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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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!

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ