"PORTSTEWART, July 19, 1836.
“I returned from Paris on Thursday last, having contrived within the space of fifteen days to travel there and back, spending one day and a half in London and five whole days in Paris. As to the result of my inquiry on the subject of my trip: I have thought it better, after a deliberate calculation of every bearing of the matter, to decline accepting the Journal.
“Independently of the great sacrifice of time to a pursuit foreign to my profession,—and this I only learned was indispensable on my going to Paris,—I find the expense of living—rent in particular—far beyond my expectations or means, lodgings in any respectable quarter ranging from 3000 to 4000 francs per annum (£120 to £160). The great influx of English, either resident or visitants, has rendered Paris a close competitor with London for extravagance. The changes which the few years since last I saw Paris have brought about, have rendered it the most magnificent city imagination can conceive. New esplanades, ornamented with the most stately and beautiful public buildings, are everywhere to be met with, and all the agréments of out-of-door life abound in Paris. I was present at the trial of [ ], and, in the few days of my stay, contrived to see a good deal both of places and persons. I cannot but regret that the speculation has not fully answered my expectations; but, when considering the time required, the matter of remuneration, the uncertainty of its continuance, and the great danger of again [risking] a fall into the world of a new and foreign city, I am afraid to venture though shockingly tempted. I have returned home to remain, at least until something decidedly better offers.”
“The trip to France, however pleasant and healthful,” he writes to M’Glashan in July, “has not added to my purse’s weight.... If you desire a continuance of my contributions, you can mention when you write.... Maxwell dined with me yesterday. I don’t think you can calculate on much from him at present, as, besides fighting with Bentley the whole battle of Waterloo over again, he is writing a new book for Macrone.... I hear Butt* is about to be my neighbour, and rejoice that he is not leaving the Magazine while he is extending the field of his labours.”
* Isaac Butt, the editor of ‘The Dublin University
Magazine,’ afterwards a famous advocate, and the “father of
the Home Rule movement”—E. D.
Maxwell’s arrival in Portstewart in the summer of 1836 helped to chase away Dr Lever’s gloomy forebodings. In the autumn, when the season was over, he set to work vigorously and made his first bold plunge into the sea,—he regarded his pre-1836 writings merely as dabblings in shallow water. On the 29th of October the first chapter of ‘Harry Lorrequer’ was despatched to Dublin, accompanied by the following note to M’Glashan:—
“I send you Article No. 1 of a series which will include scenes and stories at home and abroad,—some tragic, others (as in the present case) ludicrous. I have had an invitation from Colburn to furnish a two or three volume affair, but I am not in the vein for anything longer or more continuous than magazine work at present.”
The following month he wrote again to M’Glashan:—-
"PORTSTEWART, Saturday night.
“In a gale of wind, slates flying, and the chimneys (such of them as are not blown down) smoking.