To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“33 Boulevard de l’Observation, Dec 1838.
“I have just despatched my acceptance of M’Glashan’s offer—which I am well content with—and shall lose no time in setting about my part in the affair. I hope to be ready for March next. I do not know if any more formal document of agreement be requisite between us than his proposal and my consent as expressed by letter. But as publishers are rather slippery gentlemen, [I] think it would be safer to have a regularly-drawn contract on each side for signature. This I know to be the usual mode, for I have seen such issuing from Bentley and the other great publishing people.
“I am very desirous that the illustrations should be by Cruikshank, not Phiz. Pray try to accomplish this for me. Much if not all the success to be hoped for depends on these [illustrations]....
“M’Glashan speaks of an introductory chapter. I think that anything of this sort had better be deferred for the last No., as in the ‘Pickwick’; but on this point I shall be guided by him.
“M’G. desires that each No. should be, as it were, complete in itself. Now until I know the quantity of matter requisite for one I cannot effect this. Therefore let him as soon as possible have a hundred struck off for me, and this will be a guide for the others. Of course M’G. considers as his exclusive province all the details of getting up the work, but I hope he intends putting me in a good coat, as I promise myself, if fortunate, another appearance on the boards.
“I wish above all that he could put me in relations with the illustrator for the scenes to be selected as subjects: this is most material. John [or Johnston] speaks most kindly upon the propriety of not touching the proceeds of this affair. I shall do my endeavours thereunto, but for the present I am rather lower in funds than usual. My furnishing has cost more than double what I anticipated, and I must call upon you in January some time to send me £40 or £50. Butt owes me something—I believe about £20—for the Mag. The exact sum I know not, but he can tell you; and the affair had better be wound up, as he has left the concern and gone to the English Bar, where, by the bye, the highest expectations are formed of him.
“We have been giving weekly soirees to the great guns here—all the different corps diplomatique and lords and marquises without end. I have a very handsome house, and the [? entertaining] has been done admirably well. Johnston was here one night. The thing is cheaply done here,—a well-lit room, plenty of servants (to be had for the night), ices, lemonade glacé, and stirrup-cup of spiced wine at 12 o’clock,—and that completes the expenditure. And you can have fifty people—and we never had less—for about five pounds sterling. They all so understand the art of mere chatting that music and dancing would be thought a regular bore; and except one whist-table for the dowager ladies of honour, nothing else is needed. Without witnessing it one cannot think how well these affairs always go off, and the din and clamour of fifty people, talking in about half the tongues of Europe, is about as exciting a scene in a brilliant salon as can be conceived. Lord Ely and Lord James Hay and Lord Douro are here every Monday; and amongst our notorieties we have Napoleon, Bassano of Russian memory, the Russian Ambassador, the Man of the Treaty of Tilsit, and Jerome Buonaparte. Sir H[amilton] Seymour and our Embassy never fail us, and we are really at the top of the ladder. I confess I am proud of this for one reason: hitherto the doctor has been regularly kept down amongst English society in Brussels, and it took a good deal of management to break the old chain of habit and fight out a place for him.
“If our Lorrequer scheme goes on favourably I hope to visit Ireland in the summer for a day or two.
“As time presses for our publishing, pray write as soon as you can and tell me all you can learn about M’Glashan’s views. Since I have begun this, the news—alas! but too true—has reached me of the failure of La Banque de Belgique. All my ready money happens to be in their notes; about £40 is thus, if not entirely lost, at least so far jeopardised as to be trembled for.”