THE TOUR OF DAVID DUNDYKE, ESQUIRE.
Perhaps of all the changes time had wrought, in those connected with our
history, not one was more remarkable than that in Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke,
in regard to their position in the world. They had changed in themselves
of course; we all change; and were now middle-aged people of some
five-and-forty years: Mr. Dundyke being red and portly; his wife, thin
and meek as ever.
Little by little, step by step, had David Dundyke risen in the world.
There had come a day when he was made a fourth partner in that famous
tea-importing house, with which he had been so long connected. He was
now the third partner, and his income was a large one. There had also
come a day when he was elected a common councilman (I am not sure but
this has been previously mentioned), and now the old longing, the height
of his ambition, was really and truly dawning upon him. In the
approaching autumn he was to be proposed for sheriff; and _that_, as we
all know, leads in time to the civic chair.
You will readily understand that it was not at all consistent for a
partner in a wealthy tea house, and a common councilman rising into note
and attending the civic feasts, to remain the tenant of two humble
rooms. Mr. Dundyke had made a change long ago. He and his wife, clinging
still to apartments, as being less trouble, and also less expense on the
whole, had moved into handsome ones; and there they remained for some
years. But the prospect of the shrievalty demanded something more; and
latterly Mr. Dundyke had taken a handsome villa at Brixton, had
furnished it well, and set himself up there with two maid servants and a
footman. In some degree his old miserly habits were on him still, and he
rarely spent where he could save, or launched into any extravagance
unless he had an end in view in doing it; but he had never very much
loved money for its own sake alone, only as means to an end.
His great care, now that the glorious end was near, was to blazon forth
his importance. He wanted the world (_his_ little world) to forget what
he had been; to forget the pinching and saving, the poor way of living,
the red-herring dinners, and the past in general. He did what he could
to blot out the past in the present. He looked out for correspondents
to address him as "esquire;" and he took to wear a ring with a crest
upon it.
In this very month of July, when you saw Henry Arkell and the dean's
daughter walking in the Bishop's Garden--and a very hot July it was--Mr.
Dundyke came to the decision of taking a tour. What first put it into
his unfortunate head to do so, his wife never knew; though she asked
herself the question afterwards many and many a time. He debated the
point with himself, to go or not to go, some little while; balancing the
advantages against the drawbacks. On the one hand, it would cost time
and money; on the other, it would certainly be another stepping-stone in
his advancing greatness, the more especially if he could get the _Post_
or some other fashionable organ to announce the departure of "David
Dundyke, Esquire, and Lady, on a Continental tour."
One sultry afternoon, when Mrs. Dundyke was sewing in her own
sitting-room, he returned home somewhat earlier than usual.
"My mind is made up, Mrs. Dundyke," he said, before he had had time to
look round, as he came in, wiping his hot brows. "I told you I thought I
should go that tour; and I mean to start as soon as we have fixed upon
our route. It must be somewhere foreign."
Mr. Dundyke's intellectual improvement had not advanced in an equal
ratio with his fortunes; he called tour tower, and route rout. Indeed,
he spoke almost exactly as he used to speak.
"Foreign!" echoed Mrs. Dundyke, somewhat aghast. Her geographical
knowledge had always been imperfect and confused; the retired life she
led, occupied solely in domestic affairs, had not tended to enlarge it;
and the word "foreign" suggested to her mind extremely remote parts of
the globe--the two poles and Cape Horn. "Foreign?"
"One can't travel anywhere now that's not foreign, Betsey," returned Mr.
Dundyke, testily. "One can't humdrum up and down England in a
stage-coach, as one used to do."
"True; but you said foreign. You don't mean America--or China--or any of
those parts, do you, David?"
"It's never of no use talking to you about anything, Mrs. D.," said the
common-councilman, in wrath. "Chinar! Why, it would be a life-journey! I
shall go to Geneva."
"But, David, is not that very far?" she asked. "Where is it? Over in
Greece, or Turkey, or some of those places."
"It is in Switzerland, Mrs. D. The tip-top quality go to it, and I mean
to go. It will cost a good deal, I know; but I can stand that."
"And how shall we manage to talk Swiss?"
"There is no Swiss," answered Mr. Dundyke. "The language spoke there is
French; the guide-book says so."
"It will be the same to us, David," she mildly said; "we cannot speak
French."
"I know that 'we' means 'yes,' and 'no' means 'no.' We shall rub on well
enough with that. So get all my stockings and shirts seen to, Betsey,
and your own things; for the day after to-morrow I shall be off."
His wife looked up, not believing in the haste. But it proved true,
nevertheless; for Mr. Dundyke had a motive in it. On the morning but one
after, an excursion opposition steamer was advertised to start for
Boulogne--fares, half-a-crown; return-tickets, four shillings. Of course
David Dundyke could not let so favourable an opportunity slip; he still
saved where he could.
Accordingly, on the said morning, which was very squally, they found
themselves on the crowded boat. Such a sight! such a motley freight!
Half London, as it seemed, had been attracted by the cheapness; but it
was by no means a fashionable assemblage, nor yet a refined one.
"I hear somebody saying we shall have it rough, David," whispered Mrs.
Dundyke, as they sat side by side, and the vessel passed Greenwich. "I
hope we shall not be sea-sick."
"Pooh! sea-sick! we shan't be sea-sick!" imperiously cried the sheriff
in prospective, as he turned his ring, now assumed for good, to the
front of all beholders. "I don't believe in sea-sickness for my part. We
did not feel sick when we went to Gravesend; you remember that, don't
you, Betsey? It is more brag than anything else with people, talking
about sea-sickness, that's my belief; a genteel way of letting out that
they can afford to be travellers."
Excepting that one trip to Gravesend, of which he spoke, neither he nor
his wife had ever been on the water in their lives. Neither of them had
seen the sea. They had possessed really no inclination to stir from
home; and _saving_ had been, the ruling motive in David Dundyke's life.
The steamer went on. The river itself growing rough at Gravesend, the
dead-lights were put in; and as they got nearer to the sea, the wind was
freshening to a gale. Oh, the good steamer! will she ever live through
it? The unbelieving common-councilman, to his horror and dismay, found
sea-sickness was not a _brag_. He lay on the floor of the cabin,
groaning, and moaning, and bewailing his ill fate in having come to sea.
"Heaven forgive me for having thought of this foreign tour! Steward! He
stops up with them outsiders on deck! Heavens! Steward! Call him,
somebody! Tell him it's for a common-councilman!"
Mrs. Dundyke was in the ladies' cabin--very ill, but very quiet. A
dandy-looking man, impervious to the miseries of the passage, who had
nothing to do but gape and yawn, took a sudden look in, by way of
gratifying his curiosity, and, having done so, withdrew again--not,
however, before one of the lady passengers had marked him. She took him
for the captain.
"Capting! capting!" she called out; "if you please is that the capting?"
"Which?--where?" asked the steward's boy, to whom the question was
addressed, turning round with a glass of brandy-and-water in his hand,
which he was presenting to another lady, groaning up aloft in a berth.
"He came in at the door; he have got on tan kid gloves and shiny boots."
"_That_ the captain!" cried the boy, gratified beyond everything at the
lady's notion of a captain's rigging. "No, ma'am, he's up on deck."
"Just call the captain here, will you?" resumed the lady; "I know we are
going down. I'm never ill aboard these horrid boats; but I'm worse, I'm
dreadful timid."
"There ain't no danger, ma'am," said the boy.
"I know there _is_ danger, and I know we are a going to be emerged to
the bottom. If you'll call the capting down here, boy, I'll give you
sixpence; and if you don't call him, I'll have you punished for
insolence."
"Call him directly, ma'am," said the boy, rushing off with alacrity.
"I am the captain," exclaimed a rough voice, proceeding from a rough
head, poking itself down the companion ladder; "what's wanted of me?"
"Oh! capting, we are going to the fishes fast! and some of us is dead of
fright already. The vessel'll be in pieces presently! see how she rolls
and pitches! and there's the sea dashing over the decks and against them
boards at the windows, such as I never heard it; and all that awful
crashing and cording, what is it?"
"There ain't no danger," shortly answered the commander, mentally vowing
to punch the boy's head for calling him for nothing.
"Can't you put back, and land us somewhere, or take us into smooth
water?" implored the petitioner; "we'd subscribe for a reward for you,
capting, sir."
"Oh, yes, yes," echoed a faint chorus of voices; "any reward."
"There's no danger whatever, I tell ye, ladies," repeated the
exasperated captain. "When we've got round this bit of headland, we
shall have the wind at our starn, and go ahead as if the dickens druv
us."
With this consolatory information, the rough head turned round and
vanished. The grinning boy came out of a corner where he had hid
himself, and appealed to the lady for his promised sixpence.
"I know we are going down!" she cried, as she fumbled in her bag for
one. "That capting ought to lose his place for saying there's no danger;
to me it's apparent to be seen. If he'd any humanity in him, he'd put
back and land us somewhere, if 'twas only on the naked shore. Good
mercy! what a lurch!--and now we're going to t'other side. No danger
indeed! And all my valuable luggage aboard: my silk gownds, and my
shawls, and my new lace mantle! Good gracious, ma'am, don't pitch out of
your berth! you'll fall atop of me. Can't you hold on? What were hands
made for?"
Some hours more yet, and then the steward, who had been whisking and
whirling like one possessed, now on deck, now in the cabins, and now in
his own especial sanctum, amid his tin jugs and his broken crockery,
came whirling in once more to the large cabin, and said they were at the
mouth of Boulogne harbour. "Just one pitch more, ladies and
gentlemen--there it is--and now we are in the port, safe and sound."
"Don't talk to me about being in," cried poor Mr. Dundyke, from his
place on the floor, not quite sure yet whether he was dead or alive, but
rather believing he'd prefer to be the former. "Please don't step upon
me, anybody. I couldn't stir yet."
All minor disasters of the journey overcome, the travellers reached
Paris in safety. So far, Mr. Dundyke had found no occasion to rub on
with his "we" and "no," for he encountered very few people who were not
able to speak, or at least understand, a little English. But when they
quitted Paris--and they remained in it but two days--then their
difficulties commenced; and many were the distresses, and furious the
fits of anger, of the common-councilman. It pleased Mr. Dundyke to
travel by diligence on cross-country roads, rather than take the rail to
Lyons--of which rail, and of all rails, he had a sort of superstitious
dread--but this he found easy to do, though it caused him to be somewhat
longer on the road. Here his tongue was at fault. He wanted to know the
names of the towns and villages they passed through, the meaning of any
puzzling object of wonder he saw on his way, and he could not ask; or,
rather, he did ask repeatedly, but the answers conveyed to his ears only
an unmeaning sound. It vexed him excessively.
"I don't think they understand you, David," Mrs. Dundyke said to him one
day.
"And how should they understand, speaking nothing but heathen
gibberish?" he returned. "It's enough to make a saint swear."
Another source of annoyance was the living. Those who have travelled by
diligence in the more remote parts of France, and sat down to the
tables-d'hote at the road-side inns where the diligence halted, and
remember the scrambling haste observed, may imagine the distresses of
Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke. In common with their countrymen in general, they
partook strongly of the national horror of frog-eating, and also of the
national conviction that that delicate animal furnished the component
parts of at least every second dish served up in France: so that it was
little short of martyrdom to be planted down to a dinner, where half the
dishes, for all the information they gave to the eye, might be composed
of frogs, or something equally obnoxious. There would be the bouilli
first, but Mr. Dundyke, try as he would, could not swallow it, although
he had once dined on red-herrings; and there would be a couple of skinny
chickens, drying on a dish of watercress, but before _he_ could hope, in
his English deliberation, to get at them, they were snapped up and
devoured. Few men liked good living better than David Dundyke,--how
else would he have been fit to become one of the renowned metropolitan
body-corporate?--and when it was to be had at anybody else's cost, none
enjoyed it more. At these tables-d'hote, eat or not eat, he had to pay,
and bitter and frequent were the heartburnings at throwing away his good
money, yet rising up with an empty stomach. Not a tenth part of the
cravings of hunger did he and his wife ever satisfy at these miserable
tables-d'hote. The very idea of but the minutest portion of a frog's leg
going into their mouths, was more repulsive to their minds than that
shuddering reminiscence of the steam-packet; and, what with this dread,
and their inability to ask questions, Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke were nearly
starved.
One day in particular it was very sad. They had halted at an inn in a
good-sized town, not very far distant from Lyons. While the soup and
bouilli were being devoured, the two unfortunates ate a stray radish or
two, when up bustled the waiter with a funny-looking dish, its contents
wonderfully like what a roast-beef eater might suppose cooked frogs to
be, and presented it to Mr. Dundyke.
"What's this?" inquired Mr. Dundyke, delicately adventuring the tip of a
fork towards the suspicious-looking compound, by way of indicating the
nature of his question.
"Plait-il, monsieur?"
"This, _this_," rapping the edge of the dish with the fork; "what is it
made of? what do you call it?"
"Une fricassee de petits pigeons, a l'oseille, monsieur," replied the
discerning waiter.
Poor Mr. Dundyke pushed the dish away from him with a groan. "Une
fricassee de petits pigeons, a l'oseille" in French, might be "Stewed
frogs" in English.
"What was all that green mess in the dish?" asked his wife.
"The saints know," groaned the common-councilman. "Perhaps it's the
fashion here to cook frogs in their own rushes."
Up came the waiter with another dish, that attentive functionary
observing that the Monsieur Anglais ate nothing. A solid piece of meat,
with little white ends sticking out of it, rising out of another bed of
green. "Oseille" is much favoured in these parts of France.
"Whatever's this?" ejaculated the common-councilman, eyeing the dish
with wondering suspicion. "It's as much like a porkipine as anything I
ever saw. What d'ye call it?" rapping the edge of the dish as before.
"Foie-de-veau larde, a l'oseille, monsieur."
The common-councilman was as wise as before, and sat staring at it.
"It can't be frogs, David, this can't," suggested Mrs. Dundyke, "it is
too large and solid; and I don't think it's any foreign animal. It looks
to me like veal. Veal, waiter?" she asked, appealingly.
"Oui, madame," was the answer, at a venture.
"And the green stuff round it is spinach, of course. Veal and spinach,
my dear."
"That's good, that is, veal and spinach. I'll try it," said Mr. Dundyke.
He helped himself plentifully, and, pushing the dish to his wife,
voraciously took the first mouthful, for he was fearfully hungry.
It was a rash proceeding. What in the world had he got hold of! Veal and
spinach!--Heaven protect him from poison! It was some horrible, soft
compound, sharp and sour; it turned him sick at once, and set his teeth
on edge. He became very pale, and called faintly for the waiter.
But the garcon had long ago whisked off to other parts of the room, and
there was Mr. Dundyke obliged to sit with that nauseous mystery
underneath his very nose.
"Waiter!" he roared out at length, with all the outraged dignity of a
common-councilman, "I say, waiter! For the love of goodness take this
away: it's only fit for pigs. There's a dish there, with two little
ducks upon it, and some carrots round 'em--French ducks I suppose they
are: an Englishman might shut up shop if _he_ placed such on his table.
Bring it here."
"Plait-il, monsieur?"
"Them ducks--there--at the top, by the pickled cowcumbers. I'll take
one."
The waiter ranged his perplexed eyes round and round the table. "Pardon,
monsieur, plait-il?"
"I think you are an idiot, I do!" roared out Mr. Dundyke, unable to keep
both his hunger and his temper. "That dish of ducks, I said, and it is
being seized upon! They are tearing them to pieces! they are gone! Good
Heavens! are we to famish like this?"
The waiter, in despair, laid hold of a slice of melon in one hand and
the salt and pepper in the other, and presented them.
"The man _is_ an idiot!" decided the exasperated Englishman. "What does
he mean by offering me melon for dinner, and salt and pepper to season
it?--that's like their putting sugar to their peas! I want something
that I can eat," he cried, piteously.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que je peux vous offrir, monsieur?" asked the
agonized garcon.
"Don't you see we want something to eat," retorted the gentleman; "this
lady and myself? We can't touch any of the trash on the table. Get us
some mutton chops cooked."
"Pardon, monsieur, plait-il?"
"Some--mut--ton--chops," repeated the common-councilman, very
deliberately, thinking that the slower he spoke, the better he should be
understood. "And let 'em look sharp about it."
The waiter sighed and shrugged, and, after pushing the bread and butter
and young onions within reach, moved away, giving up the matter as a
hopeless job.
"Let's peg away at this till the chops come," cried Mr. Dundyke. And in
the fallacious hope that the chops _were_ coming, did the unconscious
couple "peg" away till the driver clacked his long whip, and summoned
his passengers to resume their seats in the diligence.
"I have had nothing to eat," screamed Mr. Dundyke. "They are doing me
some mutton chops. I can't go yet."
"Deux diners, quatre francs, une bouteille de vin, trente sous," said
the waiter in Mr. Dundyke's ear. "Fait cinq francs, cinquante,
monsieur."
"Fetch my mutton chops," he implored; "we can't go without them: we can
eat them in the diligence."
"Allons! depechons-nous, messieurs et dames," interrupted the conductor,
looking in, impatiently. "Prenez vos places. Nous sommes en retard."
"They are swindlers, every soul of them, in this country," raved the
common-councilman, passionately throwing down the money, when he could
be made to comprehend its amount, and that there were no chops to come.
"How dare you be so dishonest as charge for dinners we don't eat."
"I am faint now for the want of something," bewailed poor Mrs. Dundyke.
"If ever I am caught out of Old England again," he sobbed, climbing to
his place in the diligence, "I'll give 'em leave to make a Frenchman of
me, that's all."