Volume Ii Part 24 (1/2)
As for mamma, she flew out in a violent pa.s.sion, called Lord Darewood some very hard names, and did not spare his emissary; fortunately, her feelings so far overcame her that she became totally unintelligible, and was carried away to her room in hysterics. As I was obliged to follow her, I was unable to hear more. But to what end should I desire it? Is not this last disappointment more than enough to discourage all hope and trustfulness forever? Shall my heart ever open again to a sense of confidence in any?
When I sat down to write, I had firmly resolved not to reveal this disgraceful event to you; but somehow, Kitty, in the overflowing of a heart that has no recesses against you, it has come forth, and I leave it so.
James came to my room later on, and told me such dreadful stories--he had heard them from Morris--of Lord G. that I really felt my brain turning as I listened to him; that the separation from his wife was all a pretence,--part of a plot arranged between them; that she, under the semblance of desertion, attracted to her the compa.s.sion--in some cases the affection--of young men of fortune, from whom her husband exacted the most enormous sums; that James himself had been marked out for a victim in this way; in fact, Kitty, I cannot go on: a web of such infamy was exposed as I firmly believed, till then, impossible to exist, and a degree of baseness laid bare that, for the sake of human nature, I trust has not its parallel.
I can write no more. Tears of shame as well as sorrow are blotting my paper, and in my self-abas.e.m.e.nt I feel how changed I must have become, when, in reflecting over such disgrace as this, I have a single thought but of contempt for one so lost and dishonored.
Yours in the depth of affliction,
Mary Anne Dodd.
LETTER x.x.x. KENNY JAMES DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., OF THE GRANGE, BRUFF
Florence.
My dear Tom,--I have had a busy week of it, and even now I scarcely perceive that the day is come when I can rest and repose myself. The pleasure-life of this same capital is a very exhausting process, and to do the thing well, a man's const.i.tution ought to be in as healthy a condition as his cash account! Now, Tom, it is an unhappy fact, that I am a very ”low letter” in both person and pocket, and I should be sorely puzzled to say whether I find it harder to dance or to pay for the music!
Don't fancy that I 'm grumbling, now; not a bit of it, old fellow; I have had my day, and as pleasant a one as most men. And if a man starts in life with a strong fund of genial liking for his fellows, enjoying society less for its display than for its own resources in developing the bright side of human nature, take my word for it, he 'll carry on with him, as he goes, memories and recollections enough to make his road agreeable, and, what is far better, to render himself companionable to others.
You tell me you want to hear ”all about Florence,”--a modest request, truly! Why, man, I might fill a volume with my own short experiences, and afterwards find that the whole could be condensed into a foot-note for the bottom of a page. In the first place, there are at least half a dozen distinct aspects in this place, which are almost as many cities.
There is the Florence of Art,--of pictures, statues, churches, frescos, a town of unbounded treasures in objects of high interest. There are galleries, where a whole life might be pa.s.sed in cultivating the eye, refining the taste, and elevating the imagination. There is the Florence of Historical a.s.sociation, with its palaces recalling the feudal age, and its castellated strongholds, telling of the stormy times before the ”Medici.” There is not a street, there is scarcely a house, whose name does not awaken some stirring event, and bring you back to the period when men were as great in crime as in genius. Here an inscription tells you Benvenuto Cellini lived and labored; yonder was the window of his studio; there the narrow street through which he walked at nightfall, his hand upon his rapier, and his left arm well enveloped in his mantle; there the stone where Dante used to sit; there the villa Boccaccio inhabited; there the lone tower where Galileo watched; there the house, unchanged in everything, of the greatest of them all, Michael Angelo himself. The pen sketches of his glorious conceptions adorn the walls, the half-finished models of his immortal works are on the brackets. That splendid palace on the sunny Arno was Alfieri's. Go where you will, in fact, a gorgeous story of the past reveals itself before you, and you stand before the great triumphs of human genius, with the spirit of the authors around and about you.
There is also Florence the Beautiful and the Picturesque; Florence the City of Fas.h.i.+on and Splendor; and, saddest of all, Florence garrisoned by the stranger, and held in subjection by the Austrian!
I entertain no bigoted animosity to the German, Tom; on the contrary, I like him; I like his manly simplicity of character, his thorough good faith, his unswerving loyalty; but I own to you, his figure is out of keeping with the picture here,--the very tones of his harsh gutturals grate painfully on the ears attuned to softer sounds. It is pretty nearly a hopeless quarrel when a Sovereign has recourse to a foreign intervention between himself and his subjects; as in private life, there is no reconciliation when you have once called Doctors' Commons to your councils. You may get damages; you 'll never have tranquillity. You 'll say, perhaps, the thing was inevitable, and could n't be helped. Nothing of the kind. Coercing the Tuscans by Austrian bayonets was like herding a flock of sheep with bull-dogs. I never saw a people who so little require the use of strong measures; the difficulty of ruling them lies not in their spirit of resistance, but in its very opposite,--a plastic facility of temper that gives way to every pressure. Just like a horse with an over-fine mouth, you never can have him in hand, and never know that he has stumbled till he is down.
It was the duty of our Government to have prevented this occupation, or at least to have set some limits to its amount and duration. We did neither, and our influence has grievously suffered iu consequence.
Probably at no recent period of history was the name of England so little respected in the entire peninsula as at present. And now, if I don't take care, I 'll really involve myself in a grumbling revery, so here goes to leave the subject at once.
These Italians, Tom, are very like the Irish. There is the same blending of mirth and melancholy in the national temperament, the same imaginative cast of thought, the same hopefulness, and the same indolence. In justice to our own people, I must say that they are the better of the two. Paddy has strong attachments, and is unquestionably courageous; neither of these qualities are conspicuous here. It would be ungenerous and unjust to p.r.o.nounce upon the _naturel_ of a people who for centuries have been subjected to every species of misrule, whose moral training has been also either neglected or corrupted, and whose only lessons have been those of craft and deception. It would be worse than rash to a.s.sume that a people so treated were unfitted for a freedom they never enjoyed, or un suited to a liberty they never even heard of.
Still, I may be permitted to doubt that Const.i.tutional Government will ever find its home in the hearts of a Southern nation. The family, Tom,--the fireside, the domestic habits of a Northern people, are the normal schools for self-government. It is in the reciprocities of a household men learn to apportion their share of the burdens of life, and to work for the common weal. The fellow who with a handful of chestnuts can provision himself for a whole day, and who can pa.s.s the night under the shade of a fig-tree, acknowledges no such responsibilities.
All-sufficing to himself, he recognizes no claims upon him for exertion in behalf of others; and as to the duties of citizens.h.i.+p, he would repudiate them as an intolerable burden. Take ray word for it, Parliamentary Inst.i.tutions will only flourish where you have coal-fires and carpets, and Elective Governments have a close affinity to easy-chairs and hearth-rugs!
You are curious to learn ”how far familiarity with works of high art may have contributed to influence the national character of Italy.” I don't like to dogmatize on such a subject, but so far as my own narrow experience goes, I am far from attributing any high degree of culture to this source. I even doubt whether objects of beauty suggest a high degree of enjoyment, except to intellects already cultivated. I suspect that your men of Glasgow or Manchester, who never saw anything more artistic than a power-loom and a spinning-jenny, would stand favorable comparison with him who daily pa.s.ses beside the ”Dying Gladiator” or the Farnese Hercules.
Of course I do not extend this opinion to the educated cla.s.ses, amongst whom there is a very high range of acquirement and cultivation. They bring, moreover, to the knowledge of any subject a peculiar subtlety of perception, a certain Machiavellian ingenuity, such as I have never noticed elsewhere. A great deal of the national distrustful-ness and suspicion has its root in this very habit, and makes me often resigned to Northern dulness for the sake of Northern reliance and good faith.
They are most agreeable in all the intercourse of society. Less full of small attentions than the French, less ceremonious than the Germans, they are easier in manner than either. They are natural to the very verge of indifference; but above all their qualities stands pre-eminent their good nature. An ungenerous remark, a harsh allusion, an unkind anecdote, are utterly unknown amongst them, and all that witty smartness which makes the success of a French _salon_ would find no responsive echo in an Italian drawing-room. In a word, Tom, they are eminently a people to live amongst They do not contribute much, but they exact as little; and if never broken-hearted when you separate, they are delighted when you meet; falling in naturally with your humor, tolerant of anything and everything, except what gives trouble.
There now, my dear Tom, are all my Italian experiences in a few words.
I feel that by a discreet use of my material I might have made a tureen with what I have only filled a teaspoon; but as I am not writing for the public, but only for Tom Purcell, I 'll not grumble at my wastefulness.
Of the society, what can I say that would not as well apply to any city of the same size as much resorted to by strangers? The world of fas.h.i.+on is pretty much the same thing everywhere; and though we may ”change the venue,” we are always pleading the same cause. They tell me that social liberty here is understood in a very liberal sense, and the right of private judgment on questions of morality exercised with a more than Protestant independence. I hear of things being done that could not be done elsewhere, and so on; but were I only to employ my own una.s.sisted faculties, I should say that everything follows its ordinary routine, and that profligacy does not put on in Florence a single ”travesty” that I have not seen at Brussels and Baden, and twenty similar places! True, people know each other very well, and discuss each other in all the privileged candor close friends.h.i.+p permits. This sincerity, abused as any good thing is liable to be, now and then grows scandalous; but still, Tom, though they may bespatter you with mud, n.o.body ever thinks you too dirty for society. In point of fact, there is a great deal of evil speaking, and very little malevolence; abundance of slander, but scarcely any ill-will. Mark you, these are what they tell me; for up to this moment I have not seen or heard anything but what has pleased me,--met much courtesy and some actual cordiality. And surely, if a man can chance upon a city where the climate is good, the markets well supplied, the women pretty, and the bankers tractable, he must needs be an ill-conditioned fellow not to rest satisfied with his good fortune.
I don't mean to Bay I 'd like to pa.s.s my life here, no more than I would like to wear a domino, and spend the rest of my days in a masquerade, for the whole thing is just as unreal, just as unnatural; but it is wonderfully amusing for a while, and I enjoy it greatly.
From what I have seen of the world of pleasure, I begin to suspect that we English people are never likely to have any great success in our attempts at it; and for this simple reason, that we bring to our social hours exhausted bodies and fatigued minds; we labor hard all day in law courts or counting-houses or committee-rooms, and when evening comes are overcome by our exertions, and very little disposed for those efforts which make conversation brilliant, or intercourse amusing. Your foreigner, however, is a chartered libertine. He feels that nature never meant him for anything but idleness; he takes to frivolity naturally and easily; and, what is of no small importance too, without any loss of self-esteem! Ah, Tom! that is the great secret of it all. We never do our fooling gracefully. There is everlastingly rising up within us a certain bitter conviction that we are not doing fairly by ourselves, and that our faculties might be put to better and more n.o.ble uses than we have engaged them in. We walk the stage of life like an actor ashamed of his costume, and ”our motley” never sets easily on us to the last. I think I had better stop dogmatizing, Tom. Heaven knows where it may lead me, if I don't. Old Woodc.o.c.k says that ”he might have been a vagabond, if Providence had n't made him a justice of the peace;” so I feel that it is not impossible I might have been a moral philosopher, if fate had n't made me the husband of Mrs. Dodd.
Wednesday Afternoon.