Volume Ii Part 7 (2/2)
You may rely upon one thing, Tom, and it is this: that no government ever persisted in a policy of oppression towards a country that was advancing on the road of prosperity. It is to the disaffected, dispirited, bankrupt people--idle and cantankerous, wasting their resources, and squandering their means of wealth--that cabinets play the bully. They grind them the way a cruel colonel flogs a condemned regiment. Let industry and its consequences flow in; let the laborer be well fed, and housed, and clothed; and the spirit of independence in him will be a far stronger and more dangerous element to deal with than the momentary burst of pa.s.sion that comes from a fevered heart in a famished frame! Ask a Cabinet Minister if he wouldn't be more frightened by a deputation from the City, than if the telegraph told him a Chartist mob was moving on London? We live in an age of a very peculiar kind, and where real power and real strength are more respected than ever they were before.
Don't you think I have given you a dose of politics? Well, happily for you, I must desist now, for Cary has come to order me off to bed. It is only two p.m., but the siesta is now one of my habits, and so pleasant a one that I intend to keep it when I get well again.
Nine o'clock, Evening.
Here I am again at my desk for you, though Cary has only given me leave to devote half an hour to your edification.
What a good girl it is,--so watchful in all her attention, and with that kind of devotion that shows that her whole heart is engaged in what she is doing! The doctor may fight the malady, Tom, but, take my word for it, it is the nurse that saves the patient. If ever I raised my eyelids, there she was beside me! I could n't make a sign that I was thirsty till she had the drink to my lips. She had, too, that noiseless, quiet way with her, so soothing to a sick man; and, above all, she never bothered with questions, but learned to guess what I wanted, and sat patiently watching at her post.
It is a strange confession to make, but the very best thing I know of this foreign tour of ours is that it has not spoiled that girl; she has contracted no taste for extra finery in dress, nor extra liberty in morals; her good sense is not overlaid by the pretentious tone of those mock n.o.bles that run about calling each other count and marquis, and fancying they are the great world. There she is, as warmhearted, as natural, and as simple--in all that makes the real excellence of simplicity--as when she left home. And now, with all this, I 'd wager a crown that nineteen young fellows out of twenty would prefer Mary Anne to her. She is, to be sure, a fine, showy girl, and has taken to a stylish line of character so naturally that she never abandons it.
I a.s.sure you, Tom, the way she used to come in of a morning to ask me how I was, and how I pa.s.sed the night; her graceful stoop to kiss me; her tender little caressing twaddle, as if I was a small child to be bribed into black-bottle by sugar-candy,--were as good as a play. The little extracts, too, that she made from the newspapers to amuse me were all from that interesting column called fas.h.i.+onable intelligence, and the movements in fas.h.i.+onable life, as if it amused me to hear who Lady Jemima married, and who gave away the bride. Cary knew better what I cared for, and told me about the harvest and the crops, and the state of the potatoes, with now and then a spice of the foreign news, whenever there was anything remarkable. To all appearance, we are not far from a war; but where it 's to be, and with whom, is hard to say. There 's no doubt but fighting is a costly amus.e.m.e.nt; and I believe no country pays so heavily for her fun in that shape as England; but, nevertheless, there is nothing would so much tend to revive her drooping and declining influence on the Continent as a little brush at sea. She is, I take it, as good as certain to be victorious; and the very fervor of the enthusiasm success would evoke in England would go far to disabuse the foreigner of his notion that we are only eager about printing calicoes, and sharpening Sheffield ware. Believe me, it is vital to us to eradicate this fallacy; and until the world sees a British fleet reeling up the Downs with some half-dozen dismasted line-of-battle s.h.i.+ps in their wake, they 'll not be convinced of what you and I know well,--that we are just the same people that fought the Nile and Trafalgar. Those Industrial Exhibitions, I think, brought out a great deal of trashy sentimentality about universal brotherhood, peace, and the rest of it. I suppose the Crystal Palace rage was a kind of allegory to show that they who live in gla.s.s houses shouldn't throw stones; but our s.h.i.+ps, Tom,--our s.h.i.+ps, as the song says, are ”hearts of oak”! Here's Cary again, and with a confounded cupful of something green at top and muddy below! Apothecaries are filthy distillers all the world over, and one never knows the real blessing of health till one has escaped from their beastly brewings. Good-night.
Sat.u.r.day Morning.
A regular Italian morning, Tom, and such a view! The mists are swooping down the Alps, and showing cliffs and crags in every tint of sunlit verdure. The lake is blue as a dark turquoise, reflecting the banks and their hundred villas in the calm water. The odor of the orange-flower and the oleander load the air, and, except my vagabonds under the window, there is not an element of the picture devoid of interest and beauty. There they are as usual; one of them has his arm in a b.l.o.o.d.y rag, I perceive, the consequence of a row last night,--at least, Paddy Byrne saw a fellow wiping his knife and was.h.i.+ng his bands in the lake--very suspicious circ.u.mstances--just as he was going to bed.
I have been hearing all about our neighbors,--at least, Cary has been interrogating the gardener, and ”reporting progress” to me as well as she could make him out. This Lake of Como seems the paradise of _ci-devant_ theatrical folk; all the prima donnas who have ama.s.sed millions, and all the dancers that have pirouetted into great wealth, appear to have fixed their ambition on retiring to this spot. Of a truth, it is the very ant.i.thesis to a stage existence. The silent and almost solemn grandeur of the scene, the ma.s.sive Alps, the deep dense woods, the calm unbroken stillness, are strong contrasts to the crash and tumult, the unreality and uproar of a theatre. I wonder, do they enjoy the change? I am curious to know if they yearn for the blaze of the dress-circle and the waving pit? Do they long at heart for the stormy crash of the orchestra and the maddening torrent of applause; and does the actual world of real flowers and trees and terraces and fountains seem in their eyes a poor counterfeit of the dramatic one?
It would not be unnatural if it were so. There is the same narrowing tendency in every professional career. The doctor, the lawyer, the priest, the soldier,--ay, and even your Parliament man, if he be an old member, has got to take a House of Commons standard for everything and everybody. It is only your true idler, your genuine good-for-nothing vagabond, that ever takes wide or liberal views of life; one like myself, in short, whose prejudices have not been fostered by any kind of education, and who, whatever he knows of mankind, is sure to be his own.
They 've carried away my ink-bottle, to write acknowledgments and apologies for certain invitations the womenkind have received to go and see fireworks somewhere on the lake; for these exhibitions seem to be a pa.s.sion with Italians! I wish they were fonder of burning powder to more purpose! I 'm to dine below to-day, so it is likely that I 'll not be able to add anything to this before to-morrow, when I mean to despatch it A neighbor, I hear, has sent us a fine trout; and another has forwarded a magnificent present of fruit and vegetables,--very graceful civilities these to a stranger, and worthy of record and remembrance.
Lord George tells me that these Lombard lords are fine fellows,--that is, they keep splendid houses and capital horses, have first-rate cooks, and London-built carriages,--and, as he adds, will bet you what you like at piquet or _cart_. Egad, such qualities have great success in the world, despite all that moralists may say of them!
The ink has come back, but it is _I_ am dry now! The fact is, Tom, that very little exertion goes far with a man in this climate! It is scarcely noon, but the sultry heat is most oppressive; and I half agree with my friends under the window, that the dorsal att.i.tude is the true one for Italy. In any other country you want to be up and doing: there are snipe or woodc.o.c.ks to be shot, a salmon to kill, or a fox to hunt; you have to look at the potatoes or the poorhouse; there 's a row, or a road session, or something or other to employ you; but here, it's a snug spot in the shade you look for,--six feet of even ground under a tree; and with that the hours go glibly over, in a manner that is quite miraculous.
It ought to be the best place under the sun for men of small fortune.
The climate alone is an immense economy in furs and firing; and there is scarcely a luxury that is not, somehow or other, the growth of the soil: on this head--the expense I mean--I can tell you nothing, for, of course, I have not served on any committee of the estimates since my illness; but I intend to audit the accounts to-morrow, and then you shall hear all. Tiverton, I understand, has taken the management of everything; and Mrs. D. and Mary Anne tell me, so excellent is his system, that a rebellion has broken out below stairs, and three of our household have resigned, carrying away various articles of wardrobe, and other property, as an indemnity, doubtless, for the treatment they had met with. I half suspect that any economy in dinners is more than compensated for in broken crockery; for every time that a fellow is scolded in the drawing-room, there is sure to be a smash in the plate department immediately afterwards, showing that the national custom of the ”vendetta” can be carried into the ”willow pattern.” This is one of my window observations. I wish there were no worse ones to record.
”Not a line, not another word, till you take your broth, papa,” says my kind nurse; and as after my broth I take my sleep, I 'll just take leave of you for to-day. I wish I may remember even half of what I wanted to say to you tomorrow, but I have a strong moral conviction that I shall not It is not that the oblivion will be any loss to you, Tom; but when I think of it, after the letter is gone, I 'm fit to be tied with impatience. Depend upon it, a condition of hopeless repining for the past is a more terrible torture than all that the most glowing imagination of coming evil could ever compa.s.s or conceive.
Sunday Afternoon.
I told you yesterday I had not much faith in my memory retaining even a t.i.the of what I wished to say to you. The case is far worse than that,--I can really recollect nothing. I know that I had questions to ask, doubts to resolve, and directions to give, but they are all so commingled and blended together in my distracted brain that I can make nothing out of the disorder. The fact is, Tom, the fellow has bled me too far, and it is not at my time of life--58 in the shade, by old Time's thermometer--that one rallies quickly out of the hands of the doctor.
I thought myself well enough this morning to look over my accounts; indeed, I felt certain that the inquiry could not be prudently delayed, so I sent for Mary Anne after breakfast, and proceeded in state to a grand audit. I have already informed you that all the material of life here is the very cheapest,--meat about fourpence a pound; bread and b.u.t.ter and milk and vegetables still more reasonable; wine, such as it is, twopence a bottle; fruit for half nothing. It was not, therefore, any inordinate expectation on my part that we should be economizing in rare style, and making up for past extravagance by real retrenchment.
I actually looked forward to the day of reckoning as a kind of holiday from all care, and for once in my life revel in the satisfaction of having done a prudent thing.
Conceive my misery and disappointment--I was too weak for rage--to find that our daily expenses here, with a most moderate household, and no company, amounted to a fraction over five pounds English a day. The broad fact so overwhelmed me that it was only with camphor-julep and ether that I got over it, and could proceed to details. Proceed to details, do I say! Much good did it do me! for what between a new coinage, new weights and measures, and a new language, I got soon into a confusion and embarra.s.sment that would have been too much for my brain in its best days. Now and then I began to hope that I had grappled with a fact, even a small one; but, alas! it was only a delusion, for though the prices were strictly as I told you, there was no means of even approximating to the quant.i.ties ordered in. On a rough calculation, however, it appears that _my_ mutton broth took half a sheep _per diem_. The family consumed about two cows a week in beef; besides hares, pheasants, bams, and capons at will. The servants--with a fourth of the wine set down to me--could never have been sober an hour; while our vegetable and fruit supply would have rivalled Covent Garden Market.
”Do you understand this, Mary Anne?” said I.
”No, papa,” said she.
”Does your mother?” said I.
”No, papa.”
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