Volume Ii Part 1 (2/2)

7 pleased you. You know so much of that strange beast the public, which for so many a year I have only known by report, that when you tell me the thing will do I gain fresh courage; and what between real calamities and the small rubs of life administered to me of late years in a severer shape than I ever felt before, I do need courage.

”Most men who had written so long and so much as I have done would have become thick-hided, but if I am so, it is only to attack--aggressive attack. To anything like reproof, remonstrance, or appeal, I am more open than I ever was in my earlier days, not merely because with greater knowledge of my own shortcomings I feel how much I need it, but that the amount of interest it implies, the sympathy for which it vouches, warms my heart, and gives me renewed vigour and the wish and the hope to do better.

”Now I only inflict all this egotism upon you the better to thank you for your kind counsels; in fact, I am disclosing the depth of my wound to show my grat.i.tude to my doctor who is curing it.

”Proof has not yet reached me, and I therefore cannot justify, by any plausibility in the context, how the night was so fine for Alice and the morning so severe for Tony.*

* Mr Blackwood had written: ”Observe that in the garden scene you make it a fine night, and from the morning showing before they separated, apparently the night was short; whereas when Tony started in the cold and snow for Burnside it was clearly winter.”

”You are right. I feel it more strongly since you said it that Tony has a long way to go. Hope he is worthy of Alice; but is he in this respect any worse than his neighbours? I don't believe any man was worth the woman that inspired a real pa.s.sion, and he only became approximately so by dint of loving her. And so if T. B. does ever turn out a good fellow it is Alice has done it, and not yours very faithfully.

”My thanks for your cheque, which came all safe. I thought O'D. had better be anecdotic and gossipy at _first_, but when I send you the batch (which I will in a day or two), tell me if something more didactic ought to come into preachment.”

_To Mr John Blackwood_

”Casa Capponi, Florence, _Jan_. 22, 1864.

”I send you herewith a piece of O'Dowderie, and if it be too light--I don't suspect that's its fault--I'll weight it; and if it be too doughy, I'll put more barm in it; and, last of all, if you don't like it, I'll burn it.

”What in the name of all good manners does Lord Russell mean by writing impertinences to all Europe? He is like an old Irish beggar well known in Dublin who sat in a bowl and kicked all round him. As to fighting for the Danes, it is sheer nonsense. They haven't a fragment of a case, and we should not enjoy Mr Pickwick's poor.... consolation of shouting with the largest mob.

”The Italians are less warlike than a month ago. The 'Men of Action'--as the party call themselves who write in the newspapers but never take the field--declare that they are only waiting for the signal of 'Kossuth'

from Hungary; but the fate of the Poles--who _do_ fight and are brave soldiers--is a terrible _a fortiori_ lesson to these people here, and I suspect they are imbibing it.

”I got a long letter yesterday from Lord Malmesbury and the criticism of Kinglake's history. Why they don't like it I cannot imagine. I believe he has. .h.i.t the exact measure of the Emperor's capacity, courage, and character altogether, and I go with him in everything.”

_To Dr Burbidge._

”Florence, _Feb_. 11, 1864.

”It seems to be leaking out that both Pam and Russell have been what the sporting men call 'squared' by the Queen, who would not hear of a war with Germany. The Court plays very often a more prominent part in foreign politics than the nation wots of, and certainly the Prince during the Crimean war maintained close correspondence with persons in the confidence of the R. Emperor,--not treasonably, of course, but in such a way as to require great watchfulness on the part of our Ministers. This I know. There is, in fact, the game of kings as well as of nations, and the issue not always identical.

”Our glorious weather has come back, though we hear it has been severe along the coast, and snow has actually fallen in some places.

”To-day I am to have a consultation about my wife with an Edinburgh professor of note who is pa.s.sing through to Rome. The opportunity was not to be lost, though the bare proposal has made her very nervous.

”My proofs--my proofs--are lost! gone Heaven knows where!--and here I sit lamenting, and certainly doing nothing else. I cannot take up the end of an unknown thread, and if I did go on, it would be to make Luttrell in love with Dolly Stuart.

”Only fancy my sitting for nigh an hour last night where a man [?

retailed] the story of 'T. Butler,' which he had been reading in 'Blackwood'!”

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