“Forgive me, my dear friend, all this long story of worry and annoyance, which, now that I have told it, has relieved my mind considerably.
“But, after all, I have found it a hard task and sore test of my courage for the last five weeks to go on daily bolting the egotism, selfishness, and sordid meanness of my sick world, and at night writing till one or two or three o’clock every imaginable kind of nonsense, with a heavy heart and an aching head—for means, ay, for means,—only to continue the same dull drudgery somewhat longer. This is a confession only for a very dear friend....
“My loss with the rascal is about £280—but it is all lost, for however Wright may come round my friend is most genteely cleared out.
“I have written a squib for the D. U. M.—‘The Chateau de Vandyck.’ Look at it.”
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Quartier Leopold, Brussels, Dec 28, 1840.
“I was just puzzling my brains with the knotty problem how to pay two hundred with one, when the solution of the difficulty came from another quarter—a most civil letter from the Currys, enclosing me £100 en cadeau de saison, expressing themselves sorry that their finances limited the present, and in fact doing the thing handsomely. The letter contained a pressing proposition to continue ‘O’Malley’ to 20 Nos.—a project my pocket, but not my brains, concurs in. I fear much that the public may grow very weary of the mere narrative details of battle and bloodshed which must necessarily make up the staple of the additional Nos., but they reply that the Peninsular part is likely to be popular, and in fact press me to give what in a chance conversation I hinted,—a prolongation down to Waterloo, to conclude with the battle, which [task] as regards locality, &c., I have many opportunities for making a strong thing.
“I should like to have your opinion on this. The plan is to publish the present ten numbers at once complete in one vol., and then proceed seriatim with the others. In a trade point of view a good idea; but the fear is, shall I not mar all by spinning out?—for so much has my head been running on other matters that I have latterly sat down to write without a particle of material in my mind, and merely ran on mechanically stringing sentences, sometimes so far away from the whole thing that but for my wife I had given wrong names to the characters and [made] a dozen similar blunders.
“I am about to have a special audience of the king on Friday. My grandeur costs me nearly £50 for a uniform. Do you know, ‘I’m Captain in the Derry Militia’ and aide-de-camp to somebody! His Majesty has been graciously pleased to move his royal jaws in laughter at something in ‘O’Malley,’ and I am to wait upon him while he expounds that same to me in French,—a great bore on many accounts, but an unavoidable one, such requests being very imperative. I am told I shall be asked to dinner, but this I don’t calculate on....
“The whole population is skating, and the consumption of schnaps is tremendous....