Volume I Part 18 (1/2)
Corn is doomed, and the Irish Church to be doomed--not now, but later.
The League have secured four counties and several boroughs. As to war: the Duke says he could smash the Yankees, and ought to do so while France is in her present humour,--and Mexico opens the road to invasion in the South--not to speak of the terrible threat which Napier uttered, that with two regiments of infantry and a field battery he'd raise the Slave population in the Southern States.
* This story is now discredited, and was formally denied by Lord Dufferin.
”The remark you heard at Curry's about my Repealism is no new thing.
M'G. tried to fasten the imputation upon me when I sold 'St Patrick's Eve' to the London publishers, and the attempt to revive it displays his game. A very brief hint would make the Repeal editors adopt it for present gain and future attack when they discovered their error.
However, the deception will not be long-lived, and I think on the appearance of No. 4 few will repeat the charge.
”Wilson (of Blackwood's) has written me a long letter of such encouragement that, even bating its flattery, makes me stout-hearted against small critics and their barkings, and I am emboldened to hope that I am improving as a writer. One thing I can answer for,--no popularity I ever had, or shall have, will make me trifle with the public by fast writing and careless composition. d.i.c.kens's last book*
has set the gravestone on his fame, and the warning shall not be thrown away.”
* 'Dombey and Son.'
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
”Carlsruhe, _March_ 6, 1846.
”I hope you continue to like my 'Knight,' of which I receive favourable opinions from the press and the publishers. I am told it is better writing and better comedy than anything I have done yet. Pray let me have your judgment--not sparingly, but in all candour.
”I sent a little article to M'Glashan about Fairy Tales, and he writes to me as if the paper was a review. I have not written, expecting a second advice from him containing a proof, but meanwhile would you scratch him a line addressed to D'Olier Street, saying I have received his note, and will correct the proof with pleasure, but that the paper* is not a review of any one, and that the two first tales are Danish,--the last is my own. Would you also ascertain if he is disposed to entertain his own project of my continuing 'Continental Gossipings'
for the Magazine, and subsequently publis.h.i.+ng them in one or two vols., and if he would make any proposal as to terms? This latter I would rather not mention in a note, but as a subject of chatting whenever occasion offered.
* The contribution was ent.i.tled ”Children and Children's Stories, by Hans Daumling.” It is interesting to note that the first two tales were ”The Little Tin Soldier” and ”The Ugly Buck.” Lever's own fairy tale was ent.i.tled ”The Fete of the Flowers.”--E. D.
”The weather here has been like July, and the Rhine is like crystal. We have large bouquets of spring flowers on the dinner-table every day, and the buds are bursting forth everywhere. We shall in a few weeks more resume our wanderings. Meanwhile I must press forward with my 'Knight,'
which for some weeks I have shelved entirely.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
”Stephanie Stra.s.se, Cablsruhe, _March_ 29, 1846.
”I am working away at my 'Knight,' and have in the 7th No. got him into as pleasant a mess of misfortunes as any gentleman (outside a novel) ever saw himself involved in. I hear excellent accounts of his progress in England, and have destined him to a long life--twenty numbers. This at the publisher's request rather than of my own convictions,--though I need scarcely say, to my great convenience.... Let me hear your _mot_ of No. 4, which I think is the best of the batch.”
Carlsruhe at first was a seductive place, ”where life glided on peaceably, and the current had neither ripple nor eddy.” It had no riotous pleasures; it was equally free from the things that annoy--no malignant newspapers, no malevolent enemies, no treacherous or patronising friends. He had a good house, a first-rate chef, six horses, and plenty of society,--a _corps diplomatique_ of pleasant folk and their wives; cheerful reunions every evening; sometimes a dinner at the Grand Duke's Court. There were no professional beauties, no geniuses, no bores. G. P. R James and himself were the cynosure of all eyes, and there were whist-parties every night.
In this elysium it was no wonder that his spirits were elevated, and that he worked with a will. The only rifts within the lute were the difficulty of disposing satisfactorily of his interest in Templeogue House and his disputations with Curry and M'Glashan.
Suddenly the sleepy paradise changed into a sleepy and contemptible _inferno_. There was no revolution, no change in the Grand Ducal system, n.o.body in Carlsruhe became any better or worse, n.o.body was any wiser or more foolish,--but the Grand Ducal city is described as a ”pettifogging little place, with a little court, a little army, a little aristocracy, a little _bourgeoisie_, a little diplomatic circle, little shops, and very little money.” In compensation for these littlenesses there was a flood of gossip and ”any amount of etiquette.” The people of the Grand Duchy had no commerce, no manufactories, no arts, no science,--no interests, in fact, save in the small ceremonial life of the court, no amus.e.m.e.nts except soirees held in ill-lighted rooms, where an ill-dressed company talked scandal, military slang, and cookery--how to dress a corporal or a cutlet. From this ”dreary atmosphere of local sewers, stale tobacco-smoke, and sour cabbage,” he was glad to escape.
Major Dwyer attempts to account for the changed aspect of Carlsruhe. He describes Lever as being too fond of display and too outspoken. It was his habit to gallop through the quiet streets with his wife and children, all attired in very showy habiliments. The ponderosity and solemnity of the little court occasionally tickled him, and he laughed openly. Court etiquette, too, was a source of amus.e.m.e.nt, and he violated its rules in a manner which horrified the stolid courtiers. Upon one occasion he invited to a whist-party at his house the Hof Marschall (or Lord Chamberlain), Kotzebue, Secretary to the Russian Emba.s.sy, and some other notabilities. The Hof Marschall--doubtless acting upon the same impulses which had actuated Archbishop Whately when he absented himself from the dinner-party at Temple-ogue--did not arrive, and, worse still, sent no apology. Lever was very angry, and he made some outrageous verbal jokes at the expense of Grand Dukes, Hof Marschalls, and Gross Herzogs. The upshot of the matter was that the Irish novelist found Carlsruhe ”too hot to hold him”; so (still accompanied by his ”menagerie”) he bade good-bye to G. P. R. James and to the Grand Duchy of Baden-Baden, and, travelling somewhat in gipsy fas.h.i.+on through the Black Forest, he reached the borders of Tyrol in the month of May 1846.