The Editor of the Dodd Correspondence may possibly be expected to give
the Public some information as to the manner by which these Letters
came into his possession, and the reasons which led him to publish them.
Happily he can do both without any breach of honorable confidence. The
circumstances were these:--
Mr. Dodd, on his returning to Ireland, passed through the little
watering-place of Spezzia, where the Editor was then sojourning. They
met accidentally, formed acquaintanceship, and then intimacy. Amongst
the many topics of conversation between them, the Continent and its
habits occupied a very wide space. Mr. D. had lived little abroad; the
Editor had passed half of a life there. Their views and judgment were,
as might be surmised, not always alike; and if novelty had occasionally
misled one, time and habit had not less powerfully blunted the
perceptions of the other. The old resident discovered, to his
astonishment, that the very opinions which he smiled at from his
friend, had been once his own; that he had himself incurred some of the
mistakes, and fallen into many of the blunders, which he now ridiculed,
and that, so far from the Dodd Family being the exception, they were
in reality no very unfair samples of a large class of our travelling
countrymen. They had come abroad with crude and absurd notions of what
awaited them on the Continent. They dreamed of economy, refinement,
universal politeness, and a profound esteem for England from all
foreigners. They fancied that the advantages of foreign travel were
to be obtained without cost or labor; that locomotion could educate,
sight-seeing cultivate them; that in the capacity of British subjects
every society should be open to them, and that, in fact, it was enough
to emerge from home obscurity to become at once recognized in the
fashionable circles of any Continental city.
They not only entertained all these notions, but they held them in
defiance of most contradictory elements. They practised the most rigid
economy when professing immense wealth; they affected to despise the
foreigner while shunning their own countrymen; they assumed to be
votaries of art when merely running over galleries; and lastly, while
laying claim, and just claim, for their own country to the highest moral
standard of Europe, they not unfrequently outraged all the proprieties
of foreign life by an open and shameless profligacy. It is difficult to
understand how a mere change of locality can affect a man's notions of
right and wrong, and how Cis-Alpine evil may be Trans-Alpine good. It
is very hard to believe that a few parallels of latitude can affect the
moral thermometer; but so it is, and so Mr. Dodd honestly confessed he
found it. He not only avowed that he could do abroad what he could
not dare to do at home, but that, worse still, the infraction cost
no sacrifice of self-esteem, no self-reproach. It was not that these
derelictions were part of the habits of foreign life, or at least of
such of it as met the eye; it was, in reality, because he had come
abroad with his own preconceived ideas of a certain latitude in morals,
and was resolved to have the benefit of it. Such inconsistency in
theory led, naturally, to absurdity in action, and John Bull became, in
consequence, a mark for every trait of eccentricity that satirists could
describe, or caricaturists paint.
The gradations of rank so rigidly defined in England are less accurately
marked out abroad. Society, like the face of the soil, is not enclosed
by boundaries and fenced by hedgerows, but stretches away in boundless
undulations of unlimited extent. The Englishman fancies there are no
boundaries, because he does not see the landmarks. Since all seems open,
he imagines there can be no trespass. This is a serious mistake! Not
less a one is, to connect title with rank. He fancies that nobility
represents abroad the same pretensions which it maintains in England,
and indignantly revenges his own blunder by calumniating in common every
foreigner of rank.
Mr. Dodd fell into some of these errors; from others he escaped. Most,
indeed, of his mistakes were those inseparable from a false position;
and from the acuteness of his remarks in conversation, it is clear that
he possessed fair powers of observation, and a mind well disposed to
receive and retain the truth. One quality certainly his observations
possessed,--they were "his own." They were neither worked out from the
Guide-book, nor borrowed from his _Laquais de Place_. They were the
honest convictions of a good ordinary capacity, sharpened by the habits
of an active life. It was with sincere pleasure the Editor received from
him the following note, which reached him about three weeks after they
parted:--
"DODSBOROUGH, BRUFF.
"My dear Harry Lorrequer,--I have fished up all the Correspondence of
the Dodd Family during our _Annus Mirabilis_ abroad, and send it to you
with this. You have done some queer pranks at Editorship before now, so
what would you say to standing Sponsor to us all, foundlings as we are
in the world of letters? I have a notion in my head that we were n't a
bit more ridiculous than nine-tenths of our travelling countrymen, and
that, maybe, our mistakes and misconceptions might serve to warn such
as may come after us over the same road. At all events, use your own
discretion on the matter, but say nothing about it when you write to me,
as Mrs. D. reads all my letters, and if she knew we were going to print
her, the consequences would be awful!
"You 'll be glad to hear that we got safe back here,--Tuesday was a
week,--found everything much as usual,--farming stock looking up, pigs
better than ever I knew them. I have managed to get James into the
Police, and his foreign airs and graces are bringing him into the
tip-top society of the country. Purcell tells me that we 'll be driven
to sell Dodsborough in the Estates Court, and I suppose it 's the best
thing after all, for we can buy it in, and clear off the mortgages that
was the ruin of us.
"When everything is settled, I have an idea of taking a run through the
United States, to have a peep at Jonathan. If so, you shall hear from
me.
"Meanwhile, I am yours, very faithfully,
"Kenny I. Dodd.
"Do you know any Yankees, or could you get me a few letters to some of
their noticeable men? for I 'd like to have an opportunity of talk with
them."
The Editor at once set about the inspection of the documents forwarded
to him, and carefully perused the entire correspondence; nor was it
until after a mature consideration that he determined on accepting the
responsible post which Mr. Dodd had assigned to him.
He who edits a Correspondence, to a certain extent is assumed to be a
concurring party, if not to the statements contained in it, at least to
its general tone and direction. It is in vain for him to try and hide
his own shadow behind the foreground figure of the picture, or merge
his responsibility in that of his principal. The reader will hold him
chargeable for opinions that he has made public, and for sentiments
which, but for his intervention, had slept within the drawer of a
cabinet. This is more particularly the case where the sentiments
recorded are not those of any great thinker or high authority amongst
men whose _dicta_ may be supposed capable of standing the test of
a controversy, on the mere strength of him who uttered them. Now,
unhappily, the Dodd Family have not as yet produced one of these gifted
individuals. Their views of the world, as they saw it in a foreign tour,
are those of persons of very moderate capacity, with very few special
opportunities for observation. They wrote in all the frankness of close
friendship to those with whom they were most intimately allied. They
uttered candidly what they felt acutely. They chronicled their
sorrows, their successes, their triumphs, and their shame. And although
experience did teach them something as they went, their errors tracked
them to the last. It cannot be expected, then, that the Editor is
prepared to back their opinions and uphold their notions, nor is he
blamable for the judgments they have pronounced on many points. It is
true, it was open to him to have retrenched this and suppressed that. He
might have cancelled a confession here, or blotted out an avowal there;
but had he done so in one Letter, the allusion contained in some other
might have been pointless,--the distinctive character of the writer
lost; and what is of more moment than either, a new difficulty
engendered, viz., what to retain where there was so much to retrench.
Besides this, Mrs. D. is occasionally wrong where K. I. is right, and it
is only by contrasting the impressions that the value of the judgments
can be appreciated.
It is not in our present age of high civilization that an Editor need
fear the charge of having divulged family secrets, or made the private
history of domestic life a subject for public commentary. Happily, we
live in a period of enlightenment that can defy such petty slanders.
Very high and titled individuals have shown themselves superior to
similar accusations, and if the "Dodds" can in any wise contribute
to the amusement or instruction of the world, they may well feel
recompensed for an exposure to which others have been subjected before
them.
As in all cases of this kind, the Editor's share has been of the very
lightest. It would not have become him to have added anything either
of explanation or apology to the contents of these Letters. Even when a
word or two might have served to correct a mistaken impression, he
has preferred to leave the obvious task to the reader's judgment to
obtrusively making himself the means of interpretation. In fact, he has
had little to do beyond opening the door and announcing the company, and
his functions cease when this duty is accomplished. It would be alike
ungracious and ungrateful in him, however, were he to retire without
again thanking those kind and indulgent friends who have so long and so
warmly welcomed him.
With no higher ambition in life than to be the servant of that same
Public, nor any more ardent desire than to merit well at their hands, he
writes himself, as he has so often had occasion to do before, but at no
time more sincerely than now,
Their very devoted and faithful servant,