“First of all, I thank you for your kind note, and say with what real pride I shall see myself in your columns. ‘Ebony’ has been an ambition of mine since my boyhood. I send you all that I know about Italy in an article I have boiled down from an ox to a basin of broth, and only hope it may suit your palate. I send you the opening of the Garibaldi romance. To give all the realism so necessary for a story of adventure, I was obliged to set out very quietly. Let me have your opinion as soon as conveniently you can. I quite agree with you about the mystery as to the authorship, and will answer for my part. Don’t forget to send me ‘Maga’ when out.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Spezzia, June 26, 1863.
“It has happened to me more than once, when particularly anxious to do well, to make a fiasco of it. I have the same anxiety now; and to put me at my ease, if there be anything you like in these, say so, for, like most of my countrymen, I thrive better on kindnesses than on kicks.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Spezzia, July 26,1863.
“I send by this post one sheet and half—or nearly—of ‘Tony’ corrected for the Nov. No., being, I suspect, as much as your readers would swallow at a time. Let chap. ix. end where I have marked, and I’ll try, if I can, to put in the missing link, which, as you observe, occurs at that place.
“Of course M’Casky ‘is extravagant,’ but I’ll swear to you not more so than scores of real flesh-and-blood men in the land he came from.
“My home critics say that all that political part at Naples is dull and heavy. I don’t think it so; besides, I have endeavoured to assure them that there is in novel-writing a principle, analogous to what chemists find in active medicinal substances, and which they profanely called ‘inert matte,’ but which, if our knowledge were greater, would doubtless display some marvellous property of either enhancing some other gift or restraining some latent power of mischief. Are you of my mind?—because if, unhappily, you side with them, you are at full liberty to cut away as much about Maitland’s politics as you like or dislike.
“My hope is that, with the portion now in print by me and that already sent, you will have enough for December and January too. I say this, for I start to-day for a yachting ramble down the coast, and am in for idleness till the hot weather is over. It is 90 something in what represents shade; and what with the smell of oranges and the glow, I feel as if I were sitting in a pot of hot marmalade.