“I can afford to be frank with you, for I think you wish me well. I believe there is some thought of giving me advancement, but even if it come, it will not suffice for my wants, and I must write (at all events) one more novel. I trust you understand me well enough to know that I am not pressing my wares on you, because I want to dispose of them, or that if it be your wish or your convenience to say ‘No’ that it will alter anything in our friendship. You will bear this well in mind in giving me your reply.
“I don’t believe I shall do better than ‘Sir Brook.’ I don’t think it is in me, but I will try to do as well, and certainly if it is for you, I will not do my work less vigorously nor with less heart in it. There is certainly plenty of time to think of all this, but I think better and more purposely when the future is, to a certain degree, assured, and my new story will get a stronger hold on me if I know that you too are interested in its welfare.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, Oct. 7, 1866.
“My best thanks for your note and its enclosure. They only reached me last night, though dated 30th, but the mails go by God knows what route now, as the inundations have completely cut the Mont Cenis line. I send off the Nov. ‘Sir B.’ to-night. There are two or three small corrections which had escaped me. I think if the book be largely known it may succeed. I hope ‘The Times’ may notice it—is this likely? I shall ask for some copies for a few friends, and my own can be addressed to me under cover to F. Alston, Esq., F. O. My eldest daughter, who went carefully over the corrections, says I have done nothing as good. By the way, I have not gone over Sept. and Oct. Nos. See that Sewell is never Walter, always duelling, and look well to any other lapses.
“I am all wrong in health, and depressed most damnably. I go down to Spezzia to have a swim or two to try to rally, and I shall take the O’Ds. with me for correction.
“I suspect Perry will not give up Venice, but your friends are asking L. Stanley to give me Havre, which is vacant. How kind of you to offer to write to him. I don’t like putting you to the bore, but if you come personally in his way, say what you can, or think you can, for me. Havre is worth £700 a-year, and would solace my declining years and decaying faculties. Paralysis is the last luxury of poor devils like myself, but I really can’t afford it.
“So Lyons goes Ambassador to Paris. I know him well, and his capacity is about that of a small village doctor. The devil of it is, in English diplomacy the two or three men of ability are such arrant scamps and blackguards, they can’t be employed, and the honest men are dull as ditch-water. There is no denying it, and I don’t say it because I am dyspeptic,—but we have arrived at Fogeydom in England, and the highest excellence that the nation wants or estimates is a solemn and stolid ‘respectability’ that shocks nobody with anything new or original, and spoils no digestion by any sudden or unexpected brilliancy.
“The Ionian knight is here with me, full of grander projects than ever Skeff Darner dreamed of. He asked me yesterday if that character had any prototype.”
To Mr John Blackwood.