Journal, 1859.
Aug. 12.—Mr. J. C. Evans wrote again, declaring his willingness to pay the £1000, and asking for an interview to arrange preliminaries.
Aug. 15.—Declined the American proposition, which was to write a story of twelve parts (weekly parts) in the New York Century for £1200.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Aug. 1859.
I have re-read your whole proof, and feel that every serious reader will be impressed with the indications of real truth-seeking and heart-experience in the tone. Beginnings are always troublesome. Even Macaulay's few pages of introduction to his Introduction in the English History are the worst bit of writing in the book. It was no trouble to me to read your proof, so don't talk as if it had been.
Journal, 1859.
Aug. 17.—Received a letter from Blackwood, with check for £200 for second edition of "Clerical Scenes."
Letter to John Blackwood, 17th Aug. 1859.
I'm glad my story cleaves to you. At present I have no hope that it will affect people as strongly as "Adam" has done. The characters are on a lower level generally, and the environment less romantic. But my stories grow in me like plants, and this is only in the leaf-bud. I have faith that the flower will come. Not enough faith, though, to make me like the idea of beginning to print till the flower is fairly out—till I know the end as well as the beginning.
Pug develops new charms every day. I think, in the prehistoric period of his existence, before he came to me, he had led a sort of Caspar Hauser life, shut up in a kennel in Bethnal Green; and he has had to get over much astonishment at the sight of cows and other rural objects on a large scale, which he marches up to and surveys with the gravity of an "Own Correspondent," whose business it is to observe. He has absolutely no bark; but, en revanche, he sneezes powerfully, and has speaking eyes, so the media of communication are abundant. He sneezes at the world in general, and he looks affectionately at me.