The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I

"You must excuse me, Monsieur le Président," said he, blandly; "but I 'm sure that your nice sense of honor will show that I cannot answer your question."

"Très bien, très bien," rang through the crowded court, in approbation of this chivalrous speech, and one young lady from the gallery flung down her bouquet of moss-roses to the prisoner, in token of her enthusiastic concurrence. The delicate reserve of the accused seemed to touch every one. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, all appeared to feel that they had a vested interest in the propagation of such principles; and the old judge who had propounded the ungracious interrogatory really seemed ashamed of himself.

The waiter soon after this retired, and what the newspapers next day called a sensation prononcée was caused by the entrance of a very handsome and showy-looking young lady, – no less a personage than Mademoiselle Catinka Lovenfeld, the prima donna of the opera, and the Dido of this unhappy Æneid. With us, the admiration of a pretty witness is always a very subdued homage; and even the reporters do not like venturing beyond the phrase, "here a person of prepossessing appearance took her place on the table." They are very superior to us here, however, for the buzz of admiration swelled from the lowest benches till it rose to the very judicial seat itself, and the old president, affecting to look at his notes, wiped his glasses afresh, and took a sly peep at the beauty, like the rest of us.

Though, as Macheath says, "Laws were made for every degree," the mode of examining witnesses admits of considerable variety. The interrogatories were now no longer jerked out with abruptness; the questions were not put with the categorical sternness of that frowning aspect which, be the lawyer Belgian, French, or Irish, seems an instinct with him; on the contrary, the pretty witness was invited to tell her name, she was wheedled out of her birthplace coaxed out of her peculiar religious profession, and joked into saying something about her age.

I must say, if she had rehearsed the part as often as she had that of Norma, she couldn't be more perfect. Her manner was the triumph of ease and grace. There was an almost filial deference for the bench, an air of respectful attention for the bar, courtesy for the jury, and a most touching shade of compassion for the prisoner, and all this done without the slightest seeming effort. I do not pretend to know what others felt; but as for me, I paid very little attention to the matter, so much more did the manner of the inquiry engage me: still, I heard that she was a Saxon by birth, of noble parentage, born with the highest expectations, but ruined by the attachment of her father to the cause of the Emperor Napoleon. The animation with which she alluded to this parental trait elicited a most deafening burst of applause, and the tip-staff, a veteran of the Imperial Guard, was carried out senseless, overcome by his emotions. Ah, Tom! we have nothing like this in England, and strange enough that they should have it here; but the fact is, these Belgians are only "second-chop" Frenchmen, – a kind of weak "after grass," with only the weeds luxuriant! It's pretty much as with ourselves, – the people that take a loan of a language never take a lease of the traditions! They catch up just some popular clap-traps of the mother country, but there ends the relationship!

But to come back to Mademoiselle Catinka. She now had got into a little narrative of her youth, in some old chateau on the Elbe, which held the Court breathless; to be sure, it had not a great deal to do with the case in hand; but no matter for that: a more artless, gifted, lovely, and loving creature than she appeared to have been never existed. On this last attribute she laid considerable stress. There was, I think, a little rhetorical art in the confession; for certainly a young lady who loved birds, flowers, trees, water, clouds, and mountains so devotedly, might possibly have a spare corner for something else; and even the old judge could n't tell if he had not chanced on the lucky ticket in that lottery. I wish I could have heard the case out; I'd have given a great deal to see how they linked all that Paul and Virginia life with the bloody drama they were there to investigate, and what possible connection existed between Heck's romances and sticking a man with a table-knife. This gratification was, however, denied me; for just as I was listening with my greediest ears, Vanhoegen placed his hand on my shoulder, and whispered, "Come along – don't lose a minute —your cause is on!"

"What do you mean? Have n't I compro – "

"Hush!" said he, warningly; "respect the majesty of the law."

"With all my heart; but what's my cause? – what do you mean by my cause?"

"It's no time for explanation," said he, hurrying me along; "the judges are in chamber, – you'll soon hear all about it."

He said truly; it was neither the fitting time nor place for much converse, for we had to fight our way through a crowd that was every moment increasing; and it took at least twenty minutes of struggle and combat to get out, my coat being slit up to the collar, and my friend's gown being reduced to something like bell-ropes.

He did n't seem to think much about his damaged costume, but still dragged me along, across a courtyard, up some very filthy stairs, down a dark corridor, then up another flight, and, passing into a large ante-room, where a messenger was seated in a kind of glass cage, he pushed aside a heavy curtain of green baize, and we found ourselves in a court, which, if not crowded like that below, was still sufficiently filled, and by persons of respectable exterior. There was a dead silence as we entered. The three judges were examining their notes, and handing papers back and forward to each other in dumb show. The procureur was picking his teeth with a paper-knife, and the clerk of the court munching a sandwich, which he held in his hat. Vanhoegen, however, brushed forward to a prominent place, and beckoned me to a seat beside him. I had but time to obey, when the clerk, seeing us in our places, bolted down an enormous mouthful, and, with an effort that nearly choked him, cried ont, "L'affaire de Dodd fils est en audience." My heart drooped as I heard the words. The "affaire de Dodd fils" could mean nothing but that confounded duel of which I have already told you. All the misfortune and all the criminality seemed to fall upon us. For at least four times a week I was summoned somewhere or other, now before a civil, now a military auditor; and though I swore repeatedly that I knew nothing about the matter till it was all over, they appeared to think that if I was well tortured, I might make great revelations. They were not quite wrong in their calculations. I would have turned "approver" against my father rather than gone on in this fashion. But the difficulty was, I had really nothing to tell. The little I knew had been obtained from others. Lord George had told me so much as I was acquainted with; and, from my old habits of the bench at home, I was well aware that such could not be admitted as evidence.

Still it was their good pleasure to pursue me with warrants and summonses, and there was nothing for it but to appear when and wherever they wanted me.

"Is this confounded affair the cause of my passport being detained?" whispered I to Van.

"Precisely," said he; "and if not very dexterously handled, the expense may be enormous."

I almost lost all self-possession at these words. I had been a mark for legal pillage and robbery from the first moment of my arrival, and it seemed as if they would not suffer me to leave the country while I had a Napoleon remaining. Stung nearly to madness, I resolved to make one desperate effort at rescue, and, like some of those woebegone creatures in our own country who insist on personal appeals to a Chief Justice, I called, "Monsieur le Président – " There, however, my French left me, and, after a terrible struggle to get on, I had to continue my address in the vernacular.

"Who is this man?" asked he, sternly.

"Dodd père, Monsieur le Président," interposed my lawyer, who seemed most eager to save me from the consequences of my rashness.

"Ah! he is Dodd père," said the president, solemnly; and now he and his two colleagues adjusted their spectacles, and gazed at me long and attentively; in fact, with such earnestness did they stare that I began to feel my character of Dodd père was rather an imposing kind of performance. "Enfin," said the president, with a faint sigh, as though the reasoning process had been rather a fatiguing one, – "enfin! Dodd père is the father of Dodd fils, the respondent."

Vanhoegen bowed submissive assent, and muttered, as I thought, some little flattery about the judicial acuteness and perspicuity.

"Let him be sworn," said the president; and accordingly I held up my hand, while the clerk recited something with a humdrum rapidity that I guessed must mean an oath.

"You are called Dodd père?" said the Attorney-General, addressing me.

"I find I am so called here, but I never was so before," said I, tartly.

"He means that the appellation is not usual in his own country," said one of the judges, – a small, red-eyed man, with pock-marks.

"Put it down," observed the president, gravely. "The witness informs us that he is only called Dodd."

"Kenny James Dodd, Monsieur," cried I, interrupting.

"Dodd – dit Kenny James," dictated the small judge; and the amanuensis took it down.

"And you swear you are the father of Dodd fils?" asked the president.

I suppose that the adage of a wise child knowing his own father cuts both ways; but I answered boldly, that I 'd swear to the best of my belief, – a reservation, however, that excited a discussion of three-quarters of an hour, the point being at last ruled in my favor.

I am bound to say that there was a great deal of legal learning displayed in the controversy, – a vast variety of authorities cited, from King David downwards; and although at one time matters seemed going against me, the red-eyed man turned the balance in my favor, and it was agreed that I was the father of my own son. If I knew but all, it might have been better for me there had been a hitch in the case. But I am anticipating.

There now arose another dispute, on a point of law, I believe, and which was, what degree of responsibility – there were fourteen degrees, it seems, in the Pandects – I stood in as regarded the present suit. From the turn the debate took, I began to suspect we might all of us have to plead to our responsibilities in the other world ere it could be finished; but the red-eyed man, who seemed the shrewdest of them all, cut the matter short by proposing that I should be invited – that's the phrase – to say so much as I pleased in the question before the Court.

"Yes, yes," assented the president. "Let him relate the affair." And the whole bar and the audience seemed to reecho the words.

You know me well, Tom, and you can vouch for it that I never had any objection to telling a story. It was, in truth, a kind of weakness with me, and some used to say that I was getting into the habit of telling the same ones too often. Be that as it may, I never was accused of relating a garbled, broken, and disjointed tale, and for the honor of my anecdotic powers, I resolved not to do so.

"My Lord," said I, "I 'm like the knife-grinder, – I have no story!"

Bad luck to my illustration, it took half an hour to show that my identity was not somehow mixed up with a wheel and a grinding-stone!

"Let him relate the affair," said the president, once more; and this time his voice and manner both proclaimed that his patience was not to be trifled with.

"Relate what?" asked I, tartly.

"All that you know, – anything you have heard," whispered Van, who was trembling for my rashness.

"My Lord," said I, "of myself I know nothing; I was in bed all the time."

"He was in bed all the time," said the president to the others.

"In bed," said red eyes; "let us see;" and he turned over a file of documents before him for several minutes. "Dodd père swears that he was in bed from the 7th of February, which is the first entry here, to the 19th of May, inclusive."

"I swear no such thing, my Lord," cried I.

"What does he swear, then?" asked the small judge.

"Let us hear his own version; tell us unreservedly all that you know," said the president, who really spoke as if he compassionated my embarrassment.

"My Lord," said I, "there is nothing would give me more pleasure than to display the candor you require; but when I assure you that I actually know nothing – "

"Know nothing, sir!" interposed the president. "Do you mean to tell this Court that you are, and were, in total ignorance of every part of your son's conduct, – that you never heard of his difficulties, nor of his efforts to meet them?"

"If hearsay be sufficient, then," said I, "you shall have it;" and so, taking a long breath, for I saw a weary road before me, I began thus, the amanuensis occasionally begging of me a slight halt to keep up: —

"It was about five or six weeks ago, my Lord, we – that is, Mrs. D., the girls, James, and myself – made an excursion to the field of Waterloo, filled by the very natural desire to see a spot so intimately associated with our country's glory. I will not weary you with any detail of disappointment, nor deplore the total absence of everything that could revive recollections of that great day. In fact, except the big lion with his tail between his legs, there is nothing symbolic of the nations engaged."

I waited a moment here, Tom, to see how they took this; but they never winced, and so I perceived my shell exploded harmlessly.

"We prowled about, my Lord, for two or three hours, and at last reached Hougoumont, in time to take shelter against a tremendous storm which just then broke over us; and there it was that James accidentally came in contact with the young gentleman whom I may not wrongfully call the cause of all our misfortunes. It would appear that they began discussing the battle, with all the natural prejudices of the two conflicting sides. I will not affirm that James was very well read on the subject; indeed, my impression is that his stock of information was principally derived from a representation he had witnessed by an equestrian troop at home, and where Bony, after galloping twice round the circus, throws himself on his knees and begs for mercy, – a fact so strongly impressed upon his memory that he insisted the Frenchman should receive it as historical. The dispute, it would seem, was not conducted within the legitimate limits of debate; they waxed angry, and the Frenchman, after a fierce provocation, set off into the thickest of the storm rather than endure the further discussion."

"This seems to me, sir," interposed the president, "to be perfectly irrelevant to the matter before us. The Court accords the very widest latitude to explanations, but if they really have no bearing on the case in hand, – if, as it appears to my learned brethren and myself, this polemic on a battle has no actual connection with your son's difficulties – "

"It's the very source and origin of them, my Lord," broke I in. "He has no embarrassment which does not date from that incident and that hour."

"In that case you may proceed, sir," said he, blandly; and I went on.

"I do not mean to say, my Lord, that all that followed was inevitable; nor that, with cooler heads and calmer tempers, the whole affair could not have been arranged; but James is hot, mighty hot, – the Celt is strong in him. He really likes a 'shindy,' not like some chaps for the notoriety of it, – not because it gets into the newspapers, and makes a noise, – but he likes it for itself, and for its own intrinsic merits, as one might say. And I may remark here, my Lord, that the Irishman is, perhaps, the only man in Europe that understands fighting in this sense; and this trait, if rightly considered, will give a strong clew to our national character, and will explain the general failure of all our attempts at revolution. We take so much diversion in a row that we quite forget it's only the means to an end. We have, so to say, so much fun on the road that we lose sight of the place we were going to.

"I don't know, Tom, how much further I might have gone on in my analytical researches into our national character; but the interpreter cut me short, by assuring the Court that he was totally unable to follow me. In the narrative parts of my discourse he was good enough; but it seemed that my reflections, and my general remarks on men and manners, were a cut above him. I was therefore warned to 'try back' to the line of my story, which I did accordingly.

"As for the affair itself, my Lord," resumed I, "I understand from eyewitnesses that it was most respectably and discreetly conducted. James was put up with his face to the west, so that Roger had the sun on him. The tools were beauties. It was a fine May morning, mellow, and not too bright. There was nothing wanting to make the scene impressive, and, I may add, instructive. Roger's friend gave the word – one, two, three – bang went both pistols together, and poor James received the other's fire just here, – between the bone and the artery, so Seutin described it, – a critical spot, I'm sure."

"Dodd père," said the president, solemnly, "you are trifling with the patience of the tribunal!" A grave edict, which the other judges responded to by a majestic inclination of the bead.

"If you are not," resumed he, slowly, and with great emphasis, – "if you are not a man of weak intellects and deficient reasoning powers, the conduct you have pursued is inexcusable, – it is a high contempt!"

"And we shall teach you, sir," said the red-eyed, "that no pretence of national eccentricity can weigh against the claims of insulted justice."

"Ay, sir," chimed in number three, who had not spoken before, "and we shall let you feel that the majesty of the law in this country is neither to be assailed by covert impertinence nor cajoled by assumed ignorance."

"My Lords," said I, "all this rebuke is a riddle to me. You asked me to tell you a story; and if it be not a very connected and consistent one, the fault is not mine."

"Let him stand committed for contempt," said the president. "The Petits Carmes may teach him decorum."

Now, Tom, the Petite Carmes is Newgate, no less! and you may imagine my feelings at this announcement, particularly as I saw the clerk busily taking down, from dictation, a little history of my offence and its penalty. I turned to look for Van in my sore distress, and there he was, searching the volumes, briefs, and records, to find, as he afterwards said, "some clew to what I had been saying."

"By Heaven!" cried I, losing all patience, "this is too bad. You urge me into a long account of what I know nothing, and then to rescue your own ignorance, you declare me impertinent. There is not a lawyer's clerk in Ireland, there is no pettifogging practitioner for half-crown fees, there's not a brat that carries a blue bag down the Bachelor's Walk, could n't teach you all three. You go through some of the forms, but you know nothing of the facts of justice. You sit up there, like three stucco-men in mourning, – a perfect mockery of – "

I was not suffered to finish, Tom, for, at a signal from the president, two gendarmes seized me on either side, and, notwithstanding some demonstrations of resistance, led me off to prison. Ay, I must write the word again – to prison! Kenny, I, Dodd, of Dod s borough, Justice of the Peace, and chairman of the Union of Bruff, committed to jail like a common felon!

I 'm sorry I suffered my feelings to get the better – perhaps I ought to say the worse – of me. Now that it's all over, it were better that I had not knocked down the turnkey, and kicked Vanhoegen out of my cell. It would have been both more discreet and more decorous, to have submitted patiently. I know it's what you would have done, Tom, and trusted to your action for damages to indemnify you; but I'm hasty, that's the fact; and if I wanted to deny it, the state of the jailer's nose, and my own sprained thumb, would give evidence against me. But are there no allowances to be made for the provocation? Perhaps not for a simple assault; but if I had killed the turnkey, I'm certain the jury would discover the "circonstances atténuantes."

Partly out of respect to my own feelings, partly out of regard to yours, I have not put the words "Petits Carmes" at the top of this letter; but truth will out, Tom, and the real fact is that I date the present from cell No. 65, in the common prison of Brussels! Is not that a pretty confession? Is not that a new episode in this Iliad of enjoyment, cultivation, and Heaven knows what besides, that Mrs. D. projected by our tour on the Continent? But I swear to you, solemnly, as I write this, that, if I live to get back, I'll expose the whole system of foreign travel. I don't think I could write a book, and it's hard nowadays to find a chap to put down one's own sentiments fairly and honestly, neither overlaying them with bits of poetry, nor explaining them away by any garbage of his own; so that, maybe, I'll not be able to come out hot-pressed and lettered; but if the worst comes to it, I 'll go about the country giving lectures. I 'll hire an organ-man to play at intervals, and I 'll advertise, "Kenny Dodd on Men and Manners abroad – Evenings with Frenchmen, and Nights with Distinguished Belgians." I'll show up their cookery, their morals, their modesty, their sense of truth, and their notions of justice. And though I well know that I 'll expose myself to the everlasting hate of a legion of hairdressers, dancing-masters, and white-mice men, I'll do it as sure as I live. I have heard you and Peter Belton wax warm and eloquent about the disgrace to our laws in permitting every kind of quackery to prevail unhindered; but what quackery was ever the equal to this taste for the Continent? If people ate Morison's pills like green peas, they would n't do themselves as much moral injury as by a month abroad! And if I were called before a committee of the House to declare, on my conscience, what I deemed the most pernicious reading of the day, I 'd say – Murray's Handbooks! I give you this under my hand and seal. That fellow – Murray, I mean – has got up a kind of Pictorial Europe of his own, with bits of antiquarianism, history, poetry, and architecture, that serves to convince our vulgar, vagabondizing English that they are doing a refined thing in coming abroad. He half persuades them that it is not for cheap champagne and red partridges they 're come, but to see the Cathedral of Cologne and the Dome of St. Peter's, till he breeds up a race of conceited, ill-informed, prating coxcombs, that disgrace us abroad and disgust us at home.

I think I see your face now, and I half hear you mutter, "Kenny's in one of his fits of passion;" and you'd be right, too, for I have just upset my ink-bottle over the table, and there's scarcely enough left to finish this scrawl, as I must reserve a little for a few lines to Mrs. D. Apropos to that same, Tom, I don't know how to break it to her that I'm in a jail, for her feelings will be terribly shocked at first; not but, between you and me, before a year's over, she 'll make it a bitter taunt to me whenever we have a flare-up, and remind me that, for all my justiceship of the peace, I was treated like a common felon in Brussels!

I believe that the best thing I can do is to send for Jellicot, since Vanhoegen and Draek have sent to say that they retire from my cause, "reserving to themselves all liberty of future action as regards the injury personally sustained;" which means that they require ten pounds for the kicking. Be it so!

When I have seen Jellicot, I 'll give you the result of the interview, that is, if there be any result; but my friend J. is a lawyer of the lawyers, and it is not only that he keeps his right hand on terms of distance with his left, but I don't believe that the thumb and the forefinger of the same side are ever acquainted. He is very much that stamp of man your English Protestants call a Jesuit. God help them, little they know what a real Jesuit is!

It's now a quarter to two in the morning, and I sit down to finish this with a heavy heart, and certainly no inclination for sleep. I don't know where to begin, nor how to tell you, what has happened; but the short of it is, Tom, I'm half ruined. Jellicot has been here for hours and gone over the whole case; he received the papers from D. and V.; and, indeed, everything considered, he has done the thing kindly and feelingly. I 'm sure my head would n't stand the task of telling you all the circumstances; the matter resolves itself simply into this: The "affaire de Dodd fils," instead of being James's duel, as I thought, is a series of actions against him for debt, amounting to upwards of two thousand pounds sterling! There is not an extravagance, from the ballet to the betting-book, that he has not tasted; and saddle-horses, suppers, velvet waistcoats, jewelry, and gimcracks are at this moment dancing an infernal reel through my poor brain.