To Mr John Blackwood.
“Casa Capponi, Florence, May 10, 1864.
“Herewith go three chapters of ‘Tony.’ With the best will in the world there are days when our dinners go off ill, our sherry is acrid, our entrées cold, and our jests vapid. Heaven grant (but I have my misgivings) that some such fatality may not be over these ‘Tonys.’ My home committee likes them better than I do; I pray heartily that you be of this mind.
“I shall be fretful and anxious till I hear from you about T. B., but I go off to-morrow to Spezzia, and not to be back till Wednesday the 18th,—all Consular, all Bottomry, all Official for eight mortal days, but
“Of course I must show to the office ‘I’m here,’
And draw with good conscience two hundred a-year.
I’d save fifty more, but of that I am rid well
By the agency charges of Allston and Bidwell.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, May 15,1864.
“More power to you! as we say in Ireland, for your pleasant letter. I have got it, and I send you an O’D. I think you will like on ‘Our Masterly Inactivity,’ and another on ‘Our Pensions for Colonial Governors.’
“As to next month’s O’D., I don’t know what will turn up; but [I am] like poor old Drury—the clergyman at Brussels—whose profound reliance on Providence once so touched an English lady that it moved her to tears. ‘He uttered,’ said she—telling the story to Sir H. Seymour, who told it to me—‘he uttered one of the most beautiful sentiments I ever heard from the lips of a Christian: “When I have dined heartily and well, and drunk my little bottle of light Bordeaux, Mrs S.,” said he, “where Mrs Drury or the children are to get their supper to-night or their breakfast to-morrow, I vow to God I don’t know, and I don’t care.”’ Now if that be not as sweet a little bit of hopeful trust in manna from heaven as one could ask for, I’m a Dutchman, and I lay it to my heart that somehow, somewhere, O’Dowderies will turn up for July as they have done for June, for I shall certainly need them. You will have had T. B. before this. I see you are stopping at my old ‘Gite,’ the Burlington, my hotel ever since I knew London. There was an old waiter there, Foster,—I remember him nigh thirty years,—who exercised towards me a sort of parental charge, and rebuked my occasional late hours and the light companions who laughed overmuch at breakfast with me in the coffee-room. If he is in vivente, remember me to him.”
To Mr John Blackwood.