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

“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 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.

“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.”