The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II

"My view of the case is a very simple one, my Lord," said I; "and it is this. We travelling English are very prone to two faults; one is, a bullying effort to oppose ourselves to the laws of the countries we visit; and then, when we fail, a whining appeal to some minister or consul to take up our battle. The first is stupid, the latter is contemptible. The same feeling that would prevent me trespassing on the hospitality of an unwilling host will rescue me from the indignity of remaining in a country where my presence is distasteful to the rulers of it."

"Such a line of conduct," said he, "would expose us to insult from one end of Europe to the other."

"And if it teach us to stay at home, and live under laws that we understand, the price is not too high for the benefit."

He blustered away about what he would n't do in the Press, and in his "place" in Parliament; but what's the use of all that? Will England go to war for Kenny James Dodd? No. Well, then, by no other argument is the foreigner assailable. Tell the Austrian or the Russian Government that the company at the "Freemasons'" dinner were shocked, and the ladies at Exeter Hall were outraged at their cruelty, and they 'll only laugh at you. We can't send a fleet to Vienna; nor – we would n't if we could.

I did n't tell Lord George, but to you, in confidence, Tom, I will say, I think we have – if we liked it – a grand remedy for all these cases. Do you know that it was thinking of Tim Ryan, the rat-catcher at Kelly's mills, suggested it to me. Whenever Tim came up to a house with his traps and contrivances, if the family said they did n't need him, "for they had no rats," he 'd just loiter about the place till evening, – and, whatever he did, or how he did it, one thing was quite sure, they had never to make the same complaint again! Now, my notion is, whenever we have any grudge with a foreign State, don't begin to fit out fleets or armaments, but just send a steamer off to the nearest port with one of the refugees aboard. I 'd keep Kossuth at Malta, always ready; Louis Blanc and Ledru Rollin at Jersey; Don Miguel and Don Carlos at Gibraltar; and have Mazzini and some of the rest cruising about for any service they may be wanted on. In that way, Tom, we 'd keep these Governments in order, and, like Tim Ryan, be turning our vermin to a good account besides!

I thought that Mrs. D. and Mary Anne displayed a degree of attachment to this place rather surprising, considering that I have heard of nothing but its inconvenience till this moment, when we are ordered to quit it. Now, however, they suddenly discover it to be healthful, charming, and economical. I have questioned Cary as to the secret of this change, but she does not understand it. She knows that Lord George received a large packet by the post this morning, and instantly hurried off to communicate its contents to Mary Anne. By George! Tom, I have come to the notion that to rule a family of four people, one ought to have a "detective officer" attached to the household. Every day or so, something puzzling and inexplicable occurs, the meaning of which never turns up till you find yourself duped, and then it is too late to complain. Now, this same letter Cary speaks of is at this very instant exercising a degree of influence here, and I am to remain in ignorance of the cause till I can pick it out from the effect. This, too, is another blessed result of foreign travel! When we lived at home the incidents of our daily life were few, and not very eventful; they were circumscribed within narrow limits, and addressed themselves to the feelings of every one amongst us. Concealment would have been absurd, even were it possible; but the truth was, we were all so engaged with the same topics and the same spirit, that we talked of them constantly, and grew to think that outside the little circle of ourselves the world was a mere wilderness. To be sure, all this sounds very narrow-minded, and all that. So it does; but let me tell you, it conduces greatly to happiness and contentment.

Now, here, we have so many irons in the fire, some one or other of us is always burning his fingers!

I continue to be very uneasy about James. Not a line have we had from him, and he 's now several weeks gone! I wrote to Vickars, but have not yet heard from him in reply. Cary endeavors to persuade me that it is only his indolent, careless habit is in fault; but I can see that she is just as uncomfortable and anxious as myself.

You will collect from the length of this document that I am quite myself again; and, indeed, except a little dizziness in my head after dinner, and a tendency to sleep, I 'm all right. Not that I complain of the latter, – far from it, Tom. Sancho Panza himself never blessed the inventor of it more fervently than I do.

Sometimes, however, I think that it is the newspapers are not so amusing as they used to be. The racy old bitterness of party spirit is dying out, and all the spicy drollery and epigrammatic fun of former days gone with it. It strikes me, too, Tom, that "Party," in the strong sense, never can exist again amongst us. Party is essentially the submission of the many to the few; and so long as the few were pre-eminent in ability and tactical skill, nothing was more salutary. Wal-pole, Pelham, Pitt, and Fox stood immeasurably above the men and the intelligence of their time. Their statecraft was a science of which the mass of their followers were totally ignorant, and the crew never dreamt of questioning the pilot as to the course he was about to take. Whereas now – although by no means deficient in able and competent men to rule us – the body of the House is filled by others very little their inferiors. Old Babbington used to say "that between a good physician and a bad one, there was only the difference between a pound and a guinea." In the same way, there is not a wider interval now between the Right Honorable Secretary on the Treasury Bench and the Honorable Member below him. Education is widely disseminated, – the intercourse of club life is immense, – opportunities of knowledge abound on every hand, – the Press is a great popular instructor; and, above all, the temper and tendency of the age favors labor of every kind. Idleness is not in vogue with any class of the whole community. What chance, then, of any man, no matter how great and gifted he be, imposing, his opinions —as such– upon the world of politics! A minister, or his opponent, may get together a number of supporters for a particular measure, just as you or I could muster a mob at an election or a fair; but there would be no more discipline in the one case than in the other. They'd come now, and go when they liked; and any chance of reducing such "irregulars" to the habits of an army would be downright impossible!

There is another cause of dulness, too, in the newspapers. All the accidents – a most amusing column it used to be – are now entirely caused by railroads; and there is a shocking sameness about them. They were "shunting" wagons across the line when the express came up, or the pointsman did n't turn the switch, or the fog obscured the danger signal. With these three explanations, some hundreds of human beings are annually smashed, smothered, and scalded, and the survivors not a whit more provident than before.

Cruel assaults upon women – usually the wives of the ruffians themselves – are, I perceive, becoming a species of popular custom in England. Every "Times" I see has its catalogue of these atrocities; and I don't perceive that five shilling fines nor even three weeks at the treadmill diminishes the number. One of the railroad companies announces that it will not hold itself responsible for casualties, nor indemnify the sufferers. Don't you think that we might borrow a hint from them, and insert some cause of the same kind into the marriage ceremony, and that the woman should know all her "liabilities" without any hope of appeal? Ah! Tom Purcell, all our naval reviews, and industrial exhibitions, and boastful "leading" articles about our national greatness come with a very ill grace in the same broad sheet with these degrading police histories. Must savage ferocity accompany us as we grow in wealth and power? If so, then I 'd rather see us a third-rate power to-morrow than rule the world at the cost of such disgrace!

Ireland, I see, jogs on just as usual, wrangling away. They can't even agree whether the potatoes have got the rot or not. Some of the papers, too, are taking up the English cry of triumph over the downfall of our old squirearchy; but it does not sound well from them. To be sure, some of the new proprietors would seem not only to have taken our estates, but tasted the Blarney-stone besides; and one, a great man too, has been making a fine speech with his "respected friend, the Reverend Mr. O'Shea," on his right hand, and vowing that he 'll never turn out anybody that pays the rent, nor dispossess a good tenant! The stupid infatuation of these English makes me sick, Tom. Why, with all their self-sufficiency, can't they see that we understand our own people better than they do? We know the causes of bad seasons and short harvests better; we know the soil better, and the climate better, and if we haven't been good landlords, it is simply because we couldn't afford it. Now, they are rich, and can afford it; and if they have bought up Irish estates to get the rents out of them, I 'd like to know what's to be the great benefit of the change. "Pay up the arrears," says I; but if my Lord Somebody from England says the same, I think there 's no use in selling me out, and taking him in my place. And this brings me to asking when I'm to get another remittance? I am thinking seriously of retrenchment; but first, Tom, one must have something to retrench upon. You must possess a salary before you can stand "stoppages." Of course we mean "to come home again." I have n't heard that the Government have selected me for a snug berth in the Colonies; so be assured that you'll see us all back in Dodsborough before —

Mrs. D. had been looking over my shoulder, Tom, while I was writing the last line, and we have just had what she calls an "explanation," but what ordinary grammarians would style – a row. She frankly and firmly declares that I may try Timbuctoo or the Gambia if I like, but back to Ireland she positively will not go! She informs me, besides, that she is quite open to an arrangement about a separate maintenance. But my property, Tom, is like poor Jack Heffernan's goose, – it would n't bear carving, so he just helped himself to it all! And, as I said to Mrs. D., two people may get some kind of shelter under one umbrella, but they 'll infallibly be wet through if they cut it in two, and each walk off with his half. "If you were a bit of a gentleman," said she, "you 'd give it all to the lady." That's what I got for my illustration.

But now that I 'm safe once more, I repeat, you shall certainly see us back in our old house again, and which, for more reasons than I choose to detail here, we ought never to have quitted.

I have been just sent for to a cabinet council of the family, who are curious to know whither we are going from this; and as I wish to appear prepared with a plan, and am not strong in geography, I 'll take a look at the map before I go. I've hit it, Tom, – Parma. Parma will do admirably. It's near, and it's never visited by strangers. There 's a gallery of pictures to look at, and, at the worst, plenty of cheese to eat. Tourists may talk and grumble as they will about the dreary aspect of these small capitals, without trade and commerce, with a beggarly Court and a ruined nobility, – to me they are a boon from Heaven. You can always live in them for a fourth of the cost of elsewhere. The head inn is your own, just as the Piazza is, and the park at the back of the palace. It goes hard but you can amuse yourself poking about into old churches, and peeping into shrines and down wells, pottering into the market-place, and watching the bargaining for eggs and onions; and when these fail, it's good fun to mark the discomfiture of your womankind at being shut up in a place where there's neither opera nor playhouse, – no promenade, no regimental band, and not even a milliner's shop.

From all I can learn, Parma will suit me perfectly; and now I 'm off to announce my resolve to the family. Address me there, Tom, and with a sufficiency of cash to move further when necessary.

I 'm this moment come back, and not quite satisfied with what I 've done. Mrs. D. and Mary Anne approve highly of my choice. They say nothing could be better. Some of us must be mistaken, and I fervently trust that it may not be

Your sincere friend,

Kenny James Dodd.

LETTER XIV. JAMES DODD TO LORD GEORGE TIVERTON, M.P

Cour de Vienne, Mantua

My dear George, – I 've only five minutes to give you; for the horses are at the door, and we 're to start at once. I have a great budget for you when we meet; for we've been over the Tyrol and Styria, spent ten days at Venice, and "done" Verona and the rest of them, – John Murray in hand.

We 're now bound for Milan, where I want you to meet us on our arrival, with an invitation from my mother, asking Josephine to the villa. I 've told her that the note is already there awaiting her, and for mercy' sake let there be no disappointment.

This dispensation is a horrible tedious affair; but I hope we shall have it now within the present month. The interval she desires to spend in perfect retirement, so that the villa is exactly the place, and the attention will be well timed.

Of course they ought to receive her as well as possible. Mary Anne, I know, requires no hint; but try and persuade the governor to trim himself up a little, and if you could make away with that old flea-bitten robe be calls his dressing-gown, you 'd do the State some service. Look to the servants, too, and smarten them up; a cold perspiration breaks over me when I think of Betty Cobb!

I rely on you to think of and provide for everything, and am ever your attached friend,

James Dodd.

I changed my last five-hundred-pound note at Venice, so that I must bring the campaign to a close immediately.

LETTER XV. MRS. DODD TO MRS. MARY GALLAGHER, DODSBOROUGH

Parma, the "Cour de Parme."

My dear Molly, – When I wrote to you last, we were living, quietly, it is true, and unostensively, but happily, on the Lake of Comus, and there we might have passed the whole autumn, had not K. L, with his usual thoughtfulness for the comfort of his family, got into a row with the police, and had us sent out of the country.

No less, my dear! Over the frontier in twenty-four hours was the word; and when Lord George wanted to see some of the great people about it, or even make a stir in the newspapers, he wouldn't let him. "No," said he, "the world is getting tired of Englishmen that are wronged by foreign governments. They say, naturally enough, that there must be some fault in ourselves, if we are always in trouble, this way; and, besides, I would not take fifty pounds, and have somebody get up in the House and move for all the correspondence in the case of Mr. Dodd, so infamously used by the authorities in Lombardy." Them 's his words, Molly; and when we told him that it was a fine way of getting known and talked about in the world, what was his answer do you think? "I don't want notoriety; and if I did, I 'd write a letter to the 'Times,' and say it was I that defended Hougoumont, in the battle of Waterloo. There seems to be a great dispute about it, and I don't see why I could n't put in my claim."

I suppose after that, Molly, there will be very little doubt that his head isn't quite right, for he was no more at Waterloo than you or me.

It was a great shock to us when we got the order to march; for on that same morning the post brought us a letter from James, or, at least, it came to Lord George, and with news that made me cry with sheer happiness for full two hours after. I was n't far wrong, Molly, when I told you that it 's little need he 'd have of learning or a profession. Launch him out well in life was my words to K. I. Give him ample means to mix in society and make friends, and see if he won't turn it to good account. I know the boy well; and that's what K. I. never did, – never could.

See if I 'm not right, Mary Gallagher. He went down to the baths of – I'm afraid of the name, but it sounds like "Humbug," as well as I can make out – and what does he do but make acquaintance with a beautiful young creature, a widow of nineteen, rolling in wealth, and one of the first families in France!

How he did it, I can't tell; no more than where he got all the money he spent there on horses and carriages and dinners, and elegant things that he ordered for her from Paris. He passed five weeks there, courting her, I suppose; and then away they went, rambling through Germany, and over the mountains, down to Venice. She in her own travelling-carriage, and James driving a team of four beautiful grays of his own; and then meeting when they stopped at a town, but all with as much discretion as if it was only politeness between them. At last he pops the question, Molly; and it turns out that she has no objection in life, only that she must get a dispensation from the Pope, because she was promised and betrothed to the King of Naples, or one of his brothers; and though she married another, she never got what they call a Bull of release.

This is the hardest thing in the world to obtain; and if it was n't that she has a Cardinal an uncle, she might never get it. At all events, it will take time, and meanwhile she ought to live in the strictest retirement. To enable her to do this properly, and also by way of showing her every attention, James wrote to have an invitation ready for her to come down to the villa and stay with us on a visit.

By bad luck, my dear, it was the very morning this letter came, K. I. had got us all ordered away! What was to be done, was now the question; we daren't trust him with the secret till she was in the house, for we knew well he 'd refuse to ask her, – say he could n't afford the expense, and that we were all sworn to ruin him. We left it to Lord George to manage; and he, at last, got K. I. to fix on Parma for a week or two, one of the quietest towns in Italy, and where you never see a coach in the streets, nor even a well-dressed creature oat on Sunday. K. I. was delighted with it all; saving money is the soul of him, and he never thinks of anything but when he can make a hard bargain. What he does with his income, Molly, the saints alone can tell; but I suspect that there's some sinners, too, know a trifle about it; and the day will come when I 'll have the proof! Lord G. sent for the landlord's tariff, and it was reasonable enough. Rooms were to be two zwanzigers – one-and-fourpence – apiece; breakfast, one; dinner, two zwanzigers; tea, half a one; no charge for wine of the place; and if we stayed any time, we were to have the key of a box at the opera.

K. I. was in ecstasy. "If I was to live here five or six years," says he, "and pay nobody, my affairs wouldn't be so much embarrassed as they are now!"

"If you 'd cut off your encumbrances, Mr. Dodd," says I, "that would save something."

"My what?" said he, flaring up, with a face like a turkey-cock.

But I was n't going to dispute with him, Molly; so I swept out of the room, and threw down a little china flowerpot just to stop him.

The same day we started, and arrived here at the hotel, the "Cour de Parme," by midnight; it was a tiresome journey, and K. I. made it worse, for he was fighting with somebody or other the whole time; and Lord George was not with us, for he had gone off to Milan to meet James; and Mr. D. was therefore free to get into as many scrapes as he pleased. I must say, he did n't neglect the opportunity, for he insulted the passport people and the customhouse officers, and the man at the bridge of boats, and the postmasters and postilions everywhere. "I did n't come here to be robbed," said he everywhere; and he got a few Italian words for "thief," "rogue," "villain," and so on; and if I saw one, I saw ten knives drawn on him that blessed day. He would n't let Cary translate for him, but sat on the box himself, and screamed out his directions like a madman. This went on till we came to a place called San Donino, and there – it was the last stage from Parma – they told him he could n't have any horses, though he saw ten of them standing all ready harnessed and saddled in the stable. I suppose they explained to him the reason, and that he did n't understand it, for they all got to words together, and it was soon who 'd scream loudest amongst them.

At last K. I. cried out, "Come down, Paddy, and see if we can't get four of these beasts to the carriage, and we 'll not ask for a postilion."

Down jumps Paddy out of the rumble, and rushes after him into the stable. A terrible uproar followed this, and soon after the stable people, helpers, ostlers, and postboys, were seen running out of the door for their lives, and K. I. and Paddy after them, with two rack-staves they had torn out of the manger. "Leave them to me," says K. I.; "leave them to me, Paddy, and do you go in for the horses; put them to, and get a pair of reins if you can; if not, jump up on one of the leaders, and drive away."

If he was bred and born in the place, he could not have known it better, for he came out the next minute with a pair of horses, that he fastened to the carriage in a trice, and then hurried back for two more, that he quickly brought out and put to also. "There 's no whip to be found," says he, "but this wattle will do for the leaders; and if your honor will stir up the wheelers, here 's a nice little handy stable fork to do it with." With this Paddy sprung into the saddle, K. I. jumped up to the box, and off they set, tearing down the street like mad. It was pitch dark, and of course neither of them knew the road; but K. I. screamed out, "Keep in the middle, Paddy, and don't pull up for any one." We went through the village at a full gallop, the people all yelling and shouting after us; but at the end of the street there were two roads, and Paddy cried out, "Which way now?" "Take the widest, if you can see it," screamed out K. I.; and away he went, at a pace that made the big travelling-carriage bump and swing like a boat at sea.

We soon felt we were going down a dreadful steep, for the carriage was all but on top of the horses, and K. I. kept screaming out, "Keep up the pace, Paddy. Make them go, or we'll all be smashed." Just as he said that I heard a noise, like the sea in a storm, – a terrible sound of rushing, dashing, roaring water; then a frightful yell from Paddy, followed by a plunge. "In a river, by – !" roared out K. I.; and as he said it, the coach gave a swing over to one side, then righted, then swung back again, and with a crash that I thought smashed it to atoms, fell over on one side into the water.

"All right," said K. I.; "I turned the leaders short round and saved us!" and with that he began tearing and dragging us out. I fell into a swoon after this, and know no more of what happened. When I came to myself, I was in a small hut, lying on a bed of chestnut leaves, and the place crowded with peasants and postilions.

"There 's no mischief done, mamma," said Cary. "Paddy swam the leaders across beautifully, for the traces snapped at once, and, except the fright, we 're nothing the worse."