The Dodd Family Abroad Volume Ii Part 19

It would be very disagreeable for me to explain at length how what I mentioned to you about James's marriage has come to an untimely conclusion. Enough when I say that the lady was not, in any respect, what she had represented herself, and my dear brother may be said to have had a most fortunate escape. Of course the poor fellow has suffered considerably from the disappointment, nor are his better feelings alleviated by the--I will say--very indelicate raillery papa is pleased to indulge in on the subject. It is, however, a theme I do not care to linger on, and I only thus pa.s.sively allude to it that it may be buried in oblivion between us.

We came along here from Genoa by the seaboard, a very beautiful and picturesque road, traversing a wild range of the Apennines, and almost always within view of the blue Mediterranean. At Spezia we loitered for a day or two, to bathe, and I must say nothing can be more innocently primitive than the practice as followed there.

Ladies and gentlemen--men and women, if you like it better--all meet in the water as they do on land, or rather not as they do on land, but in a very first-parentage state of no-dressedness. There they splash, swim, dive, and converse,--float, flirt, talk gossip, and laugh with a most laudable forgetfulness of externals. Introductions and presentations go forward as they would in society, and a gentleman asks you to duck instead of to dance with him. It would be affectation in me were I not to say that I thought all this very shocking at first, and that I really could scarcely bring myself to adopt it; but Lord George, who really swims to perfection, laughed me out of some, and reasoned me out of others of my prejudices, and I will own, dearest Kitty, his arguments were unanswerable.

"Were you not very much ashamed," said he, "the first time you saw a ballet, or 'poses plastiques'?--did not the whole strike you as exceedingly indelicate?--and now, would not that very same sense of shame occur to you as real indelicacy, since in these exhibitions it is Art alone you admire,--Art in its graceful development? The 'Ballarina'

is not a woman; she is an ideal,--she is a Hebe, a Psyche, an Ariadne, or an Aphrodite. Symmetry, grace, beauty of outline,--these are the charms that fascinate you. Can you not, therefore, extend this spirit to the sea, and, instead of the Marquis of this and the Countess of that, only behold Tritono and sea-nymphs disporting in the flood?"

I saw at once the force of this reasoning, Kitty, and perceived that to take any lower view of the subject would be really a gross indelicacy. I tried to make Cary agree with me, but utterly in vain,--she is so devoid of imagination! There is, too, an utter want of refinement in her mind positively hopeless. She even confessed to me that Lord George without his clothes still seemed Lord George to her, and that no effort she could make was able to persuade her that the old Danish Minister in the black leather skullcap had any resemblance to a river G.o.d. Mamma behaved much better; seeing that the custom was one followed by all the "best people," she adopted it at once, and though she would scream out whenever a gentleman came to talk to her, I 'm sure, with a few weeks' practice, she 'd have perfectly reconciled herself to "etiquette in the water." Should you, with your very Irish notions, raise hands and eyes at all this, and mutter, "How very dreadful!--how shocking!" and so on, I have only to remind you of what the Princess Pauline said to an English lady, who expressed her prudish horrors at the Princess having "sat for Canova in wet drapery": "Oh, it was not so disagreeable as you think; there was always a fire in the room." Now, Kitty, I make the same reply to your shocked scruples, by saying the sea was deliciously warm.

Bathing is here, indeed, a glorious luxury. There is no s.h.i.+vering or shuddering, no lips chattering, blue-nosed, goose-skinned misery, like the home process! It is not a rush in, in desperation, a duck in agony, and a dressing in ague, but a delicious lounge, a.s.sociated with all the enjoyments of scenery and society. The temperature of the sea is just sufficiently below that of the air to invigorate without chilling, like the tone of a company that stimulates without exhausting you. It is, besides, indescribably pleasant to meet with a pastime so suggestive of new themes of talk. Instead of the tiresome and trite topics of ballet and b.a.l.l.s, and dress and diamonds, your conversation smacks of salt water, and every allusion "hath suffered a sea change." Instead of a compliment to your dancing, the flattery is now on your diving; and he who once offered his arm to conduct you to the "buffet," now proposes his company to swim out to a lifebuoy!

And now let me get back to land once more, and you will begin to fancy that your correspondent is Undine herself in disguise. I was very sorry to leave Spezia, since I was just becoming an excellent swimmer. Indeed, the surgeon of an American frigate a.s.sured me that he thought "I had been raised in the Sandwich Islands,"--a compliment which, of course, I felt bound to accept in the sense that most flattered me.

We pa.s.sed through Carrara, stopping only to visit one or two of the studios. They had not much to interest us, the artists being for the most part copyists, and their works usually busts; busts being now the same pa.s.sion with our travelling countrymen as once were oil portraits.

The consequence is that every sculptor's shelves are loaded with thin-lipped, grim-visaged English women, and triple-chinned, apoplectic-looking aldermen, that contrast very unfavorably with the clean-cut brows and sharply chiselled features of cla.s.sic antiquity.

The English are an eminently good-looking race of people, seen in their proper costume of broadcloth and velvet. They are manly and womanly. The native characteristics of boldness, decision, and highhearted honesty are conspicuous in all their traits; nor is there any deficiency in the qualities of tenderness and gentleness. But with all this, when they take off their neckcloths, they make but very indifferent Romans; and he who looked a gentleman in his s.h.i.+rt-collar becomes, what James would call, "an arrant sn.o.b" when seen in a toga. And yet they _will_ do it!

They have a notion that the Anglo-Saxon can do anything,--and so he can, perhaps,--the difference being whether he can _look_ the character he knows so well how to _act_.

We left Carrara by a little mountain path to visit the Bagni di Lucca, a summer place, which once, in its days of Rouge-et-Noir celebrity, was greatly resorted to. The Princ.i.p.ality of Lucca possessed at that period, too, its own reigning duke, and had not been annexed to Tuscany. Like all these small States, without trade or commerce, its resources were mainly derived from the Court; and, consequently, the withdrawal of the Sovereign was the death-blow to all prosperity. It would be quite beyond me to speculate on the real advantages or disadvantages resulting from this practice of absorption, but p.r.o.nouncing merely from externals, I should say that the small States are great sufferers. Nothing can be sadder than the aspect of this little capital. Ruined palaces, gra.s.s-grown streets, tenantless houses, and half-empty shops are seen everywhere. Poverty--I might call it misery--on every hand. The various arts and trades cultivated had been those required by, even called into existence by, the wants of a Court. All the usages of the place had been made to conform to its courtly life and existence, and now this was gone, and all the "occupation" with it! You are not perhaps aware that this same territory of Lucca supplies nearly all of that tribe of image and organ men so well known, not only through Europe, but over the vast continent of America. They are skilful modellers naturally, and work really beautiful things in "terra cotta." They are a hardy mountain race, and, like all "montagnards," have an equal love for enterprise and an attachment to home. Thus they traverse every land and sea, they labor for years long in far-away climes, they endure hards.h.i.+ps and privations of every kind, supported by the one thought of the day when they can return home again, and when in some high-perched mountain village--some "granuolo," or "bennabbia "--they can rest from wandering, and, seated amidst their kith and kind, tell of the wondrous things they have seen in their journeyings. It is not uncommon here, in spots the very wildest and least visited, to find a volume in English or French on the shelf of some humble cottage: now it is perhaps a print, or an engraving of some English landscape,--a spot, doubtless, endeared by some especial recollection,--and not unfrequently a bird from Mexico--a bright-winged parrot from the Brazils--shows where the wanderer's footsteps have borne him, and shows, too, how even there the thoughts of home had followed.

Judged by our own experiences, these people are but scantily welcomed amongst us. They are constantly a.s.sociated in our minds with intolerable hurdy-gurdies and execrable barrel-organs. They are the nightmare of invalids, and the terror of all studious heads, and yet the wealth with which they return shows that their gifts are both acknowledged and rewarded. It must be that to many the organ-man is a pleasant visitor, and the image-hawker a vendor of "high art" I have seen a great many of them since we came here, and in their homes too; for mamma has taken up the notion that these excellent people are all living in a state of spiritual darkness and dest.i.tution, and to enlighten them has been disseminating her precious little volume on the Miracles of Mount Orsaro. It is plain to me that all this zeal of a woman of a foreign nation seems to them a far more miraculous manifestation than anything in her little book, and they stare and wonder at her in a way that plainly shows a compa.s.sionate distrust of her sanity.

It is right I should say that Lord George thinks all these people knaves and vagabonds; and James says they are a set of smugglers, and live by contraband. Whatever be the true side of the picture, I must now leave to your own acuteness, or rather to your prejudices, which for all present purposes are quite good enough judges to decide.

Papa likes this place so much that he actually proposed pa.s.sing the winter here, for "cheapness,"--a very horrid thought, but which, fortunately, Lord George averted by a private hint to the landlord of the inn, saying that papa was rolling in wealth, but an awful miser; so that when the bill made its appearance, with everything charged double, papa's indignation turned to a perfect hatred of the town and all in it: the consequence is that we are tomorrow to leave for Florence, which, if but one half of what Lord George says be true, must be a real earthly paradise. Not that I can possibly doubt him, for he has lived there two, or, I believe, three winters,--knows everybody and everything. How I long to see the Cascini, the Court b.a.l.l.s, the Private Theatricals, at Prince Polywkowsky's, the picnics at Fiesole, and those dear receptions at Madame della Montanare's, where, as Lord G. says, every one goes, and "there's no absurd cant heard about character."

Indeed, to judge from Lord G.'s account, Florence--to use his own words--is "the most advanced city in Europe;" that is to say, the Florentines take a higher and more ample view of social philosophy than any other people. The erring individual in our country is always treated like the wounded crow,--the whole rookery is down upon him at once. Not so here; he--or _she_, to speak more properly--is tenderly treated and compa.s.sionated; all the little blandishments of society showered on her.

She is made to feel that the world is really not that ill-natured thing sour moralists would describe it; and even if she feel indisposed to return to safer paths, the perilous ones are made as pleasant for her as it is possible. These are nearly his own words, dearest, and are they not beautiful? so teeming with delicacy and true charity. And oh!

Kitty, I must say these are habits we do not practise at home in our own country. But of this more hereafter; for the present, I can think of nothing but the society of this delightful city, and am trying to learn off by heart the names of all the charming houses in which he is to introduce us. He has written, besides, to various friends in England for letters for us, so that we shall be unquestionably better off here--socially speaking--than in any other city of the Continent.

We leave this after breakfast to-morrow; and before the end of the week it is likely you may hear from me again, for I am longing to give you my first impressions of Firenza la Bella; till when, I am, as ever, your dearly attached

Mary Anne Dodd.

P. S. Great good fortune, Kitty,--we shall arrive in time for the races.

Lord G. has got a note from Prince Pincecotti, asking him to ride his horse "Bruise-drog,"--which, it seems, is the Italian for "Bull-dog,"--and he consents. He is to wear my colors, too, dearest,--green and white,--and I have promised to make him a present of his jacket How handsome he _will_ look in jockey dress!

James is in distraction at being too heavy for even a hurdle-race; but as he is six feet one, and stout in proportion, it is out of the question. Lord G. insists upon it that Cary and I must go on horseback.

Mamma agrees with him, and papa as stoutly resists. It is in vain we tell him that all depends on the way we open the campaign here, and that the present opportunity is a piece of rare good fortune; he is in one of his obstinate moods, and mutters something about "beggars on horseback,"

and the place they "ride to." I open my letter to say--carried triumphantly, dearest--we _are_ to ride.

LETTER XXV. JAMES DODD TO ROBERT DOOLAN, ESQ., TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.

Htel d'Italie, Florence, Wednesday.

My dear Bob,--Here we are going it, and in about the very "fastest"

place I ever set foot in. In any other city society seems to reserve itself for evening and lamplight; but here, Bob, you make "running from the start," and keep up the pace till you come in. In the morning there 's the club, with plenty of whist; all the gossip of the town,--and such gossip too,--the real article, by Jove!--no shadowy innuendoes, no vague and half-mystified hints of a flaw here or a crack there, but home blows, my boy, with a smashed character or a ruined reputation at every stroke. This is, however, only a breathing canter for what awaits you at the Cascini,--a sort of "promenade," where all the people meet in their carriages, and exchange confidences in scandal and invitations to tea,--the Cascini being to the club what the ballet is to the opera.

After this, you have barely time to dress for dinner; which over, the opera begins. There you pay visits from box to box; learn all that is going on for the evening; hear where the prettiest women are going, and where the smartest play will be found. Midnight arrives, and then--but not before--the real life of Florence begins. The dear Contessa, that never showed by daylight, at last appears in her _salon_; the charming Marchesa, whose very head-dress is a study from t.i.tian, and whose dark-fringed eyes you think you recognize from the picture in "the Pitti," at length sails in, to receive the humble homage of--what, think you? a score of devoted wors.h.i.+ppers, a band of chivalrous adorers?

Nothing of the kind, Bob: a dozen or so of young fellows, in all manner of costumes, and all shapes of beards and moustaches; all smoking cigars or cigarettes, talking, singing, laughing, thumping the piano, shouting choruses, playing tricks with cards,--all manner of tomfoolery, in fact; with a dash of enthusiasm in the nonsense that carries you along in spite of yourself. The conversation--if one can dare to call it such--is a wild chaos of turf-talk, politics, scandal, literature, buffoonery, and the ballet. There is abundance of wit,--plenty of real smartness on every side. The fellows who have just described the cut of a tucker can tell you accurately the contents of a treaty; and they who did not seem to have a thought above the depth of a flounce or the width of a sandal, are thoroughly well versed in the politics of every State of Europe.

There is no touch of sarcasm in their gayety,--none of that refined, subtle ridicule that runs through a Frenchman's talk; these fellows are eminently good-natured: the code of morals is not severe, and hence the secret of the merciful judgments you hear p.r.o.nounced on every one.

As to breeding, we English should certainly say there was an excess of familiarity. Everybody puts his arm on your shoulder, pats you on the back, and calls you by your Christian name. I am "Giacomo" to a host of fellows I don't know by name; and "Gemess" to a select few, who pride themselves on speaking English. At all events, Bob, there is no constraint,--no reserve amongst them. You are at your ease at once, and good fellows.h.i.+p is the order of the day.

As to the women, they have a half-shy, half-confident look, that puzzles one sadly. They 'll stand a stare from you most unblus.h.i.+ngly; they think it's all very right and very reasonable that you should look at them as long and as fixedly as you would do at a Baffaelle in the Gallery: but with all that, there is a great real delicacy of deportment, and those coram-publico preferences which are occasionally exhibited in England, and even in France, are never seen in Italian society. As to good looks, there is an abundance, but of a character which an Englishman at first will scarcely accept as beauty. They are rarely handsome by feature, but frequently beautiful by expression. There is, besides, a graceful languor, a tender Cleopatra-like voluptuousness in their air that distinguishes them from other women; and I have no doubt that any one who has lived long in Italy would p.r.o.nounce French smartness and coquetry the very essence of vulgarity. They cannot dress like a Parisian, nor waltz like a Wienerin; but, to my thinking, they are far more captivating than either. I am already in love with four, and I have just heard of a fifth, that I am sure will set me downright distracted.

There 's one thing I like especially in them; and I own to you, Bob, it would compensate to me for any amount of defects, which I believe do not pertain to them. It is this: they have no accomplishments,--they neither murder Rossini, nor mar Salvator Rosa; they are not educated to torment society, poison social intercourse, and push politeness to its last entrenchment. You are not called on for silence while they scream, nor for praise when they paint. They do not convert a drawing-room into a boarding-school on examination-day, and they are satisfied to charm you by fascinations that cost you no compromise to admire.

After all, I believe we English are the only people that adopt the other plan. We take a commercial view of the matter, and having invested so much of our money in accomplishment, we like to show our friends that we have made a good speculation. For myself, I 'd as soon be married to a musical snuff-box or a daguerreotype machine as to a "well-brought-up English girl," who had always the benefit of the best masters in music and drawing. The fourth-rate artist in anything is better than the first-rate amateur; and I 'd just as soon wear home-made shoes as listen to home-made music.

I have not been presented in any of the English houses here as yet.

There is some wonderful controversy going forward as to whether we are to call first, or to wait to be called on; and I begin to fear that the Carnival will open before it can be settled. The governor, too, has got into a hot controversy with our Minister here, about our presentation at Court. It would appear that the rule is, you should have been presented at home, in order to be eligible for presentation abroad. Now, we have been at the Castle, but never at St James's. The Minister, however, will not recognize reflected royalty; and here we are, suffering under a real Irish grievance O'Connell would have given his eye for. The fun of it is that the Court--at least, I hear so--is crammed with English, who never even saw a Viceroy, nor perhaps partook of the high festivities of a Lord Mayor's Ball. How they got there is not for me to inquire, but I suppose that a vow to a chamberlain is like a customhouse oath, and can always be reconciled to an easy conscience.

We have arrived here at an opportune moment,--time to see all the notorieties of the place at the races, which began to-day. So far as I can learn, the foreigners have adopted the English taste, with the true spirit of imitators; that is, they have given little attention to any improvement in the breed of cattle, but have devoted considerable energy to all the rogueries of the ring, and with such success that Newmarket and Doncaster might still learn something from the "Legs" of the Continent.

Tiverton, who is completely behind the scenes, has told me some strange stories about their doings; and, at the very moment I am writing, horses are being withdrawn, names scratched, forfeits declared, and bets p.r.o.nounced "off," with a degree of precipitation and haste that shows how little confidence exists amongst the members of the ring. As for myself, not knowing either the course, the horses, nor the colors of the riders, I take my amus.e.m.e.nt in observing--what is really most laughable--the absurd effort made by certain small folk here to resemble the habits and ways of certain big ones in England. Now it is a retired coach-maker, or a pensioned-off clerk in a Crown office, that jogs down the course, betting-book in hand, trying to look--in the quaintness of his cob, and the trim smugness of his groom--like some old county squire of fifteen thousand a year. Now it is some bluff, middle-aged gent, who, with coat thrown back and thumbs in his waistcoat, insists upon being thought Lord George Bentinck. There are Ma.s.sy Stanleys, George Paynes, Lord Wiltons, and Colonel Peels by dozens; "gentlemen jocks" swathed in drab paletots, to hide the brighter rays of costume beneath, gallop at full speed across the gra.s.s on ponies of most diminutive size; smartly got-up fellows stand under the judge's box, and slang the authorities above, or stare at the ladies in front. There are cold luncheons, sandwiches, champagne, and soda-water; bets, beauties, and bitter beer,--everything, in short, that const.i.tutes races, but horses! The system is that every great man gives a cup, and wins it himself; the only possible interest attending such a process being whether, in some paroxysm of anger at this, or some frump at that, he may not withdraw his horse at the last moment,--an event on which a small knot of gentlemen with dark eyes, thick lips, and aquiline noses seem to speculate as a race chance, and only second in point of interest to a whist party at the Casino with a couple of newly come "Bulls." A more stupid proceeding, therefore, than these races--bating always the fun derived from watching the "sn.o.bocracy".

I have mentioned--cannot be conceived. Now it was a walk over; now a "sell;" now two horses of the same owner; now one horse that was owned by three. The private history of the rogueries might possibly amuse, but all that met the public eye was of the very slowest imaginable.

I begin to think, Bob, that horse-racing is only a sport that can be maintained by a great nation abounding in wealth, and with all the appliances of state and splendor. You ought to have gorgeous equipages, magnificent horses, thousands of spectators, stands crowded to the roof by a cla.s.s such as only exists in great countries. Royalty itself, in all its pomp, should be there; and all that represents the pride and circ.u.mstance of a mighty people. To try these things on a small scale is ridiculous,--just as a little navy of one sloop and a steamer! With great proportions and ample verge, the detracting elements are hidden from view. The minor rascalities do not intrude themselves on a scene of such grandeur; and though cheating, knavery, and fraud are there, they are not foreground figures. Now, on a little "race-course," it is exactly the reverse: just as on board of a three-decker you know nothing of the rats, but in a Nile boat they are your bedfellows and your guests at dinner.

To-morrow we are to have a match with gentlemen riders, and if anything worth recording occurs I 'll keep a corner for it Mother is in the grand stand, with any amount of d.u.c.h.esses and marchionesses around her.

The governor is wandering about the field, peeping at the cattle, and wondering how the riders are to get round a sharp turn at the end of the course. The girls are on horseback with Tiverton; and, in the long intervals between the matches, I jot down these rough notes for you. The scene itself is beautiful. The field, flanked on one side by the wood of the Cascini, is open on t' other to the mountains: Fiezole, from base to summit, is dotted over with villas half buried in groves of orange and olive trees. The Val d'Arno opens on one side, and the high mountain of Vallombrosa on the other. The gayly dressed and bright-costumed Florentine population throng the ground itself, and over their heads are seen the glorious domes and towers and spires of beautiful Florence, under a broad sky of cloudless blue, and in an atmosphere of rarest purity.

Thursday.

Tiverton has won his match, and with the worst horse too. Of his compet.i.tors one fell off; another never got up at all; a third bolted; and a fourth took so much out of his horse in a breathing canter before the race, that the animal was dead beat before he came to the start. And now the knowing ones are going about muttering angry denunciations on the treachery of grooms and trainers, and vowing that "Gli gentlemen riders son grandi bricconi."

I am glad it is over. The whole scene was one of quarrelling, row, and animosity from beginning to end. These people neither know how to win money nor to lose it; and as to the English who figure on such occasions, take my word for it, Bob, the national character gains little by their alliance. It is too soon for me, perhaps, to p.r.o.nounce in this fas.h.i.+on, but Tiverton has told me so many little private histories--revealed so much of the secret memoirs of these folk--that I believe I am speaking what subsequent experience will amply confirm. For the present, good-bye, and believe me,

Ever yours,

James Dodd.

LETTER XXVI. KENNY DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., ORANGE, BRUFF.

Florence, Lungo l'Arno.

My dear Tom,--It is nigh a month since I wrote to you last, and if I didn't "steal a few hours from the night, my dear," it might be longer still. The address will tell you where we are,--I wish anybody or anything else would tell you how or why we came here! I intended to have gone back from Genoa, nor do I yet understand what prevented me doing so. My poor head--none of the clearest in what may be called my lucid intervals--is but a very indifferent thinking machine when hara.s.sed, worried, and tormented as I have been latterly. You have heard how James's Countess, the Cardinal's niece and the betrothed of a Neapolitan Prince, turned out to be a circus woman, one of those bits of tawdry gold fringe and pink silk pantaloons that dance on a chalked saddle to a one-s.h.i.+lling mult.i.tude! By good fortune she had two husbands living, or she might have married the boy. As it was, he has gone into all manner of debt on her account; and if it was not that I can defy ruin in any shape,--for certain excellent reasons you may guess at,--this last exploit of his would go nigh to our utter destruction.

We hurried away out of Genoa in shame, and came on here by slow stages.

The womenkind plucked up wonderfully on the way, and I believe of the whole party your humble servant alone carried abas.e.m.e.nt with him inside the gates of Florence.

My sense of sorrow and shame probably somehow blunted my faculties and dulled my reasoning powers, for I would seem to have concurred in a vast number of plans and arrangements that now, when I have come to myself, strike me with intense astonishment. For instance, we have taken a suite of rooms on the Arno, hired a cook, a carriage, and a courier; we are, I hear, also in negotiation for a box at the "Pergola," and I am credibly informed that I am myself looking out for saddle-horses for the girls, and a "stout-made, square-jointed cob of lively action," to carry myself.