“So now it seems there is not one ‘Labouchere’ O’D. but two ‘Labouchere’ O’Ds., and I see nothing better to do than take your choice. I believe the last the best.
“As the Government are good Christians, and chasten those they love, they have made Hannay a consul! Less vindictive countries give four or five years’ hard labour and have an end of it; but there is a rare malice in sending some poor devil of a literary man who loves the Garrick, and lobster salad, and small whist, and small flattery, to eke out existence in a dreary Continental town, without society or sympathy, playing patron all the while and saying, ‘We are not neglecting our men of letters.’ I’d rather be a dog and bark at the door of the Wyndham or the Alfred than spend this weariful life of exile I am sentenced to.
“I hope you’ll like Bob Considine’s story, and let it be a warning and a lesson to you how you worry your wife when you have one, and how unsuspectingly a husband should walk all the days of his life. I don’t think the world sees it yet, but I am a great moralist, terribly undervalued and much misunderstood.
“Kinglake is admirable; he has but one fault, – and perhaps it would be none to less impatient men than myself, – he does not get on fast enough. It is splendidly written, and with a rare courage too.
“What a fuss you are all making over Abyssinia I Hech, sirs, but ye are gratefu’ for sma’ mercies! I wish to Heaven the press would moderate its raptures, or we’ll get a rare set down from the foreign journals.
“Did I tell you that there is a great rifle-match, open to all nations (even Scotch and Irish), at Vienna this month? There’s another reason for coming out. You could make your bull’s-eye on your way to me. You had better accede, or you may read of yourself as ‘The man who wouldn’t come when he was axed.’”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, August 16, 1868.
“I am worn out with fatigue and anxiety: for five nights I have not been to bed. My poor wife is again dangerously ill, and as yet no sign of any favourable kind has appeared. God help me in this great trouble!
“I wanted to see those things in print, but it is late now to correct them. I believe I wrote ‘Mincio’ in the ‘La Marmora’ paper when it should be ‘Oglio.’ Look to this for me.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Aug. 18, 1868
“You will, I know, be glad to hear my wife has had a favourable change. One of the doctors of the fleet has been fortunate enough to hit on a lucky treatment, and the admiral most kindly allows him to remain behind and continue the treatment. The fleet sails to-day.
“I send you a few lines which, I believe, would be well liked and opportune: they are true, at all events.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Sept. 3, 1868.
“I thank you heartily for your kind words about my wife. Thank God, she is now improving daily, and my anxiety has at last got some peace.
“I was greatly pressed to join Lord Clarence Paget down amongst the islands of Dalmatia, and nothing but my anxiety for my wife prevented me. It would have been a rare opportunity to pick up much odd material, and a pleasant ramble besides. Sir H. Holland has spent a few days with me, and wished me much to join his tour, – and his companionship would have been delightful, – but I was obliged to refuse. It is weeks since I wrote anything but a few passing lines, and I have not yet come round to the pleasant feeling that in settling down to my work I have got back to a little world where no cares can come in save those necessary to my hero and heroine. But I hope this will come yet.
“I’d have waited to send you another O’D. or two, but I wanted to thank you for your hearty note, and acknowledge its enclosure. Just as a little money goes far with a poor man, a few words of sympathy are marvellous sweetness in the cup of a lonely hermit like myself, for you have no idea of the dreary desolation of this place as regards one who does not sweat guineas nor has any to sweat. The Party, I fear, will go out before I can, and for all I see I shall die here; and certainly if they’re not pleasanter company after death than before it, the cemetery will be poor fun with Triestono.
“I don’t think Trollope pleasant, though he has a certain hard common-sense about him and coarse shrewdness that prevents him being dull or tiresome. His books are not of a high order, but still I am always surprised that he could write them. He is a good fellow, I believe, au fond, and has few jealousies and no rancours; and for a writer, is not that saying much?
“What I feel about Kinglake’s book is this. The great problem to be solved is, first, Was Sebastopol assailable by the north side? Second, Were the French really desirous of a short war? I suspect K. knows far more than, with all his courage, he could say on the score of our Allies’ loyalty; and any one who has not access to particular sources of knowledge would be totally unable to be his reviewer, for in reality the critic ought, though not able to write the book he reviews, to be in possession of such acquaintance with the subject as to be in a position to say what other versions the facts recorded would bear, and to weigh the evidence for and against the author’s. Another difficulty remains: what a bathos would it be – the original matter of almost any writer – among or after the extracted bits of the book itself. Kinglake’s style is, with all its glitter, so intensely powerful, and his descriptive parts so perfectly picture-like, that the reviewer must needs take the humble part of the guide and limit himself to directing attention to the beauties in view, and make himself as little seen or felt as need be. Not that this would deter me, for I like the man much, and think great things of his book; but I feel I am not in a position to do him the justice his grand book deserves. If I were a week with you in Scotland, and sufficiently able to withdraw from the pleasures of your house, I believe I could do the review; but you see my bonds, and know how I am tied.
“You will see by the divided sheet of this note that I started with the good intention of brevity; but this habit of writing by the sheet, I suppose, has corrupted me, and perhaps I’ll not be able now to make my will without ‘padding.’
“I have the Bishop of Gibraltar on a visit with me: about the most brilliant talker I ever met.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Sept. 14, 1868.
“I send you a very spicy bit of wickedness on the Whig-Radicals – but, for the love of the Virgin, let the proof be carefully looked to! I am as uncertain about the errors of the press as I am about my personal shortcomings; but I rely on your reader with the faith of a drowning man on a lifebuoy.
“My wife is a shade better, but my anxiety is great, and I (who habitually sleep eighteen hours out of twenty-four) have not had a night’s rest for ten days.
“We are suffering greatly here from drought. No rain has fallen for three months, and my well is as completely drained as my account at my bankers, or anything else you can fancy of utter exhaustion.
“Who writes ‘M. Aurelia’? He or she certainly knows nothing of Italian nature or temperament. Not but that the story opens well and is cleverly written, but I demur to the Italian. I know the rascals well; but, like short whist, it cost me twenty years and some tin to do it. Keep my opinion, however, to yourself, for I hate to disparage a contemporary, and indeed this slipped out of me because my daughter has been talking to me of the story while I write.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Sept. 16, 1868.
“I have just had a round of clerical visitors, beginning with the Bishop of Gibraltar and ending with the Dean of Exeter. Very pleasant talking and humorous men, and only agreeably dashed with the priest element, which is sufficiently feminine to temper down the rougher natures of lay humanities.
“I’d like much to be with you and Story. There is a mine of the pleasantest sort of stuff in him. Pray commend me to him heartily.
“I am sentenced, however, to pass my life with Greeks, Jews, and Ethiopians and people below Jordan, – and I don’t take to it, that’s a fact! I hear that Gladstone will give up Disendowment and be satisfied with Disestablishment, – not because he wants to let the Church down easier, but that he neither knows how to rob nor what to do with the booty.
“If they only come to a long fight over the question, it will end by Dizzy dealing with the parsons as he did with the franchise. He’d bowl over Gladstone first and then carry the whole question, and not leave a curate nor even a grave-digger of the Establishment.
“I must positively manage a run over to town in spring – and Ireland too. This is essential.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Oct. 5, 1868.
“I thank you heartily for the note and the enclosure: both were very welcome to me. Old as I am, I still need tin and tenderness.
“I have done a few lines, as you suggested, on Walewsky, whom I knew well. He was a good fellow, but with immense vanity and overruling self-conceit.
“I have determined to go to Ireland in the beginning of the year, and seek out in a part of Donegal not known to me nor, I believe, many others, the locale of a new story. I want to do something with a strong local colour, and feel that I must freshen myself up for the effort. My poor wife gains very slowly, but I hope and trust she may be well enough to let me leave her by February.
“If you saw my surroundings here – my Jews and Greeks and Armenians, and, worse than these, my Christian friends! – you would really credit me with resources that I honestly own I never believed in. How I do anything amongst them puzzles me.
“It is a good thought about the Election addresses. I’ll think over it.
“Who wrote ‘Aurelia,’ and how long will it run?”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Oct. 17, 1868.
“Of course I only spoke of O’Dowding Trollope in jest. I never had the slightest idea of attacking a friend, and a good fellow to boot. I thought, and shall think it great presumption for him to stand in any rivalry with Lord Stanley, who, though immensely over-rated, is still far and away above we poor devils in action, though we can caper and kick like the devil.
“I have just this moment arrived at home from a short tour in Dalmatia, where I amused myself much, and would have liked to have stayed longer and seen more. I send you the proofs at once, but, as usual, begging you will have them closely looked to by an ‘older and a better soldier.’
“I suppose I must set to work now at my yearly consular return, for up to this the Government have never seen my handwriting save in an appeal for my pay!
“I hope I may live to shake hands with you all in spring.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Oct. 19, 1868.
“I am so glad to get your long and pleasant letter that I return your fire at once. First of all for explanations. I never seriously thought of O’Dowding Trollope – he is far too good a fellow; and, besides, he is one of us – I mean scripturally, for in politics he is a vile unbeliever.
“You will be glad to hear that our notice of the sailors in the last O’D. was received with ‘Cheers for Blackwood’ in the wardroom of the fleet – and by Jack himself, who read it. Lord Clarence wrote to me from Naples saying he was never more gratified in his life, and that the great effect of it on his men is beyond belief.
“I have just come back from a short ramble in Dalmatia with my youngest daughter. It was very pleasant, and we enjoyed ourselves much and saw a good deal. She desires me to send you her best regards for your kind message. I have my doubts if she will not one day figure in ‘Maga.’ She has just played me a clever trick. She reviewed ‘The Bramleighs,’ sent it to an Irish paper, the ‘D. E. Mail.’ without my knowledge, and cut me up for her own amusement. I never guessed the authorship when I read it.
“I assure you that I live in the mere hope of a visit to you. I want to see Scotland, and with you.
“Things are going precious badly here. Beust has gone too fast, and the privileges accorded to the Hungarians here stimulated the other nationalities to a like importunity.
“I think Austria will fall to pieces. It is like the Chinese plum-pudding where they forgot to tie the bag. Spain has deferred the war. No one can venture to fight till he sees how the ‘Reds’ mean to behave.
“We had Farragut here, and I dined him and fêted his officers to the best of my wits. I am convinced it is our best and honestest policy to treat Yankees with [? cordiality]. Their soreness towards us was not causeless, and we had really not been as generous towards them as we were towards other foreigners. I have openly recanted my opinion of them, and I am proud to say that the first suggestion of paying off the Alabama claim was an O’Dowd. I wish these d – d Tories, before they go out for ever (as it will be), would give me something near or in England. This banishment is scarcely fair.
“I got such a nice note from Kinglake in return for a dedication of the book to him. I only wish I could acknowledge it by the way that would please me best, by telling the world what I think her great book is.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Oct 30, 1868
“Lord Sheffield was here and spent a day with me, and, strange to say, he does not take a glowing view of the Party. He distrusts Dizzy, as all old Tories do; but, in the name of Heaven, what else have we?
“When Mdlle. Laffarges’ sentence was pronounced avec ses circonstances atténuantes, Alphonse Karr said it was because she mixed gum always with the arsenic; and may not this be the Disraeli secret? At least, he’d give us gum if he could, and when he can’t, he saves torture by administering his poison in strong doses. When the Russian traveller cut up his child and flung him piecemeal to the wolves, he forgot what a zest he imparted to pursuit by the mere thought that there was always something coming. Don’t you think Pat and the wolf have some resemblance? At least, it will be as hard to persuade that there is no more ‘baby’ to be eaten.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Nov. 17, 1868.
“Have you seen Labouchere’s row with his colleague? What a talent he has for shindies! I got a letter from him a few days ago, and he is quite pleased with the O’D. upon him. There is no accounting for tastes, but most men would have thought it the reverse of complimentary.
“We are threatened with the passage of the Prince of Wales through the place. God grant it be only a threat! If there’s anything I abhor, it’s playing flunkey in a cocked hat and a policeman’s uniform.
“I think our O’Ds. this month will make a noise, – some of them, at least.
“Strange climate this: the roses are coming out first and the oleanders are again blossoming, and all the mountains of Styria around us are covered with snow.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Wednesday, Dec. 1868.
“I have been very ill – so ill that I thought these few lines of notice of my old schoolfellow should have been my last. I hope you will think I have done him well. I am getting round again – that is, if this ‘runaway knock’ should not be repeated; but Death has occasionally the postman’s trick of knocking at several doors together when he is pressed for time, and I believe he is busy with a neighbour of mine this moment. But this is a grim theme, and let us quit it.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Dec. 17,1868.
“I get up out of my bed to write to you. I have been – still am – very ill, and not well sure if I am to rub through. My sufferings have been great, and I have had nights of torture I cannot bear to think of.
“I hope Bradlaugh will not give you any trouble, but I feel sure I said nothing that could be called libellous. Would it be reparation to say that, after seeing the published list of the new Government, I beg to assure Mr B. that there is no reason whatever he might not figure amongst them?
“It is great aggravation to dying to feel that I must be buried here. I never hated a place or people so much, and it is a hard measure to lay me down amongst them where I have no chance of getting away till that grand new deal of the pack before distributing the stakes.
“I wish I could write one more O’D. – ‘the last O’Dowd.’ I have a number of little valueless legacies to leave the world, and could put them into codicil form and direct their destination. My ink is as sluggish as my blood, indeed it has been my blood for many a day, and I must wind up. I don’t think I have strength to go over the longer proof: perhaps you would kindly do it for me.
“The cheque came all right, but I was not able to thank you at the time. Give my love to Mrs Blackwood, and say that it was always fleeting across me, in moments of relief, I was to meet you both again and be very jolly and light-hearted. Who knows! I have moments still that seem to promise a rally; but there must be a long spell of absence from pain and anxiety – not so easy things to accomplish.
“I’ll write to you very soon again if strong enough.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, the day before Xmas 1868
“I promised to report if I was alive, and I do so, though, without any captiousness or Gladstonianism, the matter of my vitality might be well open to contention.
“I am barely able to move from a sofa to a chair, very weak, intensely nervous, and not at all reconciled to the fast-and-loose way death is treating me. Though there is every reason why I ought not to wish to go just now, I will put a bold face on it and say Ecco mi pronto! But the grinning humbug sends away the coach with orders to come back to-morrow at the same hour.
“I hope you have heard no more of Bradlaugh. I’d not like to carry any memory of him with me, which I might if he were annoying you. What a beast I am to obtrude my sadness against the blaze of your Xmas fire! I thought, however, you would like to hear I was yet here, – though to what end or for what use, if I continue as I now am, is not easy to see. I feel, however, that if I was freely bled and a little longer starved, I’d soon be in the frame of mind I detect in my colleagues of the Consular service here, and that, with a slight dash of paralysis, I should soon be à l’hauteur of my employment in the public service.
“I have resolved to devote my first moment of strength to a despatch to F. O., and if I be only half an imbecile as I believe, I shall crown myself with imperishable laurel.
“It’s a bore for a man – especially an Irishman – to be called away when the rows are beginning! Now next year there will be wigs on the green and no mistake. Besides, I’d like to see Gladstone well away in the deep slough of Disendowment, which I know he’ll fall into. Disestablish he may, but the other will be a complication that nothing but open robbery could deal with.
“Then I’d like to see him lose his temper, and perhaps lose his place.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Dec. 29, 1868.
“Weak as I am, I must thank you for your kind note, which has done me a deal of good. I assure you I never valued kindness more, and I will ask you to say as much for me to your wife, and to thank her sincerely for all her sympathy and good feeling for me.
“I am, I take it, about as well as I shall ever be again, which is not much to boast of, – but I really am past boasting in any sense; and provided I do not die at the top first, like the cabbage palms, I ought to be thankful.
“I wish with all my heart I could be your guest, in such guise as I might hope to be; now I am not worth my salt. I was dreaming away to-day of making an O’Dowd will, and leaving to the public my speculations on many things ere I go.
“We are living amidst wars and alarms here. Greeks and Turks seem eager to be at each other; and if talking and bumptiousness should carry the day, Heaven help the poor Turk!
“I know Hobart well; and why he didn’t sink the Enosis when she fired on him I can’t conceive, all the more as he is always at least half screwed (they must have watered his grog that morning). The Greeks here have subscribed a million of florins (£100,000), and have ordered an armour-plated frigate to be built and launched by the 20th Feb. I don’t know whether all the row will induce the Turks to cede territory, but I’m perfectly certain that it will end by our giving up Gibraltar, though the logic of the proceeding may be a little puzzling at first blush.
“The foreign press is always preaching up neutrality to us in the affairs of Turkey. Good God! can’t they see the man who represents us in Constantinople? Can they wish more from us than the most incapable cretin in the public service?
“Thank your nephew cordially for me for his good wishes for me. Who knows if I may not live to say as much to him one day. I get plucky when I am half an hour out of pain.
“I am in great hopes that my wife’s malady has taken a favourable turn; one gleam of such sunshine would do me more good than all this dosing.
“Forgive my long rambling note; but it was so pleasant to talk to you, I could not give in.”