“Casa Capponi, Nov. 7, 1856.
“The opening of ‘Glencore’ having already appeared in the Magazine, will, I now find, seriously damage its continuance elsewhere, since no periodical will republish the past chapters, nor can they take up a story thus interrupted, and when commencement must be sought for elsewhere.... Now Mr Wardlaw knows, and the books will prove, that my terms with M’Glashan were £20 per sheet. By a dodge in a mere laughing conversation at breakfast he made a sheet to mean sixteen or seventeen pages, and as I never haggled about anything, he actually took advantage of my easiness, and paid me £20 per seventeen pages.... In a pure matter of business I have no right to dwell upon the want of consideration towards an old friend and supporter of the Magazine like myself, but I do feel deeply the scant courtesy with which I have been treated, and the little regard paid either to my interests or my sentiments as an author.”
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Florence, Dec. 5, 1865.
“I thank you most heartily for keeping me au courant to the destinies of the Magazine. I have just learned that H[urst] & B[lackett] have become the proprietors, with the intention of publishing in future in England, as I see ‘The Dublin Evening Mail’ has already announced. H. & B. are also, as I am informed, about to write to me,—probably about ‘Glencore,’ but not impossibly about editorship. Many of the difficulties and ‘disagreeables’ which my friends anticipate for me as editor of the Magazine would be probably obviated by publishing in England. Indeed from that moment the journal would cease to be Irish—at least, in all the acrimonious attributes of that unhappy adjective; and if H. & B. would propose such terms as I could accept, I’d accede, if only as a valid and sufficient reason to draw nearer to England, wherefrom I have, for my own and my children’s interests, too long separated myself. I also think that with capital, and London publishing to back it, the Magazine might be raised into a very worthy rivalry with ‘Blackwood’s,’ its one solitary competitor. However, I am merely speculating on all this, and rather weaving a web of hopes and wishes than of solid reason and sound expectation.
“It would be well if the Dublin people (in 50 Sackville St.) could be brought to book for the part ‘Glencores’ at once. There are also a few pp. about politics in the August No., written at M’Glashan’s request. They cost me more work than double as much fiction.
“I hope you continue to like ‘Cro-Martin.’ They say in England it is the best I’ve done,—but I scarcely hope it myself.”
The year 1855 closed, with plenty of work to do and plenty of interest in the work, with the usual shortage of supplies, with hopes and fears and projects chasing each other through the brain which had coined them.
‘The Martins’ was rapidly advancing towards its close. The serial course of ‘Glencore’ had been interrupted by the difficulties which had beset the Magazine, and these difficulties were not surmounted until the spring of 1856, when Lever made a journey to London and entered into an arrangement with Hurst & Blackett to continue the story, payment to be at the rate of £20 per sheet. In London he heard that his brother was seriously ill. He intended to cross over to Ireland, but John Lever’s doctors warned him that he must not visit his brother, as his only chance of recovery depended upon perfect rest; so the novelist returned, gloomily, to Italy. By this time ‘The Martins’ had been published in volume form. He was more sensitive than usual about criticisms of this book, and the opinion of a London literary weekly that “Mr Lever had committed his one dull novel” caused him intense chagrin. His own opinion was that the more reflective characters would please his friends; and Mary Martin was one of his best-loved heroines—therefore his friends should admire her.
He was able now to devote his attention exclusively to ‘Glencore,’ and all would have been well with him, only that he was very much disturbed about his son. The young soldier had been sowing a considerable crop of wild oats.