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

“Many thanks for your cheque, which I have this moment received.

“You are not, I think, quite just about the last two O’Ds. First of all, an O’D. need not, nor can it, be always an epigram; it must occasionally be an argument epigrammatically treated, and ‘Close and the Carmelite’ is, I believe, such. The changed position of two Churchmen (representatives as they are of schools of thought) is well worth notice, and it would be well to show that the Dean’s Protestantism is not the national religion.

“As to the Volunteers, respect for what you think of them (and I do not) always holds my hands when I allude to them. I would not take a foreigner’s opinion on an English institution, though I would respectfully listen to his judgment on a professional matter, – as, for instance, if N. were to talk of a cancer or an aneurism, I would accept his competence to pronounce in the same way [as] when a French soldier like MacMahon or Pallitan, or an Austrian such as Hess, or a Russian like T., derides the idea of such bodies being called soldiers, and advises England not to trust to such defence if the hour of invasion approach. I really feel that it requires great self-restraint not to speak out on an inefficiency made all the more insufferable by an overweening vanity and bumptiousness of conduct (as witness the walk past t’other day at Brussels) that makes one anything but proud of the common countyship.

“Fortunately for your patience I am writing near the post hour, and I must spare you a long discourse on these two themes that you do not seem to think the world will much care for, but that I believe are both of them the very subjects men will be inclined to talk over.

“I half doubted whether, after your dissatisfaction with what I thought good and well-timed, I should forward this O’D. on ‘Irish Queries ‘; but it is a mere argument, treated Hibernically, and you will do what you like with it.

“My home is a very sad one, and I see little prospect of brighter fortune.

“A serious revolt has just broken out in Dalmatia. The peasants refuse to be enrolled in the Landwehr, and have risen, and, up to this, resisted the troops with success. Of course the thing is deeper than a mere local row, and being on the Montenegrin frontier, has an uncommonly ugly look. Three thousand men have been despatched and two gunboats this morning to Cáttaro, and there will be warm work there before to-morrow evening. Austria is in that state that any one movement of her incongruous nationalities may bring down the whole rotten edifice with a run.

“I think Sydney is ‘brewing an MS.,’ for I scarcely see her all day, and she has a half conscious air of authorship at dinner.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Oct. 27, 1869.

“I send you I think a smart O’Dowd ‘On the Misery of Singing without an Accompaniment’ (or rather, speaking without a brogue). I’m terribly hipped: I wish to God I could get out of this! If nothing else offers, perhaps I could get Elizabeth Barry to steal me: I’d make no objection to her cutting off my curls, and as to my clothes, I’ll be shot if she could change them for worse.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Nov. 9, 1869.

“I have detained these proofs that I might hear from you; but the snow has begun to make the passes difficult for the post, and I think it better to despatch them. I hope you’ll think them good. There was a slaughter of the innocents last month – that is, if they ever reached you.

“If my poor wife had not been so dreadfully ill I believe I’d have managed a trip to Suez. I had a pressing invitation, and it would have been exciting enough for the mere strange gathering it brought about, but my home anxieties are thickening every hour.

“You know we are in trouble here in Dalmatia. So far back as July I warned Lord Bloomfield that there was mischief brewing, and that Montenegro was preparing for an outbreak. Of course I never supposed that a consular report would carry weight, but I wrote in a light jocular strain that I thought might be attended to. The reply was: ‘I showed Beust your note, and he thinks you have been humbugged.’ Now I have the satisfaction of seeing B. make a very humble amende, admitting that I knew more of what was menaced than his agent at Cáttaro.

“Still the Austrians believe, or affect to believe, that Russia is not in it; nor is she more than certain American politicians are in Fenianism – that is, they want to see the chances of success before they go farther. I hear that Gladstone has got a fright about Ireland, and that his Land Bill will be ‘Moderate and even Conservative’ – in fact, he begins to feel that dealing with Ireland means ‘concession,’ and when you have given all you have, you’ve to make way for somebody else who’ll give something more. Bright is very much disgusted at the moderation of the measure intended, and the Cabinet, I hear, not one-minded.

“All these things, however, open no prospect for a Tory Government, and out of pure fear of what Gladstone would do, if pushed to it, the squires will vote for him rather than risk – not their seats, but their acres.

“The indifference foreign statesmen feel about England, and what she thinks on anything now, exceeds belief. I declare to you I believe Holland has as much weight in Europe.

“Would you like something about Suez? – I mean, about the trade prospects, &c, – that is, if anything could be had new or striking. Up to this the only speculation I have seen worth anything is how greatly to our benefit the route would be if we had a war with America, for we could certainly ‘make the police’ of the Mediterranean and Levant, though not of the Atlantic and Pacific.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Nov. 29, 1869.

“I am still confined to the house with a feverish cold, and overrun by travellers to and from Suez.

“The Dalmatian revolt is becoming a very serious affair. The peasants are beating the troops, and now the season must stop all operations till spring. Whether by that time the complication will not take wider limits and embrace Servia and the Balkans, is not easy to see. That blessed ally of ours, Louis Napoleon, is now intriguing to get a Russian alliance and undo all the work of the Crimean campaign, and of course our ‘Non-interference Policy’ will leave the coast free to him! Thank God, his home troubles may overtake him before he goes much farther!”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Dec. 11, 1869.

“Thanks for your note and its enclosure, and thanks, too, for telling me that the deferred O’Ds. are not rejected ones, for I was getting low-spirited at the number of recruits sent back as below the standard. When I asked you to send me the unused, it was a painful confession. It was like a manufacturer owning to his being reduced to work up his old material. Perhaps I shall one of these days make an O’Dowd on ‘Devil’s Dust in Literature.’ What do you think of it?

“I hope you will like the ‘O’Dowd’ I send. It is meant to expose a very common blunder respecting the influences of the better classes abroad. You must ensure the correction yourself, and it will be the last I shall forward this month. For the last week I have been keeping a dark room with a severe ophthalmia. It was a dreary time, and I am glad it is over.

“Gladstone is going to propose a sort of Court of Arbitration for land purposes – that is, another body of men to be shot at when the peasants find landlords scarce, or what the sportsmen call ‘wild.’

“This Dalmatian revolt must sleep during the winter, but it will be a serious mischief yet, especially if this Franco-Russian alliance takes place. Our policy now ought to be to reconcile Austria and Prussia at once, and prepare for the big struggle that is coming to undo the results of the Crimean War. I wish, if it be decided to represent England abroad by old women, that at least they would send us old ladies.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Dec. 14, 1860.

“I hope for both our sakes you are not quite just about the ‘Pope’ O’D. I think it has a smack of Swift – a very faint one it may be, but still enough to recall the flavour. The anecdote of the Yankee was not made for the occasion, only it occurred to Sir J. Hudson, and not to O’Dowd. Take them all in all, I have done better and worse; but I think with those you have already on hand, they will make a fair batch.

“I hope you will like the ‘Dr Temple’ O’D. It, at least, is worked out.

“I am very poorly, and very low in spirits; my wife grows weaker every day, and our anxieties are great. For the first time in my life I find it a ‘grind’ to write a few lines. Le commencement du fin, maybe – who knows?”

XX. TRIESTE 1870

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Jan. 4,1870.

“When I saw ‘Maga’ without me I began to feel as if I had died (hitherto at Trieste I only believed I had been buried), and when your cheque reached me this morning I pictured myself as my own executor! You are most kind to bethink you of the necessities of this pleasant season, – indeed I scarcely know anything of Christmas but its bills I Still, I should be well content to have nothing heavier on my heart than money cares, and I believe that is about as dreary a confession as a man can well make.

“I am sorry to hear you have not been well, but I trust it is a thing of the past already: I don’t think either of us would be what is called a good patient. I like the Homer Odyssey (?) greatly. I suspect I guess the writer – that is, from a mere accident. ‘Suez’ is excellent, and Stanley’s opinion is that of the best German engineers also. Aren’t you flattering to my Lord of Knebworth? It was not, however, a ‘good fairy’ gave him a wife.

“Sydney sends her love. She is going over to England in spring (at least she says so, and I suppose I am bound to believe it) to pay that Devonshire visit I interrupted last year.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Feb. 3,1870.

“In Stanley’s clever article on ‘Suez’ for January there is a sketch of an Italian travelling companion so like a portrait that we all here fancy we recognise the man. It is the same who addresses the Empress Eugénie so brusquely. If we be right, he is an old acquaintance of ours called ‘Campereo.’ Pray, if occasion serve, ask if this be the man. It is wonderfully like him at all events, and I could almost bet on it.

“I have been hoping to hear from you, and delaying to tell you – what for me is a rare event – a piece of pleasant news. Sydney is about to be married. The sposo, an Englishman, young, well educated, well-mannered, and well off; he is the great millowner, paper manufacturer, and shipbuilder of Austria, and has about £7000 a-year.

“I need not say it is a great match for a poor ‘tocherless lass,’ but I can say that the man’s character and reputation would make him acceptable if he had only £500 a-year.

“To myself, overborne and distressed by the thought of how little I had done for my children, and how wastefully and foolishly I had lived, – spending my means pretty much as I did my brains, in bursts of spendthrift extravagance, and leaving myself in both cases with nothing to fall back on, – it is a relief unspeakable that one of my poor girls at least is beyond the straits of penury.

“I know that you and Mrs Blackwood have a warm and kindly feeling towards us, and you will be glad to hear of such good fortune. I do not know that the excitement has been very favourable to my poor wife, who can only look as yet to the one feature – that is, that she loses a child’s companionship; but I trust that in time she will see with me that the event is one to be truly thankful for.

“The marriage is to take place on the 21st, and after a trip to Rome, &c, they visit Paris, and on to London some time in April. Sydney ardently hopes that you and Mrs Blackwood may be in town this season: she longs to see you both again.

“I need not say I have done nothing but answer and write notes for the last few weeks, and sit in commission over trousseau details, for which how I am ever to pay I hope somebody knows – but I do not. I remember Fergus O’Connor saying that he could ‘get in’ for Mallow ‘if he could stand a dinner to his committee,’ and I can fully appreciate that nice situation at present.