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

“On second thoughts I send you off the enclosed at once. One chap, more will finish ‘Tony,’ but I want to have your judgment on these before I write the last. I have worked nearly two nights through to do this. I am uncommonly anxious – more than I like to tell – that the book should be a success. I know well nothing will be wanting on your part, and I am all the more eager to do mine. Write to me as soon as you can, for I shall lie on my oars till I hear from you, except so far as correcting the volumes of T. and O’D.

“It has been, with all its fatigues, a great mercy to me to have had this hard work, for I have great – the greatest – anxieties around me, and but for the necessity for exertion, I don’t think I could bear up.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Nov. 16, 1864.

“I have never quitted ‘Tony’ since I wrote to you, and here goes the result! I have finished him, unless you opine that a few more lines are needed, though what they ought to detail is not usually thought fit for publication.

“I hope to Heaven it is good. If you knew how I have laboured to fancy myself in a love-making mood, – if you knew by what drains on my memory– on my imagination – I have tried to believe a young damsel in my arms and endeavoured to make the sweet moment profitable, – you’d pity me. Perhaps a page of notices of what became of Mait-land, M’Caskey, &c, is necessary, though I’m of the Irishman’s opinion, ‘that when we know Jimmy was hanged, we don’t want to hear who got his corduroys.’

“Do you give me your opinion, however, and God grant it be favourable! for I’m dead-beat, – gouty, doubty, and damnably blue-devilled into the bargain.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Nov. 23,1864.

“The Israelite whose letter you enclose seems to be without brains as well as ‘guile.’ Couldn’t his stolid stupidity distinguish between a story thrown out as an ‘illustration’ and a ‘fact’? Couldn’t he see that the article was a paradox throughout, written merely to sustain the one grain of doubt that reformatories were not all that their advocates think them to be?

“On my oath, I believe that the British Public is the dreariest piece of ‘bull-headed one-sidedness’ that exists. He has added another sting to my gout that nothing short of kicking him would relieve me of…

“Wolff is so much more absurd than stiff that I am ashamed of my man. His directorial-financial vein is about the broadest farce I know of, and all the while that he invents companies and devises share-lists, he has not that amount of arithmetic that can make up the score at whist!

“Labouchere is here now, and tortures the unlucky W. unceasingly.

“I hope you will sustain me in all my perjuries about ‘Tony.’ I told W. yesterday that you positively refused to tell me the author, and my own guess was that it was Mr Briggs, who was murdered.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Nov. 26, 1864.

“I will certainly do the ‘Directors.’ Wolff will do for what artists call the ‘lay figure,’ and I’ll put any drapery on him that I fancy.

“I think the loss of Lord Derby would be little short of the smash of the party – I mean, at this moment. Indeed his social position and his standing with the Queen were just as valuable to his friends as his great abilities, and to be led in the House of Lords by Lord Malmesbury is more than the party could stand.

“I remember once, when asked by Lord Lyndhurst what line I would suggest for a Conservative press – it was in ‘52 – and I said, ‘As much sense, my lord, as your party will bear.’ ‘That will do it. I understand, and I agree with you.’

“There was a project to give me the direction of the ‘Herald,’ ‘Standard,’ and ‘St James’s Chronicle,’ when purchased and in the hands of the Conservatives, and I believe it was about the sort of thing I could have done, because any good there is in me is for emergencies: I can hit them, and am seldom unprepared for them. Whatever takes the tone of daily continuous work and looks like industry I totally fail in.

“The project failed because I refused to accept a council of ‘surveillance’ that Disraeli proposed, and indeed Lytton also recommended. Forgive all this egotistical balderdash; perhaps I think I am going to die, and want to leave my memoirs in a friend’s hands.

“Your letters rally me, and I beg you to write often. If I wanted a boon from Fortune it would be to have wherewithal to live on (modestly), and write to my friends the sort of thing I write for the public, and give way to the fancies that I cannot or dare not make the public party to.

“I am curious for your critique on ‘Tony.’”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Nov. 30,1864.

“I think the enclosed few words are needed to round off ‘Tony.’ The characters of a book are to my mind damnably like the tiresome people who keep you wishing them good-night till you wish them at the devil. They won’t go, – the step of the hall door would seem to have bird-lime on it; and I therefore suspect that my constitutional impatience with the bores aforesaid has damaged many a book of mine.

“If you do not approve of the added bit, squash it; but it strikes me as useful.

“My poor wife laughed at your quiz at my bit of tenderness. She seldom laughs now, though once on a time the ring of merry laughing was heard amongst us from morn till night.

“Your cheque came all right; I have just checked my cook with it. We have a system of living here by what they call Cottino, which is really comfortable enough. You pay so much a-day to your cook for feeding you and your household, and he stipulates so many plats, &c., and it’s your business to see that he treats you well. My rascal – a very good artiste– is a great politician, and everything that goes hard against the ‘Left’ (he is a great patriot) is revenged upon me in tough beef and raw mutton, but when Garibaldi triumphs, I am fed with pheasants and woodcocks.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Dec 9,1864.

“Do you see how right I was in my ‘O’Dowd’ about Bismarck, and how now he is bullying the Diet and even Austria, and openly proclaiming how little thought there was of ‘Germany’ in his Danish war? And yet I believe I am the sole proprietor and patentee of the opinion, and I have not yet heard even the faintest rumour of calling me to the Queen’s counsels.

“My wife is half of Mrs Blackwood’s opinion, and is in no good humour with Tony personally. She thinks he married out of ‘sulk,’ not for inclination; but you and I know better, and if ever Tony comes to live a winter in Florence, he’ll find he made the best choice.

“I half think I have the opening of a good story for you, but I want to do something really creditable and will take time. Do you remember the Dutchman that took a race of three miles to jump over the ditch, and was so tired by the preparation that he sat down at the foot of it!

“I am low, low! but if I hear good accounts of ‘Tony’ and O’D. it will do me good service, and I know if you have them you’ll not hide them.

“You will have got the end of ‘Tony’ by this, and I look to another letter from you to-morrow or next day.

“I meant ‘Luttrell’ for you when I began it, but ‘Tony,’ I think (now), is better; but I’ll see if I can’t beat both for a last spring before I lie down for aye.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Dec. 11,1864.

“Aytoun shall have the reversion of M’Caskey at his own price. I mean Aytoun’s price, for the other estimate might be a stunner.

“Wolff – I mean Skeff – I mean to resuscitate, – that is, I think a droll paper of his unedited memoirs might one day be made amusing, and the vehicle for some very original notions on diplomacy and politics generally. He has just started to the Piraeus to see Henry Bulwer, who, like Mr Mantalini, is at the point of death for the nineteenth time. Wolff looks up to him with immense reverence as being the most consummate rogue in Europe; and this he is certainly, notwithstanding the fact that he has been detected and pronounced a hardened offender by every Government since the Duke’s to Palmerston’s. What robbery he wants to entrust to W. with his dying breath is hard to say; but poor Skeffy is quite eager for the inheritance, – though God help him if he thinks he can rig the thimble when his pal has gone home.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

[Undated.]

“They have sold my old house here, and I am driven to a little villa (or shall be) in about a month’s time, – a small crib, nicely placed and very quiet, about a mile from the Gates.

“What fun one could make of the devil at Compiègne, talking over all L. Nap.‘s plans, how he had humbugged every one – Pam, Russell, the Austrians, Emp., &c, &c.; the devil’s compta, on the beauty of Paris, and how much all that luxury and splendour did for him. An evening with Bulwer, too, and a week at Pisa, where he dined with H. Bulwer and heard the grand project for the regeneration of Turkey – the best bit of news the devil had heard since the partition of Poland.

“I would not for a great deal have called O’D. ‘Corney’ had I known of the other proprietor of the name; and I suspect I know the man, and that he is a right good fellow. Nobody, however, has copyright in his name – as I know, for a prebend of Lichfield wrote a socialist story and called his hero Charles Lever.

“I was once going to be shot by a certain Charles O’Malley, but who afterwards told all the adventures of my hero as his own, with various diversions into which I had not ventured.

“I was going to call O’D. ‘Terence.’ Now if the other O’D. likes to be rebaptised by that name I’m ready to stand godfather; but as my own child is before the world as Corney, I cannot change him.”

XV. FLORENCE AND SPEZZIA 1865

To Mr John Blackwood.