The Dodd Family Abroad Volume Ii Part 10

"Egad," said I, "it will be the death of _me_ with laughing;" and I shook till my sides ached.

"Does his Excellency know that he is in a Court of Justice?" said Plasterer No. 1.

"Tell him, my dear, that I quite forgot it. I fancied I was at a play, and enjoyed it much."

I believe Cary did n't translate me honestly, for the old fellow seemed appeased, and the case continued. I could now perceive that my atrocious conduct had evoked a very strong sentiment in the auditory, for there was a great rush forward to get a look at me, and they who were fortunate enough to succeed complimented me by a string of the most abusive and insulting epithets.

My advocate was now called on, and, seeing him rise, I just whispered to Cary, "Ask the judge if we may see the wound?"

"What does that question mean?" said the chief judge, imperiously.

"Would the prisoner dare to insinuate that the wound has no existence?"

"You've hit it," said I. "Tell him, Cary, that's exactly what I mean."

"Has not the prisoner sworn to his sufferings," repeated he, "and the doctor made oath to the treatment?"

"They 're both a pair of lying scoundrels. Tell him so, Cary."

"You see him now. There is the man himself in his true colors, most ill.u.s.trious and most ornate judges," exclaimed Giacomo, pointing to me with his finger, as I nearly burst with rage.

"Ah! che diavolo! che demonio infernale!" rang out amidst the waving crowd; and the looks bestowed on me from the bench seemed to give hearty concurrence to the opinion.

Now, Tom, a court of justice, be its locale ever so humble, and its procedure ever so simple, has always struck me as the very finest evidence of homage to civilization. There is something in the fact of men submitting, not only their worldly interests and their characters, but even their very pa.s.sions, to the arbitration of their fellow-men, that is indescribably fine and n.o.ble, and shows--if we even wanted such a proof--that this corrupt nature of ours, in the midst of all its worst influences, has still some of that divine essence within, unsullied and untarnished. And just as I reverence this, do I execrate, with all my heart's indignation, a corrupt judicature. The governments who employ, and the people who tolerate them, are well worthy of each other.

Take all the vices that degrade a nation, "bray them in a mortar," and they 'll not eat so deep into the moral feeling of a people as a tainted administration of the law.

You may fancy that, in my pa.s.sionate warmth, I have forgotten all about my individual case: no such thing. I have, however, rescued myself from the danger of an apoplexy by opening this safety-valve to my indignation. And now I cannot resume my narrative. No, Tom, "I have lost the scent," and all I can do is to bring you "in at the death." I was sentenced to pay seven hundred zwanzigers,--eight-pences,--all the costs of the procedure, the doctor's bill, and the maintenance of Giacomo till his convalescence was completed. I appealed on the spot to an upper court, and the judgment was confirmed! I nearly burst with indignant anger, and asked my advocate if he had ever heard of such iniquity.

He shrugged his shoulders, smiled slightly, and said, "The law is precarious in all countries."

"Yes,--but," said I, "the judges are not always corrupt. Now, that old president of the first court suggested every answer to the witness--"

"Vincenzio Lamporeccho is a shrewd man--"

"What! How do you call him? Is he anything to our friend Giacomo?"

"He is his father!"

"And the Brigadier who arrested me?"

"Is his brother. The junior judge of the Appeal Court, Luigi Lamporeccho, is his first cousin."

I did n't ask more questions, Tom. Fancy a country where your butler is brother to the chief baron, and sues you for wages in the Court of Exchequer!

"And you, Signor Mastuccio," said I. "I hope I have not exposed you to the vengeance of this powerful family by your zeal in my behalf?"

"Not in the least," said he; "my mother was a Lamporeccho herself."

Now, Tom, I think I need not take any more pains to explain the issue of my lawsuit; and here I'll leave it.

My parting benediction to the Court was brief: "Goodbye, old gentlemen.

I 'm glad you have the Austrians here to bully you; and not sorry that _you_ are here to a.s.sa.s.sinate _them_." This speech was overheard by some learned linguist in court, and on the same evening I received an intimation to quit the Imperial dominions within twenty-four hours.

Tiverton was for going up to Milan to Radetzky, or somebody, else, and having it all "put straight," as he calls it; but I would not hear of this.

"We 'll write to the Amba.s.sador at Vienna?" said he.

"Nor that either," said I.

"To the 'Times,' then."

"Not a word of it."

"You don't mean to say," said he, "that you 'll put up with this treatment, and that you'll lower the name of Briton before these foreigners by such a tame submission?"

"My view of the case is a very simple one, my Lord," said I; "and it is this. We travelling English are very p.r.o.ne to two faults; one is, a bullying effort to oppose ourselves to the laws of the countries we visit; and then, when we fail, a whining appeal to some minister or consul to take up our battle. The first is stupid, the latter is contemptible. The same feeling that would prevent me trespa.s.sing on the hospitality of an unwilling host will rescue me from the indignity of remaining in a country where my presence is distasteful to the rulers of it."

"Such a line of conduct," said he, "would expose us to insult from one end of Europe to the other."

"And if it teach us to stay at home, and live under laws that we understand, the price is not too high for the benefit."

He bl.u.s.tered away about what he would n't do in the Press, and in his "place" in Parliament; but what's the use of all that? Will England go to war for Kenny James Dodd? No. Well, then, by no other argument is the foreigner a.s.sailable. Tell the Austrian or the Russian Government that the company at the "Freemasons'" dinner were shocked, and the ladies at Exeter Hall were outraged at their cruelty, and they 'll only laugh at you. We can't send a fleet to Vienna; nor--we would n't if we could.

I did n't tell Lord George, but to you, in confidence, Tom, I will say, I think we have--if we liked it--a grand remedy for all these cases. Do you know that it was thinking of Tim Ryan, the rat-catcher at Kelly's mills, suggested it to me. Whenever Tim came up to a house with his traps and contrivances, if the family said they did n't need him, "for they had no rats," he 'd just loiter about the place till evening,--and, whatever he did, or how he did it, one thing was quite sure, they had never to make the same complaint again! Now, my notion is, whenever we have any grudge with a foreign State, don't begin to fit out fleets or armaments, but just send a steamer off to the nearest port with one of the refugees aboard. I 'd keep Kossuth at Malta, always ready; Louis Blanc and Ledru Rollin at Jersey; Don Miguel and Don Carlos at Gibraltar; and have Mazzini and some of the rest cruising about for any service they may be wanted on. In that way, Tom, we 'd keep these Governments in order, and, like Tim Ryan, be turning our vermin to a good account besides!

I thought that Mrs. D. and Mary Anne displayed a degree of attachment to this place rather surprising, considering that I have heard of nothing but its inconvenience till this moment, when we are ordered to quit it.

Now, however, they suddenly discover it to be healthful, charming, and economical. I have questioned Cary as to the secret of this change, but she does not understand it. She knows that Lord George received a large packet by the post this morning, and instantly hurried off to communicate its contents to Mary Anne. By George! Tom, I have come to the notion that to rule a family of four people, one ought to have a "detective officer" attached to the household. Every day or so, something puzzling and inexplicable occurs, the meaning of which never turns up till you find yourself duped, and then it is too late to complain. Now, this same letter Cary speaks of is at this very instant exercising a degree of influence here, and I am to remain in ignorance of the cause till I can pick it out from the effect. This, too, is another blessed result of foreign travel! When we lived at home the incidents of our daily life were few, and not very eventful; they were circ.u.mscribed within narrow limits, and addressed themselves to the feelings of every one amongst us. Concealment would have been absurd, even were it possible; but the truth was, we were all so engaged with the same topics and the same spirit, that we talked of them constantly, and grew to think that outside the little circle of ourselves the world was a mere wilderness. To be sure, all this sounds very narrow-minded, and all that. So it does; but let me tell you, it conduces greatly to happiness and contentment.

Now, here, we have so many irons in the fire, some one or other of us is always burning his fingers!

I continue to be very uneasy about James. Not a line have we had from him, and he 's now several weeks gone! I wrote to Vickars, but have not yet heard from him in reply. Cary endeavors to persuade me that it is only his indolent, careless habit is in fault; but I can see that she is just as uncomfortable and anxious as myself.

You will collect from the length of this doc.u.ment that I am quite myself again; and, indeed, except a little dizziness in my head after dinner, and a tendency to sleep, I 'm all right. Not that I complain of the latter,--far from it, Tom. Sancho Panza himself never blessed the inventor of it more fervently than I do.

Sometimes, however, I think that it is the newspapers are not so amusing as they used to be. The racy old bitterness of party spirit is dying out, and all the spicy drollery and epigrammatic fun of former days gone with it. It strikes me, too, Tom, that "Party," in the strong sense, never can exist again amongst us. Party is essentially the submission of the many to the few; and so long as the few were pre-eminent in ability and tactical skill, nothing was more salutary. Wal-pole, Pelham, Pitt, and Fox stood immeasurably above the men and the intelligence of their time. Their statecraft was a science of which the ma.s.s of their followers were totally ignorant, and the crew never dreamt of questioning the pilot as to the course he was about to take. Whereas now--although by no means deficient in able and competent men to rule us--the body of the House is filled by others very little their inferiors. Old Babbington used to say "that between a good physician and a bad one, there was only the difference between a pound and a guinea."

In the same way, there is not a wider interval now between the Right Honorable Secretary on the Treasury Bench and the Honorable Member below him. Education is widely disseminated,--the intercourse of club life is immense,--opportunities of knowledge abound on every hand,--the Press is a great popular instructor; and, above all, the temper and tendency of the age favors labor of every kind. Idleness is not in vogue with any cla.s.s of the whole community. What chance, then, of any man, no matter how great and gifted he be, imposing, his opinions--_as such_--upon the world of politics! A minister, or his opponent, may get together a number of supporters for a particular measure, just as you or I could muster a mob at an election or a fair; but there would be no more discipline in the one case than in the other. They'd come now, and go when they liked; and any chance of reducing such "irregulars" to the habits of an army would be downright impossible!

There is another cause of dulness, too, in the newspapers. All the accidents--a most amusing column it used to be--are now entirely caused by railroads; and there is a shocking sameness about them. They were "shunting" wagons across the line when the express came up, or the pointsman did n't turn the switch, or the fog obscured the danger signal. With these three explanations, some hundreds of human beings are annually smashed, smothered, and scalded, and the survivors not a whit more provident than before.

Cruel a.s.saults upon women--usually the wives of the ruffians themselves--are, I perceive, becoming a species of popular custom in England. Every "Times" I see has its catalogue of these atrocities; and I don't perceive that five s.h.i.+lling fines nor even three weeks at the treadmill diminishes the number. One of the railroad companies announces that it will not hold itself responsible for casualties, nor indemnify the sufferers. Don't you think that we might borrow a hint from them, and insert some cause of the same kind into the marriage ceremony, and that the woman should know all her "liabilities" without any hope of appeal? Ah! Tom Purcell, all our naval reviews, and industrial exhibitions, and boastful "leading" articles about our national greatness come with a very ill grace in the same broad sheet with these degrading police histories. Must savage ferocity accompany us as we grow in wealth and power? If so, then I 'd rather see us a third-rate power to-morrow than rule the world at the cost of such disgrace!

Ireland, I see, jogs on just as usual, wrangling away. They can't even agree whether the potatoes have got the rot or not. Some of the papers, too, are taking up the English cry of triumph over the downfall of our old squirearchy; but it does not sound well from _them_. To be sure, some of the new proprietors would seem not only to have taken our estates, but tasted the Blarney-stone besides; and one, a great man too, has been making a fine speech with his "respected friend, the Reverend Mr. O'Shea," on his right hand, and vowing that he 'll never turn out anybody that pays the rent, nor dispossess a good tenant! The stupid infatuation of these English makes me sick, Tom. Why, with all their self-sufficiency, can't they see that we understand our own people better than they do? We know the causes of bad seasons and short harvests better; we know the soil better, and the climate better, and if we haven't been good landlords, it is simply because we couldn't afford it. Now, they are rich, and can afford it; and if they have bought up Irish estates to get the rents out of them, I 'd like to know what's to be the great benefit of the change. "Pay up the arrears," says I; but if my Lord Somebody from England says the same, I think there 's no use in selling _me_ out, and taking _him_ in my place. And this brings me to asking when I'm to get another remittance? I _am_ thinking seriously of retrenchment; but first, Tom, one must have something to retrench upon.

You must possess a salary before you can stand "stoppages." Of course we mean "to come home again." I have n't heard that the Government have selected me for a snug berth in the Colonies; so be a.s.sured that you'll see us all back in Dodsborough before--

Mrs. D. had been looking over my shoulder, Tom, while I was writing the last line, and we have just had what she calls an "explanation," but what ordinary grammarians would style--a row. She frankly and firmly declares that I may try Timbuctoo or the Gambia if I like, but back to Ireland she positively will not go! She informs me, besides, that she is quite open to an arrangement about a separate maintenance. But my property, Tom, is like poor Jack Heffernan's goose,--it would n't bear carving, so he just helped himself to it all! And, as I said to Mrs. D., two people may get some kind of shelter under one umbrella, but they 'll infallibly be wet through if they cut it in two, and each walk off with his half. "If you were a bit of a gentleman," said she, "you 'd give it all to the lady." That's what I got for my ill.u.s.tration.

But now that I 'm safe once more, I repeat, you shall certainly see us back in our old house again, and which, for more reasons than I choose to detail here, we ought never to have quitted.

I have been just sent for to a cabinet council of the family, who are curious to know whither we are going from this; and as I wish to appear prepared with a plan, and am not strong in geography, I 'll take a look at the map before I go. I've hit it, Tom,--Parma. Parma will do admirably. It's near, and it's never visited by strangers. There 's a gallery of pictures to look at, and, at the worst, plenty of cheese to eat. Tourists may talk and grumble as they will about the dreary aspect of these small capitals, without trade and commerce, with a beggarly Court and a ruined n.o.bility,--to me they are a boon from Heaven. You can always live in them for a fourth of the cost of elsewhere. The head inn is your own, just as the Piazza is, and the park at the back of the palace. It goes hard but you can amuse yourself poking about into old churches, and peeping into shrines and down wells, pottering into the market-place, and watching the bargaining for eggs and onions; and when these fail, it's good fun to mark the discomfiture of your womankind at being shut up in a place where there's neither opera nor playhouse,--no promenade, no regimental band, and not even a milliner's shop.

From all I can learn, Parma will suit me perfectly; and now I 'm off to announce my resolve to the family. Address me there, Tom, and with a sufficiency of cash to move further when necessary.