Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Wednesday, Dec. 1868.

“I have been very ill – so ill that I thought these few lines of notice of my old schoolfellow should have been my last. I hope you will think I have done him well. I am getting round again – that is, if this ‘runaway knock’ should not be repeated; but Death has occasionally the postman’s trick of knocking at several doors together when he is pressed for time, and I believe he is busy with a neighbour of mine this moment. But this is a grim theme, and let us quit it.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Dec. 17,1868.

“I get up out of my bed to write to you. I have been – still am – very ill, and not well sure if I am to rub through. My sufferings have been great, and I have had nights of torture I cannot bear to think of.

“I hope Bradlaugh will not give you any trouble, but I feel sure I said nothing that could be called libellous. Would it be reparation to say that, after seeing the published list of the new Government, I beg to assure Mr B. that there is no reason whatever he might not figure amongst them?

“It is great aggravation to dying to feel that I must be buried here. I never hated a place or people so much, and it is a hard measure to lay me down amongst them where I have no chance of getting away till that grand new deal of the pack before distributing the stakes.

“I wish I could write one more O’D. – ‘the last O’Dowd.’ I have a number of little valueless legacies to leave the world, and could put them into codicil form and direct their destination. My ink is as sluggish as my blood, indeed it has been my blood for many a day, and I must wind up. I don’t think I have strength to go over the longer proof: perhaps you would kindly do it for me.

“The cheque came all right, but I was not able to thank you at the time. Give my love to Mrs Blackwood, and say that it was always fleeting across me, in moments of relief, I was to meet you both again and be very jolly and light-hearted. Who knows! I have moments still that seem to promise a rally; but there must be a long spell of absence from pain and anxiety – not so easy things to accomplish.

“I’ll write to you very soon again if strong enough.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, the day before Xmas 1868

“I promised to report if I was alive, and I do so, though, without any captiousness or Gladstonianism, the matter of my vitality might be well open to contention.

“I am barely able to move from a sofa to a chair, very weak, intensely nervous, and not at all reconciled to the fast-and-loose way death is treating me. Though there is every reason why I ought not to wish to go just now, I will put a bold face on it and say Ecco mi pronto! But the grinning humbug sends away the coach with orders to come back to-morrow at the same hour.

“I hope you have heard no more of Bradlaugh. I’d not like to carry any memory of him with me, which I might if he were annoying you. What a beast I am to obtrude my sadness against the blaze of your Xmas fire! I thought, however, you would like to hear I was yet here, – though to what end or for what use, if I continue as I now am, is not easy to see. I feel, however, that if I was freely bled and a little longer starved, I’d soon be in the frame of mind I detect in my colleagues of the Consular service here, and that, with a slight dash of paralysis, I should soon be à l’hauteur of my employment in the public service.

“I have resolved to devote my first moment of strength to a despatch to F. O., and if I be only half an imbecile as I believe, I shall crown myself with imperishable laurel.

“It’s a bore for a man – especially an Irishman – to be called away when the rows are beginning! Now next year there will be wigs on the green and no mistake. Besides, I’d like to see Gladstone well away in the deep slough of Disendowment, which I know he’ll fall into. Disestablish he may, but the other will be a complication that nothing but open robbery could deal with.

“Then I’d like to see him lose his temper, and perhaps lose his place.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Dec. 29, 1868.

“Weak as I am, I must thank you for your kind note, which has done me a deal of good. I assure you I never valued kindness more, and I will ask you to say as much for me to your wife, and to thank her sincerely for all her sympathy and good feeling for me.

“I am, I take it, about as well as I shall ever be again, which is not much to boast of, – but I really am past boasting in any sense; and provided I do not die at the top first, like the cabbage palms, I ought to be thankful.

“I wish with all my heart I could be your guest, in such guise as I might hope to be; now I am not worth my salt. I was dreaming away to-day of making an O’Dowd will, and leaving to the public my speculations on many things ere I go.

“We are living amidst wars and alarms here. Greeks and Turks seem eager to be at each other; and if talking and bumptiousness should carry the day, Heaven help the poor Turk!

“I know Hobart well; and why he didn’t sink the Enosis when she fired on him I can’t conceive, all the more as he is always at least half screwed (they must have watered his grog that morning). The Greeks here have subscribed a million of florins (£100,000), and have ordered an armour-plated frigate to be built and launched by the 20th Feb. I don’t know whether all the row will induce the Turks to cede territory, but I’m perfectly certain that it will end by our giving up Gibraltar, though the logic of the proceeding may be a little puzzling at first blush.

“The foreign press is always preaching up neutrality to us in the affairs of Turkey. Good God! can’t they see the man who represents us in Constantinople? Can they wish more from us than the most incapable cretin in the public service?

“Thank your nephew cordially for me for his good wishes for me. Who knows if I may not live to say as much to him one day. I get plucky when I am half an hour out of pain.

“I am in great hopes that my wife’s malady has taken a favourable turn; one gleam of such sunshine would do me more good than all this dosing.

“Forgive my long rambling note; but it was so pleasant to talk to you, I could not give in.”

XIX. TRIESTE 1869

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Jan. 4, 1869.

“Thanks twice over for your note and enclosure. Your hearty sympathy is a very great comfort to me. I suppose I am getting better, but I suffer a good deal, and find it hard to struggle against depression. I am an ungrateful dog after all, for my poor wife is decidedly better, and I ought to be satisfied and thankful for a mercy that any suffering of my own is a cheap price.

“Imagine Charles Mathews asked to pay at the door of the Adelphi, and you can fancy my horror at feeing doctors! But it has come to this with me, and you may suppose how the fact adds bitterness to illness.

“I hope you will like the O’Ds. I sent you, and that they may not savour of that break-up which is threatening me.

“They say that I must give up work for some considerable time; but till they can show me how I am to live in the interval (even with a diminished appetite), I demur.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Jan. 19,1869.

“I have no doubt you will be astonished at this reaction of mine to unwonted industry, but so it has been ever with me. When the lamp has been nearly out a very little trimming has set it to flare out again, even though the illumination last but a short time.

“I send you a bit of light matter, which I hope you will like. The Home Office has pronounced in its favour. I must work, and devilish hard too; for, cruel as it may sound, I have been feeing doctors! So you see that the adage about dogs not eating dogs does not apply to German hounds.

“I have been also driven to get my steam up by being notified officially that the Prince and Princess of Wales are coming down here to embark for Egypt; and as the exact date of their arrival is not known to us, and we only are told to be in readiness to receive them, I have slept in my cocked hat for the last week, and shave myself with my sword on.

“I have no taste for royalties, at least seen near, and would give a trifle that H.RH. had preferred any other port of departure.

“The Psyche arrived here yesterday, but the gale was so severe that the officers who were engaged to dine with me could not come on shore. The Ariadne is hourly expected, but with the wind as it is now, I can’t believe she will leave Corfu.

“The Greeks are about to launch another ironclad, for which the Greek merchants here have paid the cost. She is a large corvette, carrying ten heavy guns and plated with six-inch iron. They are savagely warlike, and say that America is all ready and willing to aid them; and there is more truth in this report than one would imagine from the source it comes from.

“I have got a letter from New York that says the Yankees are wonderfully ‘tickled’ by the O’D. on the ‘Diplomacy.’ It has been printed separately as what they call ‘a piece,’ and circulated largely.

“Tell me, if you can, that you like my ‘Whist’ sketch.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Feb. 13, 1869.

“I was very impatient to hear from you. What you say of the whist story is all true, though I didn’t make my man a fellow of All Souls’ but only a master of that college. Some of the fellows are, however, notoriously the worst whisters going. They are selected for convivial qualities, not the gentlemanlike ones. Unhappily there is a distinction.

“Of course it wants point, just as one-franc Bordeaux wants ‘body.’ It is merely meant to be light tipple, and if it does not give heartburn there is nothing to grumble at over it.

“Still I’d have made it better if I knew how, but I couldn’t hit on anything I thought improvement.

“My wife has got a serious relapse, and I have not written a line since I wrote to you. It will suit my book – that is, my story (not my banker’s book) – if you could begin with me by your new volume in July; but of course I am at the mercy of your other engagements.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, March 2, 1869.

“I send you two short, but I think spicy, O’Ds., and will try to add another. My girls say that if F. O. does not ‘inform me’ something about the ‘new series,’ it will be strange and singular, for it is certainly impertinent.

“The war is evidently drawing near, but the terror of each to begin grows greater every day. It is firmly believed here that a secret understanding binds Russia and America, and that if England moves out of strict neutrality the States mean to be troublesome. Farragut told me he saw no navy to compare with the Russian, but I know enough of Yankees to accept his talk with more than one grain of salt.

“The efforts of France and Prussia to secure the alliance of Italy are most amusing, as if the events of late had not shown how totally inoperative Italy was, and that nothing could be worse than her army except her fleet.

“My poor wife makes no progress towards recovery, and all we can do, by incessant care, is to support her strength. I never leave the house now, and am broken in spirits and nearly ‘off the hooks.’

“Do write me a line when you have time. It is always pleasant to hear from you.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, March 14, 1869.

“You are quite right, there was a clear non sequitur in the new series O’D., and I have corrected it, I hope, satisfactorily.

“You are not, I think, so right about ‘Norcott,’8 at least I hope not, for I cannot see the improbability or impossibility you speak of in the latter part. The sketch of Hungarian life was, I believe, perfectly correct, and there was no more improbability in the story than that of heaping many incidents in the career of a single individual, which, after all, is a necessity of a certain sort of fiction, and pardonable so long as they are not incongruous. It is not worth discussing, besides; indeed, I never do uphold or even defend what I have done except the critic be, as you are, a friend whose objections are meant as warnings and guidings.

“My chances of seeing London this year decrease almost daily. My poor wife’s symptoms are very threatening, and I cannot leave home now, though much pressed to pay a long-promised visit to Croatia, even for a day.

“Robert Lytton is now Secretary at Vienna,

“You don’t agree with me about the proximity of war, but I know it has been twice, within the last three weeks, on the very brink of beginning. Louis Napoleon has fallen into a state of silent despondency, in which he will give no orders, offer nothing, nor agree to anything, and R[ouher] is often left days without any instructions to guide him.

“As for Austria, she is in a terrible funk, el du raison. Her army is but half drilled, and the new weapon is a puzzle to the raw recruits; besides this, she has nothing that could be called a general, – nothing above the Codrington class, which, after all, can only pull through by the pluck and bravery of British troops.

“The hatred of Prussia is so inveterate here that anything like a candid opinion as to the chances of the campaign against France is not to be looked for, but so far as I can see men would generally back the French. How would the Whigs conduct a great war, I wonder? Certainly Cardwell and his economics would cut a sorry figure if he were called on for a big effort.

“I hope the mode in which Gladstone proposes to endow Maynooth (while affecting mere compensation) will give the Tories a strong ground of attack. The Bill is a palpable project to buy every one at the expense of the Irish Church. The landlord, the tenant, the priest, the Presbyterian, even the Consolidated Fund, are to be relieved of part of their charge for Irish charities; and yet it will pass, if for no other reason than that the nation sees one party to be as dishonest as the other, and that if Gladstone were beaten by Dizzy, Dizzy would carry the measure afterwards.

“If the ‘Ballot’ O’D. be late to send back in proof, you will deal with it yourself. It is well to take the themes that are before men’s eyes, and say our say while there are ears to hear us.

“The Emperor of Austria arrives here on Friday, and I am bidden to a great banquet, to be eaten in a tight uniform and epaulettes ‘with what appetite I may.’ I wish I could O’Dowd them all, and take my vengeance ‘in kind.’”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, April 13, 1869.

“The piece of autobiography is fact. I was a young college man when I did the trick, and can to this day remember one sentence of Boyton’s own words, which I gave in the report verbatim. The peer was the late Marquis of Downshire, the greatest ass of the Conservative party, et c’est beaucoup dire. Boyton’s death was commemorated by a beautiful article in ‘Blackwood,’ – I believe written by O’Sullivan, but I’m not sure. As for the ‘Speech-Makers’ Manual,’ it was published by Koutledge & Co. I got it out before I wrote my papers. It is incredibly absurd. The inscrutable man I refer to was Villiers – Fred Villiers, – a great friend of all the Bulwers, and formerly M.P. for Canterbury. He was no Villiers, had nothing, nor belonged to any one; but he was at the top of London society and knew every duke in England, and made a brilliant career of it for at least ten years or more.

“I am very full of my trip to London, and mean to take my youngest daughter over – she has never been in England – to visit some friends and pass the summer in Devonshire. My leave is a very short one; and as they stop my pay, I can’t afford to prolong it. It will be a great delight to me to see you and Mrs Blackwood again, and I feel this is to be my farewell visit to England, my possibly last appearance before retiring from the boards for ever.

“I have just found the reference to Boyton. It is taken from ‘The Dublin Evening Mail’ (the paper in which I gave Downshire his speech) for August 1833, but my impression is that there is another and longer notice of him in some other magazine later on.

“It is very rarely that I wish for my youth back again; but now that I have begun to think of those days, and all the fine-hearted fellows I knew in them, I cannot repress the wish that I was once more what I was thirty-five years ago, and take my chance for doing something other and better than I have done.

“The Austrians and Italians are doing now what they ought to have done fifteen years ago, making an alliance against France – that is, to maintain a united neutrality if pressed by France to join her. How strange it is that nations, no more than individuals, do not see that it is not enough to do the right thing, but that it ought to be done at the right time also.

“For ever since I have known Italy I have said her natural ally was Austria, her natural enemy France.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Hôtel du Louvre, Paris, May 4,1869.

“‘Thus far into the bowels of the land have we marched’ without other impediment than the Custom House officers, and mean to be in London by Thursday next. Will you drop me a line to Jr. Carlton to say when we may hope to see you?

“I’d not have delayed in Paris, but Lyons has been exceedingly kind and hospitable, and I am glad to have a long gossip with him over things past and present and to come.

“I have done nothing but rencontre with old schoolfellows – white-headed rascals that terrify me with their tiresome stories and half-remembered remembrances. Good God, am I like these Pharisees? is my constant question, and I have never the pluck to answer it.

“We travelled a whole day with Lewes and his wife (Adam Bede), and were delighted with her talk. Her voice alone has an indescribable charm.

“I write in the buzz of a room with 250 travellers and fifty or more particular acquaintances who are telling me what they fancy are good stories, though if I tried to palm them on you as such, you’d soon let me know your mind.

“Tanti saluti a la Signera”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“33 Brook Street, London, May 12,1869.

“I cannot tell you how I feel the disappointment of not seeing you here, and my regret is all the deeper for the cause of your absence. I thoroughly know besides how you yourself regard a position which, while you are powerless for all good, leaves you still unable to quit it. I fervently hope that your poor brother may rally, and that I may soon hear better tidings of him. In the turmoil and movement around me I always feel like a man the day after a hard drinking-bout, my head aching, my senses confused, my memory shaken, and through all a sort of shame that this is not my place at all, and that I am wastefully squandering my hard-got half-crowns to the detriment of my family. On the other side of the picture I find great kindness and great courtesy, a number of agreeable people to talk to, and the only women I have seen for a long while who, to be pleasant, do not need to be made love to. We have been greatly asked out, and some of my old friends have vied with each other in kindness to my daughters.

“Lord L.9 proposes our passing next week at Knebworth, and the idea has something tempting, but I suspect if you are not likely to come up, I shall scarcely delay here, but make a straight run home, from which my last accounts are far from reassuring.

“My old friend Seymour is with us every day with plans for amusement.

“To turn to other matters, I have a couple of half finished O’Ds. which, if you like to print, I shall have time to lick into shape. I went yesterday to the ‘House’ to see if my countryman the Mayor of Cork might not furnish matter for an O’Dowd, but the whole was flat and wearisome.”

To Mr William Blackwood.

“Knebworth, May 18, 1869.

“Half stupid with a cold, and shaken by the worst cough I ever had in my life, I send you an O’D., part of which I read to your uncle, and indeed wrote after a conversation with him. I hope it has more go in it than the man who wrote it.

“I am told you are likely to come up to town, and I cannot tell you how I would like to meet you. It may be, most probably is, my last appearance on these boards, for it is most unlikely I shall ever cross the Alps again, so that I entreat you let us have a shake hands, if only that we may recognise each other when on t’other side of the Styx.

“I shall be back in town to-morrow or the day after, and hope to hear news of you.

“I am afraid to write more, I am so overwhelmed by wheezing and nose-blowing.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, June 25, 1869.

“I have been coughing unceasingly since I saw you last, and with difficulty secured intervals to write these O’Ds. We made only a day’s delay at Paris, and came on here without resting at all.

“Of my wife I can only say she is not worse, but I dare not say she is better. The excessive heat here is very debilitating, especially coming after a somewhat rough spring.

“Sydney is pressing me to join her in a visit to a chateau in Croatia, where she is about to stay for a couple of months, but I can’t afford the time, though in one way it might repay me.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, July 9, 1869.

“I have just got your note and am glad you like the O’Ds., but the best of the batch are not here, as I am sure you will think, – ‘Forfeited Pledges’ and ‘What to do with it’ especially. I cannot throw off my cough, and as I don’t sleep at night I do nothing but sleep all day, and this disposition of my time is little favourable to habits of industry.

“I suppose you are right. Syd’s energy would have carried me off to Croatia if possible. Do you remember the story of the Irish priest telling the peasant that whenever he – the peasant aforesaid – went into a ‘shebeen’ to drink, his guardian angel stood weeping at the door. ‘Begorra,’ said Pat, ‘I don’t wonder but if he had sixpence he’d be in too.’ It is really the want of the sixpence makes me a guardian angel.

“The weather is intensely hot here just now, and all out-of-door life impossible till evening, and for my own part I never wander beyond the walls of my own garden, which, fortunately for me, is very pretty and shady too. Very little companionship would reconcile me to the place, but there’s positively none. It was this sort of solitude, begetting a species of brooding, that broke down my poor brother in an Irish parish; and sometimes I dread the depression for myself. It costs me such an effort to do anything.”

To Mr John Blackwood

“Trieste, July 10, 1869.

“You have read of some ships having crossed the Atlantic with eight feet of water in the hold, bulwarks staved in, sails in tatters, the whole only kept afloat by the incessant labour of crew and passengers at the pumps; and such is pretty much my condition, and must, I believe, continue to be for the rest of my voyage here, and what is perhaps worst of all is, in this same lamentable state I must still solicit freight and cargo, ask to be ‘chartered,’ and pledge myself to be seaworthy and insurable.

“Well, I can only say, ‘I’ll not humbug you.’ You shall see the craft in all its rottenness, and not embark a bale on board of me without knowing how frail is the hope you trust to. Having said this much of warning (not that you need warning, for no man better knows the value of what he takes or rejects), I have now another confession to make. I have begun my new story, which I call ‘Lord Kilgobbin,’ which will be essentially Irish, and for which, if I live and thrive, I mean to take a look at Ireland about May next.

“I have made such an opening – such as all here are delighted with, and I myself think not so bad. I shall be ready if you like to begin in April, and shall be able to send you No. 1 before the present month is out.

“I had gout on me all the time I was writing the ‘Dodds,’ and I have a theory that if it does not utterly floor me it sharpens me. What debilitates occasionally stimulates, just as cutting a ship’s timbers will give a knot to her speed.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, July 12,1869.

“I am going on fairly: my malady is there, and must stay there; but I am going to tide over this time, and will not fret myself for the future.