Part 23

Small as the salary was, and insignificant as the position seemed to be, his vice-consulship was of considerable service to Lever: it gave him work to do when he was weary of weaving the web of fiction, and it prevented him from indulging too recklessly in the pleasures of Florentine society. The pity of it was that the office came to him so late, and that, when “the Party” thought fit to recognise his services, they should have recognised them so trivially. It must be borne in mind that Lever was no longer young: he was in his fifty-third year when the Spezzian post was offered to him; and his manner of living had been of such a free-and-easy character that anything in the shape of control chafed him, especially when the controller was a jack-in-office. In 1861 a good deal of time was spent in endeavouring to make a bargain with Chapman k Hall for the publication, in book form, of ‘A Day’s Ride,’ and to induce that firm to enter into an arrangement for the serial publication of a new novel, ‘The Barringtons.’ ‘The Dublin University’ being practically closed as a paying vehicle for serial stories, Lever sought to find a publishing firm which might take the place of M’Glashan. He regarded ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ as the first of all periodical publications, but he feared that the Editor could not easily be induced to open his pages to the author of ‘Harry Lorrequer.’ However, he was fired with the desire to become a contributor to ‘Maga,’ and he enlisted the good offices of Lord Lytton. His brother novelist put the matter before Mr John Blackwood, who wrote, in May 1861, this kindly letter: “Admiring your genius cordially, as I do, I feel so doubtful as to whether what you would write would be suitable for the Magazine that I am unwilling to make a proposition, or to invite you to send MS. It would go sorely against my grain to decline anything from the friend of my youth, Harry Lorrequer.” This--though the reference to his first book afforded him a momentary flush of pleasure--was just the kind of letter which would cause much heart-burning. All his efforts to weed and to prune resulted only in Blackwood’s refusal to accept a posey from his garden! He wrote to Spencer in a melancholy tone; he was “out of health, out of work, out of spirits.” In addition to his literary troubles, the condition of his wife’s health had been the cause of much anxiety. He now feared that she was likely to become a confirmed invalid. Late in July his report to Spencer was that Mrs Lever was very ill, and that his money troubles were more acute than ever. His son was making no effort to lighten the burden: he was still in India, and was still drawing recklessly upon his father. Altogether, Lever’s heart was heavy during the greater part of 1861. Late in the year he made a vigorous effort to pull himself together, and to try to forget his troubles by sticking closely to his desk. He made good progress with ‘The Barringtons,’ and the first monthly part appeared in February 1862.

A visitor to the Levers in the summer of 1862 describes the novelist as being “all animation.” But Mrs Lever was an invalid, and could not move from her sofa. Though Lever had grown very corpulent, he had lost none of his cunning as a swimmer or as an oarsman. He spent a considerable portion of each day in the water, swimming with his daughters; and at night, “when the land breeze came through the orange-groves,” he would row himself and his daughters in their boat on the bay. On one occasion the head of the family and his eldest daughter had a very narrow escape from drowning. They were boating, and in endeavouring to rescue her dog, who seemed to be in difficulties, Miss Lever capsized the boat. Father and daughter kept themselves afloat partly with the aid of an oar,--they were a full mile from the shore when the accident happened. A younger daughter of the novelist witnessed from a window in the house the capsizing of the skiff. Without alarming her mother by informing her of the accident, she left the house and got a boat sent out to the assistance of the swimmers, who were brought ashore little the worse for a long immersion. This incident furnished the press with reports of Lever’s death,--“grossly exaggerated,” as Mark Twain would put it,--and when ‘The Barringtons’ was about to be published in book form, the author wrote to one of his journalistic friends saying that he believed the story was not bad,--at least, not worse than most stories of his which had found favour with the public. “As my critics,” he went on, “were wont to blackguard me for over-writing, let me have the (supposed) advantage to be derived from its being a full twelvemonth since the world has heard of me--except as having died at Spezzia.”

He finished the year well. He was anxious to show that his tiff with the editor of ‘All the Year Round’ was forgotten. The dedication prefixed to ‘The Barringtons,’ dated “26th December 1862,” is couched in these terms:--

“My dear Dickens,--Among the thousands who read and re-read your writings, you have not one who more warmly admires your genius than myself; and to say this in confidence to the world, I dedicate to you this story.”

XIII. FLORENCE AND SPEZZIA 1863

It seemed as if 1863 was about to prove a more enlivening year for Charles Lever than some of its predecessors had been. ‘Barrington’ was being applauded by his friends. Amongst these was Mr John Blackwood, for whose good opinion Lever sent his thanks in a letter dated January 30. To Lord Malmesbury he forwarded a copy of the novel, with the following letter:--

_To The Earl of Malmesbury._

“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, _Feb_. 16, 1863.

“My dear Lord,--I am sincerely obliged by your lordship’s note in acknowledgment of ‘Barrington.’

“I am sure you are right in your estimate of Kinglake’s book.* Such diatribes are no more history than the Balaclava charge was war.... It was, however, his brief to make out the Crimean war a French intrigue, and he obeyed the old legal maxim in a different case--‘Abuse the plaintiff’s attorney.’

* The allusion is to the alleged personal cowardice of the third Napoleon. “No man,” declares Lord Malmesbury, “could be less exposed to such an accusation. I saw him jump off the bridge over the Rhine at Geneva when a youth; and all men can feel what must have been his agonies when riding all day at the Battle of Sedan with his deadly malady upon him.”--E. D.

“Italy is something farther from union than a year ago. In dealing with the brigandage, Piedmont has contrived to insult the prejudices of the South by wholesale invectives against all things Neapolitan. French intrigues unquestionably help to keep up the uncertainty which all Italians feel as to the future, and the inadequacy of the men in power here contributes to the same. Indeed, what Kinglake says of the English Generals--questioning how the great Duke would have dealt with the matter before them--might be applied to Italian statesmen as regards Cavour. They have not a shadow of a policy, save in their guesses as to how _he_ would have treated any question before them. To get ‘steerage-way’ on the nation, Cavour had to launch her into a revolution; but if these people try the same experiment they are likely to be shipwrecked.

“It would be both a pride and a pleasure to me to send your lordship tidings occasionally of events here, if you cared for it.”

After some half a dozen letters had passed between Lever and John Blackwood concerning Magazine papers, Lever took courage and again asked the question which he had asked in 1861. This time his way of putting it was: “I have a half-novel, half-romance, of an Irish Garibaldian in my head--only the opening chapters written. What would you say to it?” To this Blackwood replied: “It is a serious business to start a long serial, and I would not like to decide without seeing the bulk of the work. I do not know how you have been in the habit of writing, whether from month to month, or getting a good way ahead before publication is commenced. If the latter is your usual plan, I have no hesitation in asking you to send me a good mass of the MS., and I will let you know as speedily as possible what I think and can propose.”

From this point onward--from 1863 to 1872*--the story of Charles Lever’s literary life is told mainly in his letters to the House of Blackwood: the current of his correspondence, which at one time had streamed into Ireland, was now diverted, and Lever ingenuously revealed himself and his methods of work and play to Mr John Blackwood.

* In Dr Fitzpatrick’s biography only a scant account of the novelist’s life during this period is furnished; but a number of Lever’s letters to Mr John Blackwood are given in Mrs Blackwood Porter’s Life of her father. I am indebted to Mrs Porter for permission to include some of these with the others, and also several letters from Mr John Blackwood to Lever.

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, _May_ 2, 1863.

“I hasten to answer and thank you for your letter. I am glad you like the line I have taken on Italy. I believe it to be the true one, and I know that it is, so far, new.

“As to my story, I’d give you my whole plan in detail at once but for this reason, which you will acknowledge to be good--that the very moment I revealed it I should be obliged to invent another! To such an extent do I labour under this unfortunate disability, that in my own family no one ever questions me as to the issue of any tale I am engaged on, well knowing that once I have discussed, I should be obliged to change it.

“You ask me how I write. My reply is, just as I live--from hand to mouth! I can do nothing continuously--that is, without seeing the printed part close behind me. This has been my practice for five-and-twenty years, and I don’t think I could change it. At least, I would deem it a rash experiment to try.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, _May_ 8, 1863.

“You will have had my note about my story, and all that I have to say on that score is already said. Only that I have not written any more, nor can I, without either a proof in print or a look at my MS.; for, as I had to own to you, most ignominiously, I have only one way of writing! And like the gentleman mentioned by Locke, who, having learned to dance in a room where there was an old hairbrush, never could accomplish a step without that accompaniment, so I must stick to my poor traditions, of which an old coat and an old ink-bottle, and a craving impatience to see how my characters look in type, are chief; and I seriously believe, if you cut me off from these--there’s an end of me!

“I think there is material for a pleasant half-gossiping sort of paper on social Italy--‘Life in Italian Cities,’--those strange wildernesses where rare plants and weeds live together on a pleasant equality, and where you may find the cowslip under a glass and the cactus on a dunghill. Is it not strange, there is nothing so graphic about Italy as the sketches in Byron’s letters? Perhaps it was the very blending of Dirt and Deity in himself led him into the exact appreciation.

“My hand o’ write is none of the clearest, but I’ll do my best to be legible _to_ you and _by_ you; and with my hearty thanks for your very cordial note.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, _May_ 16, 1863.

“Thanks for your note and its enclosure, which reached me this morning.

“I am glad you have understood what, after I had sent it off, appeared to me a very unintelligible note, being in fact an attempt to explain what even to myself is not explicable--the [only] mode in which I can write a story.

“You are perfectly right as to looking at the thing in proof: it is the same test as the artists’ one of seeing their drawing in a looking-glass,--all that is good is confirmed, and all that is out of drawing or wrong in perspective is just as sure of being displayed strongly.

“If your opinion be favourable, the point which will most interest me to know is the time of publishing; for, seeing that I want some material which I can only obtain by personal intercourse, the longer the interval, moderately speaking, the better for me.

“Secondly. Should we travel this road together, I want to beg that you will be as free to tell me what you think of what I send as though I was the rawest recruit in literature. I never write with the same spirit as under such criticism--given when not too late to amend; and if anything reaches you that you think ill of, do not hesitate to say so at once. I can change--in fact, it is the one compensation for all the inartistic demerits of my way of work--I can change as easily as I can talk of changing. These are all that I want to stipulate for on my part; the rest is with you. I am so eager to get on, that when you send me a proof (I cannot till then) I’ll have at it at once. Meanwhile I lie in the sun and suck oranges.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, _May_ 28, 1863.

“Though I have been, not without some anxiety, waiting for a proof of my story, or some tidings of it,--for I cannot go on without a clue,--I now write to send you a paper on ‘Why Italy has not Done More,’ knowing from my own experiences the benefit of being early in Mag. ‘make up.’

“I hope much you will like it. If you think that any addition to it would be necessary, or in fact, if you have any changes to suggest, pray let me know.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, _June_ 25, 1863.

“I have just received your pleasant note and its enclosure. How your promptitude tells of a long intimacy with Grub Street!

“As to quantity, 18 sheets of the D. U. M. used to suffice for a 3-vol. novel; but it shall be more--20 if you like. I always feel with the hostess in ‘The Honeymoon.’When reproached for her liquor, she excused herself by saying that as she knew it was bad, she gave short measure.

“One _contretemps_ or another has knocked me out of work latterly; but when the proof reaches me I’ll get into harness and pull away.

“Is it amongst the possible things to see you ever--this side o’ the Alps? It would be a great pleasure to me to hear it was, not to say the _positive advantage_ of having a gossip with you.

“The Mag. arrives most regularly and is a great pleasure to me. There is (to me) a memory of school-days in the grim old face on the cover, that brings back more flitting thoughts of long ago than I believed could have been evoked by anything.”

_To Mr John Blackwood_

[Undated.]

“First of all, I thank you for your kind note, and say with what real pride I shall see myself in your columns. ‘Ebony’ has been an ambition of mine since my boyhood. I send you all that I know about Italy in an article I have boiled down from an ox to a basin of broth, and only hope it may suit your palate. I send you the opening of the Garibaldi romance. To give all the realism so necessary for a story of adventure, I was obliged to set out very quietly. Let me have your opinion as soon as conveniently you can. I quite agree with you about the mystery as to the authorship, and will answer for my part. Don’t forget to send me ‘Maga’ when out.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Spezzia, _June_ 26, 1863.

“It has happened to me more than once, when particularly anxious to do well, to make a fiasco of it. I have the same anxiety now; and to put me at my ease, if there be anything you like in these, say so, for, like most of my countrymen, I thrive better on kindnesses than on kicks.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Spezzia, _July_ 26,1863.

“I send by this post one sheet and half--or nearly--of ‘Tony’ corrected for the Nov. No., being, I suspect, as much as your readers would swallow at a time. Let chap. ix. end where I have marked, and I’ll try, if I can, to put in the missing link, which, as you observe, occurs at that place.

“Of course M’Casky ‘is extravagant,’ but I’ll swear to you not more so than scores of real flesh-and-blood men in the land he came from.

“My home critics say that all that political part at Naples is dull and heavy. I don’t think it so; besides, I have endeavoured to assure them that there is in novel-writing a principle, analogous to what chemists find in active medicinal substances, and which they profanely called ‘inert matte,’ but which, if our knowledge were greater, would doubtless display some marvellous property of either enhancing some other gift or restraining some latent power of mischief. Are you of my mind?--because if, unhappily, you side with _them_, you are at full liberty to cut away as much about Maitland’s politics as you like or dislike.

“My hope is that, with the portion now in print by me and that already sent, you will have enough for December and January too. I say this, for I start to-day for a yachting ramble down the coast, and am in for idleness till the hot weather is over. It is 90 something in what represents shade; and what with the smell of oranges and the glow, I feel as if I were sitting in a pot of hot marmalade.

“At all events send me proof; be as critical, but as merciful, as you can.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hotel d’Odessa, Spezzia, _Aug_. 3, 1863.

“I send you herewith a short paper on Italian affairs. Call it ‘Italian Letters’ or ‘Glances at Italy.’ or anything you like better.

“The adventure with De Langier was my own. I accepted the mission at the request of Sir G. Hamilton, and very narrowly escaped the cross of Saint Joseph from the Grand Duke.

“I hope you will like the paper, but I reckon implicitly on your frankness. I have got what, if I wasn’t so poor, I’d own to be gout in one knuckle, and cannot hold a pen without trembling. I’m off to sea to-night, but send me an early proof.”

_To Dr Burbidge_.*

“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Aug_. 13, 1863

* English chaplain at Spezzia.

“I have been looking for a quiet ten minutes to write to you, but it has not come yet, and so I send this off _in petto_.

“We got up here safely, and met my wife suffering far less than I apprehended, and not materially the worse for all the fatigue.

“It reconciled her, besides, to much that she could reach her own quiet old house here, which has for fifteen years been our home, so that though I proposed remaining a day to rest at Pisa, she would not hear of it, but pushed on bravely to the end.

“It is a wonderful relief to us all to have escaped from the Bagni di Basseti, the coarse food, coarse linen, and coarser language of its vile occupants. Sixteen months of such servitude at the cost of above a thousand pounds have eaten deep into me, and it will require almost as many more to blow off the steam of my indignation.

“I have cast my eye over the latter part of ‘Tony,’ and for the life of me I cannot see what some of the crosses refer to. If I send a proof down will you make the corrections bodily for me?

“Blackwood has written a most kind letter, and incidentally tells me ‘Tony’ is liked and well spoken of.”

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Spezzia, Sept. 10, 1863.

“It is not very easy to write amidst the anxieties which money occasions--I mean the want of money; but probably I ought to be grateful that my occupation, being one which only employs imagination, necessarily withdraws me, whether I will or no, from the daily thought of difficulties which certainly reflecting over never diminishes.

“I am writing a new story--‘Luttrell of Arran’--as sad-coloured as my own reveries; but how is a man to paint a good picture who has nothing but blacks or browns on his palette?

“As to work generally, I have, thank God, health and strength for it. I never was better, nor ever found it easier to apply myself. It is in the precariousness of a life of literature is its real deterrent; but for that defect it is unquestionably the pleasantest possible. At all events it has kept us hitherto, and, I trust, will do so to the end.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, _Sept_. 19, 1863.

“By my last short note you will have seen how eagerly I accepted the opportunity of idleness and threw the blame of it on you,--though I say not altogether idle, having to look over again the story I have been writing for Chapman called ‘Luttrell,’ and which he has been desiring to publish some months back.

“I am glad to get back to my old den, Casa Cap., where I write more at ease and am freer from intrusions than here. Pray let me have No. 2 ‘Tony’ to look over again, and send me No. 3 in the _form and quantity_ it will appear in the Magazine. Above all, let your people be sure to send me ‘Maga.’

“These Italians are making immense warlike preparations. This week the king reviews 360 pieces of artillery,--more than half the number rifled guns. By the end of the month the fleet--now a very respectable squadron--will manouvre before him. Whatever wars France may engage in these poor devils are sure to partake of. Nice and Savoy are only instalments of the price they are to pay for Solferino.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Oct_. 1, 1863.

“I was called here by telegraph too late to see my only son alive. He died of a ruptured bloodvessel on Wednesday last.

“I have for some years back had many misfortunes; this one fills the cup. I am as bereaved as one can be. My wife is dying, and this shock may be her last. I have no right to obtrude upon you with these, but I think you will pity me. Pity is indeed my portion, for one more broken there cannot be. If I had not begun with you, I would not now, in justice to you, continue. You will serve us both by drawing out what I have written to a fifth number if possible. If not, I will do my utmost to be ready; four parts there are.

“Pray forgive me in all this affliction that I mix you up with what should not touch you.

“My poor boy was twenty-six,--the finest, boldest, and cleverest fellow you ever saw, and one of the handsomest.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Casa Capponi, Florence, _Oct_. 12,1863.

“I can never forget your kind and feeling note.* Broken and crushed as I am, I am not yet insensible to such kindness. If you only knew how we lived with our children, how much we mingled in their lives and they in ours! It was but the other day my poor boy came back from India after seven years’ absence, and the feeling that we were all together again had but just dawned on us.

*_From Mr John Blackwood to Mr Charles Lever._

“Oct. 5,1868.

“I am truly distressed to hear of the sad affliction that has come upon you in the death of your only son. God comfort you, and grant that your poor wife may be supported under this heavy blow. Do not disturb yourself about your tale. I will make arrangements to suit a man suffering under sorrow such as yours. We can either shorten the parts or suspend publication at the end of the fourth part for a month if you are not ready. All the opinions I hear of the first part are highly favourable, and would, under other circumstances, be highly gratifying to you. If I see any comments in the press likely to interest you, I shall send them to you. All your novels bespeak the writer a warm-hearted man, and I think much of you in your affliction. I showed your affecting note to my wife, who, although like myself personally a stranger to you, joins me in warm sympathy.”

“My poor wife, too,--for two years a great sufferer from an internal inflammation,--was happier than I had seen her for many a day, and when I repined or complained about something, said to me, ‘Well, never grumble about such disasters; remember all that we have to be thankful for, and that death has never come amongst us hitherto.’ It was but one week after that we lost him.

“From my heart. I thank you for your sympathy, all the more, too, that you associated your wife in your sorrow for us.