“I own I am more puzzled than enlightened by all this, but I give it as I get it.
“Jamaica is a bad business. Had they lynched Gordon it would have been all right; but the mock justice was dreadful! Besides, it really pushes High Churchism too far to hang a man because he has not attended a vestry.
“The post is in, and no letter from you. No matter! I meant to idle to-day; and so I’ll stroll into Florence and gossip at the Legation, where I can post you the three ‘O’Dowds’ I have done for next month,—a short paper, but perhaps long enough. I wrote ‘The Tiger’ under the infliction of a d———d old Indian, who’ll kill me if this paper doesn’t kill him.
“Do you know anything of a new magazine which Cholmondeley Pennell is going to edit? Bulwer and Browning are, I believe, in his interest. He writes me a long yarn about it, but I think he has too many poets on his list for success.
“It struck me last night what a good Noctes might be made out of your corps,—with Lytton, Hamley, Oliphant, and O’Dowd all talking after their several ways. Wouldn’t it be a rare bit of fun?
“A millionaire countryman of yours has actually beggared me at whist, and the d———d ass can’t play at all.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, March 10,1866.
“I have corrected this without my wife’s aid, for she is too weak and poorly to help me, and it will require careful looking over. I am glad you like it; I rather think well of it on re-reading.
“I believe my holiday is knocked up, and a chance of O’Dowding the Pope to be deferred, for I must hasten off to Spezzia to meet a Royal Commission on the Arsenal. I hope I may have the O’D. proof before I go, as I may be detained a week.