Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General. Lever Charles James
of persons could be less spared than pilots. Without their watchful skill the rich argosy that has entered the chops of the Channel would never anchor in the Pool. And are there no sand-banks, no sunk rocks, no hidden reefs, no insidious shoals, in humanity? Are there no treacherous lee-shores, no dangerous currents, no breakers? It is amidst these and such as these I purpose to guide my fellow-men, not pretending for a moment to the possession of any heaven-born instinct, or any inspired insight into Nature. No; I have toiled and laboured in the cause. The experience that I mean to offer for sale I have myself bought, occasionally far more dearly than I intend to dispose of it. Haud ignarus mali; I am willing to tell where I have been shipwrecked, and who stole my clothes. “Don’t tell me of your successes,” said a great physician to his colleague, “tell me of your blunders; tell me of the people you’ve killed.” I am ready to do this, figuratively of course, for they were all ladies; and more, I will make no attempt to screen myself from the ridicule that may attach to an absurd situation, nor conceal those experiences which may subject me to laughter.
You may deem me boastful if I have to set forth my qualifications; but what can I do? It is only when I have opened my pack and displayed my wares that you may feel tempted to buy. I am driven, then, to tell you that I know everybody that is worth knowing in Europe, and some two or three in America; that I have been everywhere – eaten of everything – seen everything. There’s not a railway guard from Norway to Naples doesn’t grin a recognition to me; not a waiter from the Trois Frères to the Wilde Mann doesn’t trail his napkin to earth as he sees me. Ministers speak up when I stroll into the Chamber, and prima donnas soar above the orchestra, and warble in ecstasy as I enter the pit.
I don’t like – I declare to you I do not like – saying these things; it smacks of vanity. Now for my plan. I purpose to put these my gifts at your disposal The year before us will doubtless be an eventful one. What between Danes, Poles, and Italians, there must be a row somewhere. The French are very eager for war; and the Austrians, as Paddy says, “are blue-moulded for want of a beatin’.” There will be grand “battle-pieces” to paint; but, better than these, portraits, groups, “tableaux de genre” – Teniers bits, too, at the porch of an ale-house, and warm little interiors, in the style of Mieris. I shall be instructive at times – very instructive; and whenever I am very nice and dull, be assured that I’m “full of information, and know my subject thoroughly.”
As “your own correspondent,” I am free to go wherever I please. I have left Mrs O’D. in Ireland, and I revel in an Arcadian liberty. These are all my credentials; and if with their aid I can furnish you any amusement as to the goings-on of the world and its wife, or the doings of that amiable couple in politics, books, theatres, or socialities, I seek for nothing more congenial to my taste, nor more adapted to my nature, as a bashful Irishman.
If I will not often obtrude, I will not altogether avoid, my personal experiences; for there is this to be said, that no testimony is worth much unless we know something of the temper, the tastes, and the character of the witness. We have all heard, for instance, of the gentleman who couldn’t laugh at Munden’s drolleries on the stage for thinking of a debt of ten pounds that the actor owed him: and this same spirit has a great deal to do – far more than we like to own – with our estimate of foreign countries. It is so hard to speak well of the climate where we had that horrible rheumatism, or laud the honesty of a people when we think of that rascally scoundrel of the Hotel d’Odessa. For these reasons I mean to come into the witness-box occasionally, and give you frankly, not merely my opinions, but the way they were come by. I don’t affect to be superior to prejudices; I have as many of these as a porcupine has bristles. There’s all the egotism I mean to inflict on you, unless it comes under the guise of an incident – “a circumstance which really occurred to the author” – and now, en route.
I wonder am I right in thinking that the present race of travelling English know less about the Continent and foreigners generally than their predecessors of, say, five-and-twenty years ago. Railroads and rapid travelling might be one cause; another is, that English is now more generally spoken by all foreigners than formerly; and it may be taken as a maxim, that nothing was ever asked or answered in broken phraseology that was worth the hearing. People with a limited knowledge of a strange language do not say what they wish, but what they can; and there is no name for the helplessness of him who is tied up in his preter-pluperfect tense. Now we English are not linguists; even our diplomatists are remarkable for their little proficiency in French. I’m not sure that we don’t benefit by this in the long-run. “Reden ist silber, aber Schweigen ist gold” – “Speech is silver, but silence is gold,” says the German adage; and what a deal of wisdom have I seen attributed to a man who was posed by his declensions into a listener! One of the only countrymen of my own who has made a great career lately in public life is not a little indebted to deafness for it. He was so unlike those rash, impetuous, impatient Irish, who would interrupt – he listened, or seemed to listen, and he even smiled at the sarcasms that he did not hear.
Listening, if we did but know it, sits more gracefully on us than speech, when that speech involves the denial of genders, and the utter confusion of all cases and tenses.
Next to holding their tongues, there’s another thing I wish you English would do abroad, which is, to dress like sane and responsible people. Men are simply absurd; but the women, with their ill-behaved hoops and short petticoats, are positively indecent; but the greatest of all their travelling offences is the proneness to form acquaintance at tables-d’hôte.
It is, first of all, a rank indiscretion for any but men to dine at these places. They are almost, as a rule, the resort of all that is disreputable in both sexes. You are sure to eat badly, and in the very worst of company. My warning is, however, meant for my countrywomen only: men can, or at least ought, to take care of themselves. As for myself, don’t be shocked; but I do like doubtful company – that is, I am immensely interested by all that class of people which the world calls adventurers, whether the same be railroad speculators, fortune-hunters, discoverers of inexhaustible mines, or Garibaldians. Your respectable man, with a pocket-book well stored with his circular notes, and his passport in order, is as uninteresting as a “Treckshuyt” on a Dutch canal; but your “martyr to circumstance” is like a smart felucca in a strong Levanter; and you can watch his course – how he shakes out his reefs or shortens sail – how he flaunts out his bunting, or hides his colours – with an unflagging interest I have often thought what a deal of cleverness – what stores of practical ability – were lost to the world in these out-at-elbow fellows, who speak every language fluently, play every game well, sing pleasingly, dance, ride, row, and shoot, especially with the pistol, to perfection. There they are, with a mass of qualities that win success! and, what often is harder, win goodwill in life! There they are, by some unhappy twist in their natures, preferring the precarious existence of the race-course or the billiard-table; while others, with about a tithe of their talents, are high in place and power. I met one of these men to-day, and a strong specimen of the class, well dressed, well whiskered, very quiet in manner, almost subdued in tone, but with a slight restlessness in his eye that was very significant. We found ourselves at table, over our coffee, when the others had left, and fell into conversation. He declined my offered cigar with much courtesy, preferring to smoke little cigarettes of his own making; and really the manufacture was very adroit, and, in its way, a study of the maker’s habits. We talked over the usual topics – the bad dinner we had just eaten, the strange-looking company, the discomfort of the hotel generally, and suchlike.
“Have we not met before?” asked he, after a pause. “If I don’t mistake, we dined together aboard of Leslie’s yacht, the Fawn.”
I shook my head. “Only knew Sir Francis Leslie by name; never saw the Fawn.”
The shot failed, but there was no recoil in his gun, and he merely bowed a half apology.
“A yacht is a mistake,” added he, after another interval. “One is obliged to take, not the men one wants, but the fellows who can bear the sea. Leslie, for instance, had such a set that I left him at Messina. Strange enough, they took us for pirates there.”
“For pirates!”
“Yes. There were three fishing-boats – what they call Bilancelle – some fifteen or sixteen miles out at