Part 3

“Florence, _May_ 16,1864.

“I have just had your note, and am relieved to find that I have not lost the ‘Colonial Governors,’ which I feared I had. I have added a page to it. I have re-read it carefully, but I don’t think it radical. Heaven knows, I have nothing of the Radical about me but the poverty. At all events, a certain width of opinion and semi-recklessness as to who or what he kicks does not ill become O’D.., whose motto, if we make a book of him, I mean to be ‘Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur,’--

“I care not a fig For Tory or Whig, But sit in a bowl and kick round me.

“Though the paper I sent yesterday on ‘Our Masterly Inactivity’ would be very apropos at this juncture, there will scarcely be time to see a proof of it, seeing that it could not be here before this day week. If you cannot revise it yourself, it will be better perhaps to hold it back, though I feel the moment of its ‘opportunity’ may pass. Do what you think best. My corrections of the proof I send off now will have to be closely looked to, and the MS. is to come in between the last paragraph and the part above it.”

_To Mr John Blackwood,_

“Villa Morelli, _June_ 7, 1864.

“We got into our little villa yesterday (it would not be little out of Italy, for we have seven salons), and are very pleased with it. We are only a mile from Florence, and have glorious views of the city and the Val d’Arno on every side.

“The moving has, however, addled my head awfully; indeed, after all had quitted the old Casa Capponi, a grey cat and myself were found wandering about the deserted rooms, not realising the change of domicile. What it can be that I cling to in my old room of the Capponi I don’t know (except a hole in the carpet perhaps), but certainly I do not feel myself in writing vein in my new home....

“I hear strange stories of disagreements amongst the Conservatives, and threats of splits and divi-sions. Are they well founded, think you? The social severance of the party, composed as it is of men who never associated freely together, as the Whigs did and do, is a great evil. Indeed I think the ties of our party are weaker than in the days when men dined more together.

“When C. leaders, some years back, offered to put me at the head of a Conservative Press, I said this. Lord Eglinton and Lord Naas were of my mind, but the others shrugged their shoulders as though to say the world was not as it used to be. Now I don’t believe _that_.”

_To Dr Burbidge._

“Florence, _Thursday_, [? June] 1864.

“I have taken a villa--a cottage in reality, but dear enough,--the only advantage being that it _looks_ modest; and just as some folk carry a silver snuff-box made to look like tin, I may hope to be deemed a millionaire affecting simplicity.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _June_ 14, 1864.

“I looked forward eagerly to your promised letter about O’Dowd. No one could do an imaginary portrait of a foreignised Irishman--all drollery about the eyes, and bearded like a pard--better than Hablot Browne (Phiz), and I think he could also do _all_ that we need for illustration, which would be little occasional bits on the page and tailpieces. If he would take the trouble to _read_ the book (which he is not much given to), and if he would really interest himself in it (not so unlikely now, as he is threatened with a rival in Marcus Stone), he could fully answer all our requirements. I would not advise any regular ‘plates,’ mere woodcuts in the page, and an occasional rambling one _crawling over the page_. What do _you_ think?”

_To Mr John Blackwood_.

“Villa Morelli, _June_ 16,1864.

“I am delighted with all your plans about ‘O’Dowd,’ and though I do not believe there will be much to alter, I will go carefully over the sheets when I get them. My notion always was that it would take some time to make a public for a kind of writing more really French in its character than English, but that if we could only once get ‘our hook in,’ we’d have good fishing for many a day.

“If my reader will only stand it, I’ll promise to go on as long as he likes, since it is simply putting on paper what goes on in my head all day long, even (and unluckily for me) when I am at work on other things.

“Don’t give _me_ any share in the book, or you’ll never get rid of ten copies of it, my luck being like that of my countryman who said, ‘If I have to turn hatter, I’d find to-morrow that God Almighty would make people without heads.’ Seriously, if by any turn of fortune I should have a hundred pounds in the ‘threes,’ the nation would be in imminent risk of a national bankruptcy. Give me whatever you like, and be guided by the fact that I am not a bit too sanguine about these things en masse. It is all the difference in the world to read a paper or a vol.; it is whether you are asked to taste a devilled kidney or to make your dinner of ten of them. At all events, the venture will be some test of public taste.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, Villa Morelli, _June_ 24, 1864.

“The devil take my high office! I am obliged to go down to Spezzia on Monday, and shall probably lose a week, when I am sore pressed for time too.

“What you say of buying up the disputed bit of Denmark reminds me of an incident that occurred in my house in Ireland. There were two whist-parties playing one night in the same room. One was playing pound points and twenty on the rubber (of which I was one); the others were disputing about half-crowns, and made such a row once over the score that Lord Ely, who was at our table, cried out, ‘Only be quiet and we’ll pay the difference.’ D., the artillery colonel, was so offended that it was hard to prevent him calling Ely out. Now perhaps the Danes might be as touchy as the soldier.

“Send me the Mag. as _early as you can_ this month. It will comfort me at Spezzia if I can take it down there, but address me still Florence as usual.

“What do you think of an O’D. on the Serial Story-writer? I shall be all the better pleased if Lawson O’D. stand over for August, for I shall be close run for time this month to come, and it is no joke writing with the thermometer at 93° in the shade. In Ireland the belief is that a man who is dragged out to fight a duel against his will is sure to be shot, and I own I am superstitious enough to augur very ill of our going to war in the same reluctant fashion.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _June_ 30, 1864.

“I send off to-day (_sit faust dies_) by book-post ‘O’Dowd’ corrected, and I enclose a few lines to open with a dedication to Anster. I am not quite _sure_ of the ‘notice,’ nor shall I be till I hear if you like it. I have gout and blue devils on me, but you can always do more for me than colchicum if you say ‘all right.’

“I hope we shall have a nice-looking book and a smart outside, and, above all, that we shall appear before the end of July, when people begin to scatter. I am very anxious about it all.

“I am not able to go down to Spezzia for some days, and if I can I shall attack ‘Tony’--not but the chances are sorely against anything pleasant if I mix with the characters any share of my present idiosyncrasy....

“I count on hearing from you now oftener that you are away from Whitebait. I was getting very sulky with the dinner-parties of which I was not a sharer. I met Mr and Mrs Sturgis at Thackeray’s at dinner. They were there, I think, on the day when one of Thackeray’s guests left the table to send him a challenge--the most absurd incident I ever witnessed. The man was a Mr Synge, formally Attaché at Washington, and now H.M’s Consul at the Sandwich Islands.”

_To Mr John Blackwood_.

“Villa Morklli, My 4,1864.

“I merely write a line. Your note and cheque came all right to me this morning. My thanks for both. I have had four mortal days of stupidity, and the fifth is on me this morning; but after I have had a few days at Spezzia I hope to be all right and in the harness again.

“If Dizzy’s vote of censure is not very much amplified in his _exposé_, it ought not to be difficult to meet it. The persistent way he dogged Palmerston to say something, anything, is so like Sir Lucius O’Trigger seizing on the first chance of a contradiction and saying, ‘Well, sir, I differ from you there.’

“Pam’s declaration that ‘war’ was possible in certain emergencies--when, for instance, the king should have been crucified and the princesses vanished--was the only thing like devilling I heard from him yet. This is, however, as palpably imbecility as anything they could do, and _one_ symptom, when a _leading one_, is as good as ten thousand.

“Old Begration once told the Duke of Wellington that the discovery of a French horse-shoe ‘not roughed’ for the frost in the _month of October_ was the reason for the burning of Moscow. They said: ‘These French know nothing of our climate; one winter here would kill them,’ It was the present Duke told me this story.

“You will have had my O’D. on the Conference before this, and if the Debate offer anything opportune for comment I’ll tag it on. The fact is, one can always do with an ‘O’Dowd’ what the parson accomplished when asked to preach a charity sermon,--graft the incident on the original discourse. Indeed I feel at such moments that my proper sphere would have been the pulpit. Perhaps I am more convinced of this to-day, as I have gout on me. Don’t you know what Talleyrand said to the friend who paid him a compliment on his fresh and _handsome_ appearance as he landed at Dover?--‘Ah! it’s the sea-sickness, perhaps, has done it.’”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _July_ 10, 1864.

“What a hearty thing it was with you to send me the Bishop’s letter. I hope I may keep it. Do you know that it was by the merest accident that I did not allude to _himself_ in the paper--or, rather, it was out of deference to his apron; for one of the most brilliant evenings I ever remember in my life was having the Bishop and O’Sullivan to dine with me and only two others, and Harry Griffin was the king of the company. Moore used to say, when complimented on his singing the melodies, ‘Ah! if you were to hear Griffin.’ But why don’t he recognise me? When we are ready with our vol. i. I shall ask you to send one or two, or perhaps three or four, copies to some friends. Let me beg one for the Bishop, and I’ll send a note with it. I think your note _will_ do me good. It _has_ already, and I am down and hipped and bedevilled cruelly.

“Palmerston will, I take it, have a small majority, but will he dissolve?

“I only ask about the length of T. B. on your account; for my own part I rather like writing the story, and if the public would stand it, I’d make it as long as ‘Clarissa Harlowe.’”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _July_ 11, 1864.

“I send you a short O’D. on the Debate, and so I shall spare you a letter. If, as now, there is no time for a proof,--though I think there may,--look to it closely yourself. My hand at times begins to tremble (I never give it any cause), and I find I can scarcely decipher some words. How _you_ do it is miraculous. My gout will not _fix_, but hangs over me with dreariness and ‘devil-may-careisms,’ so that though I have scores of great intentions I can _do_ nothing.

“I count a good deal on a two hours’ swim, and I am off to take it by Wednesday. If the sharks lay hold on me, finish T. B. Marry him to Alice, and put the rest of the company to bed indiscriminately.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _July_ 12, 1864.

“I send you with this a few lines to finish the serial O’D., a few also to complete ‘Be always ready with the Pistol,’ and--God forgive me for the blunder!--two stray pages that ought to come in somewhere (not where it is numbered) in the last-sent O’D. on ‘Material Aid.’ Will your ingenuity be able to find the place--perhaps the end? If not, _squash_ it, and the mischief will not be great.

“I start to-night for the sea-side, so that if you want to send me a proof for the next ten days, send it in _duo_, one to Spezzia and the other here, by which means you shall have either back by return of post.

“The thermometer has taken a sudden start upwards to-day, 26° Réamur, and work is downright impossible. The_ cicale_ too make a most infernal uproar, for every confounded thing, from a bug to a baritone, sings all day in Italy.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _July_ 23, 1864.

“I was getting a great stock of health, swimming and boating at Spezzia, when I was called back by the illness of my youngest daughter, a sort of feverish attack brought on by the excessive heat of the weather, 92° and 93° every day in the shade. She is, thank God, a little better now, and I hope the severest part is over. When shall I be at work again? There never was so much idleness assisted by an evil destiny.

“What a jolly letter you sent me. I read it over half a dozen times, even after I knew it all, just as an unalterable toper touches his lips to the glass after emptying it. I wish I could be as hopeful about O’D.,--not exactly _that_, but I wish I could know it would have some success, and for once in my life the wish is not entirely selfish.

“You will, I am sure, tell me how it fares, and if you see any notices, good or bad, tell me of them.

“What a strange line Newdigate has taken,--not but he has a certain amount of right in the middle of all the confusion of his ideas. Dizzy unquestionably _coquetted_ with Rome. Little Earle, his secretary, was out here on a small mission of intrigue, and I did my utmost to show him that for every priest he ‘netted’ he would inevitably lose two Protestants--I mean in Ireland. As for the worldly wit of the men who think that they can drive a good bargain with the ‘Romish’ clergy, all I can say is that they have no value in my eyes. The vulgarest curé that ever wore a coal-scuttle hat is more than the match of all the craft in Downing Street.

“You are quite right, it would do me immense good to breathe your bracing air, but it ‘mauna be.’ I wish I could see a chance of _your_ crossing the Alps--is it on the cards?

“I wish I was twenty years younger and I’d make an effort to get into Parliament. Like my friend Corney, my friends always prophesied a success to me in something and somewhere that I have never explored--but so it is.

“Oh! for the books that have never been written, With all the wise things that nobody has read. And oh! for the hearts that have never been smitten, Nor heard the fond things that nobody has said.

“_My_ treasures are, I suspect, safely locked in the same secure obscurity. _N’importe!_ at this moment I’d rather be sure my little girl would have a good night than I’d be Member for Oxford.”

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _July_ 23, 1864.

“It would be unfair amidst all your labours to expect you could read through the volume of ‘Corney O’Dowd’ that Blackwood will have already sent--or a few days more will bring--to you. Still, if you will open it, and here and there look through some of those jottings-down, I know they will recall me to your memory. It is so very natural to me to half-reason over things, that an old friend [? like] yourself will recognise me on every page, and for this reason it is that I would like to imagine you reading it. My great critics declare that I have done nothing so good since the ‘Dodds,’--and now, enough of the whole theme!

“Here we are in a pretty villa on a south slope of the Apennines, with Florence at our feet and a glorious foreground of all that is richest in Italian foliage between us and the city. It is of all places the most perfect to write in,--beauty of view, quiet, silence, and seclusion all perfect,--but somehow I suppose I have grown a little footsore on the road. I do not write with my old facility. I sit and think--or fancy I think--and find very little is done after [all].

“The dreary thought of time lost and talent misapplied--for I ought never to have taken to the class of writing that I did--_will_ invade, and, instead of plodding steadily along the journey, I am like one who sits down to cry over the map of the country to be traversed.

“I go to Spezzia occasionally--the fast mail now makes it but five hours. The Foreign Office is really most indulgent: they ask nothing of me, and in return I give them exactly what they ask.

“My wife is a little better--that is, she can move about unassisted and has less suffering. Her malady, however, is not checked. The others are well. As for myself, I am in great bodily health,--lazy and indolent, as I always was, and more given to depressions, perhaps, but also more patient under them than I used to be.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _Saturday_, July 30.

“Yours has just come. O’D. is very handsome. Confound the public if they won’t like them! Nothing could be neater and prettier than the book. How I long to hear some good tidings of it!

“My daughter had a slight relapse, but is now doing all well and safely.

“I think that the Irish papers--‘The Dub. E. Mail’ and ‘Express’--would review us if copies were sent, and perhaps an advertisement.

“I know you’ll let me hear, so I don’t importune you for news.

“Your cheque came all safe; my thanks for it. The intense heat is such now that I can only write late at night, and very little then.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Aug_. 3, 1864.

“Unshaven, dishevelled, I sit all bedevilled; Your news has upset me,-- It was meet it should fret me. What! two hundred and fifty! Is the public so thrifty? Or are jokes so redundant, And funds so abundant That ‘O’Dowd’ cannot find more admirers than this! I am sure in the City ‘Punch’ is reckoned more witty, And Cockneys won’t laugh Save at Lombard Street chaff; But of _gentlemen_, surely there can be no stint, Who would like dinner drolleries dished up in print, And to _read_ the same nonsense would gladly be able That they’d laugh at--if heard--o’er the claret at table The sort of light folly that sensible men Are never ashamed of--at least now and then. For even the gravest are not above chaff, And I know of a bishop that loves a good laugh. Then why will they deny me, And why won’t they buy me? I know that the world is full of cajolery, And many a dull dog will trade on _my_ drollery, Though he’ll never be brought to confess it aloud That the story you laughed at he stole from O’Dowd; But the truth is, I feel if my book is unsold, That my fun, like myself, it must be--has grown old. And though the confession may come with a damn, I must own it--_non sum qualis eram_.

“I got a droll characteristic note from the Duke of Wellington and a cordial hearty one from Sir H. Seymour. I’d like to show you both, but I am out of sorts by this sluggishness in our [circulation]. The worst of it is, I have nobody to blame but myself.

“Send a copy of O’D. to Kinglake with my respects and regards. He is the only man (except C. O’D.) in England who understands Louis Nap.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _Aug_. 9, 1864.

“I am just sent for to Spezzia to afford my Lords of the Admiralty a full and true account of all the dock accommodation possible there, which looks like something in ‘the wind’; the whole ‘most secret and confidential.’

“I am sorry to leave home, though my little girl is doing well I have _many_ causes of anxiety, and for the first time in my whole life have begun to pass sleepless nights, being from my birth as sound a sleeper as Sancho Panza himself.

“Of course Wilson was better than anything he ever did--but why wouldn’t he? He was a noble bit of manhood every way; he was my _beau idéal_ of a fine fellow from the days I was a schoolboy. The men who link genius with geniality are the true salt of the earth, but they are marvellously few in number. I don’t bore you, I hope, asking after O’D.; at least you are so forgiving to my importunity that I fancy I am merciful.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _Aug_. 11,1864.

“I forgot to tell you that the scene of the collision in the longer O’D. is all invented--there was nothing of it in ‘The Times’ or anywhere else. How right you are about the melodramatic tone in the scene between Maitland and his Mother! It is worse. It is bow-wow! It is Minerva Press and the rest of it, but all that comes of a d------d public. I mean it all comes of novel-writing for a d------d public that like novels,--and novels are--novels.

“I am very gouty to-day, and I have a cross-grained man coming to dinner, and my women (affecting to keep the mother company) won’t dine with me, and I am sore put out.

“Another despatch! I am wanted at Spezzia,--a frigate or a gunboat has just put in there and no consul Captain Short, of the _Sneezer_ perhaps, after destroying Chiavari and the organ-men, put in for instructions. By the way, Yule was dining with Perry, the Consul-General at Venice, the other day, when there came an Austrian official to ask for the Magazine with _Flynn’s Life_ as a _pièce de conviction!_ This would be grand, but it is beaten hollow by another fact. In a French ‘Life of Wellington,’ by a staff officer of distinction, he corrects some misstatements thus, ‘Au contraire, M. Charles O’Malley, raconteur,’ &c. Shall I make a short ‘O’Dowd’ out of the double fiasco? Only think, a two-barrelled blunder that made O’Dowd a witness at law, and Charles O’Malley a military authority!

“When I was a doctor, I remember a Belgian buying ‘Harry Lorrequer’ as a medical book, and thinking that the style was singularly involved and figurative.

“Oh dear, how my knuckle is singing, but not like the brook in Tennyson; it is no ‘pleasant tune.’

“Have you seen in ‘The Dublin E. Mail’ a very civil and cordial review of ‘O’Dowd,’ lengthy and with extracts? What a jolly note I got from the Bishop of Limmerick. He remembers a dinner I gave to himself and O’Sullivan, Archer Butler, and Whiteside, and we sat till 4 o’ the morning! _Noctes--Eheu fugaces!_

“Please say that some one has ordered ‘O’Dowd’ and liked it, or my gout will go to the stomach.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _Aug_. 12, 1864.

“I recant: I don’t think the scene so bad as I did yesterday. I sent it off _corrected this night’s post_--and try and agree with me. Remember that Maitland’s mother (I don’t know who his father was) was an actress,--why wouldn’t she be a little melodramatic? Don’t you know what the old Irishwoman said to the sentry who threatened to run his bayonet into her? ‘Devil thank you! sure, that’s you’re thrade.’ So Mad. Brancaleoni was only giving a touch of her ‘thrade’ in her Cambyses vein.

“I’m off to Spezzia, and my temper is so bad my family are glad to be rid of me. All the fault of the public, who won’t admire ‘O’Dowd.’”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Aug_. 24, 1864.

“My heartiest thanks for the photograph. It is the face of a friend and, _entre nous_, just now I have need of it, for I am very low and depressed, but I don’t mean to worry you with these things. What a fine fellow your Colonel is! I am right proud that he likes ‘O’Dowd,’ and so too of your friend Smith, because I know if the officers are with me we must have the rank and file later on. I read the ‘Saturday Review’ with the sort of feeling I have now and then left a dull dinner-party, thinking little of myself but still less of the company. Now, I may be stupid, but I’ll be d------d if I’m as bad as that fellow!

“One’s friends of course are no criterion, but I _have_ got very pleasant notices from several, and none condemnatory, but still I shall be sorely provoked if _your_ good opinion of me shall not be borne out by the public. Galileo said ‘Ê pur se muove,’ but the Sacred College outvoted him. God grant that you may not be the only man that doesn’t think me a blockhead!