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

“In my haste of correction in T. B. I believe I left ‘Castel d’Uovo’ ‘Castel Ovo’; now it should be the former– pray look to it. God help me! but if I live a little longer I shall find spelling impossible. Till I began to correct the press I never made a mistake; and now I understand what is meant by the tree of knowledge, for when once you begin to see there’s a right and a wrong way to do anything, it’s ‘all up’ with you. In my suspicion that the missing O’Ds. might possibly have come to your hand, I asked you to cancel [the bit] about Pam. Pray do so. It was ill-natured and gouty, though true; and, after all, he is a grand old fellow with all his humbug, and if we do make too much of him the fault is ours, not his.

“I have just got yours, 16th, and my mind is easy about the O’Ds. which never reached me. It will be easier, however, when I know you have squashed all about Pam.

“I am now doubly grieved to have been worrying about your nephew, but I am sincerely glad to know it is no more than a fall. I believe I have not a bone from my head to my heel unmarked by horse accidents, and every man who really rides meets his misadventures. Whenever I hear of a man who never falls, I can tell of one who never knew how to ride.

“Now of all my projects and intentions never bore yourself a minute: the fact is – writing to you pretty much as I talk at home, I have said some of the fifty things that pass through my vagabondising brains, just as I have been for the last twenty years plotting the Grand Book that is to make me.

“But now that you know me better, treat all these as the mere projects of a man whose only dream is hope, and whose case is all the worse that he is a ‘solitary tippler’; and, above all, trust me to do my best – my very best – for ‘Tony,’ which I am disposed to think about the best thing I have done.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Sept. 26,1864.

“Don’t be afraid that I am impatient to close ‘Tony’; if it only ‘suited your book’ I’d go on with him for a twelvemonth. And now tell me, does it make any difference to you if he should go on to the January No.? I mean, does it spoil magazine symmetry that he should appear in a new volume? Not that I opine this will be necessary, only if it should I should like to know.

“You must send me ‘Tony’ in sheets, as you did O’D., to revise and reflect over, and I’ll begin at him at once.

“I knew well what a blow Speke’s death would be to you, and I am truly sorry for the poor fellow.

“I don’t remember one word I write if I don’t see a proof, so I forget what I said about an idea I had of a story. At all events, as Curran said he picked up all his facts from the opposite counsel’s statement, I’ll soon hear what you say, and be able to guess what I said myself.

“I’m gout up to the ears, – flying, dyspeptic, blue-devil gout, – with a knuckle that sings like a tea-kettle and a toe that seems in the red-hot bite of a rabid dog, and all these with – But I swore not to bother you except it be to write to me.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

[Undated.]

“I am up to my neck in Tony, – dress him, dine with him, and yesterday went to his happy marriage with (this for Mrs Blackwood and yourself) Dolly Stuart, he having got over his absurd passion, and found out (what every man doesn’t) the girl he ought to marry.

“I am doing my best to make the wind-up good. Heaven grant that my gout do not mar my best intentions!

“This informal change of capital has raised my rent! More of Cavour’s persecution. I told you that man will be my ruin.

“Whenever you have time write to me. There are such masses of things you are to answer you will forget one-half if you don’t make a clearance.

“I am very sulky about the coldness the public have shown O’D. in its vol. form. Why, confound them! – But I won’t say what is on my lips.”

To Mr William Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Oct. 4, 1864.

“Your own fault if you have to say ‘Damn his familiarity’; but if you won’t return it you can at least say ‘Damn O’Dowd.’

“Your cheque came all safe this morning. I wish I had not to add that it was a dissolving view that rapidly disappeared in my cook’s breeches-pocket.

“I suppose my gout must be on the decline from the very mild character of the ‘O’Dowd’ I now send you. Tell your uncle if he won’t write to me about my forty-one projects, I’ll make an O’D. on Golf-players, and God help him!

“I hope I shall meet you one of these days. I am as horsey as yourself, and would a devilish deal sooner be astride of the pigskin than sitting here inditing O’Dowderies.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Oct. 14,1864.

“I return O’D. corrected. You are right, and I expunged the paragraph you mention, and changed the expression of the joke – a d – d bad one – against the Yankees; but I wanted the illustration, and couldn’t miss it.

“I shall carry on ‘Tony’ to January, and will want the chapter you sent me now to open December No. So much for the past. Now for what I have some scruples to inflict on you, but I can’t help it. I want, if it suits you, to take the O’D., – that is, the present vol., and that which is ready, say, in January or February, – and give me anything you think it worth for my share of it, for I am greatly hampered just now. My poor boy left a number of debts (some with brother officers); and though nothing could be more considerate and gentleman-like than their treatment of me, and the considerate way they left me to my own time to pay, pay I must. What I am to receive for ‘Tony’ will have to be handed over en masse, and yet only meet less than half what I owe. Now, my dear Blackwood, do not mistake me, and do not, I entreat, read me wrong: I don’t want you to do anything by me through any sense of your sympathy for these troubles, – because if you did so, I could never have the honest feeling of independence that enables me to write to you as I do, and as your friend, – but I want you to understand that if it accords with your plans to take ‘O’Dowd’ altogether to yourself, it would much help me; and if for the future you would so accept it, giving me anything you deem the whole worth, all the better for me. By this means I could get rid of some of my cares: there are heavier ones behind, but these I must bear how I may.

“I have been frank with you in all, and you will be the same with me.

“You are right, the present day is better for novels than the past – at least, present-day readers say so. If you like I will get up a story to begin in April, ‘The New Charter,’ but I won’t think of it till I have done ‘Tony,’ which I own to you I like better on re-reading than I thought I should. Do you?

“Nothing is truer than what you say about my over-rapid writing. In the O’Ds. they are all the better for it, because I could talk them a hundred times better than I could write them; but where constructiveness comes in, it is very different.”

To Dr Burbidge.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Oct. 21,1864.

“Though I have only been detained here by my wife’s illness, and should have been at Spezzia ere this, it was so far well that I was here to meet a perfect rush of friends and acquaintances who have come. Hudson, Perry from Venice, Delane, Pigott, D. Wolff, all here, and a host more, and as my wife is again up, we have them at various times and seasons, and a big dinner of them to-morrow.

“Renfrew of ‘The D. News’ tells me that O’D. was a great London success, and that the literary people like it and praised it, – evidence, thought I, that they’re not afraid of its author. He adds that I am not generally believed to have written it.

“I have not been up to work the last two days, and a remnant of a cold still keeps me ‘a-sneezin’.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Oct. 23.

“Your generous treatment of me relieves me of one great anxiety and gives me another – that I may not prove to you as good a bargain as I meant to be; but whatever comes of it, I’ll take care you shall not lose by me.

“I thank you heartily; and for the kind terms of your note even more than for the material aid. From the days of my schoolboy life I never did anything well but under kind treatment, and yours has given me a spring and a courage that really I did not know were left in me.

“I hope vol. (or rather ‘book’) ii. of ‘O’Dowd’ will be better than the first. Some of the bits are, I know, better; but in any case, if it should fall short of what I hope, you shall not be the sufferer.

“I am glad that you kept back the ‘S. Congresses.’ I send you herewith one on the ‘Parson Sore Throat,’ and I think you will like it. I think I have done it safely; they are ‘kittle cattle,’ but I have treated them gingerly.

“I could swear you will agree with me in all I say of the ‘Hybrids,’ and I think I see you, as you read it, join in with me in opinion.

“I am turning over an O’D. about Banting (but I want his book – could you send it to me?), and one on the Postal Stamp mania, and these would probably be variety enough for December No., – ‘S. Congresses,’ ‘Conservatives,’ ‘Parsonitis,’ &c.

“My wife continues still so ill that, though I am wanted at Spezzia, I cannot go down. I hope, however, that to-morrow or next day she may be well enough to let me leave without anxiety.

“Perry, a consul-general at Venice, has just promised me a photo of Flynn, taken by the Austrian authorities during his imprisonment at Verona. I’ll send it to you when it comes.

“Did you ever see the notice of O’D. in ‘The Daily News’? It was most handsome, and the D. U. M. was also good. All the London papers have now reviewed it but ‘The Times,’ and the stranger [this], as Lucas, is very well affected towards me.

“Once again, and from my heart, I thank you for responding so generously to my request.”

To Dr Burbidge.