sorry I am not to be able to do a sketch of Lord C[larendon]. First of
all, I have not anything that could serve to remind me of his career.
I know he was a Commissioner of Customs in Ireland, an Ambassador in
Spain, and a Viceroy in Dublin, but there ends my public knowledge of
him. Personally I only remember him as a very high-bred and courteous
gentleman, who made a most finished manner do service for wit (which
he had not), and a keen insight into life, especially foreign life, of
which he really only knew the conventional part. If I had the materials
for his biography I would not hesitate about the sketch, but it is as
well (for _you_) that I have not, for I should not do it well, and we
should both of us be sorry at the failure.

“I’ll tell you, however, who could and would do it well, Rob. Lytton,
who married his niece, and is now at Knebworth. _He_ knew Lord C.
intimately, and had exactly that sort of appreciation of him that the
public would like and be pleased to see in print.

“I don’t think Dickens’ memory is at all served by this ill-judged
adulation. He was a man of genius and a loyal, warm-hearted, good
fellow; but he was not Shakespeare, nor was Sam Weller Falstaff.

“I hope you will like my Greek paper. I cannot turn my mind to anything
else, and must add some pages when I see the proof. I hear there will
be no Greek debate, as all parties are agreed not to discuss Lord C.’s
absurd concession about the ship of war to take off the brigands,--a
course which would have given Russia such a handle for future meddling,
and left us totally unable to question it.

“My journey has certainly done me good. My flurried action of the heart
has greatly left me, and except a sense of deep dreariness and dislike
to do anything--even speak--I am as I used to be.

“I’d say time would do the rest if I did not hope for something more
merciful than time and that shall anticipate time: I mean rest--long
rest.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“_Aug_. 4, 1870.

“I was conning over the enclosed O’D. when your letter came this
morning,--and of late the post misses three days in five,--and I believe
I should have detained my MS. for further revision, but I cannot delay
my deepest thanks for your munificent remittance. I have not now to be
told so to feel how much more you were thinking of me than of Greece
when you advised this journey. Be assured that in the interest you felt
for me in my great sorrow I grew to have a care for life and a desire
to taste its friendships that I didn’t think my heart was capable of. I
know well, too well, that I could not have written anything that could
justify such a mission--least of all with a breaking heart and an aching
head,--but I was sure that in showing you how willing I was to accept
a benefit at your hands I should best prove what a value I attached to
your friendship, and how ready I was to owe you what brought me round
to life and labour again. I do fervently hope the Greek article may be
a success; but nothing that it could do, nor anything that I might yet
write, could in any way repay what I am well content should be my great
debt to your sterling affection for me,--never to be acquitted--never
forgotten.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 7, 1870.

“I am full sure that nothing but war will now be talked, and so I send
another bellicose ‘O’Dowd’ to make up the paper. I hope there may be
time for a proof; but if not, my hand is so well known to you now, and
you are so well aware of what I intended where I blotch or break down,
it is of less consequence.

“This Wissembourg battle was really a great success; and I don’t care a
rush that the Prussians were in overwhelming numbers. May they always be
so, and may those rascally French get so palpably, unmistakably licked
that all their lying press will be unable to gloss over the disgrace.

“If L. Nap. gets _one_ victory he’ll go in for peace and he’ll have
England to back him; and I pray, therefore, that Prussia may have the
first innings, and I think _Paris_ will do the rest by sending the
Bonapartes to the devil.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 14.

“An idea has just occurred to me, and on telling it to my daughters
they wish me to consult with you on it. It is of a series of papers, the
_rationale_ of which is this:--

“All newspaper correspondence from the war being interdicted, or so
much restricted as to be of little value, I have thought that a mock
narrative following events closely, but with all the licence that
an unblushing liar might give himself, either as to the facts or the
persons with whom he is affecting intimacy, and this being done by Major
M’Caskey, would be rather good fun. I would set out by explaining how
he is at present at large and unemployed, making the whole as a personal
narrative, and showing that in the dearth of real news he offers himself
as a military correspondent, whose qualifications include not only
special knowledge of war, but a universal acquaintance with all modern
languages, and the personal intimacy of every one from the King of
Prussia to Mr Cook the excursionist. This is enough for a mere glimpse
of the intention, which, possibly, is worth consideration. Turn it over
in your mind and say has it enough in it to recommend it? I know all
will depend on how it is done, and I have no sanguine trust in myself
now, either for nerve or ‘go,’ and still less for rattling adventures,
but yet the actual events would be a great stimulant, and perhaps they
might supply some of the missing spirit I am deploring.

“I don’t know that I should have written about this _now_, but the girls
have given me no peace since I first talked of it, and are eternally
asking have I begun Major M’Caskey’s adventures. Your opinion shall
decide if it be worth trial.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“_Aug._ 29,1870.

“A post that takes seven days (and travels, I believe, over Berlin and
part of Pomerania) before it reaches Vienna, warns me to be early, and
so I despatch these two O’Ds. to see if you like them as part of next
month’s envoy.

“Of course, people will admit of no other topic than the war or the
causes of it. As the month goes on new interests may arise, and we shall
be on the watch for them.

“Be assured ‘The Standard’ is making a grave blunder by its
anti-Germanism, and English opinion has _just now_ a value in Germany
which, if the nation be once disgusted with us, will be lost for ever.

“Even Mr Whitehurst of ‘The Daily Telegraph’ gives the Emperor up, and
how he defers his abdication after such a withdrawal of confidence is
not easy to say.

“I don’t suspect that the supremacy of Prussia will be unmitigated gain
to us--far from it; but we shall not be immediate sufferers, and we
shall at least have the classic comfort of being the ‘last devoured.’

“I hope you gave Lord Lytton and myself the credit (that is due to us)
of prophesying this war.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“_Sept_. 1, 1870.

“I have so full a conviction of _your_ judgment and such a thorough
distrust of my own, that I send you a brief bit of M’Caskey _for your
opinion_. If you like it, if you think it is what it ought to be and
the sort of thing to take, just send me one line by telegraph to say ‘Go
on.’ I shall continue the narrative in time to reach you by the 18th
at farthest, and enough for a paper. Remember this--the _real war
narrative_ is already given and will continue to be given by the
newspapers, and it is only by a _mock_ personal narrative, with the
pretentious opinions of this impudent blackguard upon all he sees,
hears, or meets with, that I could hope for any originality.

“My eldest daughter is very eager that I should take your opinion at
once, and I am sure you will not think anything of the trouble I am
giving you for both our sakes.”

_To Mr William Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sep_. 2, 1870.

“What a kind thought it was to send me the slip with Corkhardt’s paper!
It is excellent fun, and I send it to-day to the Levant to a poor
banished friend on a Greek island.

“I regard the nation that thrashes France with the same sort of
gratitude I feel for the man who shoots a jaguar. It is so much done in
the interests of all humanity, even though it be only a blackguard or a
Bismarck who does it.

“I send you an O’D. to make enough for a short paper with the other sent
on Monday last.

“I sent your uncle a specimen page of M’Caskey, but by bad luck I
despatched it on my birthday, the 31st August,* and, of course, it will
come to no good. It was Dean Swift’s custom to read a certain chapter
of Job on his birthday, wherein the day is cursed that a man-child was
born. I don’t go that far, but I have a very clear memory of a number
of mishaps (to give them a mild name) which have taken this occasion to
date from. It would be very grateful news to me to learn I was not to
see ‘another return of the happy event,’ but impatience will serve me
little, and I must wait till I’m asked for.”

     * The statement here as to his birthday is sufficiently
     explicit   See vol. i p. 2.--E. D. the credit of reviewing
     ‘Lothair,’ I am determined to say that these papers were
     written by Colonel Humbug!

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sept_ 11,1870.

“Since I got your ‘go on’ I have never ceased writing about M’Caskey.
Upon you I throw all the responsibility, the more as it has very nearly
turned my _own_ brain with its intrinsic insanity.

“I suppose I have sent you folly enough for the present month; and if
you will write me one line to say you wish it, I will set to work at
once at the next part and to the extent you dictate.

“Pray look fully to the corrections, and believe me [to be] not very
sane or collected.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sept_. 13, 1870.

“The post, which failed completely yesterday, brought me your three
proofs to-day. I now send a short, but not sweet, O’Dowd on ‘Irish
Sympathy’ (whose correction you must look to for me), but which is
certainly the best of the batch.

“I had hoped to have heard you mention the receipt of M’Caskey, whose
revelations on the war will only be of value if given at once. I also
sent off some additional matter for M’C. on Sunday last, and hope they
have arrived safely.

“I wish you would send me ‘John’ as a whole. If you should do so, send
it to F. O., to the care of F. Alston, Esq., to be forwarded to me. I do
not know of any novel-writer I like so well as Mrs. O., and if I could
get her to write her name in any of her books for me I’d treasure it
highly. She is the most womanly writer of the age, and has all the
delicacy and decency one desires in a woman.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sept_. 14, 1870.

“My sincere thanks for your note and its enclosure. It seems to me that
I do nothing but get money from you. I suspect, however, that you will
soon be freed from your pensioner. I am breaking fast, and as really the
wish to live on has left me, my friends will not grudge me going to my
rest.

“I am indeed glad that you like the O’Ds. I tear at least three for one
I send you, being more than ever fearful of that ‘brain-breakdown’ than
I am of a gorged lung or a dropsical heart.

“From your telegram about M’Caskey, I was disposed to think you wished
_the contribution for the October No._, and set to work at once to send
another batch. I do not now understand whether this is your intention.
Of course (if possible) it were all the better it were begun
immediately, because in the next part I could bring him up to recent
events, and make his impatient comments on actual occurrences more
outrageously pretentious and extravagant. You will tell me what you
intend when you write.

“Some Hungarians--great swells in their own land--have been here, and
are pressing the girls and myself to go to them a bit. It would be a
great boon to my poor daughters, and for them I would try it if I could,
but I have no heart for it. There was a time a month on the Danube would
have been a great temptation to me.

“I will tell Syd to write to you, and you’re lucky if she does not do so
with an MS.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sept_. 16,1870.

“The war interruption delayed your proof, which only reached me this
morning, and as the second part must be in your hands before this, I am
hopeful that it will all appear in October No., so that by the No. in
November I may bring things down to the actual date of passing events.
I wish this because I know that the _apropos_ will be the chief merit of
the whole.

“When I can get him into diplomatic correspondence about the Peace, &c,
I think there should be some good fun; but I shall not go on till I hear
from you or see that this is out, as I always do best on the spur of
publication.

“This dictating to the King of Prussia how he ought to make peace, when
none of us saw or presumed to say how he should have made war, is to me
insufferable; and the simple question, ‘How much moderation would
France have had had she reached Berlin?’ settles the whole dispute. The
insolent defiance of the Parisians within about a week of eating each
other is a proof that these people may be thrashed and scourged, but the
outrageous self-sufficiency cannot be squeezed out of them. I have not
a shadow of pity for them, and it is without any remorse that I see them
going headlong to--Bismarck!

“Victor Hugo’s address to the Germans beats not only Banagher, but beats
Garibaldi in high-flown absurdity. Dear me! to think what old age can
do for a man! What a warning to us small folk when we see a really great
head come to such Martin Tupperism as this. Perhaps, however, it is a
law of nature, and that poets, like plums, should be taken before they
drop.

“Let me have even one line from you if I’m to go on with M’C.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sept_. 21,1870.

“In the hope that M’Caskey has reached in time and makes his bow next
month, and seeing that as events go fast he must stir himself to keep up
with them, I have never quitted him since I wrote. I therefore send off
two chapters, whose headings I defer till I see the print, and will, if
you approve, bring him up to Sedan in the ensuing parts for the November
No.

“The absurd idea has got such hold of me that I cannot free myself of
it even for a moment, and if the reader only catches my _intention_ the
thing will have a chance of success. In fact, I want to try a mild
and not _offensive_ quiz on all ‘sensational’ reporting. M’Caskey,
fortunately, is a fine lay figure for such humbug, and being already in
part known through ‘Tony Butler,’ needs no introduction.

“I do not, honestly speaking, know whether the notion is a good one, or
whether I am doing the thing well or ill; my only guide (and it once was
a safe one) is the pleasure I feel in the writing, and this though I
am in no small bodily pain, and cannot get one night’s rest in four--a
great drawback to a poor devil whose stronghold was sleep through
everything!

“Do write to me. I cannot tell you the amount of direction and comfort
your letters give me.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sept_. 30, 1870.

“I am disappointed on hearing that M’Caskey does not appear this
month, and perhaps more so because I concur in the reasons for the
postponement. I suppose, however, that once the great tension we now
feel about these events is relieved, even by a short interval, we shall
not be reprehended for the small levities which we extend to certain
people and situations, by no means among the most serious interests of
the hour.

“Of course I am sorry not to be in England at this time. There is
scarcely a telegram of the day without its suggestion; but I have less
regrets as I think how feeble and broken I am, and how low and depressed
I feel, even at the tidings that might rally and cheer me.

“I am greatly gratified by your message from Mrs Oliphant, and I shall
treasure a book from her hand as a very precious possession. She is a
charming writer, and carries me along with her in all her sympathies;
and I shall never forget the pleasure her books gave to the sick-bed
wherein all my hopes rested.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Oct_. 22, 1870.

“As I am fairly knocked up at last--my malady making fierce way with me
within the last week or so--I send you what I have done of M’Caskey. You
will see that I have adhered to the _actual_ incidents of the campaign,
though I fear I have not been remarkable for a truthful construction of
them. When I see this in print, and hear what you say of it, I shall be
better able, and perhaps stronger, to deal with it.

“From four o’clock I cannot sleep with pain, and to a sea-calf like
myself, who requires about a double measure of sleep, you may imagine
the injury.

“The ladies’ wardrobe seized at Worth is a pure fact, and mentioned by
‘The Times,’ &c.

“If I could have counted on a little health and strength, I’d have asked
you to let me translate the plays of Terence for your Ancient Classics.
I have some trick of dialogue, and used to enjoy the ‘Adrian’ as much as
one of Molière’s. I cannot now dream of this: my own comedy has come to
the fifth act, and I actually am impatient for the fall of the curtain.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov._ 8,1870.

“From a line in a newspaper I learned the great disaster that had
befallen you, and felt for you with all my heart. It is a true
consolation, the thought that those we love are in every way more
mercifully dealt with by removal, and I have that feeling as the
stronghold of my own poor support--after years of struggle with what
could not be cured; but still the grief is _there_, and only time makes
us able to reason with it. I am shamed when I read your letters to
perceive how much I must have talked of my own health. I try at home to
skulk the subject, but I see I am not so successful when I sit down
to my desk. I am failing very fast, strength and spirits are going
together, and I really see no reason to wish it otherwise. I only pray
that with such faculties as I have I may live on to the end, and that
the end may not be far off. My dear girls are doing all that they can
think of to make my life easy and comfortable, and when I am free from
pain I try to occupy myself and take interest in what I am doing.

“I had intended to wait your proof before sending a short additional
part of M’Caskey, but if I have it ready, I believe I shall send it at
once. Of course the proof will depend on you. I strongly suspect that
Bismarck was endeavouring to get up a _querelle d’Allemand_ with us
about neutrality, which certainly carried the nation with him, and might
be found useful when, at the close of the war, he either determined to
take Luxembourg or assume towards England a defiance--which, without
some pretext, would have been impolitic, if not impossible. He has
certainly so far worked on the German mind as to make them regard the
splendid munificence of England with distrust and almost dislike. With
all this, it was a gross stupidity of the Tories to be French in their
sympathies, but certainly the readiness with which they made a wrong
choice where there is an alternative looks like something more than
German.

“It does seem scant justice to make a whole people responsible for the
inflated rubbish of Victor Hugo, but still, any one that knows France,
knows that this senseless bravado is exactly what supplies the peculiar
spirit of the nation, and that nearly all that dash and _élan_ which is
accepted as irresistible was only unconquerable by our own consent, and
by a sort of conventional agreement.

“I think I remember Mr Wynne, a nice fellow, but an atrocious whist
player. I have some dim recollection of having abused his play, and
I hope he has lived to forgive me and can bear to think of me without
malice.

“I wish I had had his campaigning opportunities,--not that I have the
most fragmentary faculty of observation, but there is a colour and a
keeping over all that one calls up in memory, which nothing replaces,
and certainly Major M’Caskey would have been not only ‘circumstantial’
but occasionally ‘correct’ if he had known how. I thought I was
imagining a very boastful and pretentious rascal, who had few scruples
in assuring himself to be a man of genius and a hero, but I have just
read the new preface to ‘Lothair,’ and I actually feel Major M’Caskey to
be a diffident and retiring character, very slow to put forward a claim
to any superiority, and on the whole reluctant to take any credit for
his own abilities.”

_To Mr John Blackwood_.

“Trieste, Nov. 11, 1870.

“While waiting for the proof of M’C. I finish the part for December. I
now suspect that the war will go on to an attack on Paris, and mean to
bring the next No. up to the _actual_ events of the day. It is only
by exhibiting him as an audacious liar that his impertinences on the
correspondent class could be tolerated, but they will surely not be
touchy at being called to account by such a critic.

“The Imperial correspondence now published shows it is scarcely possible
to invent anything too bold or too outrageous for belief, and the
absolute vulgarity of the State contrivances and expedients is not the
least remarkable part of the whole. If I ever get to the diplomacies of
the war I shall have some fun.

“Of course the present part must look to yourself for correction.

“‘The Observer’ has a short notice of M’C. this week, and ‘The Sun’
another and more civil.

“Have you seen that the Emperor in his pamphlet endorses the very
strategy recommended by M’Caskey--the attack on Central Germany?”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 14.

“It is not fair to pelt you with my ‘letters’ as well as my
‘literature,’ and you may reasonably claim some immunity on the former
score.

“I remember a very important Englishwoman--she wrote a book called ‘The
Unprotected Female in Norway’--once stopping me in the street on the
ground that ‘no introduction was necessary, as I was _a public man_.’

“I send you back M’C, which reads in places so like reality; but on the
whole I think it will do, and hope you think so too.

“Sir H. Seymour writes me word that he believes he is going to succeed
to Lord Hertford’s Irish estates, a bagatelle of £70,000 per an.! I know
of none more deserving of good fortune.

“‘John’ reached me after my note was closed, with a charming note from
Mrs O.

“Have you heard--that is, have I told you--that the ‘Neue Presse of
Vienna’ quotes M’Caskey as a veritable correspondent? But the General
Brialmont did more. In his ‘Life of Napoleon’ he states, ‘Mon. Charles
O’Malley raconte que,’ &c, &c.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 20, 1870.

“There is a new complication, and for _us_ I suspect a worse one than
all--a Russian war! I believe that every one abroad knew that if even
France had not the worst of it, the mere fact of her having gone through
a stiff campaign, and been crippled of men and money by the effort,
would have suggested to the Russians that _now_ was the time to deal
with ‘the sick man.’ The inducement on seeing France totally disabled
was too tempting, and they have denounced the treaty which they had
determined not to assail before next spring.

“You know better than I do what people at home are disposed to do, and
what’s more, what they _can_ do. By the newspapers I gather that at last
the English people are aware that they have no army; and as a fleet,
even if it floats, cannot fight on dry land, we are comparatively
powerless in ourselves. Of course we could subsidise, but whom? Not the
Austrians, though I see all the correspondents say so, and even tell the
number they could bring into the field and the places they would occupy,
&c.: and our Ambassador at Vienna, I hear, writes home most cheery
accounts of the Austrian resources. Now I _know_ that if Austria were to
move to-morrow, her Slavic population, quite entirely in the hands and
some in the pay of Russia, would rise and dismember the empire. Imagine
Fenianism not only in Meath and Kerry but in Norfolk, Yorkshire, and
Kent, and then you can have some idea of the danger of provoking such a
rebellious element as the Austrian Greek.

“A friend just arrived from Florence tells me that the King made an
ostentatious display of his cordiality to the Turkish Minister a few
nights ago, and that we can have 150,000 Italians to come down to such
assistance. Perhaps to accept the help might be regarded as a compromise
by the Peace party in England. It is like the very small child of the
unchaste young lady.

“A Cabinet courier went through here to-day for Constantinople, _the
Danube route being judged no longer safe_, which is very significant:
but what are we to do?

“Have you reviewed Henry Bulwer’s ‘Life of Palmerston’? I hear it very
well spoken of. Bulwer has all the astuteness to relish the _raserie_
of Pam, and I understand what the world at last sees was his mock
geniality. But what would we not give to have Lord Palmerston back
again, and some small respect felt abroad for the sentiment and wishes
of England!”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Dec_. 4,1870.

“I am so convinced of your better judgment, that when I differ from you
I am ready to withdraw a favour and take your verdict. In the present
case you will, however, see that ‘Pall Mall’ of the 29th has ventured on
‘quizzing’ war incidents and correspondents as freely, and I don’t think
more successfully, than myself.

“At all events, you are the only competent judge of the matter, and I
can’t move pleas in demurrer, and if it be not safe, don’t print him or
use him.

“I only write a very hurried line to say so much, and now go back to a
sofa again, for I am crippled with gout and worse--if there be a worse.

“I am not up to writing: the last thing I had done was an ‘interview’
of M’C. with the Emperor at Metz, and it is dangerously near the
waste-paper basket at this writing.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Dec_. 22, 1870.

“I am so low and _découragé_ that I have little heart to send you the
two O’Ds. that go with this.

“The Gortschakoff one is, I think, smart; the other is only original. If
the world should offer, meanwhile, matter for a third, I’ll try and take
it _toute fois_ if it be that you like and approve of these.

“I am going more rapidly downward than before. I suppose I shall run
on to spring, or near it. Though, like Thompson’s argument for lying in
bed, ‘I see no motive for rising,’ I am quite satisfied to travel in the
other direction.

“I don’t wonder that the British world is growing French in sympathy.
The Prussians are doing their very utmost to disgust Europe, and with a
success that cannot be disputed.

“I hope, if you in England mean war with Russia, that you do not count
on Austria. She will not, because she cannot, help you; and a Russian
war would mean here dismemberment of the empire and utter ruin. If
Austria were beaten, the German provinces would become Prussian; if she
were victorious, Hungary would dominate over the empire and take the
supremacy at once. Which would be worse? I really cannot say.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Dec_ 29,1870.

“I give you all my thanks for your kind letter, which, owing to the deep
snow in Styria, only reached me to-day. I am, of course, sorry the world
will not see the fun of M’Caskey as do the Levers, but it is no small
consideration to me to be represented in that minority so favourably.

“Poor Anster used to tell of an Irish fortune so ‘tied up’ by law that
it could not be untied, and left the heirs to die in the poorhouse.
Perhaps my drollery in the M’Caskey legend is just as ingeniously
wrapped up, and that nothing can find it. At all events, I have no
courage to send you any more of him.

“I am told (authoritatively) that Paris will give in on the 15th
January, but I scarcely believe it. The Germans have perfectly succeeded
in making themselves thoroughly unpopular through Europe, and this mock
anger with England is simply contemptible. If this insolence compels us
to have a fleet and an army, we shall have more reason to be grateful to
than angry with them; but how hard either with Childers or Cardwell? and
how to get rid of the Whigs?

“Gladstone’s letter to the Pope would be a good subject to ‘O’Dowd,’
but I cannot yet hit on the way. It is, however, a little absurd for a
Minister to be so free of his outlying sympathies when he is bullied by
America, bearded by Russia, and Bismarcked to all eternity.

“I am glad to hear of Oliphant. It gives great interest to the
correspondence to remember a friend’s hand in it.

“I have been always forgetting to ask you about Kinglake. A bishop who
came through here said he had died last autumn. Surely this is not true.
I hope not most sincerely.”

XXI. TRIESTE 1871

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Feb_. 15, 1871.

“I am now on my twelfth day in bed, somewhat better at last, but very
low and depressed. I had, before I was struck down, begun an ‘O’Dowd,’
but how write for a public that buys 150,000 copies of ‘Dame Europa’s
School’! Is there any use in inventing epigrams for such an auditory?
Tomorrow is the black day of the post, and can bring me no letter, or I
should not bore you with this.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Fiume Istrica, _Feb_. 28,1871.

“Your kind letter and its enclosure reached me safely here, where I have
been sent to refit. I believe the word suits, as I have got fluid in my
pericardium, and my condition is therefore one of being water-logged,
which means unseaworthy, but not yet gone down.

“The Gladstone request to Robinson to falsify the date of his letter is
too atrocious; and as the ‘O’Dowds’ are made of certain subtle analysis,
this case cannot be so treated, there being fortunately no parallel
instance to put against it.

“As to old Russell: he was instructed to bark, and he went farther, and
growled; but as Bismarck knew he was muzzled, there came nothing of it.

“My impression is the Turks are going to throw us over and make
alliances with Russia, and seeing how utterly powerless we are, small
blame to them. England is rapidly coming to the condition of Holland. I
think another fifty years will do it, and instead of the New Zealander,
a Burgomaster will sit on London Bridge and bob for eels in the muddy
Thames.

“So you mean to be in town this April? Not that I have any hope of
meeting you. Tell Mrs Blackwood for me how glad I should be to spoil her
breakfast once more!”

_To Dr Burbidge._

“Trieste, _March_ 26, 1871.

“Your letter found me at Rome, where I had been sent for a change of
air. It was my first visit to Sydney since her marriage, and I enjoyed
myself much, and threw off my cough, and could get up stairs without
blowing like a grampus.

“I cannot tell you how sincerely I thank you for your letters. I know of
no man but yourself from whom I should have liked to have letters on the
same theme, and if my illness did not make me as reflective as you hoped
for, your letter has given me much thought.

“It is easy enough for a man to mistake deep dejection for reflection,
and so far I might have deceived myself, for I have been depressed to a
state I never knew till now.

“I am cared for and watched and loved as much as is possible for a man
to be, and all the while I am companionless. The dear friend who was
with me through every hour of my life is gone, and I have no heart for
any present [? or future] occupation without her. My impatience is even
such, that I do not like those signs of returning health that promise to
keep me longer here; and I trust more complacently in breaking up
than in anything. With all this, your letter has been a great--the
greatest--comfort I have yet felt, and your affection is very dear to
me. I think I know how only such warm friendship would have taken the
tone and the words you use, and it comes to me like water to a man
thirsting.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Wednesday_, March 29.

“I believe what I now send you is good, but I will not be certain till
I hear you are of the same mind. The truth is, I am so broken in courage
as well as health, that it is only the continued insistence of my
daughters drives me to the desk at all, and they are perhaps only minded
thereto by seeing the deep depression in which I live, and which they
ascribe to idleness.

“I hope at all events to hear from you soon, with tidings of the great
paper, and if soon after with proof of the present, _tant mieux_.

“I believe I have seen my last of London, and I am sorry for it, and
sorrier not to see you again,--not but I feel you would scarce care to
meet me, depressed and low-spirited as I am now.

“I have just seen the aide-de-camp the Emperor here sent to Berlin, and
who had a confidential interview with Bismarck.

“The Prussians are furious with us, and not over friendly with Russia.
Bismarck even said that if Austria should be attacked by Russia they
will stand by her, but not support her in any aggressive policy. He
added, ‘Do what you like with Turkey, but don’t interfere with the
German rights on the Danube.’”

“If Bright had been still in the Ministry I could have understood Henry
Bulwer being made a peer as a subtle attack on the House of Lords. What
it means now I cannot guess.

“If I was not an official with a uniform and a quarter day (both
d------d shabby), I’d make an O’D. on the Princess’s marriage in this
way. The Queen, seeing the impossibility of elevating English democracy,
sees that she has but one other thing to do, which is to come down to
it. This is like old Sheridan, when appealed to by a drunken man in the
gutter, ‘Lift me up, lift me,’ replying, ‘I can’t lift you up, but I’ll
lie down beside you.’”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _April_ 16, 1871.

“I have got a short leave, and having determined to venture on the road,
I mean to start on Wednesday, and, if I can, reach town by Saturday
next. My plan is--as I want to go over to Ireland--to do my ‘Irishries’
until such time as you arrive in London, where, I need not say, I have
no object more at heart than to meet you and Mrs Blackwood.

“If I could manage a rapid run south and west in Ireland, I’ll try what
I could do as ‘A Last Glimpse of Ireland,’ and only wish I had a little
more strength and more spirit for the effort.

“Write me a line to meet me in town (at Burlington Hotel) to say when I
may hope to see you--to see you both, I mean.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“[? London] _Tuesday_, April 25, 1871.

“What with being nearly driven over ten times a-day, and the certainty
of being over-dinnered at night, I have a perilous time of it here.

“I was delighted to get your cordial note, and more so to count upon
seeing you so soon, and I hope, too, Mrs Blackwood with you. My plans
are to visit Ireland at once, so as to have as much of London as I can
when you shall have arrived.

“How I would wish to have you over with me in Ireland, but I suppose the
thing is impossible.

“I have got an autumn invitation to Sir Healy Maxwell, and if we could
manage it perhaps we could then make a little Killarney excursion
together. _Nous en parlerons!_

“I wish I may see and be able to record something in my new ramble worth
sending to ‘Maga,’--at least I will try.

“They tell me here that the Tories might come in at any moment by a snap
vote with the Radicals, but that they are too wise to be tempted.

“I hear that Tichborne is certain to win his suit: indeed fabulous odds
are laid in his favour.”

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Garrick Club, London, _April_ 25, 1871.

“I am here in the midst of civilities and attentions more than enough
to turn my poor head; but I mean to run over to Ireland and be there on
Sunday next, and, if not inconvenient, would ask you to tell Morrison’s
people to keep a room for me as low down--that is, with as few steps to
mount--as they can, always provided that the room be large and airy.
I intend to take some hurried rambles through the south and west to
refresh memories and lay in new stores, if I can.” Lever arrived in
Ireland at the end of April. He was in excellent spirits, and apparently
in a more even frame of mind than he had been during his previous visit.
Again he found himself in a vortex of dining, whisting, talking, and
laughter. Lord Spencer, who was Viceroy of Ireland at this period, made
the author of ‘Lord Kilgobbin’ his guest for some days at the Viceregal
Lodge. Lever “charmed and entertained” Lord and Lady Spencer. Bishops,
military folk, judges, doctors, professors, vied with each other for
the privilege of securing the novelist’s company at dinner-tables and
receptions. Morrison’s hotel, where he had engaged rooms, was besieged
by callers. One of these gives a very pleasant glimpse of the Irish
novelist. “I found him seated,” he says, “at an open window, a bottle of
claret at his right hand and the proof-sheets of ‘Lord Kilgobbin’ before
him. It was a beautiful morning of May: the hawthorns in the College
park were just beginning to bloom.... He looked a hale, hearty,
laughter-loving man of sixty. There was mirth in his grey eye, joviality
in the wink that twittered on his eyelid, saucy humour in his smile, and
_bon mot_, wit, and rejoinder in every movement of his lips. His hair,
very thin but of a silky brown, fell across his forehead, and when
it curtained his eyes he would jerk back his head--this, too, at some
telling crisis in a narrative.... He made great use of his hands, which
were small and white and delicate as those of a woman. He threw them
up in ecstasy or wrung them in mournfulness--just as the action of the
moment demanded.... He was somewhat careless in his dress, but clung to
the traditional high shirt-collar.... ‘I stick to my Irish shoes,’ he
said. ‘There is no shoe in the world--or no accent either--equal to the
Irish brogue.’” Trinity College decided to confer upon him the title
of Doctor of Laws--the actual bestowal of the title did not take place
until July--and played whist with him. The University Club gave a dinner
in his honour. Standing with his back to a chiffonnier, he remarked to a
friend that most of the old faces had disappeared. “You still have some
friends at your back,” said his companion; and turning to see who they
were, the novelist beheld some volumes of his own writings. Taking up
‘Harry Lorrequer,’ he observed, “A poor thing. How well Phiz illustrated
it!” One of the calls he made during this visit to Dublin was at the
house of Sheridan le Fanu. The author of ‘Uncle Silas’ was in an extra
gloomy mood, and he denied himself to his old comrade. He was more
fortunate with another friend, Sir William Wilde. Lever was beginning to
suffer from dimness of sight. The eminent oculist assured him that there
was nothing radically wrong with his eyes--that the difficulty arose out
of late suppers. Every one who met him during his last visit to Dublin
declared that ‘Lorrequer’ had never been so agreeable, so fascinating,
so buoyant. The ramble through the south and west of Ireland was not
undertaken. Dublin festivities had weakened the novelist’s will. He said
goodbye to Ireland in May, and made a short stay in London. He enjoyed
again in London the company of all that was bright and lively, himself
the brightest and liveliest. He made some heavy losses at whist, but
his ill-luck had a sunny side. It encouraged him to call upon Mr W. H.
Smith, whose firm now owned most of his copyrights; and Mr Smith, it is
said, gave Lever a very considerable sum of money on account of payments
to be made to him for a series of autobiographical prefaces to his
novels.

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

“Trieste, _June_ 14, 1871.

“It is in no ingratitude for all the hospitalities and courtesies I have
lately received that I say I was glad to be once more in my cottage, and
back in the calm, quiet, and comfortable little crib I call my home.

“I was present in court at the Tichborne examination of Thursday last,
and a more miserable spectacle of evasion, falsehood, and shame I never
witnessed; but in these depreciations of the man’s character I see no
reason to dispute his identity,--on the contrary, the blacker he is, the
more, to my thinking, he is a Tichborne. At the same time, juries do
not confine themselves to the issue they have to try, but are swayed by
moral reasons outside the legal ones, and may in all likelihood scruple
to endow with fortune such a palpable scoundrel.

“My last dinner in London was with Ballantine, and he persists in
believing the claimant to be the real man; but I do not perceive that he
is confident of the verdict.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _July_ 2, 1871.

“I am so anxious to be early that I send you the three O’Ds. I have
written this very moment. I have finished them, and so near post hour
that I have scarce time for a line to say that I am at home again, and
have brought back a fair stock of the good health my visit to town gave
me, and a large budget of the pleasure and kind flatteries which every
one bestowed on me when there,--narratives my daughters delight in, and
in which your name and your wife’s come in at every moment and to meet
all our gratitude in recognition.

“I hope you will like the O’Ds., and think they have not lost in vigour
because of my late excesses in turtle and whitebait.

“When you send me a proof, tell me all you think of them, and if
anything occurs to me in the meanwhile, I’ll speak of it.

“Tichborne I incline to think the real man, and the blacker they make
him the more certainly they identify him: so far I regard Coleridge as
his best advocate. Of course, I must not speak of the case till it is
concluded.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _July_ 5, 1871.

“As I had finished the enclosed O’D., I read how Trinity had made me
LL.D. The degree must not be exported to me in gratitude. I really
believe a large amount of what I have said, which is more than can be
asserted by Tichborne, or the man who says he is Tichborne.

“It is a great grief to me that I cannot say what I think of that
curious trial, and all that I should like to say of the solicitor to the
Crown’s examination; but I see it would be too dangerous, and, to use
his own style, I might ask myself, ‘Would you not be surprised to hear
that an attachment was issued against you?’”

“The hot weather has begun here, and in such honest earnest that I can
do nothing but hunt out a dark cool corner and go to sleep.

“I am very sorry not to be in Ireland now, when the [? ] have been
invited to the Exhibition banquet on the 20th; but I have done with
banquets now, and must address myself to my maccaroni with what appetite
I may.”

_To Mr William Blackwood._

“Trieste, _July_ 13, 1871.

“I should have liked to have detained these proofs until I heard what
your uncle might have to say to them, but I am afraid of delay, and send
them back at once. My hope is that he will like them, though I cannot
dare to think that my chief, Lord Granville, will approve of what I say
of his speech at the Cobden dinner. At any rate, if they kick me out,
I can go home and be a rebel, and if too old for a pike I am still good
for a paragraph.

“All that London life with its flatteries and fat-feeding has sorely
unfitted me for my cold mutton v. existence at home; but it cannot be
helped, and I must try to get back into the old groove and work along as
before.

“There is now a dull apathy over life--the consequence of all our late
excitement; but we cannot always afford to pay for ‘stars,’ and Bismarck
is too costly an _artiste_ to keep always on the boards. From all I
see, the French are just as insolent and bumptious as before they were
licked,--showing us, if we like to see it, what the world would have had
to endure had they been the conquerors!

“It is a sore grief to me that I cannot go to the Scott festival; but I
have no leave and less money, and though I believe F. O. might grant me
the one, they’d even stop my pay, which is the aggravation of insult.

“I hope sincerely you don’t feel it a matter of conscience to read all
a man writes, for if so I’d shut up. Only assuring you that now we have
met and shaken hands, it is with increased pleasure I write myself,
yours sincerely, Chas. Lever.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 6, 1871.

“_En attendant_ to writing you a long letter, I send you these ‘O’Dowds’
now, which will give us more time to discuss them.

“That on our ‘National Donations’ is, I hope, good. I know it is called
for. The shabby scoundrels from Manchester that want to manage England
like a mill and treat the monarch like an overseer deserve castigation,
and I feel you will agree with me. Is not ‘Meat without Bone’ good
enough for use?

“I am so sorry not to be able to say all the civil things I should like
to say of the Solicitor-General now, for when the trial is over I shall
not be able to revive my generous indignation to the white heat it now
enjoys.

“Why don’t you tell me some popular theme to O’Dowd? I’m here, as they
say in Ireland, ‘at the back of good speed,’ and know nothing.

“A very curious trial occurred five years ago in Austria on a disputed
identity, and the man questioned substantiated his case. It would be
interesting if a correct record could be had.

“Ballantine tells me that Jeune is gone to Australia, and will be back
in November with proofs of the loss of the _Bella_, names of survivors,
and existence in the colony of Arthur Orton up to November last. B. is
sure of a verdict--at least, he is sure of his right to it.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 5, 1871.

“It is time I should thank you and Mrs Blackwood for your cordial
invitation to myself and my daughter to go and see you in Scotland, and
we are only too sorry we cannot manage you a visit, and in talk--for it
is all that is left us--to ride over the links of Fife, and even assist
at golf.

“Even if I could have plucked up courage to go over now, I ‘stopped’
myself by letting my ‘vice’ go on leave,--a piece of generosity on my
part that has cost me heavier than I thought for, and gave me nearer
opportunities of intimacy with Cardiff captains and Hull skippers than I
care for.

“Of course, it is out of the question trying to write except on my ‘off
days,’ when I shut out the whole rabble.

“I begin to think that Gladstone has been carried away by pure anger in
all his late doings. It is purely womanish and hysterical throughout. To
hit off this I have thrown off the short ‘O’Dowd,’ ‘What if they were to
be Court-martialled?’ which, with a little change, will perhaps do.

“It is one of those cases which will be as long kept before the public,
for it is the attack on a great principle--and in that sense no mere
grievance of the hour.

“As a means of lowering the House of Lords--if such was the
intention--it has totally failed, and even ‘Pall Mall’ has come to the
side of the Peers, which is significant.

“I see Seymour, my old friend, has got his first verdict in the Hertford
case. It is £70,000 a-year at issue, but of course the great battle will
be fought before ‘the Lords,’”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 17,1871.

“About half an hour after your pleasant letter and its handsome
enclosure reached me, Langford came in. He was on his way to Venice,
but, like a good fellow, stopped to dine with myself and daughter.

“We are delighted with him,--not only with his talk about books and
writers, Garrick men and reviewers, but with his fine fresh-hearted
appreciation of all he sees in his tour. He likes everything, and
travels really to enjoy it.

“I wish I knew how to detain him here a little longer; though, God
knows, no place nor no man has fewer pretensions to lay an embargo on
any one.

“I took him out to see Miramar last evening, and we both wished greatly
you had been with us. It was a cool drive of some miles along the
Adriatic, with the Dalmatian mountains in front, and to the westward the
whole Julian Alps snow-topped and edged. I know you would have enjoyed
it.

“I am so glad you like the O’Ds. As I grow older I become more and more
distrustful of all I do; in fact, I feel like the man who does not know
when he draws on his banker that he may not have overdrawn his account
and have his cheque returned. This is very like intellectual bankruptcy,
or the dread of it, which is much the same.

“The finest part of Scott’s nature to my thinking was the grand heroic
spirit--that trumpet-stop on his organ--which elevated our commonplace
people and stirred the heart of all that was high-spirited and
generous amongst us. It was the anti-climax to our realism and
sensationalism--detective Police Literature or Watch-house Romance.

“This was the tone I wanted to see praised and recommended, and I was
sorry to see how little it was touched on. The very influence that
a gentleman exerts in society on a knot of inferiors was the sort of
influence Scott brought to bear upon the whole nation. All felt that
there was at least one there before whom nothing mean or low or shabby
should be exhibited.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Aug_. 28, 1871.

“The day after Langford left this, my horse, treading on a sharp stone
that cut his frog, fell on me and crushed my foot,--not severely, but
enough to bring on the worst attack of gout I ever had in my life, and
which all my precautions have only kept down up to this from seizing on
the stomach. My foot was about as big and as shapely as Cardwell’s head.
I am now unable to move, and howl if any one approaches me rashly.

“I told Langford of a curious police trial for swindling here at
Vienna--curious as illustrating Austrian criminal procedure, &c. He
thought I ought to report it in ‘O’Dowd.’ I send it off now for your
opinion and judgment (and hope favourably). It might want a little
retouching here and there, but you will see and say.

“I was delighted with your ‘Scott’ speech--the best of them of all that
I read, and I see it has been copied and recopied largely. Your allusion
to Wilson was perfect, and such a just homage to a really great man whom
all the Cockneyism in the world cannot disparage.

“I am in such damnable pain that I can hardly write a line, but I want
you to see the ‘Police’ sketch at once. Can I have a proof, if you like
it, early? as perhaps when I am able to move I shall have to get to some
of the sulphur springs in Styria at once.

“My enemy is now making a demonstration about my left knee, and, as the
newspapers say, _La situation est difficile_.

“I am not so ill but that I can desire to be remembered to Mrs
Blackwood.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“_Sept._, 9, 1871.

“Between gout and indignation I am half mad. Gladstone at Whitby is
worse to me than my swelled ankle, and I send you a furious O’D. to show
that the Cabinet are only playing out--where they do not parody--the
game of the Communists.

“Whether it will be in time to send me a proof I cannot tell, but you
will, I know, take care of me. I feel in writing it as though we had
been talking the whole thing together, and that I was merely giving a
_résumé_ of our gossip.

“Your delightful note and its enclosure have just come. I thank you
cordially for both. I have not any recollection of what I said of Scott,
but I know what I _feel_ about him, and how proud I am that you like my
words. I cannot get my foot to the ground yet, but I am rather in vein
for writing, as I always am in gout, only my caligraphy has got added
difficulties from the position I am reduced to.

“I am glad Langford likes us here: my daughters took to him immensely,
and only were sorry we saw so little of him. If he has really ‘bitten’
you with a curiosity to see Miramar I shall bless the day he came here.

“Tell Mrs Blackwood my cabin will be glad to house her here, and if she
will only come I’ll be her courier over the whole of North Italy.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Sept_. 10, 1871.

“You are right. There is little point--that is, there is no epigram--in
the ‘Trial.’ I wrote it rather to break the monotony of eternal
moral-isings than with any other object. If it be pleasant reading I am
content, and, I hope, so are you.

“I sent yesterday a hard-hitting O’D. on ‘How Gladstone is doing the
Work of the Commune,’ and I send you now, I think, a witty comparison
between the remaining troopers and the Whigs. My daughter thinks it the
smartest bit of fun I have done since I had the gout last, and all the
salt in it comes unquestionably from that source.

“All the names in the ‘Trial’ are authentic. The lady is really the
grand-daughter of Hughes Ball (the celebrated Golden Ball); and the
man’s assertion of being ‘Times’ correspondent was accepted as an
unquestionable fact.

“I have made superhuman efforts to be legible in this ‘O’Dowd’ now, so
as to make correction easy. Heaven grant that my ‘Internationals’ be as
lucky.

“I am still a cripple, and if irritability be a sign of recovery, my
daughter says that my convalescence is approaching.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Oct_. 1, 1871.

“I am so eager to save a post and see this in proof, that I have never
left my desk for five hours, and only read it to Lord D. (Henry Bulwer),
who was delighted with it, before I sent it.

“You have given me a rare fright by printing, as I see, what I said of
Scott--at least, any other man than yourself doing so would terrify me,
but you are a true friend and a wise critic, and what you have done
must be right and safe: I do not remember one word of it. I have written
myself back into gout, and must now go to bed. I had a sort of _coup_
yesterday, and D. believed I was off.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Oct_. 3,1871.

“I have just seen ‘Maga,’ and I am ashamed at the prominence you have
given my few words about Scott.

“What a close connection a man’s ankles have with his intellect. I don’t
know, but I can swear to it, that since I have become tender about the
feet I have grown to feel very insecure about the thinking department,
and the row in the cellar is re-echoed in the garret.

“Every fresh speech of Gladstone gives me a fresh seizure, and his last
‘bunkum’ at Aberdeen has cost me a pint of colchicum.

“I have an O’D. in my head on the ‘Cobden Campaign,’ but I suppose it is
safer to leave it there. You know what the tenor replied when some one
said from the pit, ‘Monsieur, vous chantez fau.’ ‘Je le sais, Monsieur,
mais je ne veux pas qu’on me le dise.’

“Give my warmest regards to Mrs Blackwood. I wish with all my heart,
gout _nonobstant_, I was to dine with you to-day.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Oct_. 17, 1871.

“I know well but for golf and its ‘divartin’ sticks’ I should have had
a line from you, but you have no moment to spare correcting O’Ds. amidst
your distractions.

“I kept back the proof I now send to hear from you and make any changes
or alterations you might suggest, and I have a half-done O’Dowd ‘On
Widows’ which I shall keep over for another time. I am sorely done
up,--only able to crawl with a stick and a friendly arm, and so weak
that the Irishwoman’s simile of a ‘sheet of wet paper’ is my only
parallel. Robert Lytton tells me he has got such a pleasant letter
from you. He and his wife had been stopping with us here, and we were
delighted with them both.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 1, 1871.

“I was sorry not to see my ‘Home Rule’ in ‘Maga,’ but sorrier still
not to hear from you, and I tormented myself thinking--which I ought
not--that you were somewhat _chagriné_ with me. I am delighted now to
find you are not, and that the only ‘grievance’ between us makes _me_
the plaintiff for your not having printed my O’D. I can forgive this,
however, and honestly assure you that I could forgive even worse at your
hands. It is the nervous fear that I may be falling into [? senility] as
well as gout that makes me tetchy about a rejected paper.

“Henry James got very safely out of my hands. He has no more pretension
to play whist with me than I would have to cross-examine a witness
before him, and I told him so before I won his sixpenny points.

“I fortunately asked F. O. by telegraph if I should take on the
despatches, as the messenger was in quarantine, and they said not. They
knew they were Henry Elliott’s, and that the delay could not injure the
freshness. He is a great diplomatist, and there is nothing ephemeral
in the news he sends home. Drummond Wolff is here with me now and Lord
Dalling, and our conversation is more remarkable for wit than propriety.

“While James was here I was too gouty to go out with him, and what the
latter Q.C. (queer customer) means by saying I was dog-bitten, I can’t
guess. I am now crippled hand and foot, and a perfect curse to myself
from irritability.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 3, 1871.

“If my late discomfiture in your opinion of my last rejected O’Ds. had
not taught me that I am not infallible, I should say that the O’D. I now
send you is, as regards thought or pith, as good as any of them. I wrote
it in a fit of gout. Spasmodic it is, perhaps, but vigorous I hope.

“I have been violently assailed in letters for what I said about
‘touching pitch,’--but there is nothing that leads me to retract or
modify one word I wrote,--some from doctors, well written, but on a
wrong issue. You can no more make people modest by Act of Parliament
than you can make them grateful or polite in fifty other good things.

“A Mr Crane, West George Street, Glasgow, writes me a very courteous
note, and says, ‘I do thank the Editor of “Blackwood” for publishing
what you say of Scott,’ and goes on to express his hearty concurrence
with it all, and he regrets that it had not been spoken instead of
written, &c, &c.

“I do not feel as if I was to get better this time; but I have called
wolf so often I shall scream no more. What I feel most, and struggle
against most in vain, is depression. I have got to believe not only
that my brains are leaving me, but that my friends are tired of me. Of
course, I couple the two disasters together, and long to be beyond the
reach of remembering either one or the other.

“You read my MS. so easily that if you do not like the O’D. don’t print
it--it saves me a disappointment at least; and above all, do not mind
any chance irritability I display in writing, for a cry escapes me in my
pain, and I often do not hear it myself.

“Now that I write very little and brood a great deal, I sit thinking
hours’ long over a very good-for-nothing life, and owning to myself
that no man ever did less with his weapon than I have. I say this in no
vanity, but sheer shame and self-reproach.

“If I could be with you at times it would rouse And stimulate me
greatly, for I think you know--that is, you understand--me better than
almost any one, and I always feel the better of your company.

“Bulwer (Lord Dalling) is with me now; but he is a richer man than
myself, and though we rally after dinner, we are poor creatures of a
morning.

“Your last note did me real good, and I have re-read it three or four
times.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Nov_. 16, 1871.

“You are right about Bradlaugh, and I have added a few lines to insert
in the place marked. I hope I am not libellous, and I believe I have
steered safely.

“I am breaking up at last more rapidly, for up to this the planking has
been too tough; but I am now bumping heavily, and, please God, must soon
go to pieces.

“Your kindness, and your wife’s, are very dear to me. I am constantly
thinking of you both. Your last note gave me sincere pleasure.

“Lytton and I talked a great deal of you and drank your health. We often
wished you were with us. He is immensely improved--I mean mentally,--and
become one of the very best talkers I ever met, and not a shade of any
affectation about him. I am convinced he will make a great career yet.

“‘Our Quacks’ is, I think, a better title. Decide yourself.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Dec_. 11, 1871.

“I was indeed surprised at the address of your letter, but I should
have been more than surprised--overjoyed--had I seen yourself, and I am
sorely sorry you did not come on here. Do let it be for another time,
and ask Mrs Blackwood to have a craving desire to see Venice and the
Titians, and take me as an accident of the road.

“I am getting too ill for work, but not for the pleasure of seeing my
friends, and there is nothing does me the same good.

“I see no difficulty in writing to you about Austria, but not as
O’Dowd,--gravely, soberly, and, if I could, instructingly. But I must
wait for a little health and a little energy, or I should be only
steaming with half-boiler power.

“I see little prospect now of getting better, and all I have to do is to
scramble along with as much of health as remains to me, and not bore
my friends or myself any more on the matter. Sending the divers down
to report how thin my iron plating is, is certainly not the way to
encourage me to a new voyage.

“Like a kind fellow, send me George Eliot’s new book. There is nothing
like her.”

XXII. TRIESTE 1872

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Jan_. 31, 1872.

“I am ordered off to Fiume for change of air--the change of scene that
is to affect me is somewhat farther. Before I go I send you two O’Ds.
that have been under my hands these few weeks back. Whether they be
print-worthy or not, you will know and decide; if so, I shall be back to
correct and add another by the time a proof could reach me.

“I am in a very creaky condition, and why I hold together at all I don’t
understand. Like the _Megæra_, all the attempts to stop the leak only
widens the breach.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Feb_. 15, 1872.

“It was an angel from heaven suggested to your wife the thought of a run
out here. Only come and I’ll go with you to Japan if you like. There are
no two people in the world I should rather see, and though the place
is a poor one and I a dull dog, the thought of seeing you here would
brighten us both up, as the mere notion has cheered me already.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _Feb_. 26, 1872.

“I send you (and thus early to be in time for next month) a short
sketchy story which, as the man said of the Athanasian Creed, is founded
on fact, but not the better (I mean the story) for that.

“It has a moral too, or rather several morals, to be distributed
according to age and sex, and, in fact, is a ‘righte merrie’ and well
conceived tale, as I hope you will tell me.

“I had fully made up my mind to write no more, and to water my grog to
enable me to do so, but I now discover that neither of my two daughters
like ‘watered grog’ at all, but prefer whatever dietary habit has inured
them to. ‘For this reason and for the season’ I am at it once more,
though my ink-bottle looks as ruefully at me as the Yankees at Gladstone
for backing out of the N. Y. Convention.

“By the way, I hope you have printed my correct version of the Alabama;
I know it is the true one, and as I am the only discoverer, I am jealous
about my invention.

“I had a grand argument to arraign the Ministry on the Collier job
(which no one hit on), but coming at this d------d corner of Europe it
was too late, and lost.

“I feel that the day after I am buried here some bright notion will
occur to me and make me very uncomfortable in my grave. I have a dress
rehearsal of this misery three times a-week, and gout all the time
besides.

“Send me news of your plans and projects, if any of them tend this way.
I shall have a ‘thanksgiving day’ of my own, and be grateful, without
scarlet cloth or Mr Aytoun on the Board of Ws.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _March_ 9 and 11.

“I begin your note now, not intending to finish till I see if the post,
a couple of days hence, may bring me some news of my short story, ‘Some
one Pays.’ Meanwhile I have time to thank you heartily for your note and
its contents, and to say what courage you give me by the hope that
Mrs Blackwood is really serious about coming out here. As a short tour
nothing could be nicer than to come out by Brussels, Munich, and Vienna
(and through Trieste), back by Venice, Milan, Florence, Turin, and
the Mont Cenis to Paris. I am seriously anxious that you should have a
number of interesting places to see, and that the journey should repay
you thoroughly. Dull as the place is, every one needs some rest in a
tour, and Trieste can come in as your halt, and all the pleasure your
visit will give us will be your recompense for enduring our stupidity.

“Monson, who is here on his way to his post (Consul-General at Pesth),
is just fresh from a visit to Lyons at Paris, where he met Lord Derby.
It seems that Lord D. spoke very frankly and confidently of Gladstone’s
speedy fall, and of the Tories ascent to power, even to the extent of
the distribution of office, who was to be Sec. at F. O., &c.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _March_ 30, 1872.

“When I was thinking I was getting better I have fallen back again into
short-breathing, heart-fluttering, and grampus-blowing bad as ever.

“I send you an absurd ‘O’Dowd’ to add to the ‘Widows,’ when you publish
it. Rose comes here from Constantinople in a day or so, and by the time
I shall receive the proof I shall probably have some secret details of
Tichborne worth telling.

“If you and Mrs B. can come out here I think I shall persuade myself to
live on till May at all events. I am resolved to meet you this spring,
somewhere, anywhere. Whenever you can make your plans let me hear.

“I am rejoiced that you like my Albanian sketch story, and hope it will
take.

“I wish you had time to look at ‘Kilgobbin.’ The talk is good
enough--the story bad as can be.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _April_ 9, 1872.

“A word to disabuse the world of the need of a ‘Political Programme’
which is well-timed just v now; and I send you a short O’D. to add to
the others.

“I feel certain you will agree with my notion, and my only misgiving is,
have I made myself clear enough?

“I have had a very sharp brush these last few days, and I am still
wrestling with the enemy. I own I do not come up smiling after each
round, but looking horribly grim. Let me only hear when there is a
chance of seeing you and Mrs B. and your little girl, and I’ll at once
apply for a renewal of my lease of life, though it be only for a week or
two.”

_To Mr John Blackwood._

“Trieste, _April_ 11,1872.

“It was only yesterday I sent off a short O’D. on the English demand for
a ‘Political Programme,’ and I hope it has reached you, and more, that
it is readable, for my hand and my head are degenerating _pari passu_.

“To-day I have got your welcome note, for which I thank you heartily. It
will do me more good to see you than all my tinctures, and pray tell
Mrs Blackwood she is quite right to bring her little girl with her. The
journey, the new scenes and new faces, will be the healthiest excitement
to a young mind, and, whether as correcting old ideas or storing up new
ones, is a form of education not to be had of books or to be satisfied
by governesses.

“You are really a good fellow to come and see me in a cabin. I can only
say if it were a palace you would be equally welcome, and more welcome
you could not be.

“I’ll not promise to go to England. I have scarcely wind for a
‘three-mile heat,’ but I’ll take a short run with you somewhere, and
we’ll concert it when we meet. Rob. Lytton wrote to me a few days ago,
and said how he hoped to see you. His wife has just had a boy, which I
am heartily glad of, as they lately lost their only son. Mrs L. is the
most charming, natural, and nice creature it is possible to imagine, and
the crowning good fortune of Robert’s life is to have met her.

“From Vienna here--you can do it in one day--fourteen and a half hours;
but if you prefer to halve it, there is a nice halting-place, Gratz,
Styria, where you arrive about three o’clock and leave the following day
about the same: the Hôtel Elephant is excellent.

“Sydney and her man are at the Burlington, and well too--also their
mother,--and can get you every detail of the journey _via_ whichever
route you take. I think you are right to come by Germany and go back by
Italy, though it be against the precepts of climate, but that Germany
after Italy is like following a strawberry ice with sauerkraut. I think
‘Just like Rye’ will be the best title for the ‘O’Dowd,’ and ‘taking’ as
well as appropriate. Rose is still at Constantinople, I believe, trying
to get the tobacco monopoly from the Government,--a huge affair of some
millions sterling.

“The weather up to this was splendid here; now it has become ‘more Irish
and less nice,’ and I fancy is one of the reasons of my maladies. One
loves to lean on such subtleties, like the alderman who ascribed his
health to his always having a strawberry in his wine-glass.”

XXIII. LOOKING BACKWARDS 1871-1872

     [The autobiographical and bibliographical notes which Lever
     arranged to supply for a new edition of his novels were
     written during the latter part of 1871 and the spring of
     1872. Unfortunately he did not live to complete the intended
     series of prefaces. They disclose highly interesting and
     amusing glimpses of his career and opinions, and they
     contain very open confessions of his loose literary methods,
     as well as some acute criticisms of his writings.]

‘HARRY LORREQUER.’

That some thirty years after the sketches which form this volume were
written I should be called upon to revise and re-edit them is strange
enough to me, well remembering, as I do, with what little hope of
permanence they were penned, how lightly they were undertaken, and how
carelessly thrown together. But there is something still stranger in
the retrospect, and that is, that these same papers--for originally they
were contributed to ‘The Dublin University Magazine’--should mainly have
directed the course of my future life, and decided my entire career.
I may quote from a former preface that I was living in a very secluded
spot when I formed the idea of jotting down these stories, many of them
heard in boyhood, others constructed out of real incidents that occurred
to my friends in travel, and some again--‘The Adventures of Trevanion’
and ‘The French Duellist,’ for instance--actual facts, well known to
many who had formed part of the army of occupation in France. To give
what consistency I might to a mass of incongruous adventure, to such a
variety of strange situations befalling one individual, I was obliged
to imagine a character, which probably my experiences--and they were not
very mature at the time--assured me as being perfectly possible: one
of a strong will and a certain energy, rarely persistent in purpose
and perpetually the sport of accident, with a hearty enjoyment of the
pleasure of the hour, and a very reckless indifference as to the price
to be paid for it. If I looked out on my acquaintances, I believed I saw
many of the traits I was bent on depicting, and for others I am afraid I
had only to take a peep into myself. If it is an error, then, to believe
that in these Confessions I have ever recorded any incidents in my own
life, there is no mistake in supposing that in sketching Harry Lorrequer
I was in a great measure depicting myself, and becoming, allegori-cally,
an autobiographist. Here is a confession which, if thirty odd years had
not rolled over, I might be indisposed to make; but time has enabled me
to look back on my work, and even on myself, with a certain degree of
impartiality, and to feel, as regards both, as the great Paley said a
man feels after he has finished his dinner, “That he might have done
better.” It is perfectly unnecessary that I should say when and where
I wrote these sketches; no thought of future authorship of any kind
occurred to me, far less did I dream of abandoning my profession as
a physician for the precarious livelihood of the pen. Indeed their
success, such as it was, only became known to me after I had left
Ireland and gone to live abroad, and it was there--at Brussels--my
publishers wrote to me to request a continuance of my Confessions, with
the assurance that they had found favour in the world and flattering
notice from the press. Though I have been what the sarcastic French
moralist called “blessed with a bad memory” all my life, I can still
recall the delight--I cannot call it less--with which I heard my attempt
at authorship had been successful. I did not awake, indeed, “to find
myself famous,” but I well remember the thrill of triumphant joy with
which I read the letter that said “Go on,” and the entrancing ecstasy
I felt at the bare possibility of becoming known one day as a writer. I
have had, since then, some moments in which a partial success has made
me very happy and very grateful, but I do not believe that all these
put together, or indeed any possible favour the world might mete to
me, would impart a tithe of the enjoyment I felt on hearing that ‘Harry
Lorrequer’ had been liked by the public, and that they asked for more of
him. If this sort of thing amuses them, thought I, I can go on for ever;
and believing this to be true, I launched forth with all that prodigal
waste of material which, if it forms one of the reasons of success, is,
strictly speaking, one among the many demerits of this story. That I
neither husbanded my resources nor imagined that they could ever fail
me were not my only mistakes; and I am tempted to show how little I
understood of the responsibilities of authorship by repeating what
I have told elsewhere,--an incident of the last number of ‘Harry
Lorrequer.’ The MS. which contained the conclusion of the story had been
sent through the Foreign Office bag from Brussels, and possibly had been
mistaken for a despatch. At all events, like King Theodore’s letter it
had been thrown on one side and forgotten. In this strait my publishers
wrote to me in a strain that “the trade” alone knows how to employ
towards an unknown author. Stung by the reproaches (and they were not
mild) of my correspondent, I wrote back, enclosing another conclusion,
and telling him to print either or both--as he pleased. Years after, I
saw the first MS. (which came to hand at last) bound in my publisher’s
library and lettered, “Another ending to H. L.” When the great master
of fiction condescended to inform the world on what small fragments of
tradition or local anecdote the Waverley Novels were founded, he best
exalted the marvellous skill of his own handiwork in showing how genius
could develop the veriest incident of a life into a story of surpassing
power and interest. I have no such secrets to reveal, nor have I the
faintest pretension to suppose the public would care to hear about the
sources from which I drew either my characters or my incidents. I have
seen, however, such references to supposed portraiture of individuals
in this story, that I am forced to declare there is but one character
in the book of which the original had any existence, and to which I
contributed nothing of exaggeration. This is Father Malachi Brennan.
The pleasant priest was alive when I wrote the tale, and saw himself in
print and--worse still--in picture, not, I believe, without a certain
mock indignation, for he was too racy a humourist and too genuine a
lover of fun to be really angry at this caricature of him. The amusing
author of ‘The Wild Sports of the West’--Hamilton Maxwell--was my
neighbour in the little watering-place where I was living,* and our
intimacy was not the less close from the graver character of the society
around us. We often exchanged our experiences of Irish character and
life, and in our gossipings stories were told, added to, and amplified
in such a way between us that I believe neither of us could have
pronounced at last who gave the initiative of an incident, or on which
side lay the authorship of any particular event.

     * Portstewart

It would have been well had our intercourse stopped at these
confidences, but, unfortunately, it did not. We often indulged in little
practical jokes on our more well-conducted neighbours, and I remember
that the old soldier from whom I drew some of the features I have
given to Colonel Kamworth was especially the mark of these harmless
pleasantries. Our Colonel was an excellent fellow, kind-hearted and
hospitable, but so infatuated with a propensity to meddle with every
one, and to be a partner in the joys, the afflictions, the failures, or
the successes of all around him, that, with the best possible intentions
and the most sincere desire to be useful to his neighbours, he became
the cause of daily misconceptions and mistakes, sowed discord where he
meant unity, and, in fact, originated more trouble and more distrust
than the most malevolent mischief-maker of the whole country-side. I am
forced to own that the small persecutions with which my friend Maxwell
and myself followed the worthy Colonel, the wrong intelligence with
which we supplied him, particularly as regarded the rank and station of
the various visitors who came down during the bathing season; the false
scents on which we sent him, and the absurd enterprises on which we
embarked him, even to the extent of a mock address which induced him to
stand for the “borough”--the address to the constituency being our joint
production,--all these follies, I say, more or less disposed me, I am
sure, to that incessant flow of absurd incident which runs through this
volume, and which, after all, was little more than the reflex of our
daily plot-tings and contrivings. I believe my old friend the Colonel
is still living: if he be, and he should read these lines, let him
also read that I have other memories of him than those of mere jest
and pleasantry--memories of his cordial hospitality and genial good
nature,--and that there are few things I would like better than to meet
and talk with him over bygones, knowing no one more likely to relish
a pleasant reminiscence than himself, no one more certain to forgive a
long-past liberty taken with him. If there are many faults and blunders
in this tale which I would willingly correct, if there be much I
would curtail or cut out altogether, and if there be also occasionally
incidents of which I could improve the telling, I am held back from any
attempts of this kind by the thought that it was by these sketches, such
as they are, I first won the hearing from the public which for more than
thirty years has never deserted me, and that the favour which has given
the chief pride and interest to my life dates from the day I was known
as Harry Lorrequer. The life of a physician has nothing so thoroughly
rewarding, nothing so cheering, so full of hearty encouragement, as in
the occasional friendships to which it opens the way. The doctor attains
to a degree of intimacy, and stands on a footing of confidence so
totally exceptional, that if personal qualities lend aid to the
position, his intercourse becomes friendship. Whether, therefore, my old
career gave me any assistance in new roads, whether it imparted to me
any habits of investigation as applicable to the full in morals as in
matter, it certainly imparted to me the happy incident of standing on
good terms with--I was going to say--my patient (and perhaps no better
word could be found for him who has heard me so long, trusted me so
much, given me so large a share in his favours, and come to look on me
with such friendliness). It would be displaying the worst in me if I did
not own that I owe to my books not only the most pleasant intimacies
of my life, but some of my closest friendships. A chance expression,
a fairly shadowed thought, a mere chord struck at random by a passing
hand, as it were, has now and then placed me, as mesmerists call it, _en
rapport_ with some one who may have thought long and deeply on what I
had but skimmed over; and straightway there was a bond between us. No
small satisfaction has it been to me occasionally to hear that out of
the over-abundance of my own buoyancy and light-heartedness--and I had a
great deal of both long ago--I have been able to share with my neighbour
and given him part of my sunshine, and only felt the warmer myself. A
great writer--one of the most eloquent historians who ever illustrated
the military achievements of his country--once told me that, as he lay
sick and careworn after a fever, it was in my own reckless stories of
soldier life that he found the cheeriest moments of his solitude: and
now let me hasten to say that I tell this in no spirit of boastfulness,
but with the heartfelt gratitude of one who has gained more by hearing
that confession than Harry Lorrequer ever gained by all his own. If to
go over again the pages that I wrote so many years ago is in a measure
to revisit in age the loved scenes of boyhood, and to ponder over
passages the very spirit of whose dictation is dead and gone,--if
all this has its sadness, I am cheered by remembering that I am still
addressing many old and dear friends, and have also for my audience
the sons and grandsons, and, what I like better, the daughters and
granddaughters, of those who once listened to Harry Lorrequer.

‘CHARLES O’MALLEY.’

The success of ‘Harry Lorrequer’ was the reason for writing ‘Charles
O’Malley.’ That I myself was in nowise prepared for the favour the
public bestowed on my first attempt is easily enough understood.
The ease with which I strung my stories together--in reality the
‘Confessions of Harry Lorrequer’ are little more than a note-book of
absurd and laughable incidents--led me to believe that I could draw on
this vein of composition without any limit whatever. I felt, or thought
I felt, an inexhaustible store of fun and buoyancy within me, and I
began to have a misty half-confused impression that Englishmen generally
laboured under a sad-coloured temperament, and were proportionately
grateful to any one who would rally them, even passingly, out of their
despondency, and give them a laugh without much trouble for going in
search of it. When I set to work to write ‘Charles O’Malley,’ I was,
as I have ever been, very low with fortune, and the success of a new
venture was pretty much as eventful to me as the turn of the right
colour at _rouge-et-noir_. At the same time, I had then an amount of
spring in my temperament, and a power of enjoying life, which I can
honestly say I never found surpassed. The world had for me all the
interest of an admirable comedy, in which the part allotted to myself,
if not a high or a foreground one, was eminently suited to my taste,
and brought me, besides, sufficiently often on the stage to enable me to
follow all the fortunes of the piece. Brussels (where I was then living)
was adorned at the period with most agreeable English society. Some
leaders of the fashionable world of London had come there to refit and
recruit, both in body and estate. There were several pleasant people,
and a great number of pretty people; and so far as I could judge,
the fashionable dramas of Belgrave Square and its vicinity were being
performed in the Rue Royale and the Boulevard de Waterloo with very
considerable success. There were dinners, balls, _déjeuners_, and
picnics in the Bois de Cambre, excursions to Waterloo, and select little
parties to Boisfort (a charming little resort in the forest), whose
intense Cockneyism became perfectly inoffensive, being in a foreign land
and remote from the invasion of home-bred vulgarity. I mention these
things to show the adjuncts by which I was aided, and the rattle of
gaiety by which I was, as it were, “accompanied” when I tried my voice.
The soldier element tinctured our society strongly, and, I will add,
most agreeably. Amongst those whom I remember best were several old
Peninsulars. Lord Combermere was of this number; and another of our set
was an officer who accompanied--if indeed he did not command--the first
boat party who crossed the Douro. It is needless to say how diligently
I cultivated a society so full of all the storied details I was eager
to obtain, and how generously disposed were they to give me all the
information I needed. On topography especially were they valuable to me,
and with such good result that I have been more than once complimented
on the accuracy of my descriptions of places which I have never seen.
When, therefore, my publishers asked me could I write a story in the
Lorrequer vein,--a story in which active service and military adventure
could figure more prominently than mere civilian life, and where
achievements of a British army might form the staple of the
narrative,--I was ready to reply: “_Not one, but fifty,_” Do not mistake
me, and suppose that any overweening confidence in my literary powers
would have emboldened me to make this reply: my whole strength lay in
the fact that I could not recognise anything like literary effort in the
matter. If the world would only condescend to read that which I wrote
precisely as I was in the habit of talking, nothing could be easier.
Not alone was it easy, but it was intensely interesting and amusing
to myself to be so engaged. The success of ‘Harry Lorrequer’ had been
freely wafted across the German Ocean: it was very intoxicating incense,
and I set to work on my second book with a thrill of hope as regards
the world’s favour which--and it is no small thing to say it--I can yet
recall. I can recall, too,--and I am afraid more vividly still,--some of
the difficulties of my task when I endeavoured to form anything like an
accurate or precise idea of some campaigning incident, or some
passage of arms, from the narratives of two distinct and separate
“eye-witnesses.” What mistrust I conceived for all eye-witnesses from my
own brief experience of their testimonies! What an impulse did it lend
to me to study the nature and the temperament of the narrator as an
indication of the peculiar colouring he might lend his narrative! And
how it taught me to measure the force of the French epigram that it was
the alternating popularity of Marshal Soult that decided whether he
won or lost the battle of Toulouse! While, however, I was sifting these
evidences, and separating, as well as I might, the wheat from the chaff,
I was in a measure training myself for what, without my then knowing it,
was to become my career in life. My training was not without a certain
amount of labour, but so light and pleasant was the labour, so full of
picturesque peeps at characters and of humorous views of human nature,
that it would be the rankest ingratitude if I did not own that I gained
all my earlier experiences of the world in very pleasant company,
highly enjoyable at the time and with matter for charming souvenirs long
afterwards. That certain traits of my acquaintances found themselves
embodied in some of the characters of this story,* I do not seek to
deny. The principle of natural selection adapts itself to novels as well
as to nature, and it would have demanded an effort above my strength
to have disabused myself at the desk of all the impressions of the
dinner-table, and to have forgotten features which interested or amused
me. One of the personages of my tale I drew, however, with very little
aid from fancy. I would go so far as to say that I took him from the
life, if my memory did not confront me with the lamentable inferiority
of my picture to the great original which it was meant to portray. With
the exception of the quality of courage, I never met a man who contained
within himself so many of the traits of Falstaff as the individual who
furnished me with “Major Monsoon.” But the Major--I must call him so,
though that rank was far beneath his own--was a man of unquestionable
bravery. His powers as a story-teller were to my thinking unrivalled;
the peculiar reflections on life which he would passingly introduce--the
wise apothegms--were of a morality essentially of his own invention; he
would indulge in the unsparing exhibition of himself in situations such
as other men would never have confessed,--all blended up with a racy
enjoyment of life, dashed occasionally with sorrow that our tenure of
it was short of patriarchal. All these idiosyncracies, accompanied by
a face redolent of intense humour and a voice whose modulations were
managed with the skill of a consummate artist, were above me to convey;
nor indeed, as I re-read any of the adventures in which he figures, am
I other than ashamed at the weakness of my drawing and the poverty of my
colouring. In order to show that I had a better chance to personify him
than is usually the lot of a novelist,--that I possessed, so to say,
a vested interest in his life and adventures,--I will relate a little
incident; and my accuracy, if necessary, can be attested by another
actor in the scene who yet survives. I was living a bachelor life at
Brussels--my family being at Ostend for the bathing--during the summer
of 1840. The city was comparatively empty, all the so-called society
being absent at the various spas or baths of Germany. One member of the
British Legation, who remained at his post to represent the mission, and
myself, making common cause of our desolation and ennui, spent much of
our time together and dined _tête-à-tête_ every day. It chanced that one
evening, as we were hastening through the park on our way to dinner, we
espied the Major--as “Major” I must speak of him--lounging about with
that half-careless, half-observant air which indicated a desire to be
somebody’s--anybody’s--guest rather than to surrender himself to the
homeliness of domestic fare.

     * ‘Charles O’ Malley.’

“There’s that confounded old Monsoon!” said my diplomatist friend. “It’s
all up if he sees us, and I can’t endure him.” Now I must remark that my
friend, though very far from being insensible to the humouristic side of
the Major’s character, was not always in the vein to enjoy it, and when
he was so indisposed he could invest the object of his dislike with
something little short of repulsiveness. “Promise me,” said he, as
Monsoon came towards us, “you’ll not ask him to dinner.” Before I could
make any reply the Major was shaking a hand of either of us, rapturously
expatiating over his good luck at meeting us. “Mrs M.,” said he, “has
got a dreary party of old ladies to dine with her, and I have come out
here to find some pleasant fellow to join me and take our mutton-chop
together.”

“We’re behind our time, Major,” said my friend. “Sorry to leave you
so abruptly, but must push on. Eh, Lorrequer?” added he, to evoke
corroboration from me.

“Harry says nothing of the kind,” interrupted Monsoon. “He says, or
he’s going to say, ‘Major, I have a nice bit of dinner waiting for me at
home,--enough for two, will feed three; or, if there be a shortcoming,
nothing easier than to eke out the deficiency by another bottle of
Moulton. Come along with us then, Monsoon, and we shall be all the
merrier for your company.’” Repeating his words, “Come along, Monsoon,”
 I passed my arm within his, and away we went. For a moment my friend
tried to get free and leave me, but I held him fast and carried him
along in spite of himself. He was, however, so chagrined and provoked
that till the moment we reached my door he never uttered a word nor
paid the slightest attention to Monsoon, who talked away in a vein that
occasionally made gravity all but impossible. Dinner proceeded drearily
enough: the diplomatist’s stiffness never relaxed for a moment, and my
own awkwardness damped all my attempts at conversation. Not so, however,
Monsoon; he ate heartily, approved of everything, and pronounced my
wine to be exquisite. He gave us a discourse upon sherry and the Spanish
wines in general; told us the secret of the Amontillado flavour; and
explained the process of browning, by boiling down wine, which some are
so fond of in England. At last he diverged into anecdote. “I was once
fortunate enough,” said he, “to fall upon some of that choice sherry
from the St Lucas Luentas which is always reserved for royalty. It was a
pale wine, delicious in the drinking, and leaving no more flavour in the
mouth than a faint dryness that seemed to say, ‘Another glass.’ Shall
I tell you how I came by it?” And scarcely pausing for a reply, he told
the story of having robbed his own convoy and stolen the wine he was
in charge of for safe conveyance.* I wish I could give any, even the
weakest, idea of how he narrated the incident,--the struggle between
duty and temptation, and the apologetic tone of voice in which he
explained that the frame of mind which succeeds to any yielding to
seductive influences is often in the main more profitable to a man than
is the vainglorious sense of having resisted a temptation. “Meekness is
the mother of all virtues,” said he, “and there is no meekness
without frailty.” The story, told as he told it, was too much for the
diplomatist’s gravity, and at last he fairly roared with laughter. As
soon as I myself recovered from the effects of his drollery I said,
“Major, I have a proposition to make. Let me tell that story in print
and I’ll give you five Naps.”

     * The story of the stolen sherry is told in ‘Charles
     O’Malley.’

“Are you serious, Harry?” said he. “Is this on honour?”

“On honour assuredly,” I replied.

“Let me have the money down on the nail and I’ll give you leave to have
me and my whole life,--every adventure that ever befell me,--ay, and if
you like, every moral reflection that my experiences have suggested.”

“Done!” cried I. “I agree.”

“Not so fast,” said the diplomatist. “We must make a protocol of this:
the high contracting parties must know what they give and what they
receive. I’ll draw out the treaty.” He did so, at full length, on a
sheet of that solemn blue-tinted paper dedicated to despatch purposes,
duly setting forth the concession and the consideration. Each of us
signed the document; it was witnessed and sealed; and Monsoon pocketed
my five Napoleons, filling a bumper to any success the bargain might
bring me. This document, along with my university degree, my commission
in a militia regiment, and a vast amount of letters (very interesting
to me), were seized by the Austrian authorities on the way from Como
to Florence in the August of 1847, being deemed part of a treasonable
correspondence--purposely allegorical in form,--and they were never
restored to me. I freely own that I’d give all the rest willingly to
repossess myself of the Monsoon treaty. To show that I did not entirely
fail in making my “Major” resemble the great original from whom I
copied, I may mention that he was speedily recognised by the Marquis
of Londonderry, the well-known Sir Charles Stuart of the Peninsular
campaign. “I know that fellow well,” said he. “He once sent me a
challenge, and I had to make him a very humble apology. The occasion was
this: I had been out with a single aide-de-camp to make a reconnaissance
in front of Victor’s division; and to avoid attracting any notice, we
covered over our uniform with two common grey overcoats which reached
to the feet, effectually concealing our rank. Scarcely, however, had
we topped a hill which commanded a view of the French, when a shower
of shells flew over and around us. Amazed to think that we had been so
quickly noticed, I looked around me and discovered, quite close in my
rear, your friend Monsoon with what he called his staff,--a popinjay
set of rascals dressed out in green and gold, and with more plumes and
feathers than ever the general staff boasted. Carried away by momentary
passion at the failure of my reconnaissance, I burst out with some
insolent allusion to the harlequin assembly which had drawn the French
fire upon us. Monsoon saluted me respectfully and retired without a
word; but I had scarcely reached my quarters when a ‘friend’ of his
waited upon me with a message,--a categorical message it was, too: ‘It
must be a meeting or an ample apology.’ I made the apology--a most full
one--for the ‘Major’ was right and I had not a fraction of reason to
sustain me. We have been the best of friends ever since.” I had heard
the story before this from Monsoon, but I did not then accord it all the
faith that was its due; and I admit that the accidental corroboration
of this one event very often served to puzzle me afterwards, when I
listened to tales in which the Major seemed to be a second Munchausen.
It might be that he was amongst the truest and most matter-of-fact of
historians. May the reader be not less embarrassed than myself! is my
sincere, if not very courteous, prayer. I have no doubt that often
in recounting some strange incident--a personal experience it always
was--he was himself carried away by the credulity of his hearers and the
amount of interest he could excite in them, rather than by the story. He
possessed the true narrative style, and there was a marvellous instinct
in the way in which he would vary a tale to suit the tastes of an
audience, while his moralisings were almost certain to take the tone
of a humouristic quiz of the company. Though fully aware that I was
availing myself of the contract that delivered him into my hands, and
though he dined with me two or three times a-week, he never lapsed
into any allusion to his appearance in print, and ‘O’Malley’had been
published some weeks when he asked me to lend him “that last thing”--he
forgot the name of it--I was writing.*

     * He refers here to his last visit in 1871.--E. D.

“‘Major Monsoon’ was Commissary-General Mayne.... When he entered
a town,” Lever declared, “he hastened to the nearest church and
appropriated whatever plate or costly reliquaries he could seize. He
once had a narrow escape from hanging, after having actually undergone
a drum-head court-martial. When the allied armies entered Paris,
Wellington was of course the constant figure of attraction. At a grand
fête he took wine (or went through the form of it) with any officer
whose face was remembered by him. The Commissary-General was a guest at
this entertainment, and Wellington’s eye rested on him. Up went the hand
and glass as a signal, and bows were wellnigh exchanged, when the Duke
thundered out, ‘Oh! I thought I had hanged you at Badajoz. Never mind,
I’ll do it next time. I drink your health.’”--Fitzpatrick’s ‘Life of
Lever.’ Of Frank Webber I have said elsewhere that he was one of my
earliest friends, my chum at college, and in the very chambers in Old
Trinity where I have located Charles O’Malley. He was a man of the
highest order of abilities, with a memory that never forgot; but he
was ruined and run to seed by the idleness that came of a discursive
uncertain temperament. Capable of anything--he spent his youth
in follies and eccentricities, every one of which, however, gave
indications of a mind inexhaustible in resources and abounding in
devices and contrivances. Poor fellow! he died young; and perhaps it
is better it should have been so. Had he lived to a later day, he would
most probably have been found a foremost leader of Fenianism; and from
what I knew of him, I can say that he, would have been a more dangerous
enemy to English rule than any of those dealers in the petty larceny of
rebellion we have lately seen amongst us. Of Mickey Free I had not one,
but one thousand, types. Indeed I am not quite sure that in my late
visit to Dublin, I did not chance on a living specimen of the “Free”
 family, much readier in repartee, quicker at an _apropos_, and droller
in illustration, than my own Mickey. The fellow was “boots” at a great
hotel in Sackville Street; and he afforded me more amusement and some
heartier laughs than it has always been my fortune to enjoy in a party
of wits. His criticisms on my sketches of Irish character were about the
shrewdest and the best I ever listened to; and that I am not bribed to
this opinion by any flattery, I may remark that they were often more
severe than complimentary, and that he hit every blunder of image,
every mistake in figure, of my peasant characters with an acuteness
and correctness which made me very grateful to know that his daily
occupations were limited to the blacking of boots and not to the
“polishing off” of authors. I should like to own that ‘Charles O’Malley’
was the means of according me a more heartfelt glow of satisfaction, a
more gratifying sense of pride, than anything I ever have written. My
brother, at that time the rector of an Irish parish, once forwarded to
me a letter from a lady, unknown to him, who had heard that he was the
brother of “Harry Lorrequer,” and who addressed him not knowing where
a letter might be directed to myself. The letter was the grateful
expression of a mother, who said: “I am the widow of a field-officer,
and with an only son, for whom I obtained a presentation to Woolwich;
but seeing in my boy’s nature certain traits of nervousness and timidity
which induced me to hesitate on embarking him in the career of a
soldier, I became very unhappy, and uncertain which course to decide
upon. While in this state of uncertainty I chanced to make him a
birthday present of ‘Charles O’Malley,’ the reading of which seemed to
act like a charm on his whole character, inspiring him with a passion
for movement and adventure, and spiriting him on to an eager desire
for a military life. Seeing that this was no passing enthusiasm but a
decided and determined bent, I accepted the cadetship for him, and his
career has been not alone distinguished as a student, but one which has
marked him out for an almost hare-brained courage and for a dash and
heroism that give high promise for his future. Thank your brother for
me,” she continued,--“a mother’s thanks for the welfare of an only son,
and say how I wish that my best wishes for him and his could recompense
him for what I owe him.” I humbly hope that it may not be imputed to
me as unpardonable vanity the recording of this incident. It gave me
intense pleasure when I heard it; and now, as I look back on it, it
invests the story for myself with an interest which nothing else that I
have written can afford me.

‘JACK HINTON’

The favour with which the public received ‘Charles O’Malley,’ and the
pleasant notices forwarded to me by my publisher, gave me great courage;
and when asked if I could be ready by a certain date with a new story, I
never hesitated to say Yes. My first thought was that in the campaign of
the Great Napoleon I might find what would serve as a “pendant” to the
story I had just completed, and that by making--as there would be no
impropriety in doing--an Irishman a soldier of France, I could still
have on my side certain sympathies of my reader which would not so
readily attach to a foreigner. I surrounded myself at once with all the
histories and memoirs I could find of the Consulate and the Empire; and,
so far as I could, withdrew my mind from questions of home interest, and
lived entirely amidst the mighty events that began at Marengo and ended
at Waterloo. Whether I failed to devise such a narrative as I needed, or
whether--and I suspect this must have been the real reason--I found that
the vast-ness of the theme overpowered me, I cannot at this distance of
time remember. But so it was, that I found much time had slipped over,
and that beyond some few notes and some scattered references, I had
actually done nothing; and my publisher had applied to me for the title
of my story for advertisement before I had begun or written a line
of it. Some disparaging remarks on Ireland and Irishmen in the London
press, not very unfrequent at the time, nor altogether obsolete now, had
provoked me at the moment; and the sudden thought occurred of a reprisal
by showing the many instances in which the Englishman would almost of
necessity mistake and misjudge my countrymen, and that out of these
blunders and misapprehensions, situations might arise that, if welded
into a story, might be made to be amusing. I knew that there was not a
class nor a condition in Ireland which had not marked differences from
the correlative rank in England; and that not only the Irish squire, the
Irish priest, and the Irish peasant were unlike anything in the larger
island, but that the Dublin professional man, the official, and the
shopkeeper, had traits and distinctions essentially their own. I had
frequently heard opinions pronounced on Irish habits which I had easily
traced to that quizzing habit of my countrymen, who never can
deny themselves the enjoyment of playing on the credulity of the
traveller,--all the more eagerly when they see his note-book taken out
to record their shortcomings and absurdities. These thoughts suggested
‘Jack Hinton,’ and led me to turn from my intention to follow the French
arms, or rather to postpone the plan, for it had got too strong a
hold on me to be utterly abandoned. I have already acknowledged that
I strayed from the path I had determined on, and, with very little
reference to my original intention, suffered my hero to take his chance
among the natives. Indeed I soon found him too intensely engaged in the
cares of self-preservation to have much time or taste for criticism on
his neighbours. I have owned elsewhere that for Mr Paul Rooney, Father
Tom Loftus, Bob Mahon, O’Grady, Tipperary Joe, and even Corny Delaney, I
had not to draw on imagination, but I never yet heard one correct guess
as to the originals. While on this theme, I may recall an incident which
occurred about three years after the story was published, and which, if
only for the trait of good-humour it displayed, is worth remembering.
I was making a little rambling tour through Ireland with my wife,
following for the most part the sea-board, and only taking such short
cuts inland as should bring us to some spot of especial interest.
We journeyed with our own horses, and consequently rarely exceeded
five-and-twenty or thirty miles in a day. While I was thus refreshing
many an old memory, and occasionally acquiring some new experience,
the ramble interested me much. It was in the course of this almost
capricious journey--for we really had nothing like a plan--we reached
the little town of Gort, where, to rest our horses, we were obliged to
remain a day. There was not much to engage attention in the place. It
was perhaps less marked by poverty than most Irish towns of its class,
and somewhat cleaner and more orderly; but the same distinctive signs
were there of depression, the same look of inertness that one remarks
almost universally through the land. In strolling half listlessly
about on the outskirts of the town, we were overtaken by a heavy
thunder-storm, and were driven to take shelter in a little shop where
a number of other people had also sought refuge. As we stood there, an
active-looking but elderly man in the neat black of an ecclesiastic,
and with a rosette in his hat, politely addressed us, and proposed that,
instead of standing there in the crowd, we would accept the hospitality
of his lodging, which was in the same house, till such time as the
storm should have passed over. His manner, his voice, and his general
appearance convinced me he was a dignitary of our Church. I thanked him
at once for his courtesy, and accepted his offer. He proceeded to show
us the way, and we entered a very comfortably-furnished sitting-room,
where a pleasant fire was burning, and sat down well pleased with our
good fortune. While we chatted freely over the weather and the crops,
some chance expression escaped me to show that I had regarded him as
a clergyman of the Established Church. He at once, but with peculiar
delicacy, hastened to correct my mistake, and introduce himself as the
Roman Catholic Dean O’Shaughnessy. “I am aware whom I am speaking to,”
 added he, pronouncing my name. Before I could express my surprise at
being recognised where I had not one acquaintance, he explained that he
had read--in some local paper which described our mode of travelling--of
my being in the neighbourhood, and this led him at once to guess our
identity. After a few flattering remarks on the pleasure something of
mine had afforded him, he said, “You are very hard upon _us_, Mr Lever.
You never let _us_ off easily, but I assure you for all that we bear you
no ill-will. There is a strong national tie between us, and we can
stand a good deal of quizzing for the sake of that bond.” I knew he
was alluding to his order; and when I said something--I cannot remember
what--about the freedoms that fiction led to, he stopped, saying, “Well,
well! the priests are not angry with you after all, if it wasn’t for one
thing.”

“Oh, I know,” cried I, “that stupid story of Father D’Array and the
Pope.” *

“No, no, not that; we laughed at that as much as any Protestant of
you all. What we could not bear so well was an ugly remark you made in
‘Harry Lorrequer,’ where--when there was a row at a wake and the money
was scattered over the floor--you say that the priest gathered more than
his share because--and here was the bitterness--old habit had accustomed
him to scrape up his corn in low places! Now, Mr Lever, that was
not fair; it was not generous, surely!” The good temper and the
gentleman-like quietness of the charge made me very uncomfortable at
the time; and now, after many years, I recall the incident to show
the impression it made on me--the only atonement I can make for the
flippancy. I had begun this story of ‘Jack Hinton’ at Brussels, but on
a proposition made to me by the publisher and proprietor of ‘The Dublin
University Magazine’ to take the editorship of that periodical, I
determined to return to Ireland. To do this, I was not alone to change
my abode and my country, but to alter the whole destiny of my life. I
was at the time a practising physician attached to the British Legation,
with the best practice of any Englishman in the place, a most pleasant
society, and, what I valued not less than them all, the intimacy of the
most agreeable and companionable man** I ever knew in my life, whose
friendship I have never ceased to treasure with pride and affection.

     * A story told in ‘Harry Lorrequer.’

     **  Sir George Hamilton Seymour.

I dedicated to him my first book, and it is with deep gratitude and
pleasure I recall him while I give the last touches to these volumes.
There is one character in this story to which imagination contributed
scarcely anything in the portraiture, though I do not pretend to say
that the situations in which I have placed him are derived from facts.
Tipperary Joe was a real personage; and if there are, among my readers,
any who remember the old coaching days between Dublin and Kilkenny, they
cannot fail to recall the curious figure, clad in a scarlet hunting-coat
and black velvet cap, who used, at the stage between Carlow and the
Royal Oak, to emerge from some field beside the road, and, after a trot
of a mile or so beside the horses, crawl up at the back of the coach
and over the roof, collecting what he called his rent from the
passengers,--a very humble tribute generally, but the occasion of a good
deal of jest and merriment, not diminished if by any accident an English
traveller were present, who could neither comprehend the relations
between Joe and the gentlemen, nor the marvellous freedom with which
this poor ragged fellow discussed the passengers and their opinions.
Joe--I must call him so, for his real name has escaped me--once came
to see me in Trinity College, and was curious to visit the Chapel, the
Library, and the Examination Hall. I will not pretend that I undertook
my office of cicerone without some misgivings, for though I was prepared
to endure all the quizzings of my friends and acquaintances, I was not
quite at my ease as to how the authorities--the dons, as they are
called elsewhere--would regard this singular apparition within academic
precincts. Joe’s respectful manner, and an air of interest that bespoke
how much the place engaged his curiosity, soon set me at my ease; while
the ready tact with which he recognised and uncovered to such persons as
held rank or station at once satisfied me that I was incurring no risk
whatever in my office as guide. The kitchen and the sight of those
gigantic spits, on which a whole series of legs of mutton were turning
slowly, overcame all the studied reserve of his manner, and he burst
into a most enthusiastic encomium on the merits of an institution so
admirably suited to satisfy human requirements. When he learned, from
what source I do not know, that I had put him in a book, he made it--not
unreasonably, perhaps--the ground of a demand on my purse; and if the
talented artist who had illustrated the tale had been accessible to
him, I suspect that he, too, would have had to submit to the levy of a
blackmail, all the more heavily as Joe was by no means pleased with a
portrait which really only self-flattery could have objected to. Hablot
K. Browne never saw him, and yet in his sketch of him standing to say
his “good-bye” to Jack Hinton at Kingston, he has caught the character
of his figure and the moping lounge of his attitude to perfection.
Indeed, though there is no resemblance in the face to Joe, the pose
of the head and the position of the limbs recall him at once. I have
already said elsewhere that the volume amused me while I was writing it.
Indeed I had not at the time exhausted, if I had even tapped, the cask
of a buoyancy of temperament which carried me along through my daily
life in the sort of spirit one rides a fresh horse over a swelling
sward. If this confession will serve to apologise for the want of
studied coherency in the narrative, and the reckless speed in which
events succeed events throughout, I shall deem myself indebted to the
generous indulgence of my readers.

‘THE O’DONOGHUE.’

It was in wandering through the south of Ireland I came to visit the
wild valley of Glennesk--a scene of loneliness and desolation with
picturesque beauty I have never seen surpassed. The only living creature
I met for miles of the way was a very old man, whose dress and look
bespoke extreme poverty, but who, on talking with him, I discovered to
be the owner of four cows that were grazing on the rocky sides of the
cliff. He had come some miles, he told me, to give his cows the spare
herbage that cropped up amongst the granite boulders. As I had seen
no house or trace of habitation as I came along, I was curious to know
where he lived, but his answer, as he pointed to the mountain, was,
“There, alone,” and this with evident unwillingness to be more freely
communicative. Though not caring to be interrogated, nor, like most
Irish peasants, much inclined to have a talk with a stranger, he made
no scruple to ask for alms, and pleaded his wretched rags--and they
were very miserable--as a proof of his poverty. I did not think that the
pittance I gave him exactly warranted me in asking how the owner of the
cows we saw near us could be in that condition of want he represented;
at all events I preferred not to dash the pleasure I was giving him
by the question. We parted, therefore, on good terms, but some miles
farther on in the glen I learned from a woman, who was “bulling” her
clothes in the river, that “ould Mat,” as she called him, was one of the
most well-to-do farmers in that part of the country; that he had given
his daughters, of whom he had several, good marriage portions, and
that his son was a thriving attorney in the town of Tralee. “Maybe yer
honor’s heard of him,” said the woman,--“Tim O’Donoghue.” It was no new
thing to me to know the Irish peasant in his character as a hoarder
and a saver. There is no one trait so indicative of the Celt as
acquisitiveness, nor does Eastern story contain a man more given to the
castle-building that grows out of some secret hoard--however small--than
Paddy. He is to add half an acre to his potato-garden, or to buy another
pig, or to send the “gossoon” to a school in the town, or to pay his
passage to New York. This tendency to construct a future, so strong in
the Irish nature, has its rise in a great reliance on what he feels to
be the goodness of God: a firm conviction that all his struggles are
watched and cared for, and that every little turn of good fortune has
been given him by some especial favour, lies deep in his nature, and
suggests an amount of hope to him which a less sanguine spirit could
never have conceived. While I thought over the endless contrarieties of
this mysterious national character, where good and evil eternally lay
side by side, I wondered within myself whether the new civilisation
of latter years was likely to be successful in dealing with men whose
temperaments and manners were so unlike the English, or were we right in
extinguishing the old feudalism that bound the peasant to the landlord,
ere we had prepared each for the new relations of mere gain and
loss that were in nature to subsist between them? Between the
great families--the old houses of the land and the present race of
proprietors--there lay a couple of generations of men who, with all the
traditions and many of the pretensions of birth and fortune, had really
become in ideas, modes of life, and habits, very little above the
peasantry about them. They inhabited, it is true, the “great house,”
 and they were in name the owners of the soil, but, crippled by debt and
overborne by mortgages, they subsisted in a shifty conflict with
their creditors, rack-renting their miserable tenants to maintain it.
Survivors of everything but pride of family, they stood there like
stumps, blackened and charred, the last remnants of a burnt forest,
their proportions attesting the noble growth that preceded them. What
would the descendants of these men prove when, destitute of fortune and
helpless, they were thrown upon a world that actually regarded them
as blamable for the unhappy condition of Ireland? Would they stand by
“their order” in so far as to adhere to the cause of the gentry? Or
would they share the feelings of the peasant to whose lot they had been
reduced, and charging on the Saxons the reverses of their fortune,
stand forth as rebels to England? Here was much food for speculation and
something for a story. For an opening scene what could I desire finer
than the gloomy grandeur and the rugged desolation of Glenflesk! And
if some patches of bright verdure here and there gleamed amidst the
barrenness,--if a stray sunbeam lit up the granite cliffs and made the
heather glow,--might there not be certain reliefs of human tenderness
and love to show that no scene in which man has a part is utterly
destitute of those affections whose home is the heart? I had now got
my theme and my locality. For my name I took ‘The O’Donoghue’; it had
become associated in my mind with Glenflesk, and would not be separated
from it. Here, then, in one word, is the history of this book. If the
performance bears but slight relation to the intention,--if, indeed, my
story seems to have little reference to what suggested it,--it will only
be another instance of a waywardness which has beset me through life,
and left me never sure when I started for Norway that I might not find
myself in Naples. It is not necessary, perhaps, for me to say that no
character in this tale was drawn from a model. I began the story, in so
far as a few pages went, at a little inn at Killarney, and I believe
I stole the name of Kerry O’Leary from one of the boatmen on the lake;
but, so far as I am aware, it is the only theft in the book. I believe
that the very crude notions of an English tourist for the betterment of
Ireland, and some exceedingly absurd comments he made me on the habits
of people which an acquaintanceship of three weeks enabled him to
pronounce on, provoked me to draw the character of Sir Marmaduke; but I
can declare that the traveller aforesaid only acted as tinder to a mine
long prepared, and afforded me a long-sought-for opportunity--not for
exposing, for I did not go that far, but--for touching on the
consummate effrontery with which a mere passing stranger can settle
the difficulties and determine the remedies for a country in which the
resident sits down overwhelmed by the amount, and utterly despairing of
a solution. I have elsewhere recorded that I have been blamed for the
fate I reserved for Kate O’Donoghue, and that she deserved something
better than to have her future linked to one who was so unworthy of her
in many ways. Till I re-read the story after a long lapse of years, I
had believed that this charge was better founded than I am now disposed
to think it. First of all, judging from an Irish point of view, I do not
consent to regard Mark O’Donoghue as a bad fellow. The greater number
of his faults were the results of neglected training, irregular--almost
utter want of--education, and the false position of an heir to a
property so swamped by debt as to be valueless. I will not say these are
the ingredients which go to the formation of a very regular life or
a very perfect husband, but they might all of them have made a worse
character than Mark’s if he had not possessed some very sterling
qualities as a counterbalance. Secondly, I am not of those who think
that the married life of a man is but the second volume of his bachelor
existence. I rather incline to believe that he starts afresh in life
under circumstances very favourable to the development of whatever is
best, and to the extinguishment of what is worst in him. That is, of
course, where he marries well, and where he allies himself to qualities
of temper and tastes which will serve as the complement, or, at times,
the correctives, of his own. Now Kate O’Donoghue would instance what I
mean in this case. Then I keep my best reason for the last: they liked
each other. This, if not a guarantee for their future happiness, is
still the best “martingale” the game of marriage admits of. I am free to
own that the book I had in my head to write was a far better one than
I have committed to paper, but as this is a sort of event which has
happened to better men than myself, I bear it as one of the accidents
that authorship is heir to. A French critic--one far too great to have
his dicta despised--has sneered at my making a poor ignorant peasant
child find pleasure in the resonance of a Homeric verse; but I could
tell him of barefooted boys in the South, running errands for a scanty
subsistence, with a knowledge of classical literature which would puzzle
many a grown student to cope with.

‘THE KNIGHT OF GWYNNE.’

I wrote this story in the Tyrol.* The accident of my residence there
was in this wise: I had travelled about the Continent for a considerable
time, in company with my family, and with my own horses. Our carriage
was a large and comfortable _calèche_, and our team four horses,
the leaders of which, well-bred and thriving-looking, served as
saddle-horses when needed. There was something very gipsy-like in this
roving uncertain existence (that had no positive bent or limit, and left
every choice of place an open question) which gave me intense enjoyment.
It opened to me views of Continental life, scenery, people, and habits
which I should certainly never have attained by other modes of travel.

     * As a matter of fact--though the fact in itself is of
     little importance,--Lever composed about one-half of ‘The
     Knight’ at Carlsruhe. The novel began to appear in monthly
     parts early in the year 1846.--E. D.

Not only were our journeys necessarily short each day, but we frequently
sojourned in little villages and out-of-the-way spots where, if pleased
by the place itself and the accommodation afforded, we would linger on
for days, the total liberty of our time at our disposal, and all our
nearest belongings around us. In the course of these rambles we had
arrived at the town of Bregenz, on the Lake of Constance, where the
inn-keeper, to whom I was known, accosted me with all the easy freedom
of his calling, and half-jestingly alluded to my mode of travelling as a
most unsatisfactory and wasteful way of life, which could never turn out
profitably to me or mine. From the window where we were standing as we
talked I could descry the tall summit of an ancient castle or _schloss_,
about two miles away; and, rather to divert my antagonist from his
argument than with any more serious purpose, I laughingly told my host,
if he could secure me such a fine old chateau as that I then looked
at, I should stable my nags and rest where I was. On the following day,
thinking of nothing less than my late conversation, the host entered
my room to assure me that he had been over to the castle, had seen
the baron, and learned that he would have no objection to lease me
his chateau, provided I took it for a fixed term, and with all its
accessories, not only of furniture but cows and farm-requisites. One of
my horses, accidentally pricked in shoeing, had obliged me at the moment
to delay a day or two at the inn, and for want of better to do, though
without the most remote intention of becoming a tenant of the castle, I
yielded so far to my host’s solicitation as to walk over and see it.
If the building itself was far from faultless it was spacious and
convenient, and its position on a low hill in the middle of a lawn finer
than anything I can convey, the four sides of the _schloss_ commanding
four distinct and perfectly dissimilar views. By the north it looked
over a wooded plain, on which stood the Convent of Mehreran, and beyond
this, the broad expanse of the Lake of Constance. The south opened on a
view towards the Upper Rhine and the valley that led to the Via Mala.
On the east you saw the Gebhardsberg and its chapel, and the lovely
orchards that bordered Bregenz; while to the west rose the magnificent
Lenten and the range of the Swiss Alps--their summits lost in the
clouds. I was so enchanted by the glorious panorama around me, and so
carried away by the thought of a life of quiet labour and rest in such
a spot, that, after hearing a very specious account of the varied
economies I should secure by this choice of a residence, and the
resources I should have in excursions on all sides, I actually
contracted to take the chateau, and became the master of the Bieder
Schloss from that day.*

     * Dr Fitzpatrick, in his ‘Life of Lever,’ furnishes a more
     prosaic account of the annexing of the Tyrolean castle,--Mr
     Stephen Pearce being given as the authority for the
     unromantic statement that the _schloss_ was advertised “to
     let,” and that while the Levers were sojourning in Carlsruhe
     negotiations were opened with Baron Pôllnitz, and Mr Pearce
     was despatched to Bregenz, where he entered into an
     agreement for a short lease of “the premises.” This, of
     course, spoils the story which Charles Lever tells; but I
     have in my possession a letter written by Mr Pearce at
     Riedenburg on May 26,1846, quoted at p. 210 of vol i., which
     would seem to bear out the tale told by the author of ‘The
     Knight of Gwynne’ in 1872.--E. D.

Having thus explained by what chance I came to pitch my home in this
little-visited spot, I have no mind to dwell further on these Tyrol
experiences than so far as they concern the story I wrote there. If the
scene in which I was living, the dress of the peasants, the daily wants
and interests, had been my prompters, I could not have addressed myself
to an Irish theme; but long before I had come to settle at Riedenburg,
when wandering among the Rhine villages, on the vine-clad slopes of
the Bergstrasse, I had been turning over in my mind the Union period of
Ireland as the era for a story. It was a time essentially rich in the
men we are proud of as a people, and peculiarly abounding in traits of
self-denial and devotion which, in the corruption of a few, have been
totally lost sight of, the very patriotism of the time having been
stigmatised as factious opposition or unreasoning resistance to wiser
counsels. That nearly every man of ability in the land was against the
Minister; that not only all the intellect of Ireland but all the high