“I wish I was twenty years younger and I’d make an effort to get into Parliament. Like my friend Corney, my friends always prophesied a success to me in something and somewhere that I have never explored – but so it is.
“Oh! for the books that have never been written,
With all the wise things that nobody has read.
And oh! for the hearts that have never been smitten,
Nor heard the fond things that nobody has said.
“My treasures are, I suspect, safely locked in the same secure obscurity. N’importe! at this moment I’d rather be sure my little girl would have a good night than I’d be Member for Oxford.”
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Villa Morelli, Florence, July 23, 1864.
“It would be unfair amidst all your labours to expect you could read through the volume of ‘Corney O’Dowd’ that Blackwood will have already sent – or a few days more will bring – to you. Still, if you will open it, and here and there look through some of those jottings-down, I know they will recall me to your memory. It is so very natural to me to half-reason over things, that an old friend [? like] yourself will recognise me on every page, and for this reason it is that I would like to imagine you reading it. My great critics declare that I have done nothing so good since the ‘Dodds,’ – and now, enough of the whole theme!
“Here we are in a pretty villa on a south slope of the Apennines, with Florence at our feet and a glorious foreground of all that is richest in Italian foliage between us and the city. It is of all places the most perfect to write in, – beauty of view, quiet, silence, and seclusion all perfect, – but somehow I suppose I have grown a little footsore on the road. I do not write with my old facility. I sit and think – or fancy I think – and find very little is done after [all].
“The dreary thought of time lost and talent misapplied – for I ought never to have taken to the class of writing that I did —will invade, and, instead of plodding steadily along the journey, I am like one who sits down to cry over the map of the country to be traversed.
“I go to Spezzia occasionally – the fast mail now makes it but five hours. The Foreign Office is really most indulgent: they ask nothing of me, and in return I give them exactly what they ask.
“My wife is a little better – that is, she can move about unassisted and has less suffering. Her malady, however, is not checked. The others are well. As for myself, I am in great bodily health, – lazy and indolent, as I always was, and more given to depressions, perhaps, but also more patient under them than I used to be.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, Saturday, July 30.
“Yours has just come. O’D. is very handsome. Confound the public if they won’t like them! Nothing could be neater and prettier than the book. How I long to hear some good tidings of it!
“My daughter had a slight relapse, but is now doing all well and safely.
“I think that the Irish papers – ‘The Dub. E. Mail’ and ‘Express’ – would review us if copies were sent, and perhaps an advertisement.
“I know you’ll let me hear, so I don’t importune you for news.
“Your cheque came all safe; my thanks for it. The intense heat is such now that I can only write late at night, and very little then.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Aug. 3, 1864.
“Unshaven, dishevelled,
I sit all bedevilled;
Your news has upset me, —
It was meet it should fret me.
What! two hundred and fifty!
Is the public so thrifty?
Or are jokes so redundant,
And funds so abundant
That ‘O’Dowd’ cannot find more admirers than this!
I am sure in the City ‘Punch’ is reckoned more witty,
And Cockneys won’t laugh
Save at Lombard Street chaff;
But of gentlemen, surely there can be no stint,
Who would like dinner drolleries dished up in print,
And to read the same nonsense would gladly be able
That they’d laugh at – if heard – o’er the claret at table
The sort of light folly that sensible men
Are never ashamed of – at least now and then.
For even the gravest are not above chaff,
And I know of a bishop that loves a good laugh.
Then why will they deny me,
And why won’t they buy me?
I know that the world is full of cajolery,
And many a dull dog will trade on my drollery,
Though he’ll never be brought to confess it aloud
That the story you laughed at he stole from O’Dowd;
But the truth is, I feel if my book is unsold,
That my fun, like myself, it must be – has grown old.
And though the confession may come with a damn,
I must own it —non sum qualis eram.
“I got a droll characteristic note from the Duke of Wellington and a cordial hearty one from Sir H. Seymour. I’d like to show you both, but I am out of sorts by this sluggishness in our [circulation]. The worst of it is, I have nobody to blame but myself.
“Send a copy of O’D. to Kinglake with my respects and regards. He is the only man (except C. O’D.) in England who understands Louis Nap.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, Aug. 9, 1864.
“I am just sent for to Spezzia to afford my Lords of the Admiralty a full and true account of all the dock accommodation possible there, which looks like something in ‘the wind’; the whole ‘most secret and confidential.’
“I am sorry to leave home, though my little girl is doing well I have many causes of anxiety, and for the first time in my whole life have begun to pass sleepless nights, being from my birth as sound a sleeper as Sancho Panza himself.
“Of course Wilson was better than anything he ever did – but why wouldn’t he? He was a noble bit of manhood every way; he was my beau idéal of a fine fellow from the days I was a schoolboy. The men who link genius with geniality are the true salt of the earth, but they are marvellously few in number. I don’t bore you, I hope, asking after O’D.; at least you are so forgiving to my importunity that I fancy I am merciful.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, Aug. 11,1864.
“I forgot to tell you that the scene of the collision in the longer O’D. is all invented – there was nothing of it in ‘The Times’ or anywhere else. How right you are about the melodramatic tone in the scene between Maitland and his Mother! It is worse. It is bow-wow! It is Minerva Press and the rest of it, but all that comes of a d – d public. I mean it all comes of novel-writing for a d – d public that like novels, – and novels are – novels.
“I am very gouty to-day, and I have a cross-grained man coming to dinner, and my women (affecting to keep the mother company) won’t dine with me, and I am sore put out.
“Another despatch! I am wanted at Spezzia, – a frigate or a gunboat has just put in there and no consul Captain Short, of the Sneezer perhaps, after destroying Chiavari and the organ-men, put in for instructions. By the way, Yule was dining with Perry, the Consul-General at Venice, the other day, when there came an Austrian official to ask for the Magazine with Flynn’s Life as a pièce de conviction! This would be grand, but it is beaten hollow by another fact. In a French ‘Life of Wellington,’ by a staff officer of distinction, he corrects some misstatements thus, ‘Au contraire, M. Charles O’Malley, raconteur,’ &c. Shall I make a short ‘O’Dowd’ out of the double fiasco? Only think, a two-barrelled blunder that made O’Dowd a witness at law, and Charles O’Malley a military authority!
“When I was a doctor, I remember a Belgian buying ‘Harry Lorrequer’ as a medical book, and thinking that the style was singularly involved and figurative.
“Oh dear, how my knuckle is singing, but not like the brook in Tennyson; it is no ‘pleasant tune.’
“Have you seen in ‘The Dublin E. Mail’ a very civil and cordial review of ‘O’Dowd,’ lengthy and with extracts? What a jolly note I got from the Bishop of Limmerick. He remembers a dinner I gave to himself and O’Sullivan, Archer Butler, and Whiteside, and we sat till 4 o’ the morning! Noctes – Eheu fugaces!
“Please say that some one has ordered ‘O’Dowd’ and liked it, or my gout will go to the stomach.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, Aug. 12, 1864.
“I recant: I don’t think the scene so bad as I did yesterday. I sent it off corrected this night’s post– and try and agree with me. Remember that Maitland’s mother (I don’t know who his father was) was an actress, – why wouldn’t she be a little melodramatic? Don’t you know what the old Irishwoman said to the sentry who threatened to run his bayonet into her? ‘Devil thank you! sure, that’s you’re thrade.’ So Mad. Brancaleoni was only giving a touch of her ‘thrade’ in her Cambyses vein.
“I’m off to Spezzia, and my temper is so bad my family are glad to be rid of me. All the fault of the public, who won’t admire ‘O’Dowd.’”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Aug. 24, 1864.
“My heartiest thanks for the photograph. It is the face of a friend and, entre nous, just now I have need of it, for I am very low and depressed, but I don’t mean to worry you with these things. What a fine fellow your Colonel is! I am right proud that he likes ‘O’Dowd,’ and so too of your friend Smith, because I know if the officers are with me we must have the rank and file later on. I read the ‘Saturday Review’ with the sort of feeling I have now and then left a dull dinner-party, thinking little of myself but still less of the company. Now, I may be stupid, but I’ll be d – d if I’m as bad as that fellow!
“One’s friends of course are no criterion, but I have got very pleasant notices from several, and none condemnatory, but still I shall be sorely provoked if your good opinion of me shall not be borne out by the public. Galileo said ‘Ê pur se muove,’ but the Sacred College outvoted him. God grant that you may not be the only man that doesn’t think me a blockhead!
“I want to be at ‘Tony,’ but I am so very low and dispirited I shall make a mess of whatever I touch, and so it is better to abstain.
“If I could only say of John Wilson one-half that I feel about him. If I could only tell Cockneydom that they never had, and probably never will have, a measure to take the height of so noble a fellow, one whose very manliness lifted him clear and clean above their petty appreciation, just as in his stalwart vigour he was a match for any score of them, and whom they would no more have ventured to scoff at while living than they would have dared to confront foot to foot upon the heather. If I could say, in fact, but a tithe of what his name calls up within me, I could write a paper on the Noctes, but the theme would run away with me. Wilson was the only hero of my boy days, and I never displaced him from the pedestal since. By Jove! ‘Ebony’ had giants in those days. Do you know that no praise of O’D. had the same flattery for me as comparing it with the papers by Maginn long ago. So you see I am ending my days under the flag that fascinated my first ambition: my grief is, my dear Blackwood, that you have not had the first of the liquor and not the lees of the cask.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Florence, Sept. 6, 1864.
“I have just had your letter and enclosure, – many thanks for both. I hope you may like the O’D. I sent you for next month. Don’t be afraid of my breaking down as to time, though I may as to merit. You may always rely on my punctuality – and I am vain of it, as the only orderly quality in my whole nature…
“I am very anxious about ‘Tony,’ I want to make a good book of it, and my very anxiety may mar my intentions. Tell me another thing: When ‘Tony’ appears in three vols., should it come out without name, or a nom de plume, – which is better?
“Why does not ‘The Times’ notice O’D.? They are talking of all the tiresome books in the world, – why not mine?
“I have often thought a pleasant series of papers might be made of the great Irish Viceroys, beginning at John D. of Ormond, Chesterfield, D. Portland, &c., with characteristic sketches of society at their several periods. Think of a tableau with Swift, Addison, &c, at Templeton’s levée!
“The thought of this, and a new cookery-book showing when each thing ought to be eaten, and making a sort of gastronomic tour, have been addling my head the last three nights. But now I sit down steadily to ‘Tony,’ and ‘God give me a good deliverance.’”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, Sept. 8.
“I am in such a hang-dog humour that I must write you.
“I suspect Anster has got his CD., but his damnable writing has misled me. What I thought was a complaint for its non-arrival was, I imagine, a praise of its contents.
“I send you the rest of ‘Tony’ for October: God grant it be better than I think it is. But if you only saw me you’d wonder that I could even do the bad things I send you.
“Tell me, are you sick of the cant of people who uphold servants and talk of them as an ‘interesting class’? I think them the greatest rascals breathing, and would rather build a jail for them than a refuge. I want to O’Dowd them; shall I?
“Gout is overcoming me completely! Isn’t it too hard to realise both Dives and Lazarus in oneself at once?”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Sept. 19.
“I send you the last chap, for the November ‘Tony,’ and I want all your most critical comment on the Envoy, because, as the book draws to the end, I desire to avoid the crying sin of all my stories, a huddled-up conclusion. Be sure you tell me all my shortcomings, for even if I cannot amend them I’ll bear in mind the impression they must create, and, so far as I can, deprecate my reader’s wrath. You have not answered me as to the advisability of a name or no name, – a matter of little moment, but I’d like your counsel on it. My notion is this. If ‘Tony’ be likely to have success as a novel when published entire, a name might be useful for future publication, and as to that, I mean futurity, what would you say to a Stuart story, taking the last days of Charles Edward in Florence, and bringing in the great reforming Grand Duke, Pietro-Leopoldo and Horace Mann, &c.?3
“I have been mooning over this for the last week. The fact is, when I draw towards the close of a story I can’t help hammering at another: like the alderman who said, ‘I am always, during the second course, imagining what will come with the woodcocks.’ Mind above all that no thought of me personally is to interfere with other Magazine arrangements, for it is merely as the outpouring of a confession that I speak now of a story, and if you don’t want me, or don’t want so much of me, you will say so.
“As I told you once before, I believe I am, or rather was – for there is very little ‘am’ left – better at other things than story-writing, and certainly I like any other pen labour more. But this shall be as you determine…
“Give me some hints as to the grievances of the ‘Limited Liability Schemes.’ What are the weak points? Brief me!
“I have a notion that a course of O’Dowd lectures on Men and Women would be a success, orally given. What think you?”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Sept. 20.
“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.
“Tuesday, [? Oct.] 23, 1864.
“I had believed I was to be at Spezzia before this, but my wife still continues in a very precarious way, and I was afraid to leave her.
“I am, besides, hard at work closing ‘Tony,’ and getting another vol. of ‘O’Dowd’ ready for 1st of January. I have worked very steadily and, for me, most industriously the entire month, but my evenings are always lost, as people are now passing through to Rome.
“Hudson has taken a house near Florence, and Labouchere come back, so that some talkers there are at least.
“I mean to run down so soon as I finish cor-rectings, &c., at eight or ten days at furthest.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Oct. 27,1864.
“How strange a hit you made when you said, ‘I knew L. N. as well as if we had drunk together.’ I was a fellow-student with him at Göttingen in 1830,* and lived in great intimacy with him. There was a Scotchman there at the same time named Dickson, a great botanist, who has, I believe, since settled in London as a practising physician in Bryanstone Square. L. Nap. went by the name of Ct. Fattorini. He never would know Dickson, and used to leave me whenever D. came in. It was not for two years after that I learned he was ‘the Bonaparte.’ Our set consisted of L. N., Adolph V. Decken (who afterwards married the sister of the Duchess of C – , who now lives in Hanover), Beuliady the Home Minister, and Ct. Bray the Bavarian Envoy at Vienna; I, the penny-a-liner, being the complement of the party. I have had very strange companionships and strange turns in life, and when I have worked out my O’Dowd vein I’ll give you an autobiography.
* The date is incorrect. Lever’s Göttingen period was 1828.
“I now send you a political O’D. on L. N., not over civil; but I detest the man, and I suspect I know him and read him aright. Banting I did without waiting for his book; but if it comes I will perhaps squeeze something out of it.
“I am crippled with gout, and can scarcely hold a pen. The bit on doctors is simply padding, and don’t put it in if you don’t like; but the No. for December will, I think, be a strong one.
“Sir Jas. Hudson is with me, but I am too low even for his glorious companionship – and he has no equal. Wolff is here, and all to stay for the winter.
“What do you think of my advertising O’D. at the end of the Banting paper? Does it not remind you of the epitaph to the French hosier, where, after the enumeration of his virtues as husband and father, the widow announces that she ‘continues the business at the old estab., Rue Neuve des Petits Champs,’ &c. &c.?”
To Dr Burbidge.
“Florence, Nov. 3, 1864.
“Bulwer the Great has stayed here, and will not leave till to-morrow, and if you see Rice, will you please to tell him so. I am so primed that I think I could write a great paper on the present state and future prospects of Turkey.
“He has been very agreeable, and with all his affectations – legion that they are – very amusing.
“Layard I don’t like at all; he is the complete stamp to represent a (metropolitan) constituency – overbearing, loud, self-opinionated, and half-informed, if so much. Bulwer appeared to great advantage in his company.
“In my desire to see how far you were just or unjust to Georgina, I set to work to read over again the scenes she occurs in, and went from end to end of ‘Tony Butler,’ and at last came in despair to ask Julia to find her out for me! So much for the gift of constructiveness, and that power of concentration without which, Sir E. B. Lytton says, there is no success in fiction-writing.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Nov. 6, 1864.
“I have just received your cheques, and thank you much for your promptitude. You certainly ‘know my necessities before I ask.’
“I cannot tell you the pleasure, the complete relief, it is to me to deal with a gentleman; and the cordial tone of our relations has done more for me than I thought anything now could, to rally and cheer me.
“I have been so long swimming with a stone round my neck, that I almost begin to wish I could go down and have it all over. You have rallied me out of this, and I frankly tell you it’s your hearty God-speed has enabled me to make this last effort.
“Aytoun’s ‘Banting’ is admirable. Mine is poor stuff after it: indeed, I’d not have done it if I’d thought he had it in hand. In one or two points we hit the same blot, but his blow is stronger and better than mine. Don’t print me, therefore, if you don’t like.
“Before this you will have received L. B., and I hope to hear from you about it. The address of this will show that my poor wife is no better, and that I cannot leave her.
“Gregory, the M.P. for Galway, is here, and it was meeting him suggested my hit at the lukewarm Conservatives. We fight every evening about politics. I wish to Heaven I could have the floor of the House to do it on, and no heavier adversary to engage…
“Henry Wolff is here full of great financial schemes, – director of Heaven knows what railroads, and secretary to an infinity of companies. He dined with me yesterday, and I’m sure I’d O’Dowd him. He means to pass the winter here. He pressed me hard about ‘Tony,’ and I lied like an envoy extracting a denial.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Nov. 9, 1864
“All the railroads are smashed, and Spezzia is now, I understand, on an island, where I certainly shall not go to look for it. Here I am, therefore, till the floods subside.
“I knew you would like the O’Ds. I believe they are the best of the batch, but don’t be afraid for ‘Tony.’ I have a fit of the gout on me that exactly keeps me up to the O’D. level; and I have one in my head for Father Ignatius that, if I only can write as I see it, will certainly hit. If Skeff is not brave it is no fault of mine. Why the devil did Wolff come and sit for his picture when I was just finishing the portrait from memory?