Volume I Part 34 (1/2)
”Give me up that inventory,--that bill of sale,” cried I, perfectly wild with pa.s.sion.
He only gave a grim smile, while, by a significant gesture, he showed that the paper in question was in his breeches-pocket For a second, Bob, I was so thoroughly beside myself with pa.s.sion, that I determined to regain possession of it by force. To this end I went to the door, and locked it; but by the time I returned to him, I found that he had thrown up the window and addressed some words to the people in the courtyard.
This brought me to my senses, so I counted over my twenty-seven Naps., placed the bill on the chimney-piece, unlocked the door, and told him to go,--an injunction which, I a.s.sure you, he obeyed with such alacrity that had I been disposed to a.s.sist his exit I could not have been in time to do it.
For both our sakes I 'll not recall the state of mind in which this scene left me. As to going an excursion with such a sum, or rather with what would have remained of it after paying waiters, porters, and such-like, it was too absurd to think of, so that I coolly put it in my pocket, walked over to ”the Rooms,” threw it on the green cloth of the gaming-table--and--lost it! There ends the episode of my last fortnight's existence,--as dreary and disreputable a one as need be. As to how I have pa.s.sed the last four days I 'm not quite so clear! I have walked some twenty-five or thirty miles in each, dining at little wayside inns, and returning late at night to Baden.
Pa.s.sing through picturesque glens, and along mountain ridges of boldest outline, I have marked little. I remember still less. Still the play-fever is abating. I can sleep without dreaming of the croupier's chant, and I awake without starting at any imaginary loss! I feel as though great bodily exertion and fatigue would ultimately antagonize the excessive tension of nerves too long and too painfully on the stretch, and I am steadily pursuing this system for a cure.
When I come home--after midnight--I add some pages to this long epistle, which I sometimes doubt if I shall ever have courage to send you! for there is this poignant misery about one's play misfortunes, you never can expect a friend's sympathy, no matter how severe your sufferings be.
The losses at play are thoroughly selfish ills; they appeal to nothing for consolation!
You will have remarked how I have avoided all mention of the family in this epistle. The truth is, I scarcely ever see my mother or Mary Anne.
Caroline occasionally comes to me before I 'm up of a morning; but it is to sorrow over domestic griefs of one kind or other. My father is still away, and, strangely too, we do not hear from him; and, in fact, we are a most ill-ordered, broken-up household, each going his own road, and that being--in almost every case, I fear--a bad one.
This recital--if it be ever destined to come to hand--may possibly tend to reconcile you to home life, and the want of those advantages which you are so thoroughly convinced pertain to foreign travel. I know that in my present mood I am very far from being an impartial witness, and I am also aware that I am open to the reproach of not having cultivated those arts which give to Continental residence its peculiar value; but let me tell you, Bob, the ignorance with which I left home--the utter neglect of education in youth--left me unable to derive profit from what lay so seemingly accessible. You do not plate over cast-iron, and the thin lacquer of gold or silver would never even hide the base metal beneath. I haven't courage to go over and see Morris; and here I live, perfectly isolated and companionless.
Tiverton writes me word that he 'll be back in a few days. He went over to speak on the Jew Bill. He says that his liberal speech on that measure ”stood to him” very handsomely in Lombard Street He has forwarded the report of his oration, but I have n't read it. His chief argument in favor of admitting them into Parliament is, ”There are so few of them.” It's very like the lady's plea,--of the child being a little one. However, I don't think it signifies much one way or t'other; but it seems strange to exclude men from legislation who claim for their ancestor the first Lawgiver.
I shall be all eagerness to hear what success you have had for the scholars.h.i.+p. You are a happy fellow to have heart and energy for an honorable ambition; and that you may have ”luck”--for that is requisite, too--is the sincere wish of your attached friend,
James Dodd.
LETTER XXIX. CAROLINE DODD TO MISS c.o.x AT MISS MINCING'S ACADEMY, BLACK ROCK, IRELAND
The Moorg Thal.
My dear Miss c.o.x,--How happy would you be if only seated in the spot where I now write these lines! I am at an open window, the sill of which is a great rock, all covered with red-brown moss, and beneath, again, at some thirty feet lower, runs the clear stream of the Moorg River.
Two gigantic mountains, clad in pine forests to the summits, enclose the valley, the view of which, however, extends to full two miles, showing little peeps of farmhouses and mills along the river's bank, and high upon a great bold crag, the ducal castle of Eberstein. The day is hot but not sultry, for a light summer breeze is playing over the water, and, high up, the clouds move slowly on, now casting broad ma.s.ses of mellow shadow over the deep-tinted forest.
The stream here falls over some ma.s.ses of rock with a pleasant gus.h.i.+ng music that harmonizes well with the songs of the peasant girls, who are what we should in Ireland call ”beetling” their clothes in the water.
On the opposite bank some mowers are seated at their dinner, under the shadow of a leafy horsechestnut-tree, and, far away in the distance, a wagon of the newly cut hay is traversing the river; the horses stop to drink, and the merry children are screaming their laughter from the top of the load. I hear them even here.
That you may learn where I am, and how I have come hither, let me tell you that I am on a visit with Mrs. Morris, the mother of Captain M., at a little cottage they have taken for the season, about twelve miles from Baden, in a valley called the Moorg Thal. If its situation be the very perfection of picturesque choice, it contains within quite enough of accommodation for those who occupy it. The furniture, too, most simple though it be, is of that nice old walnut-wood, so bright and mellow-looking; and our little drawing-room is even handsomely ornamented by a richly carved cabinet and a centre-table, the support of which is a grotesque dwarf with four heads. Then we have a piano, a reasonably well-filled book-shelf, and a painter's easel, to which I turn at intervals, as I write, to give a pa.s.sing touch of light to those trees now waving in the summer's wind, and which I destine, when finished, for my dear, dear governess. All the externals of rural life in Germany are highly picturesque,--I might almost call them poetic.
The cottages, the costume, the little phrases in use amongst the people, their devotional offices, and, above all, their music, make up an ideal of country life such as I scarcely conceived possible to exist.
There is, too, I am told,--for my imperfect knowledge of the language does not permit me to state the fact of myself,--an amount of information amongst the people seldom found in a similar cla.s.s throughout the rest of Europe. I do not mean the peasantry here, but the dwellers in the small villages,--those, for instance, who follow handicrafts and small trades, and who are usually great readers and very acute thinkers. Denied almost entirely all access to that daily literature of newspapers on which our people feed, they fall back upon a very different cla.s.s of writing, and are conversant with the works of their great prose and verse writers. Their thoughts are thus idealized to a degree; they themselves become a.s.suredly less work-a-day and practical, but their hopes, their aspirations, and their ambitions take a higher flight than we could ever think possible from such humble resting-places. Mrs. Morris, who knew Germany many years ago, tells me that those fatal years of '48 and '49 have done them great injury.
Suddenly called upon to act, in events and contingencies of which they derived all their knowledge from some parallels in remote history, they rushed into the excesses of a medival period, as the natural consequences of the position; and all the atrocities of bygone centuries were re-enacted by a people who are unquestionably the most docile and law-obeying of the whole Continent. They are now calming down again, and there is every reason to think that, if, unshaken by troubles from without or within, Germany will again be the happy land it used to be.
Forgive me, my dear Miss c.o.x, if I grow tiresome to you, by a theme which now fills all my thoughts, and occupies so much of our daily talking. Captain M. has gone to England on some important matter of business, and the old lady is my only companion.
Oh, how you would like her! and how capable you would be of appreciating traits and features of her mind, of which I, in my insufficiency, can but dimly catch the meaning. She is within a year or two of eighty, and yet with a freshness of heart and a brightness of intellect that would shame one of _my_ age.
The mellow gayety of heart that, surviving all the trials of life, lives on to remote age, hopeful in the midst of disappointments, trusting even when betrayed, is the most captivating trait that can adorn our poor nature. The spirit that can extract its pleasant memories from the past, forgetting all their bitterness, is truly a happy one. This she seems to do in all grat.i.tude for what blessings remain to her, after a life not devoid of misfortune. She is devotedly attached to her son, who, in return, adores her. Probably no picture of domestic affection is more touching than that subsisting between a man already past youth and his aged and widowed mother,--the little tender attentions, the watchful kindnesses on both sides, those graceful concessions which each knows how and when to make of their own comfort, and, above all, that blending of tastes by which, at last, each learns to adopt some of the other's likings, and, even in prejudices, to become more companionable.
To me, the happiness of my present life is greater than I can describe to you. The peaceful quietude of an existence on which no shocks obtrude is unspeakably delightful. If the weather forbid us to venture abroad, which on fine days we do for hours together, our home resources are numerous. The little cares of a household, amusing as they are, a.s.sociated with so many little peculiar traits of nationality, help the morning to pa.s.s; after which I draw, or write, or play, or read aloud, mostly German, to the old lady. Whatever my occupation, be it at the easel, the desk, or the pianoforte, her criticisms are always good and just; for, strange to say, even on subjects of which she professes to know nothing, there is an instinctive appreciation of the right; and this would seem to result from an intense study, and deep love of nature. She herself was the first to show me that this was a charm which the Bible possessed in the most remarkable manner, and, unlike other literature, gave it the most uncommon value in the eyes of the humblest cla.s.ses, who are from the very accidents of fortune the deep students of nature. The language whose ill.u.s.trations are taken from objects and incidents that every peasant can confirm, has a direct appeal to a lowly heart; and there is a species of flattery to his intelligence in the fact that inspiration could not typify more strongly its conception than by a.n.a.logies open to the lowliest son of labor.
After this, she places Shakspeare, whose actual knowledge is miraculous, and whose immortality is based upon that very fact, since the true will be true to all ages and people; and, however men's minds may differ about the forms of expression, the fact will remain imperishable.