Part 11

“I was very glad to see the part which I now return corrected, fearing that some mischance had befallen it. I hope you like it: I am eager to hear what your impression of the whole tale is on looking back over it.

“If I thought it was of the least consequence to you I would not dun you, but I want money. I am in a difficulty about a large--that is, for me, a large--bill due on the 25th, the last of those debts I once told you of, and with this I end them.

“I am writing hard at ‘Sir B.,’ and hope the ending will come right. My home advisers say ‘Yes.’

“The character of Mrs Sewell was a great difficulty--that is, the attempt to show how mere gracefulness could appear something better, and that a woman might be as depraved as a man without forfeiting to a great extent our sympathy and even something stronger.

“Have I succeeded? I don’t know, nor do I know if any one will take the trouble to see what I have aimed at.

“I wrote this epigram on the loss of the _Affondatore_, and it has some vogue here:--

“Al Affondatore.

“Ta meritai bene il tuo nome strano, Se non i nemici: Affondersi Pereano.

Or in doggerel--

“To the Sinker.

“You well deserve your name, one must say with candour,-- If you can’t sink your enemies you can your own commander.

“I see the Rhine question is the next for ‘trial’--the G. L. N. _versus_ the King of Prussia. _Nisi Prius_.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Aug_. 16,1866.

“The French Emperor is very seriously ill. Nellaton has been sent for, and has given a grave opinion of the case: suspected to be incipient stone in the bladder. He was brought up to Paris from Vichy on a bed. It would be an awkward moment for him to die, for Plonplon would convulse the whole of Europe. Both Germany and Italy are ripe for a great democratic movement. Bismarck will be swamped eventually, or, rather, pooped by the big wave of popular opinion that is now swelling in Germany, and that seems to carry him _on_ at this moment.

“As for Italy, all the failures, land and sea, are ascribed to the Government, and the ‘Reds’ are employing the general discontent to bring the dynasty into disfavour. Fortunately for the king, Garibaldi has done as little as if he were a man of education, otherwise the situation would be critical.

“Who can explain the shameful condition of our fleet? Our passion for experiment is only to be equalled by the man who passed his life speculating what he should do when he met a white bear. I suppose that a great naval disaster would drive the nation half mad, and certainly it is what we are bidding hard for if we do come to a fight. As the only passable Ministry in England is the one that will reduce taxation, it would be better at once to give up all armaments and pay a policeman (France, for instance) to protect us. We should save some fourteen million annually, and be safe besides.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Aug_. 19, 1866.

“You will see by the accompanying chaps, that I am puckering in my purse, and will be able to tell me what you think of the wind-up.

“There is nothing I find so hard in a story as the end. I never can put the people to bed with the propriety that I wish. Some won’t come for their night-caps; some won’t lie down; and some will run about in their shirts when I want to extinguish the candle. In fact--absurd as it may seem--one’s creatures have a will of their own, and the unhappy author of their being is as much tormented by their vagaries and caprices as if they were his flesh-and-blood children going into debt, and making bad matches and the rest of it.

“At all events, read and be critical. It is not yet too late to correct if you dislike the way I am concluding. I, of course, mean to make the lovers happy in my next chapter.”

_To Mr W. Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 1, 1866.

“The best thing the war has done for Italy is the knocking over a score of false gods--that graven image La Marmora and their clay idol Persano especially. This was, _par excellence_, the land of sham mock heroes, mock statesmen, mock publicists, and mock patriots. Even the engineers were humbugs, for when they made a tunnel for the Lucca railroad they could not make the two sides meet, and went on working in parallel lines till something fell in and showed one where they were!

“To pick your best Bramah with an old nail; to know what you say at your dinner-table without the faintest acquaintance with the language you are talking; to read your thoughts by the expression of your face as you glance at them; and to ‘sell’ you at every moment and turn of your existence, I’ll back them against Europe,--but there end their gifts! For the common work and wear of daily life they are too sharp and too cunning, and you might as well improvise a Cabinet Council from Pentonville or Brixton as make up a Ministry of such materials. But for the love of mercy keep all this to yourself.

“There is a story that Hudson has been offered the Embassy here. Would to God it were true! I’d defy the devil and all his bores with one such fellow in my neighbourhood. There’s more champagne in him--dry and sweet--than in all Mme. Cliquot’s cellars, and he is as good as he is able and clever.

“The Tories would do more by such an appointment than by gaining ten votes in the House, ay, fifty. I think they seem to use their patronage, up to this, very wisely: these Irish appointments are certainly good. There is one man of merit they appear to have forgotten, it is true; but I am told he is not impatient, and this is the better for him, as his virtue may probably be put to a long and trying test.

“Do you know Phil Rose of the Carlton? He is coming out to see me here next week. He is sure to have all the Conservative gossip (he used to have all the patronage once, which was better). He once (in ‘59) offered me an [? Australian post] with £1200 a-year, and gave it, on my refusing, to Ed. Disraeli, Ben’s brother. I declined from pure fear. I understood I should have to hold and account for large sums, and as I knew how incapable I was in rendering an account of the few half-crowns entrusted to me, I saw that if I accepted I should probably finish my literary career in the Swan river. Still, I have occasional misgivings at my cowardly rejection, for I might have died before they detected me.

“Do you see that that ungrateful rascal Cook has taken up the hint in my late O’D. and organised an excursion to ‘Liberated Venice’?

“Bright, too, has been plagiarising me in his Birmingham speech, in his comparison of the Conservatives with Christy Minstrels. How I chuckled when I saw that he broke down in his attempt at drollery. Write if you have not written. Do you remember Sheridan Knowles’ speech about Sanders and Ottley? ‘If you, sir, are Mr Sanders, damn Mr Ottley; and if you’re Mr Ottley, damn Mr Sanders.’”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 7,1866

“I have your note and its enclosure. My apothecary will just take the last, and may the devil do him good with it: I grudge it with all heart. My thanks to you, all the same.

“I am right glad you like ‘Sir B.’ To tell you truth, I was rather put out at not hearing you say so before, for I thought the last bit good. I am sorry now to know the reason. _You_ ill! I’d be shot, if I were _you_, if I’d condescend to be ill. With your comfortable house and your 34 Bordeaux it’s downright mean-spirited to be sick. I can imagine an unlucky devil like myself knocked up, because so little does it. Like the Irish on their potato-diet, they are always only a potato-skin above starvation; so fellows like myself are only a hair above hanging themselves. Don’t let me hear of your being blue-devilled, or I’ll go over to St Andrews and abuse you.

“I send you a short O’D.--which, as Mrs Dodd says, may please the Mammoth of unrighteousness, the press!--on ‘Our War Correspondents,’ also ‘On Bathing Naked.’ The last will help to relieve the dryness of politics, in which O’D. has of late indulged much.

“I am not ashamed of ‘Sir B.,’ and I leave it entirely to yourself to append the name or not. I think Tony was injured by being anonymous, and this had probably better be acknowledged.

“If I could manage it, I’d go over to see Venice on its cession. It would be curious in many ways.

“Do you perceive how L. Nap, is laying by the nest-egg of future discord in Germany, fomenting discontent in all Southern Germany, and exciting the King of Saxony to _defer_ accepting terms of peace? Contracts are already taken in Austria to provision the Saxon troops for three months, so that there is no question whatever of their return to Saxony. All this shows clearly enough what _pressure_ he means to put upon Prussia--that is to say, how much he intends to gall and goad her. If she resent, she must do something provocative, and that provocation will be all the Emperor needs to stir up French anger, always ready enough to take fire. It is in this way this scoundrel always works,--like the duellists who force the challenge from the other party, that they may have the choice of the weapon!

“I hope to God he won’t drive me mad, as my daughters daily tell me, for I can’t keep myself from thinking and talking of him. He destroys the comfort of my daily potatoes, and I think my little franc Bordeaux is soured by the thought of him.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Sept_. 24,1866.

“I am well pleased that you like the wind-up of ‘Sir B.’ It is always my weak point; and so instinctively do I feel it so, that I fear I shall make a bad ending myself. I half suspect, however, that your praise was a delicate forbearance, and that you really _did_ see some abruptness. Now I have a great horror of being thought prosy. There is something in prosiness that resembles a moral paralysis, and I fear it as I should fear a real palsy.

“I have written a few last words, which I leave to your judgment to subjoin or not. It’s well I have wound up the story, for I begin to feel some signs of a return of the attack I had last spring. Perhaps, however, it may pass off without carrying me with it.

“Wolff is here: he dined here yesterday, and made us laugh heartily at his account of the way Labouchere blackguarded him on the hustings at Windsor,--‘The knight from the Ionian Islands, whose glittering honours would not be the worse of the horse-pond,’ and after this went and dined with him at the ‘Star’!

“Wolff has come out with some credit from our people about a great ‘robbery’ to be done on the Italian Government--a loan of a hundred millions (francs, of course).

“I hear Lord Stanley would give me Venice--the Consul-Generalship--if Perry would resign or die. He has been ‘cretinised’ these ten years, but idiocy is the best guarantee for longevity. ‘The men the gods loved’ were clever fellows, and they ‘had their reward.’ It would be a great boon to me to get a place before I break up,--just as it is a polite attention to offer a lady a chair before she faints.

“If I get upon L. Nap. I shall write you ten pages, so I forbear, but not until I have screamed my loudest against that stupid credulity with which the English papers accept his circular as ‘Peace.’ Don’t you remember what Swift said to Bickerstaff, when the latter declared he was _not_ dead? ‘_Now we know_ you are dead, for you never told a word of truth in your life.’

“Did you see that the Cave of Adullam was originally Lincoln’s? I have noted eight distinct thefts of Bright, and am half disposed to give them in a paper with the title, ‘Blunderings and Plunder-ings of John Bright.’

“I have taken to gardening,--it’s cheaper than whist, and a watering-pot is a modest investment; besides, I feel like a Cockney friend who retired from the gay world and took to horticulture,--‘One never can want company who has a hoe and a rake.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 29,1866.

“I have conceived a new story which may, I think, turn out well. I do not wish to do it hurriedly, but if you think it would suit you by the opening of the New Year, I will go on to shape and mould it in my head, and when in a state to do so, send you some pages.

“I can afford to be frank with you, for I think you wish me well. I believe there is some thought of giving me advancement, but even if it come, it will not suffice for my wants, and I must write (at all events) _one more novel_. I trust you understand me well enough to know that I am not pressing my wares on you, because _I_ want to dispose of them, or that if it be your wish or your convenience to say ‘No’ that it will alter anything in our friendship. You will bear this well in mind in giving me your reply.

“I don’t believe I shall do better than ‘Sir Brook.’ I don’t think it is _in_ me, but I will try to do as well, and certainly if it is for _you_, I will not do my work less vigorously nor with less heart in it. There is certainly plenty of time to think of all this, but I _think_ better and more purposely when the future is, to a certain degree, assured, and my new story will get a stronger hold on me if I know that you too are interested in its welfare.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _Oct_. 7, 1866.

“My best thanks for your note and its enclosure. They only reached me last night, though dated 30th, but the mails go by God knows what route now, as the inundations have completely cut the Mont Cenis line. I send off the Nov. ‘Sir B.’ to-night. There are two or three small corrections which had escaped me. I think if the book be largely known it may succeed. I hope ‘The Times’ may notice it--is this likely? I shall ask for some copies for a few friends, and my own can be addressed to me under cover to F. Alston, Esq., F. O. My eldest daughter, who went carefully over the corrections, says I have done nothing as good. By the way, I have not gone over Sept. and Oct. Nos. See that Sewell is never Walter, always _duelling_, and look well to any other lapses.

“I am all wrong in health, and depressed most damnably. I go down to Spezzia to have a swim or two to try to rally, and I shall take the O’Ds. with me for correction.

“I suspect Perry will not give up Venice, but your friends are asking L. Stanley to give me Havre, which _is_ vacant. How kind of you to offer to write to him. I don’t like putting you to the bore, but if you come personally in his way, say what you can, or think you can, for me. Havre is worth £700 a-year, and would solace my declining years and decaying faculties. Paralysis is the last luxury of poor devils like myself, but I really can’t afford it.

“So Lyons goes Ambassador to Paris. I know him well, and his capacity is about that of a small village doctor. The devil of it is, in English diplomacy the two or three men of ability are such arrant scamps and blackguards, they can’t be employed, and the honest men are dull as ditch-water. There is no denying it, and I don’t say it because I am dyspeptic,--but we have arrived at Fogeydom in England, and the highest excellence that the nation wants or estimates is a solemn and stolid ‘respectability’ that shocks nobody with anything new or original, and spoils no digestion by any sudden or unexpected brilliancy.

“The Ionian knight is here with me, full of grander projects than ever Skeff Darner dreamed of. He asked me yesterday if that character had any prototype.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, _Oct_. 9,1866.

“I have been here some days swimming and boating, and the sea and sea-air have done wonders for me, making me feel more like a live man than I have known myself these six months.

“I send you by this post the O’Ds. corrected, and herewith a few lines to finish the ‘Cable’ O’D., which you properly thought needed some completion.

“I go back to-morrow, and hope to find a letter from you. Though I am totally alone here, and have nobody above my boatman to talk to, I leave this with some regret. The beauty of the place and the vigour it gives me are unspeakable enjoyments. It is like a dream of being twenty years younger.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 22, 1866.

“I am very grateful for your note on my behalf. You said just the sort of thing that would be likely to serve me, and will, I have no doubt, serve me if opportunity offers. Lord S. has been so besieged on my part by my friends that he will for peace sake be anxious to get rid of me. The difficulty is, however, considerable. The whole Consular service is a beggarly concern, and the only thing reconcilable about it is when there is, as in my own case, nothing to do.

“The Party were much blamed--and, I suspect, deservedly--for the way in which they are distributing their patronage. It was but last week Havre, with a thousand a-year (consular salary), was given to Bernai Osborne’s brother! and two of the private sees, of Cabinet Ministers held office as such under the late Administration. These are blunders, and blunders that not alone alienate friends but confuse councils, since no one pretends to say that these men maintain a strict silence amongst their own party of what they hear and see in their official lives.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 8,1866.

“You say nothing about the serial, so I conclude your plans are made; but what say you to taking my story to begin your _July volume?_ _That_ interval would perhaps take off the air of sameness you seem to apprehend, and it would in so far suit me that I could rest a little just now, which is perhaps the best thing I could do. Say if this will suit you.

“I was greatly tempted to go to Venice, so many of my friends went; but I was too low in many ways, and so resisted all offers.

“Send me some money. The Florence tradesmen, in their religious fervour, anticipate Xmas by sending in their bills before December, and in this way they keep me blaspheming all Advent.

“I hope to hear some good news of ‘Sir Brook,’--if, that is to say, good news has not cut with me, which I half begin to suspect.

“What do you say to the Pope’s allocution? It appears to me _son dernier mot_. By the way, why did your political article last month pronounce so positively against any Reform Bill, when it is quite certain the Government will try one? Would not the best tactic of party be now to declare that the only possible reform measure could come from the Tories? that, representing, as they do, the nation more broadly as well as more unchangeably, their bill would be more likely to settle the question for a longer term of years than any measure conceived in the spirit of mere party,--and I would like to show that it is the spirit of party, of even factious party, that is animating the Whigs.

“Universal suffrage in Australia has proved an eminently Conservative measure. What we have to bear most in England is not _great_ change so much as _sudden_ change. We can conform to anything, but we need time to suit ourselves to the task.

“I suspect that the moderate Whigs have no intention of joining the Conservatives. There is, first of all, the same disgrace attaching to a change of seat in the House as in a change of religion. Nobody hesitates to think that a convert must be either a knave or a fool; and, secondly, the Whigs do not apprehend danger as _we_ do: they do not think Democracy either so near or so perilous. Which of us is right, God knows! For my own part, perhaps my stomach has something to say to it. I believe we have turned the summit of the hill, and are on our way downward as fast as may be.

“America is wonderfully interesting just now. It is a great problem at issue, and never was popular government submitted to so severe a test. If Johnson goes on and determines to beard the Radicals, he will be driven to get up a row with England to obtain an army. They will vote troops readily enough for _that,--reste à savoir_ against whom he will employ them.

“I am glad to see Lord Stanley appointing a Commission to consider the Yankee claims. There is nothing so really good in parliamentary government as the simple fact that a new Cabinet may undo the very policy they once approved of, and thus the changeful fortunes of the world may be used to profit, instead of accepted as hopeless calamities.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 16,1866

“I would have delayed these proofs another day in the hope of hearing from you, as I am so anxious to do, but that the Queen’s Messenger leaves this evening for England, and I desire to catch him as my postman.

“I send you an O’D. on the Pope, and, curiously enough, since I wrote it I have found that Lord Derby’s instructions to Odo Russell are in conformity with the line I take, being to make the Pope stay where he is.

“We were to have had great Department changes, but they are all _tombées dans Veau_, at least for the present. Lyons was to have gone to Paris _vice_ Cowley, and Hudson come back here, but the Queen will not permit the Princess of Wales, on her visit to the Exhibition, to go to a bachelor’s house! L. Lyons has no wife. Why they don’t send him an order through F. O. to marry immediately I don’t know, but I can swear if the command came from the head of a department he’d have obeyed before the week was over.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Dec 16,1866.

“I return the proof, which by our blundering post office only reached me last night. I have added a short bit to the Pope, and also the Fenians. I’m sure you will agree with me as to Ireland; what we want is something like a continuous policy--something that men will be satisfied to see being carried out with the assurance that it will not be either discouraged or abandoned by a change of Government. We want, in fact, that Ireland should be administered for Ireland, and not for the especial gain or loss of party.

“My wife is a little better, and was up for a few hours yesterday. I suppose there is not much the matter with myself beyond some depression and a little want of appetite, but I know I’m not right, for I feel no enjoyment in whist.

“It is d------d hard that ‘Fossbrooke’ has been so little noticed. ‘Pall Mall’ and ‘Athenaeum’ are very civil, and my private ‘advices’ say I have done nothing equal to it. I know I am pretty sure never to do so again. If I had had time, I would have liked to have written a long paper on Ireland and its evils. I believe I have lived long enough _in_ Ireland to know something of the country, and long enough _out_ of it to have shaken off the prejudice and narrowness that attach to men who live at home--and I suspect I am a ‘wet’ Tory in much that regards Ireland, though not the least of a Whig in this or anything else. My O’D. will, however, serve as a pilot balloon, and if it go up freely we can follow in the same direction.

“If you see any notices, I am perfectly indifferent if civil or the reverse, of ‘Sir B.’ send them to me, and tell if you hear of any criticism from any noticeable quarter.

“I am sure you are right as to some ill-feeling towards me of the London press, though I cannot trace it to any distinct cause. If I had lived amongst them I am well aware they might hate me roundly, but I have not,--I have all my life been abroad, and never knew Grub St. That the fact is so I have a strong suspicion, and certainly ‘Tony Butler,’ anonymous, fared better till they began to discover [who wrote it].”

XVII. FLORENCE AND TRIESTE 1867

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Feb_. 6, 1867.

“Up to this I have no tidings about the Queen’s Speech, and am as much in doubt as ever what the Government means. One thing I feel sure: if they do not propose some measure of reform, they are done for as a _Party_; and if they do, they are done for as a _Ministry_. Reform is a dose that will always kill the doctor that prescribes it.