“Unshaven, dishevelled,
I sit all bedevilled;
Your news has upset me,—
It was meet it should fret me.
What! two hundred and fifty!
Is the public so thrifty?
Or are jokes so redundant,
And funds so abundant
That ‘O’Dowd’ cannot find more admirers than this!
I am sure in the City ‘Punch’ is reckoned more witty,
And Cockneys won’t laugh
Save at Lombard Street chaff;
But of gentlemen, surely there can be no stint,
Who would like dinner drolleries dished up in print,
And to read the same nonsense would gladly be able
That they’d laugh at—if heard—o’er the claret at table
The sort of light folly that sensible men
Are never ashamed of—at least now and then.
For even the gravest are not above chaff,
And I know of a bishop that loves a good laugh.
Then why will they deny me,
And why won’t they buy me?
I know that the world is full of cajolery,
And many a dull dog will trade on my drollery,
Though he’ll never be brought to confess it aloud
That the story you laughed at he stole from O’Dowd;
But the truth is, I feel if my book is unsold,
That my fun, like myself, it must be—has grown old.
And though the confession may come with a damn,
I must own it—non sum qualis eram.
“I got a droll characteristic note from the Duke of Wellington and a cordial hearty one from Sir H. Seymour. I’d like to show you both, but I am out of sorts by this sluggishness in our [circulation]. The worst of it is, I have nobody to blame but myself.
“Send a copy of O’D. to Kinglake with my respects and regards. He is the only man (except C. O’D.) in England who understands Louis Nap.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, Aug. 9, 1864.
“I am just sent for to Spezzia to afford my Lords of the Admiralty a full and true account of all the dock accommodation possible there, which looks like something in ‘the wind’; the whole ‘most secret and confidential.’
“I am sorry to leave home, though my little girl is doing well I have many causes of anxiety, and for the first time in my whole life have begun to pass sleepless nights, being from my birth as sound a sleeper as Sancho Panza himself.
“Of course Wilson was better than anything he ever did—but why wouldn’t he? He was a noble bit of manhood every way; he was my beau idéal of a fine fellow from the days I was a schoolboy. The men who link genius with geniality are the true salt of the earth, but they are marvellously few in number. I don’t bore you, I hope, asking after O’D.; at least you are so forgiving to my importunity that I fancy I am merciful.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, Aug. 11,1864.