The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I

Tuesday Evening.

I have passed a miserable twenty-four hours. They 've all the incentives to gout in this country, and yet they don't appear to have the commonest remedies against it. I sent Belton's recipe to be made up at the apothecaries', and they had never as much as heard of one of the ingredients! They told me to regulate my diet, and be careful to avoid acids, – and this, while I was bellowing like a bull with pain. It was like replying to my request for a shirt, by saying that they were going to sow flax in August It 's their confounded cookery, and the vinegar we wash it down with, has given me this!

The old housekeeper at last took compassion on my sufferings, and made me up a kind of broth of herbs that nearly finished me. She assured me that they all grew wild in the fields, and were freely eaten by the cattle. I can only say it's well that Nebuchadnezzar was n't put out to graze here! Sea-sickness was a mild nausea compared to it I 'm better now; but so low and so depressed, and with such loss of energy, that in a discussion with Mrs. D. about Mary Anne's "trousseau," as they call it, I gave in to everything!

Since this attack seized me, events have made a great progress; indeed, a suspiciously minded person would n't scruple to say that a mild poison had been administered to me to forward the course of negotiations; and in my heart and soul I believe that another bowl of the same broth would make me consent to my daughter's union with the Bey of Tunis! The poor old Dean of Lurra used to say of the Baths of Kreutznach, "I 've lost enough flesh in three weeks to make a curate!" – and, indeed, when I look at myself in the glass, I turn involuntarily around to see where's the rest of me!

Meanwhile, as I said, all has been arranged and settled, and the marriage is fixed for an early day in the coming week. I suppose it's all for the best I take it that the match is a very great one; but I own to you frankly, Tom, I 'd have fewer misgivings if the dear child was going to be the wife of some respectable man of her own country, though he had neither a castle to live in nor a title to bestow.

Foreigners are essentially and totally different from us in everything; and marrying one of them is, to my thinking, the very next thing to being united to some strange outlandish beast, as one reads of in fairy tales. I suppose that my prejudice is a very mean and narrow-minded one; but I can't get rid of it. It looks churlish and cold-hearted in me that I cannot show the same joy on the occasion that the others display; but, with all my efforts, and the very best will, I can't do it, Tom. The bridegroom, too, is not to my taste: he is one of those moping, dreamy, moonstruck fellows, that pass their lives in an imaginary sphere of thought and action; and, to my thinking, these people are distasteful to the world at large, and insufferable to their wives.

I think I see that Mary Anne already anticipates he will prove a stubborn subject. Her mother, however, gives her courage and support. She gently insinuates, too, that worse cases have been treated successfully. Lord help us, it's a strange world!

As to the material features of the affair, – I mean as regards means and fortune, – he appears to have more than enough, yet not so much as to prevent his giving a very palpable hint to me about what I intended to give my daughter. He made the overture with a most laudable candor, though, I own, with no excess of delicacy. James, however, had in a manner prepared me for it, and mentioned that I was indebted for this gratification, as I am for a variety of others, to Mrs. D. It seems that, by way of giving a very imposing notion of our possessions, she had cut the county map out of O'Kelly's old Gazetteer, and passed it off for the survey of our estate. Of course I could n't disavow the statement, and have been reduced to the pleasant alternative of settling on my daughter about five baronies and twenty townlands of Tipperary, with no inconsiderable share of villages and hamlets. Some old leases, an insurance policy, and a writ against myself have served me for title-deeds; and though the young Baron pores over them for hours with a dictionary, thanks to the figurative language of the law, they have defied detection!

The father is still too ill to receive me, but each day I am promised an interview with him. Of what benefit to either of us it is to prove, may be guessed from the fact that we cannot speak to each other. You will perceive from all this, Tom, that I am by no means enamored of our approaching greatness; and it is but fair to state that James is even less so. He calls the Baron a "snob;" and probably, in all the fashionable vocabulary of an enlightened age, a more depreciatory epithet could not be discovered. What a sham and a humbug is all the parade we make of our parental affection, and what a gross cheat, too, do we practise upon ourselves by it! We train up a girl from infancy with every care and devotedness, – we surround her with all the luxuries our means can compass, and every affection of our hearts, – and we give her away, for "better and for worse," to the first fellow that offers with what seems a reasonable chance of being able to support her!

Many of us would n't take a butler with the scanty knowledge we accept a son-in-law. His moral qualities, his disposition, the habits he has been reared in, – what do we know of them? Less than nothing! And yet, while we ask about these, and twenty more, of the man to whom we are about to confide the key of our cellar, we intrust the happiness of our child to an unknown individual, the only ascertained fact about whom – if even that be so – is his income!

As I should like to tell you every step I take in this affair, I'll not send off my letter till I can give you the latest information. Meanwhile let me impress upon you that it is now three months since I received a shilling from Ireland. James has just informed me that there is not fifty pounds left of the McCarthy legacy, of which his mother only gave him permission to draw for three hundred. The debate upon this, when it comes, will be strong. What I intend is that immediately after Mary Anne's marriage we should return to Ireland; but of course I reserve the declaration for a fitting opportunity, since I well know how it will be received. Cary would never marry a foreigner, nor would anything induce me to consent to her doing so. James is only frittering away his best years here in idleness and dissipation; and if I can get nothing for him from the Government, he must emigrate to Australia or New Zealand. As for Mrs. D., the sooner she gets home to Dodsborough the better for her health, her means, and her morals!

I am afraid to say a word about Ireland and Irish affairs, for as sure as I do I stick fast there; still I must say that I think you 're wrong for abusing those members that have accepted office from Government. Put it to yourself, my dear Tom; if anybody offered you fifty pounds for the old gray mare you drive into market of a Saturday, would you set about explaining that she was blind of an eye, and a roarer, with a splint before, and a spavin behind? Would n't you rather expatiate upon her blood and breeding, her endurance of fatigue, and her fine trotting action? I don't know you if you would n't! Well, it's just the same with these fellows. Briefless lawyers and distressed gentlemen as they are, why should they say to the Ministry, "You're giving too much for us; we can neither speak for you nor write for you; we have neither influence at home, nor power abroad; we are a noisy, riotous, disorderly set of devils, always quarrelling amongst ourselves, and never agreeing, except when there 's a bit of robbery or roguery to be done; don't think of buying us; it is a clear waste of public money; we 'd only disgrace and not benefit you"? If anybody is to be blamed, it is the Ministers that bought them, Tom.

As to all your disputed questions of education, tenant-right, and taxation, take my word for it you have no chance of settling them amicably; and for this reason: a great number of excellent men, on both sides, have pledged themselves so strongly to particular opinions that they cannot decently recant, and yet they begin to see many points in a different view, and would, were the matter to come fresh before them, treat it in another fashion. If you really wish to see Ireland better, try and get people to let her alone for some fifteen or twenty years. She is nearly ruined by doctoring. Just wait a bit, and see if the natural goodness of constitution won't do more for her than all your nostrums.

James has just interrupted me, to say that he has shot "the partridge," for it seems there was only one in the country. That's the fruits of revolution. Before the year '48, this part of Germany abounded in game of every sort – partridges, hares, and quails, in immense abundance, besides plenty of deer on the hills, and that excellent bird the "Auer-Hahn," which is like the black-cock we have at home. When the troubles came, the peasants shot everything; and now the whole breed of game is extinct. They tell me it is the same throughout Bohemia and Hungary, – the two best sporting countries in all Europe. Foreigners were never oppressed with game-laws as we are; there was a far wider liberty enjoyed by them in this respect, and, in consequence, the privileges were less abused; so that really the wholesale destruction is much to be regretted. But is it not exactly what always follows in every case of popular domination? The masses love excess, and are never satisfied with anything short of it. I don't pretend to say that the Germans had not good and valid reasons for being dissatisfied with their Governments. I believe, in my heart, it would be difficult to imagine a more stupid piece of ingenuous blundering than a German Administration; and this is the less excusable when one thinks of the people over whom they rule.

The excesses of that same year of '48 will be the stock-in-trade for these grinding Governments for many a day to come. It is like a "barring out" to a cruel schoolmaster; the excuse for any violence he may wish to indulge in. At the same time I say this, I tell you frankly that none of the foreigners I have yet seen are fit for the system of a representative Government. From whatever causes I know not, but they are less patient, less given to calm investigation, than the English. Their perceptions are as quick – perhaps quicker – but they will not weigh the consequences of conflicting interests, and, above all, they will not put any restrictions upon their own liberty for the benefit of the community at large. Their origin, climate, traditions, and so forth, of course influence them greatly; but I have a notion, Tom, that our domesticity has a very considerable share in the formation of that temperate and obedient spirit so observable amongst us. I think I see the sly dimple that 's deepening in the corner of your mouth as you murmur to yourself, "Kenny James is thinking of his Mrs. D. He's pondering over the natural results of home discipline." But that is not what I mean, at least it is not the whole of it. My theory is that a family is the best training-school for the virtues that prosper in a well-ordered State, and that the little incidents of home life have a wonderful bearing upon, and similarity to, the great events that stir mankind.

I was going to become very abstruse and incomprehensible, I've no doubt, on this theme, but Mrs. D. just dropped in with a small catalogue of some three hundred and twenty-one articles Mary Anne requires for her wedding.

I ventured to hint that her mother entered the connubial state with a more modest preparation; and hereupon arose one of those lively discussions now so frequent between us, in which, amidst other desultory and miscellaneous remarks, she drew a graphic contrast between marrying a man of rank and title, and "making a low connection that has forever served to alienate the affection of one's family."

Will you tell me what peculiarity there is in the atmosphere, or the food, or the electric influences abroad, that have made a woman that was at least occasionally reasonable at home a most unmanageable fury on the Continent? I don't want to deny that we had our little differences at Dodsborough, but they were "tiffs," – mere skirmishes, – but here they are downright pitched battles, Tom. She will have it so, too. She won't exchange a few shots and retire, but she comes up in line, with her heavy artillery, and seems resolved to have a day of it! If this blessed tour brought me no other pleasures than these, I 'd have reason to thank it! You, of course, are quite ready to assert that the fault is as much mine as hers, – that I provoke contradiction, – that I even invite conflict! There you are perfectly in the wrong! I do, I acknowledge, intrench myself in a strong position, and only fire an occasional shot at any tempting exposure of the enemy; but she comes on by storm and escalade, and, sparing neither age nor sex, never stops till she's in the very heart of the citadel. That I come out maimed, crippled, and disabled from such encounters, is not to be wondered at.

Amongst the other signs of progress of our enlightened age, a very remarkable one is the habit, now become a law, for everybody with any pretensions to the rank of a gentleman, to live in the same style, or, at least, with as close an imitation as he can of it, as persons of large fortune. Men like myself were formerly satisfied with giving their friends a little sherry and port at dinner, continued afterwards, till some considerate friend begged, "as a favor," for a glass of punch. Now we start with Madeira after the soup, if you have n't had oysters and chablis before, hock with your first entrée, and champagne afterwards, graduating into Chambertin with "the roast," and Pacquarete with the dessert, claret, at double the price it costs in Ireland, closing the entertainment. Why, a duke cannot do more than Kenny Dodd at this rate! To be sure the cookery will be more refined, and the wines in higher condition. Moët will be iced to its due point, and Chateau Margaux will be served in a carefully aired decanter; but the cost, the outlay, will be fully as much in one case as the other. Have we – that is to say, humble men like myself – gained by this in an intellectual or social point of view? Not a bit of it! We have lost all that easy cordiality that was native to us in our former condition, and we have not become as coldly polite and elegantly tiresome as the grand folk.

The same system obtains in other matters. My daughter must be dressed on her wedding-day like Lady Olivia or Lady Jemima, who has a father a marquis, and fifty thousand pounds settled on her for pin-money.

The globe has to become tributary to the marriage of Mary Anne! Cashmere sends a shawl; Lyons, silk; and Genoa, velvet; furs from Hudson's Bay, and feathers from Mexico; Valenciennes and Brussels contribute lace; Paris reserving for her peculiar snare the architectural skill that is to combine these costly materials, and construct out of them that artistic being they call a "bride." Taking a wife with nothing "but the clothes on her back" used to be the expression of a most disinterested marriage. Now it might mean anything between Swan and Edgar's and Howell and James's, or, to state it differently, between moderate embarrassment and irretrievable ruin!

If you ask me how I am to pay for all this, or when, I tell you honestly and fairly, I don't know. As well as I can make out the last accounts you sent me, we 're getting deeper into debt every day; but as figures always distract and puzzle me, I'd rather you'd put the case into something like a statement in words, just saying when we may expect a remittance, and how much it will be. I find that I shall lose the mail if I don't cease at once; but I 'll send you a few lines by to-morrow's post, as I have something important to say, but can't remember it now.

Yours, ever sincerely,

Kenny James Dodd.

LETTER XXXVIII. KENNY JAMES DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., OF THE GRANGE, BRUFF

My dear Tom, – The post hadn't left this five minutes yesterday, when I remembered what I wanted to say to you. Wednesday, the 26th, is fixed for the happy occasion; and if nothing should intervene, you may insert the following paragraph in the "Tipperary Press," under the accustomed heading of "Marriage in High Life": "The Baron Adolf Heinrich Conrad Hapsburg von Wolfenschafer, Lord of the Manors of Hohendeken, Kalbsbratenhausen, and Schweinkraut, to Mary Anne, eldest daughter of Kenny James Dodd, Esq., of Dodsborough, in this county." Faith, Tom, I was near saying "universally regretted by a large circle of afflicted survivors," for I was just wishing myself dead and buried! But you must put it in the usual formula of "beautiful and accomplished," and take care it is not applied to the bridegroom, for, upon my conscience, his claim to the first epithet couldn't be settled by even a Parliamentary title! My heart is heavy about it all, and I wish it was over!

If anything exemplifies the vanity of human wishes, it is our efforts to marry our daughters, and our regrets when the plans succeed. Tom goes to India, and Billy to sea, and there is scarcely a gap in the family circle. "The boys" were seldom at home, – they were shooting in Scotland, or hunting in England, or fishing in Norway. They never, so to say, made part of the effective garrison of the house; they came and went with that rackety good-humor that even in quiet families is pleasurable; but your girls are household gods: lose them, even one of them, and the altar is despoiled. The thousand little unobtrusive duties, noiseless cares, that make home better a hundred-fold than anywhere else, be it ever so rich and splendid, the unasked solicitude, the watchful attention that provides for your little daily wants and habits, are all their province. And just fancy, then, what scheming and intriguing we practise to get rid of them! You 'll say that this shows we are above the selfishness of only considering our own enjoyment, and that we sacrifice all for their happiness. There you mistake; our sole aim is a rich man, – our one notion of a good marriage is that the husband be wealthy. It's not a man like myself, who has sometimes paid fifty, ay, sixty per cent for money, that can afford to sneer at and despise it; but this I will say, that the mere possession of it will not suffice for happiness. I know fellows with fifteen thousand a year that have not the heart to spend five hundred. I know others that, with as much, are always over head and ears in debt, raising cash everywhere and anyhow! What kind of life must a girl lead that marries either of these? And yet would you or I think of refusing such a match for a daughter? Let me tell you, Tom, that for people of small fortune, the nunneries were fine things! What signifies serge and simple diet to the wearisome drudgery of a governess! If I was a woman, I think I'd rather sit in my quiet cell, working an embroidered suit of body clothes for Father O'Leary, than I'd be snubbed by the family of some vulgar citizen, tortured by the brats, and insulted by the servants.

I don't suppose that it signifies a straw one way or other, but I feel some compunctions of conscience at the way I have been assigning imaginary estates, mines, woods, and collieries to Mary Anne for the last three days. I know it's mere greed makes the Baron so eager on the subject, since he is enormously wealthy. James and I rode twelve miles, this morning, through a forest that belongs to the castle, and the arable land stretches more than that distance in another direction; but who knows how he 'll behave when he discovers she has nothing! To be sure, we can always ascribe our ruin to political causes, and, in verification, exhibit ourselves as poor as need be; but still I don't like it And this is one of the blessed results of a false position, – one step in a wrong direction very frequently necessitates a long journey. Yesterday I protested to my affluence; to-day I vouched for the nobility of my family. Heaven only can tell what I won't swear to to-morrow! And again I am interrupted by Mrs. D., who has just come to inform me that though the bride's finery can all be had at Paris, – whither the happy couple are to repair for the honeymoon, – there are certain indispensables must be obtained at once from Baden; and she begs that I will privately write a few lines to Morris, who will, of course, undertake the commission. It is not without shame that I enclose a list of purchases to make, which, to a man who knew what we were in Ireland, will appear preposterous; but the false position we have attained to is surrounded with interminable mortifications of the same kind.

Ah, Tom! I remember the time when, if a bride changed her smart white silk and muslin that she wore at the altar for a good brown or blue satin pelisse to travel in, we thought her a miracle of fashion and finery; but now the millinery of a wedding is the principal thing. There is a stereotyped formula, out of which there is no hope of conjugal happiness; and the bride that begins life without Brussels lace enters upon her career with gloomy omens! Now, a scarf of this alone costs thirty guineas; you may, if you like, go as high as a hundred and fifty. Why can't people wait for the ruin that is so sure to overtake them, without forestalling it in this way? Twenty pounds for clothes, and a trip to Castle Connel or Kilkee for the honeymoon, would have satisfied every wish of Alary Anne's heart in Ireland; and if she drove away in a post-chaise with four horses for the first stage, she 'd have been the envy of all the marriageable girls for miles round.

But now I have had to ask Morris to buy a travelling-carriage, because Mrs. D., in one of those expansions of splendor that occasionally attack her, said to the Baron, "Oh, take one of our carriages, we have left several of them at Baden." The excellent woman cannot be brought to perceive that romance of this kind is a most expensive amusement. I have drawn a bill on you for four hundred at three months, to meet these, and sent it to Morris to "get done." I hope he 'll succeed, and I hope you 'll pay it when it comes due; so that come what will, Tom, my intentions are honorable!

If Mrs. D. and myself had been upon better terms, we might have discussed this marriage question more fully and confidentially, but there are now so many cabinet difficulties that we rarely hold a council, and when we do, we are sure to disagree. This is another blessed result of our continentalizing. Home had its duties, and with them came that spirit of concord and agreement so essential to family happiness; but in this vagabond kind of existence, where every-thing is feigned, unreal, and unnatural, all concert and confidence is completely lost.

Now I have told you frankly and fairly everything about us, and don't take advantage of my candor by giving advice, for there is nothing in this world I have so little taste for. There's no man above the condition of an idiot that is n't thoroughly aware of his failings and shortcomings, but all that knowledge does n't bring him an inch nearer the cure of them. Do you think I 'm not fully alive to everything you could say of my wasteful habits, my improvidence, indolence, irritability, and so forth? I know them all better than you do, – ay, and I feel them acutely, too, for I know them to be incurable! Reformation, indeed! Do you know when a man gives up dancing, Tom? When he's too stiff in the knees for it. There's the whole philosophy of life. When we grow wiser, as they are pleased to call it, it is always in spite of ourselves!

I find that by enclosing this to Morris, he can forward it to you by the bag of the Legation. Once more let me remind you of our want of cash, and believe me, very faithfully your friend,

Kenny I. Dodd.

P. S. Address me "Freyburg, to be forwarded to the Schloss, Wolfenfels."

LETTER XXXIX. BETTY COBB TO MRS. SHUSAN O'SHEA, PRIEST'S HOUSE, BRUFF

Dear Mrs. Shusan, – I was meaning to write to you for the last week, but could n't by reason of the conflagration I was in, for sure any poor girl might feel it, seeing that I was far away among furriners, and had nobody to advise, barrin' the evil counsels of my wicked heart. We cam here two weeks gone, on a visit to the father of the young man that 's going to marry "Mary Anne." It's a great big ould place, like the jail at Limerick, only darker, with little windows, and a flite of stairs out of every corner in it. And the furnishing is n't a bit newer. It's a bit of rag here and a rag there, an ould cabbinet, a hard sofa, and maybe four wooden chairs that would take a ladder to get into! Eatin' and drinkin' likewise the same. Biled beef – biled first for the broth, and sarved afterwards with cow-comers, sliced and steeped in oil – the Heavens preserve us! Then a dish of roast vale, with rasberry jam and musheroons, for they tries the human stomich with every ingradiant they can think of! But the great favorite of all is a salad made out of potatoes, biled bard, sliced and pickled the same way as the cow-comers! A bowl of that, Mrs. Shusan, after a long dinner, makes you feel as full as a tick, and if the house was afire I could n't run! To be sure, when the meal is over everybody sits down to coffee, and does n't distress themselves about anything for a matter of two hours. And, indeed, I must make the remark that "manials" isn't as badly treated anywhere in the whole 'versal globe as in Ireland, and if it was n't that I hear the people is runnin' away o' themselves, I 'd write a letter to the papers about it! 'T is exactly like pigs you are, no better; potatoes and butter-milk all the year round! deny it if you can. Could you offer a pig less wages than four pound a year?

I must say, too, Shusan, that eatin' one's fill molly-fies ther nature, and subdues ther hasty dispositions in a wonderful way; I know it myself; and that after a strong supper now I can bear more from the mistress than I used at home, only giving a sigh now and then out of the fulness of my heart. But it's not them things I wanted to tell you, but of the state of my infections. Don't be angry with me, Mrs. Shusan. I don't forget the iligant lessons you gave me long ago, about thrusting the men; I know well how thrue every word you said is. They 're base, and wicked, and deceatful! Flatterin' us when we 're young and beautiful, and gibin' and jeerin' when we 're ould as yourself! But what's the use of fiting agin the will of Providence? Sure, if he intended us to have better husbands it's not them craytures he'd have left us to! My sentiments is these, Shusy: 'Tis a way of chastezin' us is marriage! The throubles and tumults we have with a man are our crosses, and it's only cowardly to avoid them. Meet your feat, say I, whatever it be, – whether it be a man or the measles, don't be afraid!

I 'm shure and sartain it's nothing but fear makes young girls go and be nuns; they're afraid, and no wonder, of the wickedness of the world; but somehow, Shusan, like everything else in this life, one gets used to it. I know it well, there 's many a thing I see now, without minding, that long ago I dared not look at. "Live and learn," they say, and there's nothing so thrue! And talking of that, you 'd be shocked to see how Mary Anne goes on wid the young Baron. She, that would scarce let poor Doctor Belton spake to her alone. We meet them walk in' in the lonesomest places together; and Taddy and I never goes into the far part of the wood without seeing them! And that's not all of it, my dear, but she must get the mistress to give me a lecture about going off myself with a man.

"Does n't your daughter do it, ma'am?" says I. "Is all the wickedness of this world," says I, "to be kept for one's betters?"

"Do you call marriage wickedness?" says she.

"Sometimes it is, ma'am," says I, with a look she understood well.

"You 're a huzzy," says she; "and I 'll give you warnin' next Saturday."

"I'll take it now," says I, "ma'am, for I'm going to better myself."

If ye saw her face, Shusy, as I said this! She knows in her heart that she could n't get on at all without me. Not a word of a furrin lingo can she say; and I 'm obleeged to traduce her meanin' to all the other sarvants! And, indeed, that's the way I become such an iligant linguist; and it's no differ to me now between talkin' French and Jarman, – I make them just the same!

I was n't in my room when Mary Anne was after me.

"Ain't you a fool, Betty?" says she, puttin' a hand on my shoulder.

"Maybe I am, miss," says I; "but there 's others fools as well as me!"

"But I mean," says she, "isn't it silly to fall out with mamma, – that was always so good, and so kind, and so fond of you?"

I saw at once, Shusy, how the wind was, and so I just went on folding up my collars and settling my things without a word.