Volume Ii Part 18 (2/2)
One might have supposed, from our failures in these attempts, that we should have learned at least our own unfitness for success. The very mortifications we have suffered might have taught us that all the enjoyment we could ever hope to reap could not repay the price of a single defeat. Yet here we are, just as eager, just as short-sighted, just as infatuated as ever, after a world that will have ”none of us,” and steadily bent on storming a position in society that, if won to-morrow, we could not retain.
I suppose that our reverses in this wise must have attained some notoriety, and I am even prepared to hear that the Dodd family have made themselves unhappily conspicuous by their unfortunate attempt at greatness; but I own, dearest friend, that I am not able to contemplate with the same philosophical submission the loss of good men's esteem and respect, to which these failures must expose US--an instance of which, I tremble to think, has already occurred to us.
You have often heard me speak of Mrs. Morris, and of the kindness with which she treated me during a visit at her house. She was at that time in what many would have called very narrow circ.u.mstances, but which by consummate care and good management sufficed to maintain a condition in every way suitable to a gentlewoman. She has since--or rather her son has--succeeded to a very large fortune and a t.i.tle. They were at Genoa when we arrived there,--at the same hotel,--and yet never either called on or noticed us! It is perfectly needless for me to say that I know, and know thoroughly, that no change in _their_ position could have produced any alteration in their manner towards us. If ever there were people totally removed from such vulgarity,--utterly incapable of even conceiving it,--it is the Morrises. They were proud in their humble fortune,--that is, they possessed a dignified self-esteem, that would have rejected the patronage of wealthy pretension, but willingly accepted the friends.h.i.+p of very lowly worth; and I can well believe that prosperity will only serve to widen the sphere of their sympathies, and make them as generous in action as they were once so in thought. That their behavior to _us_ depends on anything in themselves, I therefore completely reject,--this I know and feel to be an impossibility. What a sad alternative is then left me, when I own that they have more than sufficient cause to shun our acquaintance and avoid our intimacy!
The loss of such a friend as Captain Morris might have been to James is almost irreparable; and from the interest he once took in him, it is clear he felt well disposed for such a part; and I am thoroughly convinced that even papa himself, with all his anti-English prejudices, has only to come into close contact with the really n.o.ble traits of the English character, to acknowledge their excellence and their worth. I am very far from undervaluing the great charm of manner which comes under the category of what is called ”aimable.” I recognize all its fascination, and I even own to an exaggerated enjoyment of its display; but shall I confess that I believe that it is this very habit of simulation that detracts from the truthful character of a people, and that English bluntness is--so to say--the complement of English honesty.
That they push the characteristic too far, and that they frequently throw a chill over social intercourse, which under more genial influences had been everything that was agreeable, I am free to admit; but, with all these deficiencies, the national character is incomparably above that of any other country I have any knowledge of. It will be scarcely complimentary if I add, after all this, that we Irish are certainly more popular abroad than our Saxon relatives. We are more compliant with foreign usages, less rigid in maintaining our own habits, more conciliating in a thousand ways; and both our tongues and our temperaments more easily catch a new language and a new tone of society.
Is it not fortunate for you that I am interrupted in these gossipings by the order to march? Mary Anne has come to tell me that we are to start in half an hour; and so, adieu till we meet at Spezia.
Spezia, Croce di Malta.
The little sketch that I send with this will give you some very faint notion of this beautiful gulf, with which I have as yet seen nothing to compare. This is indeed Italy. Sea, sky, foliage, balmy air, the soft influences of an atmosphere perfumed with a thousand odors,--all breathe of the glorious land.
The Garden--a little promenade for the townspeople, that stretches along the beach--is one blaze of deep crimson flowers,--the blossom of the San Giuseppe,--I know not the botanical name. The blue sea--and such a blue!--mirrors every cliff and crag and castellated height with the most minute distinctness. Tall lateen-sailed boats glide swiftly to and fro; and lazy oxen of gigantic size drag rustling wagons of loaded vines along, the ruddy juice staining the rich earth as they pa.s.s.
Como was beautiful; but there was--so to say--a kind of trim coquetry in its beauty that did not please me. The villas, the gardens, the terraced walks, the pillared temples, seemed all the creations of a landscape-gardening spirit that eagerly profited by every accidental advantage of ground, and every casual excellence of situation. Now, here there is none of this. All that man has done here had been even better left undone. It is in the jutting promontories of rock-crowned olives,--the landlocked, silent bays, darkened by woody sh.o.r.es,--the wild, profuse vegetation, where the myrtle, the cactus, and the arbutus blend with the vine, the orange, and the fig,--the sea itself, heaving as if oppressed with perfumed languor,--and the tall Apennines, snow-capped, in the distance, but whiter still in the cliffs of pure Carrara marble,--it is in these that Spezia maintains its glorious superiority, and in these it is indeed unequalled.
It will sound, doubtless, like a very ungenerous speech, when I say that I rejoice that this spot is so little visited--so little frequented--by those hordes of stray and straggling English who lounge about the Continent. I do not say this in any invidious spirit, but simply in the pleasure that I feel in the quiet and seclusion of a place which, should it become by any fatality ”the fas.h.i.+on” will inevitably degenerate by all the vulgarities of the change. At present the Riviera--as the coast-line from Genoa to Pisa is called--is little travelled. The steamers pa.s.sing to Leghorn by the cord of the arch, take away nearly all the tourists, so that Spezia, even as a bathing-place, is little resorted to by strangers. There are none, not one, of the ordinary signs of the watering-place about it. Neither donkeys to hire, nor subscription concerts; not a pony phaeton, a pianist, nor any species of human phenomenon to torment you; and the music of the town band is, I rejoice to say, so execrably bad that even a crowd of twenty cannot be mustered for an audience.
Spezia is, therefore, _au naturel_,--and long may it be so! Distant be the day when frescoed buildings shall rise around, to seduce from its tranquil scenery the peaceful lover of nature, and make of him the hot-cheeked gambler or the broken debauchee. I sincerely, hopefully trust this is not to be, at least in our time.
We made an excursion this morning by boat to Lerici, to see poor Sh.e.l.ley's house, the same that Byron lived in when here. It stands in the bight of a little bay of its own, and close to the sea; so close, indeed, that the waves were plas.h.i.+ng and frothing beneath the arched colonnade on which it is built. It is now in an almost ruinous condition, and the damp, discolored walls and crumbling plaster bespeak neglect and decay.
The view from the terrace is glorious; the gulf in its entire extent is before you, and the island of Palmaria stands out boldly, with the tall headlands of Porto Venere, forming the breakwater against the sea. It was here Sh.e.l.ley loved to sit; here, of a summer's night, he often sat till morning, watching the tracts of hill and mountain wax fainter and fainter, till they grew into brightness again with coming day; and it was not far from this, on the low beach of Via Reggio, that he was lost!
The old fisherman who showed us the house had known him well, and spoke of his habits as one might have described those of some wayward child.
The large and l.u.s.trous eyes, the long waving hair, the uncertain step, the look half timid, half daring, had made an impression so strong, that even after long years he could recall and tell of them.
It came on to blow a ”Levanter” as we returned, and the sea got up with a rapidity almost miraculous. From a state of calm and tranquil repose, it suddenly became storm-lashed and tempestuous; nor was it without difficulty we accomplished a landing at Spezia. To-morrow we are to visit Porto Venere,--the scene which it is supposed suggested to Virgil his description of the Cave in which neas meets with Dido; and the following day we go to Carrara to see the marble quarries and the artists' studios. In fact, we are ”handbooking” this part of our tour in the most orthodox fas.h.i.+on; and from the tame, half-effaced impressions objects suggest, of which you come primed with previous description, I can almost fancy that reading ”John Murray” at your fireside at home might compensate for the fatigue and cost of a journey. It would be worse than ungrateful to deny the aid one derives from guide-books; but there is unquestionably this disadvantage in them, that they limit your faculty of admiration or disapproval. They set down rules for your liking and disliking, and far from contributing to form and educate your taste, they cramp its development by subst.i.tuting criticism for instinct.
As I hope to write to you again from Florence, I 'll not prolong this too tiresome epistle, but, with my most affectionate greetings to all my old schoolfellows, ask my dear Miss c.o.x to believe me her ever attached and devoted
Caroline Dodd.
The Morrises arrived here last night and went on this morning, without any notice of us. They must have seen our names in the book when writing their own. Is not this more than strange? Mamma and Mary Anne seemed provoked when I spoke of it, so that I have not again alluded to the subject. I wish from my heart I could ask how _you_ interpret their coldness.
LETTER XXIV. MARY ANNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN.
Lucca, Pagnini's Hotel.
Dearest Kitty,--This must be the very shortest of letters, for we are on the wing, and shall be for some days to come. Very few words, however, will suffice to tell you that we have at length persuaded papa to come on to Florence,--for the winter, of course. Rome will follow,--then Naples,--_e poi?_--who knows! I think he must have received some very agreeable tidings from your uncle Purcell, for he has been in better spirits than I have seen him latterly, and shows something like a return to his old vein of pleasantry. Not but I must own that it is what the French would call, very often, a _mauvaise plaisanterie_ in its exercise, his great amus.e.m.e.nt being to decry and disparage the people of the Continent. He seems quite to forget that in every country the traveller is, and must be, a mark for knavery and cheating. His newness to the land, his ignorance, in almost all cases, of the language, his occasional mistakes, all point him out as a proper subject for imposition; and if the English come to compare notes with any Continental country, I'm not so sure we should have much to plume ourselves upon, as regards our treatment of strangers.
For our social misadventures abroad, it must be confessed that we are mainly most to blame ourselves. All the counterfeits of rank, station, and position are so much better done by foreigners than by our people, that we naturally are more easily imposed on. Now in England, for instance, it would be easier to be a d.u.c.h.ess than to imitate one successfully. All the attributes that go to make up such a station abroad, might be a.s.sumed by any adventurer of little means and less capacity. We forget--or, more properly speaking, we do not know--this, when we come first on the Continent; hence the mistakes we fall into, and the disasters that a.s.sail us.
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