Another letter of his written from Winchester, Virginia, November 6, 1853, to Ollier, has some interest. He writes thus:
“My Dear Ollier: Long before the arrival of your kind letter, which reached me only two days ago, I had directed Messrs. Harper to send me a revise of the first page of Ticonderoga, in order to transmit it to you for the correction of errors which had crept into the Ms. through the stupidity of the drunken beast who wrote it under my dictation. Harpers have never sent the revise, but I think it better to write at once in order to have one correction and one alteration made, which must be effected even at the cost of a cancel of the page—which of course I will pay for. The very first sentence should have inverted commas before it. These have been omitted in the copy left here, as well as the words ‘so he wrote’ or something tantamount, inserted at the end of the first clause of that sentence.***
I cannot feel that an appointment of any small value, to the dearest and most unhealthy city in the United States (with the exception of New Orleans) is altogether what I had a right to hope for or expect. You must recollect that I never asked for the consulate of Virginia, where there is neither society for my family, resources or companionship for myself, nor education to be procured for my little boy—where I am surrounded by swamps and marsh miasma, eaten up by mosquitoes and black flies, and baked under an atmosphere of molten brass, with the thermometer in the shade at 103—where every article of first necessity, with the exception of meat, is sixty per cent. dearer than in London—where the only literature is the ledger, and the arts only illustrated in the slave market.
I hesitated for weeks ere I accepted; and only did so at length upon the assurances given that this was to be a step to something better, and upon the conviction that I was killing myself by excessive literary labors. Forgive me for speaking somewhat bitterly; but I feel I have not been well used. You have known me more than thirty years, and during that time I do not think you ever before heard a complaint issue from my lips. I am not a habitual grumbler; but ‘the galled jade will wince.’
I am very grateful to Scott for his kind efforts, and perhaps they may be successful; for Lord Clarendon, who is I believe a perfect gentleman himself, when he comes to consider the society in which I have been accustomed to move, my character, my habits of thought, and the sort of place which Norfolk is—if he knows anything about it—must see that I am not in my proper position there. He has no cause of enmity or ill will towards me, and my worst enemy could not wish me a more unpleasant position. If I thought that I was serving my country there better than I could elsewhere, I would remain without asking for a change; but the exact reverse is the case. The slave dealers have got up a sort of outcry against me—I believe because under Lord Clarendon’s own orders I have successfully prosecuted several cases of kidnapping negroes from the West Indies—and the consequence is that not a fortnight passes but an attempt is made to burn my house down. The respectable inhabitants of Norfolk are indignant at this treatment of a stranger, and the authorities have offered a reward of three hundred dollars for the apprehension of the offenders; but nothing has proved successful. This outcry is altogether unjust and unreasonable; for I have been perfectly silent upon the question of slavery since I have been here, judging that I had no business to meddle with the institutions of a foreign country in any way. But I will not suffer any men, when I can prevent or punish it, to reduce to slavery British subjects without chastisement.
You will be sorry to hear that this last year in Norfolk has been very injurious to my health; and I am just now recovering from a sharp attack of the fever and ague peculiar to this climate. It seized me just as I set out for the West—the great, the extraordinary West. Quinine had no effect upon it, but I learned a remedy in Wisconsin which has cured the disease entirely though I am still very weak.***
He seems to have been tormented by ill health during all his period of residence at Norfolk. He writes to Ollier:
British Consulate, Norfolk, Virginia,
7th April, 1855.
My dear Ollier:—It has been impossible for me to write to you and it is now only possible for me to write a few lines as I have already had to do more than my tormented and feeble hands could well accomplish. For 10 weeks I was nailed to my chair with rheumatic gout in knees, feet, hips, hands, shoulder. For some time I could only sign my dispatches with my left hand and to some letters put my mark. Happily my feet, knees, &c., are well, but I cannot get the enemy out of my hands and arms. My shoulder is Sebastapol and will not yield.