_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Jan_. 2,1863 [? 1864].
“I am not sure--so much has your criticism on ‘Tony’ weighed with me,
and so far have I welded his fortunes by your counsel--that you’ll not
have to own it one of these days as your own, and write ‘T. B. by J.
B.’ in the title. In sober English, I am greatly obliged for all the
interest you take in the story,--an interest which I insist on believing
includes me fully as much as the Magazine. For this reason it is that
I now send you another instalment, so that if change or suppression be
needed, there will be ample time for either.
“Whenever Lytton says anything of the story let me have it. Though his
counsels are often above me, they are always valuable. You will have
received O’D. before this, and if you like it, I suppose the proof will
be on the way to me. As to the present envoy of ‘Tony,’ if you think
that an additional chapter would be of advantage to the part for March,
take chapters xxv. and xxvi. too if you wish, for I now feel getting up
to my work again, though the ague still keeps its hold on me and makes
my alternate days very shaky ones.
“I am sorry to say that, grim as I look in marble, I am more stern and
more worn in the flesh. I thought a few days ago that it was nearly up,
and I wrote my epitaph--
“For fifty odd years I lived in the thick of it,
And now I lie here heartily sick of it.
“Poor Thackeray! I cannot say how I was shocked at his death. He wrote
his ‘Irish Sketch-Book,’ which he dedicated to me, in my old house
at Templeogue, and it is with a heavy heart I think of all our long
evenings together,--mingling our plans for the future with many a jest
and many a story.
“He was fortunate, however, to go down in the full blaze of his
genius--as so few do. The fate of most is to go on pouring water on the
lees, that people at last come to suspect they never got honest liquor
from the tap at all.
“I got a strange proposal t’other day from America, from The New
York Institute, to go out and give lectures or readings there. As
regards money it was flattering enough, but putting aside all questions
as to my ability to do what I have never tried, there is in America an
Irish element that would certainly assail me, and so I said ‘No.’ The
_possibility_ of doing the thing somewhere has now occurred to me. Would
they listen to me in Edinburgh, think you? I own to you frankly I don’t
like the thought,--it is not in any way congenial to ma _Ma che voleté?_
I’d do it, as I wear a shabby coat and drink a small claret, though
I’d like broadcloth and Bordeaux as well as my neighbours. Give me your
opinion on this. I have not spoken of it to any others.
“My very best wishes for you and all yours in the year to come.”
_To Mr William Blackwood_.
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Jan_. 11, 1864.
“I thank you sincerely for your kind note, and all the hopeful things
you say of T. B. I am not in the least ashamed to say how easily elated
I feel by encouragement of this sort, any more than I am to own how
greatly benefited I have been by your uncle’s criticisms.
“I also send O’D. The next thing I mean to do after I return from
Spezzia, where I go to-day, will be a short O’D. for March, and by that
time I think it not improbable we shall be in the midst of great events
here to record.
“Tell your uncle to cut out my Scotch _ad lib_. All my recollections of
the dialect date from nigh thirty years ago in the N. of Ireland.
“Believe me with what pleasure I make your acquaintance, and with every
good wish of the good season,” &c.
_To Mr John Blackwood_.
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Jan_. 22.
“I was right glad to get your letter, and gladder to find the ‘Tony’ No.
7 pleased you. You know so much of that strange beast the public, which
for so many a year I have only known by report, that when you tell me
the thing will do I gain fresh courage; and what between real calamities
and the small rubs of life administered to me of late years in a severer
shape than I ever felt before, I do need courage.
“Most men who had written so long and so much as I have done would have
become thick-hided, but if I am so, it is only to attack--aggressive
attack. To anything like reproof, remonstrance, or appeal, I am more
open than I ever was in my earlier days, not merely because with greater
knowledge of my own shortcomings I feel how much I need it, but that the
amount of interest it implies, the sympathy for which it vouches, warms
my heart, and gives me renewed vigour and the wish and the hope to do
better.
“Now I only inflict all this egotism upon you the better to thank you
for your kind counsels; in fact, I am disclosing the depth of my wound
to show my gratitude to my doctor who is curing it.
“Proof has not yet reached me, and I therefore cannot justify, by any
plausibility in the context, how the night was so fine for Alice and the
morning so severe for Tony.*
* Mr Blackwood had written: “Observe that in the garden
scene you make it a fine night, and from the morning showing
before they separated, apparently the night was short;
whereas when Tony started in the cold and snow for Burnside
it was clearly winter.”
“You are right. I feel it more strongly since you said it that Tony has
a long way to go. Hope he is worthy of Alice; but is he in this respect
any worse than his neighbours? I don’t believe any man was worth the
woman that inspired a real passion, and he only became approximately so
by dint of loving her. And so if T. B. does ever turn out a good fellow
it is Alice has done it, and not yours very faithfully.
“My thanks for your cheque, which came all safe. I thought O’D. had
better be anecdotic and gossipy at _first_, but when I send you the
batch (which I will in a day or two), tell me if something more didactic
ought to come into preachment.”
_To Mr John Blackwood_
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Jan_. 22, 1864.
“I send you herewith a piece of O’Dowderie, and if it be too light--I
don’t suspect that’s its fault--I’ll weight it; and if it be too doughy,
I’ll put more barm in it; and, last of all, if you don’t like it, I’ll
burn it.
“What in the name of all good manners does Lord Russell mean by writing
impertinences to all Europe? He is like an old Irish beggar well known
in Dublin who sat in a bowl and kicked all round him. As to fighting for
the Danes, it is sheer nonsense. They haven’t a fragment of a case, and
we should not enjoy Mr Pickwick’s poor.... consolation of shouting with
the largest mob.
“The Italians are less warlike than a month ago. The ‘Men of Action’--as
the party call themselves who write in the newspapers but never take the
field--declare that they are only waiting for the signal of ‘Kossuth’
from Hungary; but the fate of the Poles--who _do_ fight and are brave
soldiers--is a terrible _a fortiori_ lesson to these people here, and I
suspect they are imbibing it.
“I got a long letter yesterday from Lord Malmesbury and the criticism of
Kinglake’s history. Why they don’t like it I cannot imagine. I believe
he has hit the exact measure of the Emperor’s capacity, courage, and
character altogether, and I go with him in everything.”
_To Dr Burbidge._
“Florence, _Feb_. 11, 1864.
“It seems to be leaking out that both Pam and Russell have been what the
sporting men call ‘squared’ by the Queen, who would not hear of a
war with Germany. The Court plays very often a more prominent part
in foreign politics than the nation wots of, and certainly the Prince
during the Crimean war maintained close correspondence with persons in
the confidence of the R. Emperor,--not treasonably, of course, but
in such a way as to require great watchfulness on the part of our
Ministers. This I know. There is, in fact, the game of kings as well as
of nations, and the issue not always identical.
“Our glorious weather has come back, though we hear it has been severe
along the coast, and snow has actually fallen in some places.
“To-day I am to have a consultation about my wife with an Edinburgh
professor of note who is passing through to Rome. The opportunity was
not to be lost, though the bare proposal has made her very nervous.
“My proofs--my proofs--are lost! gone Heaven knows where!--and here I
sit lamenting, and certainly doing nothing else. I cannot take up
the end of an unknown thread, and if I did go on, it would be to make
Luttrell in love with Dolly Stuart.
“Only fancy my sitting for nigh an hour last night where a man [?
retailed] the story of ‘T. Butler,’ which he had been reading in
‘Blackwood’!”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, _Feb_. 13,1864.
“No proof. I must have made a fiasco of it in writing to C. & H. to
release the proof detained in London, and which they will now discover
to be ‘Tony’! Into what scrapes flunkeys, messengers, _et hoc genus_, do
betray us. I have offended more people in life by the awkwardness of my
servants than I have done by all my proper shortcomings, which have not
been few. I send you two chapters for the May number, which I intend,
however, to be longer by another chapter if you desire it.
“I have been casting my eyes over the ‘Athelings’ in the 3-vol. form.
Is that the length you wish for ‘Tony Butler’? I never like being
long-winded, but I am, after all my experiences, a precious bad judge
of the time one ought to begin to ‘pucker up the end of the stocking.’
Advise me, therefore, on this, as on all else, about ‘Tony.’
“The cold weather has all but done for me, and set my ‘shaking’
fearfully at work. The post is now two days _en retard_ here, and I
have great misgivings about all Italian management of everything save
roguery.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _Feb_. 19.
“The proofs arrived to-day under the envelope that I forward. On
learning from the post office in London that a proof of mine was
detained there, I immediately surmised it must be one of my serial story
‘Luttrell,’ and enclosed the reference to C. & H. to release it. Now
I find that it is ‘Tony’ and O’D. Consequently I am in terror lest our
secret be out and all our hitherto care defeated by this _maladetto_
messenger who ‘crimped the tuppence.’ I want you therefore to assure me,
if you can assure me, that C. & Hall’s people, when sent to St Martin’s
le Grand to release the proof, had no power to open and examine it, nor
any privilege to carry it away with them out of the office. If this be
the case, of course there is no mischief done, and I am _quitte pour la
peur_; but pray do tell me the regulation on the subject, and for
Heaven’s sake and Tony’s sake, water that man’s grog who posted the
packet originally, or tell me his name, and I’ll call my next villain by
it, if I have to write another story.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Feb_. 25, 1864.
“It is quite true, as you surmised; claims and demands of all sorts
have been presented to me, and in my deeper and heavier cares there have
mixed vexations and worries all the more bitter that to remedy them was
no longer to build up a hope.
“My only anxiety about the missing proof was that it might lead to the
discovery of our secret as to the authorship of ‘Tony.’ You have by your
present letter allayed this fear, and I am easy.
“I await the proof, and what you say of it, to see if the last portion
of ‘Tony’ will do. I own I thought better of it in _writing_ than it
perhaps deserves on _reading_.
“You must tell me, however, what number of sheets you think 3 vols,
ought to be, for I want to make the craft as ship-shape as I am able.
“Be assured of one thing: I never for many a year felt more anxious for
success, and the anxiety is only half selfish, if so much.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Feb_. 25, 1864.
“In the O’D. I now send, the order should be: (1) Law, (2) Organ,
(3) Chevalier d’Industrie. The last is a sketch of a notorious
(Continentally) Robert Napoleon Flynn, made Chief-Justice of Tobago by
Lord Normanby in ‘36 or ‘37, the appointment being rescinded before he
could go out. It was Grant who met him at Padua last week.
“I am terribly shaky and shaken. I hope I’ll be able to finish ‘Tony’
before I go, but sometimes I think it will have to figure as a fragment.
My headaches seldom leave me, and for the first time in my life I have
become a bad sleeper.
“Let me have a proof of T. B. as soon as you can conveniently, for I
want to get off to Spezzia and see what change of air and no pen-and-ink
will do for me.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Feb_.
“I have just got back from Spezzia, and found your pleasant note but no
proof. It will probably arrive to-morrow. Of course it was right to tell
Aytoun. I am the gladder of it, as perhaps I may get the benefit of his
advice occasionally. Tell him what a hearty admirer he has in me, and
with what pleasure I’d make his acquaintance. His glorious Lays are
immense favourites of mine, and it is time I should thank you for the
magnificent copy of them they sent me.
“Grant--Speke’s Grant--drank tea with me a few nights back. I like
him much; he is about the most modest traveller I ever met with. If an
Irishman had done the half of his exploits he would not be endurable for
ten years afterwards.
“I see Le Fanu has completed in the D. U. M. his clever story ‘Wylder’s
Hand,’ making his 3-vol. novel out of fifteen magazine sheets. As I
suppose your pages are about the same as the Dub., tell me what you
think our length ought to be.
“Why don’t you throw your eyes over--not read, I don’t ask
that--‘Luttrell,’ and tell me what you think of it? I am so fearfully
nervous of having got to the lees of the cask, that I have a nervous
impatience to know what people think of the liquor.”
_To Dr Burbidge._
“Florence, _March_ 2, 1864.
“I got yesterday an F. O. declaring that Lord R. did not opine that we
came within the provisions of chap. &c, and Act so-and-so Elizabeth,
and therefore declined to accord us the assistance we had asked for.
Thereupon I wrote an urgent and pressing letter to Napier, stating that
I found myself so pledged by his assurances to my Church colleagues,
that I begged he would immediately report to me what progress our
application had made, in order that I might communicate it to our C.
committee. I hope for a speedy reply.
“I have half a hope that the Whigs are falling. Pam’s State declarations
about Denmark _ought_ to overthrow any Administration. Even Gladstone,
so able in subterfuge, was not equal to the task assigned him of showing
Black to be very frequently, but not naturally, White.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _March_ 3,1864
“I only write one line to acknowledge and thank you for your cheque,
which has just reached me. I have not looked at pen-and-ink for the past
week, but I am on the road to get stronger. I always feel, in taking
port wine (a hard thing to get here) for my ague, as if I were
using crown pieces to repair the coppering of a shattered old craft.
Better-keep the money and let the worthless boat go to ------ I won’t
say the devil, lest there come a confusion in my figure of speech.
“Of course ‘Tony’ is the main thing. In O’D. I am only like the retired
Cat Princess, who merely caught mice for her amusement. I’ll read the
L. N. article with attention. Is Laurence Oliphant, _par hazard_, the
author? He is a charming fellow, and I like him greatly, but I’d not
think him a safe guide politically.
“I like Grant much, and have been at him to write some camp-life
sketches on Africa. The Yankees here want him to go over to America and
lecture, but he is far too modest to stand scrutiny from opera-glasses.”
_To Dr Burbidge_.
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _March_ 4,1864.
“I had hoped to have got a line from you either last night or the night
before about your flunkey; so I am unable to wait longer, and must
take one of the creatures that offers here. Indeed, making the one
who remains do all the work has installed him into a position of such
insolent tyranny, it will take a month at least to reduce him to his
proper proportions.
“Some disaster has befallen my No. of ‘Luttrell’ for April, No. 5, and I
can hear nothing of it. The proof and added part were sent from this, by
me, four weeks ago, and after that....
“I have not written for the last eight or ten days, but I am getting all
right, and take long walks every day, looking at villas, of which there
are scores, but scarcely a habitable one, at least as a permanent abode,
to be found.
“There is not one word of news beyond the arming of the French fleet. I
find that many Mazzinists here believe that Mazzini was really engaged
in the late plot; but I can neither believe the plot nor that he was in
it. I look upon it as a very clumsy police trick throughout.
“My wife makes no advance towards health,--a day back and a day forward
is the history of her life; but everything shows me that to undertake
a journey to Spezzia without feeling that I had a comfortable place for
her when there, and that she could remain without another change back in
winter, would be a fatal mistake.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, _March_ 8,1864.
“The whole story of R N. F. (Robert Napoleon Flynn, his real name) is
an unexaggerated fact, and I have only culled a very few of the traits
known to me, and not given, as perhaps I ought, a rather droll scene I
had with him myself at Spezzia. The man was originally a barrister, and
actually appointed Chief-Justice of Tobago by Lord Normanby, and as
such presented to the Queen at the Levée. The appointment was rescinded,
however, and the fellow sent adrift.
“I have met a large number of these fellows of every nation, but
never one with the same versatility as this, nor with the same hearty
enjoyment of his own rascality. Dickens never read over a successful
proof with one-half the zest Flynn has felt when sending off--as I
have known him to do--a quizzing letter to a Police Prefect from whose
clutches he had just escaped by crossing a frontier. He is, in fact, the
grand _artiste_, and he feels it.
“I am glad you like ‘O’Dowd’: first of all, they are the sort of things
I can do best. I have seen a great deal of life, and have a tolerably
good memory for strange and out-of-the-way people, and I am sure such
sketches are far more my ‘speciality’ than story-writing.
“I assure you your cheery notes do me more service than my
sulph.-quinine, and I have so much of my old schoolboy blood in me that
I do my tasks better with praise than after a caning.
“Your sketch of the French Legitimist amused me much. The insolence of
these rascals is the fine thing about them, as t’other day I heard one
of our own amongst them (the uncle of a peer, and a great name too)
reply, when I found him playing billiards at the club and asked him how
he was getting on: ‘Badly, Lever, badly, or you wouldn’t find me playing
half-crown pool with three snobs that I’d not have condescended to know
ten years ago.’ And this _the three snobs_ had to listen to!
“I am far from sure Grant was not ‘done’ by Flynn. But t’other night
Labouchere (Lord Taunton’s nephew and heir, who is the L. of the story)
met Grant here, and we all pressed G. to confess he had been ‘walked
into,’ but he only grew red and confused, and as we had laughed so much
at F.’s victims, he would not own to having been of the number.
“The Napoleon paper is very good, and perhaps not exaggerated. It is
the best sketch of the campaign I ever read, and only wants a further
allusion to the intentions of the 4th corps under Prince Napoleon to be
a perfect history of the event.
“‘Schleswig-Holstein’ admirable. I am proud of my company and _au
raison._”
_To Dr Burbidge._
“Casa Capponi, _Wednesday_, March 1864.
“I thank you sincerely for the trouble you have had about my proof:
honestly, I only wanted a criticism, but I forgot you had not seen the
last previous part. As to what is to _come_, you know, I am sorry to say
it, just as much as I do.
“‘Luttrell’ No. 5, that is for next month, has been in part lost, and I
am in a fearful hobble about it,--that is, I must re-write, without any
recollection of where, what, or how.
“My poor wife has been seriously, very seriously, attacked. Last night
Julia was obliged to stay up with her, and to-day, though easier, she
is not materially better. I write in great haste, as I have only got up,
and it is nigh one o’clock, and the post closes early.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _March_ 18, 1864.
“B. L.’s criticism on T. B. amused me greatly. Did you never hear of the
elder who waited on Chief-Justice Holt to say, ‘The Lord hath sent me
to thee to say that thou must stop that prosecution that is now going
on against me,’ and Holt replied, ‘Thou art wrong, my friend; the Lord
never sent thee on such an errand, for He well knoweth it is not I, but
the Attorney-General, that can enter a _nolle prosequi._’ But B[ulwer]
L[ytton]’s fine pedantry beats the Chief-Justice hollow, with this
advantage that he is wrong besides. Nothing is more common than for
Ministers to ‘swap’ patronage. It was done in my own case, and to my
sorrow, for I refused a good thing from one and took a d------d bad one
from another. _Au reste_, he is all right both as to O’D. and Maitland.
O’D. ought to be broader and wider. I have an idea that with a few
illustrations it would make a very readable sort of gossiping book. I am
not quite clear how far reminiscences and bygones come in well in such a
_mélange_. After all, it is only a hash at best, and one must reckon on
it that the meat has been cooked already. What do _you_ say? I have
some Irish recollections of noticeable men like Bushe, Lord Guillamore,
Plunkett, &c., too good to be lost, but perhaps only available as
apropos to something passing.
“I have thought of some of these as subjects: Good Talkers--_Le Sport_
Abroad--Diplomacy--Demi-monde Influences--Whist--Irish Justice--Home
as the Bon Marché of Europe--Travelled Americans--Plan of a new Cookery
Book (with a quiz on Charters, your book), showing what to eat every
month of the year. These I scratch down at random, for I can’t write
just yet: I have got gout _vice_ ague retired, and my knuckle is as big
as a walnut.
“I hope you have received T. B. before this. I am very sorry the
conspirator chapter of T. B. does not appear this month, when the
question of Stanfield is before the public, but I think O’Dowd might
well touch on the question of the politicians of the knife. Give me your
counsel about all these. B. L.’s remark that Maitland belonged to
twenty or thirty years ago is perfectly just, and very acute too; but,
unfortunately, so do I too. Do you remember old Lord Sefton’s reply
when the Bishop of Lincoln tried to repress him one day at dinner from
entering upon old college recollections by saying, ‘Oh, my lord, the
devil was strong in us in those days’? ‘I wish he was strong in me now,
my Lord Bishop!’ I am afraid I am something of his mind.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _March_ 20, 1864.
“As it is likely I shall start to-morrow for Spezzia to give them a
touch of my ‘consular quality,’ I send you a line to thank you for
your kind note, and with it a portion (all I have yet done) of the next
‘O’Dowd.’ I shall, however, meditate as I go, and perhaps the Providence
who supplies oddities to penny-a-liners may help me to one in the train.
“I thank you heartily for the offer of a mount, but I have grown
marvellously heavy, in more ways than one, this last year or two; and
the phrase of my daughter when ordering my horse to be saddled may
illustrate the fact, as she said, ‘Put the howdah on papa’s elephant.’
“Don’t fancy the Italians are not athletes. All the great performers of
feats of strength come from Italy. Belzoni the traveller was one. They
have a game here called _Paettone_, played with a ball as large as
a child’s head and flung to an incredible distance, which combines
strength, skill, and agility. Then as to swimming, I can only say that
I and my two eldest daughters can cross Spezzia--the width is three
miles,--and yet we are beaten hollow every season by Italians. They
swim in a peculiar way, turning from side to side and using the arms
alternately; and when there is anything of a sea they never top the
waves, but shoot through them, which gives immense speed, but it is a
process I never could master. We had a swim last year with old General
Menegaldo, who swam the Lido with Byron: he is now eighty-four years
old, and he swam a good mile along with us. I intend, if I can throw
off my gout, to have a day or two in the blue water next week, though I
suspect in your regions the idea would suggest a shiver. The weather is
fine here now--in fact, too hot for many people.”
_To Dr Burbidge._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _March_ 30, 1864.
“I was sorry to find last night that my proofs had not reached you, and
as I want your opinion greatly, I send you mine, which I have not looked
over yet.
“If it had not been for this detestable weather (and I can fancy how
Spezzia looks in it, for even Florence is dismal) I’d have gone down
to-day, for my wife has been a shade better since Sunday, and I want
to have a good conscience and be assured that I cannot possibly find
a house at Spezzia before I close for a little nook of a villa here--a
small crib enough, but, like everything else, very dear.
“I have my misgivings, my more than misgivings, about the Derbys
coming in. It is evident Lord D. does not wish power, and he is rather
impatient at the hungry eagerness of poorer men, and so I suspect my
own chances, if not to be tried now, will not be likely to survive for
another occasion. I therefore resign myself, as people call what they
cannot do more than grumble over, and ‘make my book’ to scribble on for
a subsistence to the end.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, _April_ 6, 1864.
“Here I am visiting the authorities and being visited by them, playing
off--and quite seriously too--the farce that we are all dignitaries,
and of essential consequence to the States we severally serve. ‘How we
apples swim!’ My only consolation is that there is no public to laugh at
us--all the company are on the stage.
“I mean to get back to Florence by the end of the week. You shall have
an instalment of T. B. immediately.
“If Lord D. gets his congress for Denmark it will be hard to dislodge
the Government--the more with a two-million-and-a-half surplus. In fact,
a good harvest is the Providence of the Whigs, and they are invariably
pulled out of their scrapes by sheer luck. At the same time, if Lord
Derby comes in, where could he find a Foreign Minister?”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, _April_ 6, 1864
“The post has just brought me O’D. on ‘Whist,’ but no proof of ‘The
Woman in Diplomacy.’ Perhaps I blundered and never sent it, or perhaps
you got but did not like it. At all events, I return the ‘Whist’ by this
post corrected. If there had been time I’d have dashed off an O’D. on
French Justice in Criminal Cases, apropos to that late infamy of M.
Pellier, but I fancied you had got enough of O’D. for this coming month,
and probably you are of the same mind.
“I have done my consulars here--that is, I have called on the
authorities and had them all to dinner, the bishop included; and we have
fraternised very cordially and drank all manner of violent deaths to
Mazzini, and to-morrow I go back into the obscurity of private life,
and forget if I can that I have been a great man. Wasn’t it a Glasgow
dignitary who resented being called a man on a trial, and exclaimed,
‘I’m not a man, I’m a bailie’?
“I see by ‘The Telegraph’ that Lord Clarendon has joined the Government
and Stansfield left. There is a twofold game in that, for I don’t
despair of seeing them beaten if the Queen does not put pressure on Lord
Derby, for there is a sentiment in his class that, with regard to the
Crown, rises above all party considerations, and represents that old
feudal feeling by which nobles stood round the monarchy at any personal
loss or peril.
“That letter to ‘The Times’ about the Italian Government seizing
Garibaldi’s balance at his banker’s is all rot. The Government simply
sequestrated a revolutionary fund subscribed by revolutionists for
public disturbance, and openly, flagrantly so done. Why will _patriots_
never be truthful?”
_To Dr Burbidge_.
“Casa Capponi, _Thursday_, 10 [1864].
“These questionable publishers who say, ‘Buy my share and I’ll give you
a book,’ represent the contract by which Sanders obtained Marola. That
is, _he_ bought the shares--viz., the house, and _they_ gave him the
book, meaning the ‘Arsenal.’ All fair and right so far! But nobody ever
supposed that the share was connected with the book, had a market value,
or was worth more to a purchaser than its price as a _share_. Now the
opposite is precisely the mistake Sanders has fallen into. The rent of
Marola represents in pounds the eagerness of M. Bolla to sign a certain
agreement, but _I_ have no such eagerness; for _me_ no docks are digged,
no mud excavated, no roads cut up and trees cut down; _I_ have no
interest in all the filth, dirt, drunkenness, or small assassinations
introduced into a once lonely spot; I neither derive ten per cent
profits or sixty per cent frauds. I have no part in the honest gains of
Sanders or in the wholesale robberies of Bolla,--I merely want a house
at the price of a house. Hence to pay £60 to £70 for a two-floor villa,
furnished!--three chairs and the bath,--is certes too dear, not to add
the Mackie difficulty. I have nothing definitely about my villa here,
nor need I for some days.
“Is the wretched little toy-house under the Cappucines still unlet? and
if so, what rent does M. Torri expect for it?--for, though _he_ has _no
straw_, he has more than the equivalent in the pestilent rascality of a
true Spezzino.
“I hear from ‘The Morning Post’ people that Pam has at length got the
Emperor’s consent to be warlike. _A la remarque de la France_ is a tune
we know better nowadays than ‘Rule Britannia.’ The story goes: _he_, L.
N., is to have the _freyen deutschen Rhein_, and we are to be permitted
to fill up again M. Lessep’s canal at Suez--_suum caique._
“Who is to say _l’Alliance_ brings no gain? One clears a river, t’other
fills a drain.
“It is absurd to revile--as ‘The Times’ does--the Derbys for not
announcing a policy. It is only a wise precaution in a bather who has
once been robbed to hide his clothes when he next goes for a swim. This
is all Dizzy is doing.
“I am now in a rare mess about ‘Luttrell,’ and cannot write a word.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, _April_ 7, 1864.
“I now send you the June ‘Tony,’ anxious to hear that you are satisfied.
If I bore you by my insistence in this way, my excuse is that just as a
sharp-flavoured wine turns quickest to vinegar, all the once lightness
of heart I had has now grown to a species of irritable anxiety. Of
course it is the dread a man feels of growing old lest he become more
feeble than he even suspects, and I confess to you that I can put
up with my shaky knees and swelled ankles better than I can with my
shortcomings in brain matters. At all events, I am doing as well as I
can, and quite ready to be taught to do better.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _April_ 11, 1864.
“Only think of finding in ‘The Galignani’ yesterday this paragraph about
Flynn. I send it to you, leaving it entirely to your choice to insert
in next O’D. It has _this_ merit, that it will serve to show O’D. is not
_all imaginary_, but that it deals with real rogues as well as with men
in buckram suits.
“I have got an ‘O’Dowd’ in my head that I think will amuse you if I can
write it as it struck me,--a thing that does not always happen, I am
sorry to say.
“The Italians were at first very savage about all your Garibaldian
enthusiasm. Now, however, with true Italian subtlety they affect to take
it as a national compliment. This is clever.”
_From Mr John Blackwood._
“Edinburgh, _April_ 5, 1864.
“In walking home together yesterday afternoon, Aytoun and I had fits of
laughter over O’Dowd. The thing that has tickled him is the victim of
Cavour’s eternal schemes for Italian progress, especially the plans
turning up in the dead man’s bureau. He agrees with me in thinking
that you have completely taken second wind. I improved the occasion
by commenting upon his own utter incapacity,--the lazy villain has not
written a line for two years. A sheriffship and a professorship are
fatal to literary industry. It would be well worth while for any
Government to give any man who is active in writing against them a good
fat place, but it is fatal for them so to patronise their friends. God
knows, however, that patronising their literary friends is a crime of
which Governments are not often guilty, but I hope with all my heart
that if we do come in, your turn, something good, will come at last.”
_To Mr John Blackwood,_
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _April_ 17, 1864.
“How glad I am to be the first to say there is to be no ‘mystery’
between us. I have wished for this many a day, and have only been
withheld from feeling that I was not quite certain whether my gratitude
for the cheer and encouragement you have given me might not have run
away with my judgment and made me forget the force of the Italian adage,
‘It takes two to make a bargain.’
“How lightly you talk of ten years! Why, I was thirty years younger ten
years ago than I am to-day. I’d have ridden at a five-foot wall with
more pluck than I can summon now at a steep staircase. But I own to you
frankly, if I had known _you_ then as I do now, it might have wiped off
some of this score of years. Even my daughters guess at breakfast when I
have had a pleasant note from you.
“I have thought over what you say about Garibaldi’s visit to Mazzini,
and added a bit to tag to the article. I have thought it better to say
nothing of Stansfield--I know him so little; and though I think him an
ass, yet he might feel like the tenor who, when told, ‘Monsieur, vous
chantez faux,’ replied, ‘Je le sais, monsieur, mais je ne veux pas qu’on
me le dise.’
“Don’t cut out the Haymarket ladies if you can help it. The whole thing
is very naughty, but it can’t be otherwise. I’ll try and carry it on a
little farther. I have very grand intentions--more paving-stones for the
place my hero comes from.
“But ask Aytoun what he thinks of it, and if it be worth carrying out.
The ‘Devil’s Tour’ would be better than ‘Congé.’
“The rhymes are often rough, but I meant them to be rugged lest it
should be suspected I thought myself capable of verse--and I know
better.
“Do what you like about the Flynn P.S. Perhaps it will be best not to
make more mention of the rascal. I must tell you some day of my own
scene with him at Spezzia, which ‘The Telegraph’ fellow has evidently
heard of.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _Monday_, April 18,1864.
“On second thoughts I remembered how far easier it was always to me to
make a new rod than to splice an old one, so I send you the Devil as
he is. If ever the vein comes to me, I can take him up hereafter. Let
Aytoun judge whether it be safe or wise to publish. I myself think that
a bit of wickedness has always a certain gusto in good company, while
amongst inferior folks it would savour of coarseness. This is too bleak
an attempt at explaining what I mean, but you will understand me.
“Last verse--
“For of course it lay heavily on his mind,
And greatly distressed him besides, to find
How these English had left him miles behind
In this marvellous civilisation.”
_To Mr John Blackwood_.
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _April_ 30, 1864
“For the first time these eight days I have looked at my bottle--the
ink-bottle--again. I am subject to periodical and very acute attacks of
‘doing-nothingness.’--it would be euphuism to call it idleness, which
implies a certain amount of indulgence, but mine are dreary paroxysms of
incapacity to do anything other than sleep and eat and grumble.
“I wanted for the best of all possible reasons to be up and at work, and
I could not. I tried to--but it wouldn’t do! At least I have found out
it would be far better to do nothing at all than to do what would be so
lamentably bad and unreadable.
“When I first got these attacks--they are of old standing now--I really
fancied it was the ‘beginning of the end,’ and that it was all up with
me. Now I take them as I do a passing fit of gout, and hope a few days
will see me through it.
“This is my excuse for not sending off the proof of ‘Tony’ before. I
despatch it now, hoping it is all right, but beseeching you to see it
is. I suppose you are right about Staffa, and that, like the sentinel
who couldn’t see the Spanish fleet, I failed for the same reason.”
During the first fourteen or fifteen years of Lever’s residence in
Florence, Italy had been in the melting-pot. The Tuscan Revolution of
1848, the defeat of the Sardinians, and the abdication of Carlo Alberto
in the following year, the earlier struggle of Garibaldi, the long
series of troubles with Austria (ending in the defeat of the Austrians),
feuds with the Papal States, insurrections in Sicily, the overthrow of
the Pope’s government, the Neapolitan war, and, to crown all,
triumphant brigandage, had made things lively for dwellers in Italy.
The recognition by the Powers of Victor Emanuel as king of United Italy
promised, early in 1862, a period of rest; but the expectations of
peace-lovers were shattered, for the moment, by Garibaldi’s threatened
march upon Rome. His defeat, his imprisonment in the fortress of
Varignano, and his release, inspired hopes, well-founded, of the
conclusion of the struggles (largely internecine) which had convulsed
New Italy. Upon Garibaldi’s release Lever naturally sought out his
distinguished Spezzian neighbour, and one morning he had the pleasure of
entertaining him at breakfast. It was said that the British Minister at
Florence was eager that the Italian patriot should be disabused of
the favourable impressions he was supposed to entertain of the Irish
revolutionary movement. The Vice-Consul at Spezzia found it necessary to
explain to his guest that any overt expressions or acts of sympathy with
Fenianism would be certain to alienate English sympathies. Garibaldi
seemed to be somewhat surprised at this. He looked on England as a
nation eager to applaud any patriotic or revolutionary movement. Lever
is said--the authority is Major Dwyer--to have been unable to comprehend
how a man so ignorant and childish as Garibaldi could have attained such
vast influence over a people, and could have won such general renown.
In his statements about his friend’s literary work or literary opinions,
Major Dwyer is not a thoroughly safe guide. He had a weakness for
patronising Lever, for declaring that he said or thought this or that--
usually something which coincided with the Major’s own opinion, and
which showed the novelist at a disadvantage. Dwyer’s conviction was that
Lever the talker* was better than Lever the writer, and that Lever the
man was infinitely superior to both. Possibly the vice-consul was amused
at the simplicity of Garibaldi when Anglo-Irish affairs were under
discussion. Anyhow, it is much more likely that Cornelius O’Dowd’s
true impressions are recorded in an article which he contributed to
‘Blackwood’s Magazine.’ “It is not easy to conceive anything finer,
simpler, more thoroughly unaffected, or more truly dignified than the
man,” writes Lever--“his noble head; his clever honest brown eyes;
his finely-traced mouth, beautiful as a woman’s, and only strung up to
sternness when anything ignoble has outraged him; and, last of all, his
voice contains a fascination perfectly irresistible, allied as you
knew and felt these graces were with a thoroughly pure and untarnished
nature.” While the Italian patriot lay wounded at Spezzia, Lever managed
to get a photograph taken of him. The photograph (a copy of which he
sent to Edinburgh) represents Garibaldi in bed, his red shirt enveloping
him. Mrs Blackwood Porter, in the third volume of ‘The House of
Blackwood,’ relates a most amusing anecdote of a situation arising out
of the embarrassing attentions of sympathisers who would persist
in visiting the invalid. Lever’s sketch in ‘Maga’ evoked from John
Blackwood a very interesting letter.
* The Major, amongst the many reminiscences of his friend
confided to Dr Fitzpatrick, tells a tale of this period
which shows that Lever, with all his tact, could
occasionally allow temper to master discretion. A personage
holding a high diplomatic post (which he had obtained
notoriously through influence) said to Lever at some social
gathering: “Your appointment is a sinecure, is it not?”
“Not altogether,” answered the consul. “But you are consul
at Spezzia, and you live altogether at Florence,” persisted
the personage. “You got the post, I suppose, on account of
your novels.” “Yes, sir,” replied Lever tartly, “I got the
post in compliment to my brains: you got yours in
compliment to your relatives.”--E. D.
_From Mr John Blackwood._
“_April_ 27, 1864.
“I am particularly obliged to you for the promptitude with which you did
the bit about Garibaldi. It is, I think, the best thing that has been
written about the General, and I hope he is worthy of it. You will see
that the Garibaldi fever has been cut short, so that I shall have no
opportunity of using the note of introduction you so kindly sent, but
I am equally obliged. Fergusson (Sir William), the surgeon, is a very
intimate friend and old ally of mine, and I have no doubt he has given
genuine and sound advice. Garibaldi would doubtless have had innumerable
invitations to No. 9 Piccadilly, and I hope the hero has not damaged
himself. I have half a mind to write this joke to Fergusson, and call
for an explicit statement of the hero’s health. Seriously, he is well
away at the present crisis, and we are making sufficient fools of
ourselves without this wild outbreak of hero-worship....
“Laurence Oliphant stayed with us for three days, and we had a ‘fine
time.’ I never saw such a fellow for knowing people, pulling the wires,
and being in the thick of it always. He is hand-and-glove with half the
potentates and conspirators in Europe. Skeffy in his wildest flights is
a joke to him. There is, however, no humbug about Oliphant; he is a good
fellow and a good friend. He talked much of the pleasant days he had
passed with you, and begged particularly to be remembered to you all.
Knowing I could trust him, I told him the secret, the importance of
keeping which he fully appreciated, and will assist in throwing people
off the scent, which ‘O’Dowd’ will, I think, put a good many upon.
There have been surmises in the papers, but surmises are nothing. How
is ‘Tony’ getting on, and the new ‘O’Dowd’? I wish, indeed, we had come
across each other in earlier life; but it is no use your talking of
being seedy,--you are evidently as fresh as paint, and never wrote
better, if so well.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _May_ 5, 1864.
“I have just got home and found your note and its enclosed cheque. Why
this should be so large I have no idea nor any means of guessing, for
the Mag. has not yet arrived. You are right about the ‘Devil,’ but
he alone knows when and how I shall be in the vein to go on with his
experiences. I had to come back here hurriedly, which requires my
returning to Spezzia in a day or so, a sad interruption to work, and
coming awkwardly too, as I am driven to change my house,--the old
jaillike palace I have lived in for fifteen years has just been
bought by Government, and I am driven to a villa at some distance
from Florence--a small little crib nicely placed in a bit of Apennine
scenery, and quiet enough for much writing.
“I entirely agree with all you say of Oliphant: he is an able fellow,
and a good fellow; and there is no _blague_ whatever in his talking
familiarly of ‘swells,’ for he has lived, and does live, much in their
intimacy. He is not popular with the ‘Diplos.’ nor F. O., but the chief,
if not only, reason is, that he is a far cleverer fellow than most
of them, and has had the great misfortune of having shown this to the
world.
“I want much to be at ‘Tony’ again, but it will be some three or four
days before I can settle down to work. When I have dashed off enough to
send I will, even though not enough for a number.
“I see by ‘The Telegraph’ that the fleet is to go to the Baltic, but not
for more than a demonstration. Does not this remind you of the Bishop of
Exeter’s compromise about the candles on the altar, ‘That they might be
there, but _not_ lighted.’ I believe, as a nation, we are the greatest
humbugs in Europe; and, without intending it, the most illogical and
inconsequent people the world ever saw.
“I hope your little people are all well again and over the measles and
in the country with you, and that you are all as happy as I wish you.
“Supply the date of the Reform Bill for me in the ‘New Hansard.’”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Casa Capponi, Florence, _May_ 10, 1864.
“Herewith go three chapters of ‘Tony.’ With the best will in the world
there are days when our dinners go off ill, our sherry is acrid,
our _entrées_ cold, and our jests vapid. Heaven grant (but I have my
misgivings) that some such fatality may not be over these ‘Tonys.’ My
home committee likes them better than I do; I pray heartily that _you_
be of _this_ mind.
“I shall be fretful and anxious till I hear from you about T. B., but
I go off to-morrow to Spezzia, and not to be back till Wednesday the
18th,--all Consular, all Bottomry, all Official for eight mortal days,
but
“Of course I must show to the office ‘I’m here,’
And draw with good conscience two hundred a-year.
I’d save fifty more, but of _that_ I am rid well
By the agency charges of Allston and Bidwell.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _May_ 15,1864.
“More power to you! as we say in Ireland, for your pleasant letter.
I have got it, and I send you an O’D. I think you will like on ‘Our
Masterly Inactivity,’ and another on ‘Our Pensions for Colonial
Governors.’
“As to next month’s O’D., I don’t know what will turn up; but [I am]
like poor old Drury--the clergyman at Brussels--whose profound reliance
on Providence once so touched an English lady that it moved her to
tears. ‘He uttered,’ said she--telling the story to Sir H. Seymour, who
told it to me--‘he uttered one of the most beautiful sentiments I ever
heard from the lips of a Christian: “When I have dined heartily and
well, and drunk my little bottle of light Bordeaux, Mrs S.,” said he,
“where Mrs Drury or the children are to get _their_ supper to-night
or their breakfast to-morrow, I vow to God I don’t know, _and I don’t
care_.”’ Now if that be not as sweet a little bit of hopeful trust in
manna from heaven as one could ask for, I’m a Dutchman, and I lay it to
my heart that somehow, somewhere, O’Dowderies will turn up for July as
they have done for June, for I shall certainly need them. You will have
had T. B. before this. I see you are stopping at my old ‘Gite,’ the
Burlington, my hotel ever since I knew London. There was an old waiter
there, Foster,--I remember him nigh thirty years,--who exercised towards
me a sort of parental charge, and rebuked my occasional late hours and
the light companions who laughed overmuch at breakfast with me in the
coffee-room. If he is _in vivente_, remember me to him.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _May_ 16,1864.
“I have just had your note, and am relieved to find that I have not lost
the ‘Colonial Governors,’ which I feared I had. I have added a page to
it. I have re-read it carefully, but I don’t think it radical. Heaven
knows, I have nothing of the Radical about me but the poverty. At all
events, a certain width of opinion and semi-recklessness as to who or
what he kicks does not ill become O’D.., whose motto, if we make a book
of him, I mean to be ‘Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur,’--
“I care not a fig For Tory or Whig,
But sit in a bowl and kick round me.
“Though the paper I sent yesterday on ‘Our Masterly Inactivity’ would
be very apropos at this juncture, there will scarcely be time to see a
proof of it, seeing that it could not be here before this day week.
If you cannot revise it yourself, it will be better perhaps to hold it
back, though I feel the moment of its ‘opportunity’ may pass. Do what
you think best. My corrections of the proof I send off now will have
to be closely looked to, and the MS. is to come in between the last
paragraph and the part above it.”
_To Mr John Blackwood,_
“Villa Morelli, _June_ 7, 1864.
“We got into our little villa yesterday (it would not be little out of
Italy, for we have seven salons), and are very pleased with it. We are
only a mile from Florence, and have glorious views of the city and the
Val d’Arno on every side.
“The moving has, however, addled my head awfully; indeed, after all had
quitted the old Casa Capponi, a grey cat and myself were found wandering
about the deserted rooms, not realising the change of domicile. What
it can be that I cling to in my old room of the Capponi I don’t know
(except a hole in the carpet perhaps), but certainly I do not feel
myself in writing vein in my new home....
“I hear strange stories of disagreements amongst the Conservatives, and
threats of splits and divi-sions. Are they well founded, think you?
The social severance of the party, composed as it is of men who never
associated freely together, as the Whigs did and do, is a great evil.
Indeed I think the ties of our party are weaker than in the days when
men dined more together.
“When C. leaders, some years back, offered to put me at the head of a
Conservative Press, I said this. Lord Eglinton and Lord Naas were of my
mind, but the others shrugged their shoulders as though to say the world
was not as it used to be. Now I don’t believe _that_.”
_To Dr Burbidge._
“Florence, _Thursday_, [? June] 1864.
“I have taken a villa--a cottage in reality, but dear enough,--the only
advantage being that it _looks_ modest; and just as some folk carry
a silver snuff-box made to look like tin, I may hope to be deemed a
millionaire affecting simplicity.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _June_ 14, 1864.
“I looked forward eagerly to your promised letter about O’Dowd. No one
could do an imaginary portrait of a foreignised Irishman--all drollery
about the eyes, and bearded like a pard--better than Hablot
Browne (Phiz), and I think he could also do _all_ that we need for
illustration, which would be little occasional bits on the page and
tailpieces. If he would take the trouble to _read_ the book (which he is
not much given to), and if he would really interest himself in it (not
so unlikely now, as he is threatened with a rival in Marcus Stone), he
could fully answer all our requirements. I would not advise any regular
‘plates,’ mere woodcuts in the page, and an occasional rambling one
_crawling over the page_. What do _you_ think?”
_To Mr John Blackwood_.
“Villa Morelli, _June_ 16,1864.
“I am delighted with all your plans about ‘O’Dowd,’ and though I do not
believe there will be much to alter, I will go carefully over the sheets
when I get them. My notion always was that it would take some time to
make a public for a kind of writing more really French in its character
than English, but that if we could only once get ‘our hook in,’ we’d
have good fishing for many a day.
“If my reader will only stand it, I’ll promise to go on as long as he
likes, since it is simply putting on paper what goes on in my head all
day long, even (and unluckily for me) when I am at work on other things.
“Don’t give _me_ any share in the book, or you’ll never get rid of ten
copies of it, my luck being like that of my countryman who said, ‘If
I have to turn hatter, I’d find to-morrow that God Almighty would make
people without heads.’ Seriously, if by any turn of fortune I should
have a hundred pounds in the ‘threes,’ the nation would be in imminent
risk of a national bankruptcy. Give me whatever you like, and be guided
by the fact that I am not a bit too sanguine about these things en
masse. It is all the difference in the world to read a paper or a vol.;
it is whether you are asked to taste a devilled kidney or to make your
dinner of ten of them. At all events, the venture will be some test of
public taste.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, Villa Morelli, _June_ 24, 1864.
“The devil take my high office! I am obliged to go down to Spezzia on
Monday, and shall probably lose a week, when I am sore pressed for time
too.
“What you say of buying up the disputed bit of Denmark reminds me of
an incident that occurred in my house in Ireland. There were two
whist-parties playing one night in the same room. One was playing pound
points and twenty on the rubber (of which I was one); the others were
disputing about half-crowns, and made such a row once over the score
that Lord Ely, who was at our table, cried out, ‘Only be quiet and we’ll
pay the difference.’ D., the artillery colonel, was so offended that it
was hard to prevent him calling Ely out. Now perhaps the Danes might be
as touchy as the soldier.
“Send me the Mag. as _early as you can_ this month. It will comfort me
at Spezzia if I can take it down there, but address me still Florence as
usual.
“What do you think of an O’D. on the Serial Story-writer? I shall be all
the better pleased if Lawson O’D. stand over for August, for I shall be
close run for time this month to come, and it is no joke writing with
the thermometer at 93° in the shade. In Ireland the belief is that a man
who is dragged out to fight a duel against his will is sure to be shot,
and I own I am superstitious enough to augur very ill of our going to
war in the same reluctant fashion.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _June_ 30, 1864.
“I send off to-day (_sit faust dies_) by book-post ‘O’Dowd’ corrected,
and I enclose a few lines to open with a dedication to Anster. I am not
quite _sure_ of the ‘notice,’ nor shall I be till I hear if you like
it. I have gout and blue devils on me, but you can always do more for me
than colchicum if you say ‘all right.’
“I hope we shall have a nice-looking book and a smart outside, and,
above all, that we shall appear before the end of July, when people
begin to scatter. I am very anxious about it all.
“I am not able to go down to Spezzia for some days, and if I can I shall
attack ‘Tony’--not but the chances are sorely against anything pleasant
if I mix with the characters any share of my present idiosyncrasy....
“I count on hearing from you now oftener that you are away from
Whitebait. I was getting very sulky with the dinner-parties of which
I was not a sharer. I met Mr and Mrs Sturgis at Thackeray’s at dinner.
They were there, I think, on the day when one of Thackeray’s guests
left the table to send him a challenge--the most absurd incident I ever
witnessed. The man was a Mr Synge, formally Attaché at Washington, and
now H.M’s Consul at the Sandwich Islands.”
_To Mr John Blackwood_.
“Villa Morklli, My 4,1864.
“I merely write a line. Your note and cheque came all right to me this
morning. My thanks for both. I have had four mortal days of stupidity,
and the fifth is on me this morning; but after I have had a few days at
Spezzia I hope to be all right and in the harness again.
“If Dizzy’s vote of censure is not very much amplified in his _exposé_,
it ought not to be difficult to meet it. The persistent way he dogged
Palmerston to say something, anything, is so like Sir Lucius O’Trigger
seizing on the first chance of a contradiction and saying, ‘Well, sir, I
differ from you there.’
“Pam’s declaration that ‘war’ was possible in certain emergencies--when,
for instance, the king should have been crucified and the princesses
vanished--was the only thing like devilling I heard from him yet. This
is, however, as palpably imbecility as anything they could do, and _one_
symptom, when a _leading one_, is as good as ten thousand.
“Old Begration once told the Duke of Wellington that the discovery of a
French horse-shoe ‘not roughed’ for the frost in the _month of October_
was the reason for the burning of Moscow. They said: ‘These French know
nothing of our climate; one winter here would kill them,’ It was the
present Duke told me this story.
“You will have had my O’D. on the Conference before this, and if the
Debate offer anything opportune for comment I’ll tag it on. The fact
is, one can always do with an ‘O’Dowd’ what the parson accomplished when
asked to preach a charity sermon,--graft the incident on the original
discourse. Indeed I feel at such moments that my proper sphere would
have been the pulpit. Perhaps I am more convinced of this to-day, as I
have gout on me. Don’t you know what Talleyrand said to the friend
who paid him a compliment on his fresh and _handsome_ appearance as he
landed at Dover?--‘Ah! it’s the sea-sickness, perhaps, has done it.’”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _July_ 10, 1864.
“What a hearty thing it was with you to send me the Bishop’s letter. I
hope I may keep it. Do you know that it was by the merest accident that
I did not allude to _himself_ in the paper--or, rather, it was out of
deference to his apron; for one of the most brilliant evenings I ever
remember in my life was having the Bishop and O’Sullivan to dine with
me and only two others, and Harry Griffin was the king of the company.
Moore used to say, when complimented on his singing the melodies, ‘Ah!
if you were to hear Griffin.’ But why don’t he recognise me? When we are
ready with our vol. i. I shall ask you to send one or two, or perhaps
three or four, copies to some friends. Let me beg one for the Bishop,
and I’ll send a note with it. I think your note _will_ do me good. It
_has_ already, and I am down and hipped and bedevilled cruelly.
“Palmerston will, I take it, have a small majority, but will he
dissolve?
“I only ask about the length of T. B. on your account; for my own part
I rather like writing the story, and if the public would stand it, I’d
make it as long as ‘Clarissa Harlowe.’”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _July_ 11, 1864.
“I send you a short O’D. on the Debate, and so I shall spare you a
letter. If, as now, there is no time for a proof,--though I think there
may,--look to it closely yourself. My hand at times begins to tremble (I
never give it any cause), and I find I can scarcely decipher some words.
How _you_ do it is miraculous. My gout will not _fix_, but hangs over me
with dreariness and ‘devil-may-careisms,’ so that though I have scores
of great intentions I can _do_ nothing.
“I count a good deal on a two hours’ swim, and I am off to take it
by Wednesday. If the sharks lay hold on me, finish T. B. Marry him to
Alice, and put the rest of the company to bed indiscriminately.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _July_ 12, 1864.
“I send you with this a few lines to finish the serial O’D., a few also
to complete ‘Be always ready with the Pistol,’ and--God forgive me for
the blunder!--two stray pages that ought to come in somewhere (not
where it is numbered) in the last-sent O’D. on ‘Material Aid.’ Will your
ingenuity be able to find the place--perhaps the end? If not, _squash_
it, and the mischief will not be great.
“I start to-night for the sea-side, so that if you want to send me a
proof for the next ten days, send it in _duo_, one to Spezzia and the
other here, by which means you shall have either back by return of post.
“The thermometer has taken a sudden start upwards to-day, 26° Réamur,
and work is downright impossible. The_ cicale_ too make a most infernal
uproar, for every confounded thing, from a bug to a baritone, sings all
day in Italy.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _July_ 23, 1864.
“I was getting a great stock of health, swimming and boating at Spezzia,
when I was called back by the illness of my youngest daughter, a sort of
feverish attack brought on by the excessive heat of the weather, 92° and
93° every day in the shade. She is, thank God, a little better now, and
I hope the severest part is over. When shall I be at work again? There
never was so much idleness assisted by an evil destiny.
“What a jolly letter you sent me. I read it over half a dozen times,
even after I knew it all, just as an unalterable toper touches his
lips to the glass after emptying it. I wish I could be as hopeful about
O’D.,--not exactly _that_, but I wish I could know it would have some
success, and for once in my life the wish is not entirely selfish.
“You will, I am sure, tell me how it fares, and if you see any notices,
good or bad, tell me of them.
“What a strange line Newdigate has taken,--not but he has a certain
amount of right in the middle of all the confusion of his ideas. Dizzy
unquestionably _coquetted_ with Rome. Little Earle, his secretary, was
out here on a small mission of intrigue, and I did my utmost to show
him that for every priest he ‘netted’ he would inevitably lose two
Protestants--I mean in Ireland. As for the worldly wit of the men who
think that they can drive a good bargain with the ‘Romish’ clergy, all
I can say is that they have no value in my eyes. The vulgarest curé that
ever wore a coal-scuttle hat is more than the match of all the craft in
Downing Street.
“You are quite right, it would do me immense good to breathe your
bracing air, but it ‘mauna be.’ I wish I could see a chance of _your_
crossing the Alps--is it on the cards?
“I wish I was twenty years younger and I’d make an effort to get into
Parliament. Like my friend Corney, my friends always prophesied a
success to me in something and somewhere that I have never explored--but
so it is.
“Oh! for the books that have never been written,
With all the wise things that nobody has read.
And oh! for the hearts that have never been smitten,
Nor heard the fond things that nobody has said.
“_My_ treasures are, I suspect, safely locked in the same secure
obscurity. _N’importe!_ at this moment I’d rather be sure my little girl
would have a good night than I’d be Member for Oxford.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _July_ 23, 1864.
“It would be unfair amidst all your labours to expect you could read
through the volume of ‘Corney O’Dowd’ that Blackwood will have already
sent--or a few days more will bring--to you. Still, if you will open it,
and here and there look through some of those jottings-down, I know
they will recall me to your memory. It is so very natural to me to
half-reason over things, that an old friend [? like] yourself will
recognise me on every page, and for this reason it is that I would like
to imagine you reading it. My great critics declare that I have done
nothing so good since the ‘Dodds,’--and now, enough of the whole theme!
“Here we are in a pretty villa on a south slope of the Apennines, with
Florence at our feet and a glorious foreground of all that is richest
in Italian foliage between us and the city. It is of all places the most
perfect to write in,--beauty of view, quiet, silence, and seclusion all
perfect,--but somehow I suppose I have grown a little footsore on the
road. I do not write with my old facility. I sit and think--or fancy I
think--and find very little is done after [all].
“The dreary thought of time lost and talent misapplied--for I ought
never to have taken to the class of writing that I did--_will_ invade,
and, instead of plodding steadily along the journey, I am like one who
sits down to cry over the map of the country to be traversed.
“I go to Spezzia occasionally--the fast mail now makes it but five
hours. The Foreign Office is really most indulgent: they ask nothing of
me, and in return I give them exactly what they ask.
“My wife is a little better--that is, she can move about unassisted and
has less suffering. Her malady, however, is not checked. The others are
well. As for myself, I am in great bodily health,--lazy and indolent,
as I always was, and more given to depressions, perhaps, but also more
patient under them than I used to be.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _Saturday_, July 30.
“Yours has just come. O’D. is very handsome. Confound the public if they
won’t like them! Nothing could be neater and prettier than the book. How
I long to hear some good tidings of it!
“My daughter had a slight relapse, but is now doing all well and safely.
“I think that the Irish papers--‘The Dub. E. Mail’ and ‘Express’--would
review us if copies were sent, and perhaps an advertisement.
“I know you’ll let me hear, so I don’t importune you for news.
“Your cheque came all safe; my thanks for it. The intense heat is such
now that I can only write late at night, and very little then.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Aug_. 3, 1864.
“Unshaven, dishevelled,
I sit all bedevilled;
Your news has upset me,--
It was meet it should fret me.
What! two hundred and fifty!
Is the public so thrifty?
Or are jokes so redundant,
And funds so abundant
That ‘O’Dowd’ cannot find more admirers than this!
I am sure in the City ‘Punch’ is reckoned more witty,
And Cockneys won’t laugh
Save at Lombard Street chaff;
But of _gentlemen_, surely there can be no stint,
Who would like dinner drolleries dished up in print,
And to _read_ the same nonsense would gladly be able
That they’d laugh at--if heard--o’er the claret at table
The sort of light folly that sensible men
Are never ashamed of--at least now and then.
For even the gravest are not above chaff,
And I know of a bishop that loves a good laugh.
Then why will they deny me,
And why won’t they buy me?
I know that the world is full of cajolery,
And many a dull dog will trade on _my_ drollery,
Though he’ll never be brought to confess it aloud
That the story you laughed at he stole from O’Dowd;
But the truth is, I feel if my book is unsold,
That my fun, like myself, it must be--has grown old.
And though the confession may come with a damn,
I must own it--_non sum qualis eram_.
“I got a droll characteristic note from the Duke of Wellington and a
cordial hearty one from Sir H. Seymour. I’d like to show you both, but I
am out of sorts by this sluggishness in our [circulation]. The worst of
it is, I have nobody to blame but myself.
“Send a copy of O’D. to Kinglake with my respects and regards. He is the
only man (except C. O’D.) in England who understands Louis Nap.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _Aug_. 9, 1864.
“I am just sent for to Spezzia to afford my Lords of the Admiralty a
full and true account of all the dock accommodation possible there,
which looks like something in ‘the wind’; the whole ‘most secret and
confidential.’
“I am sorry to leave home, though my little girl is doing well I have
_many_ causes of anxiety, and for the first time in my whole life have
begun to pass sleepless nights, being from my birth as sound a sleeper
as Sancho Panza himself.
“Of course Wilson was better than anything he ever did--but why wouldn’t
he? He was a noble bit of manhood every way; he was my _beau idéal_ of
a fine fellow from the days I was a schoolboy. The men who link genius
with geniality are the true salt of the earth, but they are marvellously
few in number. I don’t bore you, I hope, asking after O’D.; at least you
are so forgiving to my importunity that I fancy I am merciful.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _Aug_. 11,1864.
“I forgot to tell you that the scene of the collision in the longer
O’D. is all invented--there was nothing of it in ‘The Times’ or anywhere
else. How right you are about the melodramatic tone in the scene between
Maitland and his Mother! It is worse. It is bow-wow! It is Minerva Press
and the rest of it, but all that comes of a d------d public. I mean it
all comes of novel-writing for a d------d public that like novels,--and
novels are--novels.
“I am very gouty to-day, and I have a cross-grained man coming to
dinner, and my women (affecting to keep the mother company) won’t dine
with me, and I am sore put out.
“Another despatch! I am wanted at Spezzia,--a frigate or a gunboat has
just put in there and no consul Captain Short, of the _Sneezer_ perhaps,
after destroying Chiavari and the organ-men, put in for instructions. By
the way, Yule was dining with Perry, the Consul-General at Venice, the
other day, when there came an Austrian official to ask for the Magazine
with _Flynn’s Life_ as a _pièce de conviction!_ This would be grand, but
it is beaten hollow by another fact. In a French ‘Life of Wellington,’
by a staff officer of distinction, he corrects some misstatements thus,
‘Au contraire, M. Charles O’Malley, raconteur,’ &c. Shall I make a short
‘O’Dowd’ out of the double fiasco? Only think, a two-barrelled blunder
that made O’Dowd a witness at law, and Charles O’Malley a military
authority!
“When I was a doctor, I remember a Belgian buying ‘Harry Lorrequer’ as
a medical book, and thinking that the style was singularly involved and
figurative.
“Oh dear, how my knuckle is singing, but not like the brook in Tennyson;
it is no ‘pleasant tune.’
“Have you seen in ‘The Dublin E. Mail’ a very civil and cordial review
of ‘O’Dowd,’ lengthy and with extracts? What a jolly note I got from
the Bishop of Limmerick. He remembers a dinner I gave to himself and
O’Sullivan, Archer Butler, and Whiteside, and we sat till 4 o’ the
morning! _Noctes--Eheu fugaces!_
“Please say that some one has ordered ‘O’Dowd’ and liked it, or my gout
will go to the stomach.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _Aug_. 12, 1864.
“I recant: I don’t think the scene so bad as I did yesterday. I sent it
off _corrected this night’s post_--and try and agree with me. Remember
that Maitland’s mother (I don’t know who his father was) was an
actress,--why wouldn’t she be a little melodramatic? Don’t you know what
the old Irishwoman said to the sentry who threatened to run his bayonet
into her? ‘Devil thank you! sure, that’s you’re thrade.’ So Mad.
Brancaleoni was only giving a touch of her ‘thrade’ in her Cambyses
vein.
“I’m off to Spezzia, and my temper is so bad my family are glad to be
rid of me. All the fault of the public, who won’t admire ‘O’Dowd.’”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Aug_. 24, 1864.
“My heartiest thanks for the photograph. It is the face of a friend
and, _entre nous_, just now I have need of it, for I am very low and
depressed, but I don’t mean to worry you with these things. What a fine
fellow your Colonel is! I am right proud that he likes ‘O’Dowd,’ and so
too of your friend Smith, because I know if the officers are with me we
must have the rank and file later on. I read the ‘Saturday Review’
with the sort of feeling I have now and then left a dull dinner-party,
thinking little of myself but still less of the company. Now, I may be
stupid, but I’ll be d------d if I’m as bad as that fellow!
“One’s friends of course are no criterion, but I _have_ got very
pleasant notices from several, and none condemnatory, but still I shall
be sorely provoked if _your_ good opinion of me shall not be borne out
by the public. Galileo said ‘Ê pur se muove,’ but the Sacred College
outvoted him. God grant that you may not be the only man that doesn’t
think me a blockhead!
“I want to be at ‘Tony,’ but I am so very low and dispirited I shall
make a mess of whatever I touch, and so it is better to abstain.
“If I could only say of John Wilson one-half that I _feel_ about him.
If I could only tell Cockneydom that they never had, and probably never
will have, a measure to take the height of so noble a fellow, one
whose very manliness lifted him clear and clean above their petty
appreciation, just as in his stalwart vigour he was a match for any
score of them, and whom they would no more have ventured to scoff at
while living than they would have dared to confront foot to foot upon
the heather. If I could say, in fact, but a tithe of what his name calls
up within me, I _could_ write a paper on the _Noctes_, but the theme
would run away with me. Wilson was the only hero of my boy days, and I
never displaced him from the pedestal since. By Jove! ‘Ebony’ had giants
in those days. Do you know that no praise of O’D. had the same flattery
for me as comparing it with the papers by Maginn long ago. So you see I
am ending my days under the flag that fascinated my first ambition:
my grief is, my dear Blackwood, that you have not had the first of the
liquor and not the lees of the cask.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 6, 1864.
“I have just had your letter and enclosure,--many thanks for both. I
hope you may like the O’D. I sent you for next month. Don’t be afraid
of my breaking down as to time, though I may as to merit. You may always
rely on my punctuality--and I am vain of it, as the only orderly quality
in my whole nature....
“I am very anxious about ‘Tony,’ I want to make a good book of it,
and my very anxiety may mar my intentions. Tell me another thing: When
‘Tony’ appears in three vols., should it come out without name, or a
_nom de plume_,--which is better?
“Why does not ‘The Times’ notice O’D.? They are talking of all the
tiresome books in the world,--why not mine?
“I have often thought a pleasant series of papers might be made of the
great Irish Viceroys, beginning at John D. of Ormond, Chesterfield, D.
Portland, &c., with characteristic sketches of society at their several
periods. Think of a tableau with Swift, Addison, &c, at Templeton’s
_levée!_
“The thought of this, and a new cookery-book showing _when_ each thing
ought to be eaten, and making a sort of gastronomic tour, have been
addling my head the last three nights. But now I sit down steadily to
‘Tony,’ and ‘God give me a good deliverance.’”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Florence, _Sept._ 8.
“I am in such a hang-dog humour that I must write you.
“I suspect Anster _has_ got his CD., but his damnable writing has misled
me. What I thought was a complaint for its non-arrival was, I imagine, a
praise of its contents.
“I send you the rest of ‘Tony’ for October: God grant it be better than
I think it is. But if you only saw me you’d wonder that I could even do
the bad things I send you.
“Tell me, are you sick of the cant of people who uphold servants and
talk of them as an ‘interesting class’? I think them the greatest
rascals breathing, and would rather build a jail for them than a refuge.
I want to O’Dowd them; shall I?
“Gout is overcoming me completely! Isn’t it too hard to realise both
Dives and Lazarus in oneself at once?”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Sept_. 19.
“I send you the last chap, for the November ‘Tony,’ and I want all your
most critical comment on the Envoy, because, as the book draws to the
end, I desire to avoid the crying sin of all my stories, a huddled-up
conclusion. Be sure you tell me all my shortcomings, for even if I
cannot amend them I’ll bear in mind the impression they must create,
and, so far as I can, deprecate my reader’s wrath. You have not answered
me as to the advisability of a name or no name,--a matter of little
moment, but I’d like your counsel on it. My notion is this. If ‘Tony’ be
likely to have success as a novel when published entire, a name might
be useful for future publication, and as to that, I mean futurity, what
would you say to a Stuart story, taking the last days of Charles
Edward in Florence, and bringing in the great reforming Grand Duke,
Pietro-Leopoldo and Horace Mann, &c.?*
* Lever must have intended to recast and to rewrite the
adventures of “Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier,” the story
which appeared as a serial in ‘The Dublin University’ in
1869.--E. D.
“I have been mooning over this for the last week. The fact is, when I
draw towards the close of a story I can’t help hammering at another:
like the alderman who said, ‘I am always, during the second course,
imagining what will come with the woodcocks.’ Mind above all that
no thought of me personally is to interfere with other Magazine
arrangements, for it is merely as the outpouring of a confession that I
speak now of a _story_, and if you don’t want me, or don’t want so much
of me, you will say so.
“As I told you once before, I believe I am, or rather was--for there is
very little ‘am’ left--better at other things than story-writing, and
certainly I _like_ any other pen labour more. But this shall be as you
determine....
“Give me some hints as to the grievances of the ‘Limited Liability
Schemes.’ What are the weak points? Brief me!
“I have a notion that a course of O’Dowd lectures on Men and Women would
be a success, orally given. What think you?”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Sept_. 20.
“In my haste of correction in T. B. I believe I left ‘Castel d’Uovo’
‘Castel Ovo’; _now it should be the former_--pray look to it. God help
me! but if I live a little longer I shall find spelling impossible.
Till I began to correct the press I never made a mistake; and now I
understand what is meant by the tree of knowledge, for when once you
begin to see there’s a right and a wrong way to do anything, it’s ‘all
up’ with you. In my suspicion that the missing O’Ds. might possibly have
come to your hand, I asked you to cancel [the bit] about Pam. _Pray do
so_. It was ill-natured and gouty, though true; and, after all, he is a
grand old fellow with all his humbug, and if we do make too much of him
the fault is ours, not his.
“I have just got yours, 16th, and my mind is easy about the O’Ds. which
never reached me. It will be easier, however, when I know you have
squashed all about Pam.
“I am now doubly grieved to have been worrying about your nephew, but
I am sincerely glad to know it is no more than a fall. I believe I have
not a bone from my head to my heel unmarked by horse accidents, and
every man who really rides meets his misadventures. Whenever I hear of a
man who never falls, I can tell of one who never knew how to ride.
“Now of all my projects and intentions never bore yourself a minute:
the fact is--writing to _you_ pretty much as I talk at home, I have said
some of the fifty things that pass through my vagabondising brains, just
as I have been for the last twenty years plotting the Grand Book that is
to make me.
“But now that you _know me better_, treat all these as the mere projects
of a man whose only dream is hope, and whose case is all the worse that
he is a ‘solitary tippler’; and, above all, trust me to do my best--my
very best--for ‘Tony,’ which I am disposed to think about the best thing
I have done.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 26,1864.
“Don’t be afraid that I am impatient to close ‘Tony’; if it only ‘suited
your book’ I’d go on with him for a twelvemonth. And now tell me, does
it make any difference to you if he should go on to the January No.?
I mean, does it spoil magazine symmetry that he should appear in a new
volume? Not that I opine this will be necessary, only if it should I
should like to know.
“You must send me ‘Tony’ in sheets, as you did O’D., to revise and
reflect over, and I’ll begin at him at once.
“I knew well what a blow Speke’s death would be to you, and I am truly
sorry for the poor fellow.
“I don’t remember one word I write if I don’t see a proof, so I forget
what I said about an idea I had of a story. At all events, as Curran
said he picked up all his facts from the opposite counsel’s statement,
I’ll soon hear what you say, and be able to guess what I said myself.
“I’m gout up to the ears,--flying, dyspeptic, blue-devil gout,--with a
knuckle that sings like a tea-kettle and a toe that seems in the red-hot
bite of a rabid dog, and all these with------ But I swore not to bother
you except it be to write to me.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
[Undated.]
“I am up to my neck in Tony,--dress him, dine with him, and yesterday
went to his happy marriage with (this for Mrs Blackwood and yourself)
Dolly Stuart, he having got over his absurd passion, and found out (what
every man doesn’t) the girl he _ought_ to marry.
“I am doing my best to make the wind-up good. Heaven grant that my gout
do not mar my best intentions!
“This informal change of capital has raised my rent! More of Cavour’s
persecution. I told you that man will be my ruin.
“Whenever you have time write to me. There are such masses of things you
are to answer you will forget one-half if you don’t make a clearance.
“I am very sulky about the coldness the public have shown O’D. in its
vol. form. Why, confound them!------ But I won’t say what is on my
lips.”
_To Mr William Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 4, 1864.
“Your own fault if you have to say ‘Damn his familiarity’; but if you
won’t return it you can at least say ‘Damn O’Dowd.’
“Your cheque came all safe this morning. I wish I had not to add that
it was a dissolving view that rapidly disappeared in my cook’s
breeches-pocket.
“I suppose my gout must be on the decline from the very _mild_ character
of the ‘O’Dowd’ I now send you. Tell your uncle if he won’t write to me
about my forty-one projects, I’ll make an O’D. on Golf-players, and God
help him!
“I hope I shall meet you one of these days. I am as horsey as yourself,
and would a devilish deal sooner be astride of the pigskin than sitting
here inditing O’Dowderies.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Oct._ 14,1864.
“I return O’D. corrected. You are right, and I expunged the paragraph
you mention, and changed the expression of the joke--a d------d bad
one--against the Yankees; but I wanted the illustration, and couldn’t
miss it.
“I shall carry on ‘Tony’ to January, and will want the chapter you sent
me now to open December No. So much for the past. Now for what I have
some scruples to inflict on you, but I can’t help it. I want, if it
suits you, to take the O’D.,--that is, the present vol., and that which
is ready, say, in January or February,--and give me anything you think
it worth for my share of it, for I am greatly hampered just now. My
poor boy left a number of debts (some with brother officers); and
though nothing could be more considerate and gentleman-like than their
treatment of me, and the considerate way they left me to my own time to
pay, pay I must. What I am to receive for ‘Tony’ will have to be handed
over _en masse_, and yet only meet less than half what I owe. Now, my
dear Blackwood, do not mistake me, and do not, I entreat, read me wrong:
I don’t want you to do anything by me through any sense of your sympathy
for these troubles,--because if you did so, I could never have the
honest feeling of independence that enables me to write to you as I do,
and as your friend,--but I want you to understand that if it _accords
with your plans_ to take ‘O’Dowd’ altogether to yourself, it would much
help _me_; and if for the _future_ you would so accept it, giving me
anything you deem the whole worth, all the better for me. By this means
I could get rid of some of my cares: there are heavier ones behind, but
these I must bear how I may.
“I have been frank with you in all, and you will be the same with me.
“You are right, the present day is better for novels than the past--at
least, present-day readers say so. If you like I will get up a story to
begin in April, ‘The New Charter,’ but I won’t think of it till I have
done ‘Tony,’ which I own to you I like better on re-reading than I
thought I should. Do you?
“Nothing is truer than what you say about my over-rapid writing. In
the O’Ds. they are all the better for it, because I could talk them a
hundred times better than I could write them; but where constructiveness
comes in, it is very different.”
_To Dr Burbidge._
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 21,1864.
“Though I have only been detained here by my wife’s illness, and should
have been at Spezzia ere this, it was so far well that I was here to
meet a perfect rush of friends and acquaintances who have come. Hudson,
Perry from Venice, Delane, Pigott, D. Wolff, all here, and a host more,
and as my wife is again up, we have them at various times and seasons,
and a big dinner of them to-morrow.
“Renfrew of ‘The D. News’ tells me that O’D. was a great London success,
and that the literary people like it and praised it,--evidence,
thought I, that they’re not afraid of its author. He adds that I am not
generally believed to have written it.
“I have not been up to work the last two days, and a remnant of a cold
still keeps me ‘a-sneezin’.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 23.
“Your generous treatment of me relieves me of one great anxiety and
gives me another--that I may not prove to you as good a bargain as I
meant to be; but whatever comes of it, I’ll take care you shall not
_lose_ by me.
“I thank you heartily; and for the kind terms of your note even more
than for the material aid. From the days of my schoolboy life I never
did anything well but under kind treatment, and yours has given me a
spring and a courage that really I did not know were left in me.
“I hope vol. (or rather ‘book’) ii. of ‘O’Dowd’ will be better than
the first. Some of the bits are, I know, better; but in any case, if it
should fall short of what I hope, _you_ shall not be the sufferer.
“I am glad that you kept back the ‘S. Congresses.’ I send you herewith
one on the ‘Parson Sore Throat,’ and I think you will like it. I think I
have done it _safely_; they are ‘kittle cattle,’ but I have treated them
gingerly.
“I could swear you will agree with me in all I say of the ‘Hybrids,’ and
I think I see you, as you read it, join in with me in opinion.
“I am turning over an O’D. about Banting (but I want his book--could
you send it to me?), and one on the Postal Stamp mania, and these
would probably be variety enough for December No.,--‘S. Congresses,’
‘Conservatives,’ ‘Parsonitis,’ &c.
“My wife continues still so ill that, though I am wanted at Spezzia, I
cannot go down. I hope, however, that to-morrow or next day she may be
well enough to let me leave without anxiety.
“Perry, a consul-general at Venice, has just promised me a photo of
Flynn, taken by the Austrian authorities during his imprisonment at
Verona. I’ll send it to you when it comes.
“Did you ever see the notice of O’D. in ‘The Daily News’? It was most
handsome, and the D. U. M. was also good. All the London papers have now
reviewed it but ‘The Times,’ and the stranger [this], as Lucas, is very
well affected towards me.
“Once again, and from my heart, I thank you for responding so generously
to my request.”
_To Dr Burbidge._
“_Tuesday, [? Oct.]_ 23, 1864.
“I had believed I was to be at Spezzia before this, but my wife still
continues in a very precarious way, and I was afraid to leave her.
“I am, besides, hard at work closing ‘Tony,’ and getting another vol. of
‘O’Dowd’ ready for 1st of January. I have worked very steadily and,
for me, most industriously the entire month, but my evenings are always
lost, as people are now passing through to Rome.
“Hudson has taken a house near Florence, and Labouchere come back, so
that _some_ talkers there are at least.
“I mean to run down so soon as I finish cor-rectings, &c., at eight or
ten days at furthest.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 27,1864.
“How strange a hit you made when you said, ‘I knew L. N. as well as if
we had drunk together.’ I was a fellow-student with him at Göttingen in
1830,* and lived in great intimacy with him. There was a Scotchman there
at the same time named Dickson, a great botanist, who has, I believe,
since settled in London as a practising physician in Bryanstone Square.
L. Nap. went by the name of Ct. Fattorini. He never would know Dickson,
and used to leave me whenever D. came in. It was not for two years
after that I learned he was ‘the Bonaparte.’ Our set consisted of L. N.,
Adolph V. Decken (who afterwards married the sister of the Duchess of
C------, who now lives in Hanover), Beuliady the Home Minister, and
Ct. Bray the Bavarian Envoy at Vienna; I, the penny-a-liner, being the
complement of the party. I have had very strange companionships and
strange turns in life, and when I have worked out my O’Dowd vein I’ll
give you an autobiography.
* The date is incorrect. Lever’s Göttingen period was 1828.
“I now send you a political O’D. on L. N., not over civil; but I detest
the man, and I suspect I _know_ him and read him aright. Banting I did
without waiting for his book; but if it comes I will perhaps squeeze
something out of it.
“I am crippled with gout, and can scarcely hold a pen. The bit on
doctors is simply padding, and don’t put it in if you don’t like; but
the No. for December will, I think, be a strong one.
“Sir Jas. Hudson is with me, but I am too low even for his glorious
companionship--and he has no equal. Wolff is here, and all to stay for
the winter.
“What do you think of my advertising O’D. at the end of the Banting
paper? Does it not remind you of the epitaph to the French hosier,
where, after the enumeration of his virtues as husband and father, the
widow announces that she ‘continues the business at the old estab., Rue
Neuve des Petits Champs,’ &c. &c.?”
_To Dr Burbidge._
“Florence, Nov. 3, 1864.
“Bulwer the Great has stayed here, and will not leave till to-morrow,
and if you see Rice, will you please to tell him so. I am so primed
that I think I could write a great paper on the present state and future
prospects of Turkey.
“He has been very agreeable, and with all his affectations--legion that
they are--very amusing.
“Layard I don’t like at all; he is the complete stamp to represent a
(metropolitan) constituency--overbearing, loud, self-opinionated, and
half-informed, if so much. Bulwer appeared to great advantage in his
company.
“In my desire to see how far you were just or unjust to Georgina, I set
to work to read over again the scenes she occurs in, and went from end
to end of ‘Tony Butler,’ and at last came in despair to ask Julia to
find her out for me! So much for the gift of constructiveness, and that
power of concentration without which, Sir E. B. Lytton says, there is no
success in fiction-writing.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 6, 1864.
“I have just received your cheques, and thank you much for your
promptitude. You certainly ‘know my necessities before I ask.’
“I cannot tell you the pleasure, the complete relief, it is to me to
deal with a gentleman; and the cordial tone of our relations has done
more for me than I thought anything _now_ could, to rally and cheer me.
“I have been so long swimming with a stone round my neck, that I almost
begin to wish I could go down and have it all over. You have rallied
me out of this, and I frankly tell you it’s your hearty God-speed has
enabled me to make this last effort.
“Aytoun’s ‘Banting’ is admirable. Mine is poor stuff after it: indeed,
I’d not have done it if I’d thought he had it in hand. In one or two
points we hit the same blot, but _his_ blow is stronger and better than
mine. Don’t print me, therefore, if you don’t like.
“Before this you will have received L. B., and I hope to hear from you
about it. The address of this will show that my poor wife is no better,
and that I cannot leave her.
“Gregory, the M.P. for Galway, is here, and it was meeting him suggested
my hit at the lukewarm Conservatives. We fight every evening about
politics. I wish to Heaven I could have the floor of the House to do it
on, and no heavier adversary to engage....
“Henry Wolff is here full of great financial schemes,--director of
Heaven knows what railroads, and secretary to an infinity of companies.
He dined with me yesterday, and I’m sure I’d O’Dowd him. He means to
pass the winter here. He pressed me hard about ‘Tony,’ and I lied like
an envoy extracting a denial.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 9, 1864
“All the railroads are smashed, and Spezzia is now, I understand, on
an island, where I certainly shall not go to look for it. Here I am,
therefore, till the floods subside.
“I knew you would like the O’Ds. I believe they are the best of the
batch, but don’t be afraid for ‘Tony.’ I have a fit of the gout on me
that exactly keeps me up to the O’D. level; and I have one in my
head for Father Ignatius that, if I only can write as I see it, will
certainly hit. If Skeff is not brave it is no fault of mine. Why the
devil did Wolff come and sit for his picture when I was just finishing
the portrait from memory?
“The reason L. N. hated Dickson was: he (D------) was an awful
skinflint, and disgusted all us ‘youth.’ who were rather jolly, and went
the pace pretty briskly.
“D. is not the [? ] of the Faculty man, but a fellow who was once
Professor of Botany (in Edinburgh, I think). He once made me a visit at
my father’s, but I never liked him.
“I must not O’D. L. N., because one day or other, if I live, I shall jot
down some personal recollections of my own,--and, besides, I would not
give in a way that might be deemed fictitious what I will declare as
_fact_.
“If I can tone down M’Caskey, I will; but Skeffs courage is, I fear,
incorrigible. Oh, Blackwood, it is ‘not _I_ that have made him, but _he_
himself.’ Not but he is a good creature, as good as any can be that has
no _bone_ in his _back_--the same malady that all the Bulwers have,
for instance,--and, _take my word for it_, there is a large section of
humanity that are not verte-brated animals. Ask Aytoun if he don’t agree
with me, and show _him_ all this if you like; for though I never saw
him, my instinct tells me I _know_ him, and I feel we should hit it off
together if we met.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 11, 1864.
“I have taken two days to think over Skeff’s scene with M’C[askey],
and do not think it overdrawn. M’C. is a ruffian, and I don’t think
you object to his being one; but you wish Skeff to show pluck. Now I
remember (and it is only one instance out of many I could give you) Geo.
Brotherton, one of the most dashing cavalry officers in the service,
coming to me to say that he had listened to such insolence about England
from a Belgian sous-lieutenant that nearly killed him with rage. ‘I
had,’ said he, ‘the alternative of going out’ (and probably with the
sword too) ‘with, not impossibly, the son of a costermonger--and who,
_de facto_, was a complete _canaille_--or bear it,--and bear it I did,
though it half choked me.’
“Skeff would have fought, time and place befitting; but he would not
agree to _couper la gorge_ at the prompt bidding of a professional
throat-cutter, and I cannot impute cowardice to a man for that. Bear in
mind, too (I have witnessed it more than once), the initiative in
insult always overpowers a man that is opposed to it, if he be not by
temperament and habit one of those ready-witted fellows who can at once
see their way out of such a difficulty, as Col. O’Kelly, for instance,
at the Prince’s table------ You know the story; if not, I’ll tell it to
you.
“Still I am not wedded to my own judgment, and if I saw how to do it
I’d change the tone of the scene; for when the thing strikes you so
forcibly, and needs all this defence on _my_ part, the presumption is it
cannot be altogether right. I’ll tell you, however, how I can show the
reader that Skeff’s mortification was properly felt by a subsequent
admission--one line will do it--to Tony that he had gone through agonies
on that same journey, and did not know if he should ever feel quite
reconciled to his own endurance of M’Caskey’s outrages.
“Will this do? If not, I’ll rewrite it all for the volume.
“The floods have carried away the railroads here,--I wish to God they
had swept off my creditors! That new way to pay old debts would have
reconciled me to a month’s rain. The idea of being washed clear of one’s
difficulties is ecstasy. Write to me--write to me!”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 12, 1864.
“Mr O’Toole says, ‘Now that I’m found out, I’ll confess everything,’
and I think so good a precept should not be lost. In fact, I think it is
better to keep the disguise with respect to ‘Tony’ as long as I can,
and I have thought of giving a mock name--my grandmother’s, Arthur
Helsham--in the title. I have been lying like a Turk for this year
back, and I have really no face to own now that I wrote the book. Reason
number two: there will be that other story of mine completed nearly at
the same time, and you know better than myself how prone the world is to
cry out, ‘over-writing himself,’ ‘more rubbish,’ &c. Thirdly: even they
who discover me will be more generous to me in my mask (you know it’s a
Carnival rule never to kick a domino); and as for the outsiders, they’ll
say, ‘This young author, with a certain resemblance to Mr Lever, but
with a freshness and buoyancy which Mr Lever has long since taken leave
of,’ &c. &c. &c.
“Now so much for my notions; but you shall do exactly as you like, and
what will, to your own thinking, be best for the book’s success.
“God help Tony! If he doesn’t marry the right woman it has been for
no want of anxiety on my part: I have given him to each of them every
alternate day and night for the last month. But it must be Dolly, unless
he should take a sudden fancy for Mrs Maxwell. I’ll send you the finale
very soon, and you’ll have time to say your say on it before it be
irrevocable.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 13, 1864.
“On second thoughts I send you off the enclosed at once. One chap, more
will finish ‘Tony,’ but I want to have your judgment on these before I
write the last. I have worked nearly two nights through to do this. I am
uncommonly anxious--more than I like to tell--that the book should be
a success. I know well nothing will be wanting on _your part,_ and I am
all the more eager to do _mine_. Write to me as soon as you can, for I
shall lie on my oars till I hear from you, except so far as correcting
the volumes of T. and O’D.
“It has been, with all its fatigues, a great mercy to me to have had
this hard work, for I have great--the greatest--anxieties around me, and
but for the necessity for exertion, I don’t think I could bear up.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 16, 1864.
“I have never quitted ‘Tony’ since I wrote to you, and here goes the
result! I have finished him, unless you opine that a few more lines are
needed, though what they ought to detail is not usually thought fit for
publication.
“I hope to Heaven it is good. If you knew how I have laboured to
fancy myself in a love-making mood,--if you knew by what drains on my
_memory_--on my imagination--I have tried to believe a young damsel in
my arms and endeavoured to make the sweet moment profitable,--you’d pity
me. Perhaps a page of notices of what became of Mait-land, M’Caskey, &c,
is necessary, though I’m of the Irishman’s opinion, ‘that when we know
Jimmy was hanged, we don’t want to hear who got his corduroys.’
“Do you give me _your_ opinion, however, and God grant it be favourable!
for I’m dead-beat,--gouty, doubty, and damnably blue-devilled into the
bargain.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 23,1864.
“The Israelite whose letter you enclose seems to be without brains as
well as ‘guile.’ Couldn’t his stolid stupidity distinguish between a
story thrown out as an ‘illustration’ and a ‘fact’? Couldn’t he see that
the article was a paradox throughout, written merely to sustain the
one grain of doubt that reformatories were not all that their advocates
think them to be?
“On my oath, I believe that the British Public is the dreariest piece of
‘bull-headed one-sidedness’ that exists. He has added another sting to
my gout that nothing short of kicking him would relieve me of....
“Wolff is so much more absurd than stiff that I am ashamed of _my_ man.
His directorial-financial vein is about the broadest farce I know of,
and all the while that he invents companies and devises share-lists, he
has not that amount of arithmetic that can make up the score at whist!
“Labouchere is here now, and tortures the unlucky W. unceasingly.
“I hope you will sustain me in all my perjuries about ‘Tony.’ I told W.
yesterday that _you_ positively refused to tell me the author, and my
own guess was that it was Mr Briggs, who was murdered.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 26, 1864.
“I will certainly do the ‘Directors.’ Wolff will do for what artists
call the ‘lay figure,’ and I’ll put any drapery on him that I fancy.
“I think the loss of Lord Derby would be little short of the smash of
the party--I mean, at this moment. Indeed his social position and his
standing with the Queen were just as valuable to his friends as his
great abilities, and to be led in the House of Lords by Lord Malmesbury
is more than the party could stand.
“I remember once, when asked by Lord Lyndhurst what line I would suggest
for a Conservative press--it was in ‘52--and I said, ‘As much _sense_,
my lord, as your party will bear.’ ‘That will do it. I understand, and I
agree with you.’
“There was a project to give me the direction of the ‘Herald,’
‘Standard,’ and ‘St James’s Chronicle,’ when purchased and in the hands
of the Conservatives, and I believe it was about the sort of thing I
could have done, because any good there is in me is for emergencies: I
can hit them, and am seldom unprepared for them. Whatever takes the tone
of daily _continuous_ work and looks like industry I totally fail in.
“The project failed because I refused to accept a council of
‘surveillance’ that Disraeli proposed, and indeed Lytton also
recommended. Forgive all this egotistical balderdash; perhaps I think I
am going to die, and want to leave my memoirs in a friend’s hands.
“Your letters rally me, and I beg you to write often. If I wanted a boon
from Fortune it would be to have wherewithal to live on (modestly), and
write to my friends the sort of thing I write for the public, and give
way to the fancies that I cannot or dare not make the public party to.
“I am curious for your critique on ‘Tony.’”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 30,1864.
“I think the enclosed few words are needed to round off ‘Tony.’ The
characters of a book are to _my_ mind damnably like the tiresome people
who keep you wishing them good-night till you wish them at the devil.
They won’t go,--the step of the hall door would seem to have bird-lime
on it; and I therefore suspect that my constitutional impatience with
the bores aforesaid has damaged many a book of mine.
“If you do not approve of the added bit, squash it; but it strikes me as
useful.
“My poor wife laughed at your quiz at my bit of tenderness. She seldom
laughs now, though once on a time the ring of merry laughing was heard
amongst us from morn till night.
“Your cheque came all right; I have just checked my cook with it. We
have a system of living here by what they call _Cottino_, which is
really comfortable enough. You pay so much a-day to your cook for
feeding you and your household, and he stipulates so many _plats, &c.,_
and it’s _your_ business to see that he treats you well. My rascal--a
very good _artiste_--is a great politician, and everything that goes
hard against the ‘Left’ (he is a great patriot) is revenged upon _me_
in tough beef and raw mutton, but when Garibaldi triumphs, I am fed with
pheasants and woodcocks.”
_To Mr John Blackwood_.
“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Dec_ 9,1864.
“Do you see how right I was in my ‘O’Dowd’ about Bismarck, and how now
he is bullying the Diet and even Austria, and openly proclaiming how
little thought there was of ‘Germany’ in his Danish war? And yet I
believe I am the sole proprietor and patentee of the opinion, and I
have not yet heard even the faintest rumour of calling me to the Queen’s
counsels.
“My wife is half of Mrs Blackwood’s opinion, and is in no good humour
with Tony personally. She thinks he married out of ‘sulk,’ not for
inclination; but you and I know better, and if ever Tony comes to live a
winter in Florence, he’ll find he made the best choice.
“I half think I have the opening of a good story for you, but I want to
do something really creditable and will take time. Do you remember the
Dutchman that took a race of three miles to jump over the ditch, and was
so tired by the preparation that he sat down at the foot of it!
“I am low, low! but if I hear good accounts of ‘Tony’ and O’D. it will
do me good service, and I know if _you_ have them you’ll not hide them.
“You will have got the end of ‘Tony’ by this, and I look to another
letter from you to-morrow or next day.
“I meant ‘Luttrell’ for _you_ when I began it, but ‘Tony,’ I think
(now), is better; but I’ll see if I can’t beat both for a last spring
before I lie down for aye.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Villa Morelli, _Dec_. 11,1864.
“Aytoun shall have the reversion of M’Caskey at his own price. I mean
Aytoun’s price, for the other estimate might be a stunner.
“Wolff--I mean Skeff--I mean to resuscitate,--that is, I think a droll
paper of his unedited memoirs might one day be made amusing, and
the vehicle for some very original notions on diplomacy and politics
generally. He has just started to the Piraeus to see Henry Bulwer, who,
like Mr Mantalini, is at the point of death for the nineteenth
time. Wolff looks up to him with immense reverence as being the most
consummate rogue in Europe; and this he is certainly, notwithstanding
the fact that he has been detected and pronounced a hardened offender by
every Government since the Duke’s to Palmerston’s. What robbery he wants
to entrust to W. with his dying breath is hard to say; but poor Skeffy
is quite eager for the inheritance,--though God help him if he thinks he
can rig the thimble when his pal has gone home.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
[Undated.]
“They have sold my old house here, and I am driven to a little villa (or
shall be) in about a month’s time,--a small crib, nicely placed and very
quiet, about a mile from the Gates.
“What fun one could make of the devil at Compiègne, talking over all
L. Nap.’s plans, how he had humbugged every one--Pam, Russell, the
Austrians, Emp., &c, &c.; the devil’s compta, on the beauty of Paris,
and how much all that luxury and splendour did for _him_. An evening
with Bulwer, too, and a week at Pisa, where he dined with H. Bulwer and
heard the grand project for the regeneration of Turkey--the best bit of
news the devil had heard since the partition of Poland.
“I would not for a great deal have called O’D. ‘Corney’ had I known of
the other proprietor of the name; and I suspect I know the man, and
that he is a right good fellow. Nobody, however, has copyright in his
name--as _I_ know, for a prebend of Lichfield wrote a socialist story
and called his hero Charles Lever.
“I was once going to be shot by a certain Charles O’Malley, but who
afterwards told all the adventures of my hero as his own, with various
diversions into which I had not ventured.
“I was going to call O’D. ‘Terence.’ Now if the other O’D. likes to
be rebaptised by that name I’m ready to stand godfather; but as my own
child is before the world as Corney, I cannot change him.”