Charles James Lever

“ Now, my dear Kitty, be as national and patriotic as one will; play "Rule Britannia" every morning, with variations, on the piano; wear a Paisley shawl and a Dunstable bonnet; make yourself as hideous and absurd as the habits of your native country will admit of,—and that is a wide latitude,—you will be obliged to own the startling fact, the Continent is more civilized than England. Daily life is surrounded with more of elegance and of refinement, for the simple reason that there is more leisure for both. There is none of that vulgarity of incessant occupation so observable with us. ”

“ This was the damning circumstance, Tom. She was fond of mustard,—I had often remarked it; and just see, now, on what a trivial thing a man's happiness can hang. For I own to you, so long as I was strong in what I fancied to be her good graces, I could have fought the whole regiment of Blues; but when I thought to myself, "She doesn't care a brass farthing for you, Kenny Dodd; she may be laughing at you this minute over the ham sandwiches,"—I felt like a drowning man that had nothing to grapple on. Talk of unhappy and injured men, indeed! Wasn't I in that category myself? ”

“ Ah, Kitty, what a charm there is in the amiable tone of foreigners! How striking the contrast between their cultivated politeness and the rude barbarism of our own people! Fancy for a moment what is our home notion of a custom-house official!—a shabby genteel individual, with a week's beard and a brandy-and-water eye, that pokes into your trunk after French gloves, and searches your brother's pocket for cheroots. Imagine him beside one of these magnificently dressed and really splendid-looking men, with all the air of an aide-de-camp to the Queen! ”

“ But I ask you, Kitty, what is there in our relative stations in society which should embolden him to offer me attentions? Do we move in the same sphere? have we either thoughts, ideas, or ambitions—have we even acquaintances—in common? I do not want to magnify the position I hold. Heaven knows that the great world is not a sea devoid of rocks and quicksands. No one feels its perils more acutely than myself. ”

“ I wore my amber gauze over the satin slip, with the "jonquilles" and white roses, two camellias in my hair, with mamma's coral chain twined through the roll at the back. Count Ambrose de Roncy called me a "rose-cameo," and I believe I did look my best. I danced with "Prince Sierra d'Aguila Nero," a Sicilian that ought to be King of Sicily, and will, they say, if the King of Naples dies without leaving seven sons. What a splendid man, Kitty! not tall, rather the reverse; but such eyes, and such a beard, and so perfumed,—the very air around him was like the garden of Attarghul! ”

“ His estates are a principality, and his Schloss von Wölfenberg one of the wonders of the Black Forest. Does not your heart swell and bound, dearest, at the thought of a real castle, in a real forest, with a real baron, Kitty?—one of those cruel creatures, perhaps, who lived in feudal times, and always killed a child, to warm their feet in his heart's blood? Not that our Ritter looks this. On the contrary, he is gentle, low-voiced, and dreamy,—a little too dreamy,—if I must say it, and not sufficiently alive to the rattling drolleries of Lord George and James, who torment him unceasingly. ”

“ Having seen some parts of the Continent, having enjoyed the spectacle of those wonderful things of nature and of art which a tour abroad would display, and having acquired that facility in languages which comes so rapidly by their daily use, I should like to go home again, adding to the pleasures my own country supplies, stores of knowledge and resources from other lands. I neither want to think that Frenchmen and Germans are better bred than my own countrymen, nor that the rigid decorum of English manners is only a flimsy veil of hypocrisy thrown over the coarse vices of a coarse people. ”

“ She is within a year or two of eighty, and yet with a freshness of heart and a brightness of intellect that would shame one of my age.
The mellow gayety of heart that, surviving all the trials of life, lives on to remote age, hopeful in the midst of disappointments, trusting even when betrayed, is the most captivating trait that can adorn our poor nature. The spirit that can extract its pleasant memories from the past, forgetting all their bitterness, is truly a happy one. This she seems to do in all gratitude for what blessings remain to her, after a life not devoid of misfortune. ”

“ Oh, Kitty, it is not only that "the course of true love never did run smooth," but it really could not be true love if it did so. The sluggish stream of common affection flows lazily along between the muddy banks and sedgy sides of ordinary life, but the boiling torrent of passionate love requires the rocks of difficulty to dam its course and impart that character of foamy impetuosity that sweeps away every obstacle and dashes onward to its goal regardless of danger! ”

“ You grow to regard yourself as utterly powerless and impassive; a football at the toe of Destiny! I think I see your eyebrows upraised in astonishment at these profound reflections of mine. You never suspected me of moralizing, nor, shall I own it, was I aware myself that I had any genius that way. Shall I tell you the secret, Bob,—shall I unlock the mysterious drawer of hidden motives for you? It is this, then: I have been a tremendously heavy loser at Rouge-et-Noir! As long as luck lasted, which it did for three weeks or more, I enjoyed this place with a zest I cannot describe to you. ”

“ You are eloquent, too, about expense; and add that you always believed that there was no economy in living abroad. Perhaps not, sir, if one unites foreign vices with home ones; but I beg to say, when we left Dodsborough, I, for one, never contemplated the cost of two establishments,—take that, Mr. Tom Purcell!
I wonder at myself how I keep my temper, and condescend to argue with you about points on which an old bachelor, or widower (for it's the same) , must necessarily be ignorant. Don't you perceive that for you to discourse on family matters is like a deaf man describing music? ”

“ It is not by any pretence that I felt this to be an unworthy artifice, that I now appeal to your merciful consideration. It is simply as one suddenly awakened to the terrible conviction that she cannot be loved as she is capable of loving; or, in other words, that she despairs of ever inspiring that passion which alone could requite her for the agony of love. Oh, Kitty, it is an agony, and such a one as no torture of human wickedness ever equalled. ”

“ When I think of what I was, Kitty, and of what I am, I may indeed shudder at the perils of the present, but I blush deeply for the past! Of course you will not permit him to think of coming abroad; "settling as a doctor," as he calls it, "on the Continent," is too horrid to be thought of! Are you aware, Kitty, what place the lawyer and the physician occupy socially here? Something lower than the courier, and a little higher than the cook! Two or three, perhaps, in every capital city are received in society, wear decent clothes, and wash their hands occasionally, but there it ends! ”

“ The dress of the company actually magnificent! none of your little shabby-colored muslins, or Limerick lace; none of your gauze petticoats, worn over glazed calico, to look like satin, but everything real, Molly,—the lace, the silk, the satin, the jewels, the gold trimmings, the feathers,—all the best of the kind, and fresh as they came out of the shop. You don't see the white satin shoes with the mark of a man's foot on them, nor the satin body with four fingers and a thumb on the back of it, as you would at a Patrick's Ball in Dublin! Everything is new for each night. ”

“ It is really all like a dream to me, Tom; and many times I am unable to convince myself that it is not a dream, so strange and so novel are all the incidents that have of late befallen me, so unlike every former passage of my life, and so unsuited am I by nature, habit, and temperament for the curious series of adventures in which I have been involved. ”

“ As to your clothes, I get red as a turkey-cock with pure shame when I think of a Dublin bonnet, with a whole botanical garden over it; but, indeed, when one thinks of the dirty streets and the shocking climate, they forgive you for keeping all the finery for the head.
The cookery I won't speak of. There's people can eat it, and much good may it do them; and my heart bleeds when I think of their sufferings. But maybe Ireland is coming round, after all. What I hear is, that when everybody is sold out, matters will begin to mend. ”

“ That your friend Jemmy Dodd should be a star, even a little one, in such a galaxy, is no small boast; and such, my dear Bob, I am bound to feel it. Each of these fellows has a princely fortune, as well as a princely name, and it is not without many a clever dodge and cunning artifice that, weighted as I am, I can keep pace with them. I hope you'll succeed, with all my heart, for the scholarship or fellowship. Which is it? Don't blame me for the blunder, for I have never, all my life through, been able to distinguish between certain things which I suppose other persons find no resemblance in. ”

“ To say that she was charming, Kitty, is nothing; for, besides being almost perfectly beautiful, there is a grace, a delicacy, a feminine refinement in her manner, that make you feel her loveliness almost secondary to her elegance. It seemed, besides, like an instinct to her, the way she fell in with all our humors, enjoying with keen zest papa's acute and droll remarks about the Continent and the habits of foreigners, mamma's opinions on the subject of dress and domestic economy, and James's notions of "fast men" and "smart people" in general. ”

“ There's the band underneath my window playing the Railroad Polka, and the crowd round them is princesses and duchesses and countesses, all so elegantly dressed, and looking so sweet and amiable. Every minute the door opens, with an invitation for this or that, or maybe a nosegay of beautiful flowers that a prince with a wonderful name has sent to Mary Anne. And here 's a man with the most tempting jewelry from Vienna, and another with lace and artificial flowers; and all for nothing, Molly, or next to nothing,—if one had a trifle to spend on them. ”

“ How seldom does it occur in life that all the circumstances of any man's position respond to the ambitious imaginings of a girl's heart! He may be handsome, and yet poor; he may be rich, and yet low-born; intellectual, and yet his great gifts may be alloyed with infirmities of temper; he may be coldly natured, secret, self-contained, uncommunicative,—a hundred things that one does not like,—and yet, with all these drawbacks, what the world calls an "excellent match." ”

“ The high-spirited, the buoyant, and most daring talkers are the elderly. In a word, Kitty, everything here is the reverse of that at home; and, I am forced to confess, possesses a great superiority over our own notions.
I am dying to tell you more of the Ritter, which, I must explain to you, is the German for "Chevalier." If you want a confession, too, I will make one; and that is that he is desperately in love with a poor friend of yours, who feels herself quite unworthy of the devotion of this scion of thirty-two quarterings. ”

“ I vow to you, Kitty, that it greatly detracts from the pictorial effect of this taste, to see how obstinately men will adhere to their present ungainly and ungraceful style of dress,—that shocking solecism in costume, a narrow-tailed coat, and those more fearful outrages on shape and symmetry for which no name has been invented in any language. Now, the levelling effect of this black-coat system is terrific; and there is no distinguishing a man of real rank from his tailor,—amongst English at least, for the crosses and decorations so frequent with foreigners are unknown to us. ”

“ Ay, Tom, all is changing around us. The gentry are going, the middle classes are going, and the peasant is going,—some of their free will, more from hard necessity. I know that the general opinion is favorable to all this,—in England, at least The cry is ever, "Ireland is improving,—Ireland will be better." But my notion is that by Ireland we should understand not alone the soil, the rocks, and the rivers, but the people,—the heart and soul and life-blood that made the island the generous, warm-hearted, social spot we once knew it. ”

“ Is not the moral of all this that one should live at home, in his own place, where his father lived before him, and his son will live after him; where the tradespeople have a vested interest in your welfare, and are nearly as anxious about your wheat and potatoes as you are yourself? Unlike these foreign rascals, that think you have a manufactory of "Hemes and Farquhar's circular notes," and can coin at will, your neighbors know when and at what times it's no use to tease you,—that asking for money at the wrong season is like expecting new peas in December, or grouse in the month of May. ”

“ I touched the chair where poor Horn sat for the last time, whilst his fainting wife fell powerless at his knees, and I thought,—yes, dearest Kitty, I own it,—I thought of that last dreadful parting in the summer-house with poor Peter.—My tears are blotting out the words as I write them. Why,—why, I ask, must we be wretched? Why are we not free to face the humble destiny which more sordid spirits would shrink from? What is there in narrow fortune, if the heart soars above it? Papa is, however, more inexorable than ever ”

“ It's all nonsense to undervalue dress: I'm no more the same man in my dark-green paletot, trimmed with Astracan, that I was a month ago in my fustian shooting-jacket, than a well-plumed eagle is like a half-moulted turkey. There is an inseparable connection between your coat and your character; and few things so react on the morality of a man as the cut of his trousers. Nothing more certainly tells me this than the feeling with which I enter any public place now, compared to what I experienced a few weeks back. It was then half shame, half swagger,—a conflict between modesty and defiance. ”

“ All this running about the world, this eternal change of place and people, imparts such an "Old Soldierism," if I may make the word, to a family, that they lose all that quiet charm of domesticity that forms the fascination of a home.
Fathers and mothers are worldly, as a matter of course. It comes upon them just like chronic rheumatism, or baldness, or any other infirmity of time and years, but it's hateful to see young people calculating and speculating; planning for this, and plotting for that. You ask, perhaps, "What has this to do with foreign travel?" ”