These watering-place doctors have less tact than their _confrères_
elsewhere: their theory is, “the Wells and Amusement;” they never
strain their faculties to comprehend any class but that of hard-worked,
exhausted, men of the world, to whom the regularity of a Bad-ort, and
the simple pleasures it affords, are quite sufficient to relieve the
load of over-taxed minds and bodies. The “distractions” of these places
suit such people well; the freedom of intercourse, which even among our
strait-laced countrymen prevails, is pleasant. My Lord refreshes in
the society of a clever barrister, or an amusing essayist of the
“Quarterly.” The latter puts forth all his agreeability for the
delectation of a grander audience than he ever had at home. But to one
who has seen all these ranks and conditions of men--who finds nothing
new in the _morgue_ of the Marquis, or the last _mot_ of the Bench--it
is somewhat too bad to be told that such intercourse is a part of your
treatment.
My worthy friend Dr. Guckhardt has mistaken me; he fancies my weariness
is the result of solitude, and that my exhaustion is but _ennui_; and,
in consequence, has he gone about on the high roads and public places
inquiring if any one knows Horace Templeton, who is “sick and ill.” And
here is the fruit: a table covered with visiting cards and scented notes
of inquiry. My Lord Tollington--a Lord of the Bedchamber, a dissolute
old fop--very amusing to very young men, but intolerable to all who have
seen anything themselves. Sir Harvey Clifford, a Yorkshire Jesuit,
who travels with a _socius_ from Oscot and a whole library of tracts
controversial. Reginald St. John, a “levanter” from the Oaks. Colonel
Morgan O’Shea, absent without leave for having shot his father-in-law.
Such are among the first I find. But whose writing is this?... I know
the hand well.... Frank Burton, that I knew so well at Oxford! Poor
devil! he joined the 9th Lancers when he came of age, and ran through
every thing he had in the world in three years. He married a Lady Mary
somebody, and lives now on her family. What is his note about?
“Dear Tempy,
“I have just heard of your being here, and would have gone
over to see you, but have sprained my ancle in a hopping-
match with Kubetskoi--walked into him for two hundred,
nevertheless. Come and dine with us to-day at the France,
and we’ll shew you some of the folk here. That old bore,
Lady Bellingham Blakely, is with us, and gives a pic-nic on
Saturday at the Waterfall--rare fun for you, who like a
field-day of regular quizzes! Don’t fail--sharp seven--and
believe me,
“Yours,
“F. B.”
This requires but brief deliberation; and so, my dear Frank, you must
excuse my company, both at dinner and pic-nic. What an ass he must be to
suppose that a man of thirty has got no farther insight into the world,
and knows no more of its inhabitants, than a boy of eighteen! These
“quizzes,” doubtless, had been very amusing to me once--just as I used
to laugh at the “School for Scandal” the first fifty times I saw it;
but now that I have _épuisé les ridicules_--have seen every manner
of absurdity the law of Chancery leaves at large--why hammer out the
impression by repetition?
What is here by way of postscript?
“Lady B. has made the acquaintance of a certain Sicilian
Countess, the handsomest woman here, and has engaged her for
Saturday. If you be the man you used to be, you’ll not fail
to come.”
*****
“Dear F----
“I cannot dine out. I can neither eat, drink, nor talk, nor
can I support the heat or ‘confaz’ of a dinner; but, if
permitted, will join your party on Saturday for half an
hour.
“Yours truly,
“H. Templeton.”
Now has curiosity--I have no worthier name to bestow on it--got the
better of all my scruples and dislikes to such an agglomeration as a
pic-nic! Socially I know nothing so bad: the liberty is license, and the
license is an intolerable freedom, where only the underbred are at
ease. _N’importe_--I’ll go; for while I now suspect that I was wrong
in believing the Countess to have been my old acquaintance, Caroline
Graham, I have a strange interest, at least, in seeing how one so like
her, externally, may resemble her in traits of mind and manner. And then
I’ll leave Baden.
I am really impatient to get away. I feel--I suppose there is nothing
unusual in the feeling--that, as I meet acquaintances, I can read in
their looks those expressions of compassion and pity by which the sick
are admonished of their hopeless state; and for the very reason that
I can dare to look it steadily in the face myself, I have a strong
repugnance to its being forcibly placed before me. My greatest wish
to live--if it ever deserved the name of wish--is to see the upshot of
certain changes that time inevitably will bring out. I have watched
the game in some cases so closely, I should like to know who rises the
winner.
What will become of France under a regency? How will the new government
turn the attention of the _mauvaises têtes_, and where will they carry
their arms? What will Austria do, when the Pope shall have given the
taste for free institutions, and the Italians fancy that they are strong
enough for self-government? What America, when the government of her
newly acquired territory must be a military dictation, with a standing
army of great strength? What Ireland, when the landlords, depressed by
an increasing poor-rate, have brought down the gentry to a condition of
mere subsistence, with Romanism hourly assuming a bolder, higher tone,
dictating its terms with the Minister, and treating the Government _de
pair?_
What Prussia, when democracy grows quicker when Constitutional Liberty,
and Freedom of the Press get ahead of the Censor?
For Belgium and Switzerland I have little interest. Priest-ridden and
mob-ridden, they may indulge their taste for domestic quarrel so long as
a general war is remote; let _that_ come, and their small voices will be
lost in the louder din of far different elements.
As for the Peninsula, Spain and Portugal are in as miserable a plight as
free institutions combined with Popery can make them. If Romanism is
to be the religion of the State, let it be allied with Absolutism. The
right to think, read, and speak, are incompatible with the dictates of
a Church that forbids all three. Rome is the type. It is a grand and a
stupendous tyranny. _Gare!_ to those who try to make it a popular rule!
So... I find that all Baden is full of our great picnic! Ours, I say,
for here lies Lady B---- B----‘s respectful compliments, &c, and my own
replication is already delivered. It seems that we have taken the true
way to create popular interest, by trespassing on popular enjoyment. We
have engaged M. Gougon, the _chef_ of the Cursaal; engaged the band who
usually perform before the promenade; engaged all the saddle-horses, and
most of the carriages--in fact, we have enlisted every thing save the
Genius Loci, the hump-backed croupier of the roulette table.
Why we should travel twelve miles or so, out of our way, to bring Baden
with us I cannot so clearly see. Why we cannot be satisfied with vice
without a change of venue I do not understand. But with this I have
nothing to do. Like the Irishman, “I am but a lodger.” Indeed, I believe
my own poor presence was less desired at this _fête_ than that of my
London phaeton and my two black ponies, which, I am told, are very
much admired here--a certain sign that they are not in the most correct
taste. However, I have my revenge. As Hussars, when invited to dine out
at questionable places, always appear in plain clothes, so shall I
come to the rendezvous in a _fiacre_; though, I own, it is very like
obtaining a dinner under false pretences.
Already the little town is a-stir; servants are hastening to and fro;
ominous-looking baskets and hampers are seen to pass and repass;
strange quadrupeds are led by as saddle-horses, their gay headstalls and
splendid saddle-cloths scarce diverting the eye from “groggy” fore-legs
and drawn-up quarters; curiously dressed young gentlemen, queer
combinations of Jockeyism with an Arcadian simplicity, stand in groups
about; and, now and then, a carriage rolls by, and disappears up some
steep street in search of its company.
Ah! there go the Tollingtons! and in a conveniency, too, they’d
scarcely like to be seen with in Hyde Park. What a droll old
rattle-trap! and what a pair of wretched hacks to draw it! After all,
one cannot help avowing that these people, seated there in that most
miserable equipage, where poverty exhibits its most ludicrous of
aspects, even there, they preserve as decisive an air of class and rank
as--as--yes, I have found the exact equivalent--as almost every
foreigner seated in a handsome carriage does of the opposite. Prejudice,
bigotry, narrow-mindedness, or any thing else of the same kind it may
be; but, after a great part of a life spent abroad, my testimony is,
that for one person of either sex, whose appearance unmistakeably
pronounces condition, met, abroad--I care not where--at least one
hundred are to be seen in England. So much for the nation of
shopkeepers!
Ah! a tandem, by Jove! and rather well got up. Of course it could be no
other than Burton--“the ruling passion strong in ‘debt!’” Well, he may
have forgotten his creditors, but he has not forgotten how to hold the
ribbons.
What’s this heavy old coach with a cabriolet over the rumble?--the
Russian minister, Kataffsky! Lord bless us! from all the strong braces
and bars of wood and iron, one would say that it was built to stand
a journey to Siberia. Who knows, but it may travel that road yet!...
Pretty woman the Princess, but with all the characteristic knavery of
her race in the eyes. Paulwas right when he refused to license Jews in
Russia, because he knew his subjects would cheat _them!_
“_Bon jour, Marquis_.” Monsieur de Tavanne, very absurd but a chivalrous
Frenchman of the old school. They say that, meeting the late Duc
d’Orléans at Lady Grenville’s, he took a very abrupt leave, expressing
as his reason that he did not know her Ladyship received “_des gens
comme cela_.”
A Vienna _Coupé_, with a Vienna Coachman, and a Vienna Countess inside,
are very distinctive in their way. The Grafin von Lowenhaufen, one of
those pretty _intriguantes_ of modern political warfare who frequent
watering-places and act as the tirailleurs for Metternich and Guizot.
Talleyrand avowed the great advantage of such assistance, which he said
was impossible for an English minister, for “les Anglaises” always fell
in love and blabbed!
Here comes a showy affair!--a real landau with four horses, as fine as
bouquets and worsted tassels can make them! No mistaking it--_Erin go
Brag!_ Sir Roger M’Causland and my lady, and the four Misses and the
Master M’Causland. They are the invincibles of modern travel; they have
stormed every court in Europe, and are the terror of Grand Maréchals
from Naples to the Pole. Heaven help the English minister in whose city
they squat for a winter! He would have less trouble with a new tariff
or a new boundary than in arranging their squabbles with court
functionaries and the police. Sir Roger _must_ know the King and his
Ministers, and expound to them his own notions of the government, with
divers hints about free trade and other like matters. My Lady _must_
be invited to all court balls and concerts, and a fair proportion of
dinners; and this, “_de droit_,” because “the M’Causland” was a King of
Ballyshandera in the year 4, and my Lady herself being an O’Dowde, also
of blood royal. People may laugh at these absurd, shameless pretensions,
but “_il rit le mieux, qui rit le dernier_,” says the proverb; and if
the sentiment be one the M’Causlands’ dignity permit, they have the
right to laugh heartily. Boredom, actual boredom--a perseverance that
is dead to all shame--a persistance that no modesty rebukes--a steady
resolve to push forward, wins its way socially as well as strategically;
and even the folding-doors of court saloons fly open before its magic
sésame.
And who are these gay equestrians with prancing hackneys, flowing
plumes, and flaunting habits?--The Fothergills; four handsome, dashing,
_effronté_ girls, who, under the mock protection of a small schoolboy
brother, are, really, escorted by a group of moustached heroes, more
than one of whom I already recognise as scarcely fit company for the
daughters of an English church dignitary. _Mais que voulez-vous?_ They
would not visit the curate’s wife and sister in Durham, but they will
ride out at Baden with blacklegs and swindlers! The Count yonder,
Monsieur de Mallenville, is a noted character in Paris, and is always
attended, when there, by an emissary of the police, who, with what
Alphonse Karr calls an _empressement de bonne compagnie_, never leaves
him for a moment.
And here we have the “dons” of the entertainment, la Princesse de
Rubetzki, as pretty a piece of devilry as ever Poland manufactured to
sow treason and disaffection, accompanied by her devoted admirer the
Austrian general, Count Cohary. Poor fellow! all his efforts to appear
young and _volage_ are as nothing to the difficulties he endures in
steering between the fair Princess’s politics and her affection. An
Austrian of the “_vieille roche_” he is shocked by the Liberalism of his
lady-love; and yet, with Spielberg before him, he cannot tear himself
away.
They who are not acquainted with the world of the Continent may think
it strange that society, even in a watering-place, should assemble
individuals so different in rank and social position; but a very little
experience will always shew that intercourse is really as much denied
between such parties as though they were in different hemispheres. As
the Rhone rolls its muddy current through the blue waters of the Lake of
Geneva, and never mingles its turbid stream with the clear waves
beside it, so these people are seen pouring their flood through every
assemblage, and never disturbing the placid surface in their course.
To effect this, two requisites are indispensable to the company,--a very
rigid good-breeding and a very lax morality. No one can deny that both
are abundant.
And here, if I mistake not, comes my own _cher-à-banc_. Truly, my
excellent valet has followed my directions to the letter. I said,
“Something of the commonest,” and he has brought me a _fiacre_ that
seems as moribund and creaky as myself. No matter, I am ready. And now
to be off!