“It is in no ingratitude for all the hospitalities and courtesies I have lately received that I say I was glad to be once more in my cottage, and back in the calm, quiet, and comfortable little crib I call my home.
“I was present in court at the Tichborne examination of Thursday last, and a more miserable spectacle of evasion, falsehood, and shame I never witnessed; but in these depreciations of the man’s character I see no reason to dispute his identity,—on the contrary, the blacker he is, the more, to my thinking, he is a Tichborne. At the same time, juries do not confine themselves to the issue they have to try, but are swayed by moral reasons outside the legal ones, and may in all likelihood scruple to endow with fortune such a palpable scoundrel.
“My last dinner in London was with Ballantine, and he persists in believing the claimant to be the real man; but I do not perceive that he is confident of the verdict.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, July 2, 1871.
“I am so anxious to be early that I send you the three O’Ds. I have written this very moment. I have finished them, and so near post hour that I have scarce time for a line to say that I am at home again, and have brought back a fair stock of the good health my visit to town gave me, and a large budget of the pleasure and kind flatteries which every one bestowed on me when there,—narratives my daughters delight in, and in which your name and your wife’s come in at every moment and to meet all our gratitude in recognition.
“I hope you will like the O’Ds., and think they have not lost in vigour because of my late excesses in turtle and whitebait.
“When you send me a proof, tell me all you think of them, and if anything occurs to me in the meanwhile, I’ll speak of it.
“Tichborne I incline to think the real man, and the blacker they make him the more certainly they identify him: so far I regard Coleridge as his best advocate. Of course, I must not speak of the case till it is concluded.”
To Mr John Blackwood.