within the reach of my finances than those of honest Francis!

To tell you all that I think of the rascality of the administration of justice here, would lead me into a diffusiveness something like that of the pleasant "Mémoire" which my advocate has just left me to read, and in which, as a measure of defence against an iniquitous demand, I 'm obliged to give a short history of my life, with some account of my father and grandfather. I made it as brief as I could, and said nothing about the mortgages nor Hackett's bond; but even with all my conciseness, the thing is very voluminous. The greatest difficulty of all is the examination of Paddy Byrne, who, imagining that a law process cannot have any other object than either to hang or transport him, has already made two efforts at escape, and each time been brought back by the police. His repugnance to the course of justice has already damaged my case with my own defender, who, naturally enough, thinks if my own witnesses are so little to my credit, what will be the opposite evidence? »

Another of my "causes célèbres," as Cary calls them, – she is the only one of us has a laugh left in her, – is for the assault and battery of a certain Mr. Cherry, a little rascal that came one day to tell me that Mrs. D. 's appearance struck him as being more fascinating than respectable! I kicked him downstairs into the street, and in return he has dragged me into the Court of the Correctional Police, where I 'm told they 'll maul me far worse than I did him; besides this, I have a small interlude suit for a breach of contract, in not taking a lodging next an Anatomy School; and lastly, James's duel! I have compromised fully double the number, and have received vague threats from different quarters, that may either mean being waylaid or prosecuted, as the case may be.

So far, therefore, as economy goes, this Continentalizing has not succeeded up to this. Instead of living rent free at Dodsborough, with our own mutton and turnips, the ducks and peas, that cost us, I may say, nothing, here we are, keeping up the price of foreign markets, and feeding the foreigners at the expense of our own poor people. If, instead of excluding British manufactures from the Continent, Bony had only struck out the notion of seducing over here John Bull himself and his family, let me assure you, Tom, that he'd have done us far more lasting and irreparable mischief. We can do without their markets. What between their Zollvereins, their hostile tariffs, and troublesome trade restrictions, they have themselves taught us to do without them; and, indeed, except when we get up a row at Barcelona, and smuggle five or six hundred thousand pounds' worth of goods into Spain, we care little for the old Continent; but I 'll tell you what we cannot do without, – we cannot do without their truffled turkeys, their tenors, their men-cooks, and their dancing-women. French novels and Italian knavery have got a fast hold of us; and I doubt much if the polite world of England would n't rather see this country cut off from all the commerce of America than be themselves excluded from the wicked old cities of Europe!

When I think of myself holding these opinions, and still living abroad, I almost fancy I was meant for a Parliamentary life; for assuredly my convictions and my actions are about as contradictory as any honorable or right honorable gentleman on either side of the House. But so it is, Tom. Whatever 's the reason of it I can't tell, but I believe in my heart that every Irishman is always doing something or other that he doesn't approve of; and that this is the real secret of that want of conduct, deficient steadiness, uncertainty of purpose, and all the other faults that our polite neighbors ascribe to us, and what the "Times" has a word of its own for, and sets shortly down as "Celtic barbarism." And between ourselves, the "Times" is too fond of blackguarding us. What's the use of it? What good does it ever do? I may throw mud at a man every day till the end of the world, but I 'll never make his face the cleaner for it!

The same system we used to follow once with America; and at last, what with sneering and jibing, we got up a worse feeling between the two countries than ever existed in the heat of the war. No matter how stupid the writer, how little he saw, or how ill he told it, let a fellow come back from the United States with a good string of stories about whittling, spitting, and chewing, interlard the narrative with a full share of slang, show up Jonathan as a vulgar, obtrusive, self-important animal, boastful and ignorant, and I 'll back the book to run through its two or three editions with a devouring and delighted public. But what would you think of a man that went down to Leeds or Manchester, to look at some of our great factories at full work; who saw the evidences of our enterprise and industry, that are felt at the uttermost ends of the earth; who knew that every bang of that big piston had its responsive answer in some far-away land over the sea, where British skill and energy were diffusing comfort and civilization, – what, I say, would you think of him if, instead of standing amazed at the future before such a people, he sat down to chronicle how many fustian jackets had holes in them, how many shaved but twice a week, whether the overseer made a polite bow, or the timekeeper talked with a strong Yorkshire accent?

I tell you, Tom, our travellers in the States did little other than this. I don't mean to say that it wouldn't be pleasanter and prettier to look at, if all the factory-folk were dressed like Young England, with white waistcoats and cravats, and all the young ladies wore silk petticoats and white satin shoes; but I'm afraid that, considering the work to do, that's scarcely practicable; and so with regard to America, considering the work to do, – ay, Tom, and the way they are doing it, – I 'm not over-disposed to be critical about certain asperities that are sure to rub off in time, particularly if we don't sharpen them into spikes by our own awkward attempts to polish them.

If I was able, I'd like to write a book about America. I'd like to inquire, first, if, seeing the problem that the Yankees are trying to solve, the way they have set about it is the best and the shortest? I'd like, too, to study what secret machinery combines a weak government and a strong people, – the very reverse of what we see in the Old World, where the governments are strong and the people weak? I'd like to find out, if I could, why people that, for the most part, have formed the least subordinate populations of the Old World, behave so remarkably well in the New?

In running off into these topics, Tom, I suppose I'm like every one else, who, in proportion as his own affairs become embarrassed, takes a wonderful interest in those of his neighbors. Half the patriotism in the world comes out of the bankruptcy courts.

And, here's Monsieur Gabriel Dulong "for my instructions in re Cherry," as if to recall me from foreign affairs, and once more bring back my wandering thoughts to the Home Office.

Write to me, Tom, and send me money. You have no idea how it goes here; and as for the bankers, I never met the like of them! The exchange is always against you, and if you want a ten-pound English note, they'll make you smart for it.

The more I see of this foreign life, the less I like it. I know that we have been unfortunate in one or two respects. I know that it is rash in me to speak on so brief an acquaintance with it, but I already dread our being more intimate. Mrs. D. is not the woman you knew her. No more thrift, no more saving, – none of that looking after trifles that, however we may laugh at in our wives, we are right glad to profit by. She has taken a new turn, and fancies, God forgive her! that we have an elegant estate, and a fine, thriving, solvent tenantry. Wherever the delusion came from, I cannot guess; but I 'm certain that the little slip of sea between Dover and Calais is the origin of more false notions and extravagant fancies than the wide Atlantic.

I have been thinking for some days back that you ought to write me a strong letter, – you know what I mean, Tom, – a strong letter about matters at home. There's no great difficulty, when a man lives in Ireland, to make out a good list of grievances.

Give it to us, then, and let us have our fill of rotten potatoes, blighted wheat, runaway tenants, and workhouse riots. Throw in a murder if you like, and make it "strong," Tom. Say that, considering the cheapness of the Continent, we draw a terrible sight of money, and add that you can't imagine what we do with the cash. Put "Strictly private and confidential" on the outside, and I 'll take care to be out of the way when it comes. You can guess that Mrs. D. will soon open it, and perhaps it may give her a shock. Is n't it hard that I have to go about the bush in this way? but that's what we 're come to. If I hint a word about expense, they look on me as if I was Shylock; and I believe they 'd rather hear me blaspheme than say the phrase "economy." I think, from what I see in James, that he's fretting about this very same thing. He did n't say exactly that, but he dropped a remark the other day that showed me he was grieved by the turn for dress and finery that Mrs. D. and Mary Anne have taken up; and one of the nurses that sat up with him told me that he used to sigh dreadfully at times, and mutter broken expressions about money.

To tell you the truth, Tom, I 'd go back to-morrow, if I could. "And why can't you? – what prevents you, Kenny?" I hear you say. Just this, then, I haven't the pluck! I couldn't stand the attack of Mrs. D. and her daughter. I 'm not equal to it. My constitution is n't what it used to be, and I'm afraid of the gout. At my time of life, they say it always flies to the heart or to the head, – maybe because there 's a vacancy in these places after fifty-six or seven years of age! I see, too, by the looks Mrs. D. gives Mary Anne occasionally, that they know this; and she often gives me to understand that she does n't wish to dispute with me, for reasons of her own. This is all very well, and kindly meant, Tom, but it throws me into a depression that is dreadful.

I see by the papers that you've taken up all kinds of "Sanitary Questions" at home. As for the health of towns, Tom, the grand thing is not to suffer them to grow too big. You're always crying out about twelve people sleeping in one room somewhere, and you gave the ages of each of them in the "Times," and you grow moral and modest, and I don't know what else, about decency, destitution, and so forth; but what's London itself but the very same thing on an enlarged scale? It's nonsense to fret about a wart, when you have a wen in the same neighborhood. Not that I'm sorry to see fine folk taking trouble about what concerns the poor, particularly when they go about it sensibly and quietly, without any balderdash of little books, and, above all, without a ladies' committee. If there 's anything chokes me, it's a ladies' committee. Three married women on bad terms with their husbands, four widows, and five old maids, all prying, pedantic, and impertinent, – going loose about the world with little subscription-cards, decrying innocent pleasures, and decoying your children's pocket-money, – turning benevolence into a house-tax, and making charity like the "Pipe-water." You remark, too, that the pretty women won't join these gangs at all. Now and then you may see one take out a letter of marque, and cruise for herself, but never in company. Seeing the importunity of these old damsels, I often wondered why the Government never thought of employing ladies as tax-collectors. He 'd be a hardy man who 'd make one or two I could mention call twice.

I have been turning over in my mind what you said about Dodsborough; and though I don't like the notion of giving a lease, still it's possible we might do it without much danger. "He is an Englishman," you say, "that has never lived in Ireland." Now, my notion is, Tom, that if he be as old as you say, it's too late for him to try. They're a mulish, obstinate, unbending kind of people, these English; and wherever you see them, they never conform to the habits of the people. After thirty years' experience of Ireland, you'll hear them saying that they cannot accustom themselves to the "lies and the climate "! If I have heard that same remark once, I've heard it fifty times. And what does it amount to but a confession that they won't take the world as they find it. Ireland is rainy, there's no doubt, and Paddy is fond of telling you what he thinks is agreeable to you, – a kind of native courtesy, just like his offering you his potato when he knows in his heart that he can't spare it, – but he gives it, nevertheless.

I 'd say, then, we might let him have Dodsborough, on the chance that he 'd never stay six months there, and perhaps in the mean while we 'd find out another Manchester gentleman to succeed him. I remember poor old Dycer used to sell a little chestnut mare every Saturday, – nobody ever kept her a fortnight, – and when she died, by jumping over Bloody Bridge into the Liffey, and killed herself and her rider, Dycer said, "There's four-and-twenty pounds a year lost to me," – and so it was too! Think over this, and tell me your mind on it.

I believe I told you of the Polish Count that we took with us to Waterloo. I met him yesterday with my cloak on him; but really the number of my legal embroilments here is so great that I was shy of arresting him. We hear a great deal of talk about the partition of Poland, and there is an English lord keeps the subject for his own especial holdings forth; but I am convinced that the greatest evil of that nefarious act lies in having thrown all these Polish fellows broadcast over Europe. I wish it was a kingdom to-morrow, if they 'd only consent to stay there. To be well rid of them and their sympathizers, whom I own I like even less, would be a great blessing just now. I wish the "Times" would stop blackguarding Louis Napoleon. If the French like being bullied, what is that to us? My own notion is that the people and their ruler are well met; besides, if we only reflect a little on it, we 'll see that anything is better for us than a Bourbon, – I don't care what branch! They are under too deep obligations to us, and have too often accepted of English hospitality, not to hate us; and hate us they do. I believe the first Frenchman that cherishes an undying animosity to England is your Legitimist; next to him comes the Orleanist.

It's a strange thing, but the more I have to think of about my own affairs, and the worse they are going with me, the more my thoughts run after politics and the newspapers. I suppose that's all for the best, and that if people dwelled too much on their own troubles, their heads would n't stand it. You've seen a trick the horse jockeys have when a horse goes lame of one foot, – to pinch him a little with the shoe of the opposite one; and it's not bad philosophy to practise mentally, and you may preserve your equanimity just by putting on the load fairly. And so it is I try to divert my thoughts from mortgages, creditors, and Chancery, by wondering how the King of Naples will contrive to keep his throne, and how the Austrians will save themselves from bankruptcy! I know it would be more to the purpose if I turned my thoughts to getting Mary Anne married, and James into the Board of Trade; at least, so Mrs. D. tells me, and although she is always repeating the old saw about "marriages being made in heaven," she evidently does n't wish to give too much trouble in that quarter, and would like to lend a hand herself to the work.

Jellicot has sent his clerk here to tell me that I have been pronounced "Contumacious," for not appearing somewhere, and before somebody that I never heard of! Egad! these kind of proceedings are scarcely calculated to develop the virtues of humanity! They sent me something I thought was a demand for a tax, and it turns out a judge's warrant; for aught I know, there may be an order to seize the body of Kenny James Dodd, and consign him to the dungeons of the Inquisition! Write to me at once, Tom, and above all don't forget the money.

Yours, most faithfully,

K. I. Dodd.

Why does Molly Gallagher keep pestering me about Christy? She wants me to get him into the "Grand Canal." I wish they were both there, with all my heart.

I open this to say that Vickars has just sent me a copy of his address to the "Independent Electors of Bruff." I'd like to see one of them, for the curiosity of the thing. He asks me to give him my opinion of the document, and the "benefit of my advice and counsel," as if I had not been reading the very same productions since I was a child. The very phraseology is unaltered. Why can't they hit on something new? He "hopes that he restores to them, unsullied, the high trust they had committed to his keeping." Egad! if he does so, he ought to get a patent for taking out spots, stains, and discolorations, for a dirtier garment than our representative mantle has been, would be hard to find. Like all our patriots that sit in Whig company, he is sorely puzzled between his love for Ireland and his regard for himself, and has to limit his political line to a number of vague threats about overgrown Church Establishments and Landlord tyranny, not being quite sure how far his friends in power are disposed to worry the Protestants and grind the gentry.

Of course be batters up the pastors of the people; but he might as well leave that alone; the priests are too cunning for all that balderdash nowadays. They'll insist on something real, tangible, and substantial. What they say is this: "The landlords used to have it all their own way at one time. Our day is come now." And there they're right, Tom; there's no doubt of it. O'Connell said true when he told the English, "Ye're always abusing me, – and call me the 'curse of Ireland' and the destroyer of the public peace, – but wait a bit. I 'll not be five years in my grave till you 'd wish me back again." There never was anything more certain. So long as you had Dan to deal with, you could make your bargain, – it might be, it often was, a very hard one, – but when it was once made, he kept the terms fairly and honestly! But with whom will you treat now? Is it with M'Hale, or Paul Cullen, or Dr. Meyler? Sure each of them will demand separate and specific conditions, and you might as well try to settle the Caffre war by a compact with Sandilla, who, the moment he sells himself to you, enters into secret correspondence with his successor.

I'm never so easy in my mind as when I see the English in a row with the Catholics. I don't care a brass farthing how much it may go against us at first, – how enthusiastically they may yell "No Popery," burn cardinals in effigy, and persecute the nuns. Give them rope enough, Tom, and see if they don't hang themselves! There never came a fit of rampant Protestantism in England that all the weak, rash, and ridiculous zealots did n't get to the head of the movement. Off they go at score, subsidizing renegade vagabonds of our Church to abuse us, raking up bad stories of conventual life, and attacking the confessional. There never were gulls like them! They swallow all the cases of cruelty and persecution at once, – they foster every scoundrel, if he's only a deserter from us, – ay, and they even take to their fireplaces the filthiest novels of Eugene Sue, if he only satisfies their rancorous hate of a Jesuit. And where does it end? I'll tell you. Their converts turn out to be scoundrels too infamous for common contact; their prosecutions fail, – why would n't they, when we get them up ourselves? – John Bull gets ashamed of himself; round comes the Press, and that's the moment when any young rising Catholic barrister in the House can make his own terms, whether it be to endow the true Church or to smash the false one!