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

“It has been, with all its fatigues, a great mercy to me to have had this hard work, for I have great – the greatest – anxieties around me, and but for the necessity for exertion, I don’t think I could bear up.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Nov. 16, 1864.

“I have never quitted ‘Tony’ since I wrote to you, and here goes the result! I have finished him, unless you opine that a few more lines are needed, though what they ought to detail is not usually thought fit for publication.

“I hope to Heaven it is good. If you knew how I have laboured to fancy myself in a love-making mood, – if you knew by what drains on my memory– on my imagination – I have tried to believe a young damsel in my arms and endeavoured to make the sweet moment profitable, – you’d pity me. Perhaps a page of notices of what became of Mait-land, M’Caskey, &c, is necessary, though I’m of the Irishman’s opinion, ‘that when we know Jimmy was hanged, we don’t want to hear who got his corduroys.’

“Do you give me your opinion, however, and God grant it be favourable! for I’m dead-beat, – gouty, doubty, and damnably blue-devilled into the bargain.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Nov. 23,1864.

“The Israelite whose letter you enclose seems to be without brains as well as ‘guile.’ Couldn’t his stolid stupidity distinguish between a story thrown out as an ‘illustration’ and a ‘fact’? Couldn’t he see that the article was a paradox throughout, written merely to sustain the one grain of doubt that reformatories were not all that their advocates think them to be?

“On my oath, I believe that the British Public is the dreariest piece of ‘bull-headed one-sidedness’ that exists. He has added another sting to my gout that nothing short of kicking him would relieve me of…

“Wolff is so much more absurd than stiff that I am ashamed of my man. His directorial-financial vein is about the broadest farce I know of, and all the while that he invents companies and devises share-lists, he has not that amount of arithmetic that can make up the score at whist!

“Labouchere is here now, and tortures the unlucky W. unceasingly.

“I hope you will sustain me in all my perjuries about ‘Tony.’ I told W. yesterday that you positively refused to tell me the author, and my own guess was that it was Mr Briggs, who was murdered.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Nov. 26, 1864.

“I will certainly do the ‘Directors.’ Wolff will do for what artists call the ‘lay figure,’ and I’ll put any drapery on him that I fancy.

“I think the loss of Lord Derby would be little short of the smash of the party – I mean, at this moment. Indeed his social position and his standing with the Queen were just as valuable to his friends as his great abilities, and to be led in the House of Lords by Lord Malmesbury is more than the party could stand.

“I remember once, when asked by Lord Lyndhurst what line I would suggest for a Conservative press – it was in ‘52 – and I said, ‘As much sense, my lord, as your party will bear.’ ‘That will do it. I understand, and I agree with you.’

“There was a project to give me the direction of the ‘Herald,’ ‘Standard,’ and ‘St James’s Chronicle,’ when purchased and in the hands of the Conservatives, and I believe it was about the sort of thing I could have done, because any good there is in me is for emergencies: I can hit them, and am seldom unprepared for them. Whatever takes the tone of daily continuous work and looks like industry I totally fail in.

“The project failed because I refused to accept a council of ‘surveillance’ that Disraeli proposed, and indeed Lytton also recommended. Forgive all this egotistical balderdash; perhaps I think I am going to die, and want to leave my memoirs in a friend’s hands.

“Your letters rally me, and I beg you to write often. If I wanted a boon from Fortune it would be to have wherewithal to live on (modestly), and write to my friends the sort of thing I write for the public, and give way to the fancies that I cannot or dare not make the public party to.

“I am curious for your critique on ‘Tony.’”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Nov. 30,1864.

“I think the enclosed few words are needed to round off ‘Tony.’ The characters of a book are to my mind damnably like the tiresome people who keep you wishing them good-night till you wish them at the devil. They won’t go, – the step of the hall door would seem to have bird-lime on it; and I therefore suspect that my constitutional impatience with the bores aforesaid has damaged many a book of mine.

“If you do not approve of the added bit, squash it; but it strikes me as useful.

“My poor wife laughed at your quiz at my bit of tenderness. She seldom laughs now, though once on a time the ring of merry laughing was heard amongst us from morn till night.

“Your cheque came all right; I have just checked my cook with it. We have a system of living here by what they call Cottino, which is really comfortable enough. You pay so much a-day to your cook for feeding you and your household, and he stipulates so many plats, &c., and it’s your business to see that he treats you well. My rascal – a very good artiste– is a great politician, and everything that goes hard against the ‘Left’ (he is a great patriot) is revenged upon me in tough beef and raw mutton, but when Garibaldi triumphs, I am fed with pheasants and woodcocks.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Dec 9,1864.

“Do you see how right I was in my ‘O’Dowd’ about Bismarck, and how now he is bullying the Diet and even Austria, and openly proclaiming how little thought there was of ‘Germany’ in his Danish war? And yet I believe I am the sole proprietor and patentee of the opinion, and I have not yet heard even the faintest rumour of calling me to the Queen’s counsels.

“My wife is half of Mrs Blackwood’s opinion, and is in no good humour with Tony personally. She thinks he married out of ‘sulk,’ not for inclination; but you and I know better, and if ever Tony comes to live a winter in Florence, he’ll find he made the best choice.

“I half think I have the opening of a good story for you, but I want to do something really creditable and will take time. Do you remember the Dutchman that took a race of three miles to jump over the ditch, and was so tired by the preparation that he sat down at the foot of it!

“I am low, low! but if I hear good accounts of ‘Tony’ and O’D. it will do me good service, and I know if you have them you’ll not hide them.

“You will have got the end of ‘Tony’ by this, and I look to another letter from you to-morrow or next day.

“I meant ‘Luttrell’ for you when I began it, but ‘Tony,’ I think (now), is better; but I’ll see if I can’t beat both for a last spring before I lie down for aye.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Dec. 11,1864.

“Aytoun shall have the reversion of M’Caskey at his own price. I mean Aytoun’s price, for the other estimate might be a stunner.

“Wolff – I mean Skeff – I mean to resuscitate, – that is, I think a droll paper of his unedited memoirs might one day be made amusing, and the vehicle for some very original notions on diplomacy and politics generally. He has just started to the Piraeus to see Henry Bulwer, who, like Mr Mantalini, is at the point of death for the nineteenth time. Wolff looks up to him with immense reverence as being the most consummate rogue in Europe; and this he is certainly, notwithstanding the fact that he has been detected and pronounced a hardened offender by every Government since the Duke’s to Palmerston’s. What robbery he wants to entrust to W. with his dying breath is hard to say; but poor Skeffy is quite eager for the inheritance, – though God help him if he thinks he can rig the thimble when his pal has gone home.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

[Undated.]

“They have sold my old house here, and I am driven to a little villa (or shall be) in about a month’s time, – a small crib, nicely placed and very quiet, about a mile from the Gates.

“What fun one could make of the devil at Compiègne, talking over all L. Nap.‘s plans, how he had humbugged every one – Pam, Russell, the Austrians, Emp., &c, &c.; the devil’s compta, on the beauty of Paris, and how much all that luxury and splendour did for him. An evening with Bulwer, too, and a week at Pisa, where he dined with H. Bulwer and heard the grand project for the regeneration of Turkey – the best bit of news the devil had heard since the partition of Poland.

“I would not for a great deal have called O’D. ‘Corney’ had I known of the other proprietor of the name; and I suspect I know the man, and that he is a right good fellow. Nobody, however, has copyright in his name – as I know, for a prebend of Lichfield wrote a socialist story and called his hero Charles Lever.

“I was once going to be shot by a certain Charles O’Malley, but who afterwards told all the adventures of my hero as his own, with various diversions into which I had not ventured.

“I was going to call O’D. ‘Terence.’ Now if the other O’D. likes to be rebaptised by that name I’m ready to stand godfather; but as my own child is before the world as Corney, I cannot change him.”

XV. FLORENCE AND SPEZZIA 1865

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, Jan. 6, 1866.

“I have just got your kind letter. I thank you for it heartily. The second instalment of ‘Tony’ and the ‘O’Dowd’ [paper] will be time enough in March.

“I am walking over the hills every day getting up my new tale; I truly think I have got on a good track.

“I’ll send you a couple of short O’Ds. for February. When Parliament meets we shall not want for matter.

“I send one now on ‘Tuft-hunting.’ You will see I had Whately in my head while I was doing it.

“My hope and wish is to be able to begin a new story in the April No. Will this suit your book?

“You can’t imagine how anxious I feel about ‘Tony.’ Let me hear from you how it is subscribed? Mudie is, I think, the novel barometer; what says he? If the book is not known as mine, all the better. At least, I have such faith in my bad luck that I would rather any one else fathered it.

“If it were not for the cheer of your hearty letters I don’t know what I should do, for I am low – low!”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Jan. 9, 1865.

“I send you herewith three O’Ds. ‘Going into Parliament’ – not bad; ‘Excursionist,’ perhaps tolerable, – but both true, so help me!

“This is the 9th, and if in time to let me have a proof – well. If not, I trust to you to see that my errors be set right and my sins forgiven me.

“One of the most curious trials – a case of disputed identity – is now going on in Madrid. I’d like to have given it, but I fear that the daily papers will have it, and of course we must never drink out of the same well. O’D. must be original or he is nothing, and the originality ought to be, if possible, in matter as much as manner. Don’t you agree with me?

“I think I have a good opening of a story, – Ireland, – to be changed, scene ii., to Cagliari in Sardinia. It is only in my head, and in company there with duns, usurers, attorneys, begging letters, and F. O. impertinences, – my poor skull being like a pawnbroker’s shop, where a great deal is ‘pledged’ and very little redeemable.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Jan. 19,1866.

“I got your note and your big cheque, and felt so lusty therewith that I actually contradicted my landlord, and conducted myself with a bumptiousness that half alarmed my family, unaware of the strong stimulant I was under.

“Hech, sirs! aren’t I nervous about ‘Tony’? You made a great mistake in not putting a name on the title. It will be ascribed to me, and blackguarded in consequence.

“I am glad you like the O’D. on ‘Tuft-hunting.’ Of course you saw I had Whately and his tail in my eye. They were the most shameless dogs I ever forgathered with.

“Do let me hear from you about T. B. soon. You may depend on’t that Corney O’Dowd’s sins will be visited on Tony, and the fellows who would not dare to come out into the open and have a ‘fall’ with Tony will shy their stone at him now.

“Why have you not reprinted in a vol. the ‘Maxims of Morgan O’Doherty’? They are unequalled in their way.

“By this you will have received the O’D. on ‘Wolff going into Parliament’ and a score more sui generis.

“I have composed three openings of the new story, and nearly driven my family distracted by my changes of plan; but I am not on the right road yet. However, I hope to be hard at it next week.

“Is the ‘P. M. Gazette’ to be the organ of the Party or is it a private spec? When I only think of the Tories of my acquaintance it is not any surprise to me that the Party is not a power; though I certainly feel if they were there and not kicked out again it would go far to prove a miracle. Are these your experiences?”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Jan. 24, 1865.

“You are such a good fellow that you can give even bad news a colour of comfort; but it is bad news, this of ‘Tony,’ and has caught me like a strong blow between the eyes. Surely in this gurgite vasto of [] and sensuality there ought to be some hearing for a man who would give his experiences of life uncharged with exaggerations, or unspiced by capital offences.

“I am sure a notice of ‘The Times,’ if it could be, would get the book a fair trial, and I neither ask nor have a right to more. Meanwhile I am what Mrs O’Dowd calls ‘several degrees below Nero.’

“I began my new story yesterday, but I’ll wait till I hear more cheery news before I take to my (ink) bottle again.

“You’ll have to look sharp for blunders in the last O’D.

“It almost puts me in spirits to talk of the theatricals. It is my veritable passion, and I plume myself upon my actorship. I have had plays in nearly every house I have lived in, in all parts of Europe. Mary Boyle – that was Dickens’s prima donna– was of my training; her infant steps (she was five-and-thirty at the time) were first led by me; and I remember holding a ladder for her while she sang a love-song out of a window, and (trying to study my own part at the same time) I set fire to her petticoats!

“There are short things from the French which would do well if your people had time to translate them. ‘Les Inconsolables,’ from two really good artists, first-rate. I have a little Italian piece by me would also adapt well, and it is an immense gain to have a piece perfectly new and fresh, and when there can be no odious comparisons with Buckstone or Keely, and the rest of them. In fact, half of our young English amateurs are only bad Robsons and Paul Bedfords. My girls are all good actresses, and we have – or we used to have – short scenes of our devising constantly got up amongst us.

“Remember to send me good news, true or not, or at least any civil ‘notice’ you may see of ‘Tony,’ for till I hear again ‘the divil a word ever I write.’

“When I read out your letter this morning, my wife said in a whisper, ‘Now he’ll be off to whist worse than ever!’ So it is; I take to the rubber as other men do to a dram.

“Have you sent copies of T. B. to the press folk? I don’t know if Savage has to do with ‘The Examiner,’ but he is an old pal of mine, and would willingly give us a lift.

“I wish I had Bright’s speech in time for a quiz this month. It was a rare occasion. A mock classic oration, for a tribune of the people, full of gross flattery of the Plebs, would have been good fun; but [? the opportunity] is everything, and the joke that comes late looks, at least, as if it took labour to arrive at.

“Oh dear, but I am down! down! Write to me, I entreat you.

“Give my heartiest good wishes to the Corps Dramatique, – say that I am with them in spirit. ‘My heart’s in the side scenes, my heart is not here.’”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Feb. 4, 1865.

“I am impatient to show you a brick of the new house: first, because if you don’t like it I’ll not go on; and secondly, if you should think well of it, your encouragement will be a great strengthener to me, and give me that confidence that none of my own connections ever inspire. My womenkind like Sir F., partly perhaps because I have said something about my ‘intentions.’ Not that I have any intentions, however, so fixed that the course of the story may not serve to unhinge them. At all events, you are well able to predicate from a molar tooth what sort of a beast it was that owned it, or might own it. Say your say then, and as boldly as our interests require.

“I’d like to write you the best story in my market – that is, if I have a market; but now and then I half feel as if I were only manufacturing out of old wearables, like the devil’s dust folk at Manchester.

“I have no heart to talk of ‘Tony,’ because I think the book is a deal better than what the scoundrels are daily praising, and I know there is better ‘talk’ in it than the rascals ever did talk or listen to in the dirty daily Covent Garden lines. There’s a burst of indignant vanity for you, and I’m ‘better for it’ already. If ‘The Times’ had noticed us at once, it would have given the key-note; but patienzia, as the Italians say.

“Now let me have a line at your earliest about B. F., for though we don’t start till All Fools’ Day, I’d like to get in advance. I hope you’ll like the O’Ds. I sent last. When vol. ii. is ready let me have one by post. Your cheque is come all safe – my thanks for it.

“We are in great commotion here; the K. has arrived. Turin being in a state that may be any moment ‘of siege,’ things look very ill here, and the men in power are quite unequal to the charge.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Florence, Feb. 11, 1865.

“You are wrong about the scandal – there is none abroad whatever! For the same reason that Lycurgus said there was no adultery in Sparta, because every one had a legal right to every one else. There can be no criticism where there is no default.

“‘The Times’ on ‘Tony’ was miserable: the book is – ‘though I that oughtn’t,’ &c, – good. That is, there is a devilish deal more good in it than half of the things that are puffed up into celebrity, and had it been written by any man but my unlucky self, would have had great success. I have not seen the M. P. notice. I have just seen the ‘P. Mall Gazette.’ It is deplorably bad: the attempts at fun and smartness positively painful. I am impatient to hear what you say of the new story.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Feb. 21,1865.

“I hasten to answer your note, which has just come and relieved me of some gloomy apprehensions. I had begun to fancy that your delay in pronouncing on B. F. is out of dislike to say that you are not pleased with it. This fear of mine was increased by being low and depressed. Your judgment has relieved me, however, and done me much good already, and to-morrow I’ll go to work ‘with a will’ and, I hope, a ‘way.’

“‘The Judge and his Wife’4 are life sketches, the rest are fictional.

“I send you a batch of O’Ds. for April No. Some of them I think good. By the way, Smith – of Smith & Elder – has been begging me to send him something, as O’Ds. I refused, and said that Cornelius was your property, and if I sent him an occasional squib it should be on no account under that title.

“From what I have seen I agree with you about the style and pretensions of the ‘P. M. Gazette.’ They are heavy when trying to be light and volatile, the dreariest sort of failure imaginable. It is strange fact that what the world regards as the inferior organisation – the temperament for drollery – is infinitely the most difficult to imitate. Your clown might possibly play Hamlet. I’ll be shot if Hamlet could play Clown! Now original matter on daily events, to be read at all, ought to have the stamp of originality on its style. These fellows have not caught this. They are as tiresome as real members of Parliament.

“There is a great dearth of ‘passing topics’ for O’Dowderie; Parliament is dull, and society duller. I am sure that a little stupidity – a sort of prosy platitude just now in O’D. – would conciliate my critics of the press. My pickles have given them a heartburn, d – them; but they shall have them hotter than ever.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Feb. 29, 1866.

“I have just got your note and its ‘farce’: thanks for both. ‘Tony Butler’ is a deal too good for the stupid public, who cram themselves with [] and [ ], which any one with a Newgate Calendar at hand and an unblushing temperament might accomplish after a few easy lessons.

“It is very little short of an indignity for a man to write for a public who can gloat over [] or the stupid drolleries of [ ], so flauntingly proclaimed by ‘The Times,’ as most utter trash. I am decidedly sick of my readers and my critics, and not in any extravagance of self-conceit, because though I know I have a speciality for the thing I do, I neither want any one to believe it a high order of performance or myself a very great artist. I only say it is mine, and that another has not done it in the same way.

“I shall be sorry if you omit the O’Ds. this month. Two of them, at least, are apropos, and would suffer. The careful meditation, too, is worth something, as I claim to be ready with my pen, even when I only wound my bird.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa MorElli, Florence, March 7, 1865.

“I answer your note at once to acknowledge your cheque. It’s not necessary to tell you how I value your feeling for me, or how deeply I prize your treatment of me. Sorely as I feel the public neglect of ‘Tony,’ I declare I am more grieved on your account than on my own. It is in no puppyism I profess to think the book good: faults I know there are, scores of them, but there is more knowledge of men and women and better ‘talk’ in it, I honestly believe, than in those things which are run after and third-editioned. As to doing better – I frankly own I cannot. It is not in me. I will not say I may not hit off my public better, though I’m not too confident of even that, but as to writing better, throwing off more original sketches of character, – better contrasts in colour or sharper talkers, – don’t believe it! I cannot.

“A more ignorant notice than the ‘Saturday Review’ I never read. M’Caskey is no more an anachronism than myself! though perhaps the writer of the paper would say that is not taking a very strong ground.

“Why don’t you like the ‘Rope Trick’? It is better than most of the O’Ds. By the way, Smith only asked if I would send him O’Dowderies, and I misrepresented him if I conveyed anything stronger. I was not sorry, however, at the opportunity it gave me to say – how much and how strongly – I felt that they were yours so long as you cared for them. You had been the godfather when they were christened.

“I am half disappointed we don’t start B. F. next month; but you are always right, – perhaps even that makes the thing harder to bear.

“‘Piccadilly’ is very good, very amusing; one thing is pre-eminently clear, the writer is distinctively a ‘gentleman.’ None but a man hourly conversant with good society could give the tone he has given to Salon Life. It has the perfume of the drawing-room throughout it all, and if any one thinks that an easy thing to do, let him try it – that’s all

“What you say of ‘Our Mutual Friend’ I agree with thoroughly. It is very disagreeable reading, and the characters are more or less repugnant and repelling; but there are bits, one especially, in the last No., of restoring a drowned fellow to life which no man living but Dickens could have written. I only quote ‘Armadale’ for the sake of the Dream Theory: it is an odious story to my thinking, and I never can separate the two cousins in my head, and make an infernal confusion in consequence. How good ‘Miss Marjoribanks’ is – how excellent! What intense humour, what real knowledge of human nature! To my thinking she has no equal, and so think all my womanhood, who prefer her to all the story-writers, male and female.