* The Major, amongst the many reminiscences of his friendconfided to Dr Fitzpatrick, tells a tale of this periodwhich shows that Lever, with all his tact, couldoccasionally allow temper to master discretion. A personageholding a high diplomatic post (which he had obtainednotoriously through influence) said to Lever at some socialgathering: “Your appointment is a sinecure, is it not?”“Not altogether,” answered the consul. “But you are consulat Spezzia, and you live altogether at Florence,” persistedthe personage. “You got the post, I suppose, on account ofyour novels.” “Yes, sir,” replied Lever tartly, “I got thepost in compliment to my brains: you got yours incompliment to your relatives.”—E. D.
From Mr John Blackwood.
“April27, 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,May5, 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 noblaguewhatever 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, butnotlighted.’ 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,May10, 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, ourentréescold, 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 thatyoube ofthismind.
“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 ofthatI am rid wellBy the agency charges of Allston and Bidwell.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence,May15,1864.
“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 gettheirsupper 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 isin vivente, remember me to him.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence,May16,1864.
“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,June7, 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 believethat.”
To Dr Burbidge.
“Florence,Thursday, [? June] 1864.
“I have taken a villa—a cottage in reality, but dear enough,—the only advantage being that itlooksmodest; 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,June14, 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 doallthat we need for illustration, which would be little occasional bits on the page and tailpieces. If he would take the trouble toreadthe 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 onecrawling over the page. What doyouthink?”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli,June16,1864.
“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 givemeany 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,June24, 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. asearly as you canthis 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,June30, 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 quitesureof 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 hisexposé, 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, andonesymptom, when aleading 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 themonth of Octoberwas 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 andhandsomeappearance as he landed at Dover?—‘Ah! it’s the sea-sickness, perhaps, has done it.’”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Florence,July10, 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 tohimselfin 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 notewilldo me good. Ithasalready, 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,July11, 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. Howyoudo it is miraculous. My gout will notfix, but hangs over me with dreariness and ‘devil-may-careisms,’ so that though I have scores of great intentions I candonothing.
“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,July12, 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,squashit, 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 induo, 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. Thecicaletoo 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,July23, 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 exactlythat, 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 unquestionablycoquettedwith 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 ofyourcrossing 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.
“Mytreasures 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,July23, 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—willinvade, 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 abundantThat ‘O’Dowd’ cannot find more admirers than this!I am sure in the City ‘Punch’ is reckoned more witty,And Cockneys won’t laughSave at Lombard Street chaff;But ofgentlemen, surely there can be no stint,Who would like dinner drolleries dished up in print,And toreadthe same nonsense would gladly be ableThat they’d laugh at—if heard—o’er the claret at tableThe sort of light folly that sensible menAre 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 onmydrollery,Though he’ll never be brought to confess it aloudThat 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 havemanycauses 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 mybeau idéalof 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 theSneezerperhaps, 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 withFlynn’s Lifeas apièce 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 offcorrected 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 Ihavegot very pleasant notices from several, and none condemnatory, but still I shall be sorely provoked ifyourgood 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 Ifeelabout 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, Icouldwrite a paper on theNoctes, 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 anom 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’slevée!
“The thought of this, and a new cookery-book showingwheneach 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 Ansterhasgot 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 theadventures of “Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier,” the storywhich appeared as a serial in ‘The Dublin University’ in1869.—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 astory, 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 Ilikeany 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 toyoupretty 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 youknow 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 heoughtto 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 verymildcharacter 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 overen 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 itaccords with your plansto take ‘O’Dowd’ altogether to yourself, it would much helpme; and if for thefutureyou 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 notloseby 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,youshall 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 itsafely; 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 thatsometalkers 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.