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

“It is time I should thank you and Mrs Blackwood for your cordial invitation to myself and my daughter to go and see you in Scotland, and we are only too sorry we cannot manage you a visit, and in talk – for it is all that is left us – to ride over the links of Fife, and even assist at golf.

“Even if I could have plucked up courage to go over now, I ‘stopped’ myself by letting my ‘vice’ go on leave, – a piece of generosity on my part that has cost me heavier than I thought for, and gave me nearer opportunities of intimacy with Cardiff captains and Hull skippers than I care for.

“Of course, it is out of the question trying to write except on my ‘off days,’ when I shut out the whole rabble.

“I begin to think that Gladstone has been carried away by pure anger in all his late doings. It is purely womanish and hysterical throughout. To hit off this I have thrown off the short ‘O’Dowd,’ ‘What if they were to be Court-martialled?’ which, with a little change, will perhaps do.

“It is one of those cases which will be as long kept before the public, for it is the attack on a great principle – and in that sense no mere grievance of the hour.

“As a means of lowering the House of Lords – if such was the intention – it has totally failed, and even ‘Pall Mall’ has come to the side of the Peers, which is significant.

“I see Seymour, my old friend, has got his first verdict in the Hertford case. It is £70,000 a-year at issue, but of course the great battle will be fought before ‘the Lords,’”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Aug. 17,1871.

“About half an hour after your pleasant letter and its handsome enclosure reached me, Langford came in. He was on his way to Venice, but, like a good fellow, stopped to dine with myself and daughter.

“We are delighted with him, – not only with his talk about books and writers, Garrick men and reviewers, but with his fine fresh-hearted appreciation of all he sees in his tour. He likes everything, and travels really to enjoy it.

“I wish I knew how to detain him here a little longer; though, God knows, no place nor no man has fewer pretensions to lay an embargo on any one.

“I took him out to see Miramar last evening, and we both wished greatly you had been with us. It was a cool drive of some miles along the Adriatic, with the Dalmatian mountains in front, and to the westward the whole Julian Alps snow-topped and edged. I know you would have enjoyed it.

“I am so glad you like the O’Ds. As I grow older I become more and more distrustful of all I do; in fact, I feel like the man who does not know when he draws on his banker that he may not have overdrawn his account and have his cheque returned. This is very like intellectual bankruptcy, or the dread of it, which is much the same.

“The finest part of Scott’s nature to my thinking was the grand heroic spirit – that trumpet-stop on his organ – which elevated our commonplace people and stirred the heart of all that was high-spirited and generous amongst us. It was the anti-climax to our realism and sensationalism – detective Police Literature or Watch-house Romance.

“This was the tone I wanted to see praised and recommended, and I was sorry to see how little it was touched on. The very influence that a gentleman exerts in society on a knot of inferiors was the sort of influence Scott brought to bear upon the whole nation. All felt that there was at least one there before whom nothing mean or low or shabby should be exhibited.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Aug. 28, 1871.

“The day after Langford left this, my horse, treading on a sharp stone that cut his frog, fell on me and crushed my foot, – not severely, but enough to bring on the worst attack of gout I ever had in my life, and which all my precautions have only kept down up to this from seizing on the stomach. My foot was about as big and as shapely as Cardwell’s head. I am now unable to move, and howl if any one approaches me rashly.

“I told Langford of a curious police trial for swindling here at Vienna – curious as illustrating Austrian criminal procedure, &c. He thought I ought to report it in ‘O’Dowd.’ I send it off now for your opinion and judgment (and hope favourably). It might want a little retouching here and there, but you will see and say.

“I was delighted with your ‘Scott’ speech – the best of them of all that I read, and I see it has been copied and recopied largely. Your allusion to Wilson was perfect, and such a just homage to a really great man whom all the Cockneyism in the world cannot disparage.

“I am in such damnable pain that I can hardly write a line, but I want you to see the ‘Police’ sketch at once. Can I have a proof, if you like it, early? as perhaps when I am able to move I shall have to get to some of the sulphur springs in Styria at once.

“My enemy is now making a demonstration about my left knee, and, as the newspapers say, La situation est difficile.

“I am not so ill but that I can desire to be remembered to Mrs Blackwood.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Sept., 9, 1871.

“Between gout and indignation I am half mad. Gladstone at Whitby is worse to me than my swelled ankle, and I send you a furious O’D. to show that the Cabinet are only playing out – where they do not parody – the game of the Communists.

“Whether it will be in time to send me a proof I cannot tell, but you will, I know, take care of me. I feel in writing it as though we had been talking the whole thing together, and that I was merely giving a résumé of our gossip.

“Your delightful note and its enclosure have just come. I thank you cordially for both. I have not any recollection of what I said of Scott, but I know what I feel about him, and how proud I am that you like my words. I cannot get my foot to the ground yet, but I am rather in vein for writing, as I always am in gout, only my caligraphy has got added difficulties from the position I am reduced to.

“I am glad Langford likes us here: my daughters took to him immensely, and only were sorry we saw so little of him. If he has really ‘bitten’ you with a curiosity to see Miramar I shall bless the day he came here.

“Tell Mrs Blackwood my cabin will be glad to house her here, and if she will only come I’ll be her courier over the whole of North Italy.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Sept. 10, 1871.

“You are right. There is little point – that is, there is no epigram – in the ‘Trial.’ I wrote it rather to break the monotony of eternal moral-isings than with any other object. If it be pleasant reading I am content, and, I hope, so are you.

“I sent yesterday a hard-hitting O’D. on ‘How Gladstone is doing the Work of the Commune,’ and I send you now, I think, a witty comparison between the remaining troopers and the Whigs. My daughter thinks it the smartest bit of fun I have done since I had the gout last, and all the salt in it comes unquestionably from that source.

“All the names in the ‘Trial’ are authentic. The lady is really the grand-daughter of Hughes Ball (the celebrated Golden Ball); and the man’s assertion of being ‘Times’ correspondent was accepted as an unquestionable fact.

“I have made superhuman efforts to be legible in this ‘O’Dowd’ now, so as to make correction easy. Heaven grant that my ‘Internationals’ be as lucky.

“I am still a cripple, and if irritability be a sign of recovery, my daughter says that my convalescence is approaching.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Oct. 1, 1871.

“I am so eager to save a post and see this in proof, that I have never left my desk for five hours, and only read it to Lord D. (Henry Bulwer), who was delighted with it, before I sent it.

“You have given me a rare fright by printing, as I see, what I said of Scott – at least, any other man than yourself doing so would terrify me, but you are a true friend and a wise critic, and what you have done must be right and safe: I do not remember one word of it. I have written myself back into gout, and must now go to bed. I had a sort of coup yesterday, and D. believed I was off.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Oct. 3,1871.

“I have just seen ‘Maga,’ and I am ashamed at the prominence you have given my few words about Scott.

“What a close connection a man’s ankles have with his intellect. I don’t know, but I can swear to it, that since I have become tender about the feet I have grown to feel very insecure about the thinking department, and the row in the cellar is re-echoed in the garret.

“Every fresh speech of Gladstone gives me a fresh seizure, and his last ‘bunkum’ at Aberdeen has cost me a pint of colchicum.

“I have an O’D. in my head on the ‘Cobden Campaign,’ but I suppose it is safer to leave it there. You know what the tenor replied when some one said from the pit, ‘Monsieur, vous chantez fau.’ ‘Je le sais, Monsieur, mais je ne veux pas qu’on me le dise.’

“Give my warmest regards to Mrs Blackwood. I wish with all my heart, gout nonobstant, I was to dine with you to-day.”

To Mr John Blackwood.