“Thanks for your most kind and affectionate letter. I think you are mistaken as to Brussels, and suppose that gaiety, society, &c., are stimulants that I can’t live without. Now the fact is, I do so at the moment, and have done for a long while past,—society being the very thing that unhinges me for writing, my slippers and my fireside being as essential to me as my pen and ink-bottle. Secondly, the incognito that you deem of service (as John does) is not what you suppose. It is only a nom de guerre, when my own name is seen throughout; and in England, where I am more read and prize the repute higher, Charles Lever is as much a pseudonym as Harry Lorrequer, for indeed H. L. is believed to exist, and no one cares whether C. L. does or not.
“What I thought of was not society, not a [? fashionable] neighbourhood: scenery, quiet, cheapness above all. I sent you a, I thought, very good [? story]: pray agree with me and translate it. I hope to hear something from Chambers every post, and when I do you shall know.
“I open a series of papers next month in the ‘U. Magazine,’ called, I believe, ‘Nuts and Nut-Crackers., This is a secret, however, and done to prevent M’Glashan reprinting ‘Our Mess’ in his confoundedly stupid journal.”
The pleasure he derived from Lover’s company made Lever more anxious than ever to pay a visit to Ireland, and gradually he came to the conclusion that he would be happier and more free from worries in his native land than he would be in any other portion of the globe. He proposed to M’Glashan that he should settle down in the neighbourhood of Dublin and take up the editorship of the ‘University Magazine.’ He was now willing to relinquish for ever the profession of medicine. M’Glashan was agreeable, and offered to pay Lever £1200 a-year, “with half profits, on all he wrote.” These negotiations were not completed until the close of the year 1841.
And then the restless novelist could think of nothing but of his speedy return to the land of his birth. He nourished a plan for a touring expedition through Ireland, disguised as a Frenchman. He had a sheaf of designs for Irish humorous publications,—‘The Weekly Quiz.’ to be illustrated by Phiz; ‘Blarney,’ which was to be launched on the 1st of April. There was also to be a series for the magazine entitled “Noctes Lorrequeriana”—an Irish ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ.’ Another contemplated work was ‘The Wild Songs of the West’—a mock collection of pseudo-original Irish ballads, to be composed by Lever himself. A short time previously he had formulated a larger scheme—‘The Irish, by Themselves,’ a comprehensive volume to be written by various hands, and to be bound in “a bright emerald cover, with an Irishman on a spit and another one roasting him, according to Swift.”
But all these Hiberniose projects came to nought.
In January 1842 we see the last of Charles Lever as a medical man. He advertised his practice for sale and left Brussels, fervently hoping that he would find contentment in his own country.
He did not put aside the lancet lightly. Shortly before his death, referring to this crisis in his career, he made this avowal: “Having given up the profession, for which I believe I had some aptitude, to follow the precarious life of a writer, I suppose I am admitting only what many others, under like circumstances, might declare—that I have had my moments, and more than mere moments, of doubt and misgiving that I had made the wiser choice; and, bating the intense pleasure an occasional success has afforded, I have been led to think that the career I abandoned would have been more rewarding, more safe from reverses, and less exposed to those variations of public taste which are the terrors of all who live by the world’s favour.”
It is doubtful whether Lever would have succeeded in reaching the higher walks of medicine; and it is pretty certain that he would not have found contentment in jogging along the beaten tracks. His temperament was too unstable to admit of the incessant and inalienable toil which helps to make the great physician. Having once started upon the literary path, if he had turned aside from it he would never have been free from misgivings that he had abandoned the road to fortune and to fame. If he had endeavoured to confine his intellectual powers to the study and practice of the healing art, and if success had crowned his efforts, it is most likely that his life would have been more even and more happy; but he would have missed the moments of exaltation which were worth living for, even if they were followed occasionally by periods of abysmal melancholy. Lever the physician could have benefited only those with whom he came into direct contact: Lever the novelist could, and did, provide a rich fund of healthy enjoyment for a vast circle of his contemporaries, and for posterity. One can hardly doubt that in abandoning medicine for fiction he chose the better part.