“The day after Langford left this, my horse, treading on a sharp stone that cut his frog, fell on me and crushed my foot,—not severely, but enough to bring on the worst attack of gout I ever had in my life, and which all my precautions have only kept down up to this from seizing on the stomach. My foot was about as big and as shapely as Cardwell’s head. I am now unable to move, and howl if any one approaches me rashly.
“I told Langford of a curious police trial for swindling here at Vienna—curious as illustrating Austrian criminal procedure, &c. He thought I ought to report it in ‘O’Dowd.’ I send it off now for your opinion and judgment (and hope favourably). It might want a little retouching here and there, but you will see and say.
“I was delighted with your ‘Scott’ speech—the best of them of all that I read, and I see it has been copied and recopied largely. Your allusion to Wilson was perfect, and such a just homage to a really great man whom all the Cockneyism in the world cannot disparage.
“I am in such damnable pain that I can hardly write a line, but I want you to see the ‘Police’ sketch at once. Can I have a proof, if you like it, early? as perhaps when I am able to move I shall have to get to some of the sulphur springs in Styria at once.
“My enemy is now making a demonstration about my left knee, and, as the newspapers say, La situation est difficile.
“I am not so ill but that I can desire to be remembered to Mrs Blackwood.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Sept., 9, 1871.
“Between gout and indignation I am half mad. Gladstone at Whitby is worse to me than my swelled ankle, and I send you a furious O’D. to show that the Cabinet are only playing out—where they do not parody—the game of the Communists.
“Whether it will be in time to send me a proof I cannot tell, but you will, I know, take care of me. I feel in writing it as though we had been talking the whole thing together, and that I was merely giving a résumé of our gossip.