Part 4

“I want to be at ‘Tony,’ but I am so very low and dispirited I shall make a mess of whatever I touch, and so it is better to abstain.

“If I could only say of John Wilson one-half that I _feel_ about him. If I could only tell Cockneydom that they never had, and probably never will have, a measure to take the height of so noble a fellow, one whose very manliness lifted him clear and clean above their petty appreciation, just as in his stalwart vigour he was a match for any score of them, and whom they would no more have ventured to scoff at while living than they would have dared to confront foot to foot upon the heather. If I could say, in fact, but a tithe of what his name calls up within me, I _could_ write a paper on the _Noctes_, but the theme would run away with me. Wilson was the only hero of my boy days, and I never displaced him from the pedestal since. By Jove! ‘Ebony’ had giants in those days. Do you know that no praise of O’D. had the same flattery for me as comparing it with the papers by Maginn long ago. So you see I am ending my days under the flag that fascinated my first ambition: my grief is, my dear Blackwood, that you have not had the first of the liquor and not the lees of the cask.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 6, 1864.

“I have just had your letter and enclosure,--many thanks for both. I hope you may like the O’D. I sent you for next month. Don’t be afraid of my breaking down as to time, though I may as to merit. You may always rely on my punctuality--and I am vain of it, as the only orderly quality in my whole nature....

“I am very anxious about ‘Tony,’ I want to make a good book of it, and my very anxiety may mar my intentions. Tell me another thing: When ‘Tony’ appears in three vols., should it come out without name, or a _nom de plume_,--which is better?

“Why does not ‘The Times’ notice O’D.? They are talking of all the tiresome books in the world,--why not mine?

“I have often thought a pleasant series of papers might be made of the great Irish Viceroys, beginning at John D. of Ormond, Chesterfield, D. Portland, &c., with characteristic sketches of society at their several periods. Think of a tableau with Swift, Addison, &c, at Templeton’s _levée!_

“The thought of this, and a new cookery-book showing _when_ each thing ought to be eaten, and making a sort of gastronomic tour, have been addling my head the last three nights. But now I sit down steadily to ‘Tony,’ and ‘God give me a good deliverance.’”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Florence, _Sept._ 8.

“I am in such a hang-dog humour that I must write you.

“I suspect Anster _has_ got his CD., but his damnable writing has misled me. What I thought was a complaint for its non-arrival was, I imagine, a praise of its contents.

“I send you the rest of ‘Tony’ for October: God grant it be better than I think it is. But if you only saw me you’d wonder that I could even do the bad things I send you.

“Tell me, are you sick of the cant of people who uphold servants and talk of them as an ‘interesting class’? I think them the greatest rascals breathing, and would rather build a jail for them than a refuge. I want to O’Dowd them; shall I?

“Gout is overcoming me completely! Isn’t it too hard to realise both Dives and Lazarus in oneself at once?”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Sept_. 19.

“I send you the last chap, for the November ‘Tony,’ and I want all your most critical comment on the Envoy, because, as the book draws to the end, I desire to avoid the crying sin of all my stories, a huddled-up conclusion. Be sure you tell me all my shortcomings, for even if I cannot amend them I’ll bear in mind the impression they must create, and, so far as I can, deprecate my reader’s wrath. You have not answered me as to the advisability of a name or no name,--a matter of little moment, but I’d like your counsel on it. My notion is this. If ‘Tony’ be likely to have success as a novel when published entire, a name might be useful for future publication, and as to that, I mean futurity, what would you say to a Stuart story, taking the last days of Charles Edward in Florence, and bringing in the great reforming Grand Duke, Pietro-Leopoldo and Horace Mann, &c.?*

* Lever must have intended to recast and to rewrite the adventures of “Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier,” the story which appeared as a serial in ‘The Dublin University’ in 1869.--E. D.

“I have been mooning over this for the last week. The fact is, when I draw towards the close of a story I can’t help hammering at another: like the alderman who said, ‘I am always, during the second course, imagining what will come with the woodcocks.’ Mind above all that no thought of me personally is to interfere with other Magazine arrangements, for it is merely as the outpouring of a confession that I speak now of a _story_, and if you don’t want me, or don’t want so much of me, you will say so.

“As I told you once before, I believe I am, or rather was--for there is very little ‘am’ left--better at other things than story-writing, and certainly I _like_ any other pen labour more. But this shall be as you determine....

“Give me some hints as to the grievances of the ‘Limited Liability Schemes.’ What are the weak points? Brief me!

“I have a notion that a course of O’Dowd lectures on Men and Women would be a success, orally given. What think you?”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Sept_. 20.

“In my haste of correction in T. B. I believe I left ‘Castel d’Uovo’ ‘Castel Ovo’; _now it should be the former_--pray look to it. God help me! but if I live a little longer I shall find spelling impossible. Till I began to correct the press I never made a mistake; and now I understand what is meant by the tree of knowledge, for when once you begin to see there’s a right and a wrong way to do anything, it’s ‘all up’ with you. In my suspicion that the missing O’Ds. might possibly have come to your hand, I asked you to cancel [the bit] about Pam. _Pray do so_. It was ill-natured and gouty, though true; and, after all, he is a grand old fellow with all his humbug, and if we do make too much of him the fault is ours, not his.

“I have just got yours, 16th, and my mind is easy about the O’Ds. which never reached me. It will be easier, however, when I know you have squashed all about Pam.

“I am now doubly grieved to have been worrying about your nephew, but I am sincerely glad to know it is no more than a fall. I believe I have not a bone from my head to my heel unmarked by horse accidents, and every man who really rides meets his misadventures. Whenever I hear of a man who never falls, I can tell of one who never knew how to ride.

“Now of all my projects and intentions never bore yourself a minute: the fact is--writing to _you_ pretty much as I talk at home, I have said some of the fifty things that pass through my vagabondising brains, just as I have been for the last twenty years plotting the Grand Book that is to make me.

“But now that you _know me better_, treat all these as the mere projects of a man whose only dream is hope, and whose case is all the worse that he is a ‘solitary tippler’; and, above all, trust me to do my best--my very best--for ‘Tony,’ which I am disposed to think about the best thing I have done.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 26,1864.

“Don’t be afraid that I am impatient to close ‘Tony’; if it only ‘suited your book’ I’d go on with him for a twelvemonth. And now tell me, does it make any difference to you if he should go on to the January No.? I mean, does it spoil magazine symmetry that he should appear in a new volume? Not that I opine this will be necessary, only if it should I should like to know.

“You must send me ‘Tony’ in sheets, as you did O’D., to revise and reflect over, and I’ll begin at him at once.

“I knew well what a blow Speke’s death would be to you, and I am truly sorry for the poor fellow.

“I don’t remember one word I write if I don’t see a proof, so I forget what I said about an idea I had of a story. At all events, as Curran said he picked up all his facts from the opposite counsel’s statement, I’ll soon hear what you say, and be able to guess what I said myself.

“I’m gout up to the ears,--flying, dyspeptic, blue-devil gout,--with a knuckle that sings like a tea-kettle and a toe that seems in the red-hot bite of a rabid dog, and all these with------ But I swore not to bother you except it be to write to me.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

[Undated.]

“I am up to my neck in Tony,--dress him, dine with him, and yesterday went to his happy marriage with (this for Mrs Blackwood and yourself) Dolly Stuart, he having got over his absurd passion, and found out (what every man doesn’t) the girl he _ought_ to marry.

“I am doing my best to make the wind-up good. Heaven grant that my gout do not mar my best intentions!

“This informal change of capital has raised my rent! More of Cavour’s persecution. I told you that man will be my ruin.

“Whenever you have time write to me. There are such masses of things you are to answer you will forget one-half if you don’t make a clearance.

“I am very sulky about the coldness the public have shown O’D. in its vol. form. Why, confound them!------ But I won’t say what is on my lips.”

_To Mr William Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 4, 1864.

“Your own fault if you have to say ‘Damn his familiarity’; but if you won’t return it you can at least say ‘Damn O’Dowd.’

“Your cheque came all safe this morning. I wish I had not to add that it was a dissolving view that rapidly disappeared in my cook’s breeches-pocket.

“I suppose my gout must be on the decline from the very _mild_ character of the ‘O’Dowd’ I now send you. Tell your uncle if he won’t write to me about my forty-one projects, I’ll make an O’D. on Golf-players, and God help him!

“I hope I shall meet you one of these days. I am as horsey as yourself, and would a devilish deal sooner be astride of the pigskin than sitting here inditing O’Dowderies.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Oct._ 14,1864.

“I return O’D. corrected. You are right, and I expunged the paragraph you mention, and changed the expression of the joke--a d------d bad one--against the Yankees; but I wanted the illustration, and couldn’t miss it.

“I shall carry on ‘Tony’ to January, and will want the chapter you sent me now to open December No. So much for the past. Now for what I have some scruples to inflict on you, but I can’t help it. I want, if it suits you, to take the O’D.,--that is, the present vol., and that which is ready, say, in January or February,--and give me anything you think it worth for my share of it, for I am greatly hampered just now. My poor boy left a number of debts (some with brother officers); and though nothing could be more considerate and gentleman-like than their treatment of me, and the considerate way they left me to my own time to pay, pay I must. What I am to receive for ‘Tony’ will have to be handed over _en masse_, and yet only meet less than half what I owe. Now, my dear Blackwood, do not mistake me, and do not, I entreat, read me wrong: I don’t want you to do anything by me through any sense of your sympathy for these troubles,--because if you did so, I could never have the honest feeling of independence that enables me to write to you as I do, and as your friend,--but I want you to understand that if it _accords with your plans_ to take ‘O’Dowd’ altogether to yourself, it would much help _me_; and if for the _future_ you would so accept it, giving me anything you deem the whole worth, all the better for me. By this means I could get rid of some of my cares: there are heavier ones behind, but these I must bear how I may.

“I have been frank with you in all, and you will be the same with me.

“You are right, the present day is better for novels than the past--at least, present-day readers say so. If you like I will get up a story to begin in April, ‘The New Charter,’ but I won’t think of it till I have done ‘Tony,’ which I own to you I like better on re-reading than I thought I should. Do you?

“Nothing is truer than what you say about my over-rapid writing. In the O’Ds. they are all the better for it, because I could talk them a hundred times better than I could write them; but where constructiveness comes in, it is very different.”

_To Dr Burbidge._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 21,1864.

“Though I have only been detained here by my wife’s illness, and should have been at Spezzia ere this, it was so far well that I was here to meet a perfect rush of friends and acquaintances who have come. Hudson, Perry from Venice, Delane, Pigott, D. Wolff, all here, and a host more, and as my wife is again up, we have them at various times and seasons, and a big dinner of them to-morrow.

“Renfrew of ‘The D. News’ tells me that O’D. was a great London success, and that the literary people like it and praised it,--evidence, thought I, that they’re not afraid of its author. He adds that I am not generally believed to have written it.

“I have not been up to work the last two days, and a remnant of a cold still keeps me ‘a-sneezin’.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 23.

“Your generous treatment of me relieves me of one great anxiety and gives me another--that I may not prove to you as good a bargain as I meant to be; but whatever comes of it, I’ll take care you shall not _lose_ by me.

“I thank you heartily; and for the kind terms of your note even more than for the material aid. From the days of my schoolboy life I never did anything well but under kind treatment, and yours has given me a spring and a courage that really I did not know were left in me.

“I hope vol. (or rather ‘book’) ii. of ‘O’Dowd’ will be better than the first. Some of the bits are, I know, better; but in any case, if it should fall short of what I hope, _you_ shall not be the sufferer.

“I am glad that you kept back the ‘S. Congresses.’ I send you herewith one on the ‘Parson Sore Throat,’ and I think you will like it. I think I have done it _safely_; they are ‘kittle cattle,’ but I have treated them gingerly.

“I could swear you will agree with me in all I say of the ‘Hybrids,’ and I think I see you, as you read it, join in with me in opinion.

“I am turning over an O’D. about Banting (but I want his book--could you send it to me?), and one on the Postal Stamp mania, and these would probably be variety enough for December No.,--‘S. Congresses,’ ‘Conservatives,’ ‘Parsonitis,’ &c.

“My wife continues still so ill that, though I am wanted at Spezzia, I cannot go down. I hope, however, that to-morrow or next day she may be well enough to let me leave without anxiety.

“Perry, a consul-general at Venice, has just promised me a photo of Flynn, taken by the Austrian authorities during his imprisonment at Verona. I’ll send it to you when it comes.

“Did you ever see the notice of O’D. in ‘The Daily News’? It was most handsome, and the D. U. M. was also good. All the London papers have now reviewed it but ‘The Times,’ and the stranger [this], as Lucas, is very well affected towards me.

“Once again, and from my heart, I thank you for responding so generously to my request.”

_To Dr Burbidge._

“_Tuesday, [? Oct.]_ 23, 1864.

“I had believed I was to be at Spezzia before this, but my wife still continues in a very precarious way, and I was afraid to leave her.

“I am, besides, hard at work closing ‘Tony,’ and getting another vol. of ‘O’Dowd’ ready for 1st of January. I have worked very steadily and, for me, most industriously the entire month, but my evenings are always lost, as people are now passing through to Rome.

“Hudson has taken a house near Florence, and Labouchere come back, so that _some_ talkers there are at least.

“I mean to run down so soon as I finish cor-rectings, &c., at eight or ten days at furthest.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 27,1864.

“How strange a hit you made when you said, ‘I knew L. N. as well as if we had drunk together.’ I was a fellow-student with him at Göttingen in 1830,* and lived in great intimacy with him. There was a Scotchman there at the same time named Dickson, a great botanist, who has, I believe, since settled in London as a practising physician in Bryanstone Square. L. Nap. went by the name of Ct. Fattorini. He never would know Dickson, and used to leave me whenever D. came in. It was not for two years after that I learned he was ‘the Bonaparte.’ Our set consisted of L. N., Adolph V. Decken (who afterwards married the sister of the Duchess of C------, who now lives in Hanover), Beuliady the Home Minister, and Ct. Bray the Bavarian Envoy at Vienna; I, the penny-a-liner, being the complement of the party. I have had very strange companionships and strange turns in life, and when I have worked out my O’Dowd vein I’ll give you an autobiography.

* The date is incorrect. Lever’s Göttingen period was 1828.

“I now send you a political O’D. on L. N., not over civil; but I detest the man, and I suspect I _know_ him and read him aright. Banting I did without waiting for his book; but if it comes I will perhaps squeeze something out of it.

“I am crippled with gout, and can scarcely hold a pen. The bit on doctors is simply padding, and don’t put it in if you don’t like; but the No. for December will, I think, be a strong one.

“Sir Jas. Hudson is with me, but I am too low even for his glorious companionship--and he has no equal. Wolff is here, and all to stay for the winter.

“What do you think of my advertising O’D. at the end of the Banting paper? Does it not remind you of the epitaph to the French hosier, where, after the enumeration of his virtues as husband and father, the widow announces that she ‘continues the business at the old estab., Rue Neuve des Petits Champs,’ &c. &c.?”

_To Dr Burbidge._

“Florence, Nov. 3, 1864.

“Bulwer the Great has stayed here, and will not leave till to-morrow, and if you see Rice, will you please to tell him so. I am so primed that I think I could write a great paper on the present state and future prospects of Turkey.

“He has been very agreeable, and with all his affectations--legion that they are--very amusing.

“Layard I don’t like at all; he is the complete stamp to represent a (metropolitan) constituency--overbearing, loud, self-opinionated, and half-informed, if so much. Bulwer appeared to great advantage in his company.

“In my desire to see how far you were just or unjust to Georgina, I set to work to read over again the scenes she occurs in, and went from end to end of ‘Tony Butler,’ and at last came in despair to ask Julia to find her out for me! So much for the gift of constructiveness, and that power of concentration without which, Sir E. B. Lytton says, there is no success in fiction-writing.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 6, 1864.

“I have just received your cheques, and thank you much for your promptitude. You certainly ‘know my necessities before I ask.’

“I cannot tell you the pleasure, the complete relief, it is to me to deal with a gentleman; and the cordial tone of our relations has done more for me than I thought anything _now_ could, to rally and cheer me.

“I have been so long swimming with a stone round my neck, that I almost begin to wish I could go down and have it all over. You have rallied me out of this, and I frankly tell you it’s your hearty God-speed has enabled me to make this last effort.

“Aytoun’s ‘Banting’ is admirable. Mine is poor stuff after it: indeed, I’d not have done it if I’d thought he had it in hand. In one or two points we hit the same blot, but _his_ blow is stronger and better than mine. Don’t print me, therefore, if you don’t like.

“Before this you will have received L. B., and I hope to hear from you about it. The address of this will show that my poor wife is no better, and that I cannot leave her.

“Gregory, the M.P. for Galway, is here, and it was meeting him suggested my hit at the lukewarm Conservatives. We fight every evening about politics. I wish to Heaven I could have the floor of the House to do it on, and no heavier adversary to engage....

“Henry Wolff is here full of great financial schemes,--director of Heaven knows what railroads, and secretary to an infinity of companies. He dined with me yesterday, and I’m sure I’d O’Dowd him. He means to pass the winter here. He pressed me hard about ‘Tony,’ and I lied like an envoy extracting a denial.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 9, 1864

“All the railroads are smashed, and Spezzia is now, I understand, on an island, where I certainly shall not go to look for it. Here I am, therefore, till the floods subside.

“I knew you would like the O’Ds. I believe they are the best of the batch, but don’t be afraid for ‘Tony.’ I have a fit of the gout on me that exactly keeps me up to the O’D. level; and I have one in my head for Father Ignatius that, if I only can write as I see it, will certainly hit. If Skeff is not brave it is no fault of mine. Why the devil did Wolff come and sit for his picture when I was just finishing the portrait from memory?

“The reason L. N. hated Dickson was: he (D------) was an awful skinflint, and disgusted all us ‘youth.’ who were rather jolly, and went the pace pretty briskly.

“D. is not the [? ] of the Faculty man, but a fellow who was once Professor of Botany (in Edinburgh, I think). He once made me a visit at my father’s, but I never liked him.

“I must not O’D. L. N., because one day or other, if I live, I shall jot down some personal recollections of my own,--and, besides, I would not give in a way that might be deemed fictitious what I will declare as _fact_.

“If I can tone down M’Caskey, I will; but Skeffs courage is, I fear, incorrigible. Oh, Blackwood, it is ‘not _I_ that have made him, but _he_ himself.’ Not but he is a good creature, as good as any can be that has no _bone_ in his _back_--the same malady that all the Bulwers have, for instance,--and, _take my word for it_, there is a large section of humanity that are not verte-brated animals. Ask Aytoun if he don’t agree with me, and show _him_ all this if you like; for though I never saw him, my instinct tells me I _know_ him, and I feel we should hit it off together if we met.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 11, 1864.

“I have taken two days to think over Skeff’s scene with M’C[askey], and do not think it overdrawn. M’C. is a ruffian, and I don’t think you object to his being one; but you wish Skeff to show pluck. Now I remember (and it is only one instance out of many I could give you) Geo. Brotherton, one of the most dashing cavalry officers in the service, coming to me to say that he had listened to such insolence about England from a Belgian sous-lieutenant that nearly killed him with rage. ‘I had,’ said he, ‘the alternative of going out’ (and probably with the sword too) ‘with, not impossibly, the son of a costermonger--and who, _de facto_, was a complete _canaille_--or bear it,--and bear it I did, though it half choked me.’

“Skeff would have fought, time and place befitting; but he would not agree to _couper la gorge_ at the prompt bidding of a professional throat-cutter, and I cannot impute cowardice to a man for that. Bear in mind, too (I have witnessed it more than once), the initiative in insult always overpowers a man that is opposed to it, if he be not by temperament and habit one of those ready-witted fellows who can at once see their way out of such a difficulty, as Col. O’Kelly, for instance, at the Prince’s table------ You know the story; if not, I’ll tell it to you.