But whether you feel angry with him for his improvidence, or whether you are moved to compassion by contemplating his difficulties, you cannot help smiling at his excuses or parables. A friend upon one solemn occasion tendered advice on the score of his extravagance. He pointed out that Lever kept too many horses and too many servants, gave too many dinners, and played too highly at cards. The friend—a personage—wound up his homily by saying, “Begin your reformation with small economies.” The novelist determined to economise, and he tried to think where it would be easiest to begin. He racked his brain throughout the night in the endeavour to hit upon a starting-point in the proposed career of reformation. At length a happy thought occurred to him. He was in the habit of indulging in pistol-practice at a shooting-gallery, and he used to give a franc to a man who held his horse while he was amusing himself in the gallery. Now it would be an admirable effort in the scheme of economy to do away with the splendour of hiring a man to hold his horse. Henceforth he would fasten the bridle to one of the hooks of the jalousies. When he arrived next morning at the gallery the man who usually held the horse was in waiting. Lever informed him that he did not require his services. The dismay of the man smote the economist to the heart, but he had been told that he might expect to endure many pangs in the effort to inaugurate the campaign of frugality. He hitched his horse to the hook, shamefacedly, and entered the gallery. The effort to economise steeled his nerves, and at the first shot he hit the centre of the target. This excellent example of shooting had the effect of ringing a bell denoting the triumph of the marksman. The bell startled the horse outside, and the animal broke away, “carrying the window-frame with him,” according to Lever. “Altogether,” he says, “the repairs amounted to eighty-seven francs.... This was my first and last attempt at economy.”
A small turn of fortune’s wheel cheered him in March. A man to whom he had loaned a considerable sum of money gave him a series of bills which he managed to discount at a large sacrifice for cash. During the same month a trouble, not of his own making, disturbed him—the threat of a fresh outbreak in Florence. This, however, blew over, and he was able to continue his literary labour until the heat of August drove him, limp and desk-weary, from the Tuscan capital.
He turned his steps towards Spezzia (destined to be his official place of residence at a later period), and here he enjoyed to its full extent the luxury of lotus-eating. He offered a deaf ear to appeals for “copy.” He could do nothing, he told his publishers, except to sit on the rocks with his children and dream away the whole day. When he did arouse himself from this form of lethargy, it was only to indulge in another variety of dolce far niente—swimming. One day he was aroused from a half dream, as he lay floating on the bosom of the bay, by the sting of an electric-fish. His arm became swollen and inflamed, and he suffered excruciating pain. Leeching and blistering, and subsequently massage, pulled him through, but left him weak and querulous.
“The piano-playing, guitar-twanging, sol-fahing, and yelling” which went on at his hotel drove him out of Spezzia in September.
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Casa Capponi, Florence, Nov. 21, 1851.
“‘Maurice Tiernay’ being completed, I want to know how I stand. If I remember aright, M’Glashan advanced me £60 here, and paid two other sums for insurance, amounting to about £160 or £170 more, leaving a surplus sufficient, I hope, for the accruing insurance of next Xmas. In addition to this I have proposed to him to purchase out my copyright of ‘Tiernay,’ to which he replied by stating that he is ‘engaged in making certain calculations on the subject, and will give me the result in a speedy letter.’ Now I am so aware of his procrastinations that I would rather intrust the negotiations to you, and ask of you to find out his resolve and let me hear it. I want to learn if he desires another serial from me, to begin about the same month as before—April. If so (and that he makes me any acceptable offer about the copyright of ‘Tiernay ‘), I would wish to know if he would feel disposed to take the story altogether off my hands at once,—I mean, to give me a certain monthly sum for the tale, surrendering my copyright, so that I should attain no subsequent lien upon it, my object being to have a little more money for present purposes, which the education of my children and other outlays render needful.
“Even with both oars [this refers to ‘The Dal-tons’] I have barely kept my bark in motion for the past year, and these anxious inquiries will show you how anxious I feel about the year to come. Hinc illo lachrymo thus tormenting of you!
“With so much of actual Peter Daltonism in my own affairs, I have little courage to ask you what you think of my fictitious woes, but I hope you go with me in the chief views I take of priestly craft and priestly political meddling. O’Sullivan writes me many encouraging things about the story generally, and in parts; and I believe it is not worse than some, and is better than many of its fellows,—its chief errors (which I see too late) being an undue dalliance among the more worthless dramatis persono, and less stress consequently on the better features of the piece. More of Nelly and less of Haggerstone & Coy. would have been better. My own apology is, I have lived only among the Haggerstone class latterly, and that Nelly is pure fiction while the others are naked facts,—indeed they are portraits drawn from the life, and in some cases so close as to make the original manifestly uneasy.
“‘Tiernay’ is of course a poor performance—sketchy-meat [? or meal] and skim-milky; but here, again, I am ready with an excuse. I cannot be good for £20 a sheet!—just as I should revoke if I played whist for shilling points.