Miss Mitford** was a staunch admirer of Lever. “I think him,” she said, “one of our best living writers of fiction.” She must have expressed her appreciation to Mrs Browning, for the latter writes in the autumn of 1849 to the author of ‘Our Village’: “I told Mr Lever your opinion of him, dearest friend, and then he said, all in a glow and animation, that you were not only his own delight but the delight of his children, which is affection by refraction, isn’t it?” Then follows a further description of the Irish novelist and of his ways. “Not only,” says Mrs Browning, “is he the notability par excellence of these Baths of Lucca, where he has lived a whole year during the snow upon the mountains, but he presides over the weekly balls at the Casino, where the English do congregate (all except Robert and me), and is said to be the light of the flambeaux and the spring of the dancers. There is a general desolation when he will retire to play whist. In addition to which he really seems to be loving and lovable in his family. You always see him with his children and his wife; he drives her and her baby up and down along the only carriageable road of Lucca—so set down that piece of domestic life on the bright side in the broad charge against married authors; now do! I believe he is to return to Florence this winter with his family, having had enough of the mountains.”
* “Lever’s accent,” according to Major Dwyer, “was au
fond Dublinian.” “He never dropped his Irish manner or his
Irish tongue,” says Anthony Trollops, who was an excellent
judge of Irish manners and dialect.
Tot homines, quot
aures!—E. D.
** In 1843 Lever had made in his Magazine a special appeal
to his readers to testify their gratitude to the author of
‘Our Village,’ by subscribing to a fund which had been
started for her benefit.—E. D.
As he had been the life and soul of social enjoyment at the Baths of Lucca, so was he the life and soul of Anglo-Florentine society when he returned to Florence. One of his numerous friends of the period declares that his appearance in the Cascine always provoked attention. His manner of riding was, if anything, less graceful than it used to be in his Templeogue days, when he clattered into Dublin city: he did not rise in the stirrups, but allowed himself to be jogged up and down like a trooper. Dr Fitzpatrick conjectures that “the shaking to which he surrendered himself was meant as a counter-irritant to sedentary habits.” Though at this time he did not speak Italian fluently, he was able to hold his own in the language. Being unlucky enough to embroil himself in a small lawsuit, he decided to conduct his own case. He was warned that this would be courting defeat; but his confidence in himself was unshaken, and not only did he plead his own cause, but he gained a verdict in his favour.
He tells a tale of another case in which (also pleading his own cause) he did not make so successful an advocata In front of his Florentine house was a terrace reached by a flight of steps. This was a favourite lounging-place for the novelist. One day his reveries were disturbed by a visitor who presented a bill. The visitor was a tailor, and the bill was a monstrous document. Lever protested vehemently against the charges, and the tailor protested that they were moderate. In his endeavour to convince the novelist of his rectitude, the visitor became wildly excited, and, moving backwards, he fell headlong down the flight of steps. Lever was summoned, and the tailor swore that his accident was due to alarm caused by the threatening manner of the Englishman,—it was owing to his eagerness to escape from assault that he had fallen down the steps. Lever denied that he had done or said anything which would indicate a possible assault. The court inquired how could the defendant account for the panic-stricken condition of the man. “On two grounds,” replied Lever, flippantly; “he is a tailor and a Tuscan.” Needless to say, the Tuscan court awarded the plaintiff ample damages. When he released himself from his writing-table, and when he was not riding or driving with his family, he was to be found in the clubs, or in salons, or at receptions at the Grand Duke’s. He divided his leisure moments between whist-playing and conversation. Occasionally he danced—when dancing was the order of the night,—his wife, as a general rule, being his partner. It is said that he was never at his best in the society of literary ladies, and that he was particularly nervous in the company of Mrs Trollope. Possibly he was in dread that this authoress might be taking a leaf out of his own book and endeavouring to make a character sketch of him. “It was amusing,” says a friend, “to observe his transparent manoeuvrings to avoid Mrs Trollope as a whist-partner; and it was equally amusing to observe Mrs Trollope’s undisguised desire to secure Lor-requer as her partner.”
XI. FLORENCE AND SPEZZIA 1850-1854
Towards the close of 1849 ‘Roland Cashel’ was published in book form by Messrs Chapman & Hall. It was dedicated to G. P. R. James—“a Roland for your Oliver, or rather for your Stepmother,” according to Lever (to whom James had dedicated the last-named novel). The opening of 1850 found the author of ‘Roland Cashel’ struggling to make headway with a new work of fiction, for which he was troubled not only to find a satisfactory plot but even a satisfactory title. Ere long, however, the story shaped itself, and the title came trippingly—‘Maurice Tiernay, the Soldier of Fortune.’ M’Glashan had written to Lever asking him to contribute a new serial to ‘The Dublin University’; and choosing to forget his Dublin quarrellings, he agreed to write a novel which would run for twelve or twenty numbers according to the humour, or at the discretion, of the author. He was also busy with ‘The Daltons.’ ‘Maurice Tiernay’ was to be a tale of military adventure, ‘The Daltons’—possibly his most ambitious book—a novel of a more homely pattern. The story of the Daltons was a long time in the making. The author employed some of the ideas he had entertained for ‘Corrig O’Neill,’ the novel which he had abandoned in 1845—most likely because of Miss Edgeworth’s objections. He had commenced ‘The Daltons’ late in 1849. He tells us that it was no labour to sit at his desk for the easy hour and a half which sufficed to carry on his literary labours at this period. The incidents came to him as he required them without effort, and the sayings and doings of his characters afforded him infinite amusement. “Although no longer a young man,” he writes, “I had not yet felt one touch of age, nor knew myself other than I was at five-and-twenty; and it was this conscious buoyancy of temperament, joined to a shrewder knowledge of the life, that imparted to me a sense of enjoyment in society for which I have no word but ecstasy. The increasing business of life went on before me like a play in which, if occasionally puzzled by the plot, I could always anticipate the dénoûment by my reading of the actors. Such a theatre was Florence in these old grand-ducal times—times which, whatever the political shortcomings, were surrounded with a charm of existence words cannot picture. If it were an obligation on me to relive any portion of my life, I should select this part, even in preference to earlier youth and more hopeful ambitions.”
His only anxieties or troubles arose whenever he was suddenly aroused to a knowledge of the fact that money was going out much more rapidly than it was coming in—a discovery which always spurred him to renewed literary exertions.
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Casa Ximenes, Jan. 14, 1850