To Mr William Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Florence, Oct. 4, 1864.
“Your own fault if you have to say ‘Damn his familiarity’; but if you won’t return it you can at least say ‘Damn O’Dowd.’
“Your cheque came all safe this morning. I wish I had not to add that it was a dissolving view that rapidly disappeared in my cook’s breeches-pocket.
“I suppose my gout must be on the decline from the very mild character of the ‘O’Dowd’ I now send you. Tell your uncle if he won’t write to me about my forty-one projects, I’ll make an O’D. on Golf-players, and God help him!
“I hope I shall meet you one of these days. I am as horsey as yourself, and would a devilish deal sooner be astride of the pigskin than sitting here inditing O’Dowderies.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Oct. 14,1864.
“I return O’D. corrected. You are right, and I expunged the paragraph you mention, and changed the expression of the joke—a d———d bad one—against the Yankees; but I wanted the illustration, and couldn’t miss it.
“I shall carry on ‘Tony’ to January, and will want the chapter you sent me now to open December No. So much for the past. Now for what I have some scruples to inflict on you, but I can’t help it. I want, if it suits you, to take the O’D.,—that is, the present vol., and that which is ready, say, in January or February,—and give me anything you think it worth for my share of it, for I am greatly hampered just now. My poor boy left a number of debts (some with brother officers); and though nothing could be more considerate and gentleman-like than their treatment of me, and the considerate way they left me to my own time to pay, pay I must. What I am to receive for ‘Tony’ will have to be handed over en masse, and yet only meet less than half what I owe. Now, my dear Blackwood, do not mistake me, and do not, I entreat, read me wrong: I don’t want you to do anything by me through any sense of your sympathy for these troubles,—because if you did so, I could never have the honest feeling of independence that enables me to write to you as I do, and as your friend,—but I want you to understand that if it accords with your plans to take ‘O’Dowd’ altogether to yourself, it would much help me; and if for the future you would so accept it, giving me anything you deem the whole worth, all the better for me. By this means I could get rid of some of my cares: there are heavier ones behind, but these I must bear how I may.