Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters Volume Ii Part 17

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Villa Morelli, Florence, _Oct_. 12,1865.

"Take care that M'Caskey's letter is not amongst the 'O'Dowds.'

Cornelius never heard of him, nor has he any knowledge of 'Tony Butler.'

Mind this.

"Send me the Horse-book of your Cavalry Officer, and I'll try and make a short notice of it. I want the book of Villa Architecture too. I was thinking of a paper (I have good bones for it) on the Italian fleet, wood and iron, but I foresee that I should say so many impertinent things, and hurt so many people I know, that I suspect on the whole it is better not to go on with it. What I am to do with my surplus venom when I close 'O'Dowd' I don't see, except I go into the Church and preach on the Athanasian Creed.

"Wolff is in Paris still, scheming in 'Turks.'

"It will astonish Lyons when he discovers what a heritage Bulwer has left him at Constantinople."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 20, 1866.

"Your note and its 'padding' came to my hand a couple of hours ago. I thank you much for both, but more for the encouragement than the cash, though I wanted the last badly.

"I don't think there is a public for O'D. collectively. I don't think people will take more than a monthly dose of 'my bitters,' and I incline to suspect mawkish twaddle and old Joe Millers would hit the mark better. Shall I try? _At all events, make room if you can for the postscript I send you. Now I wrote it at your own suggestion when I read your note_, and it seems to me to embody the dispute. I have tried to put in a bit of Swift s tart dryness in the style.

"The telegram just announces Palmerston's death. Take care that his name does not occur in my last O'D. I don't remember using it, but look to it for me.

"What will happen now? I hear the Whigs won't have Russell, and that he won't serve under Clarendon.

"How I wish I were in England to hear all the talk. It is d------d hard to be chained up here and left only to bark, when I want to bite too."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 23,1865.

"Does it not strike you that a good view of Palmerston's character might be taken from considering how essentially the man was English, and that in no other a.s.sembly than a British House of Commons would his qualities have had the same sway and influence? All that intense vitality and rich geniality would have been totally powerless in Austria, France, Italy, or even America. None would have accepted the glorious nature of the man, or the element of statesmanship, as the House accepted it. None would have seen that the spirit of all he did was the rebound of that public opinion which only a genial man ever feels or knows the value of. If I be right in this, depend upon it Gladstone will make a lame successor to him. G.o.d grant it!

"I send you a 'Sir B.' for December, as I am about to leave for Carrara for a few days. I hope it is good. It may be that another short chapter may be necessary, and if so there will be time for it when I come back.

"How I would like now if I had the time (but it would take time and labour too) to write an article on the deception which the Whigs have practised in trading on their Italian policy as their true claim to office. It is the most rascally fraud ever practised."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 29, 1865.

"I send you two O'Ds.; that on Gladstone I think tolerably good. The short paper on 'The Horse,' being all done in the first person, I think had better be an 'O'Dowd,'--indeed I signed it such; but do as you like about this.

"I think there seems a very good prospect of the Tories coming in during the session. Phil Rose was here the other day and gave me good hopes, and said also they would certainly give me _something_. Heaven grant it! for I am getting very footsore, and would like to fall back upon a do-nothing existence, and never hear more of the public.

"The foreign papers are all--especially the Bonapartist ones--attacking Lord Russell as an 'Orleanist.' I never had heard of his leanings in that direction; but it is exactly one of those tendencies we should _not_ hear of in England, but which foreigners would be certain to chance upon."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Villa Morelli, _Friday, Nov. 3_, 1866.

"I am rather out of spirits,--indeed I feel that my public and myself are at cross-purposes.

"D------ their souls--(G.o.d forgive me)--but they go on repeating some stone-cold drollery of old Pam's, and my fun--hot and piping--is left un-tasted; and as to wisdom, I'll back O'Dowd against all the mock aphorisms of Lord Russell and his whole Cabinet. It would not do to touch Palmerston in O'D.: I could not go on the intensely laudatory tack, and any--the very slightest--qualification of praise would be ill taken. Do you know the real secret of P.'s success? It was, that he never displayed ambition till he was a rich man. Had Disraeli reserved himself in the same degree, there would have been nothing of all the rotten cant of 'adventurer,' &c., that we now hear against him. _Begin_ life rich in England, and all things will be added to you."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Villa Morelli, Florence, _Nov._ 6,1865.

"I think the Bagmen deserve an 'O'Dowd'; their impertinent wine discussion is too much to bear. I don't suspect the general public will dislike seeing them lashed, and from the specimens I have met travelling, I owe some of the race more than I have given them.

"I think there is a good chance of a (short-lived) Conservative Government next year, and then Gladstone and _le Deluge_. Unless some great change resolves the two parties in the House into real open enemies (not camps where deserters cross and recross any day), we shall have neither political honesty nor good government.

"The present condition of things makes a lukewarm public and disreputable politicians."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Villa Morelli, Florence, _Nov_. 11, 1866.

"I would have sent another chapter to 'Sir Brook,' but that I have been sick and ill,--a sort of feverish cold, with a headache little short of madness. I am over it now, but very low and spiritless and unfit for work....

"I have got a long letter from Whiteside this morning: he thinks that the conduct of the Palmerston Whigs will decide the question as to who should govern the country. It is, however, decided that Gladstone is to smash the Irish Education scheme and to overturn the Church.

"I had written to him to press upon his friend the importance of restoring Hudson to his Emba.s.sy in the event of the Derby party coming to power, and he sent my letter as it was to Lord Malmes-bury, though it contained some rather sharp remarks on Lord M.'s conduct while at F. O.

He (W.) says Lord M. asked to keep the letter, and wrote a very civil reply.

"Look carefully to 'Sir B.' for me, for my head is a stage below correction. I composed some hundred O'Ds. in doggerel the night before last, and (I hear) laughed immoderately in my sleep."

_To Mr John Blackwood._

"Villa Morelli, Florence, _Nov_. 30, 1866.

"If I be right, Lord R. will dodge both parties, say 'No' to neither, and, while cajoling the old Palmerston Whigs not to desert him, he'll by certain Radical appointments conciliate that party and bribe them to _wait_. In this sense I have written the O'Dowd, 'The Man at the Wheel.' I think it reasonably good. _That is, if my prediction be true_: otherwise it won't do at all; but we'll have time to see before we commit ourselves.