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

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СКАЧАТЬ of your sympathy for these troubles, – because if you did so, I could never have the honest feeling of independence that enables me to write to you as I do, and as your friend, – but I want you to understand that if it accords with your plans to take ‘O’Dowd’ altogether to yourself, it would much help me; and if for the future you would so accept it, giving me anything you deem the whole worth, all the better for me. By this means I could get rid of some of my cares: there are heavier ones behind, but these I must bear how I may.

      “I have been frank with you in all, and you will be the same with me.

      “You are right, the present day is better for novels than the past – at least, present-day readers say so. If you like I will get up a story to begin in April, ‘The New Charter,’ but I won’t think of it till I have done ‘Tony,’ which I own to you I like better on re-reading than I thought I should. Do you?

      “Nothing is truer than what you say about my over-rapid writing. In the O’Ds. they are all the better for it, because I could talk them a hundred times better than I could write them; but where constructiveness comes in, it is very different.”

      To Dr Burbidge.

      “Villa Morelli, Florence, Oct. 21,1864.

      “Though I have only been detained here by my wife’s illness, and should have been at Spezzia ere this, it was so far well that I was here to meet a perfect rush of friends and acquaintances who have come. Hudson, Perry from Venice, Delane, Pigott, D. Wolff, all here, and a host more, and as my wife is again up, we have them at various times and seasons, and a big dinner of them to-morrow.

      “Renfrew of ‘The D. News’ tells me that O’D. was a great London success, and that the literary people like it and praised it, – evidence, thought I, that they’re not afraid of its author. He adds that I am not generally believed to have written it.

      “I have not been up to work the last two days, and a remnant of a cold still keeps me ‘a-sneezin’.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Villa Morelli, Florence, Oct. 23.

      “Your generous treatment of me relieves me of one great anxiety and gives me another – that I may not prove to you as good a bargain as I meant to be; but whatever comes of it, I’ll take care you shall not lose by me.

      “I thank you heartily; and for the kind terms of your note even more than for the material aid. From the days of my schoolboy life I never did anything well but under kind treatment, and yours has given me a spring and a courage that really I did not know were left in me.

      “I hope vol. (or rather ‘book’) ii. of ‘O’Dowd’ will be better than the first. Some of the bits are, I know, better; but in any case, if it should fall short of what I hope, you shall not be the sufferer.

      “I am glad that you kept back the ‘S. Congresses.’ I send you herewith one on the ‘Parson Sore Throat,’ and I think you will like it. I think I have done it safely; they are ‘kittle cattle,’ but I have treated them gingerly.

      “I could swear you will agree with me in all I say of the ‘Hybrids,’ and I think I see you, as you read it, join in with me in opinion.

      “I am turning over an O’D. about Banting (but I want his book – could you send it to me?), and one on the Postal Stamp mania, and these would probably be variety enough for December No., – ‘S. Congresses,’ ‘Conservatives,’ ‘Parsonitis,’ &c.

      “My wife continues still so ill that, though I am wanted at Spezzia, I cannot go down. I hope, however, that to-morrow or next day she may be well enough to let me leave without anxiety.

      “Perry, a consul-general at Venice, has just promised me a photo of Flynn, taken by the Austrian authorities during his imprisonment at Verona. I’ll send it to you when it comes.

      “Did you ever see the notice of O’D. in ‘The Daily News’? It was most handsome, and the D. U. M. was also good. All the London papers have now reviewed it but ‘The Times,’ and the stranger [this], as Lucas, is very well affected towards me.

      “Once again, and from my heart, I thank you for responding so generously to my request.”

      To Dr Burbidge.

      “Tuesday, [? Oct.] 23, 1864.

      “I had believed I was to be at Spezzia before this, but my wife still continues in a very precarious way, and I was afraid to leave her.

      “I am, besides, hard at work closing ‘Tony,’ and getting another vol. of ‘O’Dowd’ ready for 1st of January. I have worked very steadily and, for me, most industriously the entire month, but my evenings are always lost, as people are now passing through to Rome.

      “Hudson has taken a house near Florence, and Labouchere come back, so that some talkers there are at least.

      “I mean to run down so soon as I finish cor-rectings, &c., at eight or ten days at furthest.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Villa Morelli, Oct. 27,1864.

      “How strange a hit you made when you said, ‘I knew L. N. as well as if we had drunk together.’ I was a fellow-student with him at Göttingen in 1830,* and lived in great intimacy with him. There was a Scotchman there at the same time named Dickson, a great botanist, who has, I believe, since settled in London as a practising physician in Bryanstone Square. L. Nap. went by the name of Ct. Fattorini. He never would know Dickson, and used to leave me whenever D. came in. It was not for two years after that I learned he was ‘the Bonaparte.’ Our set consisted of L. N., Adolph V. Decken (who afterwards married the sister of the Duchess of C – , who now lives in Hanover), Beuliady the Home Minister, and Ct. Bray the Bavarian Envoy at Vienna; I, the penny-a-liner, being the complement of the party. I have had very strange companionships and strange turns in life, and when I have worked out my O’Dowd vein I’ll give you an autobiography.

      * The date is incorrect. Lever’s Göttingen period was 1828.

      “I now send you a political O’D. on L. N., not over civil; but I detest the man, and I suspect I know him and read him aright. Banting I did without waiting for his book; but if it comes I will perhaps squeeze something out of it.

      “I am crippled with gout, and can scarcely hold a pen. The bit on doctors is simply padding, and don’t put it in if you don’t like; but the No. for December will, I think, be a strong one.

      “Sir Jas. Hudson is with me, but I am too low even for his glorious companionship – and he has no equal. Wolff is here, and all to stay for the winter.

      “What do you think of my advertising O’D. at the end of the Banting paper? Does it not remind you of the epitaph to the French hosier, where, after the enumeration of his virtues as husband and father, the widow announces that she ‘continues the business at the old estab., Rue Neuve des Petits Champs,’ &c. &c.?”

      To Dr Burbidge.

      “Florence, Nov. 3, 1864.

      “Bulwer the Great has stayed here, and will not leave till to-morrow, and if you see Rice, will you please to tell him so. I am so primed that I think I could write a great paper on the present state and future prospects of Turkey.

      “He has been СКАЧАТЬ