Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters Volume Ii Part 2

"I have not written for the last eight or ten days, but I am getting all right, and take long walks every day, looking at villas, of which there are scores, but scarcely a habitable one, at least as a permanent abode, to be found.

"There is not one word of news beyond the arming of the French fleet. I find that many Mazzinists here believe that Mazzini was really engaged in the late plot; but I can neither believe the plot nor that he was in it. I look upon it as a very clumsy police trick throughout.

"My wife makes no advance towards health,--a day back and a day forward is the history of her life; but everything shows me that to undertake a journey to Spezzia without feeling that I had a comfortable place for her when there, and that she could remain without another change back in winter, would be a fatal mistake."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Casa Capponi, _March_ 8,1864.

"The whole story of R N. F. (Robert Napoleon Flynn, his real name) is an unexaggerated fact, and I have only culled a very few of the traits known to me, and not given, as perhaps I ought, a rather droll scene I had with him myself at Spezzia. The man was originally a barrister, and actually appointed Chief-Justice of Tobago by Lord Normanby, and as such presented to the Queen at the Levee. The appointment was rescinded, however, and the fellow sent adrift.

"I have met a large number of these fellows of every nation, but never one with the same versatility as this, nor with the same hearty enjoyment of his own rascality. d.i.c.kens never read over a successful proof with one-half the zest Flynn has felt when sending off--as I have known him to do--a quizzing letter to a Police Prefect from whose clutches he had just escaped by crossing a frontier. He is, in fact, the grand _artiste_, and he feels it.

"I am glad you like 'O'Dowd': first of all, they are the sort of things I can do best. I have seen a great deal of life, and have a tolerably good memory for strange and out-of-the-way people, and I am sure such sketches are far more my 'speciality' than story-writing.

"I a.s.sure you your cheery notes do me more service than my sulph.-quinine, and I have so much of my old schoolboy blood in me that I do my tasks better with praise than after a caning.

"Your sketch of the French Legitimist amused me much. The insolence of these rascals is the fine thing about them, as t'other day I heard one of our own amongst them (the uncle of a peer, and a great name too) reply, when I found him playing billiards at the club and asked him how he was getting on: 'Badly, Lever, badly, or you wouldn't find me playing half-crown pool with three sn.o.bs that I'd not have condescended to know ten years ago.' And this _the three sn.o.bs_ had to listen to!

"I am far from sure Grant was not 'done' by Flynn. But t'other night Labouchere (Lord Taunton's nephew and heir, who is the L. of the story) met Grant here, and we all pressed G. to confess he had been 'walked into,' but he only grew red and confused, and as we had laughed so much at F.'s victims, he would not own to having been of the number.

"The Napoleon paper is very good, and perhaps not exaggerated. It is the best sketch of the campaign I ever read, and only wants a further allusion to the intentions of the 4th corps under Prince Napoleon to be a perfect history of the event.

"'Schleswig-Holstein' admirable. I am proud of my company and _au raison._"

_To Dr Burbidge._

"Casa Capponi, _Wednesday_, March 1864.

"I thank you sincerely for the trouble you have had about my proof: honestly, I only wanted a criticism, but I forgot you had not seen the last previous part. As to what is to _come_, you know, I am sorry to say it, just as much as I do.

"'Luttrell' No. 5, that is for next month, has been in part lost, and I am in a fearful hobble about it,--that is, I must re-write, without any recollection of where, what, or how.

"My poor wife has been seriously, very seriously, attacked. Last night Julia was obliged to stay up with her, and to-day, though easier, she is not materially better. I write in great haste, as I have only got up, and it is nigh one o'clock, and the post closes early."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Casa Capponi, Florence, _March_ 18, 1864.

"B. L.'s criticism on T. B. amused me greatly. Did you never hear of the elder who waited on Chief-Justice Holt to say, 'The Lord hath sent me to thee to say that thou must stop that prosecution that is now going on against me,' and Holt replied, 'Thou art wrong, my friend; the Lord never sent thee on such an errand, for He well knoweth it is not I, but the Attorney-General, that can enter a _nolle prosequi._' But B[ulwer]

L[ytton]'s fine pedantry beats the Chief-Justice hollow, with this advantage that he is wrong besides. Nothing is more common than for Ministers to 'swap' patronage. It was done in my own case, and to my sorrow, for I refused a good thing from one and took a d------d bad one from another. _Au reste_, he is all right both as to O'D. and Maitland.

O'D. ought to be broader and wider. I have an idea that with a few ill.u.s.trations it would make a very readable sort of gossiping book. I am not quite clear how far reminiscences and bygones come in well in such a _melange_. After all, it is only a hash at best, and one must reckon on it that the meat has been cooked already. What do _you_ say? I have some Irish recollections of noticeable men like Bushe, Lord Guillamore, Plunkett, &c., too good to be lost, but perhaps only available as apropos to something pa.s.sing.

"I have thought of some of these as subjects: Good Talkers--_Le Sport_ Abroad--Diplomacy--Demi-monde Influences--Whist--Irish Justice--Home as the Bon Marche of Europe--Travelled Americans--Plan of a new Cookery Book (with a quiz on Charters, your book), showing what to eat every month of the year. These I scratch down at random, for I can't write just yet: I have got gout _vice_ ague retired, and my knuckle is as big as a walnut.

"I hope you have received T. B. before this. I am very sorry the conspirator chapter of T. B. does not appear this month, when the question of Stanfield is before the public, but I think O'Dowd might well touch on the question of the politicians of the knife. Give me your counsel about all these. B. L.'s remark that Maitland belonged to twenty or thirty years ago is perfectly just, and very acute too; but, unfortunately, so do I too. Do you remember old Lord Sefton's reply when the Bishop of Lincoln tried to repress him one day at dinner from entering upon old college recollections by saying, 'Oh, my lord, the devil was strong in us in those days'? 'I wish he was strong in me now, my Lord Bishop!' I am afraid I am something of his mind."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Casa Capponi, Florence, _March_ 20, 1864.

"As it is likely I shall start to-morrow for Spezzia to give them a touch of my 'consular quality,' I send you a line to thank you for your kind note, and with it a portion (all I have yet done) of the next 'O'Dowd.' I shall, however, meditate as I go, and perhaps the Providence who supplies oddities to penny-a-liners may help me to one in the train.

"I thank you heartily for the offer of a mount, but I have grown marvellously heavy, in more ways than one, this last year or two; and the phrase of my daughter when ordering my horse to be saddled may ill.u.s.trate the fact, as she said, 'Put the howdah on papa's elephant.'

"Don't fancy the Italians are not athletes. All the great performers of feats of strength come from Italy. Belzoni the traveller was one. They have a game here called _Paettone_, played with a ball as large as a child's head and flung to an incredible distance, which combines strength, skill, and agility. Then as to swimming, I can only say that I and my two eldest daughters can cross Spezzia--the width is three miles,--and yet we are beaten hollow every season by Italians. They swim in a peculiar way, turning from side to side and using the arms alternately; and when there is anything of a sea they never top the waves, but shoot through them, which gives immense speed, but it is a process I never could master. We had a swim last year with old General Menegaldo, who swam the Lido with Byron: he is now eighty-four years old, and he swam a good mile along with us. I intend, if I can throw off my gout, to have a day or two in the blue water next week, though I suspect in your regions the idea would suggest a s.h.i.+ver. The weather is fine here now--in fact, too hot for many people."

_To Dr Burbidge._

"Casa Capponi, Florence, _March_ 30, 1864.

"I was sorry to find last night that my proofs had not reached you, and as I want your opinion greatly, I send you mine, which I have not looked over yet.

"If it had not been for this detestable weather (and I can fancy how Spezzia looks in it, for even Florence is dismal) I'd have gone down to-day, for my wife has been a shade better since Sunday, and I want to have a good conscience and be a.s.sured that I cannot possibly find a house at Spezzia before I close for a little nook of a villa here--a small crib enough, but, like everything else, very dear.

"I have my misgivings, my more than misgivings, about the Derbys coming in. It is evident Lord D. does not wish power, and he is rather impatient at the hungry eagerness of poorer men, and so I suspect my own chances, if not to be tried now, will not be likely to survive for another occasion. I therefore resign myself, as people call what they cannot do more than grumble over, and 'make my book' to scribble on for a subsistence to the end."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Croce di Malta, Spezzia, _April_ 6, 1864.

"Here I am visiting the authorities and being visited by them, playing off--and quite seriously too--the farce that we are all dignitaries, and of essential consequence to the States we severally serve. 'How we apples swim!' My only consolation is that there is no public to laugh at us--all the company are on the stage.

"I mean to get back to Florence by the end of the week. You shall have an instalment of T. B. immediately.

"If Lord D. gets his congress for Denmark it will be hard to dislodge the Government--the more with a two-million-and-a-half surplus. In fact, a good harvest is the Providence of the Whigs, and they are invariably pulled out of their sc.r.a.pes by sheer luck. At the same time, if Lord Derby comes in, where could he find a Foreign Minister?"

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Croce di Malta, Spezzia, _April_ 6, 1864

"The post has just brought me O'D. on 'Whist,' but no proof of 'The Woman in Diplomacy.' Perhaps I blundered and never sent it, or perhaps you got but did not like it. At all events, I return the 'Whist' by this post corrected. If there had been time I'd have dashed off an O'D. on French Justice in Criminal Cases, apropos to that late infamy of M.

Pellier, but I fancied you had got enough of O'D. for this coming month, and probably you are of the same mind.

"I have done my consulars here--that is, I have called on the authorities and had them all to dinner, the bishop included; and we have fraternised very cordially and drank all manner of violent deaths to Mazzini, and to-morrow I go back into the obscurity of private life, and forget if I can that I have been a great man. Wasn't it a Glasgow dignitary who resented being called a man on a trial, and exclaimed, 'I'm not a man, I'm a bailie'?