Part 19

“I hope you will like the O’Ds., and think they have not lost in vigour because of my late excesses in turtle and whitebait.

“When you send me a proof, tell me all you think of them, and if anything occurs to me in the meanwhile, I’ll speak of it.

“Tichborne I incline to think the real man, and the blacker they make him the more certainly they identify him: so far I regard Coleridge as his best advocate. Of course, I must not speak of the case till it is concluded.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _July_ 5, 1871.

“As I had finished the enclosed O’D., I read how Trinity had made me LL.D. The degree must not be exported to me in gratitude. I really believe a large amount of what I have said, which is more than can be asserted by Tichborne, or the man who says he is Tichborne.

“It is a great grief to me that I cannot say what I think of that curious trial, and all that I should like to say of the solicitor to the Crown’s examination; but I see it would be too dangerous, and, to use his own style, I might ask myself, ‘Would you not be surprised to hear that an attachment was issued against you?’”

“The hot weather has begun here, and in such honest earnest that I can do nothing but hunt out a dark cool corner and go to sleep.

“I am very sorry not to be in Ireland now, when the [? ] have been invited to the Exhibition banquet on the 20th; but I have done with banquets now, and must address myself to my maccaroni with what appetite I may.”

_To Mr William Blackwood._

“Trieste, _July_ 13, 1871.

“I should have liked to have detained these proofs until I heard what your uncle might have to say to them, but I am afraid of delay, and send them back at once. My hope is that he will like them, though I cannot dare to think that my chief, Lord Granville, will approve of what I say of his speech at the Cobden dinner. At any rate, if they kick me out, I can go home and be a rebel, and if too old for a pike I am still good for a paragraph.

“All that London life with its flatteries and fat-feeding has sorely unfitted me for my cold mutton v. existence at home; but it cannot be helped, and I must try to get back into the old groove and work along as before.

“There is now a dull apathy over life--the consequence of all our late excitement; but we cannot always afford to pay for ‘stars,’ and Bismarck is too costly an _artiste_ to keep always on the boards. From all I see, the French are just as insolent and bumptious as before they were licked,--showing us, if we like to see it, what the world would have had to endure had they been the conquerors!

“It is a sore grief to me that I cannot go to the Scott festival; but I have no leave and less money, and though I believe F. O. might grant me the one, they’d even stop my pay, which is the aggravation of insult.

“I hope sincerely you don’t feel it a matter of conscience to read all a man writes, for if so I’d shut up. Only assuring you that now we have met and shaken hands, it is with increased pleasure I write myself, yours sincerely, Chas. Lever.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 6, 1871.

“_En attendant_ to writing you a long letter, I send you these ‘O’Dowds’ now, which will give us more time to discuss them.

“That on our ‘National Donations’ is, I hope, good. I know it is called for. The shabby scoundrels from Manchester that want to manage England like a mill and treat the monarch like an overseer deserve castigation, and I feel you will agree with me. Is not ‘Meat without Bone’ good enough for use?

“I am so sorry not to be able to say all the civil things I should like to say of the Solicitor-General now, for when the trial is over I shall not be able to revive my generous indignation to the white heat it now enjoys.

“Why don’t you tell me some popular theme to O’Dowd? I’m here, as they say in Ireland, ‘at the back of good speed,’ and know nothing.

“A very curious trial occurred five years ago in Austria on a disputed identity, and the man questioned substantiated his case. It would be interesting if a correct record could be had.

“Ballantine tells me that Jeune is gone to Australia, and will be back in November with proofs of the loss of the _Bella_, names of survivors, and existence in the colony of Arthur Orton up to November last. B. is sure of a verdict--at least, he is sure of his right to it.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 5, 1871.

“It is time I should thank you and Mrs Blackwood for your cordial invitation to myself and my daughter to go and see you in Scotland, and we are only too sorry we cannot manage you a visit, and in talk--for it is all that is left us--to ride over the links of Fife, and even assist at golf.

“Even if I could have plucked up courage to go over now, I ‘stopped’ myself by letting my ‘vice’ go on leave,--a piece of generosity on my part that has cost me heavier than I thought for, and gave me nearer opportunities of intimacy with Cardiff captains and Hull skippers than I care for.

“Of course, it is out of the question trying to write except on my ‘off days,’ when I shut out the whole rabble.

“I begin to think that Gladstone has been carried away by pure anger in all his late doings. It is purely womanish and hysterical throughout. To hit off this I have thrown off the short ‘O’Dowd,’ ‘What if they were to be Court-martialled?’ which, with a little change, will perhaps do.

“It is one of those cases which will be as long kept before the public, for it is the attack on a great principle--and in that sense no mere grievance of the hour.

“As a means of lowering the House of Lords--if such was the intention--it has totally failed, and even ‘Pall Mall’ has come to the side of the Peers, which is significant.

“I see Seymour, my old friend, has got his first verdict in the Hertford case. It is £70,000 a-year at issue, but of course the great battle will be fought before ‘the Lords,’”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 17,1871.

“About half an hour after your pleasant letter and its handsome enclosure reached me, Langford came in. He was on his way to Venice, but, like a good fellow, stopped to dine with myself and daughter.

“We are delighted with him,--not only with his talk about books and writers, Garrick men and reviewers, but with his fine fresh-hearted appreciation of all he sees in his tour. He likes everything, and travels really to enjoy it.

“I wish I knew how to detain him here a little longer; though, God knows, no place nor no man has fewer pretensions to lay an embargo on any one.

“I took him out to see Miramar last evening, and we both wished greatly you had been with us. It was a cool drive of some miles along the Adriatic, with the Dalmatian mountains in front, and to the westward the whole Julian Alps snow-topped and edged. I know you would have enjoyed it.

“I am so glad you like the O’Ds. As I grow older I become more and more distrustful of all I do; in fact, I feel like the man who does not know when he draws on his banker that he may not have overdrawn his account and have his cheque returned. This is very like intellectual bankruptcy, or the dread of it, which is much the same.

“The finest part of Scott’s nature to my thinking was the grand heroic spirit--that trumpet-stop on his organ--which elevated our commonplace people and stirred the heart of all that was high-spirited and generous amongst us. It was the anti-climax to our realism and sensationalism--detective Police Literature or Watch-house Romance.

“This was the tone I wanted to see praised and recommended, and I was sorry to see how little it was touched on. The very influence that a gentleman exerts in society on a knot of inferiors was the sort of influence Scott brought to bear upon the whole nation. All felt that there was at least one there before whom nothing mean or low or shabby should be exhibited.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 28, 1871.

“The day after Langford left this, my horse, treading on a sharp stone that cut his frog, fell on me and crushed my foot,--not severely, but enough to bring on the worst attack of gout I ever had in my life, and which all my precautions have only kept down up to this from seizing on the stomach. My foot was about as big and as shapely as Cardwell’s head. I am now unable to move, and howl if any one approaches me rashly.

“I told Langford of a curious police trial for swindling here at Vienna--curious as illustrating Austrian criminal procedure, &c. He thought I ought to report it in ‘O’Dowd.’ I send it off now for your opinion and judgment (and hope favourably). It might want a little retouching here and there, but you will see and say.

“I was delighted with your ‘Scott’ speech--the best of them of all that I read, and I see it has been copied and recopied largely. Your allusion to Wilson was perfect, and such a just homage to a really great man whom all the Cockneyism in the world cannot disparage.

“I am in such damnable pain that I can hardly write a line, but I want you to see the ‘Police’ sketch at once. Can I have a proof, if you like it, early? as perhaps when I am able to move I shall have to get to some of the sulphur springs in Styria at once.

“My enemy is now making a demonstration about my left knee, and, as the newspapers say, _La situation est difficile_.

“I am not so ill but that I can desire to be remembered to Mrs Blackwood.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“_Sept._, 9, 1871.

“Between gout and indignation I am half mad. Gladstone at Whitby is worse to me than my swelled ankle, and I send you a furious O’D. to show that the Cabinet are only playing out--where they do not parody--the game of the Communists.

“Whether it will be in time to send me a proof I cannot tell, but you will, I know, take care of me. I feel in writing it as though we had been talking the whole thing together, and that I was merely giving a _résumé_ of our gossip.

“Your delightful note and its enclosure have just come. I thank you cordially for both. I have not any recollection of what I said of Scott, but I know what I _feel_ about him, and how proud I am that you like my words. I cannot get my foot to the ground yet, but I am rather in vein for writing, as I always am in gout, only my caligraphy has got added difficulties from the position I am reduced to.

“I am glad Langford likes us here: my daughters took to him immensely, and only were sorry we saw so little of him. If he has really ‘bitten’ you with a curiosity to see Miramar I shall bless the day he came here.

“Tell Mrs Blackwood my cabin will be glad to house her here, and if she will only come I’ll be her courier over the whole of North Italy.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sept_. 10, 1871.

“You are right. There is little point--that is, there is no epigram--in the ‘Trial.’ I wrote it rather to break the monotony of eternal moral-isings than with any other object. If it be pleasant reading I am content, and, I hope, so are you.

“I sent yesterday a hard-hitting O’D. on ‘How Gladstone is doing the Work of the Commune,’ and I send you now, I think, a witty comparison between the remaining troopers and the Whigs. My daughter thinks it the smartest bit of fun I have done since I had the gout last, and all the salt in it comes unquestionably from that source.

“All the names in the ‘Trial’ are authentic. The lady is really the grand-daughter of Hughes Ball (the celebrated Golden Ball); and the man’s assertion of being ‘Times’ correspondent was accepted as an unquestionable fact.

“I have made superhuman efforts to be legible in this ‘O’Dowd’ now, so as to make correction easy. Heaven grant that my ‘Internationals’ be as lucky.

“I am still a cripple, and if irritability be a sign of recovery, my daughter says that my convalescence is approaching.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Oct_. 1, 1871.

“I am so eager to save a post and see this in proof, that I have never left my desk for five hours, and only read it to Lord D. (Henry Bulwer), who was delighted with it, before I sent it.

“You have given me a rare fright by printing, as I see, what I said of Scott--at least, any other man than yourself doing so would terrify me, but you are a true friend and a wise critic, and what you have done must be right and safe: I do not remember one word of it. I have written myself back into gout, and must now go to bed. I had a sort of _coup_ yesterday, and D. believed I was off.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Oct_. 3,1871.

“I have just seen ‘Maga,’ and I am ashamed at the prominence you have given my few words about Scott.

“What a close connection a man’s ankles have with his intellect. I don’t know, but I can swear to it, that since I have become tender about the feet I have grown to feel very insecure about the thinking department, and the row in the cellar is re-echoed in the garret.

“Every fresh speech of Gladstone gives me a fresh seizure, and his last ‘bunkum’ at Aberdeen has cost me a pint of colchicum.

“I have an O’D. in my head on the ‘Cobden Campaign,’ but I suppose it is safer to leave it there. You know what the tenor replied when some one said from the pit, ‘Monsieur, vous chantez fau.’ ‘Je le sais, Monsieur, mais je ne veux pas qu’on me le dise.’

“Give my warmest regards to Mrs Blackwood. I wish with all my heart, gout _nonobstant_, I was to dine with you to-day.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Oct_. 17, 1871.

“I know well but for golf and its ‘divartin’ sticks’ I should have had a line from you, but you have no moment to spare correcting O’Ds. amidst your distractions.

“I kept back the proof I now send to hear from you and make any changes or alterations you might suggest, and I have a half-done O’Dowd ‘On Widows’ which I shall keep over for another time. I am sorely done up,--only able to crawl with a stick and a friendly arm, and so weak that the Irishwoman’s simile of a ‘sheet of wet paper’ is my only parallel. Robert Lytton tells me he has got such a pleasant letter from you. He and his wife had been stopping with us here, and we were delighted with them both.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 1, 1871.

“I was sorry not to see my ‘Home Rule’ in ‘Maga,’ but sorrier still not to hear from you, and I tormented myself thinking--which I ought not--that you were somewhat _chagriné_ with me. I am delighted now to find you are not, and that the only ‘grievance’ between us makes _me_ the plaintiff for your not having printed my O’D. I can forgive this, however, and honestly assure you that I could forgive even worse at your hands. It is the nervous fear that I may be falling into [? senility] as well as gout that makes me tetchy about a rejected paper.

“Henry James got very safely out of my hands. He has no more pretension to play whist with me than I would have to cross-examine a witness before him, and I told him so before I won his sixpenny points.

“I fortunately asked F. O. by telegraph if I should take on the despatches, as the messenger was in quarantine, and they said not. They knew they were Henry Elliott’s, and that the delay could not injure the freshness. He is a great diplomatist, and there is nothing ephemeral in the news he sends home. Drummond Wolff is here with me now and Lord Dalling, and our conversation is more remarkable for wit than propriety.

“While James was here I was too gouty to go out with him, and what the latter Q.C. (queer customer) means by saying I was dog-bitten, I can’t guess. I am now crippled hand and foot, and a perfect curse to myself from irritability.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 3, 1871.

“If my late discomfiture in your opinion of my last rejected O’Ds. had not taught me that I am not infallible, I should say that the O’D. I now send you is, as regards thought or pith, as good as any of them. I wrote it in a fit of gout. Spasmodic it is, perhaps, but vigorous I hope.

“I have been violently assailed in letters for what I said about ‘touching pitch,’--but there is nothing that leads me to retract or modify one word I wrote,--some from doctors, well written, but on a wrong issue. You can no more make people modest by Act of Parliament than you can make them grateful or polite in fifty other good things.

“A Mr Crane, West George Street, Glasgow, writes me a very courteous note, and says, ‘I do thank the Editor of “Blackwood” for publishing what you say of Scott,’ and goes on to express his hearty concurrence with it all, and he regrets that it had not been spoken instead of written, &c, &c.

“I do not feel as if I was to get better this time; but I have called wolf so often I shall scream no more. What I feel most, and struggle against most in vain, is depression. I have got to believe not only that my brains are leaving me, but that my friends are tired of me. Of course, I couple the two disasters together, and long to be beyond the reach of remembering either one or the other.

“You read my MS. so easily that if you do not like the O’D. don’t print it--it saves me a disappointment at least; and above all, do not mind any chance irritability I display in writing, for a cry escapes me in my pain, and I often do not hear it myself.

“Now that I write very little and brood a great deal, I sit thinking hours’ long over a very good-for-nothing life, and owning to myself that no man ever did less with his weapon than I have. I say this in no vanity, but sheer shame and self-reproach.

“If I could be with you at times it would rouse And stimulate me greatly, for I think you know--that is, you understand--me better than almost any one, and I always feel the better of your company.

“Bulwer (Lord Dalling) is with me now; but he is a richer man than myself, and though we rally after dinner, we are poor creatures of a morning.

“Your last note did me real good, and I have re-read it three or four times.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 16, 1871.

“You are right about Bradlaugh, and I have added a few lines to insert in the place marked. I hope I am not libellous, and I believe I have steered safely.

“I am breaking up at last more rapidly, for up to this the planking has been too tough; but I am now bumping heavily, and, please God, must soon go to pieces.

“Your kindness, and your wife’s, are very dear to me. I am constantly thinking of you both. Your last note gave me sincere pleasure.

“Lytton and I talked a great deal of you and drank your health. We often wished you were with us. He is immensely improved--I mean mentally,--and become one of the very best talkers I ever met, and not a shade of any affectation about him. I am convinced he will make a great career yet.

“‘Our Quacks’ is, I think, a better title. Decide yourself.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Dec_. 11, 1871.

“I was indeed surprised at the address of your letter, but I should have been more than surprised--overjoyed--had I seen yourself, and I am sorely sorry you did not come on here. Do let it be for another time, and ask Mrs Blackwood to have a craving desire to see Venice and the Titians, and take me as an accident of the road.

“I am getting too ill for work, but not for the pleasure of seeing my friends, and there is nothing does me the same good.

“I see no difficulty in writing to you about Austria, but not as O’Dowd,--gravely, soberly, and, if I could, instructingly. But I must wait for a little health and a little energy, or I should be only steaming with half-boiler power.

“I see little prospect now of getting better, and all I have to do is to scramble along with as much of health as remains to me, and not bore my friends or myself any more on the matter. Sending the divers down to report how thin my iron plating is, is certainly not the way to encourage me to a new voyage.

“Like a kind fellow, send me George Eliot’s new book. There is nothing like her.”

XXII. TRIESTE 1872

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Jan_. 31, 1872.

“I am ordered off to Fiume for change of air--the change of scene that is to affect me is somewhat farther. Before I go I send you two O’Ds. that have been under my hands these few weeks back. Whether they be print-worthy or not, you will know and decide; if so, I shall be back to correct and add another by the time a proof could reach me.

“I am in a very creaky condition, and why I hold together at all I don’t understand. Like the _Megæra_, all the attempts to stop the leak only widens the breach.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Feb_. 15, 1872.

“It was an angel from heaven suggested to your wife the thought of a run out here. Only come and I’ll go with you to Japan if you like. There are no two people in the world I should rather see, and though the place is a poor one and I a dull dog, the thought of seeing you here would brighten us both up, as the mere notion has cheered me already.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Feb_. 26, 1872.

“I send you (and thus early to be in time for next month) a short sketchy story which, as the man said of the Athanasian Creed, is founded on fact, but not the better (I mean the story) for that.

“It has a moral too, or rather several morals, to be distributed according to age and sex, and, in fact, is a ‘righte merrie’ and well conceived tale, as I hope you will tell me.

“I had fully made up my mind to write no more, and to water my grog to enable me to do so, but I now discover that neither of my two daughters like ‘watered grog’ at all, but prefer whatever dietary habit has inured them to. ‘For this reason and for the season’ I am at it once more, though my ink-bottle looks as ruefully at me as the Yankees at Gladstone for backing out of the N. Y. Convention.

“By the way, I hope you have printed my correct version of the Alabama; I know it is the true one, and as I am the only discoverer, I am jealous about my invention.

“I had a grand argument to arraign the Ministry on the Collier job (which no one hit on), but coming at this d------d corner of Europe it was too late, and lost.

“I feel that the day after I am buried here some bright notion will occur to me and make me very uncomfortable in my grave. I have a dress rehearsal of this misery three times a-week, and gout all the time besides.

“Send me news of your plans and projects, if any of them tend this way. I shall have a ‘thanksgiving day’ of my own, and be grateful, without scarlet cloth or Mr Aytoun on the Board of Ws.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _March_ 9 and 11.

“I begin your note now, not intending to finish till I see if the post, a couple of days hence, may bring me some news of my short story, ‘Some one Pays.’ Meanwhile I have time to thank you heartily for your note and its contents, and to say what courage you give me by the hope that Mrs Blackwood is really serious about coming out here. As a short tour nothing could be nicer than to come out by Brussels, Munich, and Vienna (and through Trieste), back by Venice, Milan, Florence, Turin, and the Mont Cenis to Paris. I am seriously anxious that you should have a number of interesting places to see, and that the journey should repay you thoroughly. Dull as the place is, every one needs some rest in a tour, and Trieste can come in as your halt, and all the pleasure your visit will give us will be your recompense for enduring our stupidity.

“Monson, who is here on his way to his post (Consul-General at Pesth), is just fresh from a visit to Lyons at Paris, where he met Lord Derby. It seems that Lord D. spoke very frankly and confidently of Gladstone’s speedy fall, and of the Tories ascent to power, even to the extent of the distribution of office, who was to be Sec. at F. O., &c.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _March_ 30, 1872.

“When I was thinking I was getting better I have fallen back again into short-breathing, heart-fluttering, and grampus-blowing bad as ever.