Part 16

“A serious revolt has just broken out in Dalmatia. The peasants refuse to be enrolled in the Landwehr, and have risen, and, up to this, resisted the troops with success. Of course the thing is deeper than a mere local row, and being on the Montenegrin frontier, has an uncommonly ugly look. Three thousand men have been despatched and two gunboats this morning to Cáttaro, and there will be warm work there before to-morrow evening. Austria is in that state that any one movement of her incongruous nationalities may bring down the whole rotten edifice with a run.

“I think Sydney is ‘brewing an MS.,’ for I scarcely see her all day, and she has a half conscious air of authorship at dinner.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Oct_. 27, 1869.

“I send you I think a smart O’Dowd ‘On the Misery of Singing without an Accompaniment’ (or rather, speaking without a brogue). I’m terribly hipped: I wish to God I could get out of this! If nothing else offers, perhaps I could get Elizabeth Barry to steal me: I’d make no objection to her cutting off my curls, and as to my clothes, I’ll be shot if she could change them for worse.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 9, 1869.

“I have detained these proofs that I might hear from you; but the snow has begun to make the passes difficult for the post, and I think it better to despatch them. I hope you’ll think them good. There was a slaughter of the innocents last month--that is, if they ever reached you.

“If my poor wife had not been so dreadfully ill I believe I’d have managed a trip to Suez. I had a pressing invitation, and it would have been exciting enough for the mere strange gathering it brought about, but my home anxieties are thickening every hour.

“You know we are in trouble here in Dalmatia. So far back as July I warned Lord Bloomfield that there was mischief brewing, and that Montenegro was preparing for an outbreak. Of course I never supposed that a consular report would carry weight, but I wrote in a light jocular strain that I thought might be attended to. The reply was: ‘I showed Beust your note, and he thinks you have been humbugged.’ Now I have the satisfaction of seeing B. make a very humble _amende_, admitting that I knew more of what was menaced than his agent at Cáttaro.

“Still the Austrians believe, or affect to believe, that Russia is not in it; nor is she more than certain American politicians are in Fenianism--that is, they want to see the chances of success before they go farther. I hear that Gladstone has got a fright about Ireland, and that his Land Bill will be ‘Moderate and even Conservative’--in fact, he begins to feel that dealing with Ireland means ‘concession,’ and when you have given all you have, you’ve to make way for somebody else who’ll give something more. Bright is very much disgusted at the moderation of the measure intended, and the Cabinet, I hear, not one-minded.

“All these things, however, open no prospect for a Tory Government, and out of pure fear of what Gladstone would do, _if pushed to it_, the squires will vote for him rather than risk--not their seats, but their acres.

“The indifference foreign statesmen feel about England, and what she thinks on anything now, exceeds belief. I declare to you I believe Holland has as much weight in Europe.

“Would you like something about Suez?--I mean, about the trade prospects, &c,--that is, if anything could be had new or striking. Up to this the only speculation I have seen worth anything is how greatly to our benefit the route would be if we had a war with America, for we could certainly ‘make the police’ of the Mediterranean and Levant, though not of the Atlantic and Pacific.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 29, 1869.

“I am still confined to the house with a feverish cold, and overrun by travellers to and from Suez.

“The Dalmatian revolt is becoming a very serious affair. The peasants are beating the troops, and now the season must stop all operations till spring. Whether by that time the complication will not take wider limits and embrace Servia and the Balkans, is not easy to see. That blessed ally of ours, Louis Napoleon, is now intriguing to get a Russian alliance and undo all the work of the Crimean campaign, and of course our ‘Non-interference Policy’ will leave the coast free to him! Thank God, his home troubles may overtake him before he goes much farther!”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Dec_. 11, 1869.

“Thanks for your note and its enclosure, and thanks, too, for telling me that the deferred O’Ds. are not rejected ones, for I was getting low-spirited at the number of recruits sent back as below the standard. When I asked you to send me the unused, it was a painful confession. It was like a manufacturer owning to his being reduced to work up his old material. Perhaps I shall one of these days make an O’Dowd on ‘Devil’s Dust in Literature.’ What do you think of it?

“I hope you will like the ‘O’Dowd’ I send. It is meant to expose a very common blunder respecting the influences of the better classes abroad. You must ensure the correction yourself, and it will be the last I shall forward this month. For the last week I have been keeping a dark room with a severe ophthalmia. It was a dreary time, and I am glad it is over.

“Gladstone is going to propose a sort of Court of Arbitration for land purposes--that is, another body of men to be shot at when the peasants find landlords scarce, or what the sportsmen call ‘wild.’

“This Dalmatian revolt must sleep during the winter, but it will be a serious mischief yet, especially if this Franco-Russian alliance takes place. Our policy now ought to be to reconcile Austria and Prussia at once, and prepare for the big struggle that is coming to undo the results of the Crimean War. I wish, if it be decided to represent England abroad by old _women_, that at least they would send us old _ladies_.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Dec_. 14, 1860.

“I hope for both our sakes you are not quite just about the ‘Pope’ O’D. I think it has a smack of Swift--a very faint one it may be, but still enough to recall the flavour. The anecdote of the Yankee was not made for the occasion, only it occurred to Sir J. Hudson, and not to O’Dowd. Take them all in all, I have done better and worse; but I think with those you have already on hand, they will make a fair batch.

“I hope you will like the ‘Dr Temple’ O’D. It, at least, is worked out.

“I am very poorly, and very low in spirits; my wife grows weaker every day, and our anxieties are great. For the first time in my life I find it a ‘grind’ to write a few lines. _Le commencement du fin_, maybe--who knows?”

XX. TRIESTE 1870

_To Mr John Blackwood_.

“Trieste, _Jan_. 4,1870.

“When I saw ‘Maga’ without me I began to feel as if I had died (hitherto at Trieste I only believed I had been buried), and when your cheque reached me this morning I pictured myself as my own executor! You are most kind to bethink you of the necessities of this pleasant season,--indeed I scarcely know anything of Christmas but its bills I Still, I should be well content to have nothing heavier on my heart than money cares, and I believe that is about as dreary a confession as a man can well make.

“I am sorry to hear you have not been well, but I trust it is a thing of the past already: I don’t think either of us would be what is called a good patient. I like the Homer Odyssey (?) greatly. I suspect I guess the writer--that is, from a mere accident. ‘Suez’ is excellent, and Stanley’s opinion is that of the best German engineers also. Aren’t you flattering to my Lord of Knebworth? It was not, however, a ‘good fairy’ gave him a wife.

“Sydney sends her love. She is going over to England in spring (at least she says so, and I suppose I am bound to believe it) to pay that Devonshire visit I interrupted last year.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Feb_. 3,1870.

“In Stanley’s clever article on ‘Suez’ for January there is a sketch of an Italian travelling companion so like a portrait that we all here fancy we recognise the man. It is the same who addresses the Empress Eugénie so brusquely. If we be right, he is an old acquaintance of ours called ‘Campereo.’ Pray, if occasion serve, ask if this be the man. It is wonderfully like him at all events, and I could almost bet on it.

“I have been hoping to hear from you, and delaying to tell you--what for me is a rare event--a piece of pleasant news. Sydney is about to be married. The _sposo_, an Englishman, young, well educated, well-mannered, and well off; he is the great millowner, paper manufacturer, and shipbuilder of Austria, and has about £7000 a-year.

“I need not say it is a great match for a poor ‘tocherless lass,’ but I can say that the man’s character and reputation would make him acceptable if he had only £500 a-year.

“To myself, overborne and distressed by the thought of how little I had done for my children, and how wastefully and foolishly I had lived,--spending my means pretty much as I did my brains, in bursts of spendthrift extravagance, and leaving myself in both cases with nothing to fall back on,--it is a relief unspeakable that one of my poor girls at least is beyond the straits of penury.

“I know that you and Mrs Blackwood have a warm and kindly feeling towards us, and you will be glad to hear of such good fortune. I do not know that the excitement has been very favourable to my poor wife, who can only look as yet to the one feature--that is, that she loses a child’s companionship; but I trust that in time she will see with me that the event is one to be truly thankful for.

“The marriage is to take place on the 21st, and after a trip to Rome, &c, they visit Paris, and on to London some time in April. Sydney ardently hopes that you and Mrs Blackwood may be in town this season: she longs to see you both again.

“I need not say I have done nothing but answer and write notes for the last few weeks, and sit in commission over trousseau details, for which how I am ever to pay I hope somebody knows--but _I_ do not. I remember Fergus O’Connor saying that he could ‘get in’ for Mallow ‘if he could stand a dinner to his committee,’ and I can fully appreciate that nice situation at present.

“Mr Cook has been at me again in a pamphlet. It was only a few days back he went through here with a gang, and I had determined to dine at _table d’hôte_ with them, but was laid up with a heavy cold and sorely disappointed accordingly.

“I hear from London that Dizzy is hopeful and in good heart, but of what or why I cannot guess. Certainly the country is not Conservatively-minded now, nor could the Tories succeed to power except by repeating the Reform Bill dodge of outbidding the Whigs and then strengthening the Radical party. That Dizzy is ready for this, and that he would push a Land Bill for Ireland to actual commission, I can easily believe; but are we not all sick of being ‘shuttlecocked’ between two ambitious and jealous rivals? And is there not something else to be thought of than who is to be First Lord of the Treasury?

“I see a book advertised called ‘Varieties of Viceregal Life.’ If I had it I suspect I could make an amusing paper on it--that is, if the book bore out its title.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Feb_. 9, 1870.

“I have been hoping and hoping to have a line from you, and would still go on waiting for it only that the ‘O’Dowd’ I now send is too ‘apropos’ for delay. It is the only one I have written, but think you have still one or two by you--‘The Pope,’ and ‘Landlords and Limits.’ I am terribly knocked up,--such an attack on the chest,--and not able to leave my room, and at a time when I am full of care and occupation.

“Lord Clarendon has written me a private and confidential about ‘Cook and the Excursionists,’ who have petitioned him against me. Lord Clarendon evidently foresees a ‘question’ to be asked in the House, and wants an answer. Mine was that Cornelius O’Dowd was not in the Consular service, nor, so far as I was aware, had he any relations with F. O.; that he was a person who amused himself and, when he could, other people, by ridiculing whatever was absurd, or in bad taste or manners, or hypocritical in morals; and that being one who had followed the avocation of a writing man for thirty years, he must be understood to have acquired some notions, not only of the privileges but the responsibilities of the pen; and that, finally, as Consul Lever, I had no explanation to make Mr Cook, who first blackguarded me in print and then appealed to my official superior.

“Sydney’s marriage comes off Monday 21st. I am forced to say, like King Frederic of Prussia, ‘Another such victory would ruin me.’ To be sent to one’s grave by milliners does seem a very ignoble destiny!--but a bad bronchitis, aided by Brussels lace, has brought me to a state of feverish irritability that, if it does not terrify me, certainly alarms my family, and _con ragione_.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _March_ 3,1870.

“Perhaps you’ll say ‘dull as ditch water’ was the inspiration as well as the title of this ‘O’Dowd/ and mayhap I won’t deny it. It is, however, a heartfelt cry over the dreariness of the time the ‘whole world over,’ and I am sure many will acknowledge the truth of it.

“I know nobody jolly but Sydney. She writes me full accounts of Venetian Carnival doings,--masques and gondoliers, &c, &c., and music on the Grand Canal till daybreak.

“Here I am hipped and out of heart,--waiting, too, but for the undertaker, I believe, for it is the only ‘carriage exercise’ I should now care for.

“We had two smart shocks of earthquake yesterday. I thought that Cumming was going to be right after all, but it passed off with nothing worse than some tinkling of the teacups and a formidable swinging of the lustre over our heads.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _March_ 6, 1870.

“The Whigs would like to blend up Fenianism and agrarian crime. _Now they are not to be so confounded_. The National party is anti-English, rebel, violent, cruel, anything you like, but the men _who shoot the landlords are not the Fenians!_ It is a brief I should like well to plead on, and you will see ere long that there will be many to acknowledge its truth.

“Gladstone will carry his Bill, I’m sure, but if the Tories are adroit they will make a complete schism in the Irish party and throw the Catholic set so completely on the side of the Ministry as to disgust the Protestant feeling of England. How I wish I had half an hour with Dizzy, and that he would condescend to listen to me!”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“March 15, 1870.

“I was glad to hear from you, and gladder to hear you liked the O’Ds.

“Sydney is away to Rome honeymooning it very pleasantly, and meeting all manner of attentions, &c. The trousseau has spoilt my trip to town. I have ‘taken out’ in white lace what I meant for ‘whitebait,’ and I must try and screw on in life for one year more if I mean to see London again. It was the celebrated Betty O’Dwyer that said to her legs, ‘I’ll take another season out of you before I’ll give you to Tom O’Callaghan.’”

_To Mr William Blackwood._

“_March_ 16,1870.

“I have no patience with you for being ill. What I a fellow of something and twenty, with a sound chest, six feet in his stockings, and a hunter in top condition; what an ungrateful dog to Fortune you are! Leave sickness to old cripples like myself,--hipped, dunned, and blue-devilled,--with a bad balance at the bank, and a ruined digestion. _You_ have no business with malady! Come over and see me here: the very contrast will make you happy and contented.

“I hope, however, you are all right by this time. I’m sure you stick too close to the desk. Be warned by _me!_ It was all over-application and excessive industry ruined _my_ constitution; and instead of being threatened to be cut off, as I am now, in the flower of my youth, I might have lived on to a ripe old age, and all that rottenness that they tell us makes ‘medlars’ exquisite.

“I send you a tailpiece to the O’D. Heaven grant that the Saxon intelligence, for which I daily feel less veneration, should not suspect me of being a Fenian in disguise, though if it should get me dismissed from my consulate and turned out into the streets, I’d almost cry hurrah! for, after all, picking oakum could scarcely be worse than cudgelling my brains for what, after all the manipulation, can’t be got out of them.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _April_ 1,1870.

“I suppose ‘Sanding the Sugar’ reached you too late, or was it that you don’t like it? _I_ thought it was good, but needed careful going over again and perhaps enlarging.

“I send you three now, and hope you will like them. I have been days over them, and without getting on, for my poor wife’s time of being operated on again draws nigh, and her fear and nervousness have made her seriously ill. For the last three nights I have been sitting up beside her, and as I have been very ‘creaky’ some time back, this pressure has pushed me very hard indeed.

“Many thanks for ‘Piccadilly’; it is beautifully got up, and the style and look of it perfectly faultless. I have re-read it, and like it greatly,--indeed, I think more than the first time. In the little touches of that brusqueness which the well-bred world affects, Oliphant is admirable, and so removed from that low-world dialogue that vulgar novelists imagine people in Society converse in. I am, however, not surprised at the strange step he has taken in life; such extreme fastidiousness could find no rest anywhere but in savagery, just as we see incredulity take refuge in the Church of Rome: _les extrêmes se touchent_ oftener in life than we suspect.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _April_ 5, 1870.

“I send you an ‘O’Dowd’ I hope will please you. I think it has more ‘fun’ in it than all my late ones,--though, God knows, I never myself felt less disposed to drollery, for I am literally worn out with watching beside my poor sick wife. I cannot bear to read, and it is a blessing to me to run to the pen for distraction.

“The O’D. on Canning has been going the round of the Italian papers, and I see one, the ‘Eco de l’Arno,’ has given a sort of series of extracts from the O’Ds. called Leverania.

“I see Whiteside is in London. How I wish I could go over! I’d like to have a dinner with you both. You’d be greatly pleased with him.

“I am told that the deadlock about the Education Bill is caused by the opposition of the Irish Catholic bishops, who insist on denominational schools--that is, having the whole grant for themselves. No bad idea after all. I wish every consul, with a bald back to his head, should have double salary.

“My best regards to Mrs Blackwood. Tell her she’ll have her meals in peace this time in London, but it isn’t my fault after all.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _April_ 12, 1870.

“You gratify me much by what you say of these O’Ds. Failing health, broken spirits, a very sad home, and many uncertainties are hard to bear, but I believe I could face them all better than the thought of ‘Brain bankruptcy.’ To draw on my intellect and get for answer ‘no assets’ would, I feel, overwhelm me utterly. Your hearty words have, therefore, done me good service, and in my extra glass of claret--and I will take one to-day--I’ll drink your health.

“I am distressed at not getting the _April No. of ‘Maga’_ yet; by some accident it has been forgotten or miscarried, and it is a great comfort to me to ‘cuddle over.’

“My poor wife is still suffering intensely, and too weak to undergo the operation, which is eminently necessary. She has at last, too, lost all courage, and, I might almost say, wish to live. Much of this depression is from actual pain, and all our efforts are now directed to allay that. I never leave the house, or, if I do, go beyond the garden. Of course, I admit no visitors, and scarcely remember the days of the week.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _April_ 15,1870.

“I think the title had better be ‘Personal and Peculiar.’ I have added and changed the conclusion, whether for the better or not you shall decide. There was some danger in saying more, and I might have found, if I went on, that, as Curran says, I had argued myself _out_ of my brief.

“I have a half suspicion the Bill may break down after all,--not that it signifies much, since the Tories could not take office with any chance of holding it, but the mere failure would offend Gladstone, and even that would be a comfort.

“I have no better news to send for this, and am low, low!

“Don’t forget to send me ‘Maga’ for this month--April.

“Have you read Dickens’ new serial, and what do you say to it? I am curious to hear.

“We have a report here from Greece that the English Sec. of Legation and a whole picnic party have been captured by the brigands, and an immense ransom demanded.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _April_ 23, 1870.

“The blow has fallen at last, and I am desolate. My poor darling was taken from me at two this morning, without suffering. It seems to me as if years had gone over since she smiled her last good-bye to me. All the happiness of my life has gone, and all the support. God’s greatest mercy would be to take me from a life of daily looking back, which is all that remains to me now.

“You are, I feel, a true friend who will feel for my great sorrow, and I write this as to one who will pity me.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _May_ 28, 1870.

“Though I cannot read your note by any other light than an affectionate desire to be of service to _me_, veiled under the notion that I could be of any use to _you_; and though I say I see all this, and see besides how little capable I now am of even a weak effort, I accept your offer and write at once for leave of absence, which, between ourselves, I do not think would be accorded me if it was guessed that I intended to visit Greece. Indeed I _know_ that Mr Gladstone’s Hellenism is calculated on at Athens to sustain the Greek government through anything that the public opinion of Europe would be likely to submit to.*

* Mr Blackwood proposed that Lever should pay a visit to Greece, for the purpose of making investigations about an act of brigandage which had shocked the civilised world. A party of English tourists, which included Lord and Lady Muncaster, had been seized by brigands at Oropos, near Marathon. During the course of the negotiations for the ransom of the tourists, some members of the British Legation at Athens had been murdered. Many influential Greeks were conniving at the act of brigandage, and matters were at this time in a very disturbed condition in high quarters.--E. D.

“Erskine is an old friend of mine, but he is a very self-contained and reserved fellow, who will reveal nothing, and I would be glad of some Greek introductions to any persons not officially bound to sustain the Queen’s Cabinet. My wish would be to take the Constantinople boat that leaves on Saturday next, the 4th, and reaches Athens on Thursday following, 9th; but if my leave is not accorded me by telegraph I cannot do this, and there is only _one_ boat in the week. I have to-day seen a private telegram from M. W------, the Greek Minister to the Austrian government here, saying that he is on the track of this most infamous outrage, and that if his suspicion prove true, some men of political eminence will have to fly from Greece for ever.

“I cannot thank you enough for your kind and affectionate remembrance of me: it is very dear to me such friendship in this dark hour of my life. There is something gone wrong with the action of my heart, and I have short moments when it seems disposed to give in,--and indeed I don’t wonder at it.

“As there would be no time to send me letters here in reply to this, write to me addressed British Legation, Athens--that is, taking for granted that I shall start on Saturday next.”