“The hatred of Prussia is so inveterate here that anything like a candid opinion as to the chances of the campaign against France is not to be looked for, but so far as I can see men would generally back the French. How would the Whigs conduct a great war, I wonder? Certainly Cardwell and his economics would cut a sorry figure if he were called on for a big effort.
“I hope the mode in which Gladstone proposes to endow Maynooth (while affecting mere compensation) will give the Tories a strong ground of attack. The Bill is a palpable project to buy every one at the expense of the Irish Church. The landlord, the tenant, the priest, the Presbyterian, even the Consolidated Fund, are to be relieved of part of their charge for Irish charities; and yet it will pass, if for no other reason than that the nation sees one party to be as dishonest as the other, and that if Gladstone were beaten by Dizzy, Dizzy would carry the measure afterwards.
“If the ‘Ballot’ O’D. be late to send back in proof, you will deal with it yourself. It is well to take the themes that are before men’s eyes, and say our say while there are ears to hear us.
“The Emperor of Austria arrives here on Friday, and I am bidden to a great banquet, to be eaten in a tight uniform and epaulettes ‘with what appetite I may.’ I wish I could O’Dowd them all, and take my vengeance ‘in kind.’”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, April 13, 1869.
“The piece of autobiography is fact. I was a young college man when I did the trick, and can to this day remember one sentence of Boyton’s own words, which I gave in the report verbatim. The peer was the late Marquis of Downshire, the greatest ass of the Conservative party, et c’est beaucoup dire. Boyton’s death was commemorated by a beautiful article in ‘Blackwood,’—I believe written by O’Sullivan, but I’m not sure. As for the ‘Speech-Makers’ Manual,’ it was published by Koutledge & Co. I got it out before I wrote my papers. It is incredibly absurd. The inscrutable man I refer to was Villiers—Fred Villiers,—a great friend of all the Bulwers, and formerly M.P. for Canterbury. He was no Villiers, had nothing, nor belonged to any one; but he was at the top of London society and knew every duke in England, and made a brilliant career of it for at least ten years or more.
“I am very full of my trip to London, and mean to take my youngest daughter over—she has never been in England—to visit some friends and pass the summer in Devonshire. My leave is a very short one; and as they stop my pay, I can’t afford to prolong it. It will be a great delight to me to see you and Mrs Blackwood again, and I feel this is to be my farewell visit to England, my possibly last appearance before retiring from the boards for ever.
“I have just found the reference to Boyton. It is taken from ‘The Dublin Evening Mail’ (the paper in which I gave Downshire his speech) for August 1833, but my impression is that there is another and longer notice of him in some other magazine later on.
“It is very rarely that I wish for my youth back again; but now that I have begun to think of those days, and all the fine-hearted fellows I knew in them, I cannot repress the wish that I was once more what I was thirty-five years ago, and take my chance for doing something other and better than I have done.