Bregenz.
My dear Bob,--I had made up my mind not to write to you till we had
quitted this place, where our life has been of the "slowest;" but this
morning has brought a letter with a piece of good news which I cannot
defer imparting to you. It is a communication from the Under-Secretary
for Foreign Affairs to the governor, to say that I have been appointed
to something somewhere, and that I am to come over to London, and be
examined by somebody. Very vague all this, but I suppose it's the
style of Diplomacy, and one will get used to it. The real bore is the
examination, for George told "dad" that there was none, and, in fact,
that very circumstance it was which gave the peculiar value to the
"service." Tiverton tells me, however, he can make it "all safe;"
whether you "tip" the Secretary, or some of the underlings, I don't
know. Of course there is a way in all these things, for half the fellows
that pass are just as ignorant as your humble servant.
I am mainly indebted to Tiverton for the appointment, for he wrote to
everybody he could think of, and made as much interest as if it was
for himself. He tells me, in confidence, that the list of names down
is about six feet long, and actually wonders at the good fortune of my
success. From all I can learn, however, there is no salary at first, so
that the governor must "stump out handsome," for an Attache is expected
to live in a certain style, keep horses, and, in fact, come it "rayther
strongish." In some respects, I should have preferred the army; but
then there are terrible drawbacks in colonial banishment, whereas in
Diplomacy you are at least stationed in the vicinity of a Court, which
is always something.
I wonder where I am to be gazetted for; I hope Naples, but even Vienna
would do. In the midst of our universal joy at my good fortune, it's not
a little provoking to see the governor pondering over all it will cost
for outfit, and wondering if the post be worth the gold lace on the
uniform. Happily for me, Bob, he never brought me up to any profession,
as it is called, and it is too late now to make me anything either in
law or physic. I say happily, because I see plainly enough that he 'd
refuse the present opportunity if he knew of any other career for me.
My mother does not improve matters by little jokes on his low tastes and
vulgar ambitions; and, in fact, the announcement has brought a good deal
of discussion and some discord amongst us.
I own to you, frankly, that once named to a Legation, I will do my
utmost to persuade the governor to go back to Ireland. In the first
place, nothing but a very rigid economy at Dodsborough will enable him
to make me a liberal allowance; and secondly, to have my family
prowling about the Legation to which I was attached would be perfectly
insufferable. I like to have my father and mother what theatrical
folk call "practicable," that is, good for all efficient purposes of
bill-paying, and such-like; but I shudder at the notion of being their
pioneer into fashionable life; and, indeed, I am not aware of any one
having carried his parent on his back since the days of AEneas.
I am obliged to send you a very brief despatch, for I 'm off to-morrow
for London, to make my bow at "F. O.," and kiss hands on my appointment.
I 'd have liked another week here, for the fishing has just come in, and
we killed yesterday, with two rods, eleven large, and some thirty small
trout. They are a short, thick-shouldered kind of fish, ready enough
to rise, but sluggish to play afterwards. The place is pretty, too; the
Swiss Alps at one side, and the Tyrol mountains at the other. Bregenz
itself stands well, on the very verge of the lake, and although not
ancient enough to be curious in architecture, has a picturesque air
about it. The people are as primitive as anything one can well fancy,
and wear a costume as ungracefully barbarous as any lover of nationality
could desire. Their waists are close under their arms, and the longest
petticoats I have yet seen finish at the knee! They affect, besides,
a round, low-crowned cap, like a fur turban, or else a great piece of
filigree sliver, shaped like a peacock's tail, and fastened to the back
of the head. Nature, it must be owned, has been somewhat ungenerous to
them; and with the peculiar advantages conferred on them by costume,
they are the ugliest creatures I 've ever set eyes on.
It is only just to remark that Mary Anne dissents from me in all this,
and has made various "studies" of them, which are, after all, not a whit
more flattering than my own description. As to a good-looking peasantry,
Bob, it's all humbug. It's only the well-to-do classes, in any country,
have pretensions to beauty. The woman of rank numbers amongst her charms
the unmistakable stamp of her condition. Even in her gait, like the
Goddess in Virgil, she displays her divinity. The pretty "bourgeoise"
has her peculiar fascination in the brilliant intelligence of her
laughing eye, and the sly archness of her witty mouth; but your peasant
beauty is essentially heavy and dull. It is of the earth, earthy; and
there is a bucolic grossness about the lips the very antithesis to the
pleasing. I 'm led to these remarks by the question in your last as to
the character of Continental physiognomy. Up to this, Bob, I have seen
nothing to compare with our own people, and you will meet more pretty
faces between Stephen's Green and the Rotunda than between Schaffhausen
and the sea. I 'm not going to deny that they "make up" better abroad,
but our boast is the raw material of beauty. The manufactured article we
cannot dispute with them. It would be, however, a great error to suppose
that the artistic excellence I speak of is a small consideration; on the
contrary, it is a most important one, and well deserving of deep thought
and reflection, and, I must say, that all our failures in the decorative
arts are as nothing to our blunders when attempting to adorn beauty. A
French woman, with a skin like an old drumhead, and the lower jaw of a
baboon, will actually "get herself up" to look better than many a really
pretty girl of our country, disfigured by unbecoming hairdressing,
ill-assorted colors, ill-put-on clothes, and that confounded walk, which
is a cross between the stride of a Grenadier and running in a sack!
With all our parade of Industrial Exhibitions and shows of National
Productions lately, nobody has directed his attention to this subject,
and, for _my_ part, I 'd infinitely rather know that our female
population had imbibed some notions of dress and self-adornment from
their French neighbors, than that Glasgow could rival Genoa in velvet,
or that we beat Bohemia out of the field in colored glass. If the proper
study of mankind be man,--which, of course, includes woman,--we
are throwing a precious deal of time away on centrifugal pumps,
sewing-machines, and self-acting razors. If I ever get into Parliament,
Bob, and I don't see why I should not, when once fairly launched in the
Diplomatic line, I 'll move for a Special Commission, not to examine
into foreign railroads, or mines, or schools, or smelting-houses, but to
inquire into and report upon how the women abroad, with not a tenth of
the natural advantages, contrive to look,--I won't say better, but more
fascinating than our own,--and how it is that they convert something a
shade below plainness into features of downright pleasing expression!
Since this appointment has come, I have been working away to brush up my
French and German, which you will be surprised to hear is pretty
nearly where it was when we first came abroad. We English herd so
much together, and continue to follow our home habits and use our own
language wherever we happen to be, that it is not very easy to break
out of the beaten track. This observation applies only to the men of
the family, for our sisters make a most astonishing progress, under
the guidance of those mustachioed and well-whiskered gents they meet at
balls. The governor and my mother of course believe that I am as great
a linguist as Mezzofanti, if that be the fellow's name, and I shall try
and keep up the delusion to the last. It is not quite impossible I may
have more time for my studies here than I fancy, for "dad" has come
in, this moment, to say that he has n't got five shillings towards the
expenses of my journey to London, nor has he any very immediate prospect
of a remittance from Ireland. What a precious mess will it be if my
whole career in life is to be sacrificed for a shabby hundred or two!
The governor appears to have spent about three times as much as he
speculated on, and our affairs at this moment present as pleasant a
specimen of hopeless entanglement as a counsel in Bankruptcy could
desire.
I wish I was out of the ship altogether, Bob, and would willingly
adventure on the broad ocean of life in a punt, were it only my own. I
trust that by the time this reaches you her Majesty's gracious pleasure
will have numbered me amongst the servants of the Crown; but whether in
high or humble estate, believe me ever
Unalterably yours,
James Dodd.
P. S. My sister Cary has written to say she will be here to-night or
to-morrow; she is coming expressly to see me before I go; but from all
that I can surmise she need not have used such haste. What a bore it
will be if the governor should not be able to "stump out"! I'm in a
perfect fever at the very thought.
LETTER III. CAROLINE DODD TO MISS COX AT MISS MINCING'S ACADEMY, BLACK ROCK, IRELAND.
My dear Miss Cox,--It would appear, from your last, that a letter of
mine to you must have miscarried; for I most distinctly remember having
written to you on the topics you allude to, and, so far as I was able,
answered all your kind inquiries about myself and my pursuits. Lest my
former note should ever reach you, I do not dare to go over again the
selfish narrative which would task even your friendship to peruse once.
I remained with my kind friend, Mrs. Morris, till three days ago, when I
came here to see my brother James, who has been promised some Government
employment, and is obliged to repair at once to London. Mamma terrified
me greatly by saying that he was to go to China or to India, so that I
hurried back to see and stay with him as much as I could before he
left us. I rejoice, however, to tell you that his prospects are in the
Diplomatic service, and he will be most probably named to a Legation in
some European capital.
He is a dear, kind-hearted boy; and although not quite untainted by
the corruptions which are more or less inseparable from this rambling
existence, is still as fresh in his affections, and as generous in
nature, as when he left home. Captain Morris, whose knowledge of life
is considerable, predicts most favorably of him, and has only one
misgiving,--the close intimacy he maintains with Lord George Tiverton.
Towards this young nobleman the Captain expresses the greatest distrust
and dislike; feelings that I really own seem to me to be frequently
tinctured by a degree of prejudice rather than suggested by reason. It
is true, no two beings can be less alike than they are. The one, rigid
and unbending in all his ideas of right, listening to no compromise,
submitting to no expediency, reserved towards strangers even to the
verge of stiffness, and proud from a sense that his humble station might
by possibility expose him to freedoms he could not reciprocate. The
other, all openness and candor, pushed probably to an excess, and not
unfrequently transgressing the barrier of an honorable self-esteem;
without the slightest pretension to principle of any kind, and as ready
to own his own indifference as to ridicule the profession of it by
another. Yet, with all this, kind and generous in all his impulses, ever
willing to do a good-natured thing; and, so far as I can judge,
even prepared to bear a friendly part at the hazard of personal
inconvenience.
Characters of this stamp are, as you have often observed to me, far more
acceptable to very young men than those more swayed by rigid rules of
right; and when they join to natural acuteness considerable practical
knowledge of life, they soon obtain a great influence over the less
gifted and less experienced. I see this in James; for, though not by
any means blind to the blemishes in Lord George's character, nor even
indifferent to them, yet is he submissive to every dictate of his will,
and an implicit believer in all his opinions. But why should I feel
astonished at this? Is not his influence felt by every member of the
family; and papa himself, with all his native shrewdness, strongly
disposed to regard his judgments as wise and correct? I remark this
the more because I have been away from home, and after an absence one
returns with a mind open to every new impression; nor can I conceal from
myself that many of the notions I now see adopted and approved of, are
accepted as being those popular in high society, and not because of
their intrinsic correctness. Had we remained in Ireland, my dear Miss
Cox, this had never been the case. There is a corrective force in the
vicinity of those who have known us long and intimately, who can measure
our pretensions by our station, and pronounce upon our mode of life from
the knowledge they have of our condition; and this discipline, if at
times severe and even unpleasant, is, upon the whole, beneficial to us.
Now, abroad, this wholesome--shall I call it--"surveillance" is
wanting altogether, and people are induced by its very absence to give
themselves airs, and assume a style quite above them. From that very
moment they insensibly adopt a new standard of right and wrong, and
substitute fashion and conventionality for purity and good conduct. I
'm sure I wish we were back in Dodsborough with all my heart! It is not
that there are not objects and scenes of intense interest around us here
on every hand. Even I can feel that the mind expands by the variety of
impressions that continue to pour in upon it. Still, I would not say
that these things may not be bought too dearly; and that if the price
they cost is discontent at our lot in life, a craving ambition to be
higher and richer, and a cold shrinking back from all of our own real
condition, they are unquestionably not worth the sacrifice.
To really enjoy the Continent it is not necessary--at least, for people
bred and brought up as we have been--to be very rich; on the contrary,
many--ay, and the greatest--advantages of Continental travel are open
to very small fortunes and very small ambitions. Scenery, climate,
inexpensive acquaintanceship, galleries, works of art, public libraries,
gardens, promenades, are all available. The Morrises have certainly much
less to live on than we have, and yet they have travelled over every
part of Europe, know all its cities well, and never found the cost of
living considerable. You will smile when I tell you that the single
secret for this is, not to cultivate English society. Once make up your
mind abroad to live with the people of the country, French, German, and
Italian,--and there is no class of these above the reach of well-bred
English,--and you need neither shine in equipage nor excel in a cook.
There is no pecuniary test of respectability abroad; partly because this
vulgarity is the offspring of a commercial spirit, which is, of course,
not the general characteristic, and partly from the fact that many
of the highest names have been brought down to humble fortunes by
the accidents of war and revolution, and poverty is, consequently, no
evidence of deficient birth. Our gorgeous notions of hospitality are
certainly very fine things, and well become great station and large
fortune, but are ruinous when they are imitated by inferior means and
humble incomes. Foreigners are quite above such vulgar mimicry; and
nothing is more common to hear than the avowal, "I am too poor to
do this; my fortune would not admit of that;" not uttered in a mock
humility, or with the hope of a polite incredulity, but in all the
unaffected simplicity with which one mentions a personal fact, to which
no shame or disgrace attaches. You may imagine, then, how unimpressively
fall upon the ear all those pompous announcements by which we travelling
English herald our high and mighty notions; the palaces we are about to
hire, the _fetes_ we are going to give, and the other splendors we mean
to indulge in.
I have read and re-read that part of your letter wherein you speak of
your wish to come and live abroad, so soon as the fruits of your life of
labor will enable you. Oh, my dear kind governess, with what emotion the
words filled me,--emotions very different from those you ever suspected
they would call up; for I bethought me how often I and others must have
added to that toilsome existence by our indolence, our carelessness, and
our wilfulness. In a moment there rose before me the anxieties you must
have suffered, the cares you must have endured, the hopes for those
who threw all their burdens upon _you_, and left to _you_ the blame of
_their_ shortcomings and the reproach of _their_ insufficiency.
What rest, what repose would ever requite such labor! How delighted am
I to say that there are places abroad where even the smallest fortunes
will suffice. I profited by the permission you gave me to show your
letter to Mrs. Morris, and she gave me in return a list of places for
you to choose from, at any one of which you could live with comfort for
less than you speak of. Some are in Belgium, some in Germany, and some
in Italy. Think, for instance, of a small house on the "Meuse," in the
midst of the most beauteous scenery, and with a country teeming in every
abundance around you, for twelve pounds a year, and all the material of
life equally cheap in proportion. Imagine the habits of a Grand-Ducal
capital, where the Prime Minister receives three hundred per annum, and
spends two; where the admission to the theatre is fourpence, and you go
to a Court dinner on foot at four o'clock in the day, and sit out of an
evening with your work in a public garden afterwards.
Now, I know that in Ireland or Scotland, and perhaps in Wales too,
places might be discovered where all the ordinary wants of life would
not be dearer than here, but then remember that to live with this
economy at home, you subject yourself to all that pertains to a small
estate; you endure the barbarizing influences of a solitary life, or,
what is worse, the vulgarity of village society. The well-to-do classes,
the educated and refined, will not associate with you. Not so here. Your
small means are no barrier against your admission into the best circles;
you will be received anywhere. Your black silk gown will be "toilet" for
the "Minister's reception," your white muslin will be good enough for a
ball at Court! When the army numbers in its cavalry fifty hussars, and
one battalion for its infantry, the simple resident need never blush for
his humble retinue, nor feel ashamed that a maid-servant escorts him
to a Court entertainment with a lantern, or that a latch-key and a
lucifer-match do duty for a hall-porter and a chandelier!
One night--I was talking of these things--Captain Morris quoted a Latin
author to the effect "that poverty had no such heavy infliction as in
its power to make people ridiculous." The remark sounds at first an
unfeeling one, but there is yet a true and deep philosophy in it, for it
is in our own abortive and silly attempts to gloss over narrow fortune
that the chief sting of poverty resides, and the ridicule alluded to
is all of our making! The poverty of two thousand a year can be thus as
glaringly absurd, as ridiculous, as that of two hundred, and even more
so, since its failures are more conspicuous.
Now, had we been satisfied to live in this way, it is not alone that we
should have avoided debt and embarrassment, but we should really have
profited largely besides. I do not speak of the negative advantages of
not mingling with those it had been better to have escaped; but that in
the society of these smaller capitals there is, especially in Germany, a
highly cultivated and most instructive class, slightly pedantic, it
may be, but always agreeable and affable. The domesticity of Germany is
little known to us, since even their writers afford few glimpses of
it. There are no Bulwers nor Bozes nor Thackerays to show the play of
passion, nor the working of deep feeling around the family board and
hearth. The cares of fathers, the hopes of sons, the budding anxieties
of the girlish heart, have few chroniclers. How these people think and
act and talk at home, and in the secret circle of their families, we
know as little as we do of the Chinese. It may be that the inquiry would
require long and deep and almost microscopic study. Life with them is
not as with us, a stormy wave-tossed ocean; it is rather a calm and
landlocked bay. They have no colonial empires, no vast territories for
military ambition to revel in, nor great enterprise to speculate on.
There are neither gigantic schemes of wealth, nor gold-fields to tempt
them. Existence presents few prizes, and as few vicissitudes. The march
of events is slow, even, and monotonous, and men conform themselves to
the same measure! How, then, do they live,--what are their loves, their
hates, their ambitions, their crosses, their troubles, and their joys?
How are they moved to pity,--how stirred to revenge? I own to you I
cannot even fancy this. The German heart seems to me a clasped volume;
and even Goethe has but shown us a chance page or two, gloriously
illustrated, I acknowledge, but closed as quickly as displayed.
Is Marguerite herself a type? I wish some one would tell me. Is that
childlike gentleness, that trustful nature, that resistless, passionate
devotion, warring with her piety, and yet heightened by it,--are these
German traits? They seem so; and yet do these Fraeuleins that I see, with
yellow hair, appear capable of this headlong and impetuous love. Faust,
I 'm convinced, is true to his nationality. He loves like a German,--and
is mad, and mystical, fond, dreamy, and devoted by turns.
But all these are not what I look for. I want a family picture--a
Teerburgh or a Mieris--painted by a German Dickens, or touched by a
native Titmarsh. So far as I have read of it, too, the German Drama
does not fill up this void; the comedies of the stage present nothing
identical of the people, and yet it appears to me they are singularly
good materials for portraiture. The stormy incidents of university life,
its curious vicissitudes, and its strange, half-crazed modes of thought
blend into the quiet realities of after-life, and make up men such as
one sees nowhere else. The tinge of romance they have contracted in
boyhood is never thoroughly washed out of their natures, and although
statecraft may elevate them to be grave privy councillors, or good
fortune select them for its revenue officers, they cherish the old
memories of Halle and Heidelberg, and can grow valorous over the shape
of a rapier, or pathetic about the color of Fraeulein Lydchen's hair.
It is doubtless very presumptuous in _me_ to speak thus of a people of
whom I have seen so little; but bear in mind, my dear Miss Cox, that I'm
rather giving Mrs. Morris's experiences than my own, and, in some cases,
in her own very words. She has a very extensive acquaintance in Germany,
and corresponds, besides, with many very distinguished persons of that
country. Perhaps private letters give a better insight into the habits
of a people than most other things, and if so, one should pronounce very
favorably of German character from the specimens I have seen. There are
everywhere, great truthfulness, great fairness; a willingness to concede
to others a standard different from their own; a hopeful tone in all
things, and extreme gentleness towards women and children. Of rural
life, and of scenery, too, they speak with true feeling-; and, as Sir
Walter said of Goethe, "they understand trees."
You will wish to hear something of Bregenz, where we are staying at
present, and I have little to say beyond its situation in a little
bay on the Lake of Constance, begirt with high mountains, amidst which
stretches a level flat, traversed by the Rhine. The town itself is
scarcely old enough to be picturesque, though from a distance on the
lake the effect is very pleasing. A part is built upon a considerable
eminence, the ascent to which is by a very steep street, impassable save
on foot; at the top of this is an old gateway, the centre of which is
ornamented by a grotesque attempt at sculpture, representing a female
figure seated on a horse, and, to all seeming, traversing the clouds.
The phenomenon is explained by a legend, that tells how a Bregenzer
maiden, some three and a half centuries ago, had gone to seek her
fortune in Switzerland, and becoming domesticated there in a family,
lived for years among the natural enemies of her people. Having learned
by an accident one night, that an attack was meditated on her native
town, she stole away unperceived, and, taking a horse, swam the current
of the Rhine, and reached Bregenz in time to give warning of the
threatened assault, and thus rescued her kinsmen and her birthplace from
sack and slaughter. This is the act commemorated by the sculpture, and
the stormy waves of the river are doubtless typified in what seem to be
clouds.
There is, however, a far more touching memory of the heroism preserved
than this; for each night, as the watchman goes his round of the
village, when he comes to announce midnight, he calls aloud the name of
her who at the same dead hour, three centuries back, came to wake the
sleeping town and tell them of their peril. I do not know of a monument
so touching as this! No bust nor statue, no group of marble or bronze,
can equal in association the simple memory transmitted from age to age,
and preserved ever fresh and green in the hearts of a remote generation.
As one thinks of this, the mind at once reverts to the traditions of
the early Church, and insensibly one is led to feel the beauty of those
transmitted words and acts, which, associated with place, and bound up
with customs not yet obsolete, gave such impressive truthfulness to
all the story of our faith. At the same time, it is apparent that the
current of tradition cannot long run pure. Even now there are those who
scoff at the grateful record of the Bregenzer maiden! Where will her
memory be five years after the first railroad traverses the valley of
the Vorarlberg? The shrill whistle of the "express" is the death-note to
all the romance of life!
Some deplore this, and assert that, with this immense advancement of
scientific discovery, we are losing the homely virtues of our fathers.
Others pretend that we grow better as we grow wiser, and that increased
intelligence is but another form of enlarged goodness. To myself, the
great change seems to be that every hour of this progress diminishes the
influences of woman, and that, as men grow deeper and deeper engaged in
the pursuits of wealth, the female voice is less listened to, and its
counsels less heeded and cared for.
But why do I dare to hazard such conjectures to you, so far more capable
of judging, so much more able to solve questions like this!
I am sorry not to be able to speak more confidently about my music; but
although Germany is essentially the land of song, there is less domestic
cultivation of the art than I had expected; or, rather, it is made less
a matter of display. Your mere acquaintances seldom or never will sing
for your amusement; your friends as rarely refuse you. To our notions,
also, it seems strange that men are more given to the art here than
women. The Frau is almost entirely devoted to household cares. Small
fortunes and primitive habits seem to require this, and certainly no one
who has ever witnessed the domestic peace of a German family could find
fault with the system.
What has most struck me of all here, is the fact that while many of the
old people retain a freshness of feeling, and a warm susceptibility that
is quite remarkable, the children are uniformly grave, even to sadness.
The bold, dashing, half-reckless boy; the gay, laughing, high-spirited
girl,--have no types here. The season of youth, as we under-stand it,
in all its jocund merriment, its frolics, and its wildness, has no
existence amongst them. The child of ten seems weighted with the
responsibilities of manhood; the little sister carries her keys about,
and scolds the maids with all the semblance of maternal rigor. Would
that these liquid blue eyes had a more laughing look, and that pretty
mouth could open to joyous laughter!
With all these drawbacks, it is still a country that I love to live
in, and should leave with regret; besides that, I have as yet seen but
little of it, and its least remarkable parts.
Whither we go hence, and when, are points that I cannot inform you on.
I am not sure, indeed, if any determination on the subject has been come
to. Mamma and Mary Anne seem most eager for Rome and Naples; but though
I should anticipate a world of delight and interest in these cities, I
am disposed to think that they would prove far too expensive,--at least
with our present tastes and habits.
Wherever my destiny, however, I shall not cease to remember my dear
governess, nor to convey to her, in all the frankness of my affection,
every thought and feeling of her sincerely attached
Caroline Dodd.