Volume Ii Part 49 (1/2)
”If you and Mrs B. can come out here I think I shall persuade myself to live on till May at all events. I am resolved to meet you this spring, somewhere, anywhere. Whenever you can make your plans let me hear.
”I am rejoiced that you like my Albanian sketch story, and hope it will take.
”I wish you had time to look at 'Kilgobbin.' The talk is good enough--the story bad as can be.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
”Trieste, _April_ 9, 1872.
”A word to disabuse the world of the need of a 'Political Programme'
which is well-timed just v now; and I send you a short O'D. to add to the others.
”I feel certain you will agree with my notion, and my only misgiving is, have I made myself clear enough?
”I have had a very sharp brush these last few days, and I am still wrestling with the enemy. I own I do not come up smiling after each round, but looking horribly grim. Let me only hear when there is a chance of seeing you and Mrs B. and your little girl, and I'll at once apply for a renewal of my lease of life, though it be only for a week or two.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
”Trieste, _April_ 11,1872.
”It was only yesterday I sent off a short O'D. on the English demand for a 'Political Programme,' and I hope it has reached you, and more, that it is readable, for my hand and my head are degenerating _pari pa.s.su_.
”To-day I have got your welcome note, for which I thank you heartily. It will do me more good to see you than all my tinctures, and pray tell Mrs Blackwood she is quite right to bring her little girl with her. The journey, the new scenes and new faces, will be the healthiest excitement to a young mind, and, whether as correcting old ideas or storing up new ones, is a form of education not to be had of books or to be satisfied by governesses.
”You are really a good fellow to come and see me in a cabin. I can only say if it were a palace you would be equally welcome, and more welcome you could not be.
”I'll not promise to go to England. I have scarcely wind for a 'three-mile heat,' but I'll take a short run with you somewhere, and we'll concert it when we meet. Rob. Lytton wrote to me a few days ago, and said how he hoped to see you. His wife has just had a boy, which I am heartily glad of, as they lately lost their only son. Mrs L. is the most charming, natural, and nice creature it is possible to imagine, and the crowning good fortune of Robert's life is to have met her.
”From Vienna here--you can do it in one day--fourteen and a half hours; but if you prefer to halve it, there is a nice halting-place, Gratz, Styria, where you arrive about three o'clock and leave the following day about the same: the Hotel Elephant is excellent.
”Sydney and her man are at the Burlington, and well too--also their mother,--and can get you every detail of the journey _via_ whichever route you take. I think you are right to come by Germany and go back by Italy, though it be against the precepts of climate, but that Germany after Italy is like following a strawberry ice with sauerkraut. I think 'Just like Rye' will be the best t.i.tle for the 'O'Dowd,' and 'taking' as well as appropriate. Rose is still at Constantinople, I believe, trying to get the tobacco monopoly from the Government,--a huge affair of some millions sterling.
”The weather up to this was splendid here; now it has become 'more Irish and less nice,' and I fancy is one of the reasons of my maladies. One loves to lean on such subtleties, like the alderman who ascribed his health to his always having a strawberry in his wine-gla.s.s.”
XXIII. LOOKING BACKWARDS 1871-1872
[The autobiographical and bibliographical notes which Lever arranged to supply for a new edition of his novels were written during the latter part of 1871 and the spring of 1872. Unfortunately he did not live to complete the intended series of prefaces. They disclose highly interesting and amusing glimpses of his career and opinions, and they contain very open confessions of his loose literary methods, as well as some acute criticisms of his writings.]
'HARRY LORREQUER.'
That some thirty years after the sketches which form this volume were written I should be called upon to revise and re-edit them is strange enough to me, well remembering, as I do, with what little hope of permanence they were penned, how lightly they were undertaken, and how carelessly thrown together. But there is something still stranger in the retrospect, and that is, that these same papers--for originally they were contributed to 'The Dublin University Magazine'--should mainly have directed the course of my future life, and decided my entire career.
I may quote from a former preface that I was living in a very secluded spot when I formed the idea of jotting down these stories, many of them heard in boyhood, others constructed out of real incidents that occurred to my friends in travel, and some again--'The Adventures of Trevanion'
and 'The French Duellist,' for instance--actual facts, well known to many who had formed part of the army of occupation in France. To give what consistency I might to a ma.s.s of incongruous adventure, to such a variety of strange situations befalling one individual, I was obliged to imagine a character, which probably my experiences--and they were not very mature at the time--a.s.sured me as being perfectly possible: one of a strong will and a certain energy, rarely persistent in purpose and perpetually the sport of accident, with a hearty enjoyment of the pleasure of the hour, and a very reckless indifference as to the price to be paid for it. If I looked out on my acquaintances, I believed I saw many of the traits I was bent on depicting, and for others I am afraid I had only to take a peep into myself. If it is an error, then, to believe that in these Confessions I have ever recorded any incidents in my own life, there is no mistake in supposing that in sketching Harry Lorrequer I was in a great measure depicting myself, and becoming, allegori-cally, an autobiographist. Here is a confession which, if thirty odd years had not rolled over, I might be indisposed to make; but time has enabled me to look back on my work, and even on myself, with a certain degree of impartiality, and to feel, as regards both, as the great Paley said a man feels after he has finished his dinner, ”That he might have done better.” It is perfectly unnecessary that I should say when and where I wrote these sketches; no thought of future authors.h.i.+p of any kind occurred to me, far less did I dream of abandoning my profession as a physician for the precarious livelihood of the pen. Indeed their success, such as it was, only became known to me after I had left Ireland and gone to live abroad, and it was there--at Brussels--my publishers wrote to me to request a continuance of my Confessions, with the a.s.surance that they had found favour in the world and flattering notice from the press. Though I have been what the sarcastic French moralist called ”blessed with a bad memory” all my life, I can still recall the delight--I cannot call it less--with which I heard my attempt at authors.h.i.+p had been successful. I did not awake, indeed, ”to find myself famous,” but I well remember the thrill of triumphant joy with which I read the letter that said ”Go on,” and the entrancing ecstasy I felt at the bare possibility of becoming known one day as a writer. I have had, since then, some moments in which a partial success has made me very happy and very grateful, but I do not believe that all these put together, or indeed any possible favour the world might mete to me, would impart a t.i.the of the enjoyment I felt on hearing that 'Harry Lorrequer' had been liked by the public, and that they asked for more of him. If this sort of thing amuses them, thought I, I can go on for ever; and believing this to be true, I launched forth with all that prodigal waste of material which, if it forms one of the reasons of success, is, strictly speaking, one among the many demerits of this story. That I neither husbanded my resources nor imagined that they could ever fail me were not my only mistakes; and I am tempted to show how little I understood of the responsibilities of authors.h.i.+p by repeating what I have told elsewhere,--an incident of the last number of 'Harry Lorrequer.' The MS. which contained the conclusion of the story had been sent through the Foreign Office bag from Brussels, and possibly had been mistaken for a despatch. At all events, like King Theodore's letter it had been thrown on one side and forgotten. In this strait my publishers wrote to me in a strain that ”the trade” alone knows how to employ towards an unknown author. Stung by the reproaches (and they were not mild) of my correspondent, I wrote back, enclosing another conclusion, and telling him to print either or both--as he pleased. Years after, I saw the first MS. (which came to hand at last) bound in my publisher's library and lettered, ”Another ending to H. L.” When the great master of fiction condescended to inform the world on what small fragments of tradition or local anecdote the Waverley Novels were founded, he best exalted the marvellous skill of his own handiwork in showing how genius could develop the veriest incident of a life into a story of surpa.s.sing power and interest. I have no such secrets to reveal, nor have I the faintest pretension to suppose the public would care to hear about the sources from which I drew either my characters or my incidents. I have seen, however, such references to supposed portraiture of individuals in this story, that I am forced to declare there is but one character in the book of which the original had any existence, and to which I contributed nothing of exaggeration. This is Father Malachi Brennan.
The pleasant priest was alive when I wrote the tale, and saw himself in print and--worse still--in picture, not, I believe, without a certain mock indignation, for he was too racy a humourist and too genuine a lover of fun to be really angry at this caricature of him. The amusing author of 'The Wild Sports of the West'--Hamilton Maxwell--was my neighbour in the little watering-place where I was living,* and our intimacy was not the less close from the graver character of the society around us. We often exchanged our experiences of Irish character and life, and in our gossipings stories were told, added to, and amplified in such a way between us that I believe neither of us could have p.r.o.nounced at last who gave the initiative of an incident, or on which side lay the authors.h.i.+p of any particular event.
* Portstewart