Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1

Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1
Charles Lever

Charles James Lever

Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1 (of 2)

CHAPTER I. HYDROPATHIC ACQUAINTANCES

We are at Como, on the lake – that spot so beloved of opera dancers – the day-dream of prima donnas – the Elysium of retired barytones! And with what reason should this be the Paradise of all who have lived and sighed, and warbled and pirouetted, within the charmed circle of the footlights? The crystal waters mirroring every cliff and crag with intense distinctness; the vegetation variegated to the very verge of extravagance; orange-trees overloaded with fruit; arbutus only too much bespangled with red berries; villas, more coquettish than ever scene-painter conceived, with vistas of rooms within, all redolent of luxury; terraces, and statues, and vases, and fountains, and marble balconies, steeped in a thousand balmy odours, make up a picture which well may fascinate those whose ideal of beauty is formed of such gorgeous groupings. There is something of unreality in the brilliant colouring and variety of the scene suggesting the notion, that at any moment the tenor may emerge, velvet mantle and all, from the copse before you; or a prima donna, in all the dishevelment of her back hair, rush madly to your feet. There is not a portal from which an angry father may not issue; not a shady walk that might not be trod by an incensed basso!

The rustic bridges seem made for the tiny feet of short-petticoated damsels, daintily tripping, with white-napkin covered baskets, to soft music; and every bench appears but waiting for that wearied old peasant, in blue stockings, a staff, and a leather belt, that has vented his tiresomeness in the same spot for the last half century. Who wonders, if the distracted Princess of “the scene” should love a picture that recalls the most enthusiastic triumphs of her success? Why should not the retired “Feri” like to wander at will through a more enchanting garden than ever she pirouetted in?

Conspicuous amongst the places where these stage-like elements abound is the Villa d’Este; situated in a little bay, with two jutting promontories to guard it, the ground offers every possible variety of surface and elevation. From the very edge of the calm lake, terrace rises above terrace, clad with all that is rich and beautiful in vegetation; rocks, and waterfalls, and ruins, and statues abound. Everything that money could buy, and bad taste suggest, are there heaped with a profusion that is actually confounding. Every stone stair leads to some new surprise; every table-land opens some fresh and astonishing prospect. Incongruous, inharmonious, tea-gardenish as it is, there is still a charm in the spot which no efforts of the vilest taste seem able to eradicate. The vines will cluster in graceful groupings; the oranges will glow in gorgeous contrast to their dark mantle of leaves; water will leap with its own spontaneous gladness, and fall in diamond showers over a grassy carpet no emerald ever rivalled; and, more than all, the beautiful lake itself will reflect the picture, with such softened effects of light and shadow, that all the perversions of human ingenuity are totally lost in the transmission.

This same Villa d’Este was once the scene of a sad drama; but it is not to this era in its history we desire now to direct our reader’s attention, but to a period much later, when no longer the home of an exiled Princess, or the retreat where shame and sorrow abandoned themselves to every excess, its changed fortune had converted it into an establishment for the water cure!

The prevailing zeal of our day is to simplify everything, even to things which will not admit of simplicity. What with our local athenæums, our mechanics’ institutes, our lecturing lords and discoursing baronets, we have done a great deal. Science has been popularised, remote geographies made familiar, complex machinery explained, mysterious inscriptions rendered intelligible. How could it be expected that in the general enthusiasm for useful knowledge medicine should escape, or that its secrets should be exempt from a scrutiny that has spared nothing? Hence have sprung up those various sects in the curative art which, professing to treat rationally and openly what hitherto has been shrouded in mysticism and deception, have multiplied themselves into grape cures, milk cures, and water cures, and Heaven knows how many other strange devices “to cheat the ills that flesh is heir to.”

We are not going to quarrel with any of these new religions; we forgive them much for the simple service they have done, in withdrawing their followers from the confined air, the laborious life, the dreary toil, or the drearier dissipation of cities, to the fresh and invigorating breezes, the cheerful quietude, and the simple pleasures of a country existence.

We care little for the regimen or the ritual, be it lentils or asses’ milk, Tyrol grapes, or pure water, so that it be administered on the breezy mountain side, or in the healthful air of some lofty “Plateau” away from the cares, the ambitions, the strife, and the jar-rings of the active world, with no seductions of dissipation, neither the prolonged stimulants, nor the late hours of fashion.

It was a good thought, too, to press the picturesque into the service of health, and show the world what benefits may flow, even to nerves and muscles, from elevated thoughts and refined pleasures. All this is, however, purely digressionary, since we are more concerned with the social than the medical aspects of Hydropathy, and so we come back at once to Como. The sun has just risen, on a fresh morning in autumn, over the tall mountain east of the lake, making the whole western shore, where the Villa d’Este stands, all a-glitter with his rays. Every rock, and crag, and promontory are picked out with a sharp distinctness, every window is a-blaze, and streams of light shoot into many a grove and copse, as though glad to pierce their way into cool spots where the noonday sun himself can never enter. On the opposite shore, a dim and mysterious shadow wraps every object, faint outlines of tower and palace loom through the darkness, and a strange hazy depth encloses the whole scene. Such is the stillness, however, that the opening of a casement, or the plash of a stone in the water, is heard across the lake, and voices come from the mysterious gloom with an effect almost preternaturally striking.

On a terrace high up above the lake, sheltered with leafy fig-trees and prickly pears, there walks a gentleman, sniffing the morning air, and evidently bent on inhaling health at every pore.

Nothing in his appearance indicates the invalid; every gesture, as he moves, rather displays a conscious sense of health and vigour. Somewhat above the middle size, compactly but not heavily built, it is very difficult to guess his years; for though his hair and the large whiskers which meet beneath his chin are perfectly white, his clear blue eyes and regular teeth show no signs of age. Singularly enough, it is his dress that gives the clue to this mystery. His tightly-fitting frock, his bell-shaped hat, and his shapely trousers, all tell of a fashion antecedent to our loosely-hanging vestments and uncared-for garments; for the Viscount Lackington was a lord in waiting to the “First Gentleman” in Europe at a time when Paletots were unknown, and Jim Crows had not been imagined.

Early as was the hour, his dress was perfect in all its details, and the accurate folds of his immaculate cravat, and the spotless brilliancy of his boots, would have done credit to Bond-street in days when Bond-street cherished such glories. Let our modern critics sneer as they will at the dandyism of that day, the gentleman of the time was a very distinctive individual, and, in the subdued colour of his habiliments, their studious simplicity, and, above all, their unvarying uniformity, utterly defied all the attempts of spurious imitators.

Our story opens only a few years back, and Lord Lackington was then one of the very few who perpetuated the traditions in costume of that celebrated period; but he did so with such unerring accuracy, that men actually wondered where those marvellously shaped hats were made, or how those creaseless coats were ever fashioned. Even to the perfume of his handkerchief, the faintest and most evanescent of odours, all were mysteries that none could penetrate.

As he surveyed the landscape through his double eye-glass, he smiled graciously and blandly, and gently inclined his head, as though to say, “Very prettily done, water and mountains. I’m quite satisfied with you, trees; you please me very much indeed! Trickle away little fountain – the picture is the better for it.” His Lordship had soon, however, other objects to engage his attention than the inanimate constituents of the scene. The spot which he had selected for his point of view was usually traversed, in their morning walks, by the other residents of the “Cure,” and this circumstance permitted him to receive the homage of such early risers as were fain to couple with their pursuit of health the recognition of a great man.

Like poverty, hydropathy makes us acquainted with strange associates. The present establishment was too recently formed to have acquired any very distinctive celebrity, but it was sufficiently crowded. There was a great number of third-rate Italians from the Lombard towns and cities, a sprinkling of inferior French, a few English, a stray American or so, and an Irish family, on their way to Italy, sojourning here rather for economy than health, and fancying that they were acquiring habits and manners that would serve them through their winter’s campaign.

The first figure which emerged upon the plateau was that of a man swathed in great-coat, cap, and worsted wrappers, that it was difficult to guess what he could be. He came forward at a shambling trot, and was about to pass on without looking aside, when Lord Lackington called out, “Ah! Spicer, have you got off that eleven pounds yet?” “No, my Lord, but very near it. I’m seven stone ten, and at seven eight I’m all right.”

“Push along, then, and don’t lose your training,’ said his Lordship, dismissing him with a bland wave of the hand. And the other made an attempt at a salutation, and passed on.

“Madame la Marquise, your servant. You ascend these mountain steeps like a chamois!”

This compliment was addressed to a little, very fat old lady, who came snorting along like a grampus.

“Benedetto Dottore!” cried she. “He will have it that I must go up to the stone cross yonder every morning before breakfast, and I know I shall burst a blood-vessel yet in the attempt.”

A chair, with a mass of horse-clothing and furs, surmounted by a little yellow wizened face, was next borne by, to which Lord Lackington bowed courteously, saying, “Your Excellency improves at every hour.”

His Excellency gave a brief nod and a little faint smile, swallowed a mouthful from a silver flask presented by his servant, and disappeared.

“Ah! the fair syren sisters! what a charming vision!” said his Lordship, as two bright-cheeked, laughing-eyed girls bounced upon the terrace in all the high-hearted enjoyment of good health and good spirits.

“Molly, for shame!” cried what seemed the elder, a damsel of about nineteen, as the younger, holding out her dress with both hands, performed a kind of minuet curtsey to the Viscount, to which he responded with a bow that might have done credit to Versailles.

“Perfectly done – grace and elegance itself. The foot a little – a very little more in advance.”

“Just because you want to look at it,” cried she, laughing. “Molly, Molly!” exclaimed the other, rebukingly. “Let him deny it if he can, Lucy,” retorted she. “But here’s papa.”

And as she spoke, a square-built, short, florid man, fanning his bald head with a straw hat, puffed his way forward.

“My Lord, I’m your most obaydient!” said he, with a very unmistakably Irish enunciation. “O’Reilly, I’m delighted to see you. These charming girls of yours have just put me in good humour with the whole creation. What a lovely spot this is; how beautiful!”

Though his Lordship’s arm and outstretched hand directed attention to the scenery, his eyes never wandered from the pretty features of the laughing girl beside him.

“It’s like Banthry!” said Mr. O’Reilly – “it’s the very ditto of Banthry.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed my Lord, still pursuing his scrutiny.

“Only Banthry’s bigger and wider. Indeed, I may say finer.”

“Nothing, in my estimation, can exceed this!” said his Lordship, with a distinctive smile, addressed to the young lady.

“I’m glad you think so,” said she, with a merry laugh. And then, with a pirouette, she sprang up the steep steps on the rocky path before her, and disappeared, her sister as quickly following, leaving Mr. O’Reilly alone with his Lordship.

“What heaps of money she laid out here,” exclaimed O’Reilly, as he looked at the labyrinth of mad ruins, and rustic bridges, and hanging gardens on every side of him.

“Large sums – very large indeed!” said my Lord, whose thoughts were evidently on some other track.

“Pure waste – nothing else; the place never could pay. Vines and fig-trees, indeed – I’d rather see a crop of oats.”.

“I have a weakness for the picturesque, I must own,” said my Lord, as his eye still followed the retreating figures of the girls.

“Well, I like a waterfall; and, indeed, I like a summer-house myself,” said O’Reilly, as though confessing to a similar trait on his own part.

“This is the first time you have been abroad, O’Reilly?” said his Lordship, to turn the subject of the conversation.

“Yes, my Lord, my first, and, with God’s blessing, my last, too! When I lost Mrs. O’Reilly, two years ago, of a complaint that beat all the doctors – ”

“Ah, yes, you mentioned that to me; very singular indeed!”

“For it wasn’t in the heart itself, my Lord, but in the bag that houlds it.”

“Oh yes, I remember the explanation perfectly; so you thought you’d just come abroad for a little distraction.”

“Distraction indeed! ‘tis the very word for it,” broke in Mr. O’Reilly, eagerly. “My head is bewildered between the lingo and the money, and they keep telling me, ‘You’ll get used to it, papa, darling – you’ll be quite at home yet.’ But how is that ever possible?”

“Still, for your charming girls’ sake,” said my Lord, caressing his whiskers and adjusting his neckcloth, as if for immediate captivation – “or their sake, O’Reilly, you’ve done perfectly right!”

“Well, I’m glad your Lordship says so. ‘Tis nobody ought to know better!” said he, with a heavy sigh.