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Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II

by Charles Lever · English · Gutenberg #35865 · 573,240 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II

Author: Charles Lever

Editor: Edmund Downey


        
Release date: April 13, 2011 [eBook #35865]
                Most recently updated: September 4, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35865

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLES LEVER, HIS LIFE IN HIS LETTERS, VOL. II ***




Produced by David Widger





CHARLES LEVER

His Life in His Letters

By Edmund Downey

With Portraits

In Two Volumes, Vol. II.

William Blackwood And Sons

Edinburgh And London

MCMVI




XIV. FLORENCE AND SPEZZIA 1864


_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.”




XV. FLORENCE AND SPEZZIA 1865


_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Jan_. 6, 1866.

“I have just got your kind letter. I thank you for it heartily. The
second instalment of ‘Tony’ and the ‘O’Dowd’ [paper] will be time enough
in March.

“I am walking over the hills every day getting up my new tale; I truly
think I have got on a good track.

“I’ll send you a couple of short O’Ds. for February. When Parliament
meets we shall not want for matter.

“I send one now on ‘Tuft-hunting.’ You will see I had Whately in my head
while I was doing it.

“My hope and wish is to be able to begin a new story in the April No.
Will this suit your book?

“You can’t imagine how anxious I feel about ‘Tony.’ Let me hear from you
how it is subscribed? Mudie is, I think, the novel barometer; what says
he? If the book is not known as mine, all the better. At least, I have
such faith in my bad luck that I would rather any one else fathered it.

“If it were not for the cheer of your hearty letters I don’t know what I
should do, for I am low--low!”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Jan_. 9, 1865.

“I send you herewith three O’Ds. ‘Going into Parliament’--not bad;
‘Excursionist,’ perhaps tolerable,--but both true, so help me!

“This is the 9th, and if in time to let me have a proof--well. If not, I
trust to you to see that my errors be set right and my sins forgiven me.

“One of the most curious trials--a case of disputed identity--is now
going on in Madrid. I’d like to have given it, but I fear that the daily
papers will have it, and of course we must never drink out of the same
well. O’D. must be original or he is nothing, and the originality ought
to be, if possible, in _matter_ as much as manner. Don’t you agree with
me?

“I think I have a good opening of a story,--Ireland,--to be changed,
scene ii., to Cagliari in Sardinia. It is only in my _head_, and in
company there with duns, usurers, attorneys, begging letters, and F. O.
impertinences,--my poor skull being like a pawnbroker’s shop, where a
great deal is ‘pledged’ and very little redeemable.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Jan_. 19,1866.

“I got your note and your big cheque, and felt so lusty therewith that
I actually contradicted my landlord, and conducted myself with a
bumptiousness that half alarmed my family, unaware of the strong
stimulant I was under.

“Hech, sirs! aren’t I nervous about ‘Tony’? You made a great mistake
in not putting a name on the title. It will be ascribed to me, and
blackguarded in consequence.

“I am glad you like the O’D. on ‘Tuft-hunting.’ Of course you saw I had
Whately and his tail in my eye. They were the most shameless dogs I ever
forgathered with.

“Do let me hear from you about T. B. soon. You may depend on’t that
Corney O’Dowd’s sins will be visited on Tony, and the fellows who would
not dare to come out into the open and have a ‘fall’ with Tony will shy
their stone at him now.

“Why have you not reprinted in a vol. the ‘Maxims of Morgan O’Doherty’?
They are unequalled in their way.

“By this you will have received the O’D. on ‘Wolff going into
Parliament’ and a score more _sui generis_.

“I have composed three openings of the new story, and nearly driven my
family distracted by my changes of plan; but I am not on the right road
yet. However, I hope to be hard at it next week.

“Is the ‘P. M. Gazette’ to be the organ of the Party or is it a private
spec? When I only think of the Tories of my acquaintance it is not any
surprise to me that the Party is not a power; though I certainly feel
if they were there and not kicked out again it would go far to prove a
miracle. Are these your experiences?”



_To Mr John Blackwood_.

“Villa Morelli, _Jan_. 24, 1865.

“You are such a good fellow that you can give even bad news a colour of
comfort; but it is bad news, this of ‘Tony,’ and has caught me like a
strong blow between the eyes. Surely in this _gurgite vasto_ of [ ] and
sensuality there ought to be some hearing for a man who would give his
experiences of life uncharged with exaggerations, or unspiced by capital
offences.

“I am sure a notice of ‘The Times,’ if it could be, would get the book
a fair trial, and I neither ask nor have a right to more. Meanwhile I am
what Mrs O’Dowd calls ‘several degrees below Nero.’

“I began my new story yesterday, but I’ll wait till I hear more cheery
news before I take to my (ink) bottle again.

“You’ll have to look sharp for blunders in the last O’D.

“It almost puts me in spirits to talk of the theatricals. It is my
veritable passion, and I plume myself upon my actorship. I have had
plays in nearly every house I have lived in, in all parts of Europe.
Mary Boyle--that was Dickens’s _prima donna_--was of my training; her
infant steps (she was five-and-thirty at the time) were first led by me;
and I remember holding a ladder for her while she sang a love-song out
of a window, and (trying to study my own part at the same time) I set
fire to her petticoats!

“There are short things from the French which would do well if your
people had time to translate them. ‘Les Inconsolables,’ from two really
good artists, first-rate. I have a little Italian piece by me would also
adapt well, and it is an immense gain to have a piece perfectly new and
fresh, and when there can be no odious comparisons with Buckstone or
Keely, and the rest of them. In fact, half of our young English amateurs
are only bad Robsons and Paul Bedfords. My girls are all good actresses,
and we have--or we used to have--short scenes of our devising constantly
got up amongst us.

“Remember to send me good news, true or not, or at least any civil
‘notice’ you may see of ‘Tony,’ for till I hear again ‘the divil a word
ever I write.’

“When I read out your letter this morning, my wife said in a whisper,
‘Now he’ll be off to whist worse than ever!’ So it is; I take to the
rubber as other men do to a dram.

“Have you sent copies of T. B. to the press folk? I don’t know if Savage
has to do with ‘The Examiner,’ but he is an old pal of mine, and would
willingly give us a lift.

“I wish I had Bright’s speech in time for a quiz this month. It was a
rare occasion. A mock classic oration, for a tribune of the people, full
of gross flattery of the Plebs, would have been good fun; but [? the
opportunity] is everything, and the joke that comes late looks, at
least, as if it took labour to arrive at.

“Oh dear, but I am down! down! Write to me, I entreat you.

“Give my heartiest good wishes to the Corps Dramatique,--say that I am
with them in spirit. ‘My heart’s in the side scenes, my heart is not
here.’”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Feb_. 4, 1865.

“I am impatient to show you a brick of the new house: first, because if
you don’t like it I’ll not go on; and secondly, if you should think well
of it, your encouragement will be a great strengthener to me, and give
me that confidence that none of my own connections ever inspire. My
womenkind like Sir F., partly perhaps because I have said something
about my ‘intentions.’ Not that I have any intentions, however, so
fixed that the course of the story may not serve to unhinge them. At all
events, _you_ are well able to predicate from a molar tooth what sort of
a beast it was that owned it, or might own it. Say your say then, and as
boldly as our interests require.

“I’d like to write you the best story in my market--that is, if I have a
market; but now and then I half feel as if I were only manufacturing out
of old wearables, like the devil’s dust folk at Manchester.

“I have no heart to talk of ‘Tony,’ because I think the book is a deal
better than what the scoundrels are daily praising, and I know there is
better ‘talk’ in it than the rascals ever did talk or listen to in the
dirty daily Covent Garden lines. There’s a burst of indignant vanity for
you, and I’m ‘better for it’ already. If ‘The Times’ had noticed us at
once, it would have given the key-note; but _patienzia_, as the Italians
say.

“Now let me have a line at your earliest about B. F., for though we
don’t start till All Fools’ Day, I’d like to get in advance. I hope
you’ll like the O’Ds. I sent last. When vol. ii. is ready let me have
one by post. Your cheque is come all safe--my thanks for it.

“We are in great commotion here; the K. has arrived. Turin being in a
state that may be any moment ‘of siege,’ things look very ill here, and
the men in power are quite unequal to the charge.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _Feb_. 11, 1865.

“You are wrong about the scandal--there is none abroad whatever! For the
same reason that Lycurgus said there was no adultery in Sparta, because
every one had a legal right to every one else. There can be no criticism
where there is no default.

“‘The Times’ on ‘Tony’ was miserable: the book is--‘though I that
oughtn’t,’ &c,--good. That is, there is a devilish deal more good in it
than half of the things that are puffed up into celebrity, and had
it been written by any man but my unlucky self, would have had great
success. I have not seen the M. P. notice. I have just seen the ‘P.
Mall Gazette.’ It is deplorably bad: the attempts at fun and smartness
positively painful. I am impatient to hear what you say of the new
story.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Feb._ 21,1865.

“I hasten to answer your note, which has just come and relieved me
of some gloomy apprehensions. I had begun to fancy that your delay in
pronouncing on B. F. is out of dislike to say that you are not pleased
with it. This fear of mine was increased by being low and depressed.
Your judgment has relieved me, however, and done me much good already,
and to-morrow I’ll go to work ‘with a will’ and, I hope, a ‘way.’

“‘The Judge and his Wife’ * are life sketches, the rest are fictional.

     * Baron Lendrick (in ‘Sir Brook Fossbrooke’) was one of
     Lever’s favourite characters. The old judge was a sketch for
     which he had to depend upon a memory of a journey made more
     than twenty years before ‘Sir Brook’ was written. Lever had
     travelled to London in the ‘Forties with a distinguished
     party--Isaac Butt, Frederick Shaw (the member for Dublin
     University), Henry West (afterwards a judge), and Sergeant
     Lefroy (afterwards--Lord Chief-Justice of Ireland). Baron
     Lendrick was a study of Lefroy. It was said that Lever was
     the only man who had ever succeeded in making Lefroy laugh.
     Lever declared that his Baron Lendrick was a portrait upon
     which he had expended “a good deal of time and paint”--E. D.

“I send you a batch of O’Ds. for April No. Some of them I think good.
By the way, Smith--of Smith & Elder--has been begging me to send
him something, as O’Ds. I refused, and said that Cornelius was your
property, and if I sent him an occasional squib it should be on no
account under that title.

“From what I have seen I agree with you about the style and pretensions
of the ‘P. M. Gazette.’ They are heavy when trying to be light and
volatile, the dreariest sort of failure imaginable. It is strange
fact that what the world regards as the inferior organisation--the
temperament for drollery--is infinitely the most difficult to imitate.
Your clown might possibly play Hamlet. I’ll be shot if Hamlet could play
Clown! Now original matter on daily events, to be read at all, ought
to have the stamp of originality on its style. These fellows have not
caught this. They are as tiresome as real members of Parliament.

“There is a great dearth of ‘passing topics’ for O’Dowderie; Parliament
is dull, and society duller. I am sure that a little stupidity--a sort
of prosy platitude just now in O’D.--would conciliate my critics of the
press. My pickles have given them a heartburn, d------ them; but they
shall have them hotter than ever.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“_Feb_. 29, 1866.

“I have just got your note and its ‘farce’: thanks for both. ‘Tony
Butler’ is a deal too good for the stupid public, who cram themselves
with [ ] and [ ], which any one with a Newgate Calendar at hand and an
unblushing temperament might accomplish after a few easy lessons.

“It is very little short of an indignity for a man to write for a public
who can gloat over [ ] or the stupid drolleries of [ ], so flauntingly
proclaimed by ‘The Times,’ as most utter trash. I am decidedly sick of
my readers and my critics, and not in any extravagance of self-conceit,
because though I know I have a speciality for the thing I do, I neither
want any one to believe it a high order of performance or myself a very
great artist. I only say it is mine, and that another has not done it in
the same way.

“I shall be sorry if you omit the O’Ds. this month. Two of them, at
least, are apropos, and would suffer. The careful meditation, too, is
worth something, as I claim to be ready with my pen, even when I only
wound my bird.”



_To Mr John Blackwood_.

“Villa MorElli, Florence, March 7, 1865.

“I answer your note at once to acknowledge your cheque. It’s not
necessary to tell you how I value your feeling for me, or how deeply
I prize your treatment of me. Sorely as I feel the public neglect of
‘Tony,’ I declare I am more grieved on your account than on my own. It
is in no puppyism I profess to think the book good: faults I know there
are, scores of them, but there is more knowledge of men and women and
better ‘talk’ in it, I honestly believe, than in those things which
are run after and third-editioned. As to doing better--I frankly own I
cannot. It is not _in_ me. I will not say I may not hit off my public
better, though I’m not too confident of even _that_, but as to writing
better, throwing off more original sketches of character,--better
contrasts in colour or _sharper_ talkers,--don’t believe it! I cannot.

“A more _ignorant_ notice than the ‘Saturday Review’ I never read.
M’Caskey is no more an anachronism than myself! though perhaps the
writer of the paper would say that is not taking a very strong ground.

“Why don’t you like the ‘Rope Trick’? It is better than most of the
O’Ds. By the way, Smith only _asked_ if I would send him O’Dowderies,
and I misrepresented him if I conveyed anything stronger. I was not
sorry, however, at the opportunity it gave me to say--how much and how
strongly--I felt that they were _yours_ so long as you cared for them.
You had been the godfather when they were christened.

“I am half disappointed we don’t start B. F. next month; but you are
always right,--perhaps even _that_ makes the thing harder to bear.

“‘Piccadilly’ is very good, very amusing; one thing is pre-eminently
clear, the writer is distinctively a ‘gentleman.’ None but a man hourly
conversant with good society could give the tone he has given to Salon
Life. It has the perfume of the drawing-room throughout it all, and if
any one thinks that an easy thing to do, let him try it--that’s all

“What you say of ‘Our Mutual Friend’ I agree with thoroughly. It is very
disagreeable reading, and the characters are more or less repugnant
and repelling; but there are bits, one especially, in the last No., of
restoring a drowned fellow to life which no man living but Dickens could
have written. I only quote ‘Armadale’ for the sake of the Dream Theory:
it is an odious story to my thinking, and I never can separate the two
cousins in my head, and make an infernal confusion in consequence. How
good ‘Miss Marjoribanks’ is--how excellent! What intense humour, what
real knowledge of human nature! To my thinking she has no equal, and so
think all my womanhood, who prefer her to all the story-writers, male
and female.

“What you hint about a real love-story is good, but don’t forget that
Thackeray said, ‘No old man must prate about love.’ I remember the D.
of Wellington once saying to me, referring to Warren’s ‘Ten Thousand
a-Year’: ‘It is not that _he never had_ ten thousand a-year, but he
never knew a man who had.’ As to writing about love from memory, it’s
like counting over the bank-notes of a bank long broken. They remind you
of money, it’s true, but they’re only waste-paper after all.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _March_ 11,1865.

“I send off by book-post the O’D. proof, though I suppose, and indeed
hope, you will not use them for the April No., but keep them for May.
This, not alone because it will give me more time to think of ‘Sir B.’
but also, because there is just now rather a dearth of matter for what
the ‘Morning Post’ describes as my ‘Olympian platitudes.’

     “‘Oh dear, what a trial it is--to be kicked by a cripple.’

“I have added a few lines to complete the ‘Church’ O’Dowd; pray see that
it is correct. I am curious to see the new vol., and to hear from you
about its success.

“Do write to me--and as often as you have spare time. If we ever meet,
I’ll pay it all back in _talk_.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, _March_ (_St Pat.’s_ Day).

“Gout, a rickety table, and four stupid Piedmontese authorities talking
bad Italian and smoking ‘Cavours’ at my side, are not aids to
polite letter-writing, and so forgive me if unusually incoherent and
inexplicable.

“I came hurriedly down here to be consular, and to see poor old Mrs
Somerville, who was very seriously ill. She has rallied, but it is the
rally of eighty odd years. Nothing short of a Scotchwoman could have
lived through her attack.

“On looking over the ‘Whist’ proof, there are a few changes I would
suggest. I would, for instance, insert the 7 pp. copy in place of the
piece marked (--). It will need your careful supervision and reading.
The other bit of a page and half copy I would insert at p. 4, after the
word ‘frankness.’The concluding sentence is in its due place. These
bits are meant to take off the air of didactic assumption the article is
tinged with, and also to dispose the reader to think I am not perfectly
serious in esteeming Whist to be higher than Astronomy or the Physical
Sciences.

“I have shown ‘Foss’ to a _very_ critical fellow here, and he says it
is better in _manner_ than ‘Tony.’ I don’t believe him, though I should
like to do so.

“You shall have the proof at once. My daughter writes me that O’D. 2 has
arrived and looks very nice. Tell me how subscribed! Tell me what said
of it!

“Is it true you are all in a devil of a funk at a war with America?
So say the diplomats here, but they are very generally mistaken about
everything except ‘Quarter day.’ I had Hudson to dinner on Monday, and
we laughed ourselves into the gout, and had to finish the evening with
hot flannels and colchicum. There is not his equal in Europe. If I could
only give you his talk, you’d have such a _Noctes_ as I have never read
of for many a year, I assure you. I wished for you when the fun was
going fast. Good Heavens! how provoking it is that such a fellow should
not be commemorated. Listening to him after reading a biography is such
rank bathos; and as to settling down to _write_ after him, it is
like setting to work to brew small beer with one’s head swimming with
champagne. I hope to be back at Villa Morelli by Sunday, and to find a
proof and a letter from you when I arrive.

“I shall be very glad to see Mr M. Skene when he turns up at Florence. I
need not tell you that a friend of yours comes into the category of the
favoured nations. My life is now, however, a very dull affair to ask any
one to look at, and it is only by a real feeling of good-nature any one
would endure me.

“Only think of this climate! I have had to close the jalousies to keep
out the sun, and it is now positively too hot where I am writing. I
could almost forgive the ‘Excursionists’ coming out to bask in such
sunshine.

“I hear the ‘M. Post’ has had a long and favourable notice of ‘Tony.’
Have you seen it?

“Now be sure you write to me and often. Addio.

“The American consul has just called and told me that his Government are
sending a smashing squadron over here under an admiral--a sort of ‘Io
Triumphe’ after the raising of the blockade. All the big frigates are to
be included in it.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _March_ 30,1865.

“This is only to say how much your criticism on ‘Sir B.’ has pleased me,
but don’t believe the book is better than ‘Tony’--it is not. The man who
wrote the other hasn’t as good in his wallet.

“I am _sure_ the _Major_ is right, and the story of being _chasséd_ from
Austria reads wrong; but it is not, as one might imagine, _unfounded_.
The case was Yelverton’s, and present V. Admiral in the Mediterranean,
and the lady an Infanta of Portugal, and it went so far that she was
actually going off with him. Now, if you still think it should be
cancelled, be it so. I have only recommended it to mercy, not pardoned
it.

“Besides my gout I am in the midst of worries. The New Capital is
playing the devil with us in increased cost of everything, and my
landlord--the one honest man I used to think him in the Peninsula--has
just written to apprise me that my rent is doubled. Of course I must
go, but where to? that’s the question. I’d cut my lucky and make towards
England, but that our friends at the Carlton say, ‘Hold on to Spezzia
and we’ll give you something when we come in.’ Do you remember the
German Duke who told his ragged followers they should all have shirts,
for he was about to sow flax? I threw my sorrows into a doggerel epigram
as I was in my bath this morning.--

      “To such a pass have things now come,
      So high have prices risen,
      If Italy don’t go to Rome,
      Then--I must go to prison.

“I find that Skene and I are old friends who have fought many a
whist battle together. I wanted him to dine with me yesterday to meet
Knatchbull and Labouchere, but he was lumbagoed and obliged to keep his
bed: he is all right to-day, however.

“I hope to have a few days (a week) in England this spring--that is,
if I keep out of jail,--but I’ll let you know my plans when they are
planned.

“I have not written since--better I should not--for I go about saying
to myself ‘D------ Morelli,’ so that my family begin to tremble for my
sanity.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Spezzia, _April_ 6, 1865.

“Your letter has just caught me here. I came down hurriedly to see if
I couldn’t find a ‘location,’ for my Florentine landlord--actuated by
those pure patriotic motives which see in the change of capital the
greatness of Italy and the gain of Tuscany--has put 280 odd l. on
my rent! As I have been stupid enough to spend some little money in
improving my garden, &c. he is wise enough to calculate that I feel
reluctant to leave where I have taken root.

“These are small worries, but _they are_ worries in their way, and
sometimes more than mere worries to a man like myself who takes a
considerable time to settle down, and hates being disturbed afterwards.
It never was a matter of surprise to me that story of the prisoner who,
after twenty year’s confinement, refused to accept his liberty! And for
this reason: if I had been a Papist I’d never have spent a farthing to
get me out of Purgatory, for I know I’d have taken to the place after
a while, and made myself a sort of life that would have been very
endurable.

“You will see from this that ‘Sir B.’ is not advancing. How can he, when
I am badgered about from post to pillar? But once settled, you’ll see
how I’ll work. It’s time I should say I had your cheque all right; and
as to ‘Sir B.,’ it shall be all as you say.

“I am sorely put out by ‘Tony’ not doing better. I can understand scores
of people not caring for O’Dowd, just as I have heard in Society such
talk as O’D. voted a bore. Englishmen resent a smartness as a liberty:
the man who tries a jest in their company has been guilty of a freedom
not pardonable. But surely ‘Tony’ is as good trash as the other trash
vendors are selling; his nonsense is as readable nonsense as theirs.
I am not hopeful of hitting it off better this time, though I have a
glimmering suspicion that ‘Sir Brooke’ will be bad enough to succeed.

“Skene and Preston came out to me one evening. I wish I had seen more of
them. We laughed a good deal, though I was depressed and out of sorts.

“Of course if Hudson goes ‘yourwards’ I’ll make him known to you. What
a misfortune for all who love the best order of fun that he was not
poor enough to be obliged to write for his bread! His letters are better
drollery than any of us can do, and full of caricature illustrations far
and away beyond the best things in ‘Punch.’ Who knows but one of these
days we may meet at the same mahogany; and if we should------

“I forget if I told you I have a prospect of a few days in town towards
the beginning of May--my positively last appearance in England, before I
enter upon that long engagement in the great afterpiece where there are
no Tony Butlers nor any O’Dowds.

“I do hope I shall see you: no fault of mine will it be if I fail.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, April 10, 1866.

“Send for No. 1 of ‘The Excursionist,’ edited by a Mr Cook, and if you
don’t laugh, ‘you’re no’ the man I thought ye.’ He pitches in to me most
furiously for my O’Dowd on the ‘Convict Tourists’; and seeing the tone
of his paper, I only wonder he did not make the case actionable.

“He evidently believes that I saw him and his ‘drove Bulls,’ and takes
the whole in the most serious light. Good Heavens! what a public he
represents.

“The extracts he gives from the T. B.’s article are far more _really_
severe than anything I wrote, because the snob who wrote them was a
_bona fide_ witness of the atrocious snobs around him; and as for the
tourist who asks, ‘Is this suit of clothes good enough for Florence, Mr
Cook?’ I could make a book on him.

“The fellow is frantic, that is clear.

“Heaven grant that I may fall in with his tourists! I’ll certainly go
and dine at any _table d’hôte_ I find them at in Florence.

“I have been so put out (because my landlord will insist on putting me
out) by change of house that I have not been able to write a line.”



_To Mr John Blackwood_.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _April_ 14,1865.

“After the affecting picture Skene drew of you over one of my
inscrutable MSS., I set the governess to work to copy out a chapter of
‘Sir B.,’ which I now send; the remainder of the No. for July I shall
despatch to-morrow or next day at farthest. That done, I shall rest and
do no more for a little while, as my story needs digestion.

“I have asked for a short leave. I am not sure the answer may not be,
‘You are never at your post, and your request is mere surplusage, and
nobody knows or cares where you are,’ &c. If, however, ‘My Lord’ should
not have read ‘The Rope Trick,’ and if he should be courteously disposed
to accord me my few weeks of absence, and if I should go,--it will be
at once, as I am anxious to be in town when the world of Parliament is
there, when there are men to talk to and to listen to. I want greatly
to see you: I’m not sure that it is not one of my primest objects in my
journey.

“All this, however, must depend on F. O., which, to say truth, owes
me very little favour or civility. I have been idle latterly--not from
choice indeed; but my wife has been very poorly, and there is nothing
so entirely and hopelessly disables me as a sick house: the very silence
appals me.”



_To Mr John Blackwood,_

“Villa Morelli, _April_ 23,1865.

“I send you a short story. I have made it O’Dowdish, but you shall
yourself decide if it would be better unconnected with O’D. It would not
make a bad farce; and Buckstone as ‘Joel,’ and Paul Bedford as ‘Victor
Emanuel,’ would make what the Cockneys call a ‘screamer.’

“I have not yet heard anything of my leave, but if I get it at once, and
_am forced to utilise it immediately_, my plan would be to go over to
Ireland (where I am obliged to go on business), finish all I have to do
there, and be back by the 20th to meet you in London. I cannot say how
delighted I should be to go down to you in Scotland. I’d like to see
you with your natural background,--a man is always best with his own
accessories,--but it mauna be. I can’t manage the time. Going, as I do,
from home with my poor wife such a sufferer is very anxious work, and
though I have deferred it for the last five years, I go now--if I do
go--with great fear and uneasiness. It requires no small self-restraint
to say ‘No’ to so pleasant a project, and for God’s sake don’t try and
tempt me any more!”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _May_ 6,1865.

“I suppose (from your silence) that you imagine me in, or about to be
in, England. But no; thanks to ‘The Rope Trick,’ perhaps, my Lord has
not vouchsafed any reply to my asking for leave, and here I am still.
It is the more provoking because, in the expectation of a start, I idled
the last ten days, and now find it hard to take up my bed and walk,
uncured by the vagabondage I looked for.

“Besides this, I had received a very warm and pressing invitation to I
know not what celebrations in Ireland, and meant to have been there by
the opening of the Exhibition. However, the F. O. won’t have it, and
here I am.

“I am deucedly disposed to throw up my tuppenny consulate on every
ground, but have not the pluck, from really a want of confidence in
myself, and what I may _be_ this day twelve months, if I _be_ at all.

“Write to me at all events, and with proof, since if ‘the leave’ does
not arrive to-morrow or next day, I’ll not avail myself of it.

“If I could hear O’D. was doing flourishing I’d pitch F. O. to the devil
by return of post.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _May_ 10,1866.

“When this comes to hand I hope to be nearer you than I am now. My
address will be care of Alexander Spencer, Esq., 32 North Frederick
Street, Dublin. Any proofs--and I hope for some--will find me there.

“F. O. meant to bully, and _did_ bully me; but, after all, one must
say that there is an impression that I wrote ‘Tony Butler,’ and as I
am indolent to contradict it, _que voulez-vous?_ I only got my blessed
leave to-day, and go to-morrow. Never feeling sure that I should be able
to go, I have left everything to the last, and now I am overwhelmed with
things to do.

“My stay in Ireland will be probably a week, and I hope to be in London
by the end of the month. Let me know your plans and your places.

“I am a (something) at the Irish Exhibition (remind me to tell you a
story of the D. of Richmond at Rotterdam, which won’t do to write); and
perhaps it would not be seemly to O’Dowd the Dubliners.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Morrison’s, Dublin, _May_ 21,1865.

“My movements are to go up to London by Wednesday next. I have a
fortnight at least to give to London, but don’t mulct any engagements on
my account, but let me see you on your ‘off days.’

“I sent off the ‘Hero-worship,’ corrected, by yesterday’s mail, but
added in the envelope a prayer to whomever it might concern not to
trust to my hasty revisal, but to look to the orthographies closely, and
especially to make Mr Jack ‘Mr Joel,’ as he ought to be.

“Heaven reward you for sending me money! I wonder how you knew I lost
£40 last Wednesday night at whist at a mess. I shall, I hope, have
wherewithal to pass me on to my parish, but no more.

“The Exhibition here is really good, and very tasteful and pretty. The
weather is, however, atrocious, and I am half choked with a cold.

“A Scotch friend, J. F. Drummond (some relative of George Thompson’s),
has been endeavouring to have me domiciled at the house he stops at,
11 St James’s Place; but I suspect that the coming Derby has made a
difficulty, and I shall probably not get in: hitherto I have always gone
to the Burlington, but a notion of ‘Thrift’ (_vide_ O’Dowd) impels me
to do something that I already suspect will end in a reckless
extravagance.” Lever found Dublin bright, lively, and hospitable, and
he was soon ready to cry out against the killing effects of too much
dining, too much whist, and too much flattery. Some of his Irish friends
noticed that he suffered from occasional attacks of utter despondency.
The novelist himself explains the cause of his low-spiritedness: many of
his blithesome companions of the ‘Thirties and ‘Forties were dead, and
most of those who remained in the land of the living had become very old
and painfully prim. When he paid a visit to the Four Courts, he saw on
the bench solemn care-worn personages whom he had known as struggling
and light-hearted lawyers. His sympathies almost to the last were with
young and lively folk: old age was his bogey. “I like the ambitions of
young men,” he said, “their high and their bold self-confidence, which
no man retains when he gets ‘groggy.’” Amongst his entertainers in
Dublin during this visit were Sheridan Le Fanu, W. H. Lecky, and Sir
William Wilde. The first two of these noted Lever’s dulness: Wilde
found him more brilliant than ever. The novelist’s moods were peculiarly
variable just then. Amongst the visits he paid to old haunts was one
to the place where his Burschen Club had held revel thirty-five years
previously. He discovered some of the club’s paraphernalia, and obtained
possession of these relics of golden hours. When he visited Trinity
College he was a prey to conflicting emotions, but on the whole the
remembrances of the old days, when he lived at No. 2 Botany Bay, were
pleasant and inspiriting. He declares that as he walked through the
courts and corridors of the University he felt as if thirty years of
hard conflict with the world were no more than a memory, and that he was
as ready as ever to fling himself headlong into all the fun and frolic
of a freshman’s life. This highly-strung mood was succeeded by a fit of
deepest melancholy. As he said good-bye to Trinity he felt that he was
gazing upon it for the last time. He had submitted to the ordeal of
being photographed. The result did not tend to chase his gloom away. The
photograph showed him features which the hand of Time had coarsened.
In London he met, for the first time, John Blackwood. It was a merry
meeting. Blackwood, writing from The Burlington on June 4th, says:
“This place is in a greater whirl than ever, and it is with the
greatest difficulty I can get anything done. In addition to the usual
distractions, I have had Cornelius O’Dowd staying in the same house. He
is a sort of fellow that comes into your room and keeps you roaring
with laughter for a couple of hours every hour of the day.... His fun is
something wonderful.” Every likely attraction was provided for O’Dowd by
his publisher. Hannay, Kinglake, Delane did their best to entertain him.
Blackwood describes the contrast between Kinglake and Lever,--the former
making neat little remarks, and Lever rattling on with story after
story. Harry Lorrequer appeared in the Park, riding on a nag of Lord
Bolingbroke’s. Blackwood humorously declares that, seeing a donkey-cart
in Piccadilly, he was uneasy lest the author of ‘Charles O’Malley’
should be tempted to clear the cart in a flying leap. The novelist’s
own impressions of this visit to London were sufficiently lively. He was
entertained by Lord Houghton, Lord Lytton, and other literary big-wigs.
The city seemed as new to him--“just as noisy, as confounding, as
addling, as exciting, as tantalising, as never satisfying”--as when
he had first seen it. London loungers, he said, had no idea of the
overwhelming excitement produced on an idle Anglo-Italian by the mere
sounds and sights of the streets, nor could they measure the confusion
and enjoyment experienced by a man “who hears more in half an hour
than he has imagined in half a year.” He returned to Florence in June,
visiting Paris on the homeward journey. He was not sorry to find that
official duties called him to Spezzia. He was anxious for a period of
rumination--for an easy opportunity of sliding back into the routine
ways of pen-craft, which were, he declares, the labour and the happiness
of his life. For some weeks consular work kept him busy, and it was
difficult to make much headway with ‘Sir Brook.’ Moreover, he was
beginning to suffer from attacks of somnolency, akin to the attacks
which had prostrated him at Templeogue. When he was not sleeping he was
frequently enwrapped in a half dream. “I reflect much,” he said, “and
always with my eyes closed and a pillow under my head, and with such
a semblance of perfect repose that calumnious people have said I was
asleep. These hours of reflection occupy a large share of the forenoon
and of the time between early dinner and sunset. They are periods of
great enjoyment: they once were even more so, when an opinion prevailed
that it would be a sacrilege to disturb me, these being the creative
hours of my active intelligence. This faith has long since changed for
a less reverent version of my labours, and people are less scrupulous
about interruption.” One cannot help suspecting that opium played
some part in this languorousness,--though there is no evidence that he
resumed the habit. It would have been impossible that Lever should
allow even his slumber-fits to escape from association with some form
of frolic. Attired in a negligently-worn linen suit, he fell asleep on
a chair one day at the public baths. An English footman came into the
place, and, mistaking the vice-consul for an attendant, he rudely shook
him and declared that he wanted a bath instantly. “There you are!” said
Lever, springing to his feet, seizing the flashily-dressed lackey, and
pitching him into the reservoir.



_To Dr Burbidge._

“Villa Morelli, _July_ 1,1865.

“I am much obliged by your interest for me at Valetta. I really _want_
the house, first, because I would be glad to get away from Florentine
dear-ness; and secondly, I ought to give up Spezzia or go to it. If,
then, anything can be done anent this matter, it will serve me much.

“Of course I am sorry to hear that you should leave Spezzia, but I
cannot but feel the bishop’s offer a good one--good as the means of
securing an excellent position and field for further effort. To me Malta
would be very palatable. I like the 49th, and their stupid talk. I
like pipeclay, and facings, and camp gossip. I like the Mess, and the
half-crown whist, and the no ‘canon’ company.

“_You_ are above all this, and _tant pis_ for you. It is a grand lesson
in life to have habits and ways that will suit the lowest rate of
intelligence; and as for me, I have not a pursuit that could not be
practised by the company of a private madhouse.

“I have seen a review of ‘Tony,’ excellent in its way, and giving some
encouragement to the ‘evidently young author,’ and warning him that his
Italian politics are too heavy for fiction.

“I have begun a new story, ‘Sir Brook Fossbrooke.’ What it will turn
out, God knows. ‘Luttrell is complete and out, and another vol. of
‘O’Dowd’ appears next week.

“There is a new evening paper (Tory) called ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’
started. They have asked me to join them, but I don’t like newspaper
work, and have said ‘No.’

“Till ‘the party’ are able to strike out some line essentially different
from Palmerston’s, not merely crotchety, but really distinctive, all
advocating of them in the press is impossible. Now, it’s hard work to
_read_ platitudes; it’s the devil to _write_ them. Hannay is to be the
editor.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, _July_ 11,1865.

“I have just got your note and the proof of O’D. in the midst of my
consular cares, with my Jack flying out of my consular windows, and
my consular brains broiling under a temperature that would roast a
woodcock.

“I sent you off Sir B. in proof by this post. ‘O’Dowd’ shall follow (if
possible) to-morrow, at all events in time. For the love of God, let
some man learned in orthographies look to my proofs, for I can’t spell
after the thermometer passes 90° in the shade, and if I were to be
d------d I don’t know how many d’s there are in granddaughter.

“As to writing here I need only say that it costs me a small apoplexy to
perform the present note. The railroad screams under my window, and two
Miss Somervilles are sol-faing overhead (and I vow to Heaven I like the
locomotive best), and I have a telegram to say that the admiral may
be here any day after the 17th, and stay as long as he finds it
pleasant,--a condition which (if I know myself) will not entail any
undue delay.”



_To Mr John Blackwood_.

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, _July_ 13, 1865.

“Your note came on here to-day, the enclosure stayed at Florence.
What cruel inspiration suggested your thoughtful kindness? I left home
declaring that I was ruined, had overdrawn you, and had not a _sou_ for
anything; that we must live on roots and drink water till next spring:
and now my beautiful budget, that I have just carried at the risk of the
Government, is all gone and smashed.

“You (fortunately for you) don’t know that all these things are very
great things to people who are always swimming for their lives,--but
enough of it.

“I have been exceedingly busy since I came here. An order of the Queen’s
Bench named me a Commissioner to take evidence in a case coming on
for trial next November, and I have been sitting up--like a Brummagem
Chief-Justice--and rebuking witnesses, and scowling at the public like a
real judge.

“I send a few lines to complete O’D. for the month. How I wrote them I
don’t know, for this infernal place is so noisy, and the interruptions
so frequent, I’d fain be back in Brook Street for quiet.

“I fear I shall be detained here all this month, for the admiral is on
his way here, and the whole Maltese fleet are thirsting for bitter beer
and champagne. I wonder if I were to put down their powers of suction in
my extraordinaries would F. O. stand it?”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, _July_ 15, 1865.

“I send off O’D. proof to-night. I last night sent by private hand some
pages to conclude it. Do look very carefully to both; my orthography
(like Acre’s courage) oozes out of my finger-ends in this hot weather.

“I have had a two hours’ swim, and am so sleepy and ‘water-logged’ that
I can’t write, though I’m dying to O’Dowd the judge for his remarks on
Dr Paterson in the Pritchard case. They are so ignorant, and so vulgar
to boot.

“If every doctor who _suspected_ foul play in the treatment of malady
was to cry out Murder! the whole world would be one wild shout of
assassination. What between medical timidity, terror, _gobemoucherie_,
and sometimes private malice, the police-courts would have enough
on their hands. They say railroads must have no signals because
pusillanimous travellers would be eternally summoning the guard, and
here is exactly a similar evil with worse consequences.

“I don’t think I ever conversed with a country practitioner who hadn’t a
story or two of ‘foul play,’ and so palpably untrue as to be laughable.
In all probability Paterson’s impressions were only strong when he found
the woman had died, and it is a very medical error to imagine a skill
in prediction which only comes after the event. The world is all
subserviency to the doctor when there is an epidemic abroad, and ‘takes
it out’ in insult when the weather is fine and the season salubrious.

“‘The Spanish fleet’ is not in sight.

“Remember I rely upon you to look closely to these last ‘Sir Bs.’ and
‘O’Dowds,’ for I am as near softening of the brain as it is permitted to
a consul to be.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, _July_ 28, 1865.

“It seems like a century to me since we heard of each other. Here I am
still awaiting the fleet. They were to come on the 27th, and they are to
be here positively on the 6th, most positively on the 8th, and as sure
as the Lord liveth (I mean the First Lord), on the 12th August.

“I have my youngest daughter with me, who keeps me in a perpetual round
of croquet, picnics, boat-races, and moonlight rowing-parties.

“If you knew, then, the difficulty I have had to write the two chaps.
I now send you (my first instalment of Sept. ‘Fossbrooke ‘), you would
prize them more certainly than their merit could call for.”



_To Mr William Blackwood._

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, _Aug_. 6, 1865.

“I got your telegram just as I was starting for a picnic, to eat my
lobster afterwards with what appetite I might. I suspect (it is mere
suspicion) that chap, i., enclosed in an envelope I had borrowed from an
American colleague, has gone (through the words ‘U.S. Consulate’ on the
corner) to America, and that Sir B. F. is now making the tour of ‘the
Union.’

“Rewriting is all very fine; but I have forgotten all I wrote, as I
always do, or I should go mad. If Providence had only inflicted me with
a memory in proportion to my imagination, I’d have been in Bedlam twenty
years ago. I have therefore set to work and written something else. If
the other turns up, you may prefer it [‘You pays your money and takes
your choice,’ as the apple-women say).

“God forgive me, but I grow less wise as I grow older. The old smack of
devil-may-care, that sat so easily on me as a boy, keeps dodging me now
in grey hairs and making a fool of me; but you’ve read the German story
of the fellow whose wooden leg was ‘possessed’ and ran away with him. I
haven’t a wooden leg, but I have a wooden stick that plays a like prank
with me.

“O’Dowd indeed! And _I_ flirting with little Yankee girls, and teaching
them to swim! Don’t talk to me of O’Dowd!

“Tell your uncle to send me whatever there remains of balance of the
last O’Ds., for I am losing my money here like fun, and ashamed to send
to my bankers for more.

“Continue to address me _here_: I see no prospect of my getting back to
Florence. The English fleet is still at Rosas, and the three balls we
intended to give them have already come off here, and we are all ruined
in champagne and crinoline before the honoured guests have arrived. What
an O’D. one might make on ‘The Fleet of the Future’!”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel de Milan, _Aug_. 14,1866.

“When I read of Aytoun’s death in the papers I knew how it would affect
you. I am well aware what old ties linked you; and these old ties bind
not only heart to heart, but attach a man to his former self, and make
up the sweetest part of our identity. They are often, too, the only
light that shines on the past, which would be dark and untraceable if
love did not mark it.

“It is strange, but I feel (and I wrote it to my wife) that I thought
I had lost a friend in losing him,--though we never met, and only knew
each other in a few kindly greetings transmitted by yourself from one to
the other. How right you are about the solemn fools! I go even farther,
and say that the solemn wise, the Gladstones of this world, are only
half great in wanting that humouristic vein that gives a man his wide
sympathy with other men, and makes him, through his very humanity, a
something more than human. I am sure it is in no unfair spirit I say
it, but the Aytoun type grows rarer every day. It is a commodity not
marketable, and Nature somehow ceases to produce what has not its value
in the _pièce courant._

“I can’t write a line here. My youngest daughter keeps me ever
concocting new gaieties for her, and she has such an insatiable spirit
for enjoyment the game never ends.

“Our fleet is becalmed outside Spezzia, but may be here at any moment.

“I shall send off the proof by book-post, and (if no other reach
me) beseech you to remember that, being away from my wife and eldest
daughter, I am neither to be relied upon for my orthographies nor my
‘unities,’ nor indeed any other ‘ties. Look, therefore, sharply to my
proof, and see that I am not ever obscure where I don’t intend it.

“I see no chance of getting away before the end of the month, and till I
reach V. Morelli my ink-bottle is screwed up.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzià, _Sept_. 2,1865.

“I am in misery. Here I am, dining and being dined, eating, drinking,
singing, sailing, swimming, pic-nicing, bedevilling,--everything, in
short, but writing. I have made incredible attempts to work. I have
taken a room on the house-top; I have insulted the ward-room and
d------d the cockpit; I have even sneered at the admiral. The evil,
however, is--I have done but a few pages, and I send them to get
printed, leaving you to determine whether we shall skip a month, or
whether, completing the unfinished chapter, an instalment of about 12
pp. will be better than nothing. I am more disposed to this than leaving
a gap, and I am still very wretched that my work should be ill done.
Direct and counsel me.

“This miserable place has cost me a year’s pay to keep, and now I
hear that Elliott is sure to report me if I am found living in
Florence,--another illustration of thrift, if I add a P.S. to the
‘O’Dowd.’

“I am very sick of the row and racket I live in. I want my home and my
quiet, and even my ink-bottle.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 17, 1866.

“I got back here two days ago, after more real fatigue and exhaustion
than I would again face for double my miserable place at Spezzia. These
bluejackets have not only drunk me out of champagne and Allsopp, but
so tapped myself that I am perfectly dry. The constant intercourse with
creatures of mere action--with creatures of muscles, nerves, and mucous
membranes, and no brains--becomes one of the most wearing and weakening
things you can imagine. Nor is it only the nine weeks lost, but God
knows how many more it will take before I can get the machinery of my
mind to work again: all is rusted and out of gear, and I now feel, what
I only suspected, that it is in this quiet humdrum life I am able to
work, and that I keep fresh by keeping to myself. An occasional burst
(to London for instance) would be of immense value to me, but that even
then should only be brief, and not too frequent.

“Is it necessary to say I could not write at Spezzia? I tried over and
over again, and for both our sakes it is as well I did not persevere.
I send, therefore, these two chapters, and a short bit to round off the
last one. If you opine (as I do) that even a short link is better than
a break, insert them next No., taking especial care to correct the new
portion, and, indeed, to look well to all.

“To-morrow I set to work,--I hope vigorously, at least so far as
intention goes,--and you shall have, if I’m able, a strong Sir B.’ and
an ‘O’Dowd’ for next month. I never for thirty years of monthly labour
broke down before, and I am heartily ashamed of my shortcoming; but I
repeat it is better to give short measure than poison the company.

“I like the tribute to poor Aytoun very much, and I condole heartily
with you on the loss of one who walked so much of life at your side.
I am sure the habit of writing turns out more of a man’s nature to his
friends than happens to those who never commit themselves to print, and
I am certain that his friends have their own reading of an author that
is totally denied to his outer public. You knew Aytoun well enough to
know if my theory does not apply to him.

“Don’t be as chary of your letters as you have been. I’ll so pepper you
now with correspondence that you must reply.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Sept_. 24,1865.

“You have herewith three chapters of ‘Sir B.’ for Nov. No., and if so be
that you need a fourth, there will be time to write it when I see these
in proof; but I thought it as well to keep the reader in suspense about
the interview, all the more because I know no more of what is coming
than he does! My impression is that these chapters will do: my womankind
like them, and only complain that there are no female scenes in the No.
But there shall be crinolines to the fore hereafter.

“I shall now set to work to write an ‘O’Dowd’ on my late Spezzia life
and experiences.

“What a fuss they are making about the Fenians, as if rebellion was
anything new in Ireland! It is only an acute attack of the old chronic
com-plaint, and wants nothing but bleeding to cure it.

“Some vile sailor, I suspect, has walked off with my May No. Magazine,
and I have not the beginning of the ‘Sir B.’ Will you send it to me?

“My wife is very poorly again, but this month coming round renews so
much sorrow to her that I suspect the cause may be there.

“I have just this moment heard that the new squadron is coming back to
Spezzia. If so, it will be the ruin of me--that is, if I go there; and
indeed I am seriously thinking of pitching my consular dignity to the
devil, and becoming a gentleman again, if only, as my coachman says,
‘for an alternative.’”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 1,1865.

“The squib I enclose will, I think, be well-timed. It is a letter
supposed to be found on a Fenian prisoner, a Col. Denis Donovan,
Assistant Adjutant-General, Fenian army, from Major-General M’Caskey,
who has been asked to take command of the National Forces. It can be
introduced to the reader thus.

“My wife says I have written nothing to equal this.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 8,1866.

“You will have received before this the Fenian squib. I have little
courage to ask how you like it. Of course it would be easy enough to
make a long and strong paper out of the condensed materials of M’Caskey,
but I don’t water my milk, though my experiences with the public might
have taught me that it would suit us both best.

“I have mislaid--perhaps some one has carried off--my ‘Rebel Songs,’
for I heard a threat of the kind in connection with some autograph
balderdash. They are, however, no loss either to the cause or the
public. The best was one called ‘The Devil may care.’ I add a verse (as
it strikes me) for the public--

     “You don’t read ‘O’Dowd’ and don’t like its style;
     But then to my conscience I swear
     You buy things that are worse,
     And some not worth a curse,
     And for _my_ part--the Devil may care!”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 12,1865.

“Take care that M’Caskey’s letter is not amongst the ‘O’Dowds.’
Cornelius never heard of him, nor has he any knowledge of ‘Tony Butler.’
Mind this.

“Send me the Horse-book of your Cavalry Officer, and I’ll try and make
a short notice of it. I want the book of Villa Architecture too. I was
thinking of a paper (I have good bones for it) on the Italian fleet,
wood and iron, but I foresee that I should say so many impertinent
things, and hurt so many people I know, that I suspect on the whole it
is better not to go on with it. What I am to do with my surplus venom
when I close ‘O’Dowd’ I don’t see, except I go into the Church and
preach on the Athanasian Creed.

“Wolff is in Paris still, scheming in ‘Turks.’

“It will astonish Lyons when he discovers what a heritage Bulwer has
left him at Constantinople.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 20, 1866.

“Your note and its ‘padding’ came to my hand a couple of hours ago. I
thank you much for both, but more for the encouragement than the cash,
though I wanted the last badly.

“I don’t think there is a public for O’D. collectively. I don’t think
people will take more than a monthly dose of ‘my bitters,’ and I incline
to suspect mawkish twaddle and old Joe Millers would hit the mark
better. Shall I try? _At all events, make room if you can for the
postscript I send you. Now I wrote it at your own suggestion when I read
your note_, and it seems to me to embody the dispute. I have tried to
put in a bit of Swift s tart dryness in the style.

“The telegram just announces Palmerston’s death. Take care that his name
does not occur in my last O’D. I don’t remember using it, but look to it
for me.

“What will happen now? I hear the Whigs won’t have Russell, and that he
won’t serve under Clarendon.

“How I wish I were in England to hear all the talk. It is d------d hard
to be chained up here and left only to bark, when I want to bite too.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 23,1865.

“Does it not strike you that a good view of Palmerston’s character might
be taken from considering how essentially the man was English, and that
in no other assembly than a British House of Commons would his qualities
have had the same sway and influence? All that intense vitality and rich
geniality would have been totally powerless in Austria, France, Italy,
or even America. None would have accepted the glorious nature of the
man, or the element of statesmanship, as the House accepted it. None
would have seen that the spirit of all he did was the rebound of that
public opinion which only a genial man ever feels or knows the value
of. If I be right in this, depend upon it Gladstone will make a lame
successor to him. God grant it!

“I send you a ‘Sir B.’ for December, as I am about to leave for Carrara
for a few days. I hope it is good. It may be that another short chapter
may be necessary, and if so there will be time for it when I come back.

“How I would like now if I had the time (but it would take time and
labour too) to write an article on the deception which the Whigs have
practised in trading on their Italian policy as their true claim to
office. It is the most rascally fraud ever practised.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 29, 1865.

“I send you two O’Ds.; that on Gladstone I think tolerably good. The
short paper on ‘The Horse,’ being all done in the first person, I think
had better be an ‘O’Dowd,’--indeed I signed it such; but do as you like
about this.

“I think there seems a very good prospect of the Tories coming in during
the session. Phil Rose was here the other day and gave me good hopes,
and said also they would certainly give me _something_. Heaven grant
it! for I am getting very footsore, and would like to fall back upon a
do-nothing existence, and never hear more of the public.

“The foreign papers are all--especially the Bonapartist ones--attacking
Lord Russell as an ‘Orleanist.’ I never had heard of his leanings in
that direction; but it is exactly one of those tendencies we should
_not_ hear of in England, but which foreigners would be certain to
chance upon.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Friday, Nov. 3_, 1866.

“I am rather out of spirits,--indeed I feel that my public and myself
are at cross-purposes.

“D------ their souls--(God forgive me)--but they go on repeating some
stone-cold drollery of old Pam’s, and my fun--hot and piping--is left
un-tasted; and as to wisdom, I’ll back O’Dowd against all the mock
aphorisms of Lord Russell and his whole Cabinet. It would not do to
touch Palmerston in O’D.: I could not go on the intensely laudatory
tack, and any--the very slightest--qualification of praise would be
ill taken. Do you know the real secret of P.’s success? It was, that he
never displayed ambition till he was a rich man. Had Disraeli reserved
himself in the same degree, there would have been nothing of all the
rotten cant of ‘adventurer,’ &c., that we now hear against him. _Begin_
life rich in England, and all things will be added to you.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Nov._ 6,1865.

“I think the Bagmen deserve an ‘O’Dowd’; their impertinent wine
discussion is too much to bear. I don’t suspect the general public
will dislike seeing them lashed, and from the specimens I have met
travelling, I owe some of the race more than I have given them.

“I think there is a good chance of a (short-lived) Conservative
Government next year, and then Gladstone and _le Déluge_. Unless some
great change resolves the two parties in the House into real open
enemies (not camps where deserters cross and recross any day), we shall
have neither political honesty nor good government.

“The present condition of things makes a lukewarm public and
disreputable politicians.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Nov_. 11, 1866.

“I would have sent another chapter to ‘Sir Brook,’ but that I have been
sick and ill,--a sort of feverish cold, with a headache little short
of madness. I am over it now, but very low and spiritless and unfit for
work....

“I have got a long letter from Whiteside this morning: he thinks that
the conduct of the Palmerston Whigs will decide the question as to who
should govern the country. It is, however, decided that Gladstone is to
smash the Irish Education scheme and to overturn the Church.

“I had written to him to press upon his friend the importance of
restoring Hudson to his Embassy in the event of the Derby party coming
to power, and he sent my letter as it was to Lord Malmes-bury, though it
contained some rather sharp remarks on Lord M.’s conduct while at F. O.
He (W.) says Lord M. asked to keep the letter, and wrote a very civil
reply.

“Look carefully to ‘Sir B.’ for me, for my head is a stage below
correction. I composed some hundred O’Ds. in doggerel the night before
last, and (I hear) laughed immoderately in my sleep.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Nov_. 30, 1866.

“If I be right, Lord R. will dodge both parties, say ‘No’ to neither,
and, while cajoling the old Palmerston Whigs not to desert him, he’ll
by certain Radical appointments conciliate that party and bribe them to
_wait_. In this sense I have written the O’Dowd, ‘The Man at the
Wheel.’ I think it reasonably good. _That is, if my prediction be true_:
otherwise it won’t do at all; but we’ll have time to see before we
commit ourselves.

“I hope you’ll like it, as also the sterner one on ‘Hospitalities
_ex-officio_.’

“The post here is now very irregular,--indeed since we’re a capital the
place has gone to the devil. I don’t know whether the dulness or the
dearness be greatest.

“The Radicals, waiting for reform and taking the destruction of the
Irish Church meanwhile, remind one of Nelson’s coxwain’s saying when
asked if he would have a glass of rum or a tumbler of punch, that ‘he’d
be drinking the rum while her ladyship was mixing the punch.’ Ireland
is to be complimented for her projected rebellion by fresh concessions.
Never was there such a splendid policy.

“The Italians say, ‘The toad got no tail at the creation of the
world because he never asked for one.’ Certes, my countrymen won’t be
deficient in their caudal appendages on such grounds.

“I am hipped by bad weather, undeveloped gout, and other ills too
numerous to mention, but still------”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Spezzia, _Dec_. 4, 1866.

“In reply to your note, and its enclosure referring to a passage in one
of my late ‘O’Dowds’ that an admiral is a sort of human rhinoceros, &c.,
I have simply to say that the joke is a very sorry one, and one of the
worst I have ever uttered, if it give offence; but I most distinctly
declare that I never entertained the most distant idea of a personality.
Indeed my whole allusion was to the externals of admirals,--a certain
gruffness, &c., which in itself is much too superficial a trait to
include a personality.

“That I could say anything offensive to or of a service from which I
have received nothing but politeness and courtesy, and some of whose
members I regard as my closest and best friends, seems so impossible a
charge against me that I know not how to answer it. Indeed nothing is
left for me but a simple denial of intention. It then remains, perhaps,
to apologise for an expression which may be misapprehended. I do so just
as frankly. I think the men who so read me, read me _wrongfully_. No
matter; my fault it is that I should be open to such misconstruction,
and I ask to be forgiven for it.

“So much of reparation is in my power (if time permit), and I would ask
you to assist me to it--to omit the entire passage when you republish
the papers in a volume.

“Will you, in any form that you think best, convey the explanation and
the amends to the writer of the note you have enclosed?”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Dec._ 4, 1866.

“I have just read the note you enclosed me calling my attention to my
having said that an admiral was a sort of ‘human rhinoceros.’ I beg to
recant the opinion, and when opportunity serves I will do so publicly,
and declare that I believe them to be the most thin-skinned of mortals,
otherwise there was nothing in the paragraph referred to which could
give the slightest offence.

“To impute a personality to it would be for the reader to attach the
passage to some one to whom he thought it applicable, if there be such.

     “When they mentioned vice or bribe,
     It’s so pat to all the tribe,
     Each cried that was levelled at me.

“Now I had not the vaguest idea of a personality; I was simply
chronicling a sort of professional gruffness and mysteriousness,--both
admirable in the way of discipline, doubtless, but not so agreeable
socially as the gifts of younger and less responsible men.

“Omit the whole passage, however, when you republish the papers; and
accept my assurance that if ever I mention an admiral again, I will
insert the word ‘bishop’ in my MS., and only correct it with the proof.

“It is not easy to be serious in replying to such a charge of ‘doing
something prejudicial to the service.’ There is no accounting, however,
for phraseology, as Mr Carter called the loss of his right eye ‘a
domestic calamity.’

“Once more, I never meant offence. I never went within a thousand miles
of a personality; and if ever I mention the sea-service again, I hope I
may be in it.

“P.S.--Make the fullest disclaimer on my part, if you can, to
the quarter whence came the letter, as to either offence or
personality,--but more particularly the latter. I am only sorry that the
letter, not being addressed to myself, does not enable me to reply to
the writer with this assurance.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, Dec. 7.

“Out of deference to my wife’s opinion I wrote a mild disclaimer that
might satisfy Admiral Kellett as to my intentions, &c. I have, since I
wrote, heard confidentially that the Maltese authorities are trying
to bring the matter before F. O. Now I am resolved not to make a
very smallest submission, or even to go to the barest extent of an
explanation.

“The only ‘personality in the article was the reference to an admiral
that I respected and admired. I am perfectly ready to maintain that this
was not Admiral Kellett.

“If you like to forward my first note, do so, but on no account let the
civil one reach him. Indeed very little reconsideration showed me that
such an appeal as K.’s bespoke a consummate ass, and ought not to be
treated seriously. This will explain why I despatched a telegram to
you this morning to use the first, not the amended, letter. My first
thoughts are, I know, always my best.

“I shall be delighted if they make an F. O. affair of it: to have an
opportunity of telling the cadets there what I think of the ‘Authority.’
and how much respect I attach to their ‘opinion,’ would cure me of the
attack that is now making my foot fizz with pain.

“I am annoyed with myself for being so much annoyed as all this; but
if you knew to what lengths I went to make these bluejackets enjoy
themselves,--what time, money, patience, pleasantry, and bitter beer
I spent in their service,--you would see that this sort of requital is
more than a mere worry.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _Dec_. 1865.

“My wife is miserable at the sharp note I sent in reply to the
admiral. She says it was all wrong, “_because_, as I never did mean a
personality, I ought to have no hesitation in saying as much, &c, &c.

“In fact, she makes me send the enclosed, and ask you to forward it to
Kellett--that is, if _you_ agree with her. For myself, I own I am the
aggrieved party; I was d------d civil to the whole menagerie, rhinoceros
included. I half ruined myself in entertaining them, and now I am
rebuked for a little very mild pleasantry and very weak joking.

“What! is it because ye are bluejackets there shall be no more
‘O’Dowds’? Ay, marry, and very hot ones too--and sharp in the mouth.

“All right as to the new tariff. It is a great [? nuisance] to me that
the public does not like its devilled kidneys in wholesale, but perhaps
we may make the palate yet: I’ll try a little longer, at all events.
But if the Tories come in and make me a tide-waiter, I’ll forswear
pen-and-ink and only write for ‘The Hue and Cry.’”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“_Dec_. 11,1865.

“Your first objection to Cave’s ‘spoonyness’ * I answer thus. Cave was
heartily ashamed of himself for having played at stakes far above his
means, and, like a man so overwhelmed, was ready to do, say, or approve
of anything in his confusion. I was drawing from life in this sketch.

     * In ‘Sir Brook Fossbrooke.’ of doctrine by the opposite
     poles--Exeter and Cashel, Colenso and Carlisle; but you
     will see that I never instanced these men, or any other
     individuals, as likely to offer their pulpits.

“2nd, Sewell’s addressing the men in his town so carelessly. He
never saw them before; they came, hundreds, to see a race, and his
acquaintances and the public were so mingled. He addressed them with an
insolence not infrequent in Englishmen towards ‘mere Irish,’ and only
corrected himself when pulled up.

“I am deep in thinking over the story; and though I have not written a
line, I am _at it_ night and day.” To Mr John Blackwood.



“Florence, _Dec_. 12,1865.

“I have just got your note. I need not say it has not given me pleasure,
for I really thought--so little are men judges of their own work--that
there were some of these O’Ds. equal to any I ever wrote. The paper that
requires either explanation or defence can’t be good, and so I accept
the adverse verdict. I make no defence, but I must make explanation.

“In the ‘Prof. Politeness’ paper there is no personality whatever. I
simply expressed divergence.

“As to the practice, I have seen it over and over, and I can vouch for
it in hospitals, home and foreign, as well.

“I have expunged ‘Times,’ and made the word ‘newspapers’; I have
cancelled ‘C. Connellan’ altogether. And now I trust your fear of
an action must be relieved,--though if Corney Connellan were to be
offended, I might really despair of a joke being well taken by any one.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Christmas Day._

“I send you a full measure of ‘Sir B.’ for next month, and despatch it
now, as I have only remained here to eat my Christmas dinner, and start
to-morrow for Spezzia, where I have some eight or ten days’ work before
me.

“I hope you will like the present ‘envoy.’ I have taken pains with the
dialogue, and made it as sharp and touchy as I could.

“There is, I hear, a compact _in petto_ between the Whigs and the Irish
by which all Irish Education is to be made over to the Church of Rome.
If so, a paper on the way in which countries, essentially Romish, reject
the priest’s domination and provide against all subjugation to the
Church, might be well timed. It has only struck me this morning, but it
is worth you turning your mind to, especially if the papers were to be
ready and in print for the eventuality of the debate in Parliament, and
_debate there will be on the question_.

“I am not sure I could do such a paper, but I could be of use to any
one who could, and give him some valuable material, too, from Italian
enactments.

“I do not know if my Belgium bit reached you in time, and our post is
now so irregular here I may not know for some days.

“I hear that the Government mean to hand over Eyre to the Radicals; and
though there is much in his case hard to defend, that the man did his
best in a great difficulty according to ‘his lights’ I am convinced.

“I have such a good story for you about Drummond Wolff _versus_
Bulwer,--but I can’t write it. You shall hear it, however, when I come
over in spring, even if I go down to Edinburgh to tell it.

“A great many happy Christmases to you and all yours.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, Dec. 30, 1866.

“Your last pleasant note and its ‘stuffing’ has just reached me here,
where I am consularising, bullying Custom-house folk, and playing
the devil with all the authorities to show my activity in the public
service. I can’t endure being away from home and my old routine life;
but there was no help for it, and I am here now for another week to
come.

“The name I want for the author of Tony is ‘Arthur Helsham,’ the name
of my mother’s family; and the last man who bore the aforesaid was the
stupidest blockhead of the house, and the luckiest too. _Faustum sit
augurium_.

“As to G. Berkeley’s book, it is quite impossible to do anything at all
commensurate with so rascally a book. It is hopeless work trying to make
a sweep dirtier, and I agree with you--better not touch him.”




XVI. FLORENCE AND SPEZZIA 1866


_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Jan_. 3,1866.

“I came back from Spezzia this morning to find your pleasant letter
and its enclosure. I thank you much for both. I wanted the money not
a little, but half suspect I wanted the kind assurances of your
satisfaction just as much. I was not content with your opinion of the
last ‘O’Dowds,’ most probably from some lurking suspicion that you might
be right, and that they were not as good as they ought to be, or as I
meant them to be. Now I am easier on that score,--and since I have seen
them in print I am better pleased also.

“My Xmas was cut in two: I was obliged to go down to Spezzia the
day after Christmas Day and stay there ever since, idling, far from
pleasantly, and living at a bad inn somewhat dearer than the Burlington.
I could not write while there; but I have turned over a couple of
‘O’Dowds’ in my head, and if they be heavy don’t print them, and I’ll
not fret about it. It’s not very easy, in a place like this, where
the only conversation is play or intrigue, to find matters of popular
interest.

“I often wish I could break new ground; but I’m too old, perhaps, to
transplant. But I’ll not grumble now: it’s Christmas, and I wish you and
all around you every happiness that Christmas should bring.

“I hope you like my last envoy of ‘Sir B.’ which I trust to see in proof
in a few days.

“I was half tempted to make an ‘O’Dowd’ on the recent installation of
a Knight of St Patrick, as described in an Irish paper: ‘The mantle is
worn over one shoulder and falls gracefully on the ground, the legend
_Quis Separabit_ being inscribed on the decoration of the collar.’
What with the trailing garment, I was sorely tempted to translate Quis
Separabit ‘Who’ll tread on me?’

“I was right glad to read of Fergusson’s honours. What a manly bold
letter that was of his about the Negro atrocities. I vow to God I have
not temper to write of them.

“I hear young Lytton is likely to lose his sight,--some terrible
inflammation of the iris, I believe, and it is feared must end in total
blindness.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Jan_. 5,1866.

“I am so ‘shook’ by a bad train and a [? wetting] that I can scarcely
hold a pen, and my head is still addled with the crash and reverberation
of big guns, for I have been ‘assisting’ at the trial of armour-plates,
with steel shot, for the Italian Navy,--though what they have to do with
the subject, seeing that they neither fire at the enemy or wait to be
fired at, is more than I know.

“Persano was so overcome by terror that he was literally carried down
the ladder to his gig, when he changed his flag to the _Affondatore_.
The _on dit_ is he will be dismissed from the service. Quite enough, God
knows, for any shortcoming; for bravery, after all, as Dogberry says of
reading and writing, is ‘the gift of God.’

“We have had a sombre Xmas here: my wife very ill, and the rest of us
poorly enough.

“There is not a word of news. A small squabble with the Turks, who fired
at one of the ships, has made the Italians warlike once more, and they
are crying out, ‘Hold me, for you know my temper!’ But it will blow over
after some un-grammatical interchange of despatches, and be forgotten.

“Hardman was dining with me the other day, when an Italian admiral--the
ablest man they have--launched out fiercely against ‘The Times’ and its
Italian correspondent. The thing was too late for remedy, but Hardman’s
good sense prevented further embarrassment.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Jan_. 7, 1866.

“I hope long ere this your face-ache has left you. I dread these
neuralgic things, having had one or two seizures of them: and they are
so infernally treacherous; they come back just when one is triumphing
over being rid of them.

“I send you some O’Ds. One, I hope, will please you--the ‘Two
Rebellions.’ I know you will go with me in the d------d cowardice of the
newspaper fellows talking to a man in a pinch and saying how he should
behave. I had one of these men out in my boat at Spezzia, and such
a pluckless hound I never saw, and yet if you read his Garibaldian
articles in the paper, you’d have thought him a paladin!

“I read this O’D. aloud here, and it was thought the best I had done for
some time. The ‘Extradition’ is not bad, the rest are so-so.

“You will see I am right in condemning the conduct of the Catholic party
about Fenianism, and also as to the intentions of the Government of
rewarding their loyalty! It will be a great parliamentary fight, and my
paper will be well timed.

“Is Mrs Blackwood coming to town this spring? I’d like to think we could
see the Burlington repeat itself, and be as jolly as it was last year.
It did me a world of good as to spirits and courage that trip, though it
made a hole in my time--and my pocket.

“I am afraid I must go down to Spezzia again, and for a week too. The
cares of office are heavy, and I am afraid I serve a country ungrateful
enough not to appreciate me.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Jan_. 20, 1866.

“I have been obliged to put off Spezzia till the 20th, but shall have
to pass a week or ten days there _then_. Meanwhile I am at work thinking
over (not writing) ‘Sir Brook.’ I want to do the thing well, but I have
not yet got the stick by the handle.

“From what I can pick up from those who read O’D., no paper ought to
have more than one joke. One plum to a pudding is the English taste.
All the rest must be what the doctors call ‘vehicle,’ and drollery be
administered in drop doses. Of course I get public opinion in a very
diluted form here,--but such is the strength in which it reaches me.

“Robt. Lytton is better,--one eye safe, and hopes of the other. Have you
heard that Oliphant has been dangerously ill, at N. York?--a menace
of softening of the brain having declared itself, and of course such a
malady is never a mere threat. I am sincerely sorry for him, and so will
you be.

“My trip to town will depend on the events in the House. If our friends
come in I will certainly go over. Tell Mrs Blackwood to read O’Dowd on
‘Thrift ‘: she will see that there are certain people it will never do
with.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Feb_. 3, 1866.

“If what I hear be true, our friends have made a precious ‘fiasco’ of it
in their game of politics. They have so palpably shown Lord Russell all
the weak points of his Bill--every damaging ingredient in it--that he
has deliberately changed the whole structure, enlarged its provisions,
and made it (appear at least) such a measure as may settle the question
of Reform for some years to come. It is so like the Conservatives! They
certainly are more deficient in the skill required to manage a party
than any section in the House. Why, in Heaven’s name, show their hand?
and above all, why show it before the trump-card was turned? If their
cause were twice as good as it is, and if the men who sustain it
were fourfold as able, the press of the Party would reduce it to
insignificance and contempt. Never was such advocacy in the world as
‘The Herald’ and ‘Standard.’

“A few days ago, and even his own papers declared Lord R. was rushing
to his ruin; but the Conservatives cried out ‘Take care!’ and he has
listened to the warning. A mere franchise reform must have inevitably
wrecked him. The very carrying it would have been a success that must
have been worse than any defeat. I don’t think that men so inept as the
Tories deserve power, and I’m sure they could not retain it if they got
it.

“I hear Mill was a failure, and I own I’m not sorry. I hate the men he
belongs to, either in letters or politics. Bright was certainly good.
It was Bow-wow! but still a very good Bow-wow!--better than the polished
platitudes of Gladstone, which the world accepts as philosophy.

“But confound their politics. I send you ‘B. F.,’ and I send it early,
because I want the proof back as soon as you can. I am going to idle,
but whether at Rome or across to Sardinia, or only over to Elba, I have
not decided. I am hipped and want some change,--the real malady being
I’m growing old, and don’t like it, and revenge my own stupidity by
thinking the people I meet insupportably dull and tiresome.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Feb_. 6, 1866.

“I begin a short note to you now that I have just got back, full sure
that I shall have to acknowledge one from you before I finish.

“I am glad to see ‘The Times’ extract largely from the ‘Two Rebellions.’
The Jamaica affair, I hear, will be the _acrimonious_ fight of the
session. What I am told is that the country will stand at present no
Ministry of which Gladstone is not a part, and that if Lord R. goes (as
he may), it must be some patchwork of Stanley, Gladstone, and some
mild members of the Conservative party. One thing I am _assured_ is
certain,--Gladstone is far less liberal than he was.

“I own I am more puzzled than enlightened by all this, but I give it as
I get it.

“Jamaica is a bad business. Had they lynched Gordon it would have been
all right; but the mock justice was dreadful! Besides, it really pushes
High Churchism too far to hang a man because he has not attended a
vestry.

“The post is in, and no letter from you. No matter! I meant to idle
to-day; and so I’ll stroll into Florence and gossip at the Legation,
where I can post you the three ‘O’Dowds’ I have done for next month,--a
short paper, but perhaps long enough. I wrote ‘The Tiger’ under the
infliction of a d------d old Indian, who’ll kill _me_ if this paper
doesn’t kill _him_.

“Do you know anything of a new magazine which Cholmondeley Pennell is
going to edit? Bulwer and Browning are, I believe, in his interest. He
writes me a long yarn about it, but I think he has too many poets on his
list for success.

“It struck me last night what a good _Noctes_ might be made out of your
corps,--with Lytton, Hamley, Oliphant, and O’Dowd all talking after
their several ways. Wouldn’t it be a rare bit of fun?

“A millionaire countryman of yours has actually beggared me at whist,
and the d------d ass can’t play at all.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _March_ 10,1866.

“I have corrected this without my wife’s aid, for she is too weak and
poorly to help me, and it will require careful looking over. I am glad
you like it; I rather think well of it on re-reading.

“I believe my holiday is knocked up, and a chance of O’Dowding the
Pope to be deferred, for I must hasten off to Spezzia to meet a Royal
Commission on the Arsenal. I hope I may have the O’D. proof before I go,
as I may be detained a week.

“Have you any weekly [‘Saturday Review,’ ‘Examiner,’ Spectator,’ or
other) that has literary news, reviews, &c. disposable? if so, and
perfectly convenient, send it to me occasionally, for I get too much
‘bent’ in politics,--_malgré moi._

“I really would rather be porter to the House than a lord-in-waiting.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _March_ 14, 1866.

“A patchwork quilt is cakes and gingerbread compared to this blessed
proof, but I’m in and out a Georges Dandin! You said, and said truly,
that the sketch of the House was meagre, and I have dilated--I hope not
diluted--it; but my writing is open to that rendering.

“I have made the ‘Fenian Pest’ also a little fatter. Will you try and
see that the slips come on at their proper places.

“I am not well. It may be gout, it may be fifty things, but it _feels_
d------ly like breaking up. I ought to be at Spezzia, but I am so out
of sorts that I don’t like leaving home. After all, I have no right to
complain. I have been a good many years in commission, and never docked
yet for repairs!

“Dizzy is going to let Gladstone have a walk over for the first racing,
but I suspect that the real jockeyship will be to make the first and
last heats the race.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _March_ 26, 1866.

“It is only to-day that I feel able to write a line and thank you. Your
letter and cheque reached me two days ago, but I did not like to make my
daughter write to you lest you should feel alarmed at it.

“I am a little better,--I am, that is to say, in less pain, but very
weak and low. I believe I shall rub through it, but it must be a close
thing. It was, after all, only what Curran called ‘a runaway knock.’ but
it sounded wonderfully as if I was wanted.

“They don’t talk any more of knife-work, and, so far, I am easier in
mind; but my nerves are so shaken by pain and bad nights that whatever
promised relief would be welcome.

“I have two chaps, of ‘Sir B.’ ready, but perhaps next week--I hope
so--I will be able to go on. It would be a comfort to me to be at work.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _April_ 5,1866.

“I send you enough to make the May ‘Sir Brook,’--at least it will be
wellnigh a sheet. I am gaining, but slowly. My debility is excessive,
partly from all the blood I have lost; but my head is free, and I think
I could work better than usual if I had the strength for it.

“All my thanks for your kindest of notes and the O’D. enclosure. I could
not acknowledge them earlier, for I kept all my pen-power for the story.
Try and let me have it back soon; and, meanwhile, I mean to change the
air and go to Carrara. The doctors think that I must have patience,
and abstain from all treatment for a while. It is evidently as hard to
launch me (into the next world) as to get the _Northumberland_ afloat. I
stick on the ‘ways,’ and the best they can say of me is that I have, up
to this, received ‘no fatal damage.’

“I wish I was near enough to talk to you: my spirits are not bad, and
when out of pain I enjoy myself much as usual.

“What a fiasco the Derby party are making of the situation! At a time
when it is all-important to conciliate the outlaying men of all parties
they single them out for attack, as [? for example] Whiteside’s stupid
raid against Sir Robert Peel for the escape of Stephens. There never
was a party in which the man-of-the-world element was so lamentably
omitted....

“After all, it is a party without a policy, and they have to play the
game like the fellows one sees punting at Baden, who, when they win a
Louis, change it at once and go off to the silver table.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _April_ 16,1866.

“It was a great relief to my mind to know that ‘Sir B.’ was up to the
mark, as your note tells me, for I felt so shaken by illness that very
little would have persuaded me the whole craft was going to pieces; and
all they said to me _here_ I took as mere encouragement, though, sooth
to say, my home critics do not usually spoil me by flatteries. I am
better, but not on the right road somehow. I am deplorably weak, and my
choice seems to be between debility and delirium tremens, for to keep up
my strength I drink claret all day long.

“How the Conservatives must have misplayed the game! To show the
Ministry the road out of the blunder was as stupid a move as ever was
made, and yet it is what they have done. They ought, besides, to have
widened their basis at once by making Lord Stanley a _pont du diable_ to
reach Lowe and Horsman. There is a current hypocrisy in English public
opinion--about admitting new men--sharing the sweets of office and such
like. Why not cultivate it?

“From men who ought to know, I am told war is _certain_ between Prussia
and Austria.

“There is a rumour here that Italy offered terms to Austria for the
cession of Venice, even to the extent of troops! It is hard to believe
it. The Austrian alliance, if it were possible, would be the crowning
policy of Italy and the only barrier against France; but national
antipathies are hard to deal with, and here they are positively
boundless.”



_To Dr Burbidge_

“Florence, _Friday, April_ 1866.

“My thanks for your most kind note. My attack was only a ‘runaway
knock’ after all I believe when the _pallida mors_ does come, he gives a
summons that there’s no mistaking. But I was only ill enough to suggest
to _myself_ the way by which I might become worse, and now it’s all
over.

“I cannot make up my mind about the house till I go down and see in what
state I receive it. There is, I suspect, _very_ little furniture; but I
mean to see, and decide soon, if I can. I assure you I look on £90 for
a very poor quarter in a very poor place as a large rent, though you do
persist in knocking my head off on account of my extravagance, which is
a mere tradition, and you might as well bring up against me my idleness
at school. The worst is, I used formerly to make money as easily as I
spent it. I now find a great disinclination to work--that is, I am well
aware, an expression for a disability.”



_To Dr Burbidge._

“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Thursday, May_ 1866.

“By a telegram from Sanders, received too late to reply to by post
yesterday, I learned that our funds had amounted to sixty-five pounds,
and I accordingly wrote to ‘My Lord’ to state as much, and also that the
congregation, alike in grateful recognition of the gratuitously afforded
services of Doctor Burbidge, as in the very fullest desire to secure his
services, had appointed him to the chaplaincy,--a nomination which, in
the event of any subsidy from the F. Office, they earnestly hoped his
lordship would confirm.

“I believe I said it in rather choice phrase, but that was the
substance, and I am very hopeful that he will do all that we ask.

“My wife had another attack of the _rigor_ and fever yesterday, and
Wilson apprehends some tertian character has inserted itself into the
former illness. She is very ill indeed, so much so that although my
married daughter is confined to bed and seriously ill at a hotel only a
few hundred yards off, Julia cannot leave the house to see her. You see
how impossible it would be for me to be away.

“I write very hurriedly, but I wished you to know that all, so far as we
can do it, is now done, and if F. O. will only be as gracious as I hope,
we shall have accomplished our great wish, and the Spezzia chaplaincy be
a fact.”



_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _May_ 2, 1866.

“Herewith goes the next ‘Sir B.’ I was very glad indeed to get your last
few lines, for I am low, low! I can’t pick up, somehow. But I don’t want
to bore you with myself or _mes maux_.

“So they won’t resign! I think, on the whole, it’s as well,--I mean,
that seeing what sort of composite thing a new Government must be, and
how the Whigs have been beaten by a ‘byblow’--not in a fair fight by the
regular Opposition,--it’s better to wait and see.

“Here we are going to war and to bankruptcy t

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