LETTER XXXII. JAMES DODD TO ROBERT DOOLAN, ESQ., TRINITY COLLEGE,
DUBLIN.
"The Fox," Lichtenthal.
My dear Bob,--I promised to give you the earliest intelligence of the
governor's return; and this is to inform you that the agreeable incident
in question occurred on Wednesday last, accompanied, however, by
circumstances which I must call "atténuantes," that is to say,
considerably impairing the felicitous character of the event We--that
is, the Dodd M'Carthy portion of the family, for so we had already
constituted ourselves--had organized a most stunning picnic; one of
those entertainments which are the great facts of the season, just as
certain battles are the grand incidents of a campaign: we had secured
everything that Baden contained of company and _cuisine_, and we did not
leave a turkey, a truffle, nor a titled individual in the whole village.
La Mère Dodd had, in fact, resolved on one of those great _coups de
tête_, which, in the social as in the political world, are needed to
terminate a difficult position, and, as the journalists say in France,
"legitimize the situation." How I love a phrase that permits one to
escape the pettiness of a personal detail by some grand and sweeping
generality!
The picnic is to the fashionable world what a general election is in
that of politics. It is a brief orgie, in which each condescends to
acquaintanceship, or even intimacy, without in the slightest degree
pledging himself to future consequences. You, as it were, pass out of
the conventional limit of ordinary life, and take a "day rule" for
indiscretions. The natural consequence is that people will come to you
in this way that no efforts could seduce into your house; and the great
lady, who would scorn your attentions on a Turkey carpet, will suffer
you to carve her chicken, and fill her champagne glass, when seated on
the grass. "Oh! I don't know him. I saw him somewhere,--on a steamer, or
at a picnic, perhaps." This spoken, with a stare of ineffable unconcern,
is the extent of the recognition accorded to you after. At first, when
you call to mind the way you struggled to get her sherry, how you fought
for the lobster, and descended to actual meanness for the mustard,
you are disposed to fancy yourself the most injured, and her the most
ingrate of mankind; but you soon learn to perceive that this is the law
of these cases, and that you are not worse treated than your fellows.
I leave you to conjecture why we deemed a picnic an essential stroke of
policy. I assure you it was a question well and maturely discussed
in our cabinet We knew it to be a measure from which there was no
retreating when once entered upon; we also knew that the governor's
return would utterly render such a course impossible. It was now or
never with us. Would that it had been never! But to proceed. Everything,
even from the start, promised badly; the day broke in torrents of rain;
it was like one of those days of Irish picnic at the "Dargle," where a
drowned family squat under a hedge to eat soaked sandwiches. We set
out, in bad humor, determined to "take our pleasure excursion" under
difficulties; a proceeding about as sensible as that of a man who,
having sprained his ankle on his way to a ball, still insists upon
waltzing. At Eberstein, where we had purposed to dine, they would not
admit us. It is a royal residence, and although usually there was no
permission necessary for parties wishing to pass the day there, an order
from the court had closed the castle against all picnicaries,--a
fact not made more palatable to us by the information that it was the
misconduct of some interesting individuals of the family of the Simkins,
the Popkins, or the Perkins, which had provoked the edict in question.
And here I must say, Bob,--and I say it in deep sorrow,--that we are
either grossly calumniated abroad, or else very grievous faults attach
to us, since every scratched picture, every noseless statue, every
chipped relic, and every flawed marble is sure of being assigned to the
work of English fingers. I repeat, I have no means of knowing if the
accusation be wrongful or not; at all events, I conclude it to be
greatly exaggerated beyond truth. If scratching and mutilating, "the
chalking and maiming acts" against works of art, be popular practices of
travellers generally, it follows that, as we English supply a very large
majority of the earth's vagabonds, a vast number of these offences must
fall to our share; but I sincerely hope we do not deserve our wholesale
reputation, nor possess any exclusive patent for barbarism. I argue the
point as the priest used to do at home about Catholics and Protestants,
when he triumphantly asked, "Why white-faced sheep eat more than
black-faced:" and having puzzled us all, answered, "Because there are
more of them!" And that's the reason the English commit more breaches of
decorum than their neighbors. Rely upon it, Bob, the simple illustration
is very widely applicable; and whenever you hear of our derelictions
abroad, please to remember it.
As we could not gain admittance to Eberstein, it became a grand subject
of debate what to do. The prudent said, "Go back." Is it not strange,
Bob? but there is an almost stereotyped uniformity in wise counsellors,
and that whenever a difficulty arises in life, they all cry out, "Go
back!" I conclude that this is the whole secret of the Tory party, and
that all the reputation they have acquired of "safe," "prudent," and
so forth, has no other basis than this simple maxim. Upon the present
occasion, "the Progresistas" carried the day,--we went on!
A little wayside inn--the resort of a few summer visitors--was to be our
destination; but when we arrived there, it was to find the house crammed
with a most motley rabble,--a set of those wandering artisans which,
from some singular notion of her own upon the virtues of vagabondism,
Germany sends forth broadcast over her whole land; the law requiring
that each tradesman should travel for a year, or, in some states, two
years, before he can obtain permission from the municipality of his own
town to reside at home. Now, as these individuals are rarely or never
persons of independent fortune, but rather of scanty and precarious
means, the "Wander-Jahre," as the year of travel is called, is usually
a series of events vibrating between roguery and begging, and at all
events little conducive to those habits of orderly, patient industry
which, in England at least, are deemed the highest qualities of a
laboring man.
Wherever you travel in Germany you are certain to find droves of these
people on the road, their heavy knapsacks covered with an undressed
calf-skin, and usually decorated at either extremity by a Wellington
boot, "pendant," but not "proper," their long pipes and longer beards,
their well-tuned voices,--for they always sing,--and, lastly, their
unblushing appeals to your charity, proclaim them to be "Lehre-Junge,"
or apprentices. But you must not fall into the absurd mistake of one
of our well-known English writers on Germany, who has called them
travelling students, and thereupon moralized long and learnedly on
the poverty of life and the cheapness of education in that country.
Occasionally, it is true, a student of the very humblest class will
associate himself with the "youths;" but even he will be the exception,
and the university to which he belongs one of the very lowest in rank.
I should ask your forgiveness for this long and wide digression, my dear
Bob, were it not that I know that whenever I speak of matters which are
new and unfamiliar to you, I am at least as interesting as by any purely
personal history. You would like to hear a thousand traits of foreign
life and manners, far better than I am capable of communicating them.
Our inn, as I have said, was full of these "gents," and no persuasion
of ours, no threats, nor any flatteries, could induce them to vacate the
territory in our favor. In fact, they presumed to reason upon the case,
on the absurd presumption that rain would wet and wind chill them, and
positively resisted all our assurances to the contrary.
We ended by a compromise; they gave us the parlor, and retired to the
kitchen, we purchasing the concession by sundry articles of consumption,
such as fowls, ham, preserves, and a pasty, to be by them devoured as
their own proper and peculiar prog. The selection, which was made by a
special commission named by both sides, was rather an amusing process,
though probably prolonged a little beyond the limits of ordinary
patience. At length the treaty was concluded, the price paid, the
territory evacuated, and we sat down ourselves to table, I will not
say in the very happiest of humors, for throughout the whole of the
negotiation our pride and self-esteem were at each moment receiving the
very rudest buffets, princes, dukes, counts, and barons as we were! It
was a sore lesson we were acquiring; and as a great man of our party
remarked, "The canaille had apparently been taught little or nothing
by the last two years,"--a fact not so difficult to entertain when one
remembers that those whose education is conducted by grape and musketry
are seldom left to evidence the advantages of the system, and the
survivors are the "naughty boys who have learned nothing."
Our first disappointment was rather a laughable one, though certes in
itself a bore. In the hurry of leaving Baden, a selection of the town
band of musicians was made, as we had not carriage-room for the whole;
but by ill-luck it was the rejected we had taken, and there we were
with drums, cymbals, trombones, and an ophocleide, but not a flute,
flageolet, or a French horn! You may fancy the attempt to perform the
overture to "William Tell" with such appliances. Crash after crash it
went, drowned in our own uproarious laughter, or louder cries of horror
and disgust. We had scarcely rallied, some from the amusement, others
from the annoyance produced by this event, when a tremendous uproar
outside the door attracted our attention. It sounded like an attempt
being made to establish a forcible entry into our apartment, and
vigorous resistance offered. So it proved, by the account of certain
wounded and disabled who fell back to tell us of the affray. "The
Trades" were in reality in open insurrection, and marching upon us,
"headed," as the trombone said, "by a stout, elderly man of savage
appearance." To organize a resistance would have been impossible, with
countesses fainting on every side, duchesses in hysterics. The men of
our party, too, avowed that without an armory of guns, pistols, and
cutlasses they were powerless. As to smashing up a chair, or seizing
a table-leg, they had no idea of it; so that I saw myself the only
combatant in a room full of people, who, by way of fitting me for my
task, threw themselves around my neck and on my back in a fashion far
more flattering than favorable.
By great exertions I wrested myself free from my "backers," and,
bounding over the table with a formidable old tongs in my hand, I
reached the door just as it gave way to the assaulting party, and came
flat down off the hinges, discovering the forlorn hope of the enemy
led on by--oh, shame and disgrace ineffable!--no other than my father
himself! There he was, Bob, without his coat, with a large saucepan
in one hand for a shield, and a kitchen cleaver in the other. He
vociferously cheered on his followers to the breach. I own to you
that, what with his patched and poor attire, his long beard, and his
moustaches, I scarcely knew him. His voice, however, there was no
mistaking; and, at the first word he uttered, I grounded my arms in
surrender.
It turned out that some infernal device in pastry had communicated to
him the intelligence that it was Mrs. D. was the entertainer of the
gorgeous company, the crumbs from whose sumptuous table he and his
friends were then consuming. Maddened with the indignity of _his_
position, and outraged at _her_ extravagance, he tossed off two tumblers
of sherry to give him courage, and cried out to his partisans "to
charge!" I have often heard that no description can convey even the
faintest notion of the horrors of a town taken by assault. I now
believed it. For the same good reason, you will not expect of me to
portray what I own to be beyond my pictorial powers. I can, it is true,
give you the ingredients, as Lord Macartney did those of a plum-pudding
to the Chinese cook, but you must yourself know how to mingle and
combine them. Take thirty ladies of various ages, from sixteen to sixty,
and of all nations of Europe, with gents to match; throw them into
strong convulsions of fright, horror, fun, or laughter, amidst smashed
crockery, broken glass, upset viands, and drinkables; beat them up with
some ten or twelve travellers of unwashed appearance, neither civil of
speech nor ceremonious in conduct; dash the mixture with Dodd père in
a state of frenzied passion, to which he gave short and _per saltum_
utterance in such phrases as "Spitzbuben!" "Coquins!" "Canaille!"
"Scoundrels!" "Gueux!" "Blackguards!" &c,--a vocabulary that, even
without a labored context, seemed sufficiently intelligible. The company
took Lady Macbeth's hint; they did n't stand upon the order of their
going, "they went at once." I do not believe that a party ever separated
with greater despatch and less useless ceremony. A few of the "greatly
overcome" were, indeed, led out between friends, "unconscious;" but the
mass fled with a laudable precipitancy, leaving the field to my father
and the rest of the Dodd family,--a group, I beg to say, that nothing
but a painter could properly render. That it may one day be thought
worthy of a fresco, let me record it.
Foreground, and principal figure, Dodd père, seated Marius-like
amidst the ruins, cravat in one hand, turban of a spoiled countess
inadvertently grasped in the other; countenance strongly marked with
intense perplexity, a kind of universal doubt of everything; prevailing
impression of the figure, power, but power weakened by incredulity.
[Illustration: 436]
Middle distance, Mary Anne Dodd, dishevelled and weeping, gracefully
draped, and the attitude well chosen.
Extreme distance, Dodd mère, seated on the floor, with a student's cap
stuck on over her own toque, evidently horror-struck and unconscious, as
seen by the wild stare of her eyes, and the half-open lips. Dodd
fils, dimly detected in the shadow of left foreground, mixing
brandy-and-water.
There's the tableau; the smaller details are, a universal smashery,
with occasional vestiges of that part of the creation consigned to
hairdressers, tailors, and milliners, of which the ground displays
various curious specimens, in scalps, fronts, ringlets, and tufts,
scraps of lace, tuckers, and trinkets, with skirts of coats, cravats,
and a false calf! Had these been all that the company left behind them,
Bob, it might have been bearable; but, alas! they had bequeathed to
us other relics,--their contempt, their very lowest contempt. Even my
father's French was intelligible enough to show what he claimed,
and what we could not deny him, to be. You can fancy, therefore, the
impression they must have conceived of us!
One of the worst features of this unlucky occurrence was that
it happened at Baden. Baden is, so to say, one of those great
banking-houses at which a note is sure to be presented at some period or
other of its circulation, and here we were now,--declared a "forgery,"
pronounced "not negotiable."
These were the bitter thoughts which each of us had now to revolve in
secret, tormenting our several ingenuities to find a remedy for the
evil. The governor was apparently the first of us to rally, for
he turned round at last to the table, cleared a small spot for his
operations at a corner, helped himself to some of a game pie, and began
to eat like one who had not relished such delicacies for some time back.
"May I give you a glass of champagne, sir?" said I, seeing that he was
"going in" with an air of determination.
"With all my heart," responded he; "but I think you might as well open
a fresh bottle." I did so, Bob, and followed it by another, of which I
partook also.
"There are some excellent fellows out there in the kitchen," said
the governor. "There is a little lame tailor from Anspach, and an
ivory-turner from the town of Lindau, both as agreeable companions as
ever I journeyed with. Take them out that pie, James, and let the waiter
fetch them half a dozen bottles of this red wine. Pay Jacob--he 's the
tailor--four florins that I borrowed from him; and beg of Herman, a
little Jewish rogue, with an Astracan cap, to keep my tobacco-bag, out
of remembrance of me. Tell the assembled company that I 'll see them all
by and by, for at present I have some family affairs to look after. Be
civil and courteous with them, James, they all have been so to me; and
if you 'll sit down at the table for half an hour, and converse with
them, take my word for it, boy, you 'll not rise to go away without
being both wiser and humbler."
I set about my mission with a willing heart. I was glad to do anything
which should give the governor even a momentary satisfaction; and I
was well pleased, also, to mark the calm, dispassionate tone of his
language.
The "Lehr-Jungen" received me with a most respectful courtesy, in which,
however, there was not the very slightest taint of subserviency
or meanness. They showed me that they really felt kindly, and even
affectionately, towards my father, who had been their companion for
the last nine days on foot. They enjoyed in a high degree the dry humor
which he possesses, and they relished his remarks on the country, and
the people, through which they travelled, savoring as they did of a
caustic shrewdness perfectly new to them. In fact, I soon saw that his
frank temperament, enriched by that native quaintness every Irishman
has his share of, had made him a prime favorite with them, and they were
equally disposed to be flattered by his acquaintanceship as attached to
himself. I sat with them till past midnight. Indeed, when I heard that
our family had ordered bedrooms and retired for the night, I was not
sorry to dissipate my cares, even in much humbler society than I had
left home to foregather with.
It is not necessary I should make any confession to you of my unlettered
ignorance, nor own how deplorably deficient I am in every branch of
knowledge or acquirement. I was a stupid schoolboy, and an idle one,
and the result is not very difficult to imagine; and yet, with all these
disadvantages, I have a lazy man's craving for information, if I only
could obtain it easily. I 'd like to be cured, if the doctor would only
make the physic palatable. Now, will you believe me, Bob, when I say
that these poor travelling tradesfolk, patched and threadbare as they
were, talked upon subjects of a very high character, and discussed them,
too, with a shrewdness and propriety perfectly astonishing? I had been
living in Germany for some six or eight months, and yet now, for the
first time, did I hear mention made of the popular literature of the
day,--who were the writers most in vogue, and what modifications public
taste was undergoing, and how the mystical and the imaginative were
giving way before a practical common-sense and commonplace spirit
more adapted to the exigencies of our age. This, I must observe, they
entirely ascribed to the influence of England, which they described as
being paramount on the Continent since the peace. Not alone that the
vast hordes of our nation flooded every land of Europe, but that our
mechanical arts, our inventions, and our literature pervaded every nook
and crevice of the Continent.
As the tailor said, "It is not alone that we conform to your notions in
dress, and endeavor to make our coats loose and square-skirted, to look
English, but there is an Anglomania in all things, even where we will
not confess it. Our novelists, too, have followed the fashion, and
instead of those dreamy conceptions, where the possible and impossible
were always in conflict, we have now domestic stories, ay, even before
we have domesticity itself."
I do not quote my friend Jacob for anything remarkable in the sentiment
itself, though I believe it to be just and true; but to show the general
tone of a conversation maintained for hours by a set of poor artisans,
not one of whom would not be well contented could he earn a shilling a
day.
Perhaps you will ask me, if, in their several trades, these fellows were
the equals of our own? In all probability they were not. The likelihood
is, they were greatly inferior, as in every detail of the useful and the
practical Germany is far behind us; but it is strange to speculate on
what such a people may or might become, if their institutions should
ever conform to the development of their natural intelligence. This,
again, is the tailor's remark,--and I could "cabbage" from him for hours
together.
I thought a hundred times of _you_, Bob. How _you_ would have enjoyed
this strange fraternity. What amusement--not to say something better
and higher--you would have abstracted from them. What traits of native
humor,--what studies of character! As for _me_, much, by far the greater
part, was lost upon me for want of previous knowledge of the subjects
they discussed. Of the kingdoms whose politics they canvassed I scarcely
knew the names; of the books, I had not even heard the titles! I have no
doubt many of their opinions were incorrect; much of what they uttered
might have been illogical or inaccurate; but making a wide allowance for
this, I was struck by the general acuteness of their remarks, and the
tone of moderation and forbearance that characterized all they said.
This brief intercourse has at least taught me one thing,--which is not
to look down with any depreciating pity on the troops of these wayfarers
we pass on the road, still less to ridicule their absurd appearance, or
make a jest of their varied costume. I now know that amidst those motley
figures are men of shrewd intelligence and cultivated minds, content to
follow the very humblest callings, and quite satisfied if their share of
this world's good things never rises higher than black bread and a cup
of sour wine. I should like greatly to see something more of the gypsy
life they lead, and if ever the opportunity offer, shall certainly not
suffer it to escape me.
We left the inn of the Moorg Thal at daybreak, my mother and Mary Anne
in one carriage, the governor and myself in a little open calèche. He
spoke little, and seemed deep in thought all the way. From an occasional
expression he dropped, I dreaded to surmise that he had resolved on
returning to Ireland. One remark which he made of more than ordinary
bitterness was: "If we go on as we are doing, we shall at length close
every town of Europe against us. We left Brussels in shame, and now we
quit Baden in disgrace: the sooner this ends the better."
We did not proceed the whole way to Baden, but stopped about a mile from
it, at a village called Lichtenthal, where we found a comfortable inn,
with moderate charges. From this I was despatched to our hotel, after
nightfall, to arrange our affairs, settle our bill, fetch away our
baggage, and make all necessary arrangements for departure.
I am free to own that I entered on my mission with no common sense of
shame. I knew, of course, how our story had by this time become the
table-talk of Baden, and how, from the prince to the courier, "the
Dodds" were the only topic. Such notoriety as this is no boon, and I
confess, Bob, that I believe I could have submitted my hand to the knife
with less shrinking of the spirit than I raised it to pull the door-bell
of the Hôtel de Russie.
When a man has to encounter an anticipated humiliation, he usually puts
on an extra amount of offensive armor. I suppose mine, on this occasion,
must have been of unquestionable strength. None seemed willing to put
it to the proof. The host was humble,--the waiters cringing,--the very
porter fawned on me! The secretary--at your flash hotels abroad they
always have a secretary, usually a Pole, who has an immense estate under
sequestration somewhere,--this dread functionary, who, in presenting
you the bill, ever gives you to understand that he is quite prepared to
afford you personal satisfaction for any item in the score,--even he,
I say, was bland, courteous, and gentle. I little knew at the moment to
what circumstance I owed all this unexpected politeness, and that this
silky courtesy was a very different testimony from what I suspected;
it being neither more nor less than the joyful astonishment of the
household at seeing one of us again, and an amazement, rising to
enthusiastic delight, at the bare possibility of our paying our bill!
Already in their estimation the "Dodd family" had been pronounced
swindlers, and various speculations were abroad as to the value of the
several trunks, imperials, and valises we had left behind us.
My mother, in her abject misery,--you may imagine the amount of it from
the circumstance,--had given me her bank-book, with full liberty to
deal with the balance in her favor. In fact, such was her dread of
encountering one of her former acquaintances, that I verily believe she
would have agreed to an exile to Siberia rather than pass one more week
at Baden. Our bill was a swingeing one. With all the external show of
politeness, I plainly saw that they treated us just as Napoleon used to
treat a conquered nation whose imputed misconduct had outlawed it! For
_us_ there was no appeal; _we_ could not threaten the indignation of
powerful friends,--the terrors of fashionable exposure,--not even the
hackneyed expedient of a letter in the "Times"! Alas! we had ceased to
be "reasonable and sufficient bail" for any statement.
Such charges never were seen before, I 'd swear. Dinners and suppers
figured as unimportant matters. It was the "extraordinaires" that ruined
us; for your hotel-keeper is obliged, for very shame's sake, to observe
a semblance of decorum in his demands for recognized items. It is in
the indefinable that he revels; just as your geographer indulges every
caprice of his imagination when laying down the limits of land and water
at the Pole!
It would not amuse, nor could it instruct you, were I to give the
details of this iniquitous demand. I shall therefore spare you all,
save the grand fact of the total, wherein something less than six weeks'
living of four people, with as many servants, amounts to a fraction
under three hundred pounds sterling! Meanwhile, the price of rooms,
breakfasts, beds, &c, were all reasonable enough. It was "Éclairage,"
"Service," "Réceptions, Mardi," "Mercredi," and "Jeudi." These were the
heavy artillery, to which all the rest was a light-dropping fire. This
bill-settling is indeed an awful process; for when you rally from the
first horror-stricken feelings that the sum total calls up, and are
blandly asked by the smirking secretary, "To what is it that Monsieur
objects?" you are totally powerless and prostrated. Your natural impulse
would be to say, "To the whole of it,--to that infamous row of figures
at the bottom!"
In all probability, you never made an hotel bill in your life. The
wretches know this, and they feel the full force of your unhappy
situation. Just fancy a surgeon saying, "What particular part of the
operation do you dislike, sir? It can't be the first incision; I made
it in Cooper's method,--one sweep of the knife. You surely have no
complaint about the arteries,--I took them up in eighteen seconds by a
stop-watch." "What do I care for all this?" you answer. "I know nothing
about science, but I am fully open to the impression of pain." Nothing,
however, kills me like the fellow saying, "If Monsieur thinks the
lemonade too dear, we'll take off half a franc." Two-and-sixpence
deducted from a bill of three hundred pounds!
I went through all this, and more. I went through special appeal cases,
from twenty subordinates, on peculiar infractions of broken heads,
smashed crockery, and damaged furniture, which each assured me in turn
"would be charged against _him_" if Monsieur had not the honorable
"consideration"--that's the formula--to pay it. I satisfied some, I
compromised with others; I resisted none. No, Bob. There was no "locus
standi," as you would call it, for opposition. None of the Dodds could
come into court, and claim to be heard as witnesses.
This agreeable function concluded, I drove off to the Police Commissary
about our passport. The "authorities" had finished the duties of the
day. The bureau was closed. I asked where the "authorities" lived, and
was told the street and the number. I went there, but the "authorities"
were at their _café_. They liked "their dominos and their beer;" and why
should they not have their weaknesses?
I hastened to the café; not one of those brilliantly decorated and
lighted establishments where foreigners of all nations foregather, but
a dim-looking, musty, sanded-floored, smoke-dried den, filled with a
company to suit. There was that mysterious half-light, and that low
whispering sound which seemed to form a fit atmosphere for spies and
eavesdroppers, of which I need scarcely tell you government officials
are composed.
By the guidance of the waiter, I reached the table where the Herr von
Schureke was seated at his dominos. He was a beetle-browed, scowling,
ill-conditioned-looking gent of about fifty, who had a trick of coughing
a hard dry cough between every word he uttered.
"Ah," said he, after. I explained the object of my visit, "you want
your passport. You wish to leave Baden, and you come here, to give your
orders to the Polizey Beamten as if you were the Grand-Duke!"