My dear Tom,--There 's an old Turkish proverb, to the effect that,
whenever a man finds himself happy, he should immediately sit down and
write word of it to his friends; for the great likelihood is, that if he
loses a post, he 'll have to change his note. Depend upon it, the adage
has some truth in it! If, for example, I 'd have finished and sent off
a letter I began to you last Wednesday, I 'd have given you a very
favorable account of myself and our prospects here. The place seemed
very much what we were looking for,--a quiet little University town on
the bank of this fine river,--snug and comfortable, and yet, at the
same time, not shut in, but with glorious expansive views on every
side; shady walks for noonday, and hill rambles for sunset; museums
and collections for bad weather occupation, and that kind of simple,
unostentatious living that bespeaks a community of small fortunes and as
small ambitions.
A quaint-looking, half-shy, half-defiant look in the faces showed that
if not very great or very rich folk, they still had other and perhaps
not less sterling claims to worldly reverence; and so they have too!
There are some of the first men, not only in Germany but in Europe,
here, living on the income of a London butler, and letting the "first
floor furnished" to people like the Dodd family.
It is a great privation to me that I don't speak German, for something
tells me we should suit each other wonderfully! Don't mistake me, Tom,
and fancy that I am saying this out of any conceit in my abilities,
or any false notion of my education. I believe, in my heart, I have as
little of one thing as the other; and the only wise thing my father ever
did was to take me away from Dr. Bell's when I was thirteen, and when
he saw that putting Latin and Greek into me was like sowing barley in a
bog,--a waste of good seed in a soil not fit for it. But I 'll tell you
why I think I 'd get on well with these Germans. They seem to be a kind
of dreamy, thoughtful, imaginative creatures, that would relish the dry,
commonplace thoughts, and hard, practical hints of a man like myself.
I could n't discuss a classical subject with them, nor talk about the
varieties of the Greek dialects; but I could converse pleasantly enough
about the difference between the ancients and ourselves in points of
government and on matters of social life. I know little of books, but
I 've seen a good deal of men; and if it be objected that they were
chiefly of my own country, I answer at once, that, however strongly
impressed with his nationality, there's not a man in any country of
Europe so versatile, so many-sided, and so difficult to understand,
as Paddy. Don't be frightened, Tom; I 'm not going off into the
"ethnologies," and not a word will you hear from me about the facial
angle, or frontal development! I 'm not speaking of Pat as if he were
a plaster cast to be measured with a rule and marked with a piece of
charcoal; I 'm talking of him as he is, in a frieze coat or one of
broadcloth,--a sceptical, credulous, patient, headlong, calculating,
impulsive, miserly spendthrift; a species of bull incarnate, that never
prospers till he is ruined outright, and only has real success in life
when all the odds are against him.
Ireland 's birdlime to me,--I stick fast if I only touch it; and why
ain't I back there, growling about the markets, cursing the poor-rates,
and enjoying myself as I used to do? Doesn't it strike you, Tom, that
we take more "out" of ourselves in Ireland--in the way of temper, I
mean--than any other people we hear of in history? Paddy often reminds
me of those cutters on the American lakes, where they saw across the
timbers to give them greater speed; we go fast, it is true, but we
strain ourselves terribly for the sake of it.
And now to come back to Bonn: there is really much to like in it. It is
cheap, it is quiet without seclusion, and there's no snobbery. You know
what I mean, Tom. There 's not a tilbury, nor a tiger, nor a genteel
tea-party in the town. I don't know of a single waistcoat with more
than five colors in it; and, except James and the head waiter, there 's
nobody wears diamond shirt buttons. In fact, if we must live out of our
country, I thought that this was about the best spot we could fix upon.
We made an excellent bargain at our hotel; ten pounds a week was to
cover everything; no extras of any kind after that; so that at last I
began to see my way before me, and perceive some chance of solving
that curious problem that torments alike chancellors and country
gentlemen,--how to meet expenditure by income.
Masters in German, music, and mathematics, and other little odds and
ends, took a couple of pounds more; and I allowed myself ten shillings
a week for what the doctor calls "my little charities," that now
resolve themselves into threepenny whist, or a game of ninepins with the
Professor of Oriental languages. Even _you_, Tom--"Joe" as you are about
the budget--couldn't pick a hole in this! Not that I want to give myself
credit for a measure absolutely imperative; for, to say the truth, our
late performances in Brussels were of the very costliest, and even
Liège ran away with a deal of money. Doctors have about the same ideas
respecting your cash account as your constitution. They never leave
either in a state of plethora! Now, as I was saying, my letter, begun on
Wednesday last, had all these details, and might have concluded with a
flattering picture of James hard at his studies, and the girls not less
diligently occupied with their music and embroidery,--the two resources
by which modern ingenuity fancies it keeps female minds employed! As if
Double-Bass or Berlin wool were disinfecting liquors! I could also have
added that Mrs. D. had fallen into that peculiar condition which is
natural to her whenever she finds a place stupid and unexciting, and
what she fondly fancies to be a religious frame of mind; in other words,
she took to reading her breviary, and worrying Betty Cobb about her
duties; got up for five o'clock mass, and insisted upon Friday coming
three times a week. I could bear all this for quietness' sake; and if
fish diet could insure peace, I 'd be content to live upon isinglass for
the rest of my days.
Mrs. D., however, is not a woman to do things by halves; there's no John
Russellism about her; and now that she had taken this serious turn, I
saw clearly enough what was in store for us. I had actually ordered a
small silk skull-cap, as a protection to my head, not knowing when I
might be sent to do duty in a procession, when suddenly the wind veered
round, and began to blow very fresh in exactly the opposite quarter.
You must know, Tom, that just before we left Cologne we chanced to
make acquaintance with a certain very fashionable person,--a Mrs. Gore
Hampton. She was standing disconsolately to be rained on, in the street,
when Lord George brought her upstairs to our rooms, and introduced her
to us. She was, I must say, what is popularly called a very splendid
woman,--tall, dark-eyed, and dashing, with a bewitching smile, and that
kind of voice that somehow makes commonplaces very graceful. She had,
too, that wonderful tact--wherever it comes from I can't guess--to suit
us all, without seeming to take the slightest trouble about the matter.
She talked to Mrs. D. about London fashionable life, just as if they had
both been going out together for the last three or four seasons; ay,
and stranger still, without even once puzzling her, or making her feel
astray in the geography of this _terra incognita_. I conclude she was
equally successful with the girls; and though she scarcely addressed a
word to James, I suppose she must have made up for it by a look, for he
has never ceased raving of her since.
I have n't told you how she "landed" me, for I 'm not above confessing
that I was as bad as the rest; but the truth is, Tom, I don't really
know how I was caught. I am too old for these blandishments; they no
more suit me now than a tight boot or a runaway hack; one gets too
rheumatic and too stiff in the joints for homage after fifty; and
besides that, there's a kind of croaking conscience that whispers,
"Don't be making a fool of yourself, Kenny James!" and, between you and
me, Tom, 't is well for us when we 're not too deaf to hear it.
Besides this; Tom, it is only the fellows that never were in love when
they were young that become irretrievably entangled in after life. If
you want to see a true sexagenarian victim, look out for some hang-dog,
downcast, mopish creature, or some suspectful, wary, crafty, red-haired
rascal, that thought every woman had a trap laid for him. These are your
hopeless cases; these are the men that always die in some mysterious
manner, and leave wills behind them to be litigated for half a century.
The Kenny Dodds of this world come into another category. They knew that
love and the measles are mildest in young constitutions, and so they
began early. Maybe it was in a firm reliance on this that I felt so easy
about the widow,--if widow she be; for, to tell the truth, I don't yet
know if Mr. Gore Hampton be to the fore or only has left her a memory of
his virtues.
I leave you to guess what impression she made upon me; for the more I
go on trying to explain and refine upon it the less intelligible do I
become. One thing, however, I must say,--these charming women are the
ruin of Irishmen! Our own fair creatures, with a great share of good
looks, and far more than ordinary agreeability, are not so dangerous as
the English, and for this reason: in their demands for admiration they
are too general; they--so to say--fire at the whole covey; now, your
Englishwoman marks her bird,' and never goes home till she bags it!
We were to have left Cologne that morning for Bonn, but so agreeably did
the time pass, that we did n't start till evening, and even then it was
quite tearing ourselves away; for the delightful widow--for widow I must
call her till she shows cause to the contrary--hourly gained on us.
She was obliged to wait there for some lawyers or men of business that
were to follow her with papers to sign; and although Lord George did his
best to persuade her that she might as well come on with us,--that Bonn
was only fifteen miles farther,--she was firm, and said that "Old Mr.
For-dyce was a great prig, and when she had once named Cologne for their
meeting, she would have travelled from Naples rather than break the
appointment." I own to you, there was a tenacity and determination in
all that which pleased me. Maybe the great charm of it was that it was
very unlike what I 'd have done myself!
The whole way to Bonn we talked of nothing but her, the discussion being
all the more unconstrained that Lord George had stayed behind, and
was only to come up the next morning. We were agreed upon a number
of points: her beauty, her elegance, the grace and fascination of her
manner, and her high breeding; but we took different views as to her
condition,--Mrs. D. and the girls thinking that she was married, James
and I standing out for widowhood. Lord George joined us the next day;
and although he could have resolved our doubts at once, Mary Anne
stopped all inquiry, by assuring us that nothing was so hopelessly
vulgar as to display any ignorance about the family or connections of
people of rank. "If she be in the peerage, we ought to know her, and all
about her. She is, of course, some Augusta Louisa, b. 18 and dash; m. to
the Honorable Leopold Conway Gore Hampton, third son, and so on." In a
word, Tom, we had the whole family tree before us, from its old gnarled
root to its last bud, and ours the shame if we were ignorant of its
botanical properties!
A few quiet humdrum days of Bonn existence had almost obliterated our
memory of the charming widow, and we were beginning to "train off"
our attachments to fashionable life, when, in all the splashing and
whip-cracking of foreign posting, up dashes the dark green britschka
to our hotel one fine evening; and before we could well recognize the
carriage, the fair owner herself was making the tour of the Dodd family,
embracing and hand-shaking, as age and sex dictated!
I wish any physiologist would explain why the English, that are so
proverbial for a cold and chilling demeanor at home, grow at once so
cordial when they come abroad. Whether it be the fear of the damp, or
the swell mob, I can't tell, but everybody in England goes about with
his hands in his pockets, and only nods to a friend when he meets him;
whereas here you start with a grin at fifty yards off, then off goes
your hat with a flourish, that, if you have any tact, what with shaking
your head, and looking overcome with delight, occupies you till you come
up with him, when your greeting grows more enthusiastic,--lucky if it
does not finish with a kiss on both cheeks.
I suppose it was the influence of habit betrayed me, for, in a fit of
abstraction, I took the charming widow into my arms, and saluted her as
if she were Mrs. Dodd. If this was in London, Tom, or even in Dublin,
there 's no saying what mischief might not have grown out of it. I might
have been fighting duels every day for the last week, not to mention
still more formidable encounters of a domestic nature; but just to show
you what the Continent does for us,--how instinctively, as it were, we
rise above the little narrow prejudices of our insular situation,--she
threw herself into a chair and laughed immoderately. Ay, and droller
again, so did Mrs. D.! To tell you the truth, Tom, I could n't well
believe my senses when I saw it. It would seem to be the same in morals
as in murder,--you can dignify the offence by the rank of your victim;
for if it had been one of the maids at home, Mrs. D. would have left my
face like a piece of music paper!
[Illustration: 214]
There 's a great deal in how you open an acquaintance! You may be
card-leaving, and bowing, and how-d'ye-doing for years, and never get
farther; or, on the other hand, by some lucky accident, you come plump
down into the right place, just as a chance shell will now and then drop
into a magazine, and finish an engagement at once.
In less than an hour after her arrival, Mrs. Gore Hampton was one of
ourselves. It was not that she was calling the girls dearest Cary, and
darling Mary Anne, but she had got a regular sisterly tone with Mrs. D.
and myself--treating James all the while as if he was about twelve years
old, and at home for the holidays. She had not only done all this, but
before luncheon was on the table we had ratified a solemn league
and covenant that she was to travel with us, and be one of us, going
wherever we went, and living as we did. How the treaty was ever mooted,
who proposed, and who signed it, I know no more than the man in the
moon. It was done in a kind of rattling, bantering fashion; and when we
rose from table it was all settled. Mrs. Gore Hampton was to take
Cary and Mary Anne with her in the britschka; the "dear boy"--viz.
James--would be the "guard in the rumble." There was a place for
everybody and everything; and I believe, if any one had proposed that I
should ride the leader, it would have been carried without opposition.
Never was there such unanimity! The whole arrangement was huddled up
like a road-presentment on a Grand Jury, or a private bill before the
House on a "Wednesday afternoon. As for myself, if I had even the will,
I could not have summoned the shamelessness to offer any opposition to
the measure.
"Devilish good thing for you, Dodd!" whispered Lord George. "Mrs. G.
knows everybody in the world, and doesn't care for money."--"Oh, papa!
she is delightful; there never was such a piece of good fortune as our
meeting with her," cried Mary Anne. And Mrs. D. assured me that, for
the very first time in her life, she had met a person thoroughly
companionable to her in all respects; in fact, a "kindred soul," though
not a "blood relation."
Now, Tom, considering that we came abroad to enjoy the advantages of
high society, fashionable habits, and * refined associations, this
accident did indeed seem a propitious one; for, disguise it how we may,
the great world is a dangerous ocean to venture upon without a pilot.
Our own little experiences might teach that lesson. We sailed out in all
the confidence of a stout crew and a safe vessel, and a pretty voyage
we made of it! Perhaps we did not make more mistakes than our neighbors,
but assuredly our blunders were neither few nor insignificant!
Mrs G., however, would soon rectify all this. "No more making
acquaintance with wrong people, K. I." says Mrs. D.; "no more getting
into vulgar intimacies at the _café_, and cementing friendships over a
game of dominos. James will know the class of young men that he ought
to mix with, and the girls will only dance with suitable partners." It
sounded well, Tom! It was a grand protective policy, that really secured
the Dodd family in the possession of all home advantages, and relieved
them of all aggressions "from the foreigner."
If we had fallen on a prize in the lottery, I don't think the joy of our
circle could have been greater. I am not going to pretend that I did n't
join in it! I make no affectation of prudent reserve and caution, and
Heaven knows what other elegant qualities, that, however natural to
other people, very seldom fall to the lot of an Irishman. I vow to you,
Tom, I went off full cry like the rest of the pack. She is a fine woman,
this Mrs. Gore Hampton; she has a low, soft voice, a very bewitching
smile, and a way of looking at you while you are talking to her, that
somehow half suggests to yourself that you must be making love without
knowing it. Now, don't misunderstand me, Tom, and come out with one of
your long whistles, as much as to say, "Kenny James is as great a fool
as ever!" No such thing! a suit in Chancery, the repeal of the corn
laws, and the Estates Court, have made me an altered man. The very
nature of me is changed, and changed so much that many's the time I ask
myself, "Is this Kenny Dodd? Where upon earth is that light-hearted,
careless, hopeful vagabond, that always took the sunny road in life,
though maybe it was n't exactly the way to the place he was going?" I'm
another man now; I 'm wiser, as they call it; and, upon my conscience, I
'm mighty sorry for it!
But I hear you say, "Have n't you just confessed that you were--what
shall I call it?--fascinated by the widow?"
And if I did, Tom Purcell, do you mean to tell me that you would have
escaped her? Not a bit of it. The brown wig would have been set a little
more forward, so as to bring one of those silky curls over your
right eye. I think I see you exchanging your spectacles for a double
eye-glass, and turning out your toes so as to display to the best
advantage that shapely calf in its trim brown silk stocking. Ah, Tom!
not even quarter sessions and a rate in aid will drive these thoughts
out of an Irishman's head.
From the moment that this new alliance was signed, we entered upon a
new existence. Bonn, as I have told you, was a quiet little collegiate
place, with primitive habits of no very expensive kind. The chief
pleasures were weak wine in a garden, or small whist in a summer-house,
with now and then an "aesthetic tea," as they phrase it, at the
Pro-Rector's; of which, of course, I understand nothing, but sincerely
hope the discourse was better than the beverage. It was, I own it,
Tom, a strange kind of life, that seemed to me always like a moral
convalescence, when you were only strong enough for small virtues. One
undoubted advantage it had,--it was inexpensive, Tom. We were living,
with few comforts and some privations, I confess, at only one-third more
than we used to spend at Dodsbor-ough; and, considering that we know
nothing of the language, I conclude that we were enjoying the Continent
as cheaply as was practicable.
I won't pretend that it suited me. I don't want you to believe that I
was taking a scientific or a studious turn. Still I liked the place for
one thing, which was this,--its quiet monotony, its placid, unvarying
simplicity was telling upon Mrs. D. and the children in an astonishing
manner. It was exactly the way that the water-cure works its wonders
with old drunkards; the mountain air, the light diet, and the early
hours being the best of the remedy. They were getting into a healthy
state of mind without ever suspecting it.
Our grand junction, as Cary calls it, finished this; from the day Mrs.
G. arrived our reforms began. First, we had to change our hotel, and
betake ourselves to one on the river-side, three times as dear, and not
one-fourth as good.
The second story was fine enough for us before; now we have the whole
"premier," taking two rooms more than we want, lest anybody should live
on the same floor with us. Instead of the _table d'hôte_, that was cheap
and cheerful, we were to dine upstairs,--"a particular dinner," as they
call what is particularly bad, and costly besides. Then we have had to
hire two lackeys, one of whom sits in an anteroom all day reading
the newspaper, and only rises to make me a grand bow as I pass; which
worries me so much that I usually go down by the back stairs to escape
him.
We have two job coaches, for we are too many for one, and a boat hired
by the week, with a considerable retinue of mountain ponies and donkeys,
guides, goats, whey-sellers, and geological specimen-folk without end.
If Mrs. G. was only fashionable, we could n't be more than ruined; but
she is learned and literary, and given to the "ologies," Tom, and that's
what I fear will drive us clean mad. She has an eternal restlessness in
her to be at something; one day, it's the date of a medal; the next, it
is the family connections of a "moss," or the chemistry of a meteoric
stone; and, shall I own to you, my dear friend, that I don't believe
she either understands or cares one jot about them all? There 's a big
herbarium bound in green, and a grand book of autographs in blue and
gold, on the drawing-room table; there's a bit of "gneiss," a big
beetle, and a fossil frog on the chimney-piece; but my name isn't
Kenny Dodd if she has n't more sympathies with modern dandies than
antediluvian monsters. That's my private opinion;» and, of course, I
mention it in confidence. You 'll say, "What matter is that to you?"
and, true enough, it is not, as regards her; but what will become of
us, if Mrs. D. takes a turn for entomology or comparative anatomy, and
worse, maybe? She's just the kind of woman to do it. She'd learn the
tight-rope if she thought it was fashionable, or, as the newspapers say,
"patronized by the aristocracy." Now, Tom, you can fancy the unknown
sea upon which we have embarked. For, however unadapted we may be to
fashionable life, one thing is quite clear,--we never were made for the
abstract sciences; and it strikes me forcibly that the great lesson of
Continental life is that everybody can do everything. I am not going to
say that it is not a pleasant and a very flattering theory, but is it
quite safe, Tom? That's the question. The highest step I ever attained
in chemistry was how to concoct a tumbler of punch; and my knowledge of
botany does not go far beyond distinguishing "greens" from geraniums;
and it's not at my time of life that I'm to drive myself crazy with
hard names and classifications; and if I know anything of Mrs. D., her
intellectual faculties have attained all the vigor that nature meant for
them many a year ago.
My own private opinion about these sciences is, they 're capital things
for employing young people, and keeping them out of wickedness! The
fellows that teach them, too, are musty, snuff-taking, prosy old dogs,
with heavy shoes and greasy cravats,--the very reverse of your race of
dancing and music masters, who are a pestilent crew! So that, for a
man who has daughters abroad, my advice is--stick to the sciences.
Gray sandstone is safer than the polka, and there's not as dangerous
an experiment in all chemistry as singing duets with some black-bearded
blackguard from Naples or Palermo. Now mind, Tom, this counsel of mine
applies to the education of the young; for when people come to the
forties, you may rely upon it, if they set about learning anything, they
'll have the devil for a schoolmaster. What does all the geology mean?
Junketing, Tom,--nothing but junketing! Primitive rock is another name
for picnic, and what they call quartz is a figurative expression for
iced champagne. Just reflect for a moment, and see what it comes to.
You can enter a protest against family extravagances when they take the
shape of balls and soirees, but what are you to do against botanical
excursions and antiquarian researches? It 's like writing yourself down
Goth at once to oppose these. "Oh, papa hates chemistry; he despises
natural history," that's the cry at once, and they hold me up to
ridicule, just in the way the rascally Protestant newspapers did Dr.
Cullen for saying that he did n't believe the world was round. If the
liberty of the subject be worth anything,--if the right for which the
same Protestants are always prating, private judgment, be the great
privilege they deem it,--why should n't Dr. Cullen have his own opinion
about the shape of the earth? He can say, "It suits _me_ to think I 'm
walking erect on a flat surface, and not crawling along with my head
down, like a fly on the ceiling! I 'm happier when I believe what does
n't puzzle my understanding, and I don't want any more miracles than
we have in the Church." He may say that, and I'd like to know what harm
does that do you or me? Does it endanger the Protestant succession or
the State religion? Not a bit of it, Tom. The real fact is simply this:
private judgment is a boon they mean to keep for themselves, and never
share with their neighbors. So far as I have seen of life, there's no
such tyrant as your Protestant, and for this reason: it's bad enough
to force a man to believe something that he doesn't like, but it's ten
times worse to make him disbelieve what he's well satisfied with; and
that's exactly what they do. Even on the ground of common humanity it is
indefensible. If my private judgment goes in favor of saints' toe-nails
and martyrs' shin-bones, I have a right to my opinion, and you have
no right to attack it. Besides, I won't be badgered into what may suit
somebody else to think. My opinion is like my flannel waistcoat, that
I'll take off or put on as the weather requires; and I think it very
cruel if I must wear _mine_ simply because _you_ feel cold.
I get warm--I almost grow angry--when I think of these things; and I
wonder within myself why our people don't expose them as they might.
Not that some are not doing the duty well and manfully, Tom. M'Hale is a
glorious fellow; and for blackguarding a Prime Minister, for a real good
effective slanging, it's hard to find his equal. He never embarrasses
himself with logic,--he wastes no time in arguing, but "goes in" at
once, and plants his blow between the eyes! That's what the English
can't stand. They want discussion. They are always fishing for evidence
for this, and a proof of that; but come down on them with a strong
torrent of foul abuse, and you sweep them away like mud in a mill-race.
That's where we always beat them in our controversial discussions, Tom;
and we never failed so long as we relied on this superiority. It was
like the bayonet in the hands of our infantry.
Is n't it strange how I get back to Ireland in spite of me? I 'm like
that madman in the story that can't keep Charles the First out of his
memorial? And, after all, why should I? Is there anything more natural
than to think of my country, if I can't manage to live in it? And this
reminds me to ask you about home matters. What was it you wrote at the
end of your letter about Jones McCarthy? I can't make out the word,
whether it is his "death," or his "debts;" though, from my experience of
the family, I surmise it to be the latter. If it's dead he is, I suppose
we 'll come in for that blessed legacy that Mrs. D. has been talking
about every day for the last twenty-five years, the history of which I
have heard so often that I actually know nothing about it, except that
it was the only bit of property possessed by my wife's relations they
couldn't make away with. It was so strictly "tied up," as they call it
in law, that nobody could ever get the use of it,--pretty much like the
silver sixpence given to a schoolboy, with the express stipulation that
he is never to change it.
I am rather curious to know what Mrs. D. will think of these "wise
provisions" of her ancestors, if she succeeds to the bequest. To tell
you the plain truth, Tom, I don't know a greater misfortune for a man
that has married a wife without money, than to discover at the end of
some fifteen or twenty years that somebody has left her a few hundred
pounds! It is not only that she conceives visions of unbounded
extravagance, and raves about all manner of expense, but she begins to
fancy herself an heiress that was thrown away, and imagines wonderful
destinies she might have arrived at, if she had n't had the bad luck to
meet you. For a real crab-apple of discord, I 'll back a few hundreds in
the Three per Cents against all the family jars that ever were invented.
Save us then from this, if you can, Tom. There must surely be twenty
ways to avoid the legacy; and so that Mrs. D. does n't hear of it, I 'd
rather you 'd prove her illegitimate than allow her to succeed to this
bequest I 'll not enlarge upon all I feel about this subject, hoping
that by your skill and address we may never bear more of it; but I tell
you, frankly, I 'd face the small-pox with a stouter heart than the news
of succeeding to the M'Carthy inheritance.
There are many other matters I intended to write about, but I believe I
must keep them for the next time; such as the plan for taking away the
Church property, and the income-tax for Ireland; and that business of
the Madiais, that I read of in the papers. So far as I have seen, Tom,
the King of Tuscany--if that be his name--was right. There were plenty
of books the Madiais might have read without breaking the laws. There
are translations of all the rascally French novels of the day, from
Georges Sand down to Paul de Kock; and if they wanted mischief, might
n't these have satisfied them? But the truth is, Protestants are never
easy without they are attacking the true Church, and if there were more
of them sent to the galleys, the world would be all the quieter.
You amaze me about the Great Exhibition for this year in Dublin. Faith!
I remember when I used to think that the less we exhibited ourselves the
better! I suppose times are changed. I think, if I could send Mrs. D.
over as a specimen of Continental plating on Irish manufacture, she 'd
deserve a place, and maybe a prize.
Well, well! it's a queer world we live in. They 've just come to tell
me that the man of the post-office has shut up an hour earlier, as he is
engaged out to dine, so that I 'll keep this open till to-morrow's mail.
Wednesday Morning. I suspect that the mischief is done, Tom,--I mean
about the legacy. Mrs. D. received a strange-looking, square-shaped,
formally addressed epistle this morning, the contents of which, not
being a demand for money, she did not communicate to me. She and Mary
Anne both retired to peruse it in secret, and when they again appeared
in the drawing-room, it was with an air of conscious pride and
self-possession that smacked terribly of a bequest I own to you, the
prospect alarms me; it may be that my fears take an exaggerated shape,
but I can't shake off the impression that this is the hardest trial I
had ever to go through.
I know her in most of her moods, Tom, and have got a kind of way
of managing her in each of them,--not very successful, perhaps, but
sufficiently so to get on with. I have seen her in straits about money;
I have seen her in her jealous fits; I have seen her in her moments
of family pride; and I have repeatedly seen her on what she calls
"her dying couch,"--an opportunity she always seizes to say the most
disagreeable things she can think of, so that I often speculate what she
'd say if she was really going off: but all these convey no notion to me
of how she 'd behave if she thought herself rich. As for our poverty, we
never knew anything else; the jealousy I 'm getting used to; the
family pride often gives me a hearty laugh when I 'm alone; and I am
as hardened about death-bed scenes as if I was an undertaker. It's the
prosperity I have n't strength for, Tom; and I feel it.
Maybe, after all, it's only false terror alarms me. I hope it may turn
out so; and in this last wish I am sure of your hearty sympathy and good
feeling.
Ever yours, most sincerely,
Kenny I. Dodd.