Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. I

by Charles James Lever

To Dr Burbidge.

“Casa Capponi, Florence, Nov. 1863.

“I like the notion you suggest of my cancelling. Did you ever see an Irishman throw out a pint of his chalk mixture because he saw a bluebottle in the measure? Or, rather, didn’t he daintily pick out the beastie, aye, if it was a cockroach, with finger and thumb, and serve his customer? I tell you I couldn’t afford to be careful. I’m not rich enough, to write creditably,—e poi? I never could bring myself yet, nor do I hope to arrive at the point hereafter, to respect my Public; and I often hug myself, in the not very profitable consolation, that they never thought meaner of me nor do I of them. I know that the very worst things I ever did were instant successes, and some one or two—as ‘The Dodds,’ for instance, which had a certain stamp of originality—were total and lamentable failures. Now, mind, I do not say this in any spirit of misanthropic invective. I do not want, like poor Haydn, to slang the world that refuses to appreciate me—and, for this reason, that they have taken carrion from me and eaten it for good wholesome ox beef; but I say that for such consumers the trouble of selection is clean thrown away, and I feel that if I were to write for Fame, I might finish my book in the Fleet.

“My wife is certainly better; the change is not so great as to alter her habits of rest and seclusion, but she is better, and looks better. Ju and Syd well, and, like all of us, very much yours.

“Your notes are a great pleasure, and I think the postman a scoundrel when he doesn’t bring one.”

To Mr John Blackwood.

“Casa Capponi, Florence, Nov., 23,1863.

“The sight of your handwriting is very comforting to me. I tell you frankly I get no letters that cheer me like yours now. I quite agree with you about Turkey, and our policy has no other defence than that it is better to leave open to contingencies what, if we were to deal with summarily, we should finish at once. In not negotiating with Nicholas England was simply giving way to one of those intermittent attacks of morality which seize her after some aggressive paroxysm—a Caffre war or the annexation of [?Oude] We have done scores of things—and if we live and prosper will do them again—far more reprehensible than a partition of Turkey. I believe the Crimean war was a signal blunder, and the peace that followed it worse than the war.

“As to Turkey as a question for a paper, I can only say as Lord Plunkett did of a crim. con. case: ‘I’d like to have a hundred pounds to argue it either way.’

“How glad I am you like ‘The Dodds.’ I know I have never done, nor ever shall do, anything one half so good, because it is original. I decanted, through all the absurdities of Dodd’s nature, whatever I really knew of life and mankind, and it is that very admixture of shrewd sense and intense blundering that makes an Irishman. The perception and the enjoyment of the very domestic absurdities that overwhelm him with shame would in any other nature mean insanity, but they only make an Irishman very true to his national characteristics, and rather a pleasant fellow to talk to.