My dear Miss Cox,--I have long hesitated and deliberated with myself
whether it were not better to appear ungrateful for my silence, than by
writing inflict you with a very tiresome, good-for-nothing epistle; and
if I have now taken the worst counsel, it is because I prefer anything
rather than seem forgetful of one to whom I owe so much as to my dear,
kind governess. Were I only to tell you of our adventures and mishaps
since we came abroad, there might, perhaps, be enough to fill half a
dozen letters; but I greatly doubt if the theme would amuse you. You
were always too good-natured to laugh at anything where there was even
one single feature that suggested sorrow; and I grieve to say that,
however ludicrously many of our accidents might read, there is yet mixed
with them too much that is painful and distressing. You will say this is
a very gloomy opening, and from one whom you had so often to chide
for the wild gayety of her spirits; but so it is: I am sad enough
now,--sadder than ever you wished to see me. It is not that I am not in
the very midst of objects full of deep interest,--it is not that I do
not recognize around me scenes, places, and names, all of which are
imbued with great and stirring associations. I am neither indifferent
nor callous, but I see everything through a false medium, and I hear
everything with a perverted judgment; in a word, we seem to have come
abroad, not to derive the advantages that might arise from new sources
of knowledge in language, literature, and art, but to scramble for a
higher social position,--to impose ourselves on the world for something
that we have no pretension to, and to live in a way that we cannot
afford. You remember us at Dodsborough,--how happy we were, how
satisfied with the world; that is, with our world, for it was a
very little one. We were not very great folk, but we had all the
consideration as if we were; for there were none better off than
ourselves, and few had so many opportunities of winning the attachment
of all classes. Papa was always known as the very best of landlords,
mamma had not her equal for charity and kindness, James was actually
adored by the people, and I hesitate not to say that Mary Anne and
myself were not friendless. There was a little daily round of duties
that brought us all together in our cares and sympathies; for, however
different our ages or tastes, we had but one class of subjects to
discuss, and, happily, we saw them always with the same light and
shadow. Our life was, in short, what fashionable people would have
deemed a very vulgar, inglorious kind of existence; but it was full of
pleasant little incidents, and a thousand little cares and duties, that
gave it abundant variety and interest. I was never a quick scholar, as
you know too well. I have tried my dear Miss Cox's patience sorely
and often, but I loved my lessons; I loved those calm hours in the
summer-house, with the perfume of the rose and the sweetbrier around
us, and the hum of the bee mingling its song with my own not less drowsy
French. That sweet "Telemachus," so easy and so softly sounding; that
good Madame de Genlis, so simple-minded when she thought herself most
subtle! Not less did I love the little old schoolroom of a winter's
day, when the pattering rain streamed down the windows, and gave, by
contrast, all the aspect of more comfort within. How pleasant was it, as
we gathered round the turf fire, to think that we were surrounded with
such appliances against gloomy hours,--the healthful exercise of happy
minds! Ah, my dear Miss Cox, how often you told us to study hard, since
that, once launched upon the great sea of life, the voyage would exact
all our cares; and yet see, here am I upon that wide ocean, and already
longing to regain the quiet little creek,--the little haven of rest that
I quitted!
I promised to be very candid with you, to conceal nothing whatever;
but I did not remember that my confessions, to be thus frank, must
necessarily involve me in remarks on others, in which I may be often
unjust,--in which I am certain to be unwarranted,--since nothing in my
position entitles me to be their censor. However, I will keep my pledge
this once, and you will tell me afterwards if I should continue to
observe it. And now to begin. We are living here as though we were
people of vast fortune. We occupy the chief suite of apartments at the
first hotel, and we have a carriage, with showy liveries, a courier, and
are quite beset with masters of every language and accomplishment you
can fancy,--expensive kind of people, whose very dress and style bespeak
the terms on which their services are rendered. Our visitors are all
titled: dukes, princes, and princesses shower amongst our cards. Our
invitations are from the same class, and yet, my dear Miss Cox, we feel
all the unreality of this high and stately existence. We look at each
other and think of Dodsborough! We think of papa in his old fustian
shooting-jacket, paying the laborers, and higgling about half a day to
be stopped here, and a sack of meal to be deducted there. We think of
mamma's injunctions to Darby Sloan about the price he is to get for the
"boneens,"--have you forgotten our vernacular for little pigs?--and how
much he must "be sure to ask" or the turkeys. We think of Mary Anne
and myself taking our lesson from Mr. Delaney, and learning the
Quad--drilles as he pronounced it, as the last new discovery of the
dancing art, and dear James hammering away at the rule of three on an
old slate, to try and qualify himself for the Board of Trade. And we
remember the utter consternation of the household--the tumult dashed
with a certain sense of pride--when some subaltern of the detachment
at Bruff cantered up to the door and sent in his name! Dear me, how
the little words 25th Regiment, or 91st, used to make our hearts beat,
suggestive as they were of gay balls at the Town-hall with red-coated
partners, the regimental band, and the colors tastefully festooning the
whitewashed walls. And now, my dear Miss Sarah, we are actually ashamed
of the contact with one of those whom once it was our highest glory to
be acquainted with! You may remember a certain Captain Morris, who was
stationed at Bruff,--dark, with very black eyes, and most beautiful
teeth; he was very silent in company, and, indeed, we knew him but
slightly, for he chanced to have some altercation with pa on the bench
one day, and, as I hear he was all in the right, pa did not afterwards
forgive him. Well, here he is now, having left the army,--I don't know
if on half-pay, or sold out altogether,--but here he is, travelling for
the benefit of his mother's health,--a very old and infirm lady, to whom
he is dotingly attached. She fretted so much when she discovered that
his regiment was ordered abroad to the Cape, that he had no other
resource than to leave the service! He told me so himself.
"I had nobody else in the world," said he, "who felt any interest in my
fortunes; _she_ had made a hundred sacrifices for me. It was but fair I
should make one for _her_."
He knew he was surrendering position and prospect forever,--that to him
no career could ever open again; but he had placed a duty high above all
considerations of self, and so he parted with comrades and pursuit,
with everything that made up his hope and his object, and descended to a
little station of unobtrusive, undistinguished humility, satisfied to be
the companion of a poor, feeble old lady! He has as much as confessed to
me that their means are very small. It was an accidental admission with
reference to something he thought of doing, but which he found to be too
expensive; and the avowal was made so easily, so frankly, so free from
any false shame on one side, or any unworthy desire to entrap sympathy
on the other! It was as if he spoke of something which indeed concerned
him, but in no wise gave the mainspring to his thoughts or actions! He
came to visit us here; but his having left the service, coupled with our
present taste for grand acquaintance, were so little in his favor that
I believed he would not have repeated his call. An accidental service,
however, that he was enabled to render mamma and Mary Anne at a railroad
station the other day, and where but for him they might have been
involved in considerable difficulties, has opened a chance of further
intimacy, for he has already been here two mornings, and is coming this
evening to tea.
You will, perhaps, ask me how and by what chain of circumstances Captain
Morris is linked with the earlier portion of this letter, and I will
tell you. It was from him that I learned the history of those high and
distinguished individuals by whom we are surrounded; from him I heard
that, supposing us to be people of immense wealth, a whole web of
intrigue has been spun around us, and everything that the ingenuity and
craft of the professional adventurer could devise put in requisition to
trade upon our supposed affluence and inexperience! He has told me of
the dangerous companions by whom James is surrounded; and if he has
not spoken so freely about a certain young nobleman--Lord George
Tiverton--who is now seldom or never out of the house, it is because
that they have had something of a personal difference,--a serious one,
I suspect, and which Captain Morris seems to reckon as a bar to anything
beyond the merest mention of his name. It is not impossible, too, that
though he might not make any revelations to _me_ on such a theme, he
would be less guarded with papa or James. Whatever may be the fact, he
does not advance at all in the good graces of the others. Mamma
calls him a dry crust,--a confirmed old bachelor. Mary Anne and Lord
George--for they are always in partnership in matters of opinion--have
set him down as a "military prig;" and papa, who is rarely unjust in the
long run, says that "there 's no guessing at the character of a fellow
of small means, who never goes in debt" This may or may not be true;
but it is certainly hard to condemn him for an honorable trait, simply
because it does not give the key to his nature. And now, my last hope
is what James may think of him, for as yet they have not met. I think
I hear you echo my words, "And why your 'last hope,' Miss Cary? What
possible right have you to express yourself in these terms?" Simply
because I feel that one man of true and honorable sentiments, one
right-judging, right-feeling gentleman, is all-essential to us abroad!
and if we reject this chance, I 'm not so sure we shall meet with
another.
How ashamed I am not to be able to tell you of all I have seen! But so
it is,--description is a very tame performance in good hands; it is a
lamentable exhibition in weak ones! As to painters, I prefer Vandyk to
Rubens; not that I have even the pretence of a reason for my criticism.
I know nothing, whatever, of what constitutes excellence in color,
drawing, or design. I understand in a picture only what it suggests to
my own mind, either as a correct copy of nature, or as originating new
trains of thought, new sources of feeling; and by these tests Vandyk
pleases me more than his master. But, shall I own it, there is a class
of pictures of a far inferior order that gives me greater enjoyment than
either, I meau those scenes of real life, those representations of some
little uneventful incident of the every-day world,--an old chemist
at work in his dim old laboratory; an old house Vrow knitting in her
red-tiled chamber, the sunlight slanting in, and tipping with an azure
tint the tortoiseshell cat that purrs beside her; a lover teaching
his mistress the guitar; an old cavalier giving his horse a drink at a
fountain. These, in all the lifelike power of Gerard Dow, Teerburgh, or
Mieris, have a charm for me I cannot express. They are stories, and they
are better than stories; for oftentimes the writer conveys his meaning
imperfectly, and oftentimes he overlays you with his explanations,
stifling within you those expansive bursts of sentiment that ought to
have been his aim to evoke, and thus, by elaborating, he obliterates.
Now, your artist--I mean, of course, your great artist--is eminently
suggestive. He gives you but one scene, it is true, but how full is it
of the past, and the future too! Can you gaze on that old alchemist,
with his wrinkled forehead, and dim, deep-set eyes, his threadbare
doublet, and his fingers tremulous from age? Can you watch that
countenance, calm but careworn, where every line exhibits the long
struggle there has been between the keen perceptions of science and the
golden dreams of enthusiasm, where the coldest passions of a worldly
nature have warred with the most glorious attributes of a poetic
temperament? Can you see him, as he sits watching the alembic wherein
the toil of years is bubbling, and not weave within your own mind the
life-long conflict he has sustained? Have you him not before you in his
humble home, secluded and forgotten of men, yet inhabiting a dream-world
of crowded images? What beautiful stories--what touching little episodes
of domestic life--lie in the quiet scenes of those quaint interiors;
and how deep the charm that attaches one to these peaceful spots of home
happiness! The calm intellectuality of the old, the placid loveliness
of the young, the air of cultivated enjoyment that pervades all, are in
such perfect keeping that you feel as though they imparted to yourself
some share of that gentle, tranquil pleasure that forms their own
atmosphere!
Oh, my dear Miss Cox! if there be "sermons in stones," there are
romances in pictures,--and romances far more truthful than the
circulating libraries supply us with. And, to turn back to real life,
shall I own to you that I am sadly disappointed with the gay world? I am
fully alive to all the value of the confession. I appreciate perfectly
how double-edged is the weapon of this admission, and that I am in
reality but pleading guilty to my own unfitness for its enjoyments; but
as I never tried to evade or deny that fact, I may be suffered to give
my testimony with so much of qualification. When I compare the little
gratification that society confers on the very highest classes, with the
heartfelt delight intercourse imparts to the humble, I am at a loss
to see wherein lies the advantage of all the exclusive regulations of
fashionable life. Of one thing I feel assured, and that is, that one
must be bora in a certain class, habituated from the earliest years to
its ideas and habits, filled with its peculiar traditions, and animated
by its own special hopes, to conform gracefully and easily to its laws.
_We_ go into society to perform a part,--just as artificial a one as any
in a genteel comedy,--and consequently are too much occupied with
"our character" to derive that benefit from intercourse which is so
attainable by those less constrained by circumstances. If all this
amounts to the simple confession that I am by no means at home in the
great world, and far more at my ease with more humble associates, it is
no more than the fact, and comes pretty near to what you often remarked
to me,--that "in criticising external objects one is very frequently but
delineating little traits and lineaments of one's own nature."
I am unable to answer your question about our future plans; for, indeed,
they appear anything but fixed. I believe if papa had his choice he
would go back at once.
This, however, mamma will not hear of; and, indeed, the word Ireland is
now as much under ban amongst us as that name that is never "syllabled
to ears polite." The doctors say James ought to pass a month or six
weeks at Schwalbach, to drink the waters and take the baths; and,
from what I can learn, the place is the perfection of rural beauty and
quietude. Captain Morris speaks of it as a little paradise. He is going
there himself; for I have learned--though not from him--that he was
badly wounded in the Afghan war. I will write to you whenever our
destination is decided on; and, meanwhile, beg you to believe me my dear
Miss Cox's
Most attached and faithful pupil,
Caroline Dodd.