To Mr John Blackwood.
“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, May 2, 1863.
“I hasten to answer and thank you for your letter. I am glad you like the line I have taken on Italy. I believe it to be the true one, and I know that it is, so far, new.
“As to my story, I’d give you my whole plan in detail at once but for this reason, which you will acknowledge to be good—that the very moment I revealed it I should be obliged to invent another! To such an extent do I labour under this unfortunate disability, that in my own family no one ever questions me as to the issue of any tale I am engaged on, well knowing that once I have discussed, I should be obliged to change it.
“You ask me how I write. My reply is, just as I live—from hand to mouth! I can do nothing continuously—that is, without seeing the printed part close behind me. This has been my practice for five-and-twenty years, and I don’t think I could change it. At least, I would deem it a rash experiment to try.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Hôtel d’Odessa, Spezzia, May 8, 1863.
“You will have had my note about my story, and all that I have to say on that score is already said. Only that I have not written any more, nor can I, without either a proof in print or a look at my MS.; for, as I had to own to you, most ignominiously, I have only one way of writing! And like the gentleman mentioned by Locke, who, having learned to dance in a room where there was an old hairbrush, never could accomplish a step without that accompaniment, so I must stick to my poor traditions, of which an old coat and an old ink-bottle, and a craving impatience to see how my characters look in type, are chief; and I seriously believe, if you cut me off from these—there’s an end of me!
“I think there is material for a pleasant half-gossiping sort of paper on social Italy—‘Life in Italian Cities,’—those strange wildernesses where rare plants and weeds live together on a pleasant equality, and where you may find the cowslip under a glass and the cactus on a dunghill. Is it not strange, there is nothing so graphic about Italy as the sketches in Byron’s letters? Perhaps it was the very blending of Dirt and Deity in himself led him into the exact appreciation.
“My hand o’ write is none of the clearest, but I’ll do my best to be legible
To you and by you; and with my hearty thanks for your very cordial note.”