The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. I. Lynde Francis
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reading you, by Jove, – reading you like a book. All the false air of ease and indifference, all the brag assurance you may get up to conceal a "bad hand," isn't worth sixpence. They laugh at your puerile efforts, and tell you "you are voled" before you've played a card. We hear so much about genius and talent, and all that kind of thing at home, and you, I have no doubt, are full of the high abilities of some fellowship or medallist man of Trinity; but give me the deep penetration, the intense powers of calculation, the thorough insight into human nature, of some of the fellows I see here; and for success in life, I 'll back them against all your conic section and x plus y geniuses, and all the double first classes that ever breathed. There's a splendid fellow here, a Pole, called Koratinsky; he commanded the cavalry at Ostrolenca, and, it is said, rode down the Russian Guard, and sabred the Imperial Cuirassiers to a man. He's the first écarté and piquet player in Europe, and equal to Deschapelles at whist. Though he is very distant and cold in his manner to strangers, he has been most kind and good-natured to me; has given me some capital advice, too, and warned me against several of the fellows that frequent the club. He tells me that he detests and abhors play, but resorts to it as a distraction. "Que voulez-vous?" said he to me the other day; "when a man who calls himself Ladislaus Koratinsky, who has the blood of three monarchs in his veins, who has twice touched the crown of his native land, sees himself an exile and a 'proscrit,' it is only in the momentary excitement of the gaming-table he can find a passing relief for crushing and withering recollections." He could be in all the highest circles here. The greatest among the nobles are constantly begging and entreating him to come to their houses, but he sternly refuses. "Let me know one family," says he, "one domestic circle, where I can go uninvited, when I will, – where I can repose my confidence, tell my sorrows, and speak of my poor country; give me one such, and I ask for no more; but as for dukes and grand seigneurs, princesses and duchesses, I've had but too much of them." I assure you, Bob, it 's like a page out of some old story of chivalry to listen to him. The splendid sentiments, the glorious conceptions, and the great plans he has for the regeneration of Europe; and how he abhors the Emperor of Russia! "It's a 'duel à mort entre Nicholas et moi,'" said he to me yesterday.
"The terms of the conflict were signed on the field of Ostrolenca; for the present the victory is his, but there is a time coming!" I have been trying all manner of schemes to have him invited to dine with us. Mother and Mary Anne are with me, heart and hand; but the governor's late mischances have soured him against all foreigners, and I must bide my time. I feel, however, when my father sees him, he'll be delighted with him; and then he could be invaluable to us in the way of introductions, for he knows every crowned head and prince on the Continent.
After dinner, pretending to take an evening lesson in French, I'm off to the Opera. I belong to an omnibus-box, – all the fast fellows here, – such splendid dressers, Bob, and each coming in his brougham. I'm deucedly ashamed that I've nothing but a cabriolet, which I hire from my friend Lazarus at twelve pounds a month. They quiz me tremendously about my "rococo" taste in equipage, but I turn off the joke by telling them that I'm expecting my cattle and my "traps" from London next week. Lazarus promises me that I shall have a splendid "Malibran" from Hobson, and two grays over by the Antwerp packet, if I give him a bill for the price, at three months; and that he'll keep them for me at his stables till I 'm quite ready to pay. Stickler, the other job-master here, wanted the governor's name on the bills, and behaved like a scoundrel, threatening to tell my father all about it It cost me a "ten-pounder" to stop him.
After the theatre we adjourn to Dubos's to supper, and I can give you no idea, Bob, of what a thing that supper is! I remember when we used to fancy it was rather a grand affair to finish our evening at Jude's or Hayes's with a vulgar set-out of mutton-chops, spatchcocks, and devilled kidneys, washed down with* that filthy potation called punch. I shudder at the vile abomination of the whole when I think of our delicate lobster en mayonnaise^ or crouton aux truffes, red partridges in Rhine wine, and maraschino jelly, with Moët frappé to perfection. We generally invite some of the "corps," who abound in conversational ability, and are full of the pleasant gossip of the stage. There is Mademoiselle Léonine, too, in the ballet, the loveliest creature ever was seen. They say Count Maerlens, aide-de-camp of the King, is privately married to her, but that she won't leave the boards till she has saved a million, – but whether of francs or pounds, I don't remember.
When our supper is concluded, it is generally about four o'clock, and then we go to D'Arlaen's rooms, where we play chicken-hazard till our various houses are accessible.
I 'm not much up to this as yet; my forte is écarté, at which I am the terror of these fellows; and when the races come on next month, I think my knowledge of horseflesh will teach them a thing or two. I have already a third share in a splendid horse called Number Nip, bred out of Barnabas by a Middleton mare; he's engaged for the Lacken Cup and the Salle Sweepstakes, and I 'm backing him even against the field for everything I can get. If you 'd like to net a fifty without risk, say so before the tenth, and I 'll do it for you.
So that you see, Bob, without De Porquet's Grammar and "Ollendorff's Method," my time is tolerably full. In fact, if the day had forty-eight hours, I have something to fill every one of them.
There would be nothing but pleasure in this life, but for certain drawbacks, the worst of which is that I am not alone here. You have no idea, Bob, to what subterfuges I 'm reduced, to keep my family out of sight of my grand acquaintances. Sometimes I call the governor my guardian; sometimes an uncle, so rich that I am forced to put up with all his whims and caprices. Egad! it went so far, f other day, that I had to listen to a quizzing account of my aunt's costume at a concert, and hear my mother shown up as a précieuse ridicule of the first water. There's no keeping them out of public places, too; and how they know of all the various processions, Te Deums, and the like I cannot even guess. My own metamorphosis is so complete that I have cut them twice dead, in the Park; and no later than last night, I nearly ran over my father in the Allée Verte with my tandem leader, and heard the whole story this morning at breakfast, with the comforting assurance that "he 'd know the puppy again, and will break every bone in his body if he catches him." In consequence of which threat, I have given orders for a new beard and moustache of the Royal Albert hue, instead of black, which I have worn heretofore. I must own, though, it is rather a bore to stand quietly by and see fellows larking your sister; but Mary Anne is perfectly incorrigible, notwithstanding all I have said to her. Cary's safety lies in hating the Continent and all foreigners, and that is just as absurd.
The governor, it seems, is perpetually writing to Vickars, our member, about something for me. Now, I sincerely hope that he may not succeed; for I own to you that I do not anticipate as much pleasure and amusement from either a "snug berth in the Customs" or a colonial situation; and after all, Bob, why should I be reduced to accept of either? Our estate is a good one, and if a little encumbered or so, why, we 're not worse off than our neighbors. If I must do something, I 'd rather go into a Light Cavalry Regiment – such as the Eleventh, or the Seventeenth – than anything else. I say this to you, because your uncle Purcell is bent on his own plans for me, which would be nothing short of utter degradation; and if there's anything low-bred and vulgar on earth, it's what they call a "Profession." You know the old adage about leading a horse to the water; now I frankly declare to you that twenty shall not make me drink any of the springs of this knowledge, whether Law, Medicine, or Divinity lie at the bottom of the well.
It does not require any great tact or foresight to perceive that not a man of my "set" would ever know me again under such circumstances. I have heard their opinions often enough on these matters not to be mistaken; and whatever we may think in Ireland about our doctors and barristers, they are what Yankees call "mighty small potatoes" abroad.
Lord George Tiverton said to me last night, "Why doesn't your governor put you into 'the House'? You'd make a devilish good figure there." And the notion has never left me since. Lord George himself is Member for Hornby, but he never attends the sittings, and only goes into Parliament as a means of getting leave from his regiment. They say he's the "fastest" fellow in the service; he has already run through seventeen thousand a year, and one hundred and twenty thousand of his wife's fortune. They are separated now, and he has something like twelve hundred a year to live on; just enough for cigars and brandy and water, he calls it. He's the best-tempered fellow I ever saw, and laughs and jokes about his own misfortunes as freely as possible. He knows the world – and