LETTER IV. JAMES DODD TO ROBERT DOOLAN, ESQUIRE TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN
Dear Bob,--Here we are, living another kind of life from our old existence at Dodsborough! We have capital quarters at the "Bellevue,"--a fine hotel, excellent dinners, and, what I think not inferior to either, a most obliging Jew money-changer hard by, who advances "moderate loans to respectable parties, on personal security,"--a process in which I have already made some proficiency, and with considerable advantage to my outward man. The tailors are first-rate, and rig you out with gloves, boots, hat, even to your cane,--they forget nothing. The hairdressers are also incomparable. I thought, at first, that capillary attraction was beyond _me_; but, to my agreeable surprise, I discover that I boast a very imposing _chevelure_, and a bright promise of moustache which, as yet, is only faintly depicted by a dusky line on my upper lip.
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. Now, it is the easy assurance of being "all right,"--the conviction that my hat, my frock, my cravat, my vest, can stand the most critical examination; and that if any one be impertinent enough to indulge in the inquiry through his eye-glass, I have the equal privilege to return stare for stare, with, mayhap, an initiatory sneer into the bargain. By the way, the habit of looking unutterably fierce seems to be the first lesson abroad. The passport people, as you land, the officers of the Customs, the landlord of your inn, the waiters, the railroad clerks, all "get up" a general air of sovereign contempt for everybody and everything, rather puzzling at first, but quite reassuring when you are trained to reciprocity. For the time, I rather flatter myself to have learned the dodge well; not but, I must confess to you, Bob, that my education is prosecuted under difficulties. During the whole of the morning I 'm either with the governor or my mother, sight-seeing and house-hunting,--now seeking out a Rubens, now making an excursion into the market, and making exploratory researches into the prices of fish, fowl, and vegetables; cheapening articles that we don't intend to buy,--a process my mother looks upon as a moral exercise; and climbing up "two-pair," to see lodgings we have no intention to take: all because, as she says, "we ought to know everything;" and really the spirit of inquiry that moves her will have its reward,--not always, perhaps, without some drawbacks, as witness what happened to us on Tuesday. In our rambles along the Boulevard de Waterloo, we saw a smart-looking house, with an _affiche_ over the door, "A louer;" and, of course, mother and Mary Anne at once stopped the carriage for an exploration. In we went, asked for the proprietor, and saw a small, rosy-cheeked little man, with a big wig, and a very inquiet, restless look in his eyes. "Could we see the house? Was it furnished?" "Yes," to both questions. "Were there stables?" "Capital room for four horses; good water,--two kinds, and both excellent." Upstairs we toiled, through one _salon_ into another,--now losing ourselves in dark passages, now coming abruptly to unlock-able doors,--everlastingly coming back to the spot we had just left, and conceiving the grandest notions of the number of rooms, from the manner of our own perambulations. Of course you know the invariable incidents of this tiresome process, where the owner is always trying to open impracticable windows, and the visitors will rush into inscrutable places, in despite of all advice and admonition. Our voyage of discovery was like all preceding ones; and we looked down well-staircases and up into skylights,--snuffed for possible smells, and suggested imaginary smoke, in every room we saw. While we were thus busily criticising the domicile, its owner, it would seem, was as actively engaged in an examination of _us_, and apparently with a less satisfactory result, for he broke in upon one of our consultations by a friendly "No, no, ladies; it won't do,--it won't do at all. This house would never suit;" and while my mother stared, and Mary Anne opened wide her eyes in astonishment, he went on: "We 're only losing time, ladies; both your time and mine will be wasted.