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

“What you hint about a real love-story is good, but don’t forget that Thackeray said, ‘No old man must prate about love.’ I remember the D. of Wellington once saying to me, referring to Warren’s ‘Ten Thousand a-Year’: ‘It is not that he never had ten thousand a-year, but he never knew a man who had.’ As to writing about love from memory, it’s like counting over the bank-notes of a bank long broken. They remind you of money, it’s true, but they’re only waste-paper after all.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, March 11,1865.

“I send off by book-post the O’D. proof, though I suppose, and indeed hope, you will not use them for the April No., but keep them for May. This, not alone because it will give me more time to think of ‘Sir B.’ but also, because there is just now rather a dearth of matter for what the ‘Morning Post’ describes as my ‘Olympian platitudes.’

“‘Oh dear, what a trial it is – to be kicked by a cripple.’

“I have added a few lines to complete the ‘Church’ O’Dowd; pray see that it is correct. I am curious to see the new vol., and to hear from you about its success.

“Do write to me – and as often as you have spare time. If we ever meet, I’ll pay it all back in talk.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, March (St Pat.‘s Day).

“Gout, a rickety table, and four stupid Piedmontese authorities talking bad Italian and smoking ‘Cavours’ at my side, are not aids to polite letter-writing, and so forgive me if unusually incoherent and inexplicable.

“I came hurriedly down here to be consular, and to see poor old Mrs Somerville, who was very seriously ill. She has rallied, but it is the rally of eighty odd years. Nothing short of a Scotchwoman could have lived through her attack.

“On looking over the ‘Whist’ proof, there are a few changes I would suggest. I would, for instance, insert the 7 pp. copy in place of the piece marked ( – ). It will need your careful supervision and reading. The other bit of a page and half copy I would insert at p. 4, after the word ‘frankness.‘The concluding sentence is in its due place. These bits are meant to take off the air of didactic assumption the article is tinged with, and also to dispose the reader to think I am not perfectly serious in esteeming Whist to be higher than Astronomy or the Physical Sciences.

“I have shown ‘Foss’ to a very critical fellow here, and he says it is better in manner than ‘Tony.’ I don’t believe him, though I should like to do so.

“You shall have the proof at once. My daughter writes me that O’D. 2 has arrived and looks very nice. Tell me how subscribed! Tell me what said of it!

“Is it true you are all in a devil of a funk at a war with America? So say the diplomats here, but they are very generally mistaken about everything except ‘Quarter day.’ I had Hudson to dinner on Monday, and we laughed ourselves into the gout, and had to finish the evening with hot flannels and colchicum. There is not his equal in Europe. If I could only give you his talk, you’d have such a Noctes as I have never read of for many a year, I assure you. I wished for you when the fun was going fast. Good Heavens! how provoking it is that such a fellow should not be commemorated. Listening to him after reading a biography is such rank bathos; and as to settling down to write after him, it is like setting to work to brew small beer with one’s head swimming with champagne. I hope to be back at Villa Morelli by Sunday, and to find a proof and a letter from you when I arrive.

“I shall be very glad to see Mr M. Skene when he turns up at Florence. I need not tell you that a friend of yours comes into the category of the favoured nations. My life is now, however, a very dull affair to ask any one to look at, and it is only by a real feeling of good-nature any one would endure me.

“Only think of this climate! I have had to close the jalousies to keep out the sun, and it is now positively too hot where I am writing. I could almost forgive the ‘Excursionists’ coming out to bask in such sunshine.

“I hear the ‘M. Post’ has had a long and favourable notice of ‘Tony.’ Have you seen it?

“Now be sure you write to me and often. Addio.

“The American consul has just called and told me that his Government are sending a smashing squadron over here under an admiral – a sort of ‘Io Triumphe’ after the raising of the blockade. All the big frigates are to be included in it.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, March 30,1865.

“This is only to say how much your criticism on ‘Sir B.’ has pleased me, but don’t believe the book is better than ‘Tony’ – it is not. The man who wrote the other hasn’t as good in his wallet.

“I am sure the Major is right, and the story of being chasséd from Austria reads wrong; but it is not, as one might imagine, unfounded. The case was Yelverton’s, and present V. Admiral in the Mediterranean, and the lady an Infanta of Portugal, and it went so far that she was actually going off with him. Now, if you still think it should be cancelled, be it so. I have only recommended it to mercy, not pardoned it.

“Besides my gout I am in the midst of worries. The New Capital is playing the devil with us in increased cost of everything, and my landlord – the one honest man I used to think him in the Peninsula – has just written to apprise me that my rent is doubled. Of course I must go, but where to? that’s the question. I’d cut my lucky and make towards England, but that our friends at the Carlton say, ‘Hold on to Spezzia and we’ll give you something when we come in.’ Do you remember the German Duke who told his ragged followers they should all have shirts, for he was about to sow flax? I threw my sorrows into a doggerel epigram as I was in my bath this morning. —

“To such a pass have things now come,So high have prices risen,If Italy don’t go to Rome,Then – I must go to prison.

“I find that Skene and I are old friends who have fought many a whist battle together. I wanted him to dine with me yesterday to meet Knatchbull and Labouchere, but he was lumbagoed and obliged to keep his bed: he is all right to-day, however.

“I hope to have a few days (a week) in England this spring – that is, if I keep out of jail, – but I’ll let you know my plans when they are planned.

“I have not written since – better I should not – for I go about saying to myself ‘D – Morelli,’ so that my family begin to tremble for my sanity.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Spezzia, April 6, 1865.

“Your letter has just caught me here. I came down hurriedly to see if I couldn’t find a ‘location,’ for my Florentine landlord – actuated by those pure patriotic motives which see in the change of capital the greatness of Italy and the gain of Tuscany – has put 280 odd l. on my rent! As I have been stupid enough to spend some little money in improving my garden, &c. he is wise enough to calculate that I feel reluctant to leave where I have taken root.

“These are small worries, but they are worries in their way, and sometimes more than mere worries to a man like myself who takes a considerable time to settle down, and hates being disturbed afterwards. It never was a matter of surprise to me that story of the prisoner who, after twenty year’s confinement, refused to accept his liberty! And for this reason: if I had been a Papist I’d never have spent a farthing to get me out of Purgatory, for I know I’d have taken to the place after a while, and made myself a sort of life that would have been very endurable.

“You will see from this that ‘Sir B.’ is not advancing. How can he, when I am badgered about from post to pillar? But once settled, you’ll see how I’ll work. It’s time I should say I had your cheque all right; and as to ‘Sir B.,’ it shall be all as you say.

“I am sorely put out by ‘Tony’ not doing better. I can understand scores of people not caring for O’Dowd, just as I have heard in Society such talk as O’D. voted a bore. Englishmen resent a smartness as a liberty: the man who tries a jest in their company has been guilty of a freedom not pardonable. But surely ‘Tony’ is as good trash as the other trash vendors are selling; his nonsense is as readable nonsense as theirs. I am not hopeful of hitting it off better this time, though I have a glimmering suspicion that ‘Sir Brooke’ will be bad enough to succeed.

“Skene and Preston came out to me one evening. I wish I had seen more of them. We laughed a good deal, though I was depressed and out of sorts.

“Of course if Hudson goes ‘yourwards’ I’ll make him known to you. What a misfortune for all who love the best order of fun that he was not poor enough to be obliged to write for his bread! His letters are better drollery than any of us can do, and full of caricature illustrations far and away beyond the best things in ‘Punch.’ Who knows but one of these days we may meet at the same mahogany; and if we should —

“I forget if I told you I have a prospect of a few days in town towards the beginning of May – my positively last appearance in England, before I enter upon that long engagement in the great afterpiece where there are no Tony Butlers nor any O’Dowds.

“I do hope I shall see you: no fault of mine will it be if I fail.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, April 10, 1866.

“Send for No. 1 of ‘The Excursionist,’ edited by a Mr Cook, and if you don’t laugh, ‘you’re no’ the man I thought ye.’ He pitches in to me most furiously for my O’Dowd on the ‘Convict Tourists’; and seeing the tone of his paper, I only wonder he did not make the case actionable.

“He evidently believes that I saw him and his ‘drove Bulls,’ and takes the whole in the most serious light. Good Heavens! what a public he represents.

“The extracts he gives from the T. B.‘s article are far more really severe than anything I wrote, because the snob who wrote them was a bona fide witness of the atrocious snobs around him; and as for the tourist who asks, ‘Is this suit of clothes good enough for Florence, Mr Cook?’ I could make a book on him.

“The fellow is frantic, that is clear.

“Heaven grant that I may fall in with his tourists! I’ll certainly go and dine at any table d’hôte I find them at in Florence.

“I have been so put out (because my landlord will insist on putting me out) by change of house that I have not been able to write a line.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Florence, April 14,1865.

“After the affecting picture Skene drew of you over one of my inscrutable MSS., I set the governess to work to copy out a chapter of ‘Sir B.,’ which I now send; the remainder of the No. for July I shall despatch to-morrow or next day at farthest. That done, I shall rest and do no more for a little while, as my story needs digestion.

“I have asked for a short leave. I am not sure the answer may not be, ‘You are never at your post, and your request is mere surplusage, and nobody knows or cares where you are,’ &c. If, however, ‘My Lord’ should not have read ‘The Rope Trick,’ and if he should be courteously disposed to accord me my few weeks of absence, and if I should go, – it will be at once, as I am anxious to be in town when the world of Parliament is there, when there are men to talk to and to listen to. I want greatly to see you: I’m not sure that it is not one of my primest objects in my journey.

“All this, however, must depend on F. O., which, to say truth, owes me very little favour or civility. I have been idle latterly – not from choice indeed; but my wife has been very poorly, and there is nothing so entirely and hopelessly disables me as a sick house: the very silence appals me.”

To Mr John Blackwood,

“Villa Morelli, April 23,1865.

“I send you a short story. I have made it O’Dowdish, but you shall yourself decide if it would be better unconnected with O’D. It would not make a bad farce; and Buckstone as ‘Joel,’ and Paul Bedford as ‘Victor Emanuel,’ would make what the Cockneys call a ‘screamer.’

“I have not yet heard anything of my leave, but if I get it at once, and am forced to utilise it immediately, my plan would be to go over to Ireland (where I am obliged to go on business), finish all I have to do there, and be back by the 20th to meet you in London. I cannot say how delighted I should be to go down to you in Scotland. I’d like to see you with your natural background, – a man is always best with his own accessories, – but it mauna be. I can’t manage the time. Going, as I do, from home with my poor wife such a sufferer is very anxious work, and though I have deferred it for the last five years, I go now – if I do go – with great fear and uneasiness. It requires no small self-restraint to say ‘No’ to so pleasant a project, and for God’s sake don’t try and tempt me any more!”

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1

Mr Blackwood had written: “Observe that in the garden scene you make it a fine night, and from the morning showing before they separated, apparently the night was short; whereas when Tony started in the cold and snow for Burnside it was clearly winter.”

2

The Major, amongst the many reminiscences of his friend confided to Dr Fitzpatrick, tells a tale of this period which shows that Lever, with all his tact, could occasionally allow temper to master discretion. A personage holding a high diplomatic post (which he had obtained notoriously through influence) said to Lever at some social gathering: “Your appointment is a sinecure, is it not?”

“Not altogether,” answered the consul. “But you are consul at Spezzia, and you live altogether at Florence,” persisted the personage. “You got the post, I suppose, on account of your novels.” “Yes, sir,” replied Lever tartly, “I got the post in compliment to my brains: you got yours in compliment to your relatives.” – E. D.

3

Lever must have intended to recast and to rewrite the adventures of “Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier,” the story which appeared as a serial in ‘The Dublin University’ in 1869. – E. D.

4

Baron Lendrick (in ‘Sir Brook Fossbrooke’) was one of Lever’s favourite characters. The old judge was a sketch for which he had to depend upon a memory of a journey made more than twenty years before ‘Sir Brook’ was written. Lever had travelled to London in the ‘Forties with a distinguished party – Isaac Butt, Frederick Shaw (the member for Dublin University), Henry West (afterwards a judge), and Sergeant Lefroy (afterwards – Lord Chief-Justice of Ireland). Baron Lendrick was a study of Lefroy. It was said that Lever was the only man who had ever succeeded in making Lefroy laugh.

Lever declared that his Baron Lendrick was a portrait upon which he had expended “a good deal of time and paint” – E. D.