Volume I Part 14 (2/2)
not even quarter sessions and a rate in aid will drive these thoughts out of an Irishman's head.
From the moment that this new alliance was signed, we entered upon a new existence. Bonn, as I have told you, was a quiet little collegiate place, with primitive habits of no very expensive kind. The chief pleasures were weak wine in a garden, or small whist in a summer-house, with now and then an ”aesthetic tea,” as they phrase it, at the Pro-Rector's; of which, of course, I understand nothing, but sincerely hope the discourse was better than the beverage. It was, I own it, Tom, a strange kind of life, that seemed to me always like a moral convalescence, when you were only strong enough for small virtues. One undoubted advantage it had,--it was inexpensive, Tom. We were living, with few comforts and some privations, I confess, at only one-third more than we used to spend at Dodsbor-ough; and, considering that we know nothing of the language, I conclude that we were enjoying the Continent as cheaply as was practicable.
I won't pretend that it suited me. I don't want you to believe that I was taking a scientific or a studious turn. Still I liked the place for one thing, which was this,--its quiet monotony, its placid, unvarying simplicity was telling upon Mrs. D. and the children in an astonis.h.i.+ng manner. It was exactly the way that the water-cure works its wonders with old drunkards; the mountain air, the light diet, and the early hours being the best of the remedy. They were getting into a healthy state of mind without ever suspecting it.
Our grand junction, as Cary calls it, finished this; from the day Mrs.
G. arrived our reforms began. First, we had to change our hotel, and betake ourselves to one on the river-side, three times as dear, and not one-fourth as good.
The second story was fine enough for us before; now we have the whole ”premier,” taking two rooms more than we want, lest anybody should live on the same floor with us. Instead of the _table d'hte_, that was cheap and cheerful, we were to dine upstairs,--”a particular dinner,” as they call what is particularly bad, and costly besides. Then we have had to hire two lackeys, one of whom sits in an anteroom all day reading the newspaper, and only rises to make me a grand bow as I pa.s.s; which worries me so much that I usually go down by the back stairs to escape him.
We have two job coaches, for we are too many for one, and a boat hired by the week, with a considerable retinue of mountain ponies and donkeys, guides, goats, whey-sellers, and geological specimen-folk without end.
If Mrs. G. was only fas.h.i.+onable, we could n't be more than ruined; but she is learned and literary, and given to the ”ologies,” Tom, and that's what I fear will drive us clean mad. She has an eternal restlessness in her to be at something; one day, it's the date of a medal; the next, it is the family connections of a ”moss,” or the chemistry of a meteoric stone; and, shall I own to you, my dear friend, that I don't believe she either understands or cares one jot about them all? There 's a big herbarium bound in green, and a grand book of autographs in blue and gold, on the drawing-room table; there's a bit of ”gneiss,” a big beetle, and a fossil frog on the chimney-piece; but my name isn't Kenny Dodd if she has n't more sympathies with modern dandies than antediluvian monsters. That's my private opinion; and, of course, I mention it in confidence. You 'll say, ”What matter is that to you?”
and, true enough, it is not, as regards her; but what will become of us, if Mrs. D. takes a turn for entomology or comparative anatomy, and worse, maybe? She's just the kind of woman to do it. She'd learn the tight-rope if she thought it was fas.h.i.+onable, or, as the newspapers say, ”patronized by the aristocracy.” Now, Tom, you can fancy the unknown sea upon which we have embarked. For, however unadapted we may be to fas.h.i.+onable life, one thing is quite clear,--we never were made for the abstract sciences; and it strikes me forcibly that the great lesson of Continental life is that everybody can do everything. I am not going to say that it is not a pleasant and a very flattering theory, but is it quite safe, Tom? That's the question. The highest step I ever attained in chemistry was how to concoct a tumbler of punch; and my knowledge of botany does not go far beyond distinguis.h.i.+ng ”greens” from geraniums; and it's not at my time of life that I'm to drive myself crazy with hard names and cla.s.sifications; and if I know anything of Mrs. D., her intellectual faculties have attained all the vigor that nature meant for them many a year ago.
My own private opinion about these sciences is, they 're capital things for employing young people, and keeping them out of wickedness! The fellows that teach them, too, are musty, snuff-taking, prosy old dogs, with heavy shoes and greasy cravats,--the very reverse of your race of dancing and music masters, who are a pestilent crew! So that, for a man who has daughters abroad, my advice is--stick to the sciences.
Gray sandstone is safer than the polka, and there's not as dangerous an experiment in all chemistry as singing duets with some black-bearded blackguard from Naples or Palermo. Now mind, Tom, this counsel of mine applies to the education of the young; for when people come to the forties, you may rely upon it, if they set about learning anything, they 'll have the devil for a schoolmaster. What does all the geology mean?
Junketing, Tom,--nothing but junketing! Primitive rock is another name for picnic, and what they call quartz is a figurative expression for iced champagne. Just reflect for a moment, and see what it comes to.
You can enter a protest against family extravagances when they take the shape of b.a.l.l.s and soirees, but what are you to do against botanical excursions and antiquarian researches? It 's like writing yourself down Goth at once to oppose these. ”Oh, papa hates chemistry; he despises natural history,” that's the cry at once, and they hold me up to ridicule, just in the way the rascally Protestant newspapers did Dr.
Cullen for saying that he did n't believe the world was round. If the liberty of the subject be worth anything,--if the right for which the same Protestants are always prating, private judgment, be the great privilege they deem it,--why should n't Dr. Cullen have his own opinion about the shape of the earth? He can say, ”It suits _me_ to think I 'm walking erect on a flat surface, and not crawling along with my head down, like a fly on the ceiling! I 'm happier when I believe what does n't puzzle my understanding, and I don't want any more miracles than we have in the Church.” He may say that, and I'd like to know what harm does that do you or me? Does it endanger the Protestant succession or the State religion? Not a bit of it, Tom. The real fact is simply this: private judgment is a boon they mean to keep for themselves, and never share with their neighbors. So far as I have seen of life, there's no such tyrant as your Protestant, and for this reason: it's bad enough to force a man to believe something that he doesn't like, but it's ten times worse to make him disbelieve what he's well satisfied with; and that's exactly what they do. Even on the ground of common humanity it is indefensible. If my private judgment goes in favor of saints' toe-nails and martyrs' s.h.i.+n-bones, I have a right to my opinion, and you have no right to attack it. Besides, I won't be badgered into what may suit somebody else to think. My opinion is like my flannel waistcoat, that I'll take off or put on as the weather requires; and I think it very cruel if I must wear _mine_ simply because _you_ feel cold.
I get warm--I almost grow angry--when I think of these things; and I wonder within myself why our people don't expose them as they might.
Not that some are not doing the duty well and manfully, Tom. M'Hale is a glorious fellow; and for blackguarding a Prime Minister, for a real good effective slanging, it's hard to find his equal. He never embarra.s.ses himself with logic,--he wastes no time in arguing, but ”goes in” at once, and plants his blow between the eyes! That's what the English can't stand. They want discussion. They are always fis.h.i.+ng for evidence for this, and a proof of that; but come down on them with a strong torrent of foul abuse, and you sweep them away like mud in a mill-race.
That's where we always beat them in our controversial discussions, Tom; and we never failed so long as we relied on this superiority. It was like the bayonet in the hands of our infantry.
Is n't it strange how I get back to Ireland in spite of me? I 'm like that madman in the story that can't keep Charles the First out of his memorial? And, after all, why should I? Is there anything more natural than to think of my country, if I can't manage to live in it? And this reminds me to ask you about home matters. What was it you wrote at the end of your letter about Jones McCarthy? I can't make out the word, whether it is his ”death,” or his ”debts;” though, from my experience of the family, I surmise it to be the latter. If it's dead he is, I suppose we 'll come in for that blessed legacy that Mrs. D. has been talking about every day for the last twenty-five years, the history of which I have heard so often that I actually know nothing about it, except that it was the only bit of property possessed by my wife's relations they couldn't make away with. It was so strictly ”tied up,” as they call it in law, that n.o.body could ever get the use of it,--pretty much like the silver sixpence given to a schoolboy, with the express stipulation that he is never to change it.
I am rather curious to know what Mrs. D. will think of these ”wise provisions” of her ancestors, if she succeeds to the bequest. To tell you the plain truth, Tom, I don't know a greater misfortune for a man that has married a wife without money, than to discover at the end of some fifteen or twenty years that somebody has left her a few hundred pounds! It is not only that she conceives visions of unbounded extravagance, and raves about all manner of expense, but she begins to fancy herself an heiress that was thrown away, and imagines wonderful destinies she might have arrived at, if she had n't had the bad luck to meet you. For a real crab-apple of discord, I 'll back a few hundreds in the Three per Cents against all the family jars that ever were invented.
Save us then from this, if you can, Tom. There must surely be twenty ways to avoid the legacy; and so that Mrs. D. does n't hear of it, I 'd rather you 'd prove her illegitimate than allow her to succeed to this bequest I 'll not enlarge upon all I feel about this subject, hoping that by your skill and address we may never bear more of it; but I tell you, frankly, I 'd face the small-pox with a stouter heart than the news of succeeding to the M'Carthy inheritance.
There are many other matters I intended to write about, but I believe I must keep them for the next time; such as the plan for taking away the Church property, and the income-tax for Ireland; and that business of the Madiais, that I read of in the papers. So far as I have seen, Tom, the King of Tuscany--if that be his name--was right. There were plenty of books the Madiais might have read without breaking the laws. There are translations of all the rascally French novels of the day, from Georges Sand down to Paul de k.o.c.k; and if they wanted mischief, might n't these have satisfied them? But the truth is, Protestants are never easy without they are attacking the true Church, and if there were more of them sent to the galleys, the world would be all the quieter.
You amaze me about the Great Exhibition for this year in Dublin. Faith!
I remember when I used to think that the less we exhibited ourselves the better! I suppose times are changed. I think, if I could send Mrs. D.
over as a specimen of Continental plating on Irish manufacture, she 'd deserve a place, and maybe a prize.
Well, well! it's a queer world we live in. They 've just come to tell me that the man of the post-office has shut up an hour earlier, as he is engaged out to dine, so that I 'll keep this open till to-morrow's mail.
Wednesday Morning. I suspect that the mischief is done, Tom,--I mean about the legacy. Mrs. D. received a strange-looking, square-shaped, formally addressed epistle this morning, the contents of which, not being a demand for money, she did not communicate to me. She and Mary Anne both retired to peruse it in secret, and when they again appeared in the drawing-room, it was with an air of conscious pride and self-possession that smacked terribly of a bequest I own to you, the prospect alarms me; it may be that my fears take an exaggerated shape, but I can't shake off the impression that this is the hardest trial I had ever to go through.
I know her in most of her moods, Tom, and have got a kind of way of managing her in each of them,--not very successful, perhaps, but sufficiently so to get on with. I have seen her in straits about money; I have seen her in her jealous fits; I have seen her in her moments of family pride; and I have repeatedly seen her on what she calls ”her dying couch,”--an opportunity she always seizes to say the most disagreeable things she can think of, so that I often speculate what she 'd say if she was really going off: but all these convey no notion to me of how she 'd behave if she thought herself rich. As for our poverty, we never knew anything else; the jealousy I 'm getting used to; the family pride often gives me a hearty laugh when I 'm alone; and I am as hardened about death-bed scenes as if I was an undertaker. It's the prosperity I have n't strength for, Tom; and I feel it.
Maybe, after all, it's only false terror alarms me. I hope it may turn out so; and in this last wish I am sure of your hearty sympathy and good feeling.
Ever yours, most sincerely,
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