_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, Jan. 4, 1869.
“Thanks twice over for your note and enclosure. Your hearty sympathy is
a very great comfort to me. I suppose I am getting better, but I suffer
a good deal, and find it hard to struggle against depression. I am an
ungrateful dog after all, for my poor wife is decidedly better, and I
ought to be satisfied and thankful for a mercy that any suffering of my
own is a cheap price.
“Imagine Charles Mathews asked to pay at the door of the Adelphi, and
you can fancy my horror at feeing doctors! But it has come to this with
me, and you may suppose how the fact adds bitterness to illness.
“I hope you will like the O’Ds. I sent you, and that they may not savour
of that break-up which is threatening me.
“They say that I must give up work for some considerable time; but
till they can show me how I am to live in the interval (even with a
diminished appetite), I demur.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Jan_. 19,1869.
“I have no doubt you will be astonished at this reaction of mine to
unwonted industry, but so it has been ever with me. When the lamp has
been nearly out a very little trimming has set it to flare out again,
even though the illumination last but a short time.
“I send you a bit of light matter, which I hope you will like. The Home
Office has pronounced in its favour. I must work, and devilish hard too;
for, cruel as it may sound, I have been feeing doctors! So you see that
the adage about dogs not eating dogs does not apply to German hounds.
“I have been also driven to get my steam up by being notified officially
that the Prince and Princess of Wales are coming down here to embark for
Egypt; and as the exact date of their arrival is not known to us, and
we only are told to be in readiness to receive them, I have slept in my
cocked hat for the last week, and shave myself with my sword on.
“I have no taste for royalties, at least seen near, and would give a
trifle that H.RH. had preferred any other port of departure.
“The _Psyche_ arrived here yesterday, but the gale was so severe that
the officers who were engaged to dine with me could not come on shore.
The _Ariadne_ is hourly expected, but with the wind as it is now, I
can’t believe she will leave Corfu.
“The Greeks are about to launch another ironclad, for which the Greek
merchants here have paid the cost. She is a large corvette, carrying ten
heavy guns and plated with six-inch iron. They are savagely warlike, and
say that America is all ready and willing to aid them; and there is more
truth in this report than one would imagine from the source it comes
from.
“I have got a letter from New York that says the Yankees are wonderfully
‘tickled’ by the O’D. on the ‘Diplomacy.’ It has been printed separately
as what they call ‘a piece,’ and circulated largely.
“Tell me, if you can, that you like my ‘Whist’ sketch.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Feb_. 13, 1869.
“I was very impatient to hear from you. What you say of the whist story
is all true, though I didn’t make my man a fellow of All Souls’ but only
a master of that college. Some of the fellows are, however, notoriously
the worst whisters going. They are selected for convivial qualities, not
the gentlemanlike ones. Unhappily there is a distinction.
“Of course it wants point, just as one-franc Bordeaux wants ‘body.’ It
is merely meant to be light tipple, and if it does not give heartburn
there is nothing to grumble at over it.
“Still I’d have made it better if I knew how, but I couldn’t hit on
anything I thought improvement.
“My wife has got a serious relapse, and I have not written a line since
I wrote to you. It will suit my book--that is, my story (not my banker’s
book)--if you could begin with me by your new volume in July; but of
course I am at the mercy of your other engagements.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _March_ 2, 1869.
“I send you two short, but I think spicy, O’Ds., and will try to add
another. My girls say that if F. O. does not ‘inform me’ something about
the ‘new series,’ it will be strange and singular, for it is certainly
impertinent.
“The war is evidently drawing near, but the terror of each to begin
grows greater every day. It is firmly believed here that a secret
understanding binds Russia and America, and that if England moves out of
strict neutrality the States mean to be troublesome. Farragut told me he
saw no navy to compare with the Russian, but I know enough of Yankees to
accept his talk with more than one grain of salt.
“The efforts of France and Prussia to secure the alliance of Italy
are most amusing, as if the events of late had not shown how totally
inoperative Italy was, and that nothing could be worse than her army
except her fleet.
“My poor wife makes no progress towards recovery, and all we can do, by
incessant care, is to support her strength. I never leave the house now,
and am broken in spirits and nearly ‘off the hooks.’
“Do write me a line when you have time. It is always pleasant to hear
from you.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _March_ 14, 1869.
“You are quite right, there was a clear _non sequitur_ in the new series
O’D., and I have corrected it, I hope, satisfactorily.
“You are not, I think, so right about ‘Norcott,’ * at least I hope not,
for I cannot see the improbability or impossibility you speak of in
the latter part. The sketch of Hungarian life was, I believe, perfectly
correct, and there was no more improbability in the story than that
of heaping many incidents in the career of a single individual, which,
after all, is a necessity of a certain sort of fiction, and pardonable
so long as they are not incongruous. It is not worth discussing,
besides; indeed, I never do uphold or even defend what I have done
except the critic be, as you are, a friend whose objections are meant as
warnings and guidings.
* “That Boy of Norcott’s,” which was just finishing its
serial course in “The Cornhill Magazine.’ and is coming to
see me. He and ‘his’n’ are living with the Bloomfields, who
have most hospitably taken them in till they can house
themselves, which (you know) can only be done in Austria on
the 24th August.
“My chances of seeing London this year decrease almost daily. My poor
wife’s symptoms are very threatening, and I cannot leave home now,
though much pressed to pay a long-promised visit to Croatia, even for a
day.
“Robert Lytton is now Secretary at Vienna,
“You don’t agree with me about the proximity of war, but I know it has
been twice, within the last three weeks, on the very brink of beginning.
Louis Napoleon has fallen into a state of silent despondency, in which
he will give no orders, offer nothing, nor agree to anything, and
R[ouher] is often left days without any instructions to guide him.
“As for Austria, she is in a terrible funk, _el du raison_. Her army is
but half drilled, and the new weapon is a puzzle to the raw recruits;
besides this, she has nothing that could be called a general,--nothing
above the Codrington class, which, after all, can only pull through by
the pluck and bravery of British troops.
“The hatred of Prussia is so inveterate here that anything like a candid
opinion as to the chances of the campaign against France is not to be
looked for, but so far as I can see men would generally back the French.
How would the Whigs conduct a great war, I wonder? Certainly Cardwell
and his economics would cut a sorry figure if he were called on for a
big effort.
“I hope the mode in which Gladstone proposes to _endow_ Maynooth (while
affecting mere compensation) will give the Tories a strong ground of
attack. The Bill is a palpable project to buy every one at the
expense of the Irish Church. The landlord, the tenant, the priest, the
Presbyterian, even the Consolidated Fund, are to be relieved of part of
their charge for Irish charities; and yet it will pass, if for no other
reason than that the nation sees one party to be as dishonest as the
other, and that if Gladstone were beaten by Dizzy, Dizzy would carry the
measure afterwards.
“If the ‘Ballot’ O’D. be late to send back in proof, you will deal with
it yourself. It is well to take the themes that are before men’s eyes,
and say our say while there are ears to hear us.
“The Emperor of Austria arrives here on Friday, and I am bidden to a
great banquet, to be eaten in a tight uniform and epaulettes ‘with what
appetite I may.’ I wish I could O’Dowd them all, and take my vengeance
‘in kind.’”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _April_ 13, 1869.
“The piece of autobiography is fact. I was a young college man when I
did the trick, and can to this day remember one sentence of Boyton’s
own words, which I gave in the report verbatim. The peer was the late
Marquis of Downshire, the greatest ass of the Conservative party, _et
c’est beaucoup dire_. Boyton’s death was commemorated by a beautiful
article in ‘Blackwood,’--I believe written by O’Sullivan, but I’m
not sure. As for the ‘_Speech_-Makers’ Manual,’ it was published by
Koutledge & Co. I got it out before I wrote my papers. It is incredibly
absurd. The inscrutable man I refer to was Villiers--Fred Villiers,--a
great friend of all the Bulwers, and formerly M.P. for Canterbury. He
was no Villiers, had nothing, nor belonged to any one; but he was at
the top of London society and knew every duke in England, and made a
brilliant career of it for at least ten years or more.
“I am very full of my trip to London, and mean to take my youngest
daughter over--she has never been in England--to visit some friends and
pass the summer in Devonshire. My leave is a very short one; and as they
stop my pay, I can’t afford to prolong it. It will be a great delight
to me to see you and Mrs Blackwood again, and I feel this is to be my
farewell visit to England, my possibly last appearance before retiring
from the boards for ever.
“I have just found the reference to Boyton. It is taken from ‘The Dublin
Evening Mail’ (the paper in which I gave Downshire his speech) for
August 1833, but my impression is that there is another and longer
notice of him in some other magazine later on.
“It is very rarely that I wish for my youth back again; but now that I
have begun to think of those days, and all the fine-hearted fellows I
knew in them, I cannot repress the wish that I was once more what I was
thirty-five years ago, and take my chance for doing something other and
better than I have done.
“The Austrians and Italians are doing now what they ought to have done
fifteen years ago, making an alliance _against_ France--that is, to
maintain a united neutrality if pressed by France to join her. How
strange it is that nations, no more than individuals, do not see that it
is not enough to do the _right thing_, but that it ought to be done at
the _right time_ also.
“For ever since I have known Italy I have said her natural ally was
Austria, her natural enemy France.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Hôtel du Louvre, Paris, _May_ 4,1869.
“‘Thus far into the bowels of the land have we marched’ without other
impediment than the Custom House officers, and mean to be in London by
Thursday next. Will you drop me a line to Jr. Carlton to say when we may
hope to see you?
“I’d not have delayed in Paris, but Lyons has been exceedingly kind and
hospitable, and I am glad to have a long gossip with him over things
past and present and to come.
“I have done nothing but _rencontre_ with old
schoolfellows--white-headed rascals that terrify me with their tiresome
stories and half-remembered remembrances. Good God, am I like these
Pharisees? is my constant question, and I have never the pluck to answer
it.
“We travelled a whole day with Lewes and his wife (Adam Bede), and were
delighted with her talk. Her voice alone has an indescribable charm.
“I write in the buzz of a room with 250 travellers and fifty or more
particular acquaintances who are telling me what they fancy are good
stories, though if I tried to palm them on you as such, you’d soon let
me know your mind.
“Tanti saluti a la Signera”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“33 Brook Street, London, _May_ 12,1869.
“I cannot tell you how I feel the disappointment of not seeing you
here, and my regret is all the deeper for the cause of your absence. I
thoroughly know besides how you yourself regard a position which, while
you are powerless for all good, leaves you still unable to quit it. I
fervently hope that your poor brother may rally, and that I may soon
hear better tidings of him. In the turmoil and movement around me I
always feel like a man the day after a hard drinking-bout, my head
aching, my senses confused, my memory shaken, and through all a sort
of shame that this is not my place at all, and that I am wastefully
squandering my hard-got half-crowns to the detriment of my family. On
the other side of the picture I find great kindness and great courtesy,
a number of agreeable people to talk to, and the only women I have seen
for a long while who, to be pleasant, do not need to be made love to. We
have been greatly asked out, and some of my old friends have vied with
each other in kindness to my daughters.
“Lord L.* proposes our passing next week at Knebworth, and the idea has
something tempting, but I suspect if you are not likely to come up, I
shall scarcely delay here, but make a straight run home, from which my
last accounts are far from reassuring.
* A story is told of this visit. The Consul, on his arrival
in England, called upon Lord Lytton. The two novelists
chatted for some time, and at length Lytton said, “I’m so
glad for many reasons to see you here. You will have an
opportunity presently of meeting your chief, Clarendon. I
expect him every moment.” Lever was aghast. He recollected
that he had left Trieste without obtaining formal “leave.”
He endeavoured to excuse himself to Lytton (who was now very
deaf): he had to be off to meet his daughters. While he was
apologising for his hurried decision to say good-bye, the
Minister for Foreign Affairs was announced. “Ah, Mr Lever,”
said Lord Clarendon, “I didn’t know that you had left
Trieste.” “No, my lord,” stammered Lever, unable for the
moment to see how he was going to get out of the difficulty.
“The fact is, I thought it would be more respectful if I
came and asked your lordship personally for leave.”
Possibly this anecdote is of the “ben trovato” order.--E. D.
“My old friend Seymour is with us every day with plans for amusement.
“To turn to other matters, I have a couple of half finished O’Ds. which,
if you like to print, I shall have time to lick into shape. I went
yesterday to the ‘House’ to see if my countryman the Mayor of Cork might
not furnish matter for an O’Dowd, but the whole was flat and wearisome.”
_To Mr William Blackwood._
“Knebworth, _May_ 18, 1869.
“Half stupid with a cold, and shaken by the worst cough I ever had in my
life, I send you an O’D., part of which I read to your uncle, and indeed
wrote after a conversation with him. I hope it has more go in it than
the man who wrote it.
“I am told you are likely to come up to town, and I cannot tell you
how I would like to meet you. It may be, most probably is, my last
appearance on these boards, for it is most unlikely I shall ever cross
the Alps again, so that I entreat you let us have a shake hands, if only
that we may recognise each other when on t’other side of the Styx.
“I shall be back in town to-morrow or the day after, and hope to hear
news of you.
“I am afraid to write more, I am so overwhelmed by wheezing and
nose-blowing.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _June_ 25, 1869.
“I have been coughing unceasingly since I saw you last, and with
difficulty secured intervals to write these O’Ds. We made only a day’s
delay at Paris, and came on here without resting at all.
“Of my wife I can only say she is not worse, but I dare not say she is
better. The excessive heat here is very debilitating, especially coming
after a somewhat rough spring.
“Sydney is pressing me to join her in a visit to a chateau in Croatia,
where she is about to stay for a couple of months, but I can’t afford
the time, though in one way it might repay me.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _July_ 9, 1869.
“I have just got your note and am glad you like the O’Ds., but the best
of the batch are not here, as I am sure you will think,--‘Forfeited
Pledges’ and ‘What to do with it’ especially. I cannot throw off my
cough, and as I don’t sleep at night I do nothing but sleep all day, and
this disposition of my time is little favourable to habits of industry.
“I suppose you are right. Syd’s energy would have carried me off to
Croatia if possible. Do you remember the story of the Irish priest
telling the peasant that whenever he--the peasant aforesaid--went into
a ‘shebeen’ to drink, his guardian angel stood weeping at the door.
‘Begorra,’ said Pat, ‘I don’t wonder but if he had sixpence he’d be in
too.’ It is really the want of the sixpence makes me a guardian angel.
“The weather is intensely hot here just now, and all out-of-door life
impossible till evening, and for my own part I never wander beyond the
walls of my own garden, which, fortunately for me, is very pretty and
shady too. Very little companionship would reconcile me to the place,
but there’s positively none. It was this sort of solitude, begetting a
species of brooding, that broke down my poor brother in an Irish parish;
and sometimes I dread the depression for myself. It costs me such an
effort to do anything.”
_To Mr John Blackwood_
“Trieste, _July_ 10, 1869.
“You have read of some ships having crossed the Atlantic with eight feet
of water in the hold, bulwarks staved in, sails in tatters, the whole
only kept afloat by the incessant labour of crew and passengers at
the pumps; and such is pretty much my condition, and must, I believe,
continue to be for the rest of my voyage here, and what is perhaps worst
of all is, in this same lamentable state I must still solicit freight
and cargo, ask to be ‘chartered,’ and pledge myself to be seaworthy and
insurable.
“Well, I can only say, ‘I’ll not humbug you.’ You shall see the craft in
all its rottenness, and not embark a bale on board of me without knowing
how frail is the hope you trust to. Having said this much of warning
(not that you need warning, for no man better knows the value of what he
takes or rejects), I have now another confession to make. I have begun
my new story, which I call ‘Lord Kilgobbin,’ which will be essentially
Irish, and for which, if I live and thrive, I mean to take a look at
Ireland about May next.
“I have made such an opening--such as all here are delighted with, and I
myself think not so bad. I shall be ready if you like to begin in April,
and shall be able to send you No. 1 before the present month is out.
“I had gout on me all the time I was writing the ‘Dodds,’ and I have
a theory that if it does not utterly floor me it sharpens me. What
debilitates occasionally stimulates, just as cutting a ship’s timbers
will give a knot to her speed.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, July 12,1869.
“I am going on fairly: my malady is there, and must stay there; but I am
going to tide over this time, and will not fret myself for the future.
“I’m glad you like my talk. How I’d like to read you my opening of
‘Kilgobbin.’ They like it much here, but I don’t know how much may have
been said to cheer me. I’m not able to write beyond a very short time,
but I must do something or my head will run clean away with me.
“My wife’s state keeps me in intense anxiety, but on the whole she is
better than heretofore.
“Is there anything out worth reviewing? I’d like to have something would
take me off myself for a while.
“That poor fellow Baker, who was shot, was a cousin of my wife,--a good,
amiable, soft-hearted fellow, I hear, and incapable of a severe thing.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _July_ 16, 1869.
“I kept over the O’Ds., at your nephew’s suggestion, till I heard from
you, but am glad now to see that you have no change to advise, for I
don’t think I could make them better, especially by dictation. Any value
these things have is as a sort of ‘schnaps,’ and nobody likes water with
his glass of curaçoa.
“The heat is so overpowering here that I can do nothing, and I am
afraid, in my wife’s critical state, to leave home for the Styrian
mountains, where some hospitable invitations are tempting me. From all
I can learn, there is a fine field for story-writing in those unvisited
lands on the Hungarian frontier, and I may one of these days perhaps be
able to profit by it.
“I am glad the chestnut turns out so well, but I was sure she would
improve every day she was ridden. If I were Mrs B. I’d strongly demur to
putting a collar on her, at least till she was thoroughly made for the
saddle; for it is a curious fact that you may harness your saddle-horse
but you can’t ride your harness-horse. Mrs B. will understand me, and
I am sure agree with me. Whether she does or not, give her my kindest
regards.”
_To Mr William Blackwood._
“_July_ 16, 1869.
“You are a bad boy not to have come up to town and let us have a shake
hands together. I’ll forgive you, however, if you make some pretext
for seeing Venice, and come over here for a few days to me. There
must surely be some dead time of the year, when magazines, like their
writers, grow drowsy and dozy; at all events make time and take a short
run abroad, and it will do you a world of good.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Aug_. 4,1869.
“I send you two O’Ds. which I have just done, and hope you will think
them good. I imagine you will insert the small benefaction--which I
think well enough--in next batch.
“The heat has been nigh killing us all here. Sydney was thrown down by
sunstroke on Sunday coming from church, and is still in bed, but now
better. The heat was 94° in the shade, and people who had come from
Egypt say they had never suffered anything like it there. My poor wife
has felt it severely, and the strongest of us have had to give up food
and exercise, and merely wait for evening to breathe freely.
“Pray make them send me June No., for I can’t follow the story till I
get it.
“Don’t you think that they have hunted down that blackguard, Grenville
Murray, too inhumanly even for a blackguard!--I do. (I mean Knox’s
decision.)”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Sept. 6._
“I thank you much for your generous remittance. I have not been doing
anything lately for a heavy feverish cold, which has kept me in a dark
room and a low diet.
“I want to write to you about Byron, but I will wait till I see if
General Mengaldo (Byron’s old Venetian friend) will give me leave to
tell _his_ story of Byron’s separation, and confute the Yankee woman
whose name I have not temper to write.
“Mengaldo lived more in Byron’s intimacy as an equal (not a dependant)
than any one during Byron’s life at Venice, and would be a mine of
curious information if he could be led to open it. Hudson alone has
influence with him, and since I saw that woman’s book I wrote to H.
about it.
“There is a most curious little volume just out by Persano, ‘The Hero
of Lessa,’ all about Cavour and Garibaldi, confirming everything I once
wrote you about Cavour’s complicity and duplicity. Would you like a
short notice or review of it?
“My wife is most seriously ill, the rest all well.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“_Sept_. 26,1869.
“I have just read the O’D. about Canning to the Chief Baron, who has
been dining here with me, and I send it hoping you will laugh at it as
much as he did: he also liked the Fenian paper much, and I send them
both at once, as if you have anything to add, &c, there will be ample
time.
“I never write a line now but O’D., and I only send you about one in
every five I invent, for the time is not propitious in new subjects.
“My poor wife continues seriously ill, and I am myself so worn by
watching and anxiety that I am scarcely alive.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Oct_. 8,1869.
“I don’t like delaying this O’D., though I thought at one time to keep
it till I had heard from you. The ‘Austrian Free Press’ has translated
the Austrian O’D. and the Persano one, and the German party seems
greatly pleased with the tone of the first, though of course the
Italians are indignant.
“I think you will like the bit about Baron Warde in this O’D. It was to
Lord Normanby I presented him, at a party at Scarlett’s, who was then
British Chargé d’Affaires.
“I have little heart to do anything. My wife has had to submit to a
third operation, and cannot rally from the great nervous depression, and
has now ceased her only nourishment, wine.
“Loss of rest at night and want of fresh air by day have worn me so much
that I have no more energy left in me. Of course years have their share
in this, and I don’t try to blink that.
“Chas. Reade has found a sympathetic critic who has forgotten none of
his merits; not but that on the whole I agree with him, and certainly
concur in the belief that Reade has got nothing like his deserts in
popular favour. The coarsenesses that disfigure him (and they do) are,
after all, not worse than many in Balzac, and no one disputes _his_
supremacy.
“They tell me that the Cabinet can’t agree about the Irish robbery bill;
but I don’t think the thieves will fall out, seeing how much booty they
have to divide elsewhere. It’s rather a good joke to see a Whig
Radical Government trying to revive the Holy Alliance, and sending Lord
Clarendon over Europe to concoct alliances against France. The fear of
what will happen when L. N. dies is a strong bond of interest, and
in the common fear of a great Democratic revolution even Austria and
Prussia are willing to shake hands. Would it be well to O’Dowd them?
“I wish I had three days with you in your breezy atmosphere to shake off
my dumps and my dreariness.”
_To Mr William Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Sunday_, Oct. 10.
“As I have made a slight addition to the ‘Canning’ O’D., I do not like
to delay the proof beyond to-day, to which I waited in hope of a letter
from your uncle.
“I have no good news to send of my poor wife, and I am very low and
dispirited in consequence.
“I had a capital O’D. in my head this morning, but a bad sermon I have
just heard has driven it clean out of my mind. I am quite ready to
disendow my consular chaplain, and won’t give him his Sunday dinner in
consequence.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Oct_. 14,1869.
“Many thanks for your cheque, which I have this moment received.
“You are not, I think, quite just about the last two O’Ds. First of all,
an O’D. need not, nor can it, be always an epigram; it must occasionally
be an argument epigrammatically treated, and ‘Close and the
Carmelite’ is, I believe, such. The changed position of two Churchmen
(representatives as they are of schools of thought) is well worth
notice, and it would be well to show that the Dean’s Protestantism is
not the national religion.
“As to the Volunteers, respect for what you think of them (and I do
not) always holds my hands when I allude to them. I would not take
a foreigner’s opinion on an English _institution_, though I would
respectfully listen to his judgment on a professional matter,--as, for
instance, if N. were to talk of a cancer or an aneurism, I would accept
his competence to pronounce in the same way [as] when a French soldier
like MacMahon or Pallitan, or an Austrian such as Hess, or a Russian
like T., derides the idea of such bodies being called soldiers, and
advises England not to trust to such defence if the hour of invasion
approach. I really feel that it requires great self-restraint not
to speak out on an inefficiency made all the more insufferable by an
overweening vanity and bumptiousness of conduct (as witness the walk
past t’other day at Brussels) that makes one anything but proud of the
common countyship.
“Fortunately for your patience I am writing near the post hour, and I
must spare you a long discourse on these two themes that you do not seem
to think the world will much care for, but that I believe are both of
them the very subjects men will be inclined to talk over.
“I half doubted whether, after your dissatisfaction with what I thought
good and well-timed, I should forward this O’D. on ‘Irish Queries ‘; but
it is a mere argument, treated Hibernically, and you will do what you
like with it.
“My home is a very sad one, and I see little prospect of brighter
fortune.
“A serious revolt has just broken out in Dalmatia. The peasants refuse
to be enrolled in the Landwehr, and have risen, and, up to this,
resisted the troops with success. Of course the thing is deeper than a
mere local row, and being on the Montenegrin frontier, has an uncommonly
ugly look. Three thousand men have been despatched and two gunboats this
morning to Cáttaro, and there will be warm work there before to-morrow
evening. Austria is in that state that any one movement of her
incongruous nationalities may bring down the whole rotten edifice with a
run.
“I think Sydney is ‘brewing an MS.,’ for I scarcely see her all day, and
she has a half conscious air of authorship at dinner.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Oct_. 27, 1869.
“I send you I think a smart O’Dowd ‘On the Misery of Singing without
an Accompaniment’ (or rather, speaking without a brogue). I’m terribly
hipped: I wish to God I could get out of this! If nothing else offers,
perhaps I could get Elizabeth Barry to steal me: I’d make no objection
to her cutting off my curls, and as to my clothes, I’ll be shot if she
could change them for worse.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Nov_. 9, 1869.
“I have detained these proofs that I might hear from you; but the snow
has begun to make the passes difficult for the post, and I think it
better to despatch them. I hope you’ll think them good. There was a
slaughter of the innocents last month--that is, if they ever reached
you.
“If my poor wife had not been so dreadfully ill I believe I’d have
managed a trip to Suez. I had a pressing invitation, and it would have
been exciting enough for the mere strange gathering it brought about,
but my home anxieties are thickening every hour.
“You know we are in trouble here in Dalmatia. So far back as July
I warned Lord Bloomfield that there was mischief brewing, and that
Montenegro was preparing for an outbreak. Of course I never supposed
that a consular report would carry weight, but I wrote in a light
jocular strain that I thought might be attended to. The reply was: ‘I
showed Beust your note, and he thinks you have been humbugged.’ Now
I have the satisfaction of seeing B. make a very humble _amende_,
admitting that I knew more of what was menaced than his agent at
Cáttaro.
“Still the Austrians believe, or affect to believe, that Russia is
not in it; nor is she more than certain American politicians are in
Fenianism--that is, they want to see the chances of success before they
go farther. I hear that Gladstone has got a fright about Ireland, and
that his Land Bill will be ‘Moderate and even Conservative’--in fact,
he begins to feel that dealing with Ireland means ‘concession,’ and when
you have given all you have, you’ve to make way for somebody else who’ll
give something more. Bright is very much disgusted at the moderation of
the measure intended, and the Cabinet, I hear, not one-minded.
“All these things, however, open no prospect for a Tory Government,
and out of pure fear of what Gladstone would do, _if pushed to it_, the
squires will vote for him rather than risk--not their seats, but their
acres.
“The indifference foreign statesmen feel about England, and what she
thinks on anything now, exceeds belief. I declare to you I believe
Holland has as much weight in Europe.
“Would you like something about Suez?--I mean, about the trade
prospects, &c,--that is, if anything could be had new or striking. Up to
this the only speculation I have seen worth anything is how greatly
to our benefit the route would be if we had a war with America, for
we could certainly ‘make the police’ of the Mediterranean and Levant,
though not of the Atlantic and Pacific.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Nov_. 29, 1869.
“I am still confined to the house with a feverish cold, and overrun by
travellers to and from Suez.
“The Dalmatian revolt is becoming a very serious affair. The peasants
are beating the troops, and now the season must stop all operations till
spring. Whether by that time the complication will not take wider limits
and embrace Servia and the Balkans, is not easy to see. That blessed
ally of ours, Louis Napoleon, is now intriguing to get a Russian
alliance and undo all the work of the Crimean campaign, and of course
our ‘Non-interference Policy’ will leave the coast free to him! Thank
God, his home troubles may overtake him before he goes much farther!”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Dec_. 11, 1869.
“Thanks for your note and its enclosure, and thanks, too, for telling
me that the deferred O’Ds. are not rejected ones, for I was getting
low-spirited at the number of recruits sent back as below the standard.
When I asked you to send me the unused, it was a painful confession. It
was like a manufacturer owning to his being reduced to work up his old
material. Perhaps I shall one of these days make an O’Dowd on ‘Devil’s
Dust in Literature.’ What do you think of it?
“I hope you will like the ‘O’Dowd’ I send. It is meant to expose a very
common blunder respecting the influences of the better classes abroad.
You must ensure the correction yourself, and it will be the last I shall
forward this month. For the last week I have been keeping a dark room
with a severe ophthalmia. It was a dreary time, and I am glad it is
over.
“Gladstone is going to propose a sort of Court of Arbitration for land
purposes--that is, another body of men to be shot at when the peasants
find landlords scarce, or what the sportsmen call ‘wild.’
“This Dalmatian revolt must sleep during the winter, but it will be a
serious mischief yet, especially if this Franco-Russian alliance takes
place. Our policy now ought to be to reconcile Austria and Prussia at
once, and prepare for the big struggle that is coming to undo the
results of the Crimean War. I wish, if it be decided to represent
England abroad by old _women_, that at least they would send us old
_ladies_.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
“Trieste, _Dec_. 14, 1860.
“I hope for both our sakes you are not quite just about the ‘Pope’ O’D.
I think it has a smack of Swift--a very faint one it may be, but still
enough to recall the flavour. The anecdote of the Yankee was not made
for the occasion, only it occurred to Sir J. Hudson, and not to O’Dowd.
Take them all in all, I have done better and worse; but I think with
those you have already on hand, they will make a fair batch.
“I hope you will like the ‘Dr Temple’ O’D. It, at least, is worked out.
“I am very poorly, and very low in spirits; my wife grows weaker every
day, and our anxieties are great. For the first time in my life I find
it a ‘grind’ to write a few lines. _Le commencement du fin_, maybe--who
knows?”