“Villa Lima, Como, Sept. 1, 1847.
“I send you herewith a letter received from Chapman this day. You will see by one expression—the same crucible—that he, too, is [alive] to the possibility of a reprint of my books himself. As to ‘Horace Templeton,’—which is now my only spec,—it is a secret—to be published without my name. I thereby receive a small sum, but I hazard no fame, and would willingly try if, under a new sobriquet, I could lay siege to a new public.
“Have you any reason to believe that £500 to £600 with my claim would be accepted [for the copyrights]? I am more than ever eager to recover them, because, during the reissue, I could lie by and yet have some means of living till better bookselling days. Above all, obtain my MS. from M’Glashan, for independently of his cavalier treatment of me, I have now, viâ ‘Horace Templeton,’ a local habitation to accommodate my stray sheep withal. And this ‘Tyrol Tale’ will now do me good service. Send it, therefore, and with it will you send the pages of my story called ‘Carl Stelling, the Painter of Dresden,’ printed in the July number of the D. U. M., 1845? M’Glashan could give the sheet without destroying a number, but if not, buy one and tear it out. This also finds a lodging in the Hôtel Templeton.
“I cannot thank you enough for all your kindness in writing to me—a kindness that does not need the force of contrast (in others’ neglect) to make it dearer. I am a bankrupt in thanks, and have coolly resolved to die in your debt.”
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Villa Lima, Lago de Como, Sept. 20, 1847.
“We could never think of pushing Curry to a bankruptcy. If others take this upon them we must abide by it, but I hope, for the poor man’s sake, it may not be so.... M’Glashan scarcely deserves a paragraph.... O’Sullivan’s letter was in so far only an allusion to the affair at issue—that is, he said, M’G. has, it appears, an MS. of yours in his hands, which he will write to you about by this post or the following. Four months ago he (M’G.) wrote to me asking, in eager terms, to see this MS., and promising a reply upon it without the least delay,—since which he has never once written, not even an acknowledgment of its arrival.
“I would beg of you to keep the MS. by you—that is, if it should not have already been forwarded to [catch] Maxwell in London. As to the printed story,—‘Carl Stelling,’—will you scratch out the title at top, and the words ‘by the editor’ carefully, and cross out the Introduction, letting the tale begin by the words of the narrator—“There are moments in life,” &c.,—and send it to Mr Chapman with a line to say that this printed matter comes in after the MS. pages of chapter xi. of ‘Horace Templeton’? I may here add that the aforesaid H. T. is already—so far at least as eleven chapters go—in the printer’s hands. It is precious bad stuff, and, worse still, very lachrymose and depressing—I mean, so far as such very powerless trash can be—Mais que vovlez-vous? And in the present case I have laid the child at another man’s door, and will never own him—if he doesn’t grow up more thrivingly than I hope for.
“You wouldn’t believe what difficulties the authorities here make about the unhappy document. The Podesta is afraid of it! The Legation trembles at it—the Commessario says it is ‘Peri-colosissimo!’ and how I am to find an employé courageous enough to look on while I sign it, I cannot tell. I fear that in the end I must go up to Milan, where the functionaries will possibly have more hardihood.
“I am greatly gratified that you have seen John Maxwell—whose visit I look for with much pleasure. We have not met for seventeen years,—up to that we had spent, nearly day-by-day, the previous ten or twelve years always together. It will be curious for each to see time’s changes in the other, and how far the opinions and tastes of the man already steering round Cape Dangerous have diverged from (those of) the boy and the youth. For myself, there are many [? changes] that I can recognise; nor am I blind to the telling of coming years, which show me the diminished sense of enjoyment I possess to heretofore,—how little I value society, how tiresome I find what I hear are very pleasant people, and so on. And without being actually old, I am old enough to think that the world used to be pleasanter long ago, and that friends were more cordial and more frank, and that there was more laisser-aller in the course of life than in these hardworking, money-seeking, railroading days we’ve got now.