“O’Sullivan wishes me to take time for a really good effort in three vols., and so on. But how am I to live meanwhile? While I am training for the match I’ll die of hunger.
“As to a new M’Glashan serial, I have a thing en tête that would do; but of course he would trust me as to my giving him value without any question as to the colour of the cloth. Believe me, my dear friend, that if I knew how, I should not have inflicted upon you all this surplus labour nor given you more of my tiresomeness than you see in my red-bound Nos. illustrated by Phiz. But so it is: an author is an unlucky friend, whether it be his life or works that are under consideration.”
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Florence, Dec 24, 1861.
“As to the ‘Tiernay’ copyright, it is somewhat equivocal in him [M’Glashan] to talk to me for three months of calculations and then ask a proposition from me. Now such is my necessity that I will take absolutely anything for it. If he thinks £200 too much, then £150—nay £100—say one hundred, as Mr [O’] Connell observed. I repeat, my urgent necessity is such that I would make any sacrifice for the use of that sum at once. I leave it to your diplomacy to make the proposal in any shape you can,—the great object being M’Glashan’s permission to draw on him at three months for whatever he may deem the suitable price. You will see, my dear friend, that I am driven to my last resources—and for this reason: that at this season a deluge of duns await me, who, whatever their forbearance before, give me no quarter at the end of the year. I need not tell you, then, that days are very precious to me. I have no occasion to stimulate your kindness and affection. I am overdrawn with Chapman, and have actually no immediate resource, this procrastination of M’Glashan from the early part of October last having occupied me with the hopes of a settlement, and thus taken me off the track by which I might possibly have extricated myself.
“As to the future, let us, if he will, renew the old contract—£20 per sheet; and I will begin with the April quarter—if I don’t jump into the Arno before—a brand new serial as jocose and comical as can well be expected from a mind so thoroughly easy and well-to-do as mine. I will complete it in twelve or twenty parts monthly, and it shall be at his discretion to say which. I cannot yet give him the text, because I am vacillating between two themes,—and to predict a plan is with me to make the whole effort pall and disgust me. So much so is this the case, that when the children guess a dénoûment that I intend, I am never able to write it after; and when you read this to M’Glashan he will recognise a fact that he knew well once, though he may have forgotten it. If I am to go to work, let him tell me this,—or, rather, let him tell you at once,—for our Carnival begins here next week, and for a month at least all quiet and repose is at an end, but still I could pick up some of the raw material for future fabrication.
“Now, my dear friend, for my first proposition, l’affaire Tiernay. Get me something—anything—out of him. Let me know M’Glashan’s reply to the new Story proposal as soon as he can make up his mind, but do not wait for the answer if you have any tidings for me re ‘Tiernay.’
“My little people are all well,—and this, thank God, is a piece of good fortune that goes far to reconcile me to many a hard rub.”
Early in 1852 Lever heard of the tragic fate of his friend Eliot Warburton, who had perished in the Amazon, the ill-starred steamer which was burned on her voyage to the west coast of America. Warburton had made Lever’s acquaintance through sending to the editor of ‘The Dublin University’ some brilliant sketches of travel: these were published in the Magazine in 1843, under the title of ‘Episodes of Eastern Travel.’ Subsequently the author of ‘The Crescent and the Cross’ was a guest at Templeogue, and Lever entertained for him the warmest feelings. War-burton’s violent end, following closely upon the sudden death of Shiel,—who was to have dined with Lever the very day of his death,—gave the novelist a rude shock. He indulged in some very gloomy moralisings about the uncertainty of all human things, and engineered himself into a state in which work was impossible. In February he thought a journey southwards might give him a mental fillip which he sadly needed. He paid his first visit to Rome, his wife and children accompanying him. The daily expenditure increased seven-fold: but had he not forsworn small economies?
To Mr Alexander Spencer.