Volume Ii Part 4 (2/2)
I'd save fifty more, but of _that_ I am rid well By the agency charges of Allston and Bidwell.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
”Florence, _May_ 15,1864.
”More power to you! as we say in Ireland, for your pleasant letter.
I have got it, and I send you an O'D. I think you will like on 'Our Masterly Inactivity,' and another on 'Our Pensions for Colonial Governors.'
”As to next month's O'D., I don't know what will turn up; but [I am]
like poor old Drury--the clergyman at Brussels--whose profound reliance on Providence once so touched an English lady that it moved her to tears. 'He uttered,' said she--telling the story to Sir H. Seymour, who told it to me--'he uttered one of the most beautiful sentiments I ever heard from the lips of a Christian: ”When I have dined heartily and well, and drunk my little bottle of light Bordeaux, Mrs S.,” said he, ”where Mrs Drury or the children are to get _their_ supper to-night or their breakfast to-morrow, I vow to G.o.d I don't know, _and I don't care_.”' Now if that be not as sweet a little bit of hopeful trust in manna from heaven as one could ask for, I'm a Dutchman, and I lay it to my heart that somehow, somewhere, O'Dowderies will turn up for July as they have done for June, for I shall certainly need them. You will have had T. B. before this. I see you are stopping at my old 'Gite,' the Burlington, my hotel ever since I knew London. There was an old waiter there, Foster,--I remember him nigh thirty years,--who exercised towards me a sort of parental charge, and rebuked my occasional late hours and the light companions who laughed overmuch at breakfast with me in the coffee-room. If he is _in vivente_, remember me to him.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
”Florence, _May_ 16,1864.
”I have just had your note, and am relieved to find that I have not lost the 'Colonial Governors,' which I feared I had. I have added a page to it. I have re-read it carefully, but I don't think it radical. Heaven knows, I have nothing of the Radical about me but the poverty. At all events, a certain width of opinion and semi-recklessness as to who or what he kicks does not ill become O'D.., whose motto, if we make a book of him, I mean to be 'Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur,'--
”I care not a fig For Tory or Whig, But sit in a bowl and kick round me.
”Though the paper I sent yesterday on 'Our Masterly Inactivity' would be very apropos at this juncture, there will scarcely be time to see a proof of it, seeing that it could not be here before this day week.
If you cannot revise it yourself, it will be better perhaps to hold it back, though I feel the moment of its 'opportunity' may pa.s.s. Do what you think best. My corrections of the proof I send off now will have to be closely looked to, and the MS. is to come in between the last paragraph and the part above it.”
_To Mr John Blackwood,_
”Villa Morelli, _June_ 7, 1864.
”We got into our little villa yesterday (it would not be little out of Italy, for we have seven salons), and are very pleased with it. We are only a mile from Florence, and have glorious views of the city and the Val d'Arno on every side.
”The moving has, however, addled my head awfully; indeed, after all had quitted the old Casa Capponi, a grey cat and myself were found wandering about the deserted rooms, not realising the change of domicile. What it can be that I cling to in my old room of the Capponi I don't know (except a hole in the carpet perhaps), but certainly I do not feel myself in writing vein in my new home....
”I hear strange stories of disagreements amongst the Conservatives, and threats of splits and divi-sions. Are they well founded, think you?
The social severance of the party, composed as it is of men who never a.s.sociated freely together, as the Whigs did and do, is a great evil.
Indeed I think the ties of our party are weaker than in the days when men dined more together.
”When C. leaders, some years back, offered to put me at the head of a Conservative Press, I said this. Lord Eglinton and Lord Naas were of my mind, but the others shrugged their shoulders as though to say the world was not as it used to be. Now I don't believe _that_.”
_To Dr Burbidge._
”Florence, _Thursday_, [? June] 1864.
”I have taken a villa--a cottage in reality, but dear enough,--the only advantage being that it _looks_ modest; and just as some folk carry a silver snuff-box made to look like tin, I may hope to be deemed a millionaire affecting simplicity.”
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