Dearest Kitty,—Seventeen long and closely written pages to you—the warm out-gushings of my heart—have I just consigned to the flames. They contained the journal of my life in Florence,—all my thoughts and hopes, my terrors, my anxieties, and my day-dreams. Why, then, will you say, have they met this fate? I will tell you, Kitty. Of the feelings there recorded, of the emotions depicted, of the very events themselves, nothing—absolutely nothing—now remains; and my poor, distracted, forlorn heart no more resembles the buoyant spirit of yesterday than the blackened embers before me are like the carefully inscribed pages I had once destined for your hand. Pity me, dearest Kitty,—pour out every compassionate thought of your kindred heart, and let me feel that, as the wind sweeps over the snowy Apennines, it bears the tender sighs of your affection to one who lives but to be loved! But a week ago, and what a world was opening before me,—a world brilliant in all that makes life a triumph! We were launched upon the sunny sea of high society, our "argosy" a noble and stately ship; and now, Kitty, we lie stranded, shattered, and shipwrecked.
Do not expect from me any detailed account of our disasters. I am unequal to the task. It is not at the moment of being cast away that the mariner can recount the story of his wreck. Enough if these few lines be like the chance words which, enclosed in a bottle, are committed to the waves, to tell at some distant date and in some far-away land the tale of impending ruin.
It is in vain I try to collect my thoughts: feelings too acute to be controlled burst in upon me at each moment and my sobs convulse me as I write. These lines must therefore bear the impress of the emotions that dictate them, and be broken, abrupt, mayhap incoherent!
He is false, Kitty!—false to the heart that he had won, and the affections where he sat enthroned! Yes, by the blackest treason has he requited my loyalty and rewarded my devotion. If ever there was a pure and holy love, it was mine. It was not the offspring of self-interest, for I knew that he was married; nor was I buoyed up by dreams of ambition, for I always knew the great difficulty of obtaining a divorce. But I loved him, as the classic maiden wept,—because it was inconsolable! It is not in my heart to deny the qualities of his gifted nature. No, Kitty, not even now can I depreciate them. How accomplished as a linguist!—how beautifully he drove!—how exquisitely he danced!—what perfection was his dress!—how fascinating his manners! There was—so to say—an idiosyncrasy—an idealism about him; his watchguard was unlike any other,—the very perfume of his pocket-handkerchief was the invention of his own genius.
And then, the soft flattery of his attentions before the world, bestowed with a delicacy that only high breeding ever understands. What wonder if my imagination followed where my heart had gone before, and if the visions of a future blended with the ecstasies of the present!
I cannot bring myself to speak of his treachery. No, Kitty, it would be to arraign myself were I to do so. My heartstrings are breaking, as I ask myself, "Is this, then, the love that I inspired? Are these the proofs of a devotion I fondly fancied eternal?" No more can I speak of our last meeting, the agony of which must endure while life remains. When he left me, I almost dreaded that in his despair he might be driven to suicide. He fled from the house,—it was past midnight,—and never appeared the whole of the following day; another and another passed over,—my terrors increased, my fears rose to madness. I could restrain myself no longer, and hurried away to confide my agonizing sorrows to James's ear. It was early, and he was still sleeping. As I stole across the silent room, I saw an open note upon the table,—I knew the hand and seized it at once. There were but four lines, and they ran thus:—
I tottered to a seat, Kitty, and burst into tears. Yours are now falling for me,—I feel it,—I know it, dearest I can write no more.
I am better now, dearest Kitty. My heart is stilled, its agonies are calmed, but my blanched cheek, my sunken eye, my bloodless lip, my trembling hand, all speak my sorrows, though my tongue shall utter them no more. Never again shall that name escape me, and I charge your friendship never to whisper it to my ears.
From myself and my own fortunes I turn away as from a theme barren and profitless. Of Mary Anne—the lost, the forlorn, and the broken-hearted, you shall hear no more.
On Friday last—was it Friday?—I really forget days and dates and everything—James, who has latterly become totally changed in temper and appearance, contrived to fix a quarrel of some kind or other on Sir Morris Penrhyn. The circumstance was so far the more unfortunate, since Sir M. had shown himself most kind and energetic about mamma's release, and mainly, I believe, contributed to that result. In the dark obscurity that involves the whole affair, we have failed to discover with whom the offence originated, or what it really was. We only know that James wrote a most indiscreet and intemperate note to Sir Morris, and then hastened away to appoint a friend to receive his message. By the merest accident he detected, in a passing travelling-carriage, a well-known face, followed it, and discovered—whom, think you?—but our former friend and neighbor, Dr. Belton.
He was on his way to England with despatches from Constantinople; but, fortunately for James, received a telegraphic message to wait at Florence for more recent news from Vienna before proceeding farther. James at once induced him to act for him; and firmly persuaded that a meeting must ensue, set out himself for the Modense frontier beyond Lucca.
I have already said that we know nothing of the grounds of quarrel; we probably never shall; but whatever they were, the tact and delicacy of Dr. B., aided by the unvarying good sense and good temper of Sir Morris, succeeded in overcoming them; and this morning both these gentlemen drove here in a carriage, and had a long interview with papa. The room in which he received them adjoined my own, and though for a long time the conversation was maintained in the dull, monotonous tone of ordinary speakers, at last I heard hearty laughter, in which papa's voice was eminently conspicuous.
With a heart relieved of a heavy load, I dressed, and went into the drawing-room. I wore a very becoming dark blue silk, with three deep flounces, and as many falls of Valenciennes lace on my sleeves. My hair was "à l'Impératrice," and altogether, Kitty, I felt I was looking my very best; not the less, perhaps, that a certain degree of expectation had given me a faint color, and imparted a heightened animation to my features. I was alone, too, and seated in a large, low arm-chair, one of those charming inventions of modern skill, whose excellence is to unite grace with comfort, and make ease itself subsidiary to elegance.
I could see in the glass at one side of me that my attitude was well chosen, and even to my instep upon the little stool the effect was good. Shall I own to you, Kitty, that I was bent on astonishing this poor native doctor with a change a year of foreign travel had wrought in me? I actually longed to enjoy the amazed look with which he would survey me, and mark the deferential humility struggling with the remembrance of former intimacy. A hundred strange fancies shot through me,—shall I fascinate him by mere externals, or shall I condescend to captivate? Shall I delight him by memories of home and of long ago, or shall I shock him by the little levities of foreign manner? Shall I be brilliant, witty, and amusing, or shall I show myself gentle and subdued, or shall I dash my manner with a faint tinge of eccentricity, just enough to awaken interest by exciting anxiety?
I was almost ashamed to think of such an amount of preparation against so weak an adversary. It seemed ungenerous and even unfair, when suddenly I heard a carriage drive away from the door. I could have cried with vexation, but at the same instant heard papa's voice on the stairs, saying, "If you 'll step into the drawing-room, I 'll join you presently;" and Dr. Belton entered.
I expected, if not humility, dearest, at least deference, mingled with intense astonishment and, perhaps, admiration. Will you believe me when I tell you that he was just as composed, as easy and unconstrained as if it was my sister Cary! The very utmost I could do was to restrain my angry sense of indignation; I'm not, indeed, quite certain that I succeeded in this, for I thought I detected at one moment a half-smile upon his features at a sally of more than ordinary smartness which I uttered.
I cannot express to you how much he is disimproved, not in appearance, for I own that he is remarkably good-looking, and, strange to say, has even the air and bearing of fashion about him. It is his manners, Kitty, his insufferable ease and self-sufficiency, that I allude to. He talked away about the world and society, about great people and their habits, as if they were amongst his earliest associations. He was not astonished at anything; and, stranger than all, showed not the slightest desire to base his present acquaintance upon our former intimacy.
I told him I detested Ireland, and hoped never to go back there. He coldly remarked that with such feelings it were probably wiser to live abroad. I sneered at the vulgar tone of the untravelled English; and his impertinent remark was an allusion to the demerits of badly imitated manners and ill-copied attractions. I grew enthusiastic about art, praised pictures and statues, and got eloquent about music. Fancy his cool insolence, in telling me that he was too uninformed to enter upon these themes, and only knew when he was pleased, but without being able to say why. In fact, Kitty, a more insufferable mass of conceit and presumption I never encountered, nor could I have believed that a few months of foreign travel could have converted a simple-hearted, unaffected young man into a vain, self-opinionated coxcomb,—too offensive to waste words on, and for whom I have really to apologize in thus obtruding on your notice.
It was an unspeakable relief to me when papa joined us. A very little more would have exhausted my patience; and in my heart I believe the puppy saw as much, and enjoyed it as a triumph. Worse again, too, papa complimented him upon the change a knowledge of the world had effected in him, and even asked me to concur in the commendation. I need not say that I replied to this address by a sneer not to be misunderstood, and I trust he felt it.
He is to dine here to-day. He declined the invitation at first, but suffered himself to be persuaded into a cold acceptance afterwards. He had to go to Lord Stanthorpe's in the evening. I expected to hear him say "Stanthorpe's;" but he did n't, and it vexed me. I have not been peculiarly courteous nor amiable to him this morning, but I hope he will find me even less so at dinner. I only wish that a certain person was here, and I would show, by the preference of my manner, how I can converse with, and how treat those whom I really recognize as my equals. I must now hurry away to prepare Cary for what she is to expect, and, if possible, instil into her mind some share of the prejudices which now torture my own.
Saturday Morning.
Everything considered, Kitty, our dinner of yesterday passed off pleasantly,—a thousand times better than I expected. Sir Morris Penrhyn was of the party too; and notwithstanding certain awkward passages that had once occurred between mamma and him, comported himself agreeably and well. I concluded that papa was able to make some explanations that must have satisfied him, for he appeared to renew his attentions to Cary; at least, he bestowed upon her some arctic civilities, whose frigid deference chills me even in memory.
You will be curious to hear how Mr. B. (he appears to have dropped the Doctor) appeared on further intimacy; and, really, I am forced to confess that he rather overcame some of the unfavorable impressions his morning visit had left. He has evidently taken pains to profit by the opportunities afforded to him, and seen and learned whatever lay within his reach. He is a very respectable linguist, and not by any means so presumptuous as I at first supposed. I fancy, dearest, that somehow, unconsciously perhaps, we have been sparring with each other this morning, and that thus many of the opinions he appeared to profess were simply elicited by the spirit of contradiction. I say this, because I now find that we agree on a vast variety of topics, and even our judgments of people are not so much at variance as I could have imagined.
Of course, Kitty, the sphere of his knowledge of the world is a very limited one, and even what he has seen has always been in the capacity of a subordinate. He has not viewed life from the eminence of one who shall be nameless, nor mixed in society with a rank that confers its prescriptive title to attention. I could wish he were more aware—more conscious of this fact I mean, dearest, that I should like to see him more penetrated by his humble position, whereas his manner has an easy, calm unconstraint, that is exactly the opposite of what I imply. I cannot exactly, perhaps, convey the impression upon my own mind, but you may approximate to it, when I tell you that he vouchsafes neither surprise nor astonishment at the class of people with whom we now associate; nor does he appear to recognize in them anything more exalted than our old neighbors at Bruff.
Mamma gave him some rather sharp lessons on this score, which it is only fair to say that he bore with perfect good breeding. Upon the whole, he is really what would be called very agreeable, and, unquestionably, very good-looking. I sang for him two things out of Verdi's last opera of the "Trovatore;" but I soon discovered that music was one of the tastes he had not cultivated, nor did he evince any knowledge whatever when the conversation turned on dress. In fact, dearest, it is only your really fashionable man ever attains to a nice appreciation of this theme, or has a true sentiment for the poetry of costume.
Sir Morris and he seemed to have fallen into a sudden friendship, and found that they agreed precisely in their opinion about Etruscan vases, frescos, and pre-Raphaelite art,—subjects which, I own, general good-breeding usually excludes from discussion where there are pretty girls to talk to. Cary, of course, was in ecstasies with all this; she thought—or fancied she thought—Morris most agreeable, whereas it was really the other man that "made all the running."
James arrived while we were at supper, and, the first little awkwardness of the meeting over, became excellent friends with Morris. With all his cold, unattractive qualities, I am sure that Morris is a very amiable and worthy person; and if Cary likes him, I see no reason in life to refuse such an excellent offer,—always provided that it be made. But of this, Kitty, I must be permitted to doubt, since he informed us that he was daily expecting his yacht out from England, and was about to sail on a voyage which might possibly occupy upwards of two years. He pressed Mr. B. strongly to accompany him, assuring him that he now possessed influence sufficient to reinstate him in his career at his return. I 'm not quite certain that the proposal, when more formally renewed, will not be accepted.
I must tell you that I overheard Morris say, in a whisper to Belton, "I 'm sure if you ask her, Lady Louisa will give you leave." Can it be that the doctor has dared to aspire to a Lady Louisa? I almost fancy it may be so, dearest, and that this presumption is the true explanation of all his cool self-sufficiency. I only want to be certain of this to hate him thoroughly.
Just before they took their leave a most awkward incident occurred. Mr. B., in answer to some question from Morris, took out his tablets to look over his engagements for the next day: "Ah! by the way," said he, "that must not be forgotten. There is a certain scampish relative of Lord Dare-wood, for whom I have been entrusted with a somewhat disagreeable commission. This hopeful young gentleman has at last discovered that his wits, when exercised within legal limits, will not support him, and though he has contrived to palm himself off as a man of fashion on some second-rate folks who know no better, his skill at écarté and lansquenet fails to meet his requirements. He has, accordingly, taken a higher flight, and actually committed a forgery. The Earl whose name was counterfeited has paid the bill, but charged me with the task of acquainting his nephew with his knowledge of the fraud, and as frankly assuring him that, if the offence be repeated, he shall pay its penalty. I assure you I wish the duty had devolved upon any other, though, from all I have heard, anything like feelings of respect or compassion would be utterly thrown away if bestowed on such an object as Lord George Tiverton."
Oh, Kitty, the last words were not needed to make the cup of my anguish run over. At every syllable he uttered, the conviction of what was coming grew stronger; and though I maintained consciousness to the end, it was by a struggle that almost convulsed me.
As for mamma, she flew out in a violent passion, 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 compassion—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-abasement 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.
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 constitution 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 passed in cultivating the eye, refining the taste, and elevating the imagination. There is the Florence of Historical Association, 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 Fashion 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 pronounce 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 assume 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 Constitutional 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 pass 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 citizenship, he would repudiate them as an intolerable burden. Take ray word for it, Parliamentary Institutions 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 passes beside the "Dying Gladiator" or the Farnese Hercules.
Of course I do not extend this opinion to the educated classes, 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 fashion 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 unassisted 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 friendship 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, nobody 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 pass 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 noble 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 Woodcock 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.
My dear Tom,—I had thought to have despatched this prosy epistle without being obliged to inflict you with any personal details of the Dodd family. I was even vaunting to myself that I had kept us all "out of the indictment," and now I discover that I have made a signal failure, and the codicil must revoke the whole body of the testament. How shall I ever get my head clear enough to relate all I want to tell you? I go looking after a stray idea the way I 'd chase a fellow in a crowded fair or market, catching a glimpse of him now—losing him again—here, with my hand almost on him,—and the next minute no sign of him! Try and follow me, however; don't quit me for a moment; and, above all, Tom, whatever vagaries I may fall into, be still assured that I have a road to go, if I only have the wit to discover it!
First of all about Morris, or Sir Morris, as I ought to call him. I told you in my last how warmly he had taken up Mrs. D.'s cause, and how mainly instrumental was he in her liberation. This being accomplished, however, I could not but perceive that he inclined to resume the cold and distant tone he had of late assumed towards us, and rather retire from, than incur, any renewal of our intimacy. When I was younger in the world, Tom, I believe I'd have let him follow his humor undisturbed; but with more mature experience of life, I have come to see that one often sacrifices a real friendship in the indulgence of some petty regard to a ceremonial usage, and so I resolved at least to know the why, if I could, of Morris's conduct.
I went frankly to him at his hotel, and asked for an explanation. He stared at me for a second or two without speaking, and then said something about the shortness of my memory,—a recent circumstance,—and such like, that I could make nothing of. Seeing my embarrassment, he appeared slightly irritated, and proceeded to unlock a writing-desk on the table before him, saying hurriedly,—
"I shall be able to refresh your recollection, and when you read over—" He stopped, clasped his hand to his forehead suddenly, and, as if overcome, threw himself down into a seat, deeply agitated. "Forgive me," said he at length, "if I ask you a question or two. You remember being ill at Genoa, don't you?"
"Perfectly."
"You can also remember receiving a letter from me at that time?"
"No,—nothing of the kind!"
"No letter?—you received no letter of mine?"
"None!"
"Oh, then, this must really—" He paused, and, overcoming what I saw was a violent burst of indignation, he walked the room up and down for several minutes. "Mr. Dodd," said he to me, taking ray hand in both his own, "I have to entreat your forgiveness for a most mistaken impression on my part influencing me in my relations, and suggesting a degree of coldness and distrust which, owing to your manliness of character alone, has not ended in our estrangement forever. I believed you had been in possession of a letter from me; I thought until this moment that it really had reached you. I now know that I was mistaken, and have only to express my sincere contrition for having acted under a rash credulity." He went over this again and again, always, as it seemed to me, as if about to say more, and then suddenly checking himself under what appeared to be a quickly remembered reason for reserve.
I was getting impatient at last. I thought that the explanation explained little, and was really about to say so; but he anticipated me by saying, "Believe me, my dear sir, any suffering, any unhappiness that my error has occasioned, has fallen entirely upon me. You at least have nothing to complain of. The letter which ought to have reached you contained a proposal from me for the hand of your younger daughter; a proposal which I now make to you, happily, in a way that cannot be frustrated by an accident." He went on to press his suit, Tom, eagerly and warmly; but still with that scrupulous regard to truthfulness I have ever remarked in him. He acknowledged the difference in age, the difference in character, the disparity between Cary's joyous, sunny nature and his own colder mood; but he hoped for happiness, on grounds so solid and so reasonable that showed me much of his own thoughtful habit of mind.
Of his fortune, he simply said that it was very far above all his requirements; that he himself had few, if any, expensive tastes, but was amply able to indulge such in a wife, if she were disposed to cultivate them. He added that he knew my daughter had always been accustomed to habits of luxury and expense, always lived in a style that included every possible gratification, and therefore, if not in possession of ample means, he never would have presumed on his present offer.
I felt for a moment the vulgar pleasure that such flattery confers. I own to you, Tom, I experienced a degree of satisfaction at thinking that even to the observant eyes of Morris himself,—old soldier as he was,—the Dodds had passed for brilliant and fashionable folk, in the fullest enjoyment of every gift of fortune; but as quickly a more honest and more manly impulse overcame this thought, and in a few words I told him that he was totally mistaken; that I was a poor, half-ruined Irish gentleman, with an indolent tenantry and an encumbered estate; that our means afforded no possible pretension to the style in which we lived, nor the society we mixed in; that it would require years of patient economy and privation to repay the extravagance into which our foreign tour had launched us; and that, so convinced was I of the inevitable ruin a continuance of such a life must incur, I had firmly resolved to go back to Ireland at the end of the present month and never leave it again for the rest of my days.
I suppose I spoke warmly, for I felt deeply. The shame many of the avowals might have cost me in calmer mood was forgotten now, in my ardent determination to be honest and above-board. I was resolved, too, to make amends to my own heart for all the petty deceptions I had descended to in a former case, and, even at the cost of the loss of a son-in-law, to secure a little sense of self-esteem.
He would not let me finish, Tom, but, grasping my hand in his with a grip I did n't believe he was capable of, he said,—
"Dodd,"—he forgot the Mr. this time,—"Dodd, you are an honest, true-hearted fellow, and I always thought so. Consent now to my entreaty,—at least do not refuse it,—and I 'd not exchange my condition with that of any man in Europe!"
Egad, I could not have recognized him as he spoke, for his cheek colored up, and his eye flashed, and there was a dash of energy about him I had never detected in his nature. It was just the quality I feared he was deficient in. Ay, Tom, I can't deny it, old Celt that I am, I would n't give a brass farthing for a fellow whose temperament cannot be warmed up to some burst of momentary enthusiasm!
Of my hearty consent and my good wishes I speedily assured him, just adding, "Cary must say the rest." I told him frankly that I saw it was a great match for my daughter; that both in rank and fortune he was considerably above what she might have looked for; but with all that, if she herself would n't have taken him in his days of humbler destiny, my advice would be, "don't have him now."
He left me for a moment to say something to his mother,—I suppose some explanation about this same letter that went astray, and of which I can make nothing,—and then they came back together. The old lady seemed as well pleased as her son, and told me that his choice was her own in every respect. She spoke of Cary with the most hearty affection; but with all her praise of her, she does n't know half her real worth; but even what she did say brought the tears to my eyes,—and I 'm afraid I made a fool of myself!
You may be sure, Tom, that it was a happy day with me, although, for a variety of reasons, I was obliged to keep my secret for my own heart. Morris proposed that he should be permitted to wait on us the next morning, to pay his respects to Mrs. D. upon her liberation, and thus his visit might be made the means of reopening our acquaintance. You'd think that to these arrangements, so simple and natural, one might look forward with an easy tranquillity. So did I, Tom,—and so was I mistaken. Mr. James, whose conduct latterly seems to have pendulated between monastic severity and the very wildest dissipation, takes it into his wise head that Morris has insulted him. He thinks—no, not thinks, but dreams—that this calm-tempered, quiet gentleman is pursuing an organized system of outrage towards him, and has for a time back made him the mark of his sarcastic pleasantry. Full of this sage conceit, he hurries on to his hotel, to offer him a personal insult. They fortunately do not meet; but James, ordering pen and paper, sits down and indites a letter. I have not seen it; but even his friend considers it to have been "a step ill-advised and inconsiderate,—in fact, to be deeply regretted."
I cannot conjecture what might have been Morris's conduct under other circumstances, but in his present relations to myself, he saw probably but one course open to him. He condescended to overlook the terms of this insulting note, and calmly asked for an explanation of it. By great good luck, James had placed the affair in young Belton's hands,—our former doctor at Bruff,—who chanced to be on his way through here; and thus, by the good sense of one, and the calm temper of the other, this rash boy has been rescued from one of the most causeless quarrels ever heard of. James had started for Modena, I believe, with a carpet-bag full of cigars, a French novel, and a bullet-mould; but before he had arrived at his destination, Morris, Belton, and myself were laughing heartily over the whole adventure.. Morris's conduct throughout the entire business raised him still higher in my esteem; and the consummate good tact with which he avoided the slightest reflection that might pain me on my son's score, showed me that he was a thorough gentleman. I must say, too, that Belton behaved admirably. Brief as has been his residence abroad, he has acquired the habits of a perfect man of the world, but without sacrificing a jot of his truly frank and generous temperament.
Ah, Tom! it was not without some sharp self-reproaches that I saw this young fellow, poor and friendless as he started in life, struggling with that hard fate that insists upon a man's feeling independent in spirit, and humble in manner, fighting that bitter battle contained in a dispensary doctor's life, emerge at once into an accomplished, well-informed gentleman, well versed in all the popular topics of the day, and evidently stored with a deeper and more valuable kind of knowledge,—I say, I saw all this, and thought of my own boy, bred up with what were unquestionably greater advantages and better opportunities of learning, not obliged to adventure on a career in his mere student years, but with ample time and leisure for cultivation; and yet there he was,—there he is, this minute,—and there is not a station nor condition in life wherein he could earn half a crown a day. He was educated, as it is facetiously called, at Dr. Stingem's school. He read his Homer and Virgil, wrote his false quantities, and blundered through his Greek themes, like the rest. He went through—it's a good phrase—some books of Euclid, and covered reams of foolscap with equations; and yet, to this hour, he can't translate a classic, nor do a sum in common arithmetic, while his handwriting is a cuneiform character that defies a key: and with all that, the boy is not a fool, nor deficient in teachable qualities. I hope and trust this system is coming to an end. I wish sincerely, Tom, that we may have seen the last of a teaching that for one whom it made accomplished and well-informed, converted fifty into pedants, and left a hundred dunces! Intelligible spelling, and readable writing, a little history, and the "rule of three," some geography, a short course of chemistry and practical mathematics,—that's not too much, I think,—and yet I 'd be easy in my mind if James had gone that far, even though he were ignorant of "spondees," and had never read a line of that classic morality they call the Heathen Mythology. I'd not have touched upon this ungrateful theme, but that my thoughts have been running on the advantages we were to have derived from our foreign tour, and some misgivings stinking me as to their being realized.
Perhaps we are not very docile subjects, perhaps we set about the thing in a wrong way, perhaps we had not stored our minds with the preliminary knowledge necessary, perhaps—anything you like, in short; but here we are, in all essentials, as ignorant of everything a residence abroad might be supposed to teach, as though we had never quitted Dodsborough. Stop—I'm going too fast—we have learned some things not usually acquired at home; we have attained to an extravagant passion for dress, and an inordinate love of grand acquaintances. Mary Anne is an advanced student in modern French romance literature; James no mean proficient at écarté; Mrs. D. has added largely to the stock of what she calls her "knowledge of life," by familiar intimacy with a score of people who ought to be at the galleys; and I, with every endeavor to oppose the tendency, have grown as suspicious as a government spy, and as meanly inquisitive about other people's affairs as though I were prime minister to an Italian prince.
We have lost that wholesome reserve with respect to mere acquaintances, and by which our manner to our friends attained to its distinctive signs of cordiality, for now we are on the same terms with all the world. The code is, to be charmed with everything and everybody,—with their looks, with their manners, with their house and their liveries, with their table and their "toilette,"—ay, even with their vices! There is the great lesson, Tom; you grow lenient to everything save the reprobation of wrong, and that you set down for rank hypocrisy, and cry out against as the blackest of all the blemishes of humanity.
Nor is it a small evil that our attachment to home is weakened, and even a sense of shame engendered with respect to a hundred little habits and customs that to foreign eyes appear absurd—and perhaps vulgar. And lastly comes the great question, How are we ever to live in our own country again, with all these exotic notions and opinions? I don't mean how are we to bear Ireland, but how is Ireland to endure us! An American shrewdly remarked to me t' other day, "that one of the greatest difficulties of the slave question was, how to emancipate the slave owners; how to liberate the shackles of their rusty old prejudices, and fit them to stand side by side with real freemen." And in a vast variety of questions you 'll often discover that the puzzle is on the side opposite to that we had been looking at. In this way do I feel that all my old friends will have much to overlook,—much to forgive in my present moods of thinking. I 'll no more be able to take interest in home politics again than I could live on potatoes! My sympathies are now more catholic. I can feel acutely for Schleswig-Holstein, or the Druses at Lebanon. I am deeply interested about the Danubian Provinces, and strong on Sebastopol; but I regard as contemptible the cares of a quarter sessions, or the business of the "Union." If you want me to listen, you must talk of the Cossacks, or the war in the Caucasus; and I am far less anxious about who may be the new member for Bruff, than who will be the next "Vladica" of "Montenegro."
These ruminations of mine might never come to a conclusion, Tom, if it were not that I have just received a short note from Belton, with a pressing entreaty that he may see me at once on a matter of importance to myself, and I have ordered a coach to take me over to his hotel. If I can get back in time for post hour, I 'll be able to explain the reason of this sudden call, till when I say adieu.