Bregenz.
My dear Tom,--Although it is improbable I shall be able to despatch
this by the post of to-day, I take the opportunity of a few moments
of domestic peace to answer your last--I wish I could say
agreeable--letter. It is not that your intentions are not everything
that consists with rectitude and honor, or that your sentiments are not
always those of a right-minded man, but I beg to observe to you, Tom
Pur-cell, in all the candor of a five-and-forty years' friendship, that
you have about the same knowledge of life and the world that a toad has
of Lord Rosse's telescope.
We have come abroad for an object, which, whether attainable or not, is
not now the question; but if there be any prospect whatever of realizing
it,--confound the phrase, but I have no other at hand,--it is surely
by an ample and liberal style of living, such as shall place us on a
footing of equality with the best society, and make the Dodds eligible
anywhere.
I suppose you admit that much. I take it for granted that even bucolic
dulness is capable of going so far. Well, then, what do you mean by your
incessant appeals to "retrenchment" and "economy"? Don't you see that
you make yourself just as preposterous as Cobden, when he says, cut down
the estimates, reduce the navy, and dismiss your soldiers, but still
be a first-rate power. Tie your hands behind your back, but cry out,
"Beware of me, for I'm dreadful when I'm angry."
You quote me against myself; you bring up my old letters, like Hansard,
against me, and say that all our attempts have been failures; but
without calling you to order for referring "to what passed in another
place," I will reply to you on your own grounds. If we have failed, it
has been because our resources did not admit of our maintaining to the
end what we had begun in splendor,--that our means fell short of our
requirements,--that, in fact, with a well-chosen position and picked
troops, we lost the battle only for want of ammunition, having fired
away all our powder in the beginning of the engagement. Whose fault was
_that_, I beg to ask? Can the Commissary-General Purcell come clear out
of _that_ charge?
I know your hair-splitting habit; I at once anticipate your reply. An
agent and a commissary are two very different things! And just as flatly
I tell you, you are wrong, and that, rightly considered, the duties of
both are precisely analogous, and that a general commanding an army, and
an Irish landlord travelling on the Continent, present a vast number of
points of similitude and resemblance. In the one case as in the other,
supplies are indispensable; come what will, the forces must be fed,
and if it it would be absurd for the general to halt in his march and
inquire into all the difficulties of providing stores, it would be
equally preposterous for the landlord to arrest his career by going
into every petty grievance of his tenantry, and entering into a minute
examination of the state of every cottier on his laud. Send the rations,
Tom, and I 'll answer for the campaign. I don't mean to say that
there are not some hardships attendant upon this. I know that to raise
contributions an occasional severity must be employed; but is the
fate of a great engagement to be jeopardized for the sake of such
considerations? No, no, Tom. Even your spirit will recoil from such an
admission as this!
It is only fair to mention that these are not merely my own sentiments.
Lord George Tiverton, to whom I happened to show your letter, was
really shocked at the contents. I don't wish to offend you, Tom, but the
expression he used was, "It is fortunate for your friend Purcell that he
is not _my_ agent" I will not repeat what he said about the management
of English landed property, but it is obvious that our system is not
their system, and that such a thing as a landlord in _my_ position is
actually unheard of. "If Ireland were subject to earthquakes," said he,
"if the arable land were now and then covered over ten feet deep with
lava, I could understand your agent's arguments; but wanting these
causes, they are downright riddles to me."
He was most anxious to obtain possession of your letter; and I learned
from Mary Anne that he really meant to use it in the House, and show you
up bodily as one of the prominent causes of Irish misery. I have saved
you from this exposure, but I really cannot spare you some of the
strictures your conduct calls for.
I must also observe to you that there is what the Duke used to call "a
terrible sameness" about your letters. The potatoes are always going to
rot, the people always going to leave. It rains for ten weeks at a time,
and if you have three fine days you cry out that the country is
ruined by drought. Just for sake of a little variety, can't you take
a prosperous tone for once, instead of "drawing my attention," as you
superciliously phrase it, to the newspaper announcement about "George
Davis and other petitioners, and the lands of Ballyclough, Kiltimaon,
and Knocknaslat-tery, being part of the estates of James Kenny Dodd,
Esq., of Dodsborough." I have already given you my opinion about
that Encumbered Estates Court, and I see no reason for changing it.
Confiscation is a mild name for its operation. What Ireland really
wanted was a loan fund,--a good round sum, say three and a half or
four millions, lent out on reasonable security, but free from all
embarrassing conditions. Compel every proprietor to plant so many
potatoes for the use of the poor, and get rid of those expensive
absurdities called "Unions," with all the lazy, indolent officials; do
that, and we might have a chance of prospering once more.
It makes me actually sick to hear you, an Irishman born and bred,
repeating all that English balderdash about "a cheap and indisputable
title." and so forth. Do you remember about four-and-twenty years ago,
Tom, when I wanted to breach a place for a window in part of the old
house at Dodsborough, and Hackett warned me that if I touched a stone of
it I 'd maybe have the whole edifice come tumbling about my ears. Don't
you see the analogy between that and our condition as landlords, and
that our real security lay in the fact that nobody could dare to breach
us? Meddle with us once, and who could tell where the ruin would fall!
So long as the system lasted we were safe, Tom. Now, your Encumbered
Court, with its parliamentary title, has upset all that security; and
that's the reason of all the distress and misfortune that have overtaken
us.
I think, after the specimen of my opinions, I 'll hear no more of your
reproaches about my "growing indifference to home topics," my "apparent
apathy regarding Ireland," and other similar reflections in your
last letter. Forget my country, indeed! Does a man ever forget the
cantharides when he has a blister on his back? If I 'm warm, I 'm sorry
for it; but it 's your own fault, Tom Purcell. You know me since I was
a child, and understand my temper well; and whatever it was once, it
hasn't improved by conjugal felicity.
And now for the Home Office. James started last night for London, to
go through whatever formalities there may be before receiving his
appointment. What it is to be, or where, I have not an idea; but I cling
to the hope that when they see the lad, and discover his utter ignorance
on all subjects, it will be something very humble, and not requiring a
sixpence from me. All that I have seen of the world shows me that the
higher you look for your children the more they cost you; and for that
reason, if I had my choice, I 'd rather have him a gauger than in the
Grenadier Guards. Even as it is, the outfit for this journey has run
away with no small share of your late remittance, and now that we
have come to the end of the M'Carthy legacy,--the last fifty was
"appropriated" by James before starting,--it will require all the
financial skill you can command to furnish me with sufficient means for
our new campaign.
Yes, Tom, we are going to Italy. I have discussed the matter so long,
and so fully argued it in every shape, artistical, philosophical,
economical, and moral, that I verily believe that our dialogues would
furnish a very respectable manual to Trans-Alpine travellers; and if I
am not a convert to the views of my opponents, I am so far vanquished in
the controversy as to give in. Lord George put the matter, I must say,
very strongly before me. "To turn your steps homeward from the Alps,"
said he, "is like the act of a man who, having dressed for an evening
party and ascended the stairs, wheels round at the door of the
drawing-room, and quits the house. All your previous knowledge of the
Continent, so costly and so difficult to attain, is about at length to
become profitable; that insight into foreign life and habits which you
have arrived at by study and observation, is now about to be available.
Italy is essentially the land of taste, elegance, and refinement; and
there will all the varied gifts and acquirements of your accomplished
family be appreciated." Besides this, Tom, he showed me that the
"Snobs," as he politely designated them, are all "Cis-Alpine;" strictly
confining themselves to the Rhine and Switzerland, and never descending
the southern slopes of the Alps. According to his account, therefore,
the climate of Italy is not more marked by superiority than the tone of
its society. There all is polished, elegant, and refined; and if the
men be "not all brave, and the women all virtuous," it is because "their
moral standard is one more in accordance with the ancient traditions,
the temper, and the instincts of the people." I quote you his words
here, because very possibly they may be more intelligible to you than
to myself. At all events, one thing is quite clear,--we ought to go and
judge for ourselves, and to this resolve have we come. Tiverton--without
whom we should be actually helpless--has arranged the whole affair, and,
really, with a regard to economy that, considering his habits and his
station, can only be attributed to a downright feeling of friendship
for us. By a mere accident he hit upon a villa at Como, for a mere
trifle,--he won't tell me the sum, but he calls it a "nothing,"--and
now he has, with his habitual good luck, chanced upon a return carriage
going to Milan, the driver of which horses our carriage, and takes the
servants with him, for very little more than the keep of his beasts on
the road. This piece of intelligence will tickle every stingy fibre in
your economical old heart, and at last shall I know you to mutter, "K.
I. is doing the prudent thing."
Tiverton himself says, "It's not exactly the most elegant mode of
travelling; but as the season is early, and the Splugen a pass seldom
traversed, we shall slip down to Como unobserved, and save some forty
or fifty 'Naps.' without any one being the wiser." Mrs. D. would,
of course, object if she had the faintest suspicion that it was
inexpensive; but "my Lord," who seems to read her like a book, has told
her that it is the very mode in which all the aristocracy travel, and
that by a happy piece of fortune we have secured the vetturino that took
Prince Albert to Rome, and the Empress of Russia to Palermo!
He has, or he is to find, four horses for our coach, and three for
his own; we are to take the charge of bridges, barriers, rafts, and
"remounts," and give him, besides, five Napoleons _per diem_, and a
"buona mano," or gratuity, of three more, if satisfied, at the end of
the journey. Now, nothing could be more economical than this; for we are
a large party, and with luggage enough to fill a ship's jolly-boat.
You see, therefore, what it is to have a shrewd and intelligent friend.
You and I might have walked the main street of Bregenz till our shoes
were thin, before we discovered that the word "Gelegenheit," chalked up
on the back-leather of an old caleche, meant "A return conveniency to be
had cheap." The word is a German one, and means "Opportunity:" and ah!
my dear Tom, into what a strange channel does it entice one's thoughts!
What curious reflections come across the mind as we think of all our
real opportunities in this world, and how little we did of them! Not but
there might be a debit side to the account, too, and that some two or
three may have escaped us that it was just as well we let pass!
We intended to have left this to-morrow, but Mrs. D. won't travel on
a Friday. "It's an unlucky day," she says, and maybe she's right. If I
don't mistake greatly, it was on a Friday I was married; but of course
this is a reminiscence I keep to myself. This reminds me of the question
in your postscript, and to which I reply: "Not a bit of it; nothing of
the kind. So far as I see, Tiverton feels a strong attachment to James,
but never even notices the girls. I ought to add that this is not Mrs.
D.'s opinion; and she is always flouncing into my dressing-room, with
a new discovery of a look that he gave Mary Anne, or a whisper that he
dropped into Cary's ear. Mothers would be a grand element in a detective
police, if they did n't now and then see more than was in sight; but
that's their failing, Tom. The same generous zeal which they employ
in magnifying their husbands' faults helps them to many another
exaggeration. Now Mrs. D. is what she calls fully persuaded--in other
words, she has some shadowy suspicions--that Lord George has formed a
strong attachment to one or other of her daughters, the only doubtful
point being which of them is to be my Lady."
Shall I confess to you that I rather cherish the notion than seek to
disabuse her of it, and for this simple reason: whenever she is in
full cry after grandeur, whether in the shape of an acquaintance, an
invitation, or a match for the girls, she usually gives me a little
peace and quietness. The peerage, "God bless our old nobility," acts
like an anodyne on her.
I give you, therefore, both sides of the question, repeating once more
my own conviction that Lord G. has no serious intentions, to use the
phrase maternal, whatever. And now to your second query: If not, is it
prudent to encourage his intimacy? Why, Tom Purcell, just bethink you
for a moment, and see to what a strange condition would your theory, if
acted on, resolve all the inhabitants of the globe. Into one or other
category they must go infallibly. "Either they want to marry one of the
Dodds, or they don't." Now, though the fact is palpable enough, it is
for all purposes of action a most embarrassing one; and if I proceed to
make use of it, I shall either be doomed to very tiresome acquaintances,
or a life of utter solitude and desertion.
Can't a man like your society, your dinners, your port, your jokes, and
your cigars, but he must perforce marry one of your daughters? Is your
house to be like a rat-trap, and if a fellow puts his head in must he be
caught? I don't like the notion at all; and not the less that it rather
throws a slight over certain convivial gifts and agreeable qualities for
which, once upon a time at least, I used to have some reputation. As to
Tiverton, I like _him_, and I have a notion that he likes _me_, We suit
each other as well as it is possible for two men bred, born, and brought
up so perfectly unlike. We both have seen a great deal of the world, or
rather of two worlds, for _his_ is not _mine_. At the same time, every
remark he makes--and all his observations show me that mankind is
precisely the same thing everywhere, and that it is exactly with the
same interests, the same impulses, and the same passions my Lord bets
his thousands at "Crocky's" that Billy Healey or Father Tom ventures his
half-crown at the Pig and Pincers, in Bruff. I used to think that what
with races, elections, horse-fairs, and the like, I had seen my share of
rascality or roguery; but, compared to my Lord's experiences, I might be
a babe in the nursery. There is n't a dodge--not a piece of knavery that
was ever invented--he doesn't know. Trickery and deception of every kind
are all familiar to him, and, as he says himself, he only wants a few
weeks in a convict settlement to put the finish on his education.
You 'd fancy, from what I say, that he must be a cold, misanthropic,
suspectful fellow, with an ill-natured temper, and a gloomy view of
everybody and everything. Far from it, his whole theory of life is
benevolent; and his maxim, to believe every one honorable, trustworthy,
and amiable. I see the half-cynical smile with which you listen to this,
and I already know the remark that trembles on your lip. You would
say that such a code cuts both ways, and that a man who pronounces so
favorably of his fellows almost secures thereby a merciful verdict on
himself. In fact, that he who passes base money can scarcely refuse,
now and then, to accept a bad halfpenny in change. Well, Tom, I 'll not
argue the case with you, for if not myself a disciple of this creed,
I have learned to think that there are very few, indeed, who are
privileged to play censor upon their acquaintances, and that there is
always the chance that when you are occupied looking at your neighbor
drifting on a lee shore, you may bump on a rock yourself.
You said in your last that you thought me more lax than I used to be
about right and wrong,--"less strait-laced," you were polite enough to
call it; and with an equal urbanity you ascribed this change in me to
the habits of the Continent. I am proud to say "Guilty" to the charge,
and I believe you are right as to the cause. Yes, Tom, the tone of
society abroad is eminently merciful, and it must needs be a bad case
where there are no attenuating circumstances. So much the worse, say
you; where vice is leniently looked on, it will be sure to flourish. To
which I answer, Show me where it does not! Is it in the modern Babylon,
is it in moral Scotland, or drab-colored Washington? On my conscience, I
don't believe there is more of wickedness in a foreign city than a
home one; the essential difference being that we do wrong with a
consciousness of our immorality; whereas the foreigner has a strong
impression that after all it's only a passing frailty, and that human
nature was not ever intended to be perfect. Which system tends most to
corrupt a people, and which creates more hopeless sinners, I leave to
you, and others as fond of such speculations, to ponder over.
Another charge--for your letter has as many counts as an
indictment--another you make against me is that I seem as if I was
beginning to like--or, as you modestly phrase it--as if I was getting
more reconciled to the Continent. Maybe I am, now that I have learned
how to qualify the light wines with a little brandy, and to make my
dinner of the eight or nine, instead of the two-and-thirty dishes they
serve up to you; and since I have trained myself to walk the length of
a street, in rain or sunshine, without my hat, and have attained to the
names of the cards at whist in a foreign tongue, I believe I do feel
more at home here than at first; but still I am far, very far, in arrear
of the knowledge that a man bred and born abroad would possess at my
age. To begin, Tom: He would be a perfect cook; you couldn't put a clove
of garlic too little, or an olive too much, without his detecting it in
the dish. Secondly, he would be curious in snuffs, and a dead hand at
dominos; then he would be deep in the private histories of the ballet,
and tell you the various qualities of short-draperied damsels that had
figured on the boards for the last thirty years. These, and such-like,
would be the consolations of his declining years; and of these I know
absolutely next to nothing. Who knows, however, but I may improve? The
world is a wonderful schoolmaster, and if Mrs. D. is to be believed, I
am an apt scholar whenever the study is of an equivocal kind.
We hope to spend the late autumn at Como, and then step down into some
of the cities of the South for the winter months. The approved plan is
Florence till about the middle of January, Rome till the beginning
of Lent, then Naples till the Holy Week, whence back again for the
ceremonies. After that, northward wherever you please. All this sounds
like a good deal of locomotion, and, consequently, of expense; but Lord
G. says, "Just leave it to _me_, I'll be your courier;" and as he not
only performs that function, but unites with it that of banker,--he can
get anything discounted at any moment,--I am little disposed to depose
him from his office. Now no more complaints that I have not replied to
you about this, that, and t' other, not informed you about our future
movements, nor given you any hint as to our plans: you know everything
about us, at least so far as it is known to your
Very sincere friend,
Kenny I. Dodd.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I am too late for the post, so I 'll
keep this open if anything should occur to me before the next mail.
The Inn, Splugen, Monday.
I thought this was already far on its way to you; but, to my great
surprise, on opening my writing-desk this morning, I discovered it
there still. The truth is, I grow more absent, and what the French call
"distracted," every day; and it frequently happens that I forget some
infernal bill or other, till the fellow knocks at the door with "the
notice." Here we are, at a little inn on the very top of the Alps.
We arrived yesterday, and, to our utter astonishment, found ourselves
suddenly in a land of snow and icebergs. The whole way from Bregenz the
season was a mellow autumn: some of the corn was still standing, but
most was cut, and the cattle turned out over the stubble; the trees were
in full leaf, and the mountain rivulets were clear and sparkling, for no
rain had fallen for some time back. It was a picturesque road and full
of interest in many ways. From Coire we made a little excursion across
the Rhine to a place called Ragatz,--a kind of summer resort for
visitors who come to bathe and drink the waters of Pfeffers, one of
the most extraordinary sights I ever beheld. These baths are built in
a cleft of the mountain, about a thousand feet in depth, and scarcely
thirty wide in many parts; the sides of the precipices are straight as a
wall, and only admit of a gleam of the sun when perfectly vertical. The
gloom and solemnity of the spot, its death-like stillness and shade,
even at noonday, are terribly oppressive. Nor is the sadness dispelled
by the living objects of the picture,--Swiss, Germans, French, and
Italians, swathed in flannel dressing-gowns and white dimity cerements,
with nightcaps and slippers, steal along the gloomy corridors and the
gloomier alleys, pale, careworn, and cadaverous. They come here for
health, and their whole conversation is sickness. Now, however consoling
it may be to an invalid to find a recipient of his sorrows, the price
of listening in turn is a tremendous infliction. Nor is the character of
the scene such as would probably suggest agreeable reflections; had it
been the portico to the nameless locality itself, it could not possibly
be more dreary and sorrow-stricken. Now, whatever virtues the waters
possess, is surely antagonized by all this agency of gloom and
depression; and except it be as a preparation for leaving the world
without regret, this place seems to be marvellously ill adapted for its
object. It appears to me, however, that foreigners run into the greatest
extremes in these matters; a sick man must either live in a perpetual
Vauxhall of fireworks, music, dancing, dining, and gambling, as at
Baden, or be condemned to the worse than penitentiary diet and prison
discipline of Pfeffers! Surely there must be some halting-place between
the ball-room and the cloister, or some compromise of costume between
silk stockings and bare feet! But really, to a thinking, reasonable
being, it appears very distressing that you must either dance out of the
world to Strauss's music, or hobble miserably out of life to the sound
of the falling waters of Pfeffers.
Does it not sound, also, very oddly to our free-trade notions of malady,
that the doctor of these places is appointed by the State; that without
his sanction and opinion of your case, you must neither bathe nor drink;
that no matter how satisfied you may be with your own physician, nor how
little to your liking the Government medico, he has the last word on the
subject of your disorder, and without his wand the pool is never to be
stirred in your behalf. You don't quite approve of this, Tom,--neither
do I. The State has no more a right to choose my doctor than to select
a wife for me. If there be anything essentially a man's own prerogative,
it is his--what shall I call it?--his caprice about his medical adviser.
One man likes a grave, sententious, silently disposed fellow, who feels
his pulse, shakes his head, takes his fee, and departs, with scarcely
more than a muttered monosyllable; another prefers the sympathetic
doctor, that goes half-and-half in all his sufferings, lies awake at
night thinking of his case, and seems to rest his own hopes of future
bliss in life on curing him. As for myself, I lean to the fellow that,
no matter what ails me, is sure to make me pass a pleasant half-hour;
that has a lively way of laughing down all my unpleasant symptoms, and
is certain to have a droll story about a patient that he has just come
from. That's the man for my money; and I wish you could tell me where a
man gets as good value as for the guinea be gives to one of these. Now,
from what I have seen of the Continent, this is an order of which
they have no representative. All the professional classes, but more
essentially the medical, are taken from an inferior grade in society,
neither brought up in intercourse with the polite world, nor ever
admitted to it afterwards. The consequence is, that your doctor comes
to visit you as your shoemaker to measure you for shoes, and it would
be deemed as great a liberty were he to talk of anything but your
complaint, as for Crispin to impart his sentiments about Russia or the
policy of Louis Napoleon. I don't like the system, and I am convinced
it does n't work well. If I know anything of human nature, too, it is
this,--that nobody tells the whole truth to his physician _till he can't
help it_. No, Tom, it only comes out after a long cross-examination,
great patience, and a deal of dodging; and for these you must have no
vulgarly minded, commonplace, underbred fellow, but a consummate man of
the world, who knows when you are bamboozling him and when fencing him
off with a sham. He must be able to use all the arts of a priest in the
confessional, and an advocate in a trial, with a few more of his own not
known to either, to extort your secret from you; and I am sure that a
man of vulgar habits and low associations is not the best adapted for
this.
I wanted to stop and dine with this lugubrious company. I was curious
to see what they ate, and whether their natures attained any social
expansion under the genial influences of food and drink; but Mrs. D.
would n't hear of it. She had detected, she said, an "impudent hussy
with black eyes" bestowing suspicious glances at your humble servant. I
thought that she was getting out of these fancies,--I fondly hoped that
a little peace on these subjects would in a degree reconcile me to many
of the discomforts of old age; but, alas! the gray hairs and the stiff
ankles have come, and no writ of ease against conjugal jealousies.
Away we came, fresh and fasting, and as there was nothing to be had at
Ragatz, we were obliged to go on to Coire before we got supper; and if
you only knew what it is to arrive at one of these foreign inns after
the hour of the ordinary meals, you 'd confess there was little risk of
our committing an excess.
I own to you, Tom, that the excursion scarcely deserved to be called
a pleasant one. Fatigue, disappointment, and hunger are but ill
antagonized by an outbreak of temper; and Mrs. D. lightened the way
homeward by a homily on fidelity that would have made Don Juan appear
deserving of being canonized as a saint! I must also observe that
Tiverton's conduct on this occasion was the very reverse of what I
expected from him. A shrewd, keen fellow like him could not but know in
his heart that Mrs. D.'s suspicions were only nonsense and absurdity;
and yet what did he do but play shocked and horrified, agreed completely
with every ridiculous notion of my wife, and actually went so far as to
appeal to me as a father against myself as a profligate. I almost choked
with passion; and if it was not that we were under obligations to him
about James's business, I'm not certain I should not have thrown him
out of the coach. I wish to the saints that the women would take to
any other line of suspicion, even for the sake of variety,--fancy me an
incurable drunkard, a gambler, an uncertificated bankrupt, or a forger.
I'm not certain if I would not accept the charge of a transportable
felony rather than be regarded as the sworn enemy of youth and virtue,
and the snake in the grass to all unprotected females.
From Coire we travelled on to Reichenau, a pretty village at the foot
of the Alps, watered by the Rhine, which is there a very inconsiderable
stream, and with as little promise of future greatness as any barrister
of six years' standing you please to mention. There is a neat-looking
chateau, which stands on a small terrace above the river here, not
without a certain interest attached to it. It was here that Louis
Philippe, then Duke of Orleans, taught mathematics in the humble
capacity of usher to a school. Just fancy that deep politician--the
wiliest head in all Europe, with the largest views of statecraft, and
the most consummate knowledge of men--instilling angles and triangles
into impracticable numskulls, and crossing the Asses' bridge ten times a
day with lame and crippled intellects.
It would be curious to know what views of mankind, what studies of
life, he made during this period. Such a man was not made to suffer
any opportunity, no matter how inconsiderable in itself, to escape him
without profiting; and it may be easily believed that in the monarchy of
a school he might have meditated over the rule of large masses.
History can scarcely present greater changes of fortune than those that
have befallen that family, which is the more singular, since they
have been brought about neither by great talents nor great crimes. The
Orleans family was more remarkable for the qualities which shine in
the middle ranks of life than either for any towering genius or
any unscrupulous ambition. Their strength was essentially in this
mediocrity, and it was a momentary forgetfulness of that same
stronghold--by the Spanish marriage--that cost the King his throne. The
truth was, Tom, that the nation never liked us,--they hated England just
as they hated it at Cressy, at Blenheim, and at Waterloo, and will hate
it, notwithstanding your great Industrial gatherings, to the end of
time. They were much dissatisfied with Louis Philippe's policy of
an English alliance; they deemed it disadvantageous, costly, and
humiliating; but that it should be broken up and destroyed for an object
of mere family, for a piece of dynastic ambition, was a gross outrage
and affront to the spirit of national pride. It was the sentiment of
insulted honor that leagued the followers of the Orleans branch with the
Legitimists and the Republicans, and formed that terrible alliance that
extended from St. Antoine to the Faubourg St. Germain, and included
every one from the peer to the common laborer.
All this prosing about politics will never take us over the Alps; and,
indeed, so far as I can see, there is small prospect of that event just
now; for it has been snowing smartly all night, with a strong southerly
wind, which they say always leaves heavy drifts in different parts of
the mountain.
We are cooped up here in a curious, straggling kind of an inn, that
gradually dwindles away into a barn, a stable, and a great shed, filled
with disabled diligences and smashed old sledges,--an incurable asylum
for diseased conveyances. The house stands in a cleft of the hills; but
from the windows you can see the zigzag road that ascends for miles in
front, and which now is only marked by long poles, already some ten or
twelve feet deep in snow. It is snow on every side,--on the mountains,
on the roofs, on the horses that stand shaking their bells at the door,
on the conducteur that drinks his schnaps, on the postilion as he
lights his pipe. The thin flakes are actually plating his whiskers and
moustaches, till he looks like one of the "Old Guard," as we see them in
a melodrama.
Tiverton, who conducts all our arrangements, has had a row with our
vetturino, who says that he never contracted to take us over the
mountain in sledges; and as the carriages cannot run on wheels, here
we are discussing the question. There have been three stormy debates
already, and another is to come off this afternoon; meanwhile, the snow
is falling heavily, and whatever chance there was of getting forward
yesterday is now ten times less practicable. The landlord of our inn is
to be arbiter, I understand; and as he is the proprietor of the sledges
we shall have to hire, if defeated, without impugning in any way the
character of Alpine justice, you can possibly anticipate the verdict.
A word upon this vetturino system ere I leave it,--I hope forever. It
is a perfect nuisance from beginning to end. From the moment you set off
with one of these rascals, till the hour you arrive at your journey's
end, it is plague, squabble, insolence, and torment. They start at what
hour of the morning they please; they halt where they like, and for as
long as they like, invariably, too, at the worst wayside inns,--away
from a town and from all chance of accommodation,--since rye-bread and
sour wine, with a mess of stewed garlic, will always satisfy _them_.
They rarely drive at full five miles the hour, and walk every inch with
an ascent of a foot in a hundred yards. If expostulated with by the
wretched traveller, they halt in some public place, and appeal to the
bystanders in some dialect unknown to you. The result of which is that
a ferocious mob surrounds you, and with invectives, insults, and
provocative gestures assail and outrage you, till it please your
tormentor to drive on; which you do at length amidst hooting and uproar
that even convicted felons would feel ashamed of.
On reaching your inn at night, they either give such a representation of
you as gets you denied admittance at all, or obtain for you the enviable
privilege of paying for everything "en Milor." Between being a swindler
and an idiot the chance alone lies for you. Then they refuse to unstrap
your luggage; or if they do so, tie it on again so insecurely that it
is sure to drop off next day. I speak not of a running fire of petty
annoyances; such as fumigating you with pestilent tobacco, nor the
blessed enjoyment of that infernal Spitz dog which stands all day on the
roof, and barks every mile of the road from Berne to Naples. As to any
redress against their insolence, misconduct, or extortion, it is utterly
hopeless,--and for this reason: they are sure to have a hundred petty
occasions of rendering small services to the smaller authorities of
every village they frequent. They carry the judge's mother for nothing
to a watering-place; or they fetch his aunt to the market town; or they
smuggle for him--or thieve for him--something that is only to be had
over the frontier. Very probably, too, on the very morning of your
appeal, you have kicked the same judge's brother, he being the waiter
of your inn, and having given you bad money in change,--at all events,
_you_ are not likely ever to be met with again; the vetturino is certain
to come back within the year; and, finally, you are sure to have money,
and be able to pay,--so that, as the Irish foreman said, as the reason
for awarding heavy damages against an Englishman, "It is a fine thing to
bring so much money into the country."
Take my word for it, Tom, the system is a perfect disgust from beginning
to end, and even its cheapness only a sham; for your economy is more
than counterbalanced by police fees, fines, and impositions, delays,
remounts, bulls, and starved donkeys, paid for at a price they would not
bring if sold at a market. Post, if you can afford it; take the public
conveyances, if you must; but for the sake of all that is decent and
respectable,--all that consists with comfort and self-respect,--avoid
the vetturino! I know that a contrary opinion has a certain prevalence
in the world,--I am quite aware that these rascals have their
advocates,--and no bad ones either,--since they are women.
I have witnessed more than one Giuseppe, or Antonio, with a beard,
whiskers, and general "get up," that would have passed muster in a comic
opera; and on looking at the fellow's book of certificates (for such as
these always have a bound volume, smartly enclosed in a neat case), I
have found that "Mrs. Miles Dalrymple and daughters made the journey
from Milan to Aix-les-Bains with Francesco Birbante, and found him
excessively attentive, civil, and obliging; full of varied information
about the road, and quite a treasure to ladies travelling alone."
Another of these villains is styled "quite an agreeable companion;" one
was called "charming;" and I found that Miss Matilda Somers, of Queen's
Road, Old Brompton, pronounces Luigi Balderdasci, although in the
humble rank of a vetturino, "an accomplished gentleman." I know,
therefore, how ineffectual would it be for Kenny Dodd to enter the lists
against such odds, and it is only under the seal of secrecy that I dare
to mutter them. The widows and the fatherless form a strong category in
foreign travel; dark dresses and demure looks are very vagrant in their
habits, and I am not going to oppose myself single-handed to such a
united force. But to you, Tom Purceli, I may tell the truth in all
confidence and security. If I was in authority, I 'd shave these
scoundrels to-morrow. I 'd not suffer a moustache, a red sash, nor a
hat with a feather amongst them; and take my word for it, the panegyrics
would be toned down, and we'd read much more about the horses than the
drivers, and learn how many miles a day they could travel, and not how
many sonnets of Petrarch the rascal could repeat.
I have lost my "John Murray." I forgot it in our retreat from Pfeffers;
so that I don't remember whether he lauds these fellows or the reverse,
but the chances are it is the former. It is one of the endless delusions
travellers fall into, and many's the time I have had to endure a
tiresome description of their delightful vetturino, that "charming
Beppo, who, 'however he got them,' had a bouquet for each of us every
morning at breakfast." If I ever could accomplish the writing of that
book I once spoke to you about upon the Continent and foreign travels, I
'd devote a whole chapter to these fellows; and more than that, Tom, I'd
have an Appendix--a book of travels is nothing without an Appendix in
small print--wherein I'd give a list of all these scoundrels who have
been convicted as bandits, thieves, and petty larceners; of all their
misdeeds against old gentlemen with palsy, and old ladies with "nerves."
I 'd show them up, not as heroes but highwaymen; and take my word for
it, I 'd be doing good service to the writers of those sharply formed
little paragraphs now so enthusiastic about Giovanni, and so full of
"grateful recollections" of "poor Giuseppe."
I am positively ashamed to say how many of the observations, ay, and of
the printed observations of travellers, I have discovered to have their
origin in this same class; and that what the tourist jotted down as
his own remark on men and manners, was the stereotyped opinion of
these illiterate vagabonds. But as for books of travel, Tom, of all the
humbugs of a humbugging age, there is nothing can approach them. I have
heard many men talk admirably about foreign life and customs. I have
never chanced upon one who could write about them. It is not only
that your really smart fellows do not write; but that, to pronounce
authoritatively on a people, one must have a long and intimate
acquaintance with them. Now, this very fact alone to a great degree
invalidates the freshness of observation; for what we are accustomed
to see every day ceases to strike us as worthy of remark. To the raw
tourist, all is strange, novel, and surprising; and if he only record
what he sees, he will tell much that everybody knows, but also some
things that are not quite so familiar to the multitude. Now, your old
resident abroad knows the Continent too well and too thoroughly to find
any one incident or circumstance peculiar. To take an illustration: A
man who had never been at a play in his life would form a far better
conception of what a theatre was like from hearing the description of
one from an intelligent child, who had been there once, than from the
most labored criticism on the acting from an old frequenter of the pit.
Hence the majority of these tours have a certain success at home; but
for the man who comes abroad, and wishes to know something that may aid
to guide his steps, form his opinions, and direct his judgment, believe
me they are not worth a brass farthing. There is this also to be taken
into account,--that every observer is, more or less, recounting some
trait of his own nature, of his habits, his tastes, and his prejudices;
so that before you can receive his statement, you have to study his
disposition. Take all these adverse and difficult conditions into
consideration,--give a large margin for credulity, and a larger for
exaggeration,--bethink you of the embarrassments of a foreign tongue,
and then I ask you how much real information you have a right to expect
from Journals of the Long Vacation, or Winters in Italy, or Tyrol
Rambles in Autumn? I say it in no boastfulness, Tom, nor in any mood of
vanity, but if I was some twenty years younger, with a good income and
no encumbrances, well versed in languages, and fairly placed as regards
social advantages, I myself could make a very readable volume about
foreign life and foreign manners. You laugh at the notion of Kenny Dodd
on a titlepage; but have n't we one or two of our acquaintances that cut
just as ridiculous a figure?
Tiverton has come in to tell me that the judgment of the Court has been
given against him, and consequently against us, "_in re_ Vetturino;" and
the award of the judge is, "That we pay all the expenses for the journey
to Milan, the gratuity,--that was only to be given as an evidence of
our perfect satisfaction,--and anything more that our sense of honor
and justice may suggest, as compensation for the loss of time he has
sustained in litigating with us." On these conditions he is to be free
to follow his road, and we are to remain here till--I wish I could say
the time--but, according to present appearances, it may be spring before
we get away. When I tell you that the decision has been given by the
landlord of the inn, where we must stop,--as no other exists within
twenty miles of us,--you may guess the animus of the judgment-seat. It
requires a great degree of self-restraint not be to carried into what
the law calls an overt act, by a piece of iniquity like this. I have
abstained by a great effort; but the struggle has almost given me a fit
of apoplexy. Imagine the effrontery of the rascal, Tom: scarcely had
he counted over his Napoleons, and made his grin of farewell, than he
mounted his box and drove away over the mountain, which had just been
declared impassable,--a feat witnessed by all of us,--in company with
the landlord who had pronounced the verdict against us. I stormed--I
swore--in short, I worked myself into a sharp fit of the gout, which
flew from my ankle to my stomach, and very nigh carried me off. A day
of extreme suffering has been succeeded by one of great depression; and
here I am now, with the snow still falling fast; the last courier who
went by saying "that all the inns at Chiavenna were full of people, none
of whom would venture to cross the mountain." It appears that there are
just two peculiarly unpropitious seasons for the passage,--when the snow
falls first, and when it begins to melt in spring. It is needless to say
that we have hit upon one of these, with our habitual good fortune!
Thursday. The Inn, Spluegen.
Here we are still in this blessed place, this being now our seventh day
in a hole you would n't condemn a dog to live in. How long we might
have continued our sojourn it is hard to say, when a mere accident has
afforded us the prospect of liberation. It turns out that two families
arrived and went forward last night, having only halted to sup and
change horses. On inquiry why we could n't be supposed capable of the
same exertion, you 'll not believe me when I tell you the answer we got.
No, Tom! The enormous power of lying abroad is clear and clean beyond
your conception. It was this, then. We could go when we pleased,--it was
entirely a caprice of our own that we had not gone before. "How so, may
I ask?" said I, in the meekest of inquiring voices. "You would n't go
like others," was the answer. "In what respect,--how?" asked I again.
"Oh, your English notions rejected the idea of a sledge. You insisted
upon going on wheels, and as no wheeled carriage could run--" Grant me
patience, or I'll explode like a shell. My hand shakes, and my temples
are throbbing so that I can scarcely write the lines. I made a great
effort at a calm and discretionary tone, but it would n't do; a certain
fulness about the throat, a general dizziness, and a noise like the sea
in my ears, told me that I'd have been behaving basely to the "Guardian"
and the "Equitable Fire and Life" were I to continue the debate. I sat
down, and with a sponge and water and loose cravat, I got better. There
was considerable confusion in my faculties on my coming to myself; I had
a vague notion of having conducted myself in some most ridiculous and
extravagant fashion,--having insisted upon the horses being harnessed
in some impossible mode, or made some demand or other totally
impracticable. Cary, like a dear kind girl as she is, laughed and
quizzed me out of my delusion, and showed me that it was the cursed
imputation of that scoundrel of a landlord had given this erratic turn
to my thoughts. The gout has settled in my left foot, and I now, with
the exception of an occasional shoot of pain that I relieve by a shout,
feel much better, and hope soon to be fit for the road. Poor Cary made
me laugh by a story she picked up somewhere of a Scotch gentleman who
had contracted with his vetturino to be carried from Genoa to Rome and
fed on the road,--a very common arrangement. The journey was to occupy
nine days; but wishing to secure a splendid "buona mano," the vetturino
drove at a tremendous pace, and actually arrived in Rome on the eighth
day, having almost killed his horses and exhausted himself. When he
appeared before his traveller, expecting compliments on his speed, and
a handsome recognition for his zeal, guess his astonishment to hear his
self-panegyrics cut short by the pithy remark: "You drove very well, my
friend; but we are not going to part just yet,--you have still another
day to _feed_ me."
Tiverton has at length patched up an arrangement with our landlord
for twelve sledges,--each only carries one and the driver,--so that if
nothing adverse intervene we are to set forth to-morrow. He says that we
may reasonably hope to reach Chiavenna before evening. I 'll therefore
not detain this longer, but in the prospect that our hour of liberation
has at length drawn nigh, conclude my long despatch.
Our villa at Como will be our next address, and I hope to find a letter
there from you soon after our arrival. Remember, Tom, all that I have
said about the supplies, for though they tell me Italy be cheap, I
have not yet discovered a land where the population believes gold to be
dross. Adieu!