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

“I go to Spezzia occasionally – the fast mail now makes it but five hours. The Foreign Office is really most indulgent: they ask nothing of me, and in return I give them exactly what they ask.

“My wife is a little better – that is, she can move about unassisted and has less suffering. Her malady, however, is not checked. The others are well. As for myself, I am in great bodily health, – lazy and indolent, as I always was, and more given to depressions, perhaps, but also more patient under them than I used to be.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Florence, Saturday , July 30.

“Yours has just come. O’D. is very handsome. Confound the public if they won’t like them! Nothing could be neater and prettier than the book. How I long to hear some good tidings of it!

“My daughter had a slight relapse, but is now doing all well and safely.

“I think that the Irish papers – ‘The Dub. E. Mail’ and ‘Express’ – would review us if copies were sent, and perhaps an advertisement.

“I know you’ll let me hear, so I don’t importune you for news.

“Your cheque came all safe; my thanks for it. The intense heat is such now that I can only write late at night, and very little then.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Aug . 3, 1864.

“Unshaven, dishevelled,

I sit all bedevilled;

Your news has upset me, —

It was meet it should fret me.

What! two hundred and fifty!

Is the public so thrifty?

Or are jokes so redundant,

And funds so abundant

That ‘O’Dowd’ cannot find more admirers than this!

I am sure in the City ‘Punch’ is reckoned more witty,

And Cockneys won’t laugh

Save at Lombard Street chaff;

But of gentlemen , surely there can be no stint,

Who would like dinner drolleries dished up in print,

And to read the same nonsense would gladly be able

That they’d laugh at – if heard – o’er the claret at table

The sort of light folly that sensible men

Are never ashamed of – at least now and then.

For even the gravest are not above chaff,

And I know of a bishop that loves a good laugh.

Then why will they deny me,

And why won’t they buy me?

I know that the world is full of cajolery,

And many a dull dog will trade on my drollery,

Though he’ll never be brought to confess it aloud

That the story you laughed at he stole from O’Dowd;

But the truth is, I feel if my book is unsold,

That my fun, like myself, it must be – has grown old.

And though the confession may come with a damn,

I must own it — non sum qualis eram .

“I got a droll characteristic note from the Duke of Wellington and a cordial hearty one from Sir H. Seymour. I’d like to show you both, but I am out of sorts by this sluggishness in our [circulation]. The worst of it is, I have nobody to blame but myself.

“Send a copy of O’D. to Kinglake with my respects and regards. He is the only man (except C. O’D.) in England who understands Louis Nap.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Florence, Aug . 9, 1864.

“I am just sent for to Spezzia to afford my Lords of the Admiralty a full and true account of all the dock accommodation possible there, which looks like something in ‘the wind’; the whole ‘most secret and confidential.’

“I am sorry to leave home, though my little girl is doing well I have many causes of anxiety, and for the first time in my whole life have begun to pass sleepless nights, being from my birth as sound a sleeper as Sancho Panza himself.

“Of course Wilson was better than anything he ever did – but why wouldn’t he? He was a noble bit of manhood every way; he was my beau idéal of a fine fellow from the days I was a schoolboy. The men who link genius with geniality are the true salt of the earth, but they are marvellously few in number. I don’t bore you, I hope, asking after O’D.; at least you are so forgiving to my importunity that I fancy I am merciful.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Florence, Aug . 11,1864.

“I forgot to tell you that the scene of the collision in the longer O’D. is all invented – there was nothing of it in ‘The Times’ or anywhere else. How right you are about the melodramatic tone in the scene between Maitland and his Mother! It is worse. It is bow-wow! It is Minerva Press and the rest of it, but all that comes of a d – d public. I mean it all comes of novel-writing for a d – d public that like novels, – and novels are – novels.

“I am very gouty to-day, and I have a cross-grained man coming to dinner, and my women (affecting to keep the mother company) won’t dine with me, and I am sore put out.

“Another despatch! I am wanted at Spezzia, – a frigate or a gunboat has just put in there and no consul Captain Short, of the Sneezer perhaps, after destroying Chiavari and the organ-men, put in for instructions. By the way, Yule was dining with Perry, the Consul-General at Venice, the other day, when there came an Austrian official to ask for the Magazine with Flynn’s Life as a pièce de conviction! This would be grand, but it is beaten hollow by another fact. In a French ‘Life of Wellington,’ by a staff officer of distinction, he corrects some misstatements thus, ‘Au contraire, M. Charles O’Malley, raconteur,’ &c. Shall I make a short ‘O’Dowd’ out of the double fiasco? Only think, a two-barrelled blunder that made O’Dowd a witness at law, and Charles O’Malley a military authority!

“When I was a doctor, I remember a Belgian buying ‘Harry Lorrequer’ as a medical book, and thinking that the style was singularly involved and figurative.

“Oh dear, how my knuckle is singing, but not like the brook in Tennyson; it is no ‘pleasant tune.’

“Have you seen in ‘The Dublin E. Mail’ a very civil and cordial review of ‘O’Dowd,’ lengthy and with extracts? What a jolly note I got from the Bishop of Limmerick. He remembers a dinner I gave to himself and O’Sullivan, Archer Butler, and Whiteside, and we sat till 4 o’ the morning! Noctes – Eheu fugaces!

“Please say that some one has ordered ‘O’Dowd’ and liked it, or my gout will go to the stomach.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Florence, Aug . 12, 1864.

“I recant: I don’t think the scene so bad as I did yesterday. I sent it off corrected this night’s post – and try and agree with me. Remember that Maitland’s mother (I don’t know who his father was) was an actress, – why wouldn’t she be a little melodramatic? Don’t you know what the old Irishwoman said to the sentry who threatened to run his bayonet into her? ‘Devil thank you! sure, that’s you’re thrade.’ So Mad. Brancaleoni was only giving a touch of her ‘thrade’ in her Cambyses vein.

“I’m off to Spezzia, and my temper is so bad my family are glad to be rid of me. All the fault of the public, who won’t admire ‘O’Dowd.’”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Villa Morelli, Aug . 24, 1864.

“My heartiest thanks for the photograph. It is the face of a friend and, entre nous , just now I have need of it, for I am very low and depressed, but I don’t mean to worry you with these things. What a fine fellow your Colonel is! I am right proud that he likes ‘O’Dowd,’ and so too of your friend Smith, because I know if the officers are with me we must have the rank and file later on. I read the ‘Saturday Review’ with the sort of feeling I have now and then left a dull dinner-party, thinking little of myself but still less of the company. Now, I may be stupid, but I’ll be d – d if I’m as bad as that fellow!