“I’ll write to you very soon again if strong enough.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, the day before Xmas 1868
“I promised to report if I was alive, and I do so, though, without any captiousness or Gladstonianism, the matter of my vitality might be well open to contention.
“I am barely able to move from a sofa to a chair, very weak, intensely nervous, and not at all reconciled to the fast-and-loose way death is treating me. Though there is every reason why I ought not to wish to go just now, I will put a bold face on it and say Ecco mi pronto! But the grinning humbug sends away the coach with orders to come back to-morrow at the same hour.
“I hope you have heard no more of Bradlaugh. I’d not like to carry any memory of him with me, which I might if he were annoying you. What a beast I am to obtrude my sadness against the blaze of your Xmas fire! I thought, however, you would like to hear I was yet here,—though to what end or for what use, if I continue as I now am, is not easy to see. I feel, however, that if I was freely bled and a little longer starved, I’d soon be in the frame of mind I detect in my colleagues of the Consular service here, and that, with a slight dash of paralysis, I should soon be à l’hauteur of my employment in the public service.
“I have resolved to devote my first moment of strength to a despatch to F. O., and if I be only half an imbecile as I believe, I shall crown myself with imperishable laurel.
“It’s a bore for a man—especially an Irishman—to be called away when the rows are beginning! Now next year there will be wigs on the green and no mistake. Besides, I’d like to see Gladstone well away in the deep slough of Disendowment, which I know he’ll fall into. Disestablish he may, but the other will be a complication that nothing but open robbery could deal with.
“Then I’d like to see him lose his temper, and perhaps lose his place.”
To Mr John Blackwood.