It is only fair to mention that these are not merely my own sentiments.
Lord George Tiverton, to whom I happened to show your letter, was really shocked at the contents. I don"t wish to offend you, Tom, but the expression he used was, "It is fortunate for your friend Purcell that he is not _my_ agent" I will not repeat what he said about the management of English landed property, but it is obvious that our system is not their system, and that such a thing as a landlord in _my_ position is actually unheard of. "If Ireland were subject to earthquakes," said he, "if the arable land were now and then covered over ten feet deep with lava, I could understand your agent"s arguments; but wanting these causes, they are downright riddles to me."
He was most anxious to obtain possession of your letter; and I learned from Mary Anne that he really meant to use it in the House, and show you up bodily as one of the prominent causes of Irish misery. I have saved you from this exposure, but I really cannot spare you some of the strictures your conduct calls for.
I must also observe to you that there is what the Duke used to call "a terrible sameness" about your letters. The potatoes are always going to rot, the people always going to leave. It rains for ten weeks at a time, and if you have three fine days you cry out that the country is ruined by drought. Just for sake of a little variety, can"t you take a prosperous tone for once, instead of "drawing my attention," as you superciliously phrase it, to the newspaper announcement about "George Davis and other pet.i.tioners, and the lands of Ballyclough, Kiltimaon, and Knocknaslat-tery, being part of the estates of James Kenny Dodd, Esq., of Dodsborough." I have already given you my opinion about that Enc.u.mbered Estates Court, and I see no reason for changing it.
Confiscation is a mild name for its operation. What Ireland really wanted was a loan fund,--a good round sum, say three and a half or four millions, lent out on reasonable security, but free from all embarra.s.sing conditions. Compel every proprietor to plant so many potatoes for the use of the poor, and get rid of those expensive absurdities called "Unions," with all the lazy, indolent officials; do that, and we might have a chance of prospering once more.
It makes me actually sick to hear you, an Irishman born and bred, repeating all that English balderdash about "a cheap and indisputable t.i.tle." and so forth. Do you remember about four-and-twenty years ago, Tom, when I wanted to breach a place for a window in part of the old house at Dodsborough, and Hackett warned me that if I touched a stone of it I "d maybe have the whole edifice come tumbling about my ears. Don"t you see the a.n.a.logy between that and our condition as landlords, and that our real security lay in the fact that n.o.body could dare to breach us? Meddle with us once, and who could tell where the ruin would fall!
So long as the system lasted we were safe, Tom. Now, your Enc.u.mbered Court, with its parliamentary t.i.tle, has upset all that security; and that"s the reason of all the distress and misfortune that have overtaken us.
I think, after the specimen of my opinions, I "ll hear no more of your reproaches about my "growing indifference to home topics," my "apparent apathy regarding Ireland," and other similar reflections in your last letter. Forget my country, indeed! Does a man ever forget the cantharides when he has a blister on his back? If I "m warm, I "m sorry for it; but it "s your own fault, Tom Purcell. You know me since I was a child, and understand my temper well; and whatever it was once, it hasn"t improved by conjugal felicity.
And now for the Home Office. James started last night for London, to go through whatever formalities there may be before receiving his appointment. What it is to be, or where, I have not an idea; but I cling to the hope that when they see the lad, and discover his utter ignorance on all subjects, it will be something very humble, and not requiring a sixpence from me. All that I have seen of the world shows me that the higher you look for your children the more they cost you; and for that reason, if I had my choice, I "d rather have him a gauger than in the Grenadier Guards. Even as it is, the outfit for this journey has run away with no small share of your late remittance, and now that we have come to the end of the M"Carthy legacy,--the last fifty was "appropriated" by James before starting,--it will require all the financial skill you can command to furnish me with sufficient means for our new campaign.
Yes, Tom, we are going to Italy. I have discussed the matter so long, and so fully argued it in every shape, artistical, philosophical, economical, and moral, that I verily believe that our dialogues would furnish a very respectable manual to Trans-Alpine travellers; and if I am not a convert to the views of my opponents, I am so far vanquished in the controversy as to give in. Lord George put the matter, I must say, very strongly before me. "To turn your steps homeward from the Alps,"
said he, "is like the act of a man who, having dressed for an evening party and ascended the stairs, wheels round at the door of the drawing-room, and quits the house. All your previous knowledge of the Continent, so costly and so difficult to attain, is about at length to become profitable; that insight into foreign life and habits which you have arrived at by study and observation, is now about to be available.
Italy is essentially the land of taste, elegance, and refinement; and there will all the varied gifts and acquirements of your accomplished family be appreciated." Besides this, Tom, he showed me that the "Sn.o.bs," as he politely designated them, are all "Cis-Alpine;" strictly confining themselves to the Rhine and Switzerland, and never descending the southern slopes of the Alps. According to his account, therefore, the climate of Italy is not more marked by superiority than the tone of its society. There all is polished, elegant, and refined; and if the men be "not all brave, and the women all virtuous," it is because "their moral standard is one more in accordance with the ancient traditions, the temper, and the instincts of the people." I quote you his words here, because very possibly they may be more intelligible to you than to myself. At all events, one thing is quite clear,--we ought to go and judge for ourselves, and to this resolve have we come. Tiverton--without whom we should be actually helpless--has arranged the whole affair, and, really, with a regard to economy that, considering his habits and his station, can only be attributed to a downright feeling of friendship for us. By a mere accident he hit upon a villa at Como, for a mere trifle,--he won"t tell me the sum, but he calls it a "nothing,"--and now he has, with his habitual good luck, chanced upon a return carriage going to Milan, the driver of which horses our carriage, and takes the servants with him, for very little more than the keep of his beasts on the road. This piece of intelligence will tickle every stingy fibre in your economical old heart, and at last shall I know you to mutter, "K.
I. is doing the prudent thing."
Tiverton himself says, "It"s not exactly the most elegant mode of travelling; but as the season is early, and the Splugen a pa.s.s seldom traversed, we shall slip down to Como un.o.bserved, and save some forty or fifty "Naps." without any one being the wiser." Mrs. D. would, of course, object if she had the faintest suspicion that it was inexpensive; but "my Lord," who seems to read her like a book, has told her that it is the very mode in which all the aristocracy travel, and that by a happy piece of fortune we have secured the vetturino that took Prince Albert to Rome, and the Empress of Russia to Palermo!
He has, or he is to find, four horses for our coach, and three for his own; we are to take the charge of bridges, barriers, rafts, and "remounts," and give him, besides, five Napoleons _per diem_, and a "buona mano," or gratuity, of three more, if satisfied, at the end of the journey. Now, nothing could be more economical than this; for we are a large party, and with luggage enough to fill a ship"s jolly-boat.
You see, therefore, what it is to have a shrewd and intelligent friend.
You and I might have walked the main street of Bregenz till our shoes were thin, before we discovered that the word "Gelegenheit," chalked up on the back-leather of an old calche, meant "A return conveniency to be had cheap." The word is a German one, and means "Opportunity:" and ah!
my dear Tom, into what a strange channel does it entice one"s thoughts!
What curious reflections come across the mind as we think of all our real opportunities in this world, and how little we did of them! Not but there might be a debit side to the account, too, and that some two or three may have escaped us that it was just as well we let pa.s.s!
We intended to have left this to-morrow, but Mrs. D. won"t travel on a Friday. "It"s an unlucky day," she says, and maybe she"s right. If I don"t mistake greatly, it was on a Friday I was married; but of course this is a reminiscence I keep to myself. This reminds me of the question in your postscript, and to which I reply: "Not a bit of it; nothing of the kind. So far as I see, Tiverton feels a strong attachment to James, but never even notices the girls. I ought to add that this is not Mrs.
D."s opinion; and she is always flouncing into my dressing-room, with a new discovery of a look that he gave Mary Anne, or a whisper that he dropped into Cary"s ear. Mothers would be a grand element in a detective police, if they did n"t now and then see more than was in sight; but that"s their failing, Tom. The same generous zeal which they employ in magnifying their husbands" faults helps them to many another exaggeration. Now Mrs. D. is what she calls fully persuaded--in other words, she has some shadowy suspicions--that Lord George has formed a strong attachment to one or other of her daughters, the only doubtful point being which of them is to be my Lady."
Shall I confess to you that I rather cherish the notion than seek to disabuse her of it, and for this simple reason: whenever she is in full cry after grandeur, whether in the shape of an acquaintance, an invitation, or a match for the girls, she usually gives me a little peace and quietness. The peerage, "G.o.d bless our old n.o.bility," acts like an anodyne on her.
I give you, therefore, both sides of the question, repeating once more my own conviction that Lord G. has no serious intentions, to use the phrase maternal, whatever. And now to your second query: If not, is it prudent to encourage his intimacy? Why, Tom Purcell, just bethink you for a moment, and see to what a strange condition would your theory, if acted on, resolve all the inhabitants of the globe. Into one or other category they must go infallibly. "Either they want to marry one of the Dodds, or they don"t." Now, though the fact is palpable enough, it is for all purposes of action a most embarra.s.sing one; and if I proceed to make use of it, I shall either be doomed to very tiresome acquaintances, or a life of utter solitude and desertion.
Can"t a man like your society, your dinners, your port, your jokes, and your cigars, but he must perforce marry one of your daughters? Is your house to be like a rat-trap, and if a fellow puts his head in must he be caught? I don"t like the notion at all; and not the less that it rather throws a slight over certain convivial gifts and agreeable qualities for which, once upon a time at least, I used to have some reputation. As to Tiverton, I like _him_, and I have a notion that he likes _me_, We suit each other as well as it is possible for two men bred, born, and brought up so perfectly unlike. We both have seen a great deal of the world, or rather of two worlds, for _his_ is not _mine_. At the same time, every remark he makes--and all his observations show me that mankind is precisely the same thing everywhere, and that it is exactly with the same interests, the same impulses, and the same pa.s.sions my Lord bets his thousands at "Crocky"s" that Billy Healey or Father Tom ventures his half-crown at the Pig and Pincers, in Bruff. I used to think that what with races, elections, horse-fairs, and the like, I had seen my share of rascality or roguery; but, compared to my Lord"s experiences, I might be a babe in the nursery. There is n"t a dodge--not a piece of knavery that was ever invented--he doesn"t know. Trickery and deception of every kind are all familiar to him, and, as he says himself, he only wants a few weeks in a convict settlement to put the finish on his education.
You "d fancy, from what I say, that he must be a cold, misanthropic, suspectful fellow, with an ill-natured temper, and a gloomy view of everybody and everything. Far from it, his whole theory of life is benevolent; and his maxim, to believe every one honorable, trustworthy, and amiable. I see the half-cynical smile with which you listen to this, and I already know the remark that trembles on your lip. You would say that such a code cuts both ways, and that a man who p.r.o.nounces so favorably of his fellows almost secures thereby a merciful verdict on himself. In fact, that he who pa.s.ses base money can scarcely refuse, now and then, to accept a bad halfpenny in change. Well, Tom, I "ll not argue the case with you, for if not myself a disciple of this creed, I have learned to think that there are very few, indeed, who are privileged to play censor upon their acquaintances, and that there is always the chance that when you are occupied looking at your neighbor drifting on a lee sh.o.r.e, you may b.u.mp on a rock yourself.
You said in your last that you thought me more lax than I used to be about right and wrong,--"less strait-laced," you were polite enough to call it; and with an equal urbanity you ascribed this change in me to the habits of the Continent. I am proud to say "Guilty" to the charge, and I believe you are right as to the cause. Yes, Tom, the tone of society abroad is eminently merciful, and it must needs be a bad case where there are no attenuating circ.u.mstances. So much the worse, say you; where vice is leniently looked on, it will be sure to flourish. To which I answer, Show me where it does not! Is it in the modern Babylon, is it in moral Scotland, or drab-colored Washington? On my conscience, I don"t believe there is more of wickedness in a foreign city than a home one; the essential difference being that we do wrong with a consciousness of our immorality; whereas the foreigner has a strong impression that after all it"s only a pa.s.sing frailty, and that human nature was not ever intended to be perfect. Which system tends most to corrupt a people, and which creates more hopeless sinners, I leave to you, and others as fond of such speculations, to ponder over.
Another charge--for your letter has as many counts as an indictment--another you make against me is that I seem as if I was beginning to like--or, as you modestly phrase it--as if I was getting more reconciled to the Continent. Maybe I am, now that I have learned how to qualify the light wines with a little brandy, and to make my dinner of the eight or nine, instead of the two-and-thirty dishes they serve up to you; and since I have trained myself to walk the length of a street, in rain or sunshine, without my hat, and have attained to the names of the cards at whist in a foreign tongue, I believe I do feel more at home here than at first; but still I am far, very far, in arrear of the knowledge that a man bred and born abroad would possess at my age. To begin, Tom: He would be a perfect cook; you couldn"t put a clove of garlic too little, or an olive too much, without his detecting it in the dish. Secondly, he would be curious in snuffs, and a dead hand at dominos; then he would be deep in the private histories of the ballet, and tell you the various qualities of short-draperied damsels that had figured on the boards for the last thirty years. These, and such-like, would be the consolations of his declining years; and of these I know absolutely next to nothing. Who knows, however, but I may improve? The world is a wonderful schoolmaster, and if Mrs. D. is to be believed, I am an apt scholar whenever the study is of an equivocal kind.
We hope to spend the late autumn at Como, and then step down into some of the cities of the South for the winter months. The approved plan is Florence till about the middle of January, Rome till the beginning of Lent, then Naples till the Holy Week, whence back again for the ceremonies. After that, northward wherever you please. All this sounds like a good deal of locomotion, and, consequently, of expense; but Lord G. says, "Just leave it to _me_, I"ll be your courier;" and as he not only performs that function, but unites with it that of banker,--he can get anything discounted at any moment,--I am little disposed to depose him from his office. Now no more complaints that I have not replied to you about this, that, and t" other, not informed you about our future movements, nor given you any hint as to our plans: you know everything about us, at least so far as it is known to your
Very sincere friend,
Kenny I. Dodd.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I am too late for the post, so I "ll keep this open if anything should occur to me before the next mail.
The Inn, Splugen, Monday.
I thought this was already far on its way to you; but, to my great surprise, on opening my writing-desk this morning, I discovered it there still. The truth is, I grow more absent, and what the French call "distracted," every day; and it frequently happens that I forget some infernal bill or other, till the fellow knocks at the door with "the notice." Here we are, at a little inn on the very top of the Alps.
We arrived yesterday, and, to our utter astonishment, found ourselves suddenly in a land of snow and icebergs. The whole way from Bregenz the season was a mellow autumn: some of the corn was still standing, but most was cut, and the cattle turned out over the stubble; the trees were in full leaf, and the mountain rivulets were clear and sparkling, for no rain had fallen for some time back. It was a picturesque road and full of interest in many ways. From Coire we made a little excursion across the Rhine to a place called Ragatz,--a kind of summer resort for visitors who come to bathe and drink the waters of Pfeffers, one of the most extraordinary sights I ever beheld. These baths are built in a cleft of the mountain, about a thousand feet in depth, and scarcely thirty wide in many parts; the sides of the precipices are straight as a wall, and only admit of a gleam of the sun when perfectly vertical. The gloom and solemnity of the spot, its death-like stillness and shade, even at noonday, are terribly oppressive. Nor is the sadness dispelled by the living objects of the picture,--Swiss, Germans, French, and Italians, swathed in flannel dressing-gowns and white dimity cerements, with nightcaps and slippers, steal along the gloomy corridors and the gloomier alleys, pale, careworn, and cadaverous. They come here for health, and their whole conversation is sickness. Now, however consoling it may be to an invalid to find a recipient of his sorrows, the price of listening in turn is a tremendous infliction. Nor is the character of the scene such as would probably suggest agreeable reflections; had it been the portico to the nameless locality itself, it could not possibly be more dreary and sorrow-stricken. Now, whatever virtues the waters possess, is surely antagonized by all this agency of gloom and depression; and except it be as a preparation for leaving the world without regret, this place seems to be marvellously ill adapted for its object. It appears to me, however, that foreigners run into the greatest extremes in these matters; a sick man must either live in a perpetual Vauxhall of fireworks, music, dancing, dining, and gambling, as at Baden, or be condemned to the worse than penitentiary diet and prison discipline of Pfeffers! Surely there must be some halting-place between the ball-room and the cloister, or some compromise of costume between silk stockings and bare feet! But really, to a thinking, reasonable being, it appears very distressing that you must either dance out of the world to Strauss"s music, or hobble miserably out of life to the sound of the falling waters of Pfeffers.
Does it not sound, also, very oddly to our free-trade notions of malady, that the doctor of these places is appointed by the State; that without his sanction and opinion of your case, you must neither bathe nor drink; that no matter how satisfied you may be with your own physician, nor how little to your liking the Government medico, he has the last word on the subject of your disorder, and without his wand the pool is never to be stirred in your behalf. You don"t quite approve of this, Tom,--neither do I. The State has no more a right to choose my doctor than to select a wife for me. If there be anything essentially a man"s own prerogative, it is his--what shall I call it?--his caprice about his medical adviser.
One man likes a grave, sententious, silently disposed fellow, who feels his pulse, shakes his head, takes his fee, and departs, with scarcely more than a muttered monosyllable; another prefers the sympathetic doctor, that goes half-and-half in all his sufferings, lies awake at night thinking of his case, and seems to rest his own hopes of future bliss in life on curing him. As for myself, I lean to the fellow that, no matter what ails me, is sure to make me pa.s.s a pleasant half-hour; that has a lively way of laughing down all my unpleasant symptoms, and is certain to have a droll story about a patient that he has just come from. That"s the man for my money; and I wish you could tell me where a man gets as good value as for the guinea be gives to one of these. Now, from what I have seen of the Continent, this is an order of which they have no representative. All the professional cla.s.ses, but more essentially the medical, are taken from an inferior grade in society, neither brought up in intercourse with the polite world, nor ever admitted to it afterwards. The consequence is, that your doctor comes to visit you as your shoemaker to measure you for shoes, and it would be deemed as great a liberty were he to talk of anything but your complaint, as for Crispin to impart his sentiments about Russia or the policy of Louis Napoleon. I don"t like the system, and I am convinced it does n"t work well. If I know anything of human nature, too, it is this,--that n.o.body tells the whole truth to his physician _till he can"t help it_. No, Tom, it only comes out after a long cross-examination, great patience, and a deal of dodging; and for these you must have no vulgarly minded, commonplace, underbred fellow, but a consummate man of the world, who knows when you are bamboozling him and when fencing him off with a sham. He must be able to use all the arts of a priest in the confessional, and an advocate in a trial, with a few more of his own not known to either, to extort your secret from you; and I am sure that a man of vulgar habits and low a.s.sociations is not the best adapted for this.
I wanted to stop and dine with this lugubrious company. I was curious to see what they ate, and whether their natures attained any social expansion under the genial influences of food and drink; but Mrs. D.
would n"t hear of it. She had detected, she said, an "impudent hussy with black eyes" bestowing suspicious glances at your humble servant. I thought that she was getting out of these fancies,--I fondly hoped that a little peace on these subjects would in a degree reconcile me to many of the discomforts of old age; but, alas! the gray hairs and the stiff ankles have come, and no writ of ease against conjugal jealousies.
Away we came, fresh and fasting, and as there was nothing to be had at Ragatz, we were obliged to go on to Coire before we got supper; and if you only knew what it is to arrive at one of these foreign inns after the hour of the ordinary meals, you "d confess there was little risk of our committing an excess.
I own to you, Tom, that the excursion scarcely deserved to be called a pleasant one. Fatigue, disappointment, and hunger are but ill antagonized by an outbreak of temper; and Mrs. D. lightened the way homeward by a homily on fidelity that would have made Don Juan appear deserving of being canonized as a saint! I must also observe that Tiverton"s conduct on this occasion was the very reverse of what I expected from him. A shrewd, keen fellow like him could not but know in his heart that Mrs. D."s suspicions were only nonsense and absurdity; and yet what did he do but play shocked and horrified, agreed completely with every ridiculous notion of my wife, and actually went so far as to appeal to me as a father against myself as a profligate. I almost choked with pa.s.sion; and if it was not that we were under obligations to him about James"s business, I"m not certain I should not have thrown him out of the coach. I wish to the saints that the women would take to any other line of suspicion, even for the sake of variety,--fancy me an incurable drunkard, a gambler, an uncertificated bankrupt, or a forger.
I"m not certain if I would not accept the charge of a transportable felony rather than be regarded as the sworn enemy of youth and virtue, and the snake in the gra.s.s to all unprotected females.
From Coire we travelled on to Reichenau, a pretty village at the foot of the Alps, watered by the Rhine, which is there a very inconsiderable stream, and with as little promise of future greatness as any barrister of six years" standing you please to mention. There is a neat-looking chateau, which stands on a small terrace above the river here, not without a certain interest attached to it. It was here that Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans, taught mathematics in the humble capacity of usher to a school. Just fancy that deep politician--the wiliest head in all Europe, with the largest views of statecraft, and the most consummate knowledge of men--instilling angles and triangles into impracticable numskulls, and crossing the a.s.ses" bridge ten times a day with lame and crippled intellects.
It would be curious to know what views of mankind, what studies of life, he made during this period. Such a man was not made to suffer any opportunity, no matter how inconsiderable in itself, to escape him without profiting; and it may be easily believed that in the monarchy of a school he might have meditated over the rule of large ma.s.ses.
History can scarcely present greater changes of fortune than those that have befallen that family, which is the more singular, since they have been brought about neither by great talents nor great crimes. The Orleans family was more remarkable for the qualities which shine in the middle ranks of life than either for any towering genius or any unscrupulous ambition. Their strength was essentially in this mediocrity, and it was a momentary forgetfulness of that same stronghold--by the Spanish marriage--that cost the King his throne. The truth was, Tom, that the nation never liked us,--they hated England just as they hated it at Cressy, at Blenheim, and at Waterloo, and will hate it, notwithstanding your great Industrial gatherings, to the end of time. They were much dissatisfied with Louis Philippe"s policy of an English alliance; they deemed it disadvantageous, costly, and humiliating; but that it should be broken up and destroyed for an object of mere family, for a piece of dynastic ambition, was a gross outrage and affront to the spirit of national pride. It was the sentiment of insulted honor that leagued the followers of the Orleans branch with the Legitimists and the Republicans, and formed that terrible alliance that extended from St. Antoine to the Faubourg St. Germain, and included every one from the peer to the common laborer.
All this prosing about politics will never take us over the Alps; and, indeed, so far as I can see, there is small prospect of that event just now; for it has been snowing smartly all night, with a strong southerly wind, which they say always leaves heavy drifts in different parts of the mountain.
We are cooped up here in a curious, straggling kind of an inn, that gradually dwindles away into a barn, a stable, and a great shed, filled with disabled diligences and smashed old sledges,--an incurable asylum for diseased conveyances. The house stands in a cleft of the hills; but from the windows you can see the zigzag road that ascends for miles in front, and which now is only marked by long poles, already some ten or twelve feet deep in snow. It is snow on every side,--on the mountains, on the roofs, on the horses that stand shaking their bells at the door, on the conducteur that drinks his schnaps, on the postilion as he lights his pipe. The thin flakes are actually plating his whiskers and moustaches, till he looks like one of the "Old Guard," as we see them in a melodrama.
Tiverton, who conducts all our arrangements, has had a row with our vetturino, who says that he never contracted to take us over the mountain in sledges; and as the carriages cannot run on wheels, here we are discussing the question. There have been three stormy debates already, and another is to come off this afternoon; meanwhile, the snow is falling heavily, and whatever chance there was of getting forward yesterday is now ten times less practicable. The landlord of our inn is to be arbiter, I understand; and as he is the proprietor of the sledges we shall have to hire, if defeated, without impugning in any way the character of Alpine justice, you can possibly antic.i.p.ate the verdict.
A word upon this vetturino system ere I leave it,--I hope forever. It is a perfect nuisance from beginning to end. From the moment you set off with one of these rascals, till the hour you arrive at your journey"s end, it is plague, squabble, insolence, and torment. They start at what hour of the morning they please; they halt where they like, and for as long as they like, invariably, too, at the worst wayside inns,--away from a town and from all chance of accommodation,--since rye-bread and sour wine, with a mess of stewed garlic, will always satisfy _them_.
They rarely drive at full five miles the hour, and walk every inch with an ascent of a foot in a hundred yards. If expostulated with by the wretched traveller, they halt in some public place, and appeal to the bystanders in some dialect unknown to you. The result of which is that a ferocious mob surrounds you, and with invectives, insults, and provocative gestures a.s.sail and outrage you, till it please your tormentor to drive on; which you do at length amidst hooting and uproar that even convicted felons would feel ashamed of.
On reaching your inn at night, they either give such a representation of you as gets you denied admittance at all, or obtain for you the enviable privilege of paying for everything "en Milor." Between being a swindler and an idiot the chance alone lies for you. Then they refuse to unstrap your luggage; or if they do so, tie it on again so insecurely that it is sure to drop off next day. I speak not of a running fire of petty annoyances; such as fumigating you with pestilent tobacco, nor the blessed enjoyment of that infernal Spitz dog which stands all day on the roof, and barks every mile of the road from Berne to Naples. As to any redress against their insolence, misconduct, or extortion, it is utterly hopeless,--and for this reason: they are sure to have a hundred petty occasions of rendering small services to the smaller authorities of every village they frequent. They carry the judge"s mother for nothing to a watering-place; or they fetch his aunt to the market town; or they smuggle for him--or thieve for him--something that is only to be had over the frontier. Very probably, too, on the very morning of your appeal, you have kicked the same judge"s brother, he being the waiter of your inn, and having given you bad money in change,--at all events, _you_ are not likely ever to be met with again; the vetturino is certain to come back within the year; and, finally, you are sure to have money, and be able to pay,--so that, as the Irish foreman said, as the reason for awarding heavy damages against an Englishman, "It is a fine thing to bring so much money into the country."
Take my word for it, Tom, the system is a perfect disgust from beginning to end, and even its cheapness only a sham; for your economy is more than counterbalanced by police fees, fines, and impositions, delays, remounts, bulls, and starved donkeys, paid for at a price they would not bring if sold at a market. Post, if you can afford it; take the public conveyances, if you must; but for the sake of all that is decent and respectable,--all that consists with comfort and self-respect,--avoid the vetturino! I know that a contrary opinion has a certain prevalence in the world,--I am quite aware that these rascals have their advocates,--and no bad ones either,--since they are women.
I have witnessed more than one Giuseppe, or Antonio, with a beard, whiskers, and general "get up," that would have pa.s.sed muster in a comic opera; and on looking at the fellow"s book of certificates (for such as these always have a bound volume, smartly enclosed in a neat case), I have found that "Mrs. Miles Dalrymple and daughters made the journey from Milan to Aix-les-Bains with Frances...o...b..rbante, and found him excessively attentive, civil, and obliging; full of varied information about the road, and quite a treasure to ladies travelling alone."
Another of these villains is styled "quite an agreeable companion;" one was called "charming;" and I found that Miss Matilda Somers, of Queen"s Road, Old Brompton, p.r.o.nounces Luigi Balderdasci, although in the humble rank of a vetturino, "an accomplished gentleman." I know, therefore, how ineffectual would it be for Kenny Dodd to enter the lists against such odds, and it is only under the seal of secrecy that I dare to mutter them. The widows and the fatherless form a strong category in foreign travel; dark dresses and demure looks are very vagrant in their habits, and I am not going to oppose myself single-handed to such a united force. But to you, Tom Purceli, I may tell the truth in all confidence and security. If I was in authority, I "d shave these scoundrels to-morrow. I "d not suffer a moustache, a red sash, nor a hat with a feather amongst them; and take my word for it, the panegyrics would be toned down, and we"d read much more about the horses than the drivers, and learn how many miles a day they could travel, and not how many sonnets of Petrarch the rascal could repeat.
I have lost my "John Murray." I forgot it in our retreat from Pfeffers; so that I don"t remember whether he lauds these fellows or the reverse, but the chances are it is the former. It is one of the endless delusions travellers fall into, and many"s the time I have had to endure a tiresome description of their delightful vetturino, that "charming Beppo, who, "however he got them," had a bouquet for each of us every morning at breakfast." If I ever could accomplish the writing of that book I once spoke to you about upon the Continent and foreign travels, I "d devote a whole chapter to these fellows; and more than that, Tom, I"d have an Appendix--a book of travels is nothing without an Appendix in small print--wherein I"d give a list of all these scoundrels who have been convicted as bandits, thieves, and petty larceners; of all their misdeeds against old gentlemen with palsy, and old ladies with "nerves."
I "d show them up, not as heroes but highwaymen; and take my word for it, I "d be doing good service to the writers of those sharply formed little paragraphs now so enthusiastic about Giovanni, and so full of "grateful recollections" of "poor Giuseppe."
I am positively ashamed to say how many of the observations, ay, and of the printed observations of travellers, I have discovered to have their origin in this same cla.s.s; and that what the tourist jotted down as his own remark on men and manners, was the stereotyped opinion of these illiterate vagabonds. But as for books of travel, Tom, of all the humbugs of a humbugging age, there is nothing can approach them. I have heard many men talk admirably about foreign life and customs. I have never chanced upon one who could write about them. It is not only that your really smart fellows do not write; but that, to p.r.o.nounce authoritatively on a people, one must have a long and intimate acquaintance with them. Now, this very fact alone to a great degree invalidates the freshness of observation; for what we are accustomed to see every day ceases to strike us as worthy of remark. To the raw tourist, all is strange, novel, and surprising; and if he only record what he sees, he will tell much that everybody knows, but also some things that are not quite so familiar to the mult.i.tude. Now, your old resident abroad knows the Continent too well and too thoroughly to find any one incident or circ.u.mstance peculiar. To take an ill.u.s.tration: A man who had never been at a play in his life would form a far better conception of what a theatre was like from hearing the description of one from an intelligent child, who had been there once, than from the most labored criticism on the acting from an old frequenter of the pit.
Hence the majority of these tours have a certain success at home; but for the man who comes abroad, and wishes to know something that may aid to guide his steps, form his opinions, and direct his judgment, believe me they are not worth a bra.s.s farthing. There is this also to be taken into account,--that every observer is, more or less, recounting some trait of his own nature, of his habits, his tastes, and his prejudices; so that before you can receive his statement, you have to study his disposition. Take all these adverse and difficult conditions into consideration,--give a large margin for credulity, and a larger for exaggeration,--bethink you of the embarra.s.sments of a foreign tongue, and then I ask you how much real information you have a right to expect from Journals of the Long Vacation, or Winters in Italy, or Tyrol Rambles in Autumn? I say it in no boastfulness, Tom, nor in any mood of vanity, but if I was some twenty years younger, with a good income and no enc.u.mbrances, well versed in languages, and fairly placed as regards social advantages, I myself could make a very readable volume about foreign life and foreign manners. You laugh at the notion of Kenny Dodd on a t.i.tlepage; but have n"t we one or two of our acquaintances that cut just as ridiculous a figure?
Tiverton has come in to tell me that the judgment of the Court has been given against him, and consequently against us, "_in re_ Vetturino;" and the award of the judge is, "That we pay all the expenses for the journey to Milan, the gratuity,--that was only to be given as an evidence of our perfect satisfaction,--and anything more that our sense of honor and justice may suggest, as compensation for the loss of time he has sustained in litigating with us." On these conditions he is to be free to follow his road, and we are to remain here till--I wish I could say the time--but, according to present appearances, it may be spring before we get away. When I tell you that the decision has been given by the landlord of the inn, where we must stop,--as no other exists within twenty miles of us,--you may guess the animus of the judgment-seat. It requires a great degree of self-restraint not be to carried into what the law calls an overt act, by a piece of iniquity like this. I have abstained by a great effort; but the struggle has almost given me a fit of apoplexy. Imagine the effrontery of the rascal, Tom: scarcely had he counted over his Napoleons, and made his grin of farewell, than he mounted his box and drove away over the mountain, which had just been declared impa.s.sable,--a feat witnessed by all of us,--in company with the landlord who had p.r.o.nounced the verdict against us. I stormed--I swore--in short, I worked myself into a sharp fit of the gout, which flew from my ankle to my stomach, and very nigh carried me off. A day of extreme suffering has been succeeded by one of great depression; and here I am now, with the snow still falling fast; the last courier who went by saying "that all the inns at Chiavenna were full of people, none of whom would venture to cross the mountain." It appears that there are just two peculiarly unpropitious seasons for the pa.s.sage,--when the snow falls first, and when it begins to melt in spring. It is needless to say that we have hit upon one of these, with our habitual good fortune!