“Many thanks for ‘Piccadilly’; it is beautifully got up, and the style and look of it perfectly faultless. I have re-read it, and like it greatly,—indeed, I think more than the first time. In the little touches of that brusqueness which the well-bred world affects, Oliphant is admirable, and so removed from that low-world dialogue that vulgar novelists imagine people in Society converse in. I am, however, not surprised at the strange step he has taken in life; such extreme fastidiousness could find no rest anywhere but in savagery, just as we see incredulity take refuge in the Church of Rome: les extrêmes se touchent oftener in life than we suspect.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, April 5, 1870.
“I send you an ‘O’Dowd’ I hope will please you. I think it has more ‘fun’ in it than all my late ones,—though, God knows, I never myself felt less disposed to drollery, for I am literally worn out with watching beside my poor sick wife. I cannot bear to read, and it is a blessing to me to run to the pen for distraction.
“The O’D. on Canning has been going the round of the Italian papers, and I see one, the ‘Eco de l’Arno,’ has given a sort of series of extracts from the O’Ds. called Leverania.
“I see Whiteside is in London. How I wish I could go over! I’d like to have a dinner with you both. You’d be greatly pleased with him.
“I am told that the deadlock about the Education Bill is caused by the opposition of the Irish Catholic bishops, who insist on denominational schools—that is, having the whole grant for themselves. No bad idea after all. I wish every consul, with a bald back to his head, should have double salary.
“My best regards to Mrs Blackwood. Tell her she’ll have her meals in peace this time in London, but it isn’t my fault after all.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, April 12, 1870.