“I am passing my last few days at the Villa Morelli, and mean to leave for good—if that be the phrase for it—on Monday next. My wife is still very ill, and very unfit for the fatigue of a journey; but short of giving up my post, I have no alternative. I hoped to have heard from you before I wrote, but as I have a quiet half hour—not a very frequent thing with me of late—I sit down to inflict it on you. I wish, besides, to ask and learn from you—shall you want me seriously next year,—that is, do you care to have a novel from me any time about April or May next? I am driven to ask this because I have had a proposal which, if you want me, I shall certainly not accept, nor am I sure I shall even in the other alternative.
“I am always hoping that each book I write will be my last; and if it were not that I have taken (mentally) as many farewells as Grey, I’d say this new and not-a-bit-the-less-on-that-account-much-to-be-thought-over story would be my final curtsey to an indulgent public.
“It seems to me you won’t believe in a war in England. It is part of the national hypocrisy to cry peace while our neighbours are whetting their knives and polishing their breechloaders. War is certain, nevertheless—as sure as the devil is in hell and I am a consul!—two facts so apparently alike, it seems tantalising to mention them.
“We are in for a little war of our own, meanwhile, with the African savage,—perhaps to serve as an excuse for not taking part in the bigger fight near home. This policy reminds me of an old Irish squire who, being a bad horseman, always excused himself when the hounds met near him by saying ‘he was off for a rat-hunt.’
“The next Glasgow steamer that leaves Trieste will bring you a few bottles of Maraschino, which, as Cattaro is one of my dependencies, will be real. I wish I could think I’d see you sip a glass with me one of these days beside the blue Adriatic.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Oct. 18.
“It is not now I need tell you what a miserable hand I am at correcting a proof. The man who has never been able, after fifty odd years’ experience of his own nature, to correct one of his own faults, can scarcely have much success in dealing with his printers’. Look, therefore, to this for me, and let me come decently before the public. I have added a bit to Garibaldi’s which is certainly true, whatever men may think of it in England.
“I am afraid I am not equal to a notice (a worthy notice) of Aytoun. I never knew [him] personally, and I suspect it should be one who did should now recall his fine traits of heart as well as of intellect. All I know of him I liked sincerely.
“I abhor Cockneydom as much as you do! Without being a Fenian, I have an Irishman’s hate of the Londoner.