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

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, July 13, 1865.

“Your note came on here to-day, the enclosure stayed at Florence. What cruel inspiration suggested your thoughtful kindness? I left home declaring that I was ruined, had overdrawn you, and had not a sou for anything; that we must live on roots and drink water till next spring: and now my beautiful budget, that I have just carried at the risk of the Government, is all gone and smashed.

“You (fortunately for you) don’t know that all these things are very great things to people who are always swimming for their lives, – but enough of it.

“I have been exceedingly busy since I came here. An order of the Queen’s Bench named me a Commissioner to take evidence in a case coming on for trial next November, and I have been sitting up – like a Brummagem Chief-Justice – and rebuking witnesses, and scowling at the public like a real judge.

“I send a few lines to complete O’D. for the month. How I wrote them I don’t know, for this infernal place is so noisy, and the interruptions so frequent, I’d fain be back in Brook Street for quiet.

“I fear I shall be detained here all this month, for the admiral is on his way here, and the whole Maltese fleet are thirsting for bitter beer and champagne. I wonder if I were to put down their powers of suction in my extraordinaries would F. O. stand it?”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, July 15, 1865.

“I send off O’D. proof to-night. I last night sent by private hand some pages to conclude it. Do look very carefully to both; my orthography (like Acre’s courage) oozes out of my finger-ends in this hot weather.

“I have had a two hours’ swim, and am so sleepy and ‘water-logged’ that I can’t write, though I’m dying to O’Dowd the judge for his remarks on Dr Paterson in the Pritchard case. They are so ignorant, and so vulgar to boot.

“If every doctor who suspected foul play in the treatment of malady was to cry out Murder! the whole world would be one wild shout of assassination. What between medical timidity, terror, gobemoucherie, and sometimes private malice, the police-courts would have enough on their hands. They say railroads must have no signals because pusillanimous travellers would be eternally summoning the guard, and here is exactly a similar evil with worse consequences.

“I don’t think I ever conversed with a country practitioner who hadn’t a story or two of ‘foul play,’ and so palpably untrue as to be laughable. In all probability Paterson’s impressions were only strong when he found the woman had died, and it is a very medical error to imagine a skill in prediction which only comes after the event. The world is all subserviency to the doctor when there is an epidemic abroad, and ‘takes it out’ in insult when the weather is fine and the season salubrious.

“‘The Spanish fleet’ is not in sight.

“Remember I rely upon you to look closely to these last ‘Sir Bs.’ and ‘O’Dowds,’ for I am as near softening of the brain as it is permitted to a consul to be.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, July 28, 1865.

“It seems like a century to me since we heard of each other. Here I am still awaiting the fleet. They were to come on the 27th, and they are to be here positively on the 6th, most positively on the 8th, and as sure as the Lord liveth (I mean the First Lord), on the 12th August.

“I have my youngest daughter with me, who keeps me in a perpetual round of croquet, picnics, boat-races, and moonlight rowing-parties.

“If you knew, then, the difficulty I have had to write the two chaps. I now send you (my first instalment of Sept. ‘Fossbrooke ‘), you would prize them more certainly than their merit could call for.”

To Mr William Blackwood.

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzia, Aug. 6, 1865.

“I got your telegram just as I was starting for a picnic, to eat my lobster afterwards with what appetite I might. I suspect (it is mere suspicion) that chap, i., enclosed in an envelope I had borrowed from an American colleague, has gone (through the words ‘U.S. Consulate’ on the corner) to America, and that Sir B. F. is now making the tour of ‘the Union.’

“Rewriting is all very fine; but I have forgotten all I wrote, as I always do, or I should go mad. If Providence had only inflicted me with a memory in proportion to my imagination, I’d have been in Bedlam twenty years ago. I have therefore set to work and written something else. If the other turns up, you may prefer it (‘You pays your money and takes your choice,’ as the apple-women say).

“God forgive me, but I grow less wise as I grow older. The old smack of devil-may-care, that sat so easily on me as a boy, keeps dodging me now in grey hairs and making a fool of me; but you’ve read the German story of the fellow whose wooden leg was ‘possessed’ and ran away with him. I haven’t a wooden leg, but I have a wooden stick that plays a like prank with me.

“O’Dowd indeed! And I flirting with little Yankee girls, and teaching them to swim! Don’t talk to me of O’Dowd!

“Tell your uncle to send me whatever there remains of balance of the last O’Ds., for I am losing my money here like fun, and ashamed to send to my bankers for more.

“Continue to address me here: I see no prospect of my getting back to Florence. The English fleet is still at Rosas, and the three balls we intended to give them have already come off here, and we are all ruined in champagne and crinoline before the honoured guests have arrived. What an O’D. one might make on ‘The Fleet of the Future’!”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Hôtel de Milan, Aug. 14,1866.

“When I read of Aytoun’s death in the papers I knew how it would affect you. I am well aware what old ties linked you; and these old ties bind not only heart to heart, but attach a man to his former self, and make up the sweetest part of our identity. They are often, too, the only light that shines on the past, which would be dark and untraceable if love did not mark it.

“It is strange, but I feel (and I wrote it to my wife) that I thought I had lost a friend in losing him, – though we never met, and only knew each other in a few kindly greetings transmitted by yourself from one to the other. How right you are about the solemn fools! I go even farther, and say that the solemn wise, the Gladstones of this world, are only half great in wanting that humouristic vein that gives a man his wide sympathy with other men, and makes him, through his very humanity, a something more than human. I am sure it is in no unfair spirit I say it, but the Aytoun type grows rarer every day. It is a commodity not marketable, and Nature somehow ceases to produce what has not its value in the pièce courant.

“I can’t write a line here. My youngest daughter keeps me ever concocting new gaieties for her, and she has such an insatiable spirit for enjoyment the game never ends.

“Our fleet is becalmed outside Spezzia, but may be here at any moment.

“I shall send off the proof by book-post, and (if no other reach me) beseech you to remember that, being away from my wife and eldest daughter, I am neither to be relied upon for my orthographies nor my ‘unities,’ nor indeed any other ‘ties. Look, therefore, sharply to my proof, and see that I am not ever obscure where I don’t intend it.

“I see no chance of getting away before the end of the month, and till I reach V. Morelli my ink-bottle is screwed up.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Hôtel de Milan, Spezzià, Sept. 2,1865.

“I am in misery. Here I am, dining and being dined, eating, drinking, singing, sailing, swimming, pic-nicing, bedevilling, – everything, in short, but writing. I have made incredible attempts to work. I have taken a room on the house-top; I have insulted the ward-room and d – d the cockpit; I have even sneered at the admiral. The evil, however, is – I have done but a few pages, and I send them to get printed, leaving you to determine whether we shall skip a month, or whether, completing the unfinished chapter, an instalment of about 12 pp. will be better than nothing. I am more disposed to this than leaving a gap, and I am still very wretched that my work should be ill done. Direct and counsel me.

“This miserable place has cost me a year’s pay to keep, and now I hear that Elliott is sure to report me if I am found living in Florence, – another illustration of thrift, if I add a P.S. to the ‘O’Dowd.’

“I am very sick of the row and racket I live in. I want my home and my quiet, and even my ink-bottle.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Sept. 17, 1866.

“I got back here two days ago, after more real fatigue and exhaustion than I would again face for double my miserable place at Spezzia. These bluejackets have not only drunk me out of champagne and Allsopp, but so tapped myself that I am perfectly dry. The constant intercourse with creatures of mere action – with creatures of muscles, nerves, and mucous membranes, and no brains – becomes one of the most wearing and weakening things you can imagine. Nor is it only the nine weeks lost, but God knows how many more it will take before I can get the machinery of my mind to work again: all is rusted and out of gear, and I now feel, what I only suspected, that it is in this quiet humdrum life I am able to work, and that I keep fresh by keeping to myself. An occasional burst (to London for instance) would be of immense value to me, but that even then should only be brief, and not too frequent.

“Is it necessary to say I could not write at Spezzia? I tried over and over again, and for both our sakes it is as well I did not persevere. I send, therefore, these two chapters, and a short bit to round off the last one. If you opine (as I do) that even a short link is better than a break, insert them next No., taking especial care to correct the new portion, and, indeed, to look well to all.

“To-morrow I set to work, – I hope vigorously, at least so far as intention goes, – and you shall have, if I’m able, a strong Sir B.’ and an ‘O’Dowd’ for next month. I never for thirty years of monthly labour broke down before, and I am heartily ashamed of my shortcoming; but I repeat it is better to give short measure than poison the company.

“I like the tribute to poor Aytoun very much, and I condole heartily with you on the loss of one who walked so much of life at your side. I am sure the habit of writing turns out more of a man’s nature to his friends than happens to those who never commit themselves to print, and I am certain that his friends have their own reading of an author that is totally denied to his outer public. You knew Aytoun well enough to know if my theory does not apply to him.

“Don’t be as chary of your letters as you have been. I’ll so pepper you now with correspondence that you must reply.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Sept. 24,1865.

“You have herewith three chapters of ‘Sir B.’ for Nov. No., and if so be that you need a fourth, there will be time to write it when I see these in proof; but I thought it as well to keep the reader in suspense about the interview, all the more because I know no more of what is coming than he does! My impression is that these chapters will do: my womankind like them, and only complain that there are no female scenes in the No. But there shall be crinolines to the fore hereafter.

“I shall now set to work to write an ‘O’Dowd’ on my late Spezzia life and experiences.

“What a fuss they are making about the Fenians, as if rebellion was anything new in Ireland! It is only an acute attack of the old chronic com-plaint, and wants nothing but bleeding to cure it.

“Some vile sailor, I suspect, has walked off with my May No. Magazine, and I have not the beginning of the ‘Sir B.’ Will you send it to me?

“My wife is very poorly again, but this month coming round renews so much sorrow to her that I suspect the cause may be there.

“I have just this moment heard that the new squadron is coming back to Spezzia. If so, it will be the ruin of me – that is, if I go there; and indeed I am seriously thinking of pitching my consular dignity to the devil, and becoming a gentleman again, if only, as my coachman says, ‘for an alternative.’”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Oct. 1,1865.

“The squib I enclose will, I think, be well-timed. It is a letter supposed to be found on a Fenian prisoner, a Col. Denis Donovan, Assistant Adjutant-General, Fenian army, from Major-General M’Caskey, who has been asked to take command of the National Forces. It can be introduced to the reader thus.

“My wife says I have written nothing to equal this.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Oct. 8,1866.

“You will have received before this the Fenian squib. I have little courage to ask how you like it. Of course it would be easy enough to make a long and strong paper out of the condensed materials of M’Caskey, but I don’t water my milk, though my experiences with the public might have taught me that it would suit us both best.

“I have mislaid – perhaps some one has carried off – my ‘Rebel Songs,’ for I heard a threat of the kind in connection with some autograph balderdash. They are, however, no loss either to the cause or the public. The best was one called ‘The Devil may care.’ I add a verse (as it strikes me) for the public —

“You don’t read ‘O’Dowd’ and don’t like its style;But then to my conscience I swearYou buy things that are worse,And some not worth a curse,And for my part – the Devil may care!”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Oct. 12,1865.

“Take care that M’Caskey’s letter is not amongst the ‘O’Dowds.’ Cornelius never heard of him, nor has he any knowledge of ‘Tony Butler.’ Mind this.

“Send me the Horse-book of your Cavalry Officer, and I’ll try and make a short notice of it. I want the book of Villa Architecture too. I was thinking of a paper (I have good bones for it) on the Italian fleet, wood and iron, but I foresee that I should say so many impertinent things, and hurt so many people I know, that I suspect on the whole it is better not to go on with it. What I am to do with my surplus venom when I close ‘O’Dowd’ I don’t see, except I go into the Church and preach on the Athanasian Creed.

“Wolff is in Paris still, scheming in ‘Turks.’

“It will astonish Lyons when he discovers what a heritage Bulwer has left him at Constantinople.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Oct. 20, 1866.

“Your note and its ‘padding’ came to my hand a couple of hours ago. I thank you much for both, but more for the encouragement than the cash, though I wanted the last badly.

“I don’t think there is a public for O’D. collectively. I don’t think people will take more than a monthly dose of ‘my bitters,’ and I incline to suspect mawkish twaddle and old Joe Millers would hit the mark better. Shall I try? At all events, make room if you can for the postscript I send you. Now I wrote it at your own suggestion when I read your note, and it seems to me to embody the dispute. I have tried to put in a bit of Swift s tart dryness in the style.

“The telegram just announces Palmerston’s death. Take care that his name does not occur in my last O’D. I don’t remember using it, but look to it for me.

“What will happen now? I hear the Whigs won’t have Russell, and that he won’t serve under Clarendon.

“How I wish I were in England to hear all the talk. It is d – d hard to be chained up here and left only to bark, when I want to bite too.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Oct. 23,1865.

“Does it not strike you that a good view of Palmerston’s character might be taken from considering how essentially the man was English, and that in no other assembly than a British House of Commons would his qualities have had the same sway and influence? All that intense vitality and rich geniality would have been totally powerless in Austria, France, Italy, or even America. None would have accepted the glorious nature of the man, or the element of statesmanship, as the House accepted it. None would have seen that the spirit of all he did was the rebound of that public opinion which only a genial man ever feels or knows the value of. If I be right in this, depend upon it Gladstone will make a lame successor to him. God grant it!

“I send you a ‘Sir B.’ for December, as I am about to leave for Carrara for a few days. I hope it is good. It may be that another short chapter may be necessary, and if so there will be time for it when I come back.

“How I would like now if I had the time (but it would take time and labour too) to write an article on the deception which the Whigs have practised in trading on their Italian policy as their true claim to office. It is the most rascally fraud ever practised.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Oct. 29, 1865.

“I send you two O’Ds.; that on Gladstone I think tolerably good. The short paper on ‘The Horse,’ being all done in the first person, I think had better be an ‘O’Dowd,’ – indeed I signed it such; but do as you like about this.

“I think there seems a very good prospect of the Tories coming in during the session. Phil Rose was here the other day and gave me good hopes, and said also they would certainly give me something. Heaven grant it! for I am getting very footsore, and would like to fall back upon a do-nothing existence, and never hear more of the public.

“The foreign papers are all – especially the Bonapartist ones – attacking Lord Russell as an ‘Orleanist.’ I never had heard of his leanings in that direction; but it is exactly one of those tendencies we should not hear of in England, but which foreigners would be certain to chance upon.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Friday, Nov. 3, 1866.

“I am rather out of spirits, – indeed I feel that my public and myself are at cross-purposes.

“D – their souls – (God forgive me) – but they go on repeating some stone-cold drollery of old Pam’s, and my fun – hot and piping – is left un-tasted; and as to wisdom, I’ll back O’Dowd against all the mock aphorisms of Lord Russell and his whole Cabinet. It would not do to touch Palmerston in O’D.: I could not go on the intensely laudatory tack, and any – the very slightest – qualification of praise would be ill taken. Do you know the real secret of P.‘s success? It was, that he never displayed ambition till he was a rich man. Had Disraeli reserved himself in the same degree, there would have been nothing of all the rotten cant of ‘adventurer,’ &c., that we now hear against him. Begin life rich in England, and all things will be added to you.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Nov. 6,1865.

“I think the Bagmen deserve an ‘O’Dowd’; their impertinent wine discussion is too much to bear. I don’t suspect the general public will dislike seeing them lashed, and from the specimens I have met travelling, I owe some of the race more than I have given them.

“I think there is a good chance of a (short-lived) Conservative Government next year, and then Gladstone and le Déluge. Unless some great change resolves the two parties in the House into real open enemies (not camps where deserters cross and recross any day), we shall have neither political honesty nor good government.

“The present condition of things makes a lukewarm public and disreputable politicians.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Nov. 11, 1866.

“I would have sent another chapter to ‘Sir Brook,’ but that I have been sick and ill, – a sort of feverish cold, with a headache little short of madness. I am over it now, but very low and spiritless and unfit for work…

“I have got a long letter from Whiteside this morning: he thinks that the conduct of the Palmerston Whigs will decide the question as to who should govern the country. It is, however, decided that Gladstone is to smash the Irish Education scheme and to overturn the Church.

“I had written to him to press upon his friend the importance of restoring Hudson to his Embassy in the event of the Derby party coming to power, and he sent my letter as it was to Lord Malmes-bury, though it contained some rather sharp remarks on Lord M.‘s conduct while at F. O. He (W.) says Lord M. asked to keep the letter, and wrote a very civil reply.

“Look carefully to ‘Sir B.’ for me, for my head is a stage below correction. I composed some hundred O’Ds. in doggerel the night before last, and (I hear) laughed immoderately in my sleep.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Nov. 30, 1866.

“If I be right, Lord R. will dodge both parties, say ‘No’ to neither, and, while cajoling the old Palmerston Whigs not to desert him, he’ll by certain Radical appointments conciliate that party and bribe them to wait. In this sense I have written the O’Dowd, ‘The Man at the Wheel.’ I think it reasonably good. That is, if my prediction be true: otherwise it won’t do at all; but we’ll have time to see before we commit ourselves.

“I hope you’ll like it, as also the sterner one on ‘Hospitalities ex-officio.’

“The post here is now very irregular, – indeed since we’re a capital the place has gone to the devil. I don’t know whether the dulness or the dearness be greatest.

“The Radicals, waiting for reform and taking the destruction of the Irish Church meanwhile, remind one of Nelson’s coxwain’s saying when asked if he would have a glass of rum or a tumbler of punch, that ‘he’d be drinking the rum while her ladyship was mixing the punch.’ Ireland is to be complimented for her projected rebellion by fresh concessions. Never was there such a splendid policy.

“The Italians say, ‘The toad got no tail at the creation of the world because he never asked for one.’ Certes, my countrymen won’t be deficient in their caudal appendages on such grounds.

“I am hipped by bad weather, undeveloped gout, and other ills too numerous to mention, but still – ”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Spezzia, Dec. 4, 1866.

“In reply to your note, and its enclosure referring to a passage in one of my late ‘O’Dowds’ that an admiral is a sort of human rhinoceros, &c., I have simply to say that the joke is a very sorry one, and one of the worst I have ever uttered, if it give offence; but I most distinctly declare that I never entertained the most distant idea of a personality. Indeed my whole allusion was to the externals of admirals, – a certain gruffness, &c., which in itself is much too superficial a trait to include a personality.

“That I could say anything offensive to or of a service from which I have received nothing but politeness and courtesy, and some of whose members I regard as my closest and best friends, seems so impossible a charge against me that I know not how to answer it. Indeed nothing is left for me but a simple denial of intention. It then remains, perhaps, to apologise for an expression which may be misapprehended. I do so just as frankly. I think the men who so read me, read me wrongfully. No matter; my fault it is that I should be open to such misconstruction, and I ask to be forgiven for it.

“So much of reparation is in my power (if time permit), and I would ask you to assist me to it – to omit the entire passage when you republish the papers in a volume.

“Will you, in any form that you think best, convey the explanation and the amends to the writer of the note you have enclosed?”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Dec. 4, 1866.

“I have just read the note you enclosed me calling my attention to my having said that an admiral was a sort of ‘human rhinoceros.’ I beg to recant the opinion, and when opportunity serves I will do so publicly, and declare that I believe them to be the most thin-skinned of mortals, otherwise there was nothing in the paragraph referred to which could give the slightest offence.

“To impute a personality to it would be for the reader to attach the passage to some one to whom he thought it applicable, if there be such.

“When they mentioned vice or bribe,It’s so pat to all the tribe,Each cried that was levelled at me.

“Now I had not the vaguest idea of a personality; I was simply chronicling a sort of professional gruffness and mysteriousness, – both admirable in the way of discipline, doubtless, but not so agreeable socially as the gifts of younger and less responsible men.