Volume Ii Part 13 (1/2)
_To Mr John Blackwood_.
”Villa MorElli, Florence, March 7, 1865.
”I answer your note at once to acknowledge your cheque. It's not necessary to tell you how I value your feeling for me, or how deeply I prize your treatment of me. Sorely as I feel the public neglect of 'Tony,' I declare I am more grieved on your account than on my own. It is in no puppyism I profess to think the book good: faults I know there are, scores of them, but there is more knowledge of men and women and better 'talk' in it, I honestly believe, than in those things which are run after and third-editioned. As to doing better--I frankly own I cannot. It is not _in_ me. I will not say I may not hit off my public better, though I'm not too confident of even _that_, but as to writing better, throwing off more original sketches of character,--better contrasts in colour or _sharper_ talkers,--don't believe it! I cannot.
”A more _ignorant_ notice than the 'Sat.u.r.day Review' I never read.
M'Caskey is no more an anachronism than myself! though perhaps the writer of the paper would say that is not taking a very strong ground.
”Why don't you like the 'Rope Trick'? It is better than most of the O'Ds. By the way, Smith only _asked_ if I would send him O'Dowderies, and I misrepresented him if I conveyed anything stronger. I was not sorry, however, at the opportunity it gave me to say--how much and how strongly--I felt that they were _yours_ so long as you cared for them.
You had been the G.o.dfather when they were christened.
”I am half disappointed we don't start B. F. next month; but you are always right,--perhaps even _that_ makes the thing harder to bear.
”'Piccadilly' is very good, very amusing; one thing is pre-eminently clear, the writer is distinctively a 'gentleman.' None but a man hourly conversant with good society could give the tone he has given to Salon Life. It has the perfume of the drawing-room throughout it all, and if any one thinks that an easy thing to do, let him try it--that's all
”What you say of 'Our Mutual Friend' I agree with thoroughly. It is very disagreeable reading, and the characters are more or less repugnant and repelling; but there are bits, one especially, in the last No., of restoring a drowned fellow to life which no man living but d.i.c.kens could have written. I only quote 'Armadale' for the sake of the Dream Theory: it is an odious story to my thinking, and I never can separate the two cousins in my head, and make an infernal confusion in consequence. How good 'Miss Marjoribanks' is--how excellent! What intense humour, what real knowledge of human nature! To my thinking she has no equal, and so think all my womanhood, who prefer her to all the story-writers, male and female.
”What you hint about a real love-story is good, but don't forget that Thackeray said, 'No old man must prate about love.' I remember the D.
of Wellington once saying to me, referring to Warren's 'Ten Thousand a-Year': 'It is not that _he never had_ ten thousand a-year, but he never knew a man who had.' As to writing about love from memory, it's like counting over the bank-notes of a bank long broken. They remind you of money, it's true, but they're only waste-paper after all.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
”Villa Morelli, _March_ 11,1865.
”I send off by book-post the O'D. proof, though I suppose, and indeed hope, you will not use them for the April No., but keep them for May.
This, not alone because it will give me more time to think of 'Sir B.'
but also, because there is just now rather a dearth of matter for what the 'Morning Post' describes as my 'Olympian plat.i.tudes.'
”'Oh dear, what a trial it is--to be kicked by a cripple.'
”I have added a few lines to complete the 'Church' O'Dowd; pray see that it is correct. I am curious to see the new vol., and to hear from you about its success.
”Do write to me--and as often as you have spare time. If we ever meet, I'll pay it all back in _talk_.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
”Croce di Malta, Spezzia, _March_ (_St Pat.'s_ Day).
”Gout, a rickety table, and four stupid Piedmontese authorities talking bad Italian and smoking 'Cavours' at my side, are not aids to polite letter-writing, and so forgive me if unusually incoherent and inexplicable.
”I came hurriedly down here to be consular, and to see poor old Mrs Somerville, who was very seriously ill. She has rallied, but it is the rally of eighty odd years. Nothing short of a Scotchwoman could have lived through her attack.
”On looking over the 'Whist' proof, there are a few changes I would suggest. I would, for instance, insert the 7 pp. copy in place of the piece marked (--). It will need your careful supervision and reading.