"_Sept._, 9, 1871.
"Between gout and indignation I am half mad. Gladstone at Whitby is worse to me than my swelled ankle, and I send you a furious O"D. to show that the Cabinet are only playing out--where they do not parody--the game of the Communists.
"Whether it will be in time to send me a proof I cannot tell, but you will, I know, take care of me. I feel in writing it as though we had been talking the whole thing together, and that I was merely giving a _resume_ of our gossip.
"Your delightful note and its enclosure have just come. I thank you cordially for both. I have not any recollection of what I said of Scott, but I know what I _feel_ about him, and how proud I am that you like my words. I cannot get my foot to the ground yet, but I am rather in vein for writing, as I always am in gout, only my caligraphy has got added difficulties from the position I am reduced to.
"I am glad Langford likes us here: my daughters took to him immensely, and only were sorry we saw so little of him. If he has really "bitten"
you with a curiosity to see Miramar I shall bless the day he came here.
"Tell Mrs Blackwood my cabin will be glad to house her here, and if she will only come I"ll be her courier over the whole of North Italy."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Sept_. 10, 1871.
"You are right. There is little point--that is, there is no epigram--in the "Trial." I wrote it rather to break the monotony of eternal moral-isings than with any other object. If it be pleasant reading I am content, and, I hope, so are you.
"I sent yesterday a hard-hitting O"D. on "How Gladstone is doing the Work of the Commune," and I send you now, I think, a witty comparison between the remaining troopers and the Whigs. My daughter thinks it the smartest bit of fun I have done since I had the gout last, and all the salt in it comes unquestionably from that source.
"All the names in the "Trial" are authentic. The lady is really the grand-daughter of Hughes Ball (the celebrated Golden Ball); and the man"s a.s.sertion of being "Times" correspondent was accepted as an unquestionable fact.
"I have made superhuman efforts to be legible in this "O"Dowd" now, so as to make correction easy. Heaven grant that my "Internationals" be as lucky.
"I am still a cripple, and if irritability be a sign of recovery, my daughter says that my convalescence is approaching."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Oct_. 1, 1871.
"I am so eager to save a post and see this in proof, that I have never left my desk for five hours, and only read it to Lord D. (Henry Bulwer), who was delighted with it, before I sent it.
"You have given me a rare fright by printing, as I see, what I said of Scott--at least, any other man than yourself doing so would terrify me, but you are a true friend and a wise critic, and what you have done must be right and safe: I do not remember one word of it. I have written myself back into gout, and must now go to bed. I had a sort of _coup_ yesterday, and D. believed I was off."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Oct_. 3,1871.
"I have just seen "Maga," and I am ashamed at the prominence you have given my few words about Scott.
"What a close connection a man"s ankles have with his intellect. I don"t know, but I can swear to it, that since I have become tender about the feet I have grown to feel very insecure about the thinking department, and the row in the cellar is re-echoed in the garret.
"Every fresh speech of Gladstone gives me a fresh seizure, and his last "bunk.u.m" at Aberdeen has cost me a pint of colchic.u.m.
"I have an O"D. in my head on the "Cobden Campaign," but I suppose it is safer to leave it there. You know what the tenor replied when some one said from the pit, "Monsieur, vous chantez fau." "Je le sais, Monsieur, mais je ne veux pas qu"on me le dise."
"Give my warmest regards to Mrs Blackwood. I wish with all my heart, gout _non.o.bstant_, I was to dine with you to-day."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Oct_. 17, 1871.
"I know well but for golf and its "divartin" sticks" I should have had a line from you, but you have no moment to spare correcting O"Ds. amidst your distractions.
"I kept back the proof I now send to hear from you and make any changes or alterations you might suggest, and I have a half-done O"Dowd "On Widows" which I shall keep over for another time. I am sorely done up,--only able to crawl with a stick and a friendly arm, and so weak that the Irishwoman"s simile of a "sheet of wet paper" is my only parallel. Robert Lytton tells me he has got such a pleasant letter from you. He and his wife had been stopping with us here, and we were delighted with them both."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Nov_. 1, 1871.
"I was sorry not to see my "Home Rule" in "Maga," but sorrier still not to hear from you, and I tormented myself thinking--which I ought not--that you were somewhat _chagrine_ with me. I am delighted now to find you are not, and that the only "grievance" between us makes _me_ the plaintiff for your not having printed my O"D. I can forgive this, however, and honestly a.s.sure you that I could forgive even worse at your hands. It is the nervous fear that I may be falling into [? senility] as well as gout that makes me tetchy about a rejected paper.
"Henry James got very safely out of my hands. He has no more pretension to play whist with me than I would have to cross-examine a witness before him, and I told him so before I won his sixpenny points.
"I fortunately asked F. O. by telegraph if I should take on the despatches, as the messenger was in quarantine, and they said not. They knew they were Henry Elliott"s, and that the delay could not injure the freshness. He is a great diplomatist, and there is nothing ephemeral in the news he sends home. Drummond Wolff is here with me now and Lord Dalling, and our conversation is more remarkable for wit than propriety.
"While James was here I was too gouty to go out with him, and what the latter Q.C. (queer customer) means by saying I was dog-bitten, I can"t guess. I am now crippled hand and foot, and a perfect curse to myself from irritability."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Nov_. 3, 1871.
"If my late discomfiture in your opinion of my last rejected O"Ds. had not taught me that I am not infallible, I should say that the O"D. I now send you is, as regards thought or pith, as good as any of them. I wrote it in a fit of gout. Spasmodic it is, perhaps, but vigorous I hope.
"I have been violently a.s.sailed in letters for what I said about "touching pitch,"--but there is nothing that leads me to retract or modify one word I wrote,--some from doctors, well written, but on a wrong issue. You can no more make people modest by Act of Parliament than you can make them grateful or polite in fifty other good things.
"A Mr Crane, West George Street, Glasgow, writes me a very courteous note, and says, "I do thank the Editor of "Blackwood" for publishing what you say of Scott," and goes on to express his hearty concurrence with it all, and he regrets that it had not been spoken instead of written, &c, &c.
"I do not feel as if I was to get better this time; but I have called wolf so often I shall scream no more. What I feel most, and struggle against most in vain, is depression. I have got to believe not only that my brains are leaving me, but that my friends are tired of me. Of course, I couple the two disasters together, and long to be beyond the reach of remembering either one or the other.
"You read my MS. so easily that if you do not like the O"D. don"t print it--it saves me a disappointment at least; and above all, do not mind any chance irritability I display in writing, for a cry escapes me in my pain, and I often do not hear it myself.
"Now that I write very little and brood a great deal, I sit thinking hours" long over a very good-for-nothing life, and owning to myself that no man ever did less with his weapon than I have. I say this in no vanity, but sheer shame and self-reproach.
"If I could be with you at times it would rouse And stimulate me greatly, for I think you know--that is, you understand--me better than almost any one, and I always feel the better of your company.