Vanity Fair (108 page)

Wherever the party stopped, and an opportunity was offered, Mr. Jos
left his own card and the Major's upon "Our Minister." It was with
great difficulty that he could be restrained from putting on his
cocked hat and tights to wait upon the English consul at the Free
City of Judenstadt, when that hospitable functionary asked our
travellers to dinner. He kept a journal of his voyage and noted
elaborately the defects or excellences of the various inns at which
he put up, and of the wines and dishes of which he partook.

As for Emmy, she was very happy and pleased. Dobbin used to carry
about for her her stool and sketch-book, and admired the drawings of
the good-natured little artist as they never had been admired
before. She sat upon steamers' decks and drew crags and castles, or
she mounted upon donkeys and ascended to ancient robber-towers,
attended by her two aides-de-camp, Georgy and Dobbin. She laughed,
and the Major did too, at his droll figure on donkey-back, with his
long legs touching the ground. He was the interpreter for the
party; having a good military knowledge of the German language, and
he and the delighted George fought the campaigns of the Rhine and
the Palatinate. In the course of a few weeks, and by assiduously
conversing with Herr Kirsch on the box of the carriage, Georgy made
prodigious advance in the knowledge of High Dutch, and could talk to
hotel waiters and postilions in a way that charmed his mother and
amused his guardian.

Mr. Jos did not much engage in the afternoon excursions of his
fellow-travellers. He slept a good deal after dinner, or basked in
the arbours of the pleasant inn-gardens. Pleasant Rhine gardens!
Fair scenes of peace and sunshine—noble purple mountains, whose
crests are reflected in the magnificent stream—who has ever seen
you that has not a grateful memory of those scenes of friendly
repose and beauty? To lay down the pen and even to think of that
beautiful Rhineland makes one happy. At this time of summer
evening, the cows are trooping down from the hills, lowing and with
their bells tinkling, to the old town, with its old moats, and
gates, and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long blue shadows
stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below flame in-
crimson and gold; and the moon is already out, looking pale towards
the sunset. The sun sinks behind the great castle-crested
mountains, the night falls suddenly, the river grows darker and
darker, lights quiver in it from the windows in the old ramparts,
and twinkle peacefully in the villages under the hills on the
opposite shore.

So Jos used to go to sleep a good deal with his bandanna over his
face and be very comfortable, and read all the English news, and
every word of Galignani's admirable newspaper (may the blessings of
all Englishmen who have ever been abroad rest on the founders and
proprietors of that piratical print! ) and whether he woke or
slept, his friends did not very much miss him. Yes, they were very
happy. They went to the opera often of evenings—to those snug,
unassuming, dear old operas in the German towns, where the noblesse
sits and cries, and knits stockings on the one side, over against
the bourgeoisie on the other; and His Transparency the Duke and his
Transparent family, all very fat and good-natured, come and occupy
the great box in the middle; and the pit is full of the most elegant
slim-waisted officers with straw-coloured mustachios, and twopence a
day on full pay. Here it was that Emmy found her delight, and was
introduced for the first time to the wonders of Mozart and Cimarosa.
The Major's musical taste has been before alluded to, and his
performances on the flute commended. But perhaps the chief pleasure
he had in these operas was in watching Emmy's rapture while
listening to them. A new world of love and beauty broke upon her
when she was introduced to those divine compositions; this lady had
the keenest and finest sensibility, and how could she be indifferent
when she heard Mozart? The tender parts of "Don Juan" awakened in
her raptures so exquisite that she would ask herself when she went
to say her prayers of a night whether it was not wicked to feel so
much delight as that with which "Vedrai Carino" and "Batti Batti"
filled her gentle little bosom? But the Major, whom she consulted
upon this head, as her theological adviser (and who himself had a
pious and reverent soul), said that for his part, every beauty of
art or nature made him thankful as well as happy, and that the
pleasure to be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the
stars in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a
benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as for any
other worldly blessing. And in reply to some faint objections of
Mrs. Amelia's (taken from certain theological works like the
Washerwoman of Finchley Common and others of that school, with which
Mrs. Osborne had been furnished during her life at Brompton) he told
her an Eastern fable of the Owl who thought that the sunshine was
unbearable for the eyes and that the Nightingale was a most
overrated bird. "It is one's nature to sing and the other's to
hoot," he said, laughing, "and with such a sweet voice as you have
yourself, you must belong to the Bulbul faction."

I like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think that she
was cheerful and happy. You see, she has not had too much of that
sort of existence as yet, and has not fallen in the way of means to
educate her tastes or her intelligence. She has been domineered
over hitherto by vulgar intellects. It is the lot of many a woman.
And as every one of the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her
kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgments; and
gentleness for dulness; and silence—which is but timid denial of
the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism—
above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition.
Thus, my dear and civilized reader, if you and I were to find
ourselves this evening in a society of greengrocers, let us say, it
is probable that our conversation would not be brilliant; if, on the
other hand, a greengrocer should find himself at your refined and
polite tea-table, where everybody was saying witty things, and
everybody of fashion and repute tearing her friends to pieces in the
most delightful manner, it is possible that the stranger would not
be very talkative and by no means interesting or interested.

And it must be remembered that this poor lady had never met a
gentleman in her life until this present moment. Perhaps these are
rarer personages than some of us think for. Which of us can point
out many such in his circle—men whose aims are generous, whose
truth is constant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated in
its degree; whose want of meanness makes them simple; who can look
the world honestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the
great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are very well
made, and a score who have excellent manners, and one or two happy
beings who are what they call in the inner circles, and have shot
into the very centre and bull's-eye of the fashion; but of gentlemen
how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper and each make out his
list.

My friend the Major I write, without any doubt, in mine. He had
very long legs, a yellow face, and a slight lisp, which at first was
rather ridiculous. But his thoughts were just, his brains were
fairly good, his life was honest and pure, and his heart warm and
humble. He certainly had very large hands and feet, which the two
George Osbornes used to caricature and laugh at; and their jeers and
laughter perhaps led poor little Emmy astray as to his worth. But
have we not all been misled about our heroes and changed our
opinions a hundred times? Emmy, in this happy time, found that hers
underwent a very great change in respect of the merits of the Major.

Perhaps it was the happiest time of both their lives, indeed, if
they did but know it—and who does? Which of us can point out and
say that was the culmination—that was the summit of human joy? But
at all events, this couple were very decently contented, and enjoyed
as pleasant a summer tour as any pair that left England that year.
Georgy was always present at the play, but it was the Major who put
Emmy's shawl on after the entertainment; and in the walks and
excursions the young lad would be on ahead, and up a tower-stair or
a tree, whilst the soberer couple were below, the Major smoking his
cigar with great placidity and constancy, whilst Emmy sketched the
site or the ruin. It was on this very tour that I, the present
writer of a history of which every word is true, had the pleasure to
see them first and to make their acquaintance.

It was at the little comfortable Ducal town of Pumpernickel (that
very place where Sir Pitt Crawley had been so distinguished as an
attache; but that was in early early days, and before the news of
the Battle of Austerlitz sent all the English diplomatists in
Germany to the right about) that I first saw Colonel Dobbin and his
party. They had arrived with the carriage and courier at the
Erbprinz Hotel, the best of the town, and the whole party dined at
the table d'hote. Everybody remarked the majesty of Jos and the
knowing way in which he sipped, or rather sucked, the
Johannisberger, which he ordered for dinner. The little boy, too,
we observed, had a famous appetite, and consumed schinken, and
braten, and kartoffeln, and cranberry jam, and salad, and pudding,
and roast fowls, and sweetmeats, with a gallantry that did honour to
his nation. After about fifteen dishes, he concluded the repast
with dessert, some of which he even carried out of doors, for some
young gentlemen at table, amused with his coolness and gallant free-
and-easy manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons, which
he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither everybody went in
the cheery social little German place. The lady in black, the boy's
mamma, laughed and blushed, and looked exceedingly pleased and shy
as the dinner went on, and at the various feats and instances of
espieglerie on the part of her son. The Colonel—for so he became
very soon afterwards—I remember joked the boy with a great deal of
grave fun, pointing out dishes which he hadn't tried, and entreating
him not to baulk his appetite, but to have a second supply of this
or that.

It was what they call a gast-rolle night at the Royal Grand Ducal
Pumpernickelisch Hof—or Court theatre—and Madame Schroeder
Devrient, then in the bloom of her beauty and genius, performed the
part of the heroine in the wonderful opera of Fidelio. From our
places in the stalls we could see our four friends of the table
d'hote in the loge which Schwendler of the Erbprinz kept for his
best guests, and I could not help remarking the effect which the
magnificent actress and music produced upon Mrs. Osborne, for so we
heard the stout gentleman in the mustachios call her. During the
astonishing Chorus of the Prisoners, over which the delightful voice
of the actress rose and soared in the most ravishing harmony, the
English lady's face wore such an expression of wonder and delight
that it struck even little Fipps, the blase attache, who drawled
out, as he fixed his glass upon her, "Gayd, it really does one good
to see a woman caypable of that stayt of excaytement." And in the
Prison Scene, where Fidelio, rushing to her husband, cries, "Nichts,
nichts, mein Florestan," she fairly lost herself and covered her
face with her handkerchief. Every woman in the house was snivelling
at the time, but I suppose it was because it was predestined that I
was to write this particular lady's memoirs that I remarked her.

The next day they gave another piece of Beethoven, Die Schlacht bei
Vittoria. Malbrook is introduced at the beginning of the
performance, as indicative of the brisk advance of the French army.
Then come drums, trumpets, thunders of artillery, and groans of the
dying, and at last, in a grand triumphal swell, "God Save the King"
is performed.

There may have been a score of Englishmen in the house, but at the
burst of that beloved and well-known music, every one of them, we
young fellows in the stalls, Sir John and Lady Bullminster (who had
taken a house at Pumpernickel for the education of their nine
children), the fat gentleman with the mustachios, the long Major in
white duck trousers, and the lady with the little boy upon whom he
was so sweet, even Kirsch, the courier in the gallery, stood bolt
upright in their places and proclaimed themselves to be members of
the dear old British nation. As for Tapeworm, the Charge
d'Affaires, he rose up in his box and bowed and simpered, as if he
would represent the whole empire. Tapeworm was nephew and heir of
old Marshal Tiptoff, who has been introduced in this story as
General Tiptoff, just before Waterloo, who was Colonel of the —th
regiment in which Major Dobbin served, and who died in this year
full of honours, and of an aspic of plovers' eggs; when the regiment
was graciously given by his Majesty to Colonel Sir Michael O'Dowd,
K.C.B. who had commanded it in many glorious fields.

Tapeworm must have met with Colonel Dobbin at the house of the
Colonel's Colonel, the Marshal, for he recognized him on this night
at the theatre, and with the utmost condescension, his Majesty's
minister came over from his own box and publicly shook hands with
his new-found friend.

"Look at that infernal sly-boots of a Tapeworm," Fipps whispered,
examining his chief from the stalls. "Wherever there's a pretty
woman he always twists himself in." And I wonder what were
diplomatists made for but for that?

"Have I the honour of addressing myself to Mrs. Dobbin?" asked the
Secretary with a most insinuating grin.

Georgy burst out laughing and said, "By Jove, that was a good 'un."
Emmy and the Major blushed: we saw them from the stalls.

"This lady is Mrs. George Osborne," said the Major, "and this is her
brother, Mr. Sedley, a distinguished officer of the Bengal Civil
Service: permit me to introduce him to your lordship."