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

“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.

“I’m glad you like my talk. How I’d like to read you my opening of ‘Kilgobbin.’ They like it much here, but I don’t know how much may have been said to cheer me. I’m not able to write beyond a very short time, but I must do something or my head will run clean away with me.

“My wife’s state keeps me in intense anxiety, but on the whole she is better than heretofore.

“Is there anything out worth reviewing? I’d like to have something would take me off myself for a while.

“That poor fellow Baker, who was shot, was a cousin of my wife, – a good, amiable, soft-hearted fellow, I hear, and incapable of a severe thing.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, July 16, 1869.

“I kept over the O’Ds., at your nephew’s suggestion, till I heard from you, but am glad now to see that you have no change to advise, for I don’t think I could make them better, especially by dictation. Any value these things have is as a sort of ‘schnaps,’ and nobody likes water with his glass of curaçoa.

“The heat is so overpowering here that I can do nothing, and I am afraid, in my wife’s critical state, to leave home for the Styrian mountains, where some hospitable invitations are tempting me. From all I can learn, there is a fine field for story-writing in those unvisited lands on the Hungarian frontier, and I may one of these days perhaps be able to profit by it.

“I am glad the chestnut turns out so well, but I was sure she would improve every day she was ridden. If I were Mrs B. I’d strongly demur to putting a collar on her, at least till she was thoroughly made for the saddle; for it is a curious fact that you may harness your saddle-horse but you can’t ride your harness-horse. Mrs B. will understand me, and I am sure agree with me. Whether she does or not, give her my kindest regards.”

To Mr William Blackwood.

“July 16, 1869.

“You are a bad boy not to have come up to town and let us have a shake hands together. I’ll forgive you, however, if you make some pretext for seeing Venice, and come over here for a few days to me. There must surely be some dead time of the year, when magazines, like their writers, grow drowsy and dozy; at all events make time and take a short run abroad, and it will do you a world of good.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Aug. 4,1869.

“I send you two O’Ds. which I have just done, and hope you will think them good. I imagine you will insert the small benefaction – which I think well enough – in next batch.

“The heat has been nigh killing us all here. Sydney was thrown down by sunstroke on Sunday coming from church, and is still in bed, but now better. The heat was 94° in the shade, and people who had come from Egypt say they had never suffered anything like it there. My poor wife has felt it severely, and the strongest of us have had to give up food and exercise, and merely wait for evening to breathe freely.

“Pray make them send me June No., for I can’t follow the story till I get it.

“Don’t you think that they have hunted down that blackguard, Grenville Murray, too inhumanly even for a blackguard! – I do. (I mean Knox’s decision.)”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Sept. 6.

“I thank you much for your generous remittance. I have not been doing anything lately for a heavy feverish cold, which has kept me in a dark room and a low diet.

“I want to write to you about Byron, but I will wait till I see if General Mengaldo (Byron’s old Venetian friend) will give me leave to tell his story of Byron’s separation, and confute the Yankee woman whose name I have not temper to write.

“Mengaldo lived more in Byron’s intimacy as an equal (not a dependant) than any one during Byron’s life at Venice, and would be a mine of curious information if he could be led to open it. Hudson alone has influence with him, and since I saw that woman’s book I wrote to H. about it.

“There is a most curious little volume just out by Persano, ‘The Hero of Lessa,’ all about Cavour and Garibaldi, confirming everything I once wrote you about Cavour’s complicity and duplicity. Would you like a short notice or review of it?

“My wife is most seriously ill, the rest all well.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Sept. 26,1869.

“I have just read the O’D. about Canning to the Chief Baron, who has been dining here with me, and I send it hoping you will laugh at it as much as he did: he also liked the Fenian paper much, and I send them both at once, as if you have anything to add, &c, there will be ample time.

“I never write a line now but O’D., and I only send you about one in every five I invent, for the time is not propitious in new subjects.

“My poor wife continues seriously ill, and I am myself so worn by watching and anxiety that I am scarcely alive.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Oct. 8,1869.

“I don’t like delaying this O’D., though I thought at one time to keep it till I had heard from you. The ‘Austrian Free Press’ has translated the Austrian O’D. and the Persano one, and the German party seems greatly pleased with the tone of the first, though of course the Italians are indignant.

“I think you will like the bit about Baron Warde in this O’D. It was to Lord Normanby I presented him, at a party at Scarlett’s, who was then British Chargé d’Affaires.

“I have little heart to do anything. My wife has had to submit to a third operation, and cannot rally from the great nervous depression, and has now ceased her only nourishment, wine.

“Loss of rest at night and want of fresh air by day have worn me so much that I have no more energy left in me. Of course years have their share in this, and I don’t try to blink that.

“Chas. Reade has found a sympathetic critic who has forgotten none of his merits; not but that on the whole I agree with him, and certainly concur in the belief that Reade has got nothing like his deserts in popular favour. The coarsenesses that disfigure him (and they do) are, after all, not worse than many in Balzac, and no one disputes his supremacy.

“They tell me that the Cabinet can’t agree about the Irish robbery bill; but I don’t think the thieves will fall out, seeing how much booty they have to divide elsewhere. It’s rather a good joke to see a Whig Radical Government trying to revive the Holy Alliance, and sending Lord Clarendon over Europe to concoct alliances against France. The fear of what will happen when L. N. dies is a strong bond of interest, and in the common fear of a great Democratic revolution even Austria and Prussia are willing to shake hands. Would it be well to O’Dowd them?

“I wish I had three days with you in your breezy atmosphere to shake off my dumps and my dreariness.”

To Mr William Blackwood.

“Trieste, Sunday, Oct. 10.

“As I have made a slight addition to the ‘Canning’ O’D., I do not like to delay the proof beyond to-day, to which I waited in hope of a letter from your uncle.

“I have no good news to send of my poor wife, and I am very low and dispirited in consequence.

“I had a capital O’D. in my head this morning, but a bad sermon I have just heard has driven it clean out of my mind. I am quite ready to disendow my consular chaplain, and won’t give him his Sunday dinner in consequence.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Oct. 14,1869.