“We are about to move into Italy next month. I have taken a villa—a most beautifully situated thing—on the Lake of Como, where we have been last week, having crossed the Alps in twelve feet of snow,—a journey of more adventure and danger than you can well conceive.
“I intend to remain there till November—possibly the whole winter; but if not, we shall move down to Florence or Rome. Como, independent of its beauty, of which I really had formed no conception (it is Killarney with a tropical vegetation,—the aloe, the olive, the fig, pomegranate, with the cactus and magnolia growing wild), offers me the facility of visiting all the north of Italy by easy excursions,—Milan only four hours off, Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Venice itself—all available. We shall have ample time to exchange some letters before I leave, and I only mention my plans now as to the reasons of my prompt reply to M’G., wishing to make up my future contract before I place the High Alps between myself and the printing-press.”
To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, April 16, 1847.
“It does not signify that Curry has not kept any separate a/cs of the cost of all copies above 10,000. It is easy to make the deduction requisite to such an understanding.
“M’G. and Chapman both concur in stating that I am only to be charged with the cost price and not the eleventh part of the whole original cost—that is, I am only chargeable with paper and press-work, and not with any of the cost of author, engraver, &c. These are M’G.‘s words to me in a letter of last week. Chapman’s words are as follows:—
“‘By their own showing they owe you £280 to the end of Aug., but you have to dispute this, on the ground that only paper and print are to go to form the cost of the volumes, whereas they charge you authorship, engravings, in fact, everything from the beginning,—making the dry cost per vol. to be 4s. and a fraction.’
“I quote these words from his letter to me when last alluding to the transaction. So much, then, for the point on which I suppose, as M’G. has expressed his firm opinion, Curry can scarcely dissent.
“Secondly, in the account forwarded previously to me of cost of production, I was charged with my share of the expense of all the copies of ‘Hinton,’ ‘Burke,’ and ‘The O’Donoghue’ printed but still unsold—that is, I was made a party to the cost of producing so much stock,—of my interest in which we have not one syllable, and which, if I were to purchase to-morrow, I should be buying what I have paid the moiety of the charge of producing.
“This last feature of the affair it is, I opine, which makes Curry so eager for a final settlement,—at least, it was this coup which Chapman stigmatised as an atrocious piece of cheating.