MR. Davenport Dunn sat at breakfast in his spacious chamber overlooking
the Lake of Como. In addition to the material appliances of that meal,
the table was covered with newly arrived letters, and newspapers, maps,
surveys, railroad sections, and Parliamentary blue-books littered about,
along with chalk drawings, oil miniatures, some carvings in box and
ivory, and a few bronzes of rare beauty and design. Occasionally
skimming over the newspapers, now sipping his tea, or now examining some
object of art through a magnifier, he dallied over his meal like one who
felt the time thus passed a respite from the task of the day. At last
he walked out, and, leaning over the balcony, gazed at the glorious
landscape at his feet. It was early morning, and the great masses of
misty clouds were slowly beginning to move up the Alps, disclosing
as they went spots of bright green verdure, dark-sided ravines and
cataracts, amid patches of pine forest, or dreary tracts of snow still
lying deep in the mountain clefts. Beautiful as was the picture of the
lake itself, and the wooded promontories along it, his eyes never turned
from the rugged grandeur of the Alpine range, which he continued to gaze
at for a long time. So absorbed was he in his contemplation, that he
never noticed the approach of another, and Baron Glumthal was already
leaning over the balustrade beside him ere he had perceived him.
“Well, is it more assuring now that you have looked at it?” asked the
German, in English, of which there was the very slightest trace of a
foreign accent.
“I see nothing to deter one from the project,” said Dunn, slowly. “These
questions resolve themselves purely into two conditions,--time and
money. The grand army was only a corporal's guard, multiplied by
hundreds of thousands.”
“But the difficulties--”
“Difficulties!” broke in Dunn; “thank Heaven for them, Baron, or you and
I would be no better off in this world than the herd about us. Strong
heads and stout hearts are the breaching artillery of mankind,--you can
find rank and file any day.”
“When I said difficulties, I might have used a stronger word.”
“And yet,” said Dunn, smiling, “I'd rather contract to turn the Alps
yonder, than to drive a new idea into the heads of a people. See here,
now,” said he, entering the room, and returning with a large plan in his
hand, “this is Chiavenna. Well, the levels show that a line drawn
from this spot comes out below Andeer, at a place called Mühlen,--the
distance something less than twenty-two miles. By Brumall's contract,
you will perceive that if he don't meet with water--”
“But in that lies the whole question,” broke in the other.
“I know it, and I am not going to blink it. I mean to take the
alternatives in turn.”
“Shall I spare you a deal of trouble, Dunn?” said the German, laying his
hand on his arm. “Our house has decided against the enterprise. I have
no need to explain the reasons.”
“And can you be swayed by such counsels?” cried Dunn, eagerly. “Is
it possible that you will suffer yourselves to be made the dupes of a
Russian intrigue?”
“Say, rather, the agents of a great policy,” said Glumthal, “and you
will be nearer the mark. My dear friend,” added he, in a lower and more
confidential tone, “have I to tell _you_ that _your_ whole late
policy in England is a mistake, your Crimean war a mistake, your French
alliance a mistake, and your present attempt at a reconciliation with
Austria the greatest mistake of all?”
“You would find it a hard task to make the nation believe this,” said
Dunn, smiling.
“So I might; but not to convince your statesmen of it. They see it
already. They perceive even now some of the perils of the coarse they
have adopted.”
“The old story. I have heard it at least a hundred times,” broke in
Dunn. “We have been overturning the breakwaters that the ocean may
swamp us. But I tell _you_, Baron, that the more democratic we grow in
England, the safer we become. We don't want these alliances we fancied
ourselves once in need of. That family compact redounded but little to
our advantage.”
“So it might. But there is another compact now forming, which bodes even
less favorably to you. The Church, by her Concordat, is replacing the
old Holy Alliance. You 'll need the aid of the only power that cannot be
drawn into this league,--I mean the only great power,--Russia.”
“If you will wait till we are so minded, Baron,” said Dunn, laughing,
“you have plenty of time to help me with my tunnel here.” And he pointed
to his plans.
“And where will the world be,--I mean your world and mine,--before the
pick of the workman reaches so far?” and he placed his finger on
the Splugen Alps,--“answer me that. What will be the Government of
France,--I don't ask who? Where will Naples be? What king will be
convoking the Hungarian Diet? Who will be the Russian viceroy on the
Danube?”
“Far more to the purpose were it if I could tell you how would the Three
per Cents stand,” broke in Dunn.
“I 'm coming to that,” said the other, dryly. “No, no,” said he, after
a pause; “let us see this unhappy war finished,--let us wait till we
know who are to be partners in the-great game of European politics.
Lanfranchi tells me that the French and Russians who meet here come
together on the best of terms; that intimacies, and even friendships.
spring up rapidly between them. This fact, if repeated in Downing
Street, might be heard with some misgiving.”
Though Dunn affected indifference to this remark, he winced, and walked
to the window to hide his irritation.
Immediately beneath where he stood, a trellised vine-walk led down to
the lake, where the boats were usually in waiting; and from this alley
now a number of voices could be heard, although the speakers were
entirely hidden by the foliage. The gay and laughing tones indicated
a pleasure-party; and such it was, bent on a picnic to Bellaggio. Some
were loud in praises of the morning, and the splendid promise of the
day; others discussed how many boats they should want, and how the party
was to be divided.
“The Americans with the Russians,” said Twining, slapping his legs and
laughing; “great friends--capital allies--what fun! Ourselves and the
O'Reillys.--Spicer, look out, and see if they are coming.”
“And do you mean to say you'll not come?” whispered a very soft voice,
after the crowd had passed on.
“Charmante Molly!” said Lord Lackington, in his most dulcet of accents,
“I am quite heart-broken at the disappointment; but when I tell you
that this man has come some hundreds of miles to meet me here,--that the
matter is one of deepest importance--”
“And who is he? Could you make him come too?”
“Impossible, _ma belle_. He is quite unsuited to this kind of thing,--a
mere creature of parchments. The very sight of him would only suggest
thoughts of foreclosing mortgages and renewal fines.”
“How I hate him!”
“Do, dearest,--hate him to your heart's content,--and for nothing more
than the happiness of which he robs me.”
“Well, I 'm sure, I did think--” And she stopped, and seemed confused.
“And what, pray, was it that you did think?” said his Lordship, most
winningly.
“I thought two things, then, if you must know,” said she, archly:
“first, that a great personage like your Lordship would make a very
small one like this Mr. Dunn understand it was his duty to await your
convenience; and my second thought was--But perhaps you don't care to
hear it?”
“Of all things. Pray go on.”
“Well, then, my second was that if I asked you to come, you'd not refuse
me.”
“What an inexorable charmer it is!” cried he, in stage fashion. “Do you
fancy you could ever forgive yourself if, yielding to this temptation, I
were really to miss this man?”
“You told me yourself, only yesterday,” said she, “_ce que femme
veut_--Besides, you'll have him all day tomorrow, and the next, and--”
“Well, so be it. See how I hug my chains!” said he, drawing her arm
within his, and moving on towards the boat.
“Were you to be of that party, Baron?” asked Dunn, pointing to the crowd
beside the lake.
“So I was. The Princess engaged me last night; they are going to the
Plinniana and Bellaggio. Why not join us?”
“Oh, I have a score of letters to write, and double as many to read. In
fact, I have kept all my work for a quiet day in this nice tranquil spot
I wish I could take a week here.”
“And why not do it? Have n't you yet learned that it is the world's duty
to wait on _us?_ For my own part, I have always found that one emerges
from these secluded places with renewed energy and awakened vigor. I
heard Stadeon once say that when anything puzzled him, he went to pass
a day at Maria Zell, and he never came away without hitting on the
solution. They are beckoning to me; so good-bye!”
“Anything puzzled him!” muttered Dunn, repeating the words of the
other's story. “If he but knew that what puzzles _me_ at this moment is
myself!”
The very nature of the correspondence that then littered his table might
well warrant what he felt. Who, and what was he, to whom great ministers
wrote confidentially, and secretaries of state began, “My dear Dunn”?
How had he risen to this eminence? What were the gifts by which he held,
and was to maintain it? Most men who have attained to high station from
small beginnings, have so conformed to the exigencies of each new
change in life as to carry but little of what they started with to their
position of eminence; gradually assimilating to the circumstances around
them as they went, they flung the past behind them, only occupied with
those qualities which should fit them for the future. Not so Davenport
Dunn: he was ever present to his own eyes as the son of the very
humblest parentage; as the poor boy educated by charity, struggling
drearily through years of poverty,--the youth discouraged and slighted,
the man repulsed and rejected. Certain incidents of his life never left
him; there they were, as if photographed on his heart; and at will he
could behold himself as he was turned away ignominiously from Kellett's
house; or a morning scarce less sad, as he learned his rejection for the
sizarship; or the day still more bitter that Lord Glengariff put him out
of doors, with words of insult and shame. Like avenging spirits, these
memories travelled with him wherever he journeyed. They sat beside him
as he dined at great men's tables; they loitered with him in his lonely
walks, and whispered into his ear in the dark hours of the night. No
high-hearted hope, no elevating self-reliance, had sustained him through
these youthful reverses; each new failure, on the contrary, seemed to
have impressed him more and more strongly with the conviction that the
gifts which win success in life had not been vouchsafed him; that his
abilities were of that humble order which never elevate their possessor
above mere mediocrity; that if he meant to strive for the great prizes
of life, it must be less by addressing himself to great intellectual
efforts than by a patient study of men themselves,--of their frailties,
their weaknesses, and their follies. Whatever he had seen of the world
had shown him how invariably the greatest minds were alloyed with
some deteriorating influence, and that passions of one kind or other,
ambitions more or less worthy, even the subtlety of flattery, swayed
those whose intellects soared loftily among their fellows. “I cannot
share in the tilt with these,” said he. “Mine are no gifts of eloquence
or imaginative power; I am not versed in the mysteries of science, nor
deep-read in the intricacies of law. Let me, however, see if I cannot,
by dexterity, accomplish what is denied to my strength. Every man,
whatever his station, covets wealth. The noblest and the meanest, the
man dignified by exalted aspirations, the true creature of selfish
enjoyments, are all alike enlisted in the pursuit. Let me consider how
this common tendency may be best turned to account. To enrich others,
it is not necessary that I should be wealthy myself. The geographer may
safely dictate the route by which the explorer is to journey through a
desert he has never travelled himself. The great problems of finance
can be worked by suggestions in a garret, though their application may
demand millions.” Starting thus from an humble attorney in a country
town, he gradually grew to be known as a most capable adviser in all
monetary matters. Rich men consulted him about profitable investments
and safe employment of their capital; embarrassed men confided to him
their difficulties, and sought his aid to meet them; speculators asked
his advice as to this or that venture; and even those who gambled on
the eventful fortunes of a ministry were fain to be guided by his wise
predictions. “Dunn has got me the money on reasonable terms;” “Dunn
has managed to let me have five per cent;” “Dunn assures me I may risk
this;” “Dunn tells me that they 'll carry the bill next session,”--such
and such things were the phrases one heard at every turn, till his
opinion became a power in the land, and he grew to feel it so.
This first step led to another and higher one. Through the moneyed
circumstances of men he came to learn their moral natures: against what
temptations this one was proof; to what that other would yield; what
were the goals for which each was striving; what the secret doubts and
misgivings that beset them. What the doctor was to the world of sickness
and infirmity did he become to the world of human passion and desire.
Men came to him with the same unreserve; they stripped before him and
laid bare the foul spots of their heart's disease, as though it were
but repeating the story to themselves. Terrible and harrowing as are the
tales which reach the physician's ears, the stories revealed to his were
more terrible and harrowing still. They came to him with narratives of
reckless waste and ruin; with histories of debt that dated a century
back; with worse, far worse,--with tales of forgery and fraud. Crimes
for which the law would have exacted its last expiation were whispered
to him in that dreary confessional, his private office, and the
evidences of guilt placed in his hands that he might read and reflect
over them. And as the doctor moves through life with the sad knowledge
of all the secret suffering around him,--how little that “flush”
indicates of health, how faintly beats the heart that seems to swell
with happiness,--so did this man walk a world that was a mere hospital
ward of moral rottenness. Why should the priest and the physician be the
only men to trade upon the infirmities of human nature? Why should they
be the sole depositaries of those mysteries by which men's actions can
be swayed and moulded? By what temptations are men so assailable as
those that touch their material fortunes, and why not make this moral
country an especial study? Such were his theory and his practice.
There is often a remarkable fitness--may we call it a “pre-established
harmony”?--between men and the circumstances of their age, and this has
led to the opinion that it is by the events themselves the agents are
developed; we incline to think differently, as the appearance of both
together is rather in obedience to some over-ruling edict of Providence
which has alike provided the work and the workmen. It would be a shallow
reading of history to imagine Cromwell the child of the Revolution, or
Napoleon as the accident of the battle of the sections.
Davenport Dunn sprang into eminence when, by the action of the
Encumbered Estates Court, a great change was operated in the condition
of Ireland. To grasp at once the immense consequences of a tremendous
social revolution--to foresee even some of the results of this sweeping
confiscation--required no common knowledge of the country, and no small
insight into its habits. The old feudalism that had linked the fate of
a starving people with the fortunes of a ruined gentry was to be
extinguished at once, and a great experiment tried. Was Ireland to be
more governable in prosperity than in adversity? This was a problem
which really might not seem to challenge much doubt, and yet was it by
no means devoid of difficulty to those minds who had long based their
ideas of ruling that land on the principles of fomenting its dissensions
and separating its people. Davenport Dunn saw the hesitation of the
moment, and offered himself at once to solve the difficulty. The
transfer of property might be conducted in such a way as to favor the
views of a particular party in the state; the new proprietary might be
selected, and the aim of a government consulted in the establishment
of this new squirearchy. He thought so, at least, and, what is more, he
persuaded a chief secretary to believe him.
Nothing reads more simply than the sale of an encumbered estate: “In the
matter of Sir Roger O'Moore, Bart, Brian O'Moore, and Margaret Halliday,
owners, and Paul May-bey, petitioner, the Commissioners will, on Friday
next, at the hour of noon,”--and so on; and then come the descriptive
particulars of Carrickross, Dummaymagan, and Lantygoree, with
Griffith's valuation and the ordnance survey, concluding with a recital
of all the penalties, reservations, covenants, clauses, &c., with the
modest mention of twenty-odd pounds some shillings tithe-rent charge,
for a finish. To dispossess of this a man that never really owned it for
the last forty years, and invest it in another, who never saw it,
was the easy operation of the auctioneer's hammer; and with a chief
commissioner to ratify the sale, few things seemed easier than the
whole process. Still, there are certain aspects in the transaction which
suggest reflection. What were the ties, what the relations, between the
original owner and the tenantry who held under him? What kind of social
system had bound them,--what were the mutual services they rendered each
other? For the reverence and respect tendered on one side, and for the
thousand little charities and kindnesses bestowed on the other, what
was to be the compensation? How was that guidance and direction, more
or less inherent in those who are the heads of a neighborhood, to be
replaced? Was it quite certain that the incoming proprietor would care
to study the habits, the tastes, and the tempers of the peasantry on his
estate, learn their ways, or understand their difficulties? And, lastly,
what new political complexion would the country wear? Would it become
more Conservative or more Whig, more Democratic or more Saxon?
Davenport Dunn's opinion was that the case was precisely that of a
new colony, where the first settlers, too busy about their material
interests to care for mere speculative questions, would attach
themselves heartily to any existing government, giving their adhesion
to whatever afforded protection to their property and safety to their
lives. “Take this new colony,” said he, “into your especial care, and
their sons and grandsons will be yours after-wards. A new regiment is
being raised; write your own legends on their colors, and they are your
own.” He sketched out a system by which this new squirearchy was to be
dealt with,--how courted, flattered, and rewarded. He showed how, in
attaching them to the State, the government of the country might
be rendered more easy, and the dreaded influence of the priest be
antagonized most effectually; and, finally, demonstrated that Ireland,
which had been the stereotyped difficulty of every administration, might
now be turned into a stronghold against opposition.
To replace the great proprietary whose estates were now in the market
by a new constituency in accordance with his views was, therefore,
his general scheme, and he addressed himself to this task with all his
peculiar energy. He organized the registry of all the encumbered
estates of Ireland, with every detail which could illustrate the various
advantages; he established an immense correspondence with English
capitalists eager for new investments; he possessed himself of intimate
knowledge of all the variations and fluctuations which attend the money
market at certain periods, so that he knew the most favorable moments
to suggest speculation; and, lastly, he had craft enough to carry his
system into operation without any suspicion being attached to it; and
was able to say to a Viceroy, “Look and judge for yourself, my Lord,
whose influence is now paramount in Ireland.”
Truly, it was not easy for a government to ignore him; his name turned
up at every moment. From the stirring incident of a great county
election to the small contest for a poor-law guardianship, he figured
everywhere, until every question of policy became coupled with the
inevitable demand, “What does Dunn think of it?”
Like all men of strong ambition, he encouraged few or no intimacies; he
had actually no friendships. He wanted no counsels; nor would he
have stooped to have laid a case for advice before any one. Partly in
consequence of this, he was spoken of generally in terms of depreciation
and discredit. Some called him lucky,--a happy phrase that adapts
itself to any fancy; some said he was a commonplace, vulgar fellow, with
certain business aptitudes, but quite incapable of any wide or extended
views; some, again, went further, and said he was the mere tool of
certain clever heads that did not care to figure in the foreground; and
not a few wondered that “a man of this kind” should have ever attained
to any eminence or station in the land.
“You 'll see how his Excellency will turn him to account; he knows how
to deal with fellows of this stamp,” said a private secretary in the
Castle.
“I have no doubt, sir, Mr. Davenport Dunn would agree with you,” said
the Attorney-General, with a sneer; “but the opinion would be bad in
law!”
“He 's not very much of a churchman, I suspect,” whispered a bishop;
“but we find him occasionally useful.”
“He serves _our_ purpose!” pompously spoke a country gentleman, who
really, in the sentiment, represented a class.
Such was the man who now sat alone, communing with himself, in his room
at the Villa d'Este. Let us believe that he had enough to think of.