“The post, which failed completely yesterday, brought me your three proofs to-day. I now send a short, but not sweet, O’Dowd on ‘Irish Sympathy’ (whose correction you must look to for me), but which is certainly the best of the batch.
“I had hoped to have heard you mention the receipt of M’Caskey, whose revelations on the war will only be of value if given at once. I also sent off some additional matter for M’C. on Sunday last, and hope they have arrived safely.
“I wish you would send me ‘John’ as a whole. If you should do so, send it to F. O., to the care of F. Alston, Esq., to be forwarded to me. I do not know of any novel-writer I like so well as Mrs. O., and if I could get her to write her name in any of her books for me I’d treasure it highly. She is the most womanly writer of the age, and has all the delicacy and decency one desires in a woman.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Sept. 14, 1870.
“My sincere thanks for your note and its enclosure. It seems to me that I do nothing but get money from you. I suspect, however, that you will soon be freed from your pensioner. I am breaking fast, and as really the wish to live on has left me, my friends will not grudge me going to my rest.
“I am indeed glad that you like the O’Ds. I tear at least three for one I send you, being more than ever fearful of that ‘brain-breakdown’ than I am of a gorged lung or a dropsical heart.
“From your telegram about M’Caskey, I was disposed to think you wished the contribution for the October No., and set to work at once to send another batch. I do not now understand whether this is your intention. Of course (if possible) it were all the better it were begun immediately, because in the next part I could bring him up to recent events, and make his impatient comments on actual occurrences more outrageously pretentious and extravagant. You will tell me what you intend when you write.
“Some Hungarians—great swells in their own land—have been here, and are pressing the girls and myself to go to them a bit. It would be a great boon to my poor daughters, and for them I would try it if I could, but I have no heart for it. There was a time a month on the Danube would have been a great temptation to me.
“I will tell Syd to write to you, and you’re lucky if she does not do so with an MS.”