Читать книгу Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II - Lever Charles James - Страница 2

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.

“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. —

“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!”