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

To Dr Burbidge.

“Casa Capponi, Florence, March 30, 1864.

“I was sorry to find last night that my proofs had not reached you, and as I want your opinion greatly, I send you mine, which I have not looked over yet.

“If it had not been for this detestable weather (and I can fancy how Spezzia looks in it, for even Florence is dismal) I’d have gone down to-day, for my wife has been a shade better since Sunday, and I want to have a good conscience and be assured that I cannot possibly find a house at Spezzia before I close for a little nook of a villa here – a small crib enough, but, like everything else, very dear.

“I have my misgivings, my more than misgivings, about the Derbys coming in. It is evident Lord D. does not wish power, and he is rather impatient at the hungry eagerness of poorer men, and so I suspect my own chances, if not to be tried now, will not be likely to survive for another occasion. I therefore resign myself, as people call what they cannot do more than grumble over, and ‘make my book’ to scribble on for a subsistence to the end.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, April 6, 1864.

“Here I am visiting the authorities and being visited by them, playing off – and quite seriously too – the farce that we are all dignitaries, and of essential consequence to the States we severally serve. ‘How we apples swim!’ My only consolation is that there is no public to laugh at us – all the company are on the stage.

“I mean to get back to Florence by the end of the week. You shall have an instalment of T. B. immediately.

“If Lord D. gets his congress for Denmark it will be hard to dislodge the Government – the more with a two-million-and-a-half surplus. In fact, a good harvest is the Providence of the Whigs, and they are invariably pulled out of their scrapes by sheer luck. At the same time, if Lord Derby comes in, where could he find a Foreign Minister?”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, April 6, 1864

“The post has just brought me O’D. on ‘Whist,’ but no proof of ‘The Woman in Diplomacy.’ Perhaps I blundered and never sent it, or perhaps you got but did not like it. At all events, I return the ‘Whist’ by this post corrected. If there had been time I’d have dashed off an O’D. on French Justice in Criminal Cases, apropos to that late infamy of M. Pellier, but I fancied you had got enough of O’D. for this coming month, and probably you are of the same mind.

“I have done my consulars here – that is, I have called on the authorities and had them all to dinner, the bishop included; and we have fraternised very cordially and drank all manner of violent deaths to Mazzini, and to-morrow I go back into the obscurity of private life, and forget if I can that I have been a great man. Wasn’t it a Glasgow dignitary who resented being called a man on a trial, and exclaimed, ‘I’m not a man, I’m a bailie’?

“I see by ‘The Telegraph’ that Lord Clarendon has joined the Government and Stansfield left. There is a twofold game in that, for I don’t despair of seeing them beaten if the Queen does not put pressure on Lord Derby, for there is a sentiment in his class that, with regard to the Crown, rises above all party considerations, and represents that old feudal feeling by which nobles stood round the monarchy at any personal loss or peril.

“That letter to ‘The Times’ about the Italian Government seizing Garibaldi’s balance at his banker’s is all rot. The Government simply sequestrated a revolutionary fund subscribed by revolutionists for public disturbance, and openly, flagrantly so done. Why will patriots never be truthful?”

To Dr Burbidge.

“Casa Capponi, Thursday, 10, 1864.

“These questionable publishers who say, ‘Buy my share and I’ll give you a book,’ represent the contract by which Sanders obtained Marola. That is, he bought the shares – viz., the house, and they gave him the book, meaning the ‘Arsenal.’ All fair and right so far! But nobody ever supposed that the share was connected with the book, had a market value, or was worth more to a purchaser than its price as a share. Now the opposite is precisely the mistake Sanders has fallen into. The rent of Marola represents in pounds the eagerness of M. Bolla to sign a certain agreement, but I have no such eagerness; for me no docks are digged, no mud excavated, no roads cut up and trees cut down; I have no interest in all the filth, dirt, drunkenness, or small assassinations introduced into a once lonely spot; I neither derive ten per cent profits or sixty per cent frauds. I have no part in the honest gains of Sanders or in the wholesale robberies of Bolla, – I merely want a house at the price of a house. Hence to pay £60 to £70 for a two-floor villa, furnished! – three chairs and the bath, – is certes too dear, not to add the Mackie difficulty. I have nothing definitely about my villa here, nor need I for some days.

“Is the wretched little toy-house under the Cappucines still unlet? and if so, what rent does M. Torri expect for it? – for, though he has no straw, he has more than the equivalent in the pestilent rascality of a true Spezzino.

“I hear from ‘The Morning Post’ people that Pam has at length got the Emperor’s consent to be warlike. A la remarque de la France is a tune we know better nowadays than ‘Rule Britannia.’ The story goes: he, L. N., is to have the freyen deutschen Rhein, and we are to be permitted to fill up again M. Lessep’s canal at Suez —suum caique.

“Who is to say l’Alliance brings no gain? One clears a river, t’other fills a drain.

“It is absurd to revile – as ‘The Times’ does – the Derbys for not announcing a policy. It is only a wise precaution in a bather who has once been robbed to hide his clothes when he next goes for a swim. This is all Dizzy is doing.

“I am now in a rare mess about ‘Luttrell,’ and cannot write a word.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, April 7, 1864.

“I now send you the June ‘Tony,’ anxious to hear that you are satisfied. If I bore you by my insistence in this way, my excuse is that just as a sharp-flavoured wine turns quickest to vinegar, all the once lightness of heart I had has now grown to a species of irritable anxiety. Of course it is the dread a man feels of growing old lest he become more feeble than he even suspects, and I confess to you that I can put up with my shaky knees and swelled ankles better than I can with my shortcomings in brain matters. At all events, I am doing as well as I can, and quite ready to be taught to do better.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Casa Capponi, Florence, April 11, 1864.

“Only think of finding in ‘The Galignani’ yesterday this paragraph about Flynn. I send it to you, leaving it entirely to your choice to insert in next O’D. It has this merit, that it will serve to show O’D. is not all imaginary, but that it deals with real rogues as well as with men in buckram suits.

“I have got an ‘O’Dowd’ in my head that I think will amuse you if I can write it as it struck me, – a thing that does not always happen, I am sorry to say.

“The Italians were at first very savage about all your Garibaldian enthusiasm. Now, however, with true Italian subtlety they affect to take it as a national compliment. This is clever.”

From Mr John Blackwood.

“Edinburgh, April 5, 1864.

“In walking home together yesterday afternoon, Aytoun and I had fits of laughter over O’Dowd. The thing that has tickled him is the victim of Cavour’s eternal schemes for Italian progress, especially the plans turning up in the dead man’s bureau. He agrees with me in thinking that you have completely taken second wind. I improved the occasion by commenting upon his own utter incapacity, – the lazy villain has not written a line for two years. A sheriffship and a professorship are fatal to literary industry. It would be well worth while for any Government to give any man who is active in writing against them a good fat place, but it is fatal for them so to patronise their friends. God knows, however, that patronising their literary friends is a crime of which Governments are not often guilty, but I hope with all my heart that if we do come in, your turn, something good, will come at last.”

To Mr John Blackwood,

“Casa Capponi, Florence, April 17, 1864.

“How glad I am to be the first to say there is to be no ‘mystery’ between us. I have wished for this many a day, and have only been withheld from feeling that I was not quite certain whether my gratitude for the cheer and encouragement you have given me might not have run away with my judgment and made me forget the force of the Italian adage, ‘It takes two to make a bargain.’

“How lightly you talk of ten years! Why, I was thirty years younger ten years ago than I am to-day. I’d have ridden at a five-foot wall with more pluck than I can summon now at a steep staircase. But I own to you frankly, if I had known you then as I do now, it might have wiped off some of this score of years. Even my daughters guess at breakfast when I have had a pleasant note from you.

“I have thought over what you say about Garibaldi’s visit to Mazzini, and added a bit to tag to the article. I have thought it better to say nothing of Stansfield – I know him so little; and though I think him an ass, yet he might feel like the tenor who, when told, ‘Monsieur, vous chantez faux,’ replied, ‘Je le sais, monsieur, mais je ne veux pas qu’on me le dise.’

“Don’t cut out the Haymarket ladies if you can help it. The whole thing is very naughty, but it can’t be otherwise. I’ll try and carry it on a little farther. I have very grand intentions – more paving-stones for the place my hero comes from.

“But ask Aytoun what he thinks of it, and if it be worth carrying out. The ‘Devil’s Tour’ would be better than ‘Congé.’

“The rhymes are often rough, but I meant them to be rugged lest it should be suspected I thought myself capable of verse – and I know better.

“Do what you like about the Flynn P.S. Perhaps it will be best not to make more mention of the rascal. I must tell you some day of my own scene with him at Spezzia, which ‘The Telegraph’ fellow has evidently heard of.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Florence, Monday, April 18,1864.

“On second thoughts I remembered how far easier it was always to me to make a new rod than to splice an old one, so I send you the Devil as he is. If ever the vein comes to me, I can take him up hereafter. Let Aytoun judge whether it be safe or wise to publish. I myself think that a bit of wickedness has always a certain gusto in good company, while amongst inferior folks it would savour of coarseness. This is too bleak an attempt at explaining what I mean, but you will understand me.

“Last verse —

“For of course it lay heavily on his mind,And greatly distressed him besides, to findHow these English had left him miles behindIn this marvellous civilisation.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Casa Capponi, Florence, April 30, 1864

“For the first time these eight days I have looked at my bottle – the ink-bottle – again. I am subject to periodical and very acute attacks of ‘doing-nothingness.’ – it would be euphuism to call it idleness, which implies a certain amount of indulgence, but mine are dreary paroxysms of incapacity to do anything other than sleep and eat and grumble.

“I wanted for the best of all possible reasons to be up and at work, and I could not. I tried to – but it wouldn’t do! At least I have found out it would be far better to do nothing at all than to do what would be so lamentably bad and unreadable.

“When I first got these attacks – they are of old standing now – I really fancied it was the ‘beginning of the end,’ and that it was all up with me. Now I take them as I do a passing fit of gout, and hope a few days will see me through it.

“This is my excuse for not sending off the proof of ‘Tony’ before. I despatch it now, hoping it is all right, but beseeching you to see it is. I suppose you are right about Staffa, and that, like the sentinel who couldn’t see the Spanish fleet, I failed for the same reason.” During the first fourteen or fifteen years of Lever’s residence in Florence, Italy had been in the melting-pot. The Tuscan Revolution of 1848, the defeat of the Sardinians, and the abdication of Carlo Alberto in the following year, the earlier struggle of Garibaldi, the long series of troubles with Austria (ending in the defeat of the Austrians), feuds with the Papal States, insurrections in Sicily, the overthrow of the Pope’s government, the Neapolitan war, and, to crown all, triumphant brigandage, had made things lively for dwellers in Italy. The recognition by the Powers of Victor Emanuel as king of United Italy promised, early in 1862, a period of rest; but the expectations of peace-lovers were shattered, for the moment, by Garibaldi’s threatened march upon Rome. His defeat, his imprisonment in the fortress of Varignano, and his release, inspired hopes, well-founded, of the conclusion of the struggles (largely internecine) which had convulsed New Italy. Upon Garibaldi’s release Lever naturally sought out his distinguished Spezzian neighbour, and one morning he had the pleasure of entertaining him at breakfast. It was said that the British Minister at Florence was eager that the Italian patriot should be disabused of the favourable impressions he was supposed to entertain of the Irish revolutionary movement. The Vice-Consul at Spezzia found it necessary to explain to his guest that any overt expressions or acts of sympathy with Fenianism would be certain to alienate English sympathies. Garibaldi seemed to be somewhat surprised at this. He looked on England as a nation eager to applaud any patriotic or revolutionary movement. Lever is said – the authority is Major Dwyer – to have been unable to comprehend how a man so ignorant and childish as Garibaldi could have attained such vast influence over a people, and could have won such general renown. In his statements about his friend’s literary work or literary opinions, Major Dwyer is not a thoroughly safe guide. He had a weakness for patronising Lever, for declaring that he said or thought this or that – usually something which coincided with the Major’s own opinion, and which showed the novelist at a disadvantage. Dwyer’s conviction was that Lever the talker2 was better than Lever the writer, and that Lever the man was infinitely superior to both. Possibly the vice-consul was amused at the simplicity of Garibaldi when Anglo-Irish affairs were under discussion. Anyhow, it is much more likely that Cornelius O’Dowd’s true impressions are recorded in an article which he contributed to ‘Blackwood’s Magazine.’ “It is not easy to conceive anything finer, simpler, more thoroughly unaffected, or more truly dignified than the man,” writes Lever – “his noble head; his clever honest brown eyes; his finely-traced mouth, beautiful as a woman’s, and only strung up to sternness when anything ignoble has outraged him; and, last of all, his voice contains a fascination perfectly irresistible, allied as you knew and felt these graces were with a thoroughly pure and untarnished nature.” While the Italian patriot lay wounded at Spezzia, Lever managed to get a photograph taken of him. The photograph (a copy of which he sent to Edinburgh) represents Garibaldi in bed, his red shirt enveloping him. Mrs Blackwood Porter, in the third volume of ‘The House of Blackwood,’ relates a most amusing anecdote of a situation arising out of the embarrassing attentions of sympathisers who would persist in visiting the invalid. Lever’s sketch in ‘Maga’ evoked from John Blackwood a very interesting letter.

From Mr John Blackwood.

“April 27, 1864.

“I am particularly obliged to you for the promptitude with which you did the bit about Garibaldi. It is, I think, the best thing that has been written about the General, and I hope he is worthy of it. You will see that the Garibaldi fever has been cut short, so that I shall have no opportunity of using the note of introduction you so kindly sent, but I am equally obliged. Fergusson (Sir William), the surgeon, is a very intimate friend and old ally of mine, and I have no doubt he has given genuine and sound advice. Garibaldi would doubtless have had innumerable invitations to No. 9 Piccadilly, and I hope the hero has not damaged himself. I have half a mind to write this joke to Fergusson, and call for an explicit statement of the hero’s health. Seriously, he is well away at the present crisis, and we are making sufficient fools of ourselves without this wild outbreak of hero-worship…

“Laurence Oliphant stayed with us for three days, and we had a ‘fine time.’ I never saw such a fellow for knowing people, pulling the wires, and being in the thick of it always. He is hand-and-glove with half the potentates and conspirators in Europe. Skeffy in his wildest flights is a joke to him. There is, however, no humbug about Oliphant; he is a good fellow and a good friend. He talked much of the pleasant days he had passed with you, and begged particularly to be remembered to you all. Knowing I could trust him, I told him the secret, the importance of keeping which he fully appreciated, and will assist in throwing people off the scent, which ‘O’Dowd’ will, I think, put a good many upon. There have been surmises in the papers, but surmises are nothing. How is ‘Tony’ getting on, and the new ‘O’Dowd’? I wish, indeed, we had come across each other in earlier life; but it is no use your talking of being seedy, – you are evidently as fresh as paint, and never wrote better, if so well.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Casa Capponi, Florence, May 5, 1864.

“I have just got home and found your note and its enclosed cheque. Why this should be so large I have no idea nor any means of guessing, for the Mag. has not yet arrived. You are right about the ‘Devil,’ but he alone knows when and how I shall be in the vein to go on with his experiences. I had to come back here hurriedly, which requires my returning to Spezzia in a day or so, a sad interruption to work, and coming awkwardly too, as I am driven to change my house, – the old jaillike palace I have lived in for fifteen years has just been bought by Government, and I am driven to a villa at some distance from Florence – a small little crib nicely placed in a bit of Apennine scenery, and quiet enough for much writing.

“I entirely agree with all you say of Oliphant: he is an able fellow, and a good fellow; and there is no blague whatever in his talking familiarly of ‘swells,’ for he has lived, and does live, much in their intimacy. He is not popular with the ‘Diplos.’ nor F. O., but the chief, if not only, reason is, that he is a far cleverer fellow than most of them, and has had the great misfortune of having shown this to the world.

“I want much to be at ‘Tony’ again, but it will be some three or four days before I can settle down to work. When I have dashed off enough to send I will, even though not enough for a number.

“I see by ‘The Telegraph’ that the fleet is to go to the Baltic, but not for more than a demonstration. Does not this remind you of the Bishop of Exeter’s compromise about the candles on the altar, ‘That they might be there, but not lighted.’ I believe, as a nation, we are the greatest humbugs in Europe; and, without intending it, the most illogical and inconsequent people the world ever saw.

“I hope your little people are all well again and over the measles and in the country with you, and that you are all as happy as I wish you.

“Supply the date of the Reform Bill for me in the ‘New Hansard.’”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Casa Capponi, Florence, May 10, 1864.

“Herewith go three chapters of ‘Tony.’ With the best will in the world there are days when our dinners go off ill, our sherry is acrid, our entrées cold, and our jests vapid. Heaven grant (but I have my misgivings) that some such fatality may not be over these ‘Tonys.’ My home committee likes them better than I do; I pray heartily that you be of this mind.

“I shall be fretful and anxious till I hear from you about T. B., but I go off to-morrow to Spezzia, and not to be back till Wednesday the 18th, – all Consular, all Bottomry, all Official for eight mortal days, but

“Of course I must show to the office ‘I’m here,’And draw with good conscience two hundred a-year.I’d save fifty more, but of that I am rid wellBy the agency charges of Allston and Bidwell.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Florence, May 15,1864.

“More power to you! as we say in Ireland, for your pleasant letter. I have got it, and I send you an O’D. I think you will like on ‘Our Masterly Inactivity,’ and another on ‘Our Pensions for Colonial Governors.’

“As to next month’s O’D., I don’t know what will turn up; but [I am] like poor old Drury – the clergyman at Brussels – whose profound reliance on Providence once so touched an English lady that it moved her to tears. ‘He uttered,’ said she – telling the story to Sir H. Seymour, who told it to me – ‘he uttered one of the most beautiful sentiments I ever heard from the lips of a Christian: “When I have dined heartily and well, and drunk my little bottle of light Bordeaux, Mrs S.,” said he, “where Mrs Drury or the children are to get their supper to-night or their breakfast to-morrow, I vow to God I don’t know, and I don’t care.”’ Now if that be not as sweet a little bit of hopeful trust in manna from heaven as one could ask for, I’m a Dutchman, and I lay it to my heart that somehow, somewhere, O’Dowderies will turn up for July as they have done for June, for I shall certainly need them. You will have had T. B. before this. I see you are stopping at my old ‘Gite,’ the Burlington, my hotel ever since I knew London. There was an old waiter there, Foster, – I remember him nigh thirty years, – who exercised towards me a sort of parental charge, and rebuked my occasional late hours and the light companions who laughed overmuch at breakfast with me in the coffee-room. If he is in vivente, remember me to him.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Florence, May 16,1864.

“I have just had your note, and am relieved to find that I have not lost the ‘Colonial Governors,’ which I feared I had. I have added a page to it. I have re-read it carefully, but I don’t think it radical. Heaven knows, I have nothing of the Radical about me but the poverty. At all events, a certain width of opinion and semi-recklessness as to who or what he kicks does not ill become O’D… whose motto, if we make a book of him, I mean to be ‘Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur,’ —

“I care not a fig For Tory or Whig,But sit in a bowl and kick round me.

“Though the paper I sent yesterday on ‘Our Masterly Inactivity’ would be very apropos at this juncture, there will scarcely be time to see a proof of it, seeing that it could not be here before this day week. If you cannot revise it yourself, it will be better perhaps to hold it back, though I feel the moment of its ‘opportunity’ may pass. Do what you think best. My corrections of the proof I send off now will have to be closely looked to, and the MS. is to come in between the last paragraph and the part above it.”

To Mr John Blackwood,

“Villa Morelli, June 7, 1864.

“We got into our little villa yesterday (it would not be little out of Italy, for we have seven salons), and are very pleased with it. We are only a mile from Florence, and have glorious views of the city and the Val d’Arno on every side.

“The moving has, however, addled my head awfully; indeed, after all had quitted the old Casa Capponi, a grey cat and myself were found wandering about the deserted rooms, not realising the change of domicile. What it can be that I cling to in my old room of the Capponi I don’t know (except a hole in the carpet perhaps), but certainly I do not feel myself in writing vein in my new home…

“I hear strange stories of disagreements amongst the Conservatives, and threats of splits and divi-sions. Are they well founded, think you? The social severance of the party, composed as it is of men who never associated freely together, as the Whigs did and do, is a great evil. Indeed I think the ties of our party are weaker than in the days when men dined more together.