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

“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 - “That Boy of Norcott’s,” which was just finishing its serial course in “The Cornhill Magazine.’ and is coming to see me. He and ‘his’n’ are living with the Bloomfields, who have most hospitably taken them in till they can house themselves, which (you know) can only be done in Austria on the 24th August.] 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.