“Do write me a line when you have time. It is always pleasant to hear from you.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, March 14, 1869.
“You are quite right, there was a clear non sequitur in the new series O’D., and I have corrected it, I hope, satisfactorily.
“You are not, I think, so right about ‘Norcott,’ * at least I hope not, for I cannot see the improbability or impossibility you speak of in the latter part. The sketch of Hungarian life was, I believe, perfectly correct, and there was no more improbability in the story than that of heaping many incidents in the career of a single individual, which, after all, is a necessity of a certain sort of fiction, and pardonable so long as they are not incongruous. It is not worth discussing, besides; indeed, I never do uphold or even defend what I have done except the critic be, as you are, a friend whose objections are meant as warnings and guidings.
* “That Boy of Norcott’s,” which was just finishing its
serial course in “The Cornhill Magazine.’ and is coming to
see me. He and ‘his’n’ are living with the Bloomfields, who
have most hospitably taken them in till they can house
themselves, which (you know) can only be done in Austria on
the 24th August.
“My chances of seeing London this year decrease almost daily. My poor wife’s symptoms are very threatening, and I cannot leave home now, though much pressed to pay a long-promised visit to Croatia, even for a day.
“Robert Lytton is now Secretary at Vienna,
“You don’t agree with me about the proximity of war, but I know it has been twice, within the last three weeks, on the very brink of beginning. Louis Napoleon has fallen into a state of silent despondency, in which he will give no orders, offer nothing, nor agree to anything, and R[ouher] is often left days without any instructions to guide him.
“As for Austria, she is in a terrible funk, el du raison. Her army is but half drilled, and the new weapon is a puzzle to the raw recruits; besides this, she has nothing that could be called a general,—nothing above the Codrington class, which, after all, can only pull through by the pluck and bravery of British troops.