Dear Tom,--I got the bills all safe, and cashed two of them yesterday.
They came at the right moment,--when does not money?--for we are going
to leave this for Germany, one of the watering-places there, the name
of which I cannot trust myself to spell, being recommended for James's
wound. I suppose I 'm not singular, but somehow I never was able to
compute what I owed in a place till I was about to leave it. From that
moment, however, in come a shower of bills and accounts that one never
dreamed of. The cook you discharged three months before has never paid
for the poultry, and you have as many hens to your score as if you were
a fox. You 've lost the fishmonger's receipts, and have to pay him over
again for a whole Lent's consumption. Your courier has run up a bill
in your name for cigars and curaçoa, and your wife's maid has been
conducting the most liberal operations in perfumery and cosmetics, under
the title of her mistress. Then comes the landlord, for repairs and
damages. Every creaky sofa and cracked saucer that you have been
treating for six months with the deference due to their delicate
condition must be replaced by new ones. Every window that would n't
shut, and every door that would not open, must be put in perfect order;
keys replaced, bells rehung. The saucepans, whose verdigris has almost
killed you with colic, must be all retinned or coppered; and, lastly,
the pump is sure to be destroyed by the housemaid, and vague threats
about sinking a new well are certain to draw you into a compromise. Nor
is the roguery the worst of it; but all the sneaking scoundrels that
would n't "trouble you with their little demands" before, stand out now
as sturdy creditors that would not abate a jot of their claims. Lucky
are ye if they don't rake up old balances, and begin the score with
"_Restant du dernier compte_."
The moralists say that a man should be enabled to visit the world after
his death, if he would really know the opinion entertained of him by
his fellows. Until this desirable object be attainable, one ought to be
satisfied with the experience obtained by change of residence. There is
no disguise, no concealment then! The little blemishes of your temper,
once borne with such Christian charity, are remembered in a more
chastening spirit; and it is half hinted that your custom was more than
compensated for by your complaining querulousness. Is not the moral
of all this that one should live at home, in his own place, where his
father lived before him, and his son will live after him; where the
tradespeople have a vested interest in your welfare, and are nearly as
anxious about your wheat and potatoes as you are yourself? Unlike
these foreign rascals, that think you have a manufactory of "Hemes and
Farquhar's circular notes," and can coin at will, your neighbors know
when and at what times it's no use to tease you,--that asking for money
at the wrong season is like expecting new peas in December, or grouse in
the month of May.
I make these remarks in all the spirit of recent suffering, for I have
paid away two hundred pounds since yesterday morning, of which I was
not conscious that I owed fifty. And, besides, I have gone through more
actual fighting--in the way of bad language, I mean--than double the
money would repay me for. In these wordy combats, I feel I always come
off worst; for as my knowledge of the language is limited, I 'm like
the sailor that for want of ammunition crammed in whatever he could lay
hands on into his gun, and fired off his bag of doubloons against the
enemy instead of round shot. Mrs. D., too, whom the sounds of conflict
always "summon to the field," does not improve matters; for if
her vocabulary be limited, it is strong, and even the most roguish
shopkeeper does not like to be called a thief and a highwayman! These
diversions in our parts of speech have cost me dearly, for I have had
to compromise about six cases of "defamation," and two of threatened
assault and battery, though these last went no further than
demonstrations on Mrs. D.'s part, which, however, were quite sufficient
to terrify our grocer, who is a colonel in the National Guard, and a
gigantic hairdresser, whose beard is the glory of a "_Sapeur_ company."
I have discovered, besides, that I have done something, but what it
is--in contravention to the laws--I do not know, and for which I am
fined eighty-two francs five centimes, plus twenty-seven for contumacy;
and I have paid it now, lest it should grow into more by to-morrow,
for so the Brigadier has just hinted to me; for that formidable
functionary--with tags that would do credit to a general--is just come
to "invite me," as he calls it, to the Prefecture. As these invitations
are like royal ones, I must break off now abruptly.
Here I am again, Tom, after four hours of ante-chamber and audience. I
had been summoned to appear before the authorities to purge myself of a
contempt,--for which, by the way, they had already fined me; my offence
being that I had not exchanged some bit of paper for another bit of
paper given me in exchange for my passport, the purport of which was to
show that I, Kenny Dodd, was living openly and flagrantly in the city
of Brussels, and not following out any clandestine pursuit or object
injurious to the state, and subversive of the monarchy. Well, I hope
they 're satisfied now; and if my eighty-two francs five centimes gave
any stability to their institutions, much good may it do them! This,
however, seems but the beginning of new troubles; for on my applying to
have the aforesaid passport _vised_ for Germany, they told me that
there were two "detainers" on it, in the shape of two actions at law yet
undecided, although I yesterday morning paid up what I understood to be
the last instalment for compromising all suits now pending against said
Kenny I. Dodd. On hearing this, I at once set out for the tribunal to
see Vanhoegen and Draek, my chief lawyers. Such a place as the tribunal
you never set eyes on. Imagine a great quadrangle, with archways all
round crammed full of dirty advocates,--black-gowned, black-faced, and
black-hearted; peasants, thieves, jailers, tip-staffs, and the general
public of fruit-sellers and lucifer-matches all mixed up together,
with a turmoil and odor that would make you hope Justice was as little
troubled with nose as eyesight. Over the heads of this mob you catch
glimpses of the several courts, where three old fellows, like the
figures in a Holbein, sit behind a table covered with black cloth,
administering the law,--a solemn task that loses some of its imposing
influence when you think that these reverend seigniors, if wanting in
the wisdom, are not free from one of the weaknesses of Bacon! By dint of
great pressing, pushing, and perseverance, I forced my way forward into
one of these till I reached a strong wooden rail, or barrier, within
which was an open space, where the accused sat on a kind of bench, the
witness under examination being opposite to him, and the procureur hard
by in a little box like a dwarf pulpit I thought I saw Draek in the
crowd, but I was mistaken,--an easy matter, they all look so much
alike. Once in, however, I thought I 'd remain for a while and see the
proceedings. It was a trial for murder, as well as I could ascertain
the case. The prisoner, a gentlemanlike young fellow of six or seven and
twenty, had stabbed another in some fit of jealousy. I believe they were
at supper, or were going to sup together when the altercation occurred.
There was a waiter in the witness-box giving evidence when I came up;
and really the tone of deference he exhibited to the prisoner, and the
prisoner's own off-hand, easy way of interrogating him, were greatly to
be admired. It was easy to see that he had got many a half-crown from
the accused, and had not given up hope of many more in future. His chief
evidence was to the effect that Monsieur de Verteuil, the accused, had
ordered a supper for two in a private room, the bill of fare offering a
wide field for discussion, one of the points of the case being whether
the guest who should partake of the repast was a lady or the deceased;
and this the advocates on each side handled with wonderful dexterity, by
inferences drawn from the _carte_. You see, Verteuil's counsel wanted
to show that Bretigny was an intruder, and had forced himself into the
company of the accused. The opposite side were for implying that he came
there on invitation, and was murdered of malice aforethought I don't
think the point would have been so very material with us; or, at all
events, that we should have tried to elicit it in this manner; but they
have their own way of doing things, and I suppose they know what suits
them. After half an hour's very animated skirmishing, the president,
with a sudden flash of intelligence, bethought him of asking the accused
for whom he bespoke the entertainment.
"You must excuse me, Monsieur le Président," said he, blandly; "but I 'm
sure that your nice sense of honor will show that I cannot answer your
question."
"Très bien, très bien," rang through the crowded court, in approbation
of this chivalrous speech, and one young lady from the gallery flung
down her bouquet of moss-roses to the prisoner, in token of her
enthusiastic concurrence. The delicate reserve of the accused seemed to
touch every one. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, all appeared
to feel that they had a vested interest in the propagation of such
principles; and the old judge who had propounded the ungracious
interrogatory really seemed ashamed of himself.
The waiter soon after this retired, and what the newspapers next day
called a _sensation prononcée_ was caused by the entrance of a very
handsome and showy-looking young lady,--no less a personage than
Mademoiselle Catinka Lovenfeld, the prima donna of the opera, and the
Dido of this unhappy Æneid. With us, the admiration of a pretty witness
is always a very subdued homage; and even the reporters do not like
venturing beyond the phrase, "here a person of prepossessing appearance
took her place on the table." They are very superior to us here,
however, for the buzz of admiration swelled from the lowest benches
till it rose to the very judicial seat itself, and the old president,
affecting to look at his notes, wiped his glasses afresh, and took a sly
peep at the beauty, like the rest of us.
Though, as Macheath says, "Laws were made for every degree," the mode of
examining witnesses admits of considerable variety. The interrogatories
were now no longer jerked out with abruptness; the questions were not
put with the categorical sternness of that frowning aspect which, be
the lawyer Belgian, French, or Irish, seems an instinct with him; on
the contrary, the pretty witness was invited to tell her name, she was
wheedled out of her birthplace coaxed out of her peculiar religious
profession, and joked into saying something about her age.
I must say, if she had rehearsed the part as often as she had that of
Norma, she couldn't be more perfect. Her manner was the triumph of ease
and grace. There was an almost filial deference for the bench, an air
of respectful attention for the bar, courtesy for the jury, and a most
touching shade of compassion for the prisoner, and all this done without
the slightest seeming effort. I do not pretend to know what others felt;
but as for me, I paid very little attention to the matter, so much more
did the manner of the inquiry engage me: still, I heard that she was a
Saxon by birth, of noble parentage, born with the highest expectations,
but ruined by the attachment of her father to the cause of the Emperor
Napoleon. The animation with which she alluded to this parental trait
elicited a most deafening burst of applause, and the tip-staff, a
veteran of the Imperial Guard, was carried out senseless, overcome by
his emotions. Ah, Tom! we have nothing like this in England, and strange
enough that they should have it here; but the fact is, these Belgians
are only "second-chop" Frenchmen,--a kind of weak "after grass," with
only the weeds luxuriant! It's pretty much as with ourselves,--the
people that take a loan of a language never take a lease of the
traditions! They catch up just some popular clap-traps of the mother
country, but there ends the relationship!
But to come back to Mademoiselle Catinka. She now had got into a little
narrative of her youth, in some old chateau on the Elbe, which held the
Court breathless; to be sure, it had not a great deal to do with the
case in hand; but no matter for that: a more artless, gifted, lovely,
and loving creature than she appeared to have been never existed. On
this last attribute she laid considerable stress. There was, I think, a
little rhetorical art in the confession; for certainly a young lady who
loved birds, flowers, trees, water, clouds, and mountains so devotedly,
might possibly have a spare corner for something else; and even the old
judge could n't tell if he had not chanced on the lucky ticket in that
lottery. I wish I could have heard the case out; I'd have given a great
deal to see how they linked all that Paul and Virginia life with
the bloody drama they were there to investigate, and what possible
connection existed between Heck's romances and sticking a man with a
table-knife. This gratification was, however, denied me; for just as I
was listening with my greediest ears, Vanhoegen placed his hand on my
shoulder, and whispered, "Come along--don't lose a minute--_your_ cause
is on!"
"What do you mean? Have n't I compro--"
"Hush!" said he, warningly; "respect the majesty of the law."
"With all my heart; but what's _my_ cause?--what do you mean by _my_
cause?"
"It's no time for explanation," said he, hurrying me along; "the judges
are in chamber,--you'll soon hear all about it."
He said truly; it was neither the fitting time nor place for much
converse, for we had to fight our way through a crowd that was every
moment increasing; and it took at least twenty minutes of struggle and
combat to get out, my coat being slit up to the collar, and my friend's
gown being reduced to something like bell-ropes.
He did n't seem to think much about his damaged costume, but still
dragged me along, across a courtyard, up some very filthy stairs, down
a dark corridor, then up another flight, and, passing into a large
ante-room, where a messenger was seated in a kind of glass cage, he
pushed aside a heavy curtain of green baize, and we found ourselves in
a court, which, if not crowded like that below, was still sufficiently
filled, and by persons of respectable exterior. There was a dead silence
as we entered. The three judges were examining their notes, and handing
papers back and forward to each other in dumb show. The procureur
was picking his teeth with a paper-knife, and the clerk of the court
munching a sandwich, which he held in his hat. Vanhoegen, however,
brushed forward to a prominent place, and beckoned me to a seat beside
him. I had but time to obey, when the clerk, seeing us in our places,
bolted down an enormous mouthful, and, with an effort that nearly choked
him, cried ont, "L'affaire de Dodd fils est en audience." My heart
drooped as I heard the words. The "affaire de Dodd fils" could mean
nothing but that confounded duel of which I have already told you. All
the misfortune and all the criminality seemed to fall upon us. For at
least four times a week I was summoned somewhere or other, now before a
civil, now a military auditor; and though I swore repeatedly that I knew
nothing about the matter till it was all over, they appeared to think
that if I was well tortured, I might make great revelations. They were
not quite wrong in their calculations. I would have turned "approver"
against my father rather than gone on in this fashion. But the
difficulty was, I had really nothing to tell. The little I knew had
been obtained from others. Lord George had told me so much as I was
acquainted with; and, from my old habits of the bench at home, I was
well aware that such could not be admitted as evidence.
Still it was their good pleasure to pursue me with warrants and
summonses, and there was nothing for it but to appear when and wherever
they wanted me.
"Is this confounded affair the cause of my passport being detained?"
whispered I to Van.
"Precisely," said he; "and if not very dexterously handled, the expense
may be enormous."
I almost lost all self-possession at these words. I had been a mark for
legal pillage and robbery from the first moment of my arrival, and it
seemed as if they would not suffer me to leave the country while I had
a Napoleon remaining. Stung nearly to madness, I resolved to make one
desperate effort at rescue, and, like some of those woebegone creatures
in our own country who insist on personal appeals to a Chief Justice,
I called, "Monsieur le Président--" There, however, my French left me,
and, after a terrible struggle to get on, I had to continue my address
in the vernacular.
"Who is this man?" asked he, sternly.
"Dodd père, Monsieur le Président," interposed my lawyer, who seemed
most eager to save me from the consequences of my rashness.
"Ah! he is Dodd père," said the president, solemnly; and now he and
his two colleagues adjusted their spectacles, and gazed at me long and
attentively; in fact, with such earnestness did they stare that I
began to feel my character of Dodd père was rather an imposing kind of
performance. "Enfin," said the president, with a faint sigh, as though
the reasoning process had been rather a fatiguing one,--"enfin! Dodd
père is the father of Dodd fils, the respondent."
Vanhoegen bowed submissive assent, and muttered, as I thought, some
little flattery about the judicial acuteness and perspicuity.
"Let him be sworn," said the president; and accordingly I held up my
hand, while the clerk recited something with a humdrum rapidity that I
guessed must mean an oath.
"You are called Dodd père?" said the Attorney-General, addressing me.
"I find I am so called here, but I never was so before," said I, tartly.
"He means that the appellation is not usual in his own country," said
one of the judges,--a small, red-eyed man, with pock-marks.
"Put it down," observed the president, gravely. "The witness informs us
that he is only called Dodd."
"Kenny James Dodd, Monsieur," cried I, interrupting.
"Dodd--dit Kenny James," dictated the small judge; and the amanuensis
took it down.
"And you swear you are the father of Dodd fils?" asked the president.
I suppose that the adage of a wise child knowing his own father cuts
both ways; but I answered boldly, that I 'd swear to the best of
my belief,--a reservation, however, that excited a discussion of
three-quarters of an hour, the point being at last ruled in my favor.
I am bound to say that there was a great deal of legal learning
displayed in the controversy,--a vast variety of authorities cited,
from King David downwards; and although at one time matters seemed going
against me, the red-eyed man turned the balance in my favor, and it was
agreed that I was the father of my own son. If I knew but all, it might
have been better for me there had been a hitch in the case. But I am
anticipating.
There now arose another dispute, on a point of law, I believe, and which
was, what degree of responsibility--there were fourteen degrees, it
seems, in the Pandects--I stood in as regarded the present suit. From
the turn the debate took, I began to suspect we might all of us have
to plead to our responsibilities in the other world ere it could be
finished; but the red-eyed man, who seemed the shrewdest of them all,
cut the matter short by proposing that I should be invited--that's the
phrase--to say so much as I pleased in the question before the Court.
"Yes, yes," assented the president. "Let him relate the affair." And the
whole bar and the audience seemed to reecho the words.
You know me well, Tom, and you can vouch for it that I never had any
objection to telling a story. It was, in truth, a kind of weakness with
me, and some used to say that I was getting into the habit of telling
the same ones too often. Be that as it may, I never was accused of
relating a garbled, broken, and disjointed tale, and for the honor of my
anecdotic powers, I resolved not to do so.
"My Lord," said I, "I 'm like the knife-grinder,--I have no story!"
Bad luck to my illustration, it took half an hour to show that my
identity was not somehow mixed up with a wheel and a grinding-stone!
"Let him relate the affair," said the president, once more; and this
time his voice and manner both proclaimed that his patience was not to
be trifled with.
"Relate what?" asked I, tartly.
"All that you know,--anything you have heard," whispered Van, who was
trembling for my rashness.
"My Lord," said I, "of myself I know nothing; I was in bed all the
time."
"He was in bed all the time," said the president to the others.
"In bed," said red eyes; "let us see;" and he turned over a file of
documents before him for several minutes. "Dodd père swears that he was
in bed from the 7th of February, which is the first entry here, to the
19th of May, inclusive."
"I swear no such thing, my Lord," cried I.
"What does he swear, then?" asked the small judge.
"Let us hear his own version; tell us unreservedly all that you
know," said the president, who really spoke as if he compassionated my
embarrassment.
"My Lord," said I, "there is nothing would give me more pleasure than to
display the candor you require; but when I assure you that I actually
know nothing--"
"Know nothing, sir!" interposed the president. "Do you mean to tell this
Court that you are, and were, in total ignorance of every part of your
son's conduct,--that you never heard of his difficulties, nor of his
efforts to meet them?"
"If hearsay be sufficient, then," said I, "you shall have it;" and so,
taking a long breath, for I saw a weary road before me, I began thus,
the amanuensis occasionally begging of me a slight halt to keep up:--
"It was about five or six weeks ago, my Lord, we--that is, Mrs. D., the
girls, James, and myself--made an excursion to the field of Waterloo,
filled by the very natural desire to see a spot so intimately associated
with our country's glory. I will not weary you with any detail of
disappointment, nor deplore the total absence of everything that could
revive recollections of that great day. In fact, except the big lion
with his tail between his legs, there is nothing symbolic of the nations
engaged."
I waited a moment here, Tom, to see how they took this; but they never
winced, and so I perceived my shell exploded harmlessly.
"We prowled about, my Lord, for two or three hours, and at last reached
Hougoumont, in time to take shelter against a tremendous storm which
just then broke over us; and there it was that James accidentally came
in contact with the young gentleman whom I may not wrongfully call the
cause of all our misfortunes. It would appear that they began discussing
the battle, with all the natural prejudices of the two conflicting
sides. I will not affirm that James was very well read on the subject;
indeed, my impression is that his stock of information was principally
derived from a representation he had witnessed by an equestrian troop
at home, and where Bony, after galloping twice round the circus, throws
himself on his knees and begs for mercy,--a fact so strongly impressed
upon his memory that he insisted the Frenchman should receive it as
historical. The dispute, it would seem, was not conducted within the
legitimate limits of debate; they waxed angry, and the Frenchman, after
a fierce provocation, set off into the thickest of the storm rather than
endure the further discussion."
"This seems to me, sir," interposed the president, "to be perfectly
irrelevant to the matter before us. The Court accords the very widest
latitude to explanations, but if they really have no bearing on the
case in hand,--if, as it appears to my learned brethren and myself,
this polemic on a battle has no actual connection with your son's
difficulties--"
"It's the very source and origin of them, my Lord," broke I in. "He has
no embarrassment which does not date from that incident and that hour."
"In that case you may proceed, sir," said he, blandly; and I went on.
"I do not mean to say, my Lord, that all that followed was inevitable;
nor that, with cooler heads and calmer tempers, the whole affair could
not have been arranged; but James is hot, mighty hot,--the Celt is
strong in him. He really likes a 'shindy,' not like some chaps for the
notoriety of it,--not because it gets into the newspapers, and makes a
noise,--but he likes it for itself, and for its own intrinsic merits,
as one might say. And I may remark here, my Lord, that the Irishman is,
perhaps, the only man in Europe that understands fighting in this sense;
and this trait, if rightly considered, will give a strong clew to our
national character, and will explain the general failure of all our
attempts at revolution. We take so much diversion in a row that we quite
forget it's only the means to an end. We have, so to say, so much fun on
the road that we lose sight of the place we were going to.
"I don't know, Tom, how much further I might have gone on in my
analytical researches into our national character; but the interpreter
cut me short, by assuring the Court that he was totally unable to follow
me. In the narrative parts of my discourse he was good enough; but it
seemed that my reflections, and my general remarks on men and manners,
were a cut above him. I was therefore warned to 'try back' to the line
of my story, which I did accordingly.
"As for the affair itself, my Lord," resumed I, "I understand from
eyewitnesses that it was most respectably and discreetly conducted.
James was put up with his face to the west, so that Roger had the sun on
him. The tools were beauties. It was a fine May morning, mellow, and not
too bright. There was nothing wanting to make the scene impressive,
and, I may add, instructive. Roger's friend gave the word--one, two,
three--bang went both pistols together, and poor James received the
other's fire just here,--between the bone and the artery, so Seutin
described it,--a critical spot, I'm sure."
"Dodd père," said the president, solemnly, "you are trifling with
the patience of the tribunal!" A grave edict, which the other judges
responded to by a majestic inclination of the bead.
"If you are not," resumed he, slowly, and with great emphasis,--"if you
are not a man of weak intellects and deficient reasoning powers, the
conduct you have pursued is inexcusable,--it is a high contempt!"
"And we shall teach you, sir," said the red-eyed, "that no pretence of
national eccentricity can weigh against the claims of insulted justice."
"Ay, sir," chimed in number three, who had not spoken before, "and
we shall let you feel that the majesty of the law in this country is
neither to be assailed by covert impertinence nor cajoled by assumed
ignorance."
"My Lords," said I, "all this rebuke is a riddle to me. You asked me to
tell you a story; and if it be not a very connected and consistent one,
the fault is not mine."
"Let him stand committed for contempt," said the president. "The Petits
Carmes may teach him decorum."
Now, Tom, the Petite Carmes is Newgate, no less! and you may imagine my
feelings at this announcement, particularly as I saw the clerk busily
taking down, from dictation, a little history of my offence and its
penalty. I turned to look for Van in my sore distress, and there he was,
searching the volumes, briefs, and records, to find, as he afterwards
said, "some clew to what I had been saying."
"By Heaven!" cried I, losing all patience, "this is too bad. You urge
me into a long account of what I know nothing, and then to rescue _your_
own ignorance, you declare _me_ impertinent. There is not a lawyer's
clerk in Ireland, there is no pettifogging practitioner for half-crown
fees, there's not a brat that carries a blue bag down the Bachelor's
Walk, could n't teach you all three. You go through some of the forms,
but you know nothing of the facts of justice. You sit up there, like
three stucco-men in mourning,--a perfect mockery of--"
I was not suffered to finish, Tom, for, at a signal from the president,
two gendarmes seized me on either side, and, notwithstanding some
demonstrations of resistance, led me off to prison. Ay, I must write the
word again--to prison! Kenny, I, Dodd, of Dod s borough, Justice of
the Peace, and chairman of the Union of Bruff, committed to jail like a
common felon!
[Illustration: 142]
I 'm sorry I suffered my feelings to get the better--perhaps I ought to
say the worse--of me. Now that it's all over, it were better that I had
not knocked down the turnkey, and kicked Vanhoegen out of my cell. It
would have been both more discreet and more decorous, to have submitted
patiently. I know it's what _you_ would have done, Tom, and trusted
to your action for damages to indemnify you; but I'm hasty, that's the
fact; and if I wanted to deny it, the state of the jailer's nose, and
my own sprained thumb, would give evidence against me. But are there
no allowances to be made for the provocation? Perhaps not for a simple
assault; but if I had killed the turnkey, I'm certain the jury would
discover the "circonstances atténuantes."
Partly out of respect to my own feelings, partly out of regard to yours,
I have not put the words "Petits Carmes" at the top of this letter; but
truth will out, Tom, and the real fact is that I date the present from
cell No. 65, in the common prison of Brussels! Is not that a pretty
confession? Is not that a new episode in this Iliad of enjoyment,
cultivation, and Heaven knows what besides, that Mrs. D. projected by
our tour on the Continent? But I swear to you, solemnly, as I write
this, that, if I live to get back, I'll expose the whole system of
foreign travel. I don't think I could write a book, and it's hard
nowadays to find a chap to put down one's own sentiments fairly and
honestly, neither overlaying them with bits of poetry, nor explaining
them away by any garbage of his own; so that, maybe, I'll not be able to
come out hot-pressed and lettered; but if the worst comes to it, I 'll
go about the country giving lectures. I 'll hire an organ-man to play at
intervals, and I 'll advertise, "Kenny Dodd on Men and Manners
abroad--Evenings with Frenchmen, and Nights with Distinguished
Belgians." I'll show up their cookery, their morals, their modesty,
their sense of truth, and their notions of justice. And though I well
know that I 'll expose myself to the everlasting hate of a legion of
hairdressers, dancing-masters, and white-mice men, I'll do it as sure as
I live. I have heard you and Peter Belton wax warm and eloquent about
the disgrace to our laws in permitting every kind of quackery to prevail
unhindered; but what quackery was ever the equal to this taste for the
Continent? If people ate Morison's pills like green peas, they would n't
do themselves as much moral injury as by a month abroad! And if I were
called before a committee of the House to declare, on my conscience,
what I deemed the most pernicious reading of the day, I 'd say--Murray's
Handbooks! I give you this under my hand and seal. That fellow--Murray,
I mean--has got up a kind of Pictorial Europe of his own, with bits of
antiquarianism, history, poetry, and architecture, that serves to
convince our vulgar, vagabondizing English that they are doing a refined
thing in coming abroad. He half persuades them that it is not for cheap
champagne and red partridges they 're come, but to see the Cathedral of
Cologne and the Dome of St. Peter's, till he breeds up a race of
conceited, ill-informed, prating coxcombs, that disgrace us abroad and
disgust us at home.
I think I see your face now, and I half hear you mutter, "Kenny's in one
of his fits of passion;" and you'd be right, too, for I have just upset
my ink-bottle over the table, and there's scarcely enough left to finish
this scrawl, as I must reserve a little for a few lines to Mrs. D.
Apropos to that same, Tom, I don't know how to break it to her that I'm
in a jail, for her feelings will be terribly shocked at first; not but,
between you and me, before a year's over, she 'll make it a bitter
taunt to me whenever we have a flare-up, and remind me that, for all my
justiceship of the peace, I was treated like a common felon in Brussels!
I believe that the best thing I can do is to send for Jellicot, since
Vanhoegen and Draek have sent to say that they retire from my cause,
"reserving to themselves all liberty of future action as regards the
injury personally sustained;" which means that they require ten pounds
for the kicking. Be it so!
When I have seen Jellicot, I 'll give you the result of the interview,
that is, if there be any result; but my friend J. is a lawyer of the
lawyers, and it is not only that he keeps his right hand on terms of
distance with his left, but I don't believe that the thumb and the
forefinger of the same side are ever acquainted. He is very much that
stamp of man your English Protestants call a Jesuit. God help them,
little they know what a real Jesuit is!
It's now a quarter to two in the morning, and I sit down to finish this
with a heavy heart, and certainly no inclination for sleep. I don't know
where to begin, nor how to tell you, what has happened; but the short of
it is, Tom, I'm half ruined. Jellicot has been here for hours and gone
over the whole case; he received the papers from D. and V.; and, indeed,
everything considered, he has done the thing kindly and feelingly. I
'm sure my head would n't stand the task of telling you all the
circumstances; the matter resolves itself simply into this: The "affaire
de Dodd fils," instead of being James's duel, as I thought, is a series
of actions against him for debt, amounting to upwards of two thousand
pounds sterling! There is not an extravagance, from the ballet to the
betting-book, that he has not tasted; and saddle-horses, suppers,
velvet waistcoats, jewelry, and gimcracks are at this moment dancing an
infernal reel through my poor brain.
He has contrived, in less than three months, to condense and concentrate
wickedness enough for a lifetime; this is technically called "going
fast." Egad, I should say it's a pace far too quick to last with any
man, much less with the son of a broken-down Irish gentleman! You would
not believe that the boy could know the very names of the things that he
appears to have reckoned as mere necessaries of daily life; and how he
contrived to raise money and contract loans--a thing that has been a
difficulty to myself all my life long--is clean beyond me to explain. I
'll get a copy of the "claims" and send it over to you, and I feel that
your astonishment will equal my own. It would appear that the young
vagabond talked as if the Barings were his next of kin, and actually
took delight in squandering money! Only think! all the time I believed
he was hard at work at his French lessons, it was rattling a dice-box
he was, and his education for the Board of Trade was going on in the
side-scenes of the opera! Vickars has been the cause of all this. If
he 'd have kept his promise, the boy wonld n't have been rained with
rascally companions and spendthrift associates.
Where's the money to come from, Tom? Have you any device in your head to
get us out of this scrape? I suppose some, at least, of the demands will
admit of abatement, and Lazarus, they say, always takes a fourth of
his claim. You can estimate the pleasant game of cross-purposes I was
playing all yesterday with the Court of Cassation, and what a chaotic
mass of rubbish the field of Waterloo and the duel must have appeared in
an action for debt! But why did n't they apprise me of what I was
there for? Why did they go on with their ridiculous demand, "Racontez
l'affaire"? Recount what? What should I know of the nefarious dealings
of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? They torment me for six weeks by
a daily examination, till it would be nothing singular if I became
monomaniac, and could discuss no other theme than a duel and a gunshot
wound, and then, without the slightest suggestion of a change, they
launch me into a thing like a Court of Bankruptcy!
It appears that I have been committed for three days for my "contempt,"
and before that time elapses, there is no 'resource in Belgian law to
compel them to bring up the body of Kenny Dodd; so that here I must
stay, "chewing," as the poet says, "the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."
Not that I have not a great deal of business to transact in this
interval. Jellicot's papers would fill a cart; besides which, I have in
contemplation a letter for Mrs. D. that will, I suspect, astonish her. I
mean briefly, but clearly, to place before her the state we are in,
and her own share in bringing us to it. I'll let her feel that her own
extravagance has given the key-note to the family, and that she alone is
to blame for this calamity. Among the many fine things promised me for
coming abroad, she forgot to say that I was to be like Silvio Pellico;
but _I_ 'll not forget it, Tom!
Then, I have an epistle special for James. He shall feel that he has a
share in the general ruin; for I will write to Vickars, and ask for a
commission for him in a black regiment, or an appointment in the Cape
Mounted Rifles,--what old Burrowes used to call the Blessed Army of
Martyrs. I don't care a jot where he goes! But he 'll find it hard to
give suppers at four pound a head in the Gambia, and ballet-dancers will
scarcely be costly acquaintances on the banks of the Niger! And lastly,
I mean to threaten a return to Ireland! "Only threaten," you say: "why
not do it in earnest?" As I told you before, I'm not equal to it! I
've pluck for anything that can be done by one effort, but I have not
strength for a prolonged conflict. I could better jump off the Tarpeian
rock than I could descend a rugged mountain! Mrs. D. knows this so well
that whenever I show fight, she lays down her parallels so quietly, and
prepares for a siege with such deliberation, that I always surrender
before she brings up her heavy guns. Don't prate to me of pusillanimity
and cowardice! Nobody is brave with his wife. From the Queen of Sheba
down to the Duchess of Marlborough, ay, and to our own days, if I liked
to quote instances, history teaches the same lesson. What chance have
you with one that has been studying every weak point, and every frailty
of your disposition, for, maybe, twenty years? Why, you might as well
box with your doctor, who knows where to plant the blow that will be the
death of you.
I have another "dodge," too, Tom,--don't object to the phrase, for it's
quite parliamentary; see Bernai Osborne, _passim_. I 'll tell Mrs. D.
that I 'll put an advertisement in "Galignani," cautioning the public
against giving credit to her, or her son, or her daughters; that the
Dodd family is come abroad especially for economy, and has neither
pretension to affluence, nor any claim to be thought rich. If that won't
frighten her, my name is not Kenny! The fact is, Tom, I intend to pursue
a very brave line of action for the three days I'm "in," since she
cannot have access to me without my own request. You understand me.
I cannot bring my mind to answer your questions about Dodsborough; my
poor head is too full of its own troubles. They 've just brought me
my breakfast,--prison fare,--for in my indignation I have refused all
other. Little I used to think, while tasting the jail diet at home,
as one of the visitors, that I'd ever be reduced to eating it on less
experimental grounds!
I must reserve all my directions about home affairs for my next; but
bestir yourself to raise this money for us. Without some sort of a
compromise we cannot leave this; and I am as anxious to "evacuate
Flanders" as ever was Uncle Toby! Captain Morris told me, the other
day, of a little town in Germany where there are no English, and where
everything can be had for a song. The cheapness and the isolation would
both be very advisable just now. I 'll get the name of it before I write
next.
By the way, Morris is a better fellow than I used to think him: a little
priggish or so, but good-hearted at bottom, and honest as the sun. I
think he has an eye on Mary Anne. Not that at present he 'd have much
chance in that quarter. These foreign counts and barons give a false
glitter to society that throws into the shade all untitled gentility;
and your mere country gentleman beside them is like your mother's
old silver teapot on a table with a show specimen of Elkington's new
galvanic plate. Not but if you wanted to raise a trifle of money on
either, the choice would be very difficult.