Liège, Tuesday Evening.
My dear Tom,--Your reproaches are all just, but I really have not had
courage to wield a pen these last three weeks, nor have I now patience
to go back on the past. Perhaps when we meet--if ever that good time
is to come round again--I may be able to tell you something of my final
exit from Brussels; but now with the shame yet fresh, and the disgrace
recent, I cannot find pluck for it.
Here we are at what they call the "Pavilion," having changed from the
Hotel d'Angleterre yesterday. You must know, Tom, that this same city
of Liège is the noisiest, most dinning, hammering, hissing, clanking,
creaking, welding, smelting, and furnace-roaring town in Europe.
Something like a hundred thousand tinkers are at work every day; and
from an egg saucepan to a steam-boiler there is something to be hammered
at by every capacity!
You would say that tumult like this might satisfy the most craving
appetite for uproar; but not so: the Liégeois are regular gluttons for
noise, and they insist upon having Verdi's new opera of "Nabuchodonosor"
performed at their great theatre. Now, this same theatre is exactly
in front of the Hôtel d'Angleterre, so that when, by dint of time,
patience, and a partial dulness of the acoustic nerves, we were getting
used to steam-factories and shot-foundries, down comes Verdi on us,
with a din and clangor to which even the works of Seraing were like
an _Æolian_ harp! Now, of all the Pretenders of these days of especial
humbug, with our "Long ranges," Morison's pills and Louis Napoleons, I
don't think you could show me a greater charlatan than this same Verdi.
I don't pretend to know a bit about music; I only knew two tunes all my
life, "God save the King" and "Patrick's Day," and these only because
we used to stand up and take off our hats to them in the Dublin theatre;
but modulated, soft sounds have always had their effect on me, and I
never heard a country girl singing as she beetled her linen beside a
river's bank, or listened to the deep bay of an old fox-hound of a clear
winter's morning, without feeling that there was something inside of
me somewhere that responded to the note. But this fellow is all
marrow-bones and cleavers! Trumpets, drums, big fiddles, and bassoons
are the softest things he knows. I take it as a providential thing that
his music cracks every voice after one season; for before long
there will be nobody left in Europe to sing him, except it be the
steam-whistle of an express-train!
But we live in strange times, Tom, that's the fact. The day was when
our operas used to be taken from real life,--or what authors and poets
thought was real life. We had the "Maid of the Mill," and the "Duenna,"
and "Love in a Village," and a score more, pleasant and amusing enough;
and except that there was nothing wrong or incomprehensible in them,
perhaps they might have stood their ground. There was the great failure,
Tom; everybody could understand them, and nobody need be shocked. Now,
the taste is, puzzle a great many, and shock every one!
A grand opera now must be from the Old Testament. Not even drums and
kettle-drums would save you, if you haven't Moses or Melchisedek to
sit down in white raiment, and see some twenty damsels, with petticoats
about as long as a lace ruffle, capering and attitudinizing in a way
that ought to make even a patriarch blush. Now, this is all wrong,
Tom. The public might be amused without profanity, and even the most
inveterate lover of dancing needn't ask David and Uriah for a _pas
de deux_. And now, let me remark to you, that a great deal of that
so-much-vaunted social liberty abroad is neither more nor less than this
same latitude with respect to any and every thing. We at home were
bred up to believe that good-breeding mainly consists in a certain
reserve,--a cautious deference not alone for the feelings, but even the
prejudices of others; that you have no right to offend your neighbor's
sense of respect for fifty things that you held cheaply yourself. They
reverse all this here. Everybody talks to you of yourself, ay, and of
your wife and your mother, as frankly as though they were characters
of the heathen mythology: they treat you like a third party in these
discussions, and very likely it was a practice of this kind originally
suggested the phrase of being "beside oneself."
You'll perhaps remark that my tone is very low and depressed, Tom; and I
own to you I feel so. For a man that came abroad to enjoy himself, I am,
to say the least, going a mighty strange way about it. The most rigid
moralist couldn't accuse me of my epicurism, for I seem to be husbanding
my Continental pleasures with a laudable degree of self-denial. Would
you like a peep at us? Well, Mrs. D. is over there in No. 19, in bed
with fourteen leeches on her temples, and a bottle as big as a black
jack of camphor and sal-volatile beside her as a kind of table beverage;
Mary Anne and Caroline are somewhere in the dim recesses of the same
chamber, silent, if they 're not sobbing; James is under lock and key in
No. 17, with Ollendorff's Method, and the Gospel of St. John in French;
and here am I, trying to indite a few lines, with blast furnaces and
brass instruments baying around me, and Paddy Byrne cleaning knives
outside the door!
[Illustration: 168]
Mrs. D.'s attack is not serious, but it is very distressing. She has got
the notion into her head that foreign apothecaries have a general pardon
for poisoning, and so she requires that some of us should always take
part of her physic before she touches it. The consequence is that I
have been going through a course of treatment that would have pushed an
elephant rather hard. I can stand some things pretty well; but what they
call réfrigérants, Tom, play the devil with me! and I am driven to
brandy and water to an extent that I can scarcely call myself quite
sober at any time of the day. Were we at home in Dodsborough, there
would be none of this; so that here, again, is another of the blessings
of our foreign experiences! Ah, Tom! it's all a mistake from beginning
to end. You would n't know your old friend if you saw him; and although
they've padded me out, and squeezed me in, I 'm not the man I used to
be!
You tell me that I'm not to expect any more money till November; but you
forgot to tell me how I 'm to live without it. We compromised with the
Jews for fifteen hundred.
Our "extraordinaries," as the officials would call them, amounted to
three more; so that, taking all things into account, we have been living
since April last at a trifle more than eleven thousand a year. It's a
mercy that when they sell a man out by the Encumbered Estates Court,
they ask no impertinent questions about how he contracted his debts. I
'd cut a sorry figure under such an examination.
We have begun the economy, Tom, and I hope that even you will be
satisfied; for although this place is detestable to me, here I 'll stay,
if my hearing can stand it, till winter. Mary Anne says we might as well
be in Birmingham, and my reply is, I'm quite ready to go there! I own to
you I have a kind of diabolical delight in seeing them all nonplussed.
There are neither dukes nor marquises here, neither princesses nor
ballet-dancers! The most reckless spendthrift could only ruin himself in
steam-boilers, gun-barrels, and kitchen-rauges; there's nothing softer
than cast-iron in the whole town.
Our rooms are in the third story. James and I dine at the public table.
Our only piece of extravagance is the doctor that attends Mrs. D.; and
if you saw him, you 'd scarcely give him the name of a luxury! I needn't
say that there is very little pleasure in all this; indeed, for anything
_I_ see, I think we might be leading the same kind of life in Kilmainham
Jail; and perhaps at last they 'll see this themselves, and consent to
return home.
I go out for an hour's walk every day, but it does me little good. My
usual stroll is to a shot factory, and back by a patent bolt and rivet
establishment; but this avoids the theatre, for I own to you Nabucco,
as they call him for shortness, shouts in a manner that makes me quite
irritable.
James never leaves his room; he's studying hard at last; and although
his health would be the better for a little exercise, I 'll just leave
him to himself. It's right he should pay some penalty for his late
conduct. As for the girls, Mary Anne is indignant with me, and only
comes to say good-morning and good-night; and Cary, though she tries
to look cheerful and happy, is evidently fretting in secret. Betty Cobb
takes less trouble to repress her feelings, and goes howling about the
hotel like a dog run over by the mail, and is always getting accompanied
by strange and inquisitive travellers, who insist upon hearing her
sorrows, and occasionally push their inquiries even as far as my room!
Paddy Byrne alone appears to have taken a philosophical view of his
position, for he has been drunk ever since we arrived. He usually sleeps
in the hall, on the stairs, or the lobbies; and although this saves the
cost of a bedroom, the economy is counterbalanced by occasional little
reprisals he takes, as stray gentlemen stumble over him with their
bedroom candles. At such moments he smashes lamps and china ornaments,
for which his wages will require a long sequestration to clear off. And
now a word about home. Our English tenant, you tell me, is getting
tired of Dodsborough; we guessed how it would be already. "He thinks the
people lazy"! Ask him, did he ever try to cut turf, with two meals of
wet potatoes per diem? "They are bigoted and superstitious too." How
much better would they be if they knew all about Lord Rosse's telescope?
"They won't give up their old barbarous ways." Is n't that the very
boast of the Conservative party? Is n't that what Disraeli is preaching
every day and every hour?--"Fall back upon this,--fall back upon
that,--think of the spirit of your ancestors." Now they say, our
ancestors yoked their horses by the tails to save a harness. It's rather
hard that all the "progress," as they call it, must begin with the poor.
It's a dead puzzle to me, Tom, to explain one thing. All the moralists,
from the earliest ages, keep crying up humility, and telling you that
true nobility of soul consists in self-denial and moderation, simple
tastes, and so on; and yet, what is the great reproach they bring
against Paddy? Is n't it that he is satisfied with the potato? There's
the head and front of his offence. That he does n't want beef, like the
Englishman,--nor soup and three courses, like "Mounseer"--nor sauerkraut
and roast veal, like a German; "cups and cold water" being the food of a
fellow that could thrash the whole three of them all round, and think it
mighty good fun besides.
Poor Dan used to say that he was the best abused man in Europe: but
I 'll tell you that the potato is the best abused vegetable in the
universal globe. From the "Times" down to the Scotch farmers, it's one
hue-and-cry after it,--"The filthy root"--"The disgusting tuber,"--"The
source of all Irish misery,"--"The father of famine, and mother of
fever,"--on they go, blackguarding the only food of the people, till at
last, as if it were a judgment on their bad tongues, it took to rot in
the ground, and left us with nothing to eat. Now, Tom, you know as well
as myself, Ireland is not a wheat country; it's one year in three that
we can raise a crop of it; for our climate is as treacherous as the
English Government. I hope you would n't have us live on oats, like the
Scotch; nor on Indian com, like the savages; so what is there like the
potato? And then, how easy the culture, and how simple the cookery! It
does well in every soil, and agrees well with every constitution.
It feeds the peasant, it fattens the pig, it rears the children, and
supports the chickens. What can compare with that?
Do you know that there's no cant of the day annoys me more than that cry
about model farming, and green crops, and rotations, and subsoiling, and
so on. The whole ingenuity of mankind would seem devoted to ascertaining
how much a bullock can eat, and how little will feed a laborer.
Stuff one and starve the other, and you may be the President of an
Agricultural Society, and Chairman of your Union. What treatises we have
upon stock, and improving the breed of boars! Will you tell me who ever
thought of turning the same attention to the condition of the people?
and I'm sure, if you go into the county Galway, you 'll soon acknowledge
that they need it. "Look at that lanky pig," calls out the Scotch
steward, in derision; "his snout and his legs are fit for a greyhound!"
But I say, "Look at Paddy, there. His neck is shrivelled and knotted,
like an old vine-tree; his back rounded, and his legs crooked; all for
want of care and nourishment. Is all your sympathy to be kept for the
sheep, and have you none for the shepherd?"
I made some memorandums for you about Belgian farming, but Mary Anne
curled her hair with them. It's no loss to you, however, for their
system would n't do with us. Small tenures and spade husbandry do mighty
well here, because there are great cities within a few miles of each
other, and agriculture takes somewhat the character of market gardening;
but their success would be far different were there long distances to be
traversed with the produce.
This country is certainly prospering; but I 'm not so certain that it
can continue to do so.' Their industry is now stimulated to a high state
of productiveness, because they are daily extending their railroads; but
there must come an end to that, and it strikes me that a country that
only deals with itself is pretty much what the adage says of the "man
that is his own doctor." They are now, however, enjoying what your
political economists all agree in pronouncing to be the great test of
prosperity. Everything has nearly doubled in price: house rent, meat,
vegetables, wages, clothes, luxuries of all kind, and, of course,
taxation. I own to you I never clearly understood this problem; it
always seemed to me as if a whole population took to walk upon stilts,
for the pleasure of thinking themselves nine feet high.
These matters put me in mind of Vickars. I now see that I was wrong in
not going over to the election. His tone is quite changed, and he writes
to me as if I were a deputation from the distressed hand-loom weavers.
He acknowledges mine of the 5th ult, and he deplores, and regrets, and
feels constrained to remind me, and so on, ending with being "humble and
obedient,"--two things that I believe his own mother never found him.
The fact is, Tom, he's in Parliament, and he is a Lord of the Treasury,
and he does n't care a brass farthing for one of us. Do you remark how
the Ministerial papers praise the Government for promoting Irishmen?
It is not on the ground of their superior capacity for office, their
readiness and natural ability. Nothing of the kind; it is simply the
unbounded generosity of the administration, and perhaps as a proof of
their humility! They put an Irishman in the Cabinet, just as the Roman
Conqueror took a slave in his chariot, to show that they don't intend to
forget themselves!
I wish "Punch" would make a picture of it. Pat with his pipe in his
mouth beside the Premier; the roguish leer of the eye, the careless ease
of his crossed legs, and smallclothes open at the knee, would be a grand
contrast to the high-bred air of his companion.
Don't bother me any more about the salmon weirs; make the best bargain
you can, and I 'll be satisfied. It appears to me, however, the more
laws we have, the less fish we catch. In my father's time there was no
legislation at all, and salmon was a penny a pound. The fish seem to
hate Acts of Parliament just as much as ourselves. And, talking of that,
I 'm glad we 're out of our scrape with the Yankees.
Depend upon it, all the cod that ever was salted would n't pay for
one collision. It would n't be like any other war, Tom, for French
and Russians, Austrians and Italians, have each their separate
peculiarities,--giving certain advantages in certain situations; but
we--that is, English and Americans--fight exactly in the same way.
Each knows every dodge of the other,--long sixty-fives and thirty-twos,
boarders, riflemen, riggers,--all alike. It 's the old story of the
Kilkenny cats, and I'm greatly afraid our "tail" would be nearly as much
mauled as Jonathan's.
The longer I live, the nearer I find myself drawing to these Yankees;
and I 've some notion of going over there to have a look at them. They
tell me that the worst thing about them is the air of gravity, even of
depression, that prevails,--a strange fault, considering how many Irish
there are amongst them; but I suppose Paddy is like the rest of the
world, and he loses his fun when he gets prosperous. There was Tom
Martin, that went our circuit, and there was n't as pleasant a fellow
at the bar till he got into business. There was no good asking him
to dinner after that; as he owned himself, "he kept his jokes for his
clients." Now, there may be something like this the case in America; at
all events, Tom, I 'd have one advantage there,--I 'd know the language,
what I 'm never likely to do here; not but I'm doing my best every day
at the _table d'hôte_; occasionally, perhaps, with some sacrifice of the
"propers;" but as a foreigner is too polite to laugh, the stranger has
little chance to learn. For my own part, I 'd rather they 'd tell me
when I was wrong, and give me some hope of going right I 'd think it
more friendly of a man to say, "Kenny Dodd, you 're going into a hole,"
than if he smiled and simpered, and assured me that I was in the middle
of the path, and getting on beautifully.
And there isn't any good-nature in it; not a bit. It's not
good-heartedness, nor kindness, nor amiability. I don't believe a word
of it; because the chap that does it isn't thinking of you at all,--he
's only minding himself; he 's fancying how he 's delighting you, or
captivating your wife or your sister-in-law; or, if it's a woman, she
wants to fascinate or make a fool of you.
The real and essential difference between us and all foreigners is that
they are always thinking of what effect they are producing; they never
for a single moment forget that there is an audience. Now we, on the
contrary, never remember it. Life with them is a drama, in all the blaze
of wax-lights and a crowded house; with us, it's a day-rehearsal, and
we slip about, mumbling our parts, getting through the performance,
unmindful of all but our own share in it.
More than half of what is attributed to rudeness and unsociality in us,
springs out of the simple fact that we do not care to obtrude even our
politeness when there seems no need of it. _Our_ civilities are like a
bill of exchange, that must represent value one day or other. _Theirs_
are like the gilt markers on a card-table: they have a look of money
about them, but are only counterfeit. Perhaps this may explain why our
women like the Continent so much better than ourselves. All this mock
interchange of courtesy amuses and interests _them_; it only worries
_us_.
To come back to Vickars. He 'll do nothing for James. His "own list is
quite full;" he "has mentioned his name," he says, "to the Secretary for
the Colonies," and will speak of him "at the Home Office." But I know
what that means. The party is safe for the present, and don't need our
dirty voices for many a day to come. It's distressing me to find out
what to do with him. Can you get me any real information about the gold
diggings? Is it a thing that would suit him? His mother, I know well,
would never consent to the notion of his working with his hands; but,
upon my conscience, if it's his head he's to depend on, he'll fare
worse! He is very good-looking, six foot one and a half, strong as a
young bull; and to ride an unbroken horse, drive a fresh team, to shoot
a snipe, or book a salmon, I 'll back him against the field. I hear,
besides, he 's a beautiful cue at billiards. But what's the use of all
these at the Board of Trade, if he had even the luck to get there?
Many 's the time I 've heard poor old Lord Kilmahon say that an Irish
education was n't worth a groat for England; and I now see the force of
the remark.
Not but he 's working hard every day, with French and fortification and
military surveying, with a fine old officer that served in the wars of
the Empire,--Captain de la Bourdonaye,--a regular old soldier of Bony's
day, that hates the English as much as any Irishman going. He comes and
sits with me now and then of an evening, but there 's not much society
in it, since we can't understand each other. We have a bottle of rum and
some cigars between us, and our conversation goes on somewhat in this
fashion:--
"Help yourself, Mounseer."
A grin and bow, and something mumbled between his teeth.
"Take a weed?"
We smoke.
"James is getting on well, I hope? Mon fils James improving, eh? Grand
general one of these days, eh?"
"Oui, oui." Fills and drinks.
"Another Bonaparte, I suppose?"
"Ah! le grand homme" Wipes his eyes, and looks up to the ceiling.
"Well, we thrashed him for all that! Faith, we made him dance in Spain
and Portugal. What do you say to Talavera and Vittoria?"
Swears like a trooper, and rattles out whole volumes of French, with
gestures that are all but blows. I wait till it 's over, and just say
"Waterloo!"
This nearly drives him crazy, and he forgets to put water in his glass;
and off he goes about Waterloo in a way that's dreadful to look at. I
suppose, if I understood him, I 'd break his neck; but as I don't, I
only go on saying "Waterloo" at intervals; but every time I utter it,
he has to blow off the steam again. When the rum is finished, he usually
rushes out of the room, gnashing his teeth, and screaming something
about St. Helena. But it 's all over the next day, and he 's as polite
as ever when we meet,--grins, and hands me his tin snuff-box with the
air of an emperor. They 're a wonderful people, Tom; and though they 'd
murder you, they 'd never forget to make a bow to your corpse.
You may imagine, from what I tell you, that I am very lonely here; and
so I am. I never meet anybody I can speak to; I never see any newspaper
I can read! I eat things without knowing the names of them, or, what's
worse, what they are; and all this I must do for economy, while I could
live for less than one-half the expense at Dodsburough!
Mary Anne has just come to say that the doctors are agreed Mrs. D. must
be removed; the noise of the town will destroy her. My only surprise is
that she did n't discover it sooner. They speak of a place called Chaude
Fontaine, seven miles away, and of a little watering-place called Spa.
But I 'll not budge an inch till I have all the particulars, for I know
well they 're all dying to be at the old work again,--tea-parties,
and hired horses, and polkas, in the evening, and the rest of it. Lord
George has arrived at Liège, and I would n't be astonished if he was at
the bottom of it all; not but he behaved well in James's business. To
deal with a Jew there 's nothing in the world like one of your young
sprigs of nobility! Moses does n't care a bulrush for you or me; but
when he hears of a Lord Charles or Lord Augustus, he alters his tone.
It is that class which supplies his customers, and he dares not outrage
them.
I wish you saw the way he managed our friend Lazarus! He would n't look
into his statement, read one of his accounts, or even bestow a glance at
the bills.
"I 'm up to all those dodges, Lazzy," said he; "it's no use coming that
over _me_. What 'll you do it for?"
"Ah, my good Lord Shorge, you know better as me, that we cannot give
away our moneys. Here are all the bills--"
"Don't care for that, Lazzy,--won't look at 'em. What 'll you do it
for?"
"If I lend my moneys at a fair per shent--"
"Well, what's the figure to be? Say it at once, or I'm off."
"You 'll shurely look at my claims--"
"Not one of them."
"Nor the bills."
"No."
"Nor the vouchers?"
"No."
"Oh dear! oh dear! how hard you are grown; and you so young and so
handsome, so little like--"
"Never mind the resemblance, but answer me. How much?"
"It 's impossible, my Lord Shorge!" "Will two hundred do? Well, two
fifty?" "No, nor twelve fifty, my Lord. I will have my claim." "That 's
what I want to come at, Lazzy. How much?" This process goes on for half
an hour, without any apparent result on either side; when, at last, Lord
George, taking out his pocket-book, proceeds to count various bank-notes
on the table. The effect is magical; the sight of the money melts
Lazarus,--he hesitates, and gives in. Of course his compliance does not
cost him much; fifty per cent is the very lowest we escape for! But even
at this, Tom, our bargain is a good one.
I see it all, Tom; they are bent on getting to a watering-place, and
that's exactly the very thing I won't stand. Our Irish notions on these
subjects are all taken from Bundoran, or Kilkee, or Dunmore, or some
such localities; and where, to say the least, there is not a great deal
to find fault with. Tiresome they are enough; and, after a week or so,
one gets wearied of always walking over ankles in deep sand,
listening to the plash of the tide, or the less musical squall of some
half-drowned baby, or sitting on a rock to watch some miraculous draught
of fishes, that is sure to be sent off some twenty miles into the
interior. These, and occasional pictorial studies of your acquaintances,
in all the fascinations of oil-skin caps and wet drapery, tire at last.
But they are cheap pleasures, Tom; and, as the world goes, that is
something.
Now, from all I can learn, for I know nothing of them myself, your
foreign watering-place is just a big city taking an airing. The
self-same habits of dress, late hours, play, dancing, debt, and
dissipation; the great difference being that wickedness is cultivated in
straw hats and Russia-duck, instead of its more conventional costume of
black coat and trousers! From my own brief experience of life, I think a
garden by moonlight is just as dangerous as a conservatory with colored
lamps; and a polka in public is less perilous than a mountain excursion,
even on donkeys! They 'll not catch me at that game, Tom!
I have just discovered in "Cochrane's Guide"--for I have burned my "John
Murray"--the very place to suit me,--Bonn on the Rhine. He says it has
a pleasant appearance, and contains 1,300 houses and 15,000 inhabitants,
and that the Star, kept by one Schmidt, is reasonable, and that
he speaks English, and takes in the "Galignani,"--two evidences of
civilization not to be despised.
I think I see you smile; but that's the fact,--we come abroad to hunt
after somebody we can talk to, or find a newspaper we can read, making
actual luxuries of what we had every day at home for nothing.
Besides these, Bonn has a university, and that will be a great thing for
James, and masters of various kinds for the girls; but, better than all
this, there's no society, no balls, no dinners, no theatre. The only
places of public amusement are the Cathedral and the Anatomy House; and
even Mrs. D. will be puzzled to get up a jinketing in them.
I 'll write to Schmidt this evening about rooms, and I 'll show him that
we are not to be "done," like your newly arrived Bulls; for I won't pay
more than "four-and-six" a head for dinner; and plenty it is too. I
wish we could have remained here; but now that the doctors have decided
against it, there's no help. It is not that I liked the place,--Heaven
knows I have no right to be pleased with it,--but I 'll tell you one
great advantage about it: it was actually "breaking them all in to
hate the Continent;" another month of this tinkering din, this tiresome
_table d'hote_, and wearisome existence, and I 'd wager a trifle they 'd
agree to any terms to get away. You 'd not believe your eyes if you saw
how they are altered. The girls so thin, and no color in their cheeks;
James as lank as a greyhound, and always as if half asleep; and myself,
pluffy and full and short-winded, irascible about everything, and always
thirsty, without anything wholesome to drink. But I 'd bear it all, Tom,
for the result, or for what I at least expect the result would be. I
'd submit to it like a course of physic, looking to the cure for my
recompense.
Shall I now tell you, Tom, that I have my misgivings about Mrs. D.'s
illness? I was passing the lobby last night, and I heard her laughing
as heartily as ever she did in her life, though it was only two hours
before she had sent down for the man of the house to witness her will.
To be sure, she always does make a will whenever she takes to bed; but
this time she went further, and had a grand leave-taking of us all,
which I only escaped by being wrapped up in blankets, under the
"influence," as the doctors call it, of "tartarized antimony," of which
I partook, to satisfy her scruples, before she would taste it. If I have
to perform much longer as a pilot balloon, Tom, I 'm thinking I 'm very
likely to explode.
As for one word of truth from the doctors, I 'm not such a fool as to
expect it. The priest or the physician that attends your wife always
seems to regard _you_ as a natural enemy. If he happen to be well bred,
he conducts himself with all the observance due to a distinguished
opponent; but no confidence, Tom,--nothing candid. He never forgets that
he is engaged for the "opposite party."
Your foreign doctor, too, is a dreadful animal. He has not the bland
look, the soft smile, the noiseless slide, the snowy shirt-frill, and
the tender squeeze of the hand, of our own fellows, every syllable of
whose honeyed lips seems like a lenitive electuary made vocal. He is a
mean, scrubby, little, damp-looking chap, not unlike the bit of dirty
cotton in the bottom of an ink-bottle, the incarnation of black draught
and a bitter mixture. He won't poison you, however, for his treatment
ranges between dill-water and syrup of gum; in fact, to use the
expressive phrase of the French, he only comes to "assist" at your
death, and not to cause it. I have remarked that homoopathic fellows
are more attentive to the outward man than the others, whatever be
the reason. Their beards and whiskers are certainly not cut on the
infinitesimal principle, and, assuredly, flattery is one of the
medicaments they never administer in small doses. By the way, Tom, I
wish this same theory could be applied to the distresses of a man's
estate as well as that of his body. It would be a right comfortable
thing to pay off one's mortgagees with fractional parts of a halfpenny,
and get rid of one's creditors on the "decillionth" scale.
I have now finished my paper, and I have just discovered that I have not
answered one of your questions about home affairs; but, after all, does
it matter much, Tom? Things in Ireland go their own way, however we may
strive to direct and control them. In fact, I am half disposed to think
we ought to manage our business on the principle that our countryman
drove his pig,--turning his head towards Cork because he wanted him to
go to Fermoy! Look at us at this moment. We never were so thoroughly
divided as since we have enjoyed the benefits of a united education!
If Tullylicknaslatterley must be sold, see that it is soon done; for
if we put it off till November, the boys will be shooting somebody, or
doing some infernal folly or other, that will take five years off the
purchase-money. These Manchester fellows are always so terrified at
what is called an outrage! Sure, if they had the least knowledge of the
doctrine of chances, they 'd see that the estate where a man was shot
was exactly the place there would be no more mischief for many a year to
come. The only spot where accidents are always recurring is the drop in
front of a jail.
Try and persuade the Englishman to take Dodsborough for another year.
Tell him Ireland is looking up, prices are improving, &c. If he be
Hibernian in his leanings, show him how teachable Paddy is,--how
disposed to learn, and how grateful for instruction. If he be bitten
by the "Times," tell him that the Irish are all emigrating, and that in
three years there will neither be a Pat, a priest, nor a potato to be
seen. As old Fitzgibbon used to say on our circuit, "I wish I had a
hundred pounds to argue it either way!"
I can manage to keep afloat for a couple of weeks, but be sure to remit
me something by that time.
Yours, ever sincerely,
Kenny I. Dodd.