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

“Trieste, Oct. 17, 1871.

“I know well but for golf and its ‘divartin’ sticks’ I should have had a line from you, but you have no moment to spare correcting O’Ds. amidst your distractions.

“I kept back the proof I now send to hear from you and make any changes or alterations you might suggest, and I have a half-done O’Dowd ‘On Widows’ which I shall keep over for another time. I am sorely done up, – only able to crawl with a stick and a friendly arm, and so weak that the Irishwoman’s simile of a ‘sheet of wet paper’ is my only parallel. Robert Lytton tells me he has got such a pleasant letter from you. He and his wife had been stopping with us here, and we were delighted with them both.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Nov. 1, 1871.

“I was sorry not to see my ‘Home Rule’ in ‘Maga,’ but sorrier still not to hear from you, and I tormented myself thinking – which I ought not – that you were somewhat chagriné with me. I am delighted now to find you are not, and that the only ‘grievance’ between us makes me the plaintiff for your not having printed my O’D. I can forgive this, however, and honestly assure you that I could forgive even worse at your hands. It is the nervous fear that I may be falling into [? senility] as well as gout that makes me tetchy about a rejected paper.

“Henry James got very safely out of my hands. He has no more pretension to play whist with me than I would have to cross-examine a witness before him, and I told him so before I won his sixpenny points.

“I fortunately asked F. O. by telegraph if I should take on the despatches, as the messenger was in quarantine, and they said not. They knew they were Henry Elliott’s, and that the delay could not injure the freshness. He is a great diplomatist, and there is nothing ephemeral in the news he sends home. Drummond Wolff is here with me now and Lord Dalling, and our conversation is more remarkable for wit than propriety.

“While James was here I was too gouty to go out with him, and what the latter Q.C. (queer customer) means by saying I was dog-bitten, I can’t guess. I am now crippled hand and foot, and a perfect curse to myself from irritability.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Nov. 3, 1871.

“If my late discomfiture in your opinion of my last rejected O’Ds. had not taught me that I am not infallible, I should say that the O’D. I now send you is, as regards thought or pith, as good as any of them. I wrote it in a fit of gout. Spasmodic it is, perhaps, but vigorous I hope.

“I have been violently assailed in letters for what I said about ‘touching pitch,’ – but there is nothing that leads me to retract or modify one word I wrote, – some from doctors, well written, but on a wrong issue. You can no more make people modest by Act of Parliament than you can make them grateful or polite in fifty other good things.

“A Mr Crane, West George Street, Glasgow, writes me a very courteous note, and says, ‘I do thank the Editor of “Blackwood” for publishing what you say of Scott,’ and goes on to express his hearty concurrence with it all, and he regrets that it had not been spoken instead of written, &c, &c.

“I do not feel as if I was to get better this time; but I have called wolf so often I shall scream no more. What I feel most, and struggle against most in vain, is depression. I have got to believe not only that my brains are leaving me, but that my friends are tired of me. Of course, I couple the two disasters together, and long to be beyond the reach of remembering either one or the other.

“You read my MS. so easily that if you do not like the O’D. don’t print it – it saves me a disappointment at least; and above all, do not mind any chance irritability I display in writing, for a cry escapes me in my pain, and I often do not hear it myself.

“Now that I write very little and brood a great deal, I sit thinking hours’ long over a very good-for-nothing life, and owning to myself that no man ever did less with his weapon than I have. I say this in no vanity, but sheer shame and self-reproach.

“If I could be with you at times it would rouse And stimulate me greatly, for I think you know – that is, you understand – me better than almost any one, and I always feel the better of your company.

“Bulwer (Lord Dalling) is with me now; but he is a richer man than myself, and though we rally after dinner, we are poor creatures of a morning.

“Your last note did me real good, and I have re-read it three or four times.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Nov. 16, 1871.

“You are right about Bradlaugh, and I have added a few lines to insert in the place marked. I hope I am not libellous, and I believe I have steered safely.

“I am breaking up at last more rapidly, for up to this the planking has been too tough; but I am now bumping heavily, and, please God, must soon go to pieces.

“Your kindness, and your wife’s, are very dear to me. I am constantly thinking of you both. Your last note gave me sincere pleasure.

“Lytton and I talked a great deal of you and drank your health. We often wished you were with us. He is immensely improved – I mean mentally, – and become one of the very best talkers I ever met, and not a shade of any affectation about him. I am convinced he will make a great career yet.

“‘Our Quacks’ is, I think, a better title. Decide yourself.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Dec. 11, 1871.

“I was indeed surprised at the address of your letter, but I should have been more than surprised – overjoyed – had I seen yourself, and I am sorely sorry you did not come on here. Do let it be for another time, and ask Mrs Blackwood to have a craving desire to see Venice and the Titians, and take me as an accident of the road.

“I am getting too ill for work, but not for the pleasure of seeing my friends, and there is nothing does me the same good.

“I see no difficulty in writing to you about Austria, but not as O’Dowd, – gravely, soberly, and, if I could, instructingly. But I must wait for a little health and a little energy, or I should be only steaming with half-boiler power.

“I see little prospect now of getting better, and all I have to do is to scramble along with as much of health as remains to me, and not bore my friends or myself any more on the matter. Sending the divers down to report how thin my iron plating is, is certainly not the way to encourage me to a new voyage.

“Like a kind fellow, send me George Eliot’s new book. There is nothing like her.”

XXII. TRIESTE 1872

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Jan. 31, 1872.

“I am ordered off to Fiume for change of air – the change of scene that is to affect me is somewhat farther. Before I go I send you two O’Ds. that have been under my hands these few weeks back. Whether they be print-worthy or not, you will know and decide; if so, I shall be back to correct and add another by the time a proof could reach me.

“I am in a very creaky condition, and why I hold together at all I don’t understand. Like the Megæra, all the attempts to stop the leak only widens the breach.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Feb. 15, 1872.

“It was an angel from heaven suggested to your wife the thought of a run out here. Only come and I’ll go with you to Japan if you like. There are no two people in the world I should rather see, and though the place is a poor one and I a dull dog, the thought of seeing you here would brighten us both up, as the mere notion has cheered me already.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Trieste, Feb. 26, 1872.

“I send you (and thus early to be in time for next month) a short sketchy story which, as the man said of the Athanasian Creed, is founded on fact, but not the better (I mean the story) for that.

“It has a moral too, or rather several morals, to be distributed according to age and sex, and, in fact, is a ‘righte merrie’ and well conceived tale, as I hope you will tell me.

“I had fully made up my mind to write no more, and to water my grog to enable me to do so, but I now discover that neither of my two daughters like ‘watered grog’ at all, but prefer whatever dietary habit has inured them to. ‘For this reason and for the season’ I am at it once more, though my ink-bottle looks as ruefully at me as the Yankees at Gladstone for backing out of the N. Y. Convention.

“By the way, I hope you have printed my correct version of the Alabama; I know it is the true one, and as I am the only discoverer, I am jealous about my invention.

“I had a grand argument to arraign the Ministry on the Collier job (which no one hit on), but coming at this d – d corner of Europe it was too late, and lost.

“I feel that the day after I am buried here some bright notion will occur to me and make me very uncomfortable in my grave. I have a dress rehearsal of this misery three times a-week, and gout all the time besides.