_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Villa Morelli, Florence, _Aug_. 16,1866.
"The French Emperor is very seriously ill. Nellaton has been sent for, and has given a grave opinion of the case: suspected to be incipient stone in the bladder. He was brought up to Paris from Vichy on a bed. It would be an awkward moment for him to die, for Plonplon would convulse the whole of Europe. Both Germany and Italy are ripe for a great democratic movement. Bismarck will be swamped eventually, or, rather, p.o.o.ped by the big wave of popular opinion that is now swelling in Germany, and that seems to carry him _on_ at this moment.
"As for Italy, all the failures, land and sea, are ascribed to the Government, and the "Reds" are employing the general discontent to bring the dynasty into disfavour. Fortunately for the king, Garibaldi has done as little as if he were a man of education, otherwise the situation would be critical.
"Who can explain the shameful condition of our fleet? Our pa.s.sion for experiment is only to be equalled by the man who pa.s.sed his life speculating what he should do when he met a white bear. I suppose that a great naval disaster would drive the nation half mad, and certainly it is what we are bidding hard for if we do come to a fight. As the only pa.s.sable Ministry in England is the one that will reduce taxation, it would be better at once to give up all armaments and pay a policeman (France, for instance) to protect us. We should save some fourteen million annually, and be safe besides."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Villa Morelli, _Aug_. 19, 1866.
"You will see by the accompanying chaps, that I am puckering in my purse, and will be able to tell me what you think of the wind-up.
"There is nothing I find so hard in a story as the end. I never can put the people to bed with the propriety that I wish. Some won"t come for their night-caps; some won"t lie down; and some will run about in their shirts when I want to extinguish the candle. In fact--absurd as it may seem--one"s creatures have a will of their own, and the unhappy author of their being is as much tormented by their vagaries and caprices as if they were his flesh-and-blood children going into debt, and making bad matches and the rest of it.
"At all events, read and be critical. It is not yet too late to correct if you dislike the way I am concluding. I, of course, mean to make the lovers happy in my next chapter."
_To Mr W. Blackwood._
"Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 1, 1866.
"The best thing the war has done for Italy is the knocking over a score of false G.o.ds--that graven image La Marmora and their clay idol Persano especially. This was, _par excellence_, the land of sham mock heroes, mock statesmen, mock publicists, and mock patriots. Even the engineers were humbugs, for when they made a tunnel for the Lucca railroad they could not make the two sides meet, and went on working in parallel lines till something fell in and showed one where they were!
"To pick your best Bramah with an old nail; to know what you say at your dinner-table without the faintest acquaintance with the language you are talking; to read your thoughts by the expression of your face as you glance at them; and to "sell" you at every moment and turn of your existence, I"ll back them against Europe,--but there end their gifts!
For the common work and wear of daily life they are too sharp and too cunning, and you might as well improvise a Cabinet Council from Pentonville or Brixton as make up a Ministry of such materials. But for the love of mercy keep all this to yourself.
"There is a story that Hudson has been offered the Emba.s.sy here. Would to G.o.d it were true! I"d defy the devil and all his bores with one such fellow in my neighbourhood. There"s more champagne in him--dry and sweet--than in all Mme. Cliquot"s cellars, and he is as good as he is able and clever.
"The Tories would do more by such an appointment than by gaining ten votes in the House, ay, fifty. I think they seem to use their patronage, up to this, very wisely: these Irish appointments are certainly good.
There is one man of merit they appear to have forgotten, it is true; but I am told he is not impatient, and this is the better for him, as his virtue may probably be put to a long and trying test.
"Do you know Phil Rose of the Carlton? He is coming out to see me here next week. He is sure to have all the Conservative gossip (he used to have all the patronage once, which was better). He once (in "59) offered me an [? Australian post] with 1200 a-year, and gave it, on my refusing, to Ed. Disraeli, Ben"s brother. I declined from pure fear. I understood I should have to hold and account for large sums, and as I knew how incapable I was in rendering an account of the few half-crowns entrusted to me, I saw that if I accepted I should probably finish my literary career in the Swan river. Still, I have occasional misgivings at my cowardly rejection, for I might have died before they detected me.
"Do you see that that ungrateful rascal Cook has taken up the hint in my late O"D. and organised an excursion to "Liberated Venice"?
"Bright, too, has been plagiarising me in his Birmingham speech, in his comparison of the Conservatives with Christy Minstrels. How I chuckled when I saw that he broke down in his attempt at drollery. Write if you have not written. Do you remember Sheridan Knowles" speech about Sanders and Ottley? "If you, sir, are Mr Sanders, d.a.m.n Mr Ottley; and if you"re Mr Ottley, d.a.m.n Mr Sanders.""
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 7,1866
"I have your note and its enclosure. My apothecary will just take the last, and may the devil do him good with it: I grudge it with all heart.
My thanks to you, all the same.
"I am right glad you like "Sir B." To tell you truth, I was rather put out at not hearing you say so before, for I thought the last bit good.
I am sorry now to know the reason. _You_ ill! I"d be shot, if I were _you_, if I"d condescend to be ill. With your comfortable house and your 34 Bordeaux it"s downright mean-spirited to be sick. I can imagine an unlucky devil like myself knocked up, because so little does it. Like the Irish on their potato-diet, they are always only a potato-skin above starvation; so fellows like myself are only a hair above hanging themselves. Don"t let me hear of your being blue-devilled, or I"ll go over to St Andrews and abuse you.
"I send you a short O"D.--which, as Mrs Dodd says, may please the Mammoth of unrighteousness, the press!--on "Our War Correspondents,"
also "On Bathing Naked." The last will help to relieve the dryness of politics, in which O"D. has of late indulged much.
"I am not ashamed of "Sir B.," and I leave it entirely to yourself to append the name or not. I think Tony was injured by being anonymous, and this had probably better be acknowledged.
"If I could manage it, I"d go over to see Venice on its cession. It would be curious in many ways.
"Do you perceive how L. Nap, is laying by the nest-egg of future discord in Germany, fomenting discontent in all Southern Germany, and exciting the King of Saxony to _defer_ accepting terms of peace? Contracts are already taken in Austria to provision the Saxon troops for three months, so that there is no question whatever of their return to Saxony.
All this shows clearly enough what _pressure_ he means to put upon Prussia--that is to say, how much he intends to gall and goad her. If she resent, she must do something provocative, and that provocation will be all the Emperor needs to stir up French anger, always ready enough to take fire. It is in this way this scoundrel always works,--like the duellists who force the challenge from the other party, that they may have the choice of the weapon!
"I hope to G.o.d he won"t drive me mad, as my daughters daily tell me, for I can"t keep myself from thinking and talking of him. He destroys the comfort of my daily potatoes, and I think my little franc Bordeaux is soured by the thought of him."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Villa Morelli, _Sept_. 24,1866.
"I am well pleased that you like the wind-up of "Sir B." It is always my weak point; and so instinctively do I feel it so, that I fear I shall make a bad ending myself. I half suspect, however, that your praise was a delicate forbearance, and that you really _did_ see some abruptness.
Now I have a great horror of being thought prosy. There is something in prosiness that resembles a moral paralysis, and I fear it as I should fear a real palsy.
"I have written a few last words, which I leave to your judgment to subjoin or not. It"s well I have wound up the story, for I begin to feel some signs of a return of the attack I had last spring. Perhaps, however, it may pa.s.s off without carrying me with it.
"Wolff is here: he dined here yesterday, and made us laugh heartily at his account of the way Labouchere blackguarded him on the hustings at Windsor,--"The knight from the Ionian Islands, whose glittering honours would not be the worse of the horse-pond," and after this went and dined with him at the "Star"!
"Wolff has come out with some credit from our people about a great "robbery" to be done on the Italian Government--a loan of a hundred millions (francs, of course).
"I hear Lord Stanley would give me Venice--the Consul-Generalship--if Perry would resign or die. He has been "cretinised" these ten years, but idiocy is the best guarantee for longevity. "The men the G.o.ds loved"
were clever fellows, and they "had their reward." It would be a great boon to me to get a place before I break up,--just as it is a polite attention to offer a lady a chair before she faints.
"If I get upon L. Nap. I shall write you ten pages, so I forbear, but not until I have screamed my loudest against that stupid credulity with which the English papers accept his circular as "Peace." Don"t you remember what Swift said to Bickerstaff, when the latter declared he was _not_ dead? "_Now we know_ you are dead, for you never told a word of truth in your life."
"Did you see that the Cave of Adullam was originally Lincoln"s? I have noted eight distinct thefts of Bright, and am half disposed to give them in a paper with the t.i.tle, "Blunderings and Plunder-ings of John Bright."
"I have taken to gardening,--it"s cheaper than whist, and a watering-pot is a modest investment; besides, I feel like a c.o.c.kney friend who retired from the gay world and took to horticulture,--"One never can want company who has a hoe and a rake."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Villa Morelli, Florence, _Sept_. 29,1866.