“Quartier Leopold, Brussels, Nov. 14,1841.
“Dublin, if I am to trust the papers, is a changed city, and indeed I am disposed to believe them, and to have a great hope that a moderate Government with Tory leanings would be the fairest chance for peace in so disturbed a country.
“I have been scribbling about Lord Eliot in the last Mag.*
* “Ireland and her Rulers”: D. U. M., Nov. 1841.
“I am working—what for me is very hard indeed,—writing five or six hours daily; not going into society, dining early, and taking a half bottle of hock at my dinner. With all my early hours and abstinence my feet are swelled up, and I can scarcely walk when I get up in the morning.
“I have written to M’Glashan to give you a proof of ‘Jack Hinton’—No. 1—which I wish you’d read over, and then send on to John. I’d like to have your opinion (both of you) about it: don’t forget this.
“I have also hinted to John a scheme of which I have been thinking for some time—which is to retire from my profession ere it retires from me,—in plain words, to seek some cheap (and perhaps nasty) place where I could grub on for a few hundreds per annum and lay by a little. Here I am pulling the devil by the tail the whole year through, and only get sore fingers for my pains; and as my contract with Curry secures me £1200 per annum for three years at least, perhaps I ought not to hesitate about adopting some means of letting a little of it, at least, escape the wreck. Give this your consideration, and say also if you know of a nice cottage in Wicklow, about twenty-five to thirty miles from town, where I could transfer myself bag and baggage—furniture and all—at a moment’s warning. My only chance of economy is to be where money cannot be spent, and if I lived for £700 per annum (a liberal allowance too) in Ireland, the remaining five would be well worth laying by.
“I could have the editorship of ‘Bentley’s Miscellany’ at a salary of £800 per annum, but this would involve living in London. I could bring over a governess for my brats from this, and without much trouble import as many of my here habits as I care for.”
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Brussels, Dec. 17, 1841.