"I would do so," I answered, "if there were any probability that it would be published."
"I will try to arrange that," said he. "I know Mr. ——," (one of the editors,) "and will call upon him at once. I will ask for the publication of your letter as a personal favor to myself."
We parted at the door of a club-house, to meet again the same afternoon, when Thackeray hoped to have the matter settled as he desired. He did not, however, succeed in finding Mr. ——, but sent him a letter. I thereupon went to work the next day, and prepared a careful, cold, dispassionate statement, so condensed that it would have made less than half a column of the "Times." I sent it to the editor, referring him to Mr. Thackeray's letter in my behalf, and that is the last I ever heard of it.
All of Thackeray's American friends will remember the feelings of pain and regret with which they read his "Roundabout Paper" in the "Cornhill Magazine," in (February, I think) 1862,—wherein he reproaches our entire people as being willing to confiscate the stocks and other property owned in this country by Englishmen, out of spite for their disappointment in relation to the Trent affair, and directs his New-York bankers to sell out all his investments, and remit the proceeds to London, without delay. It was not his fierce denunciation of such national dishonesty that we deprecated, but his apparent belief in its possibility. We felt that he, of all Englishmen, should have understood us better. We regretted, for Thackeray's own sake, that he had permitted himself, in some spleenful moment, to commit an injustice, which would sooner or later be apparent to his own mind.
Three months afterwards, (in May, 1862,) I was again in London. I had not heard from Thackeray since the publication of the "Roundabout" letter to his bankers, and was uncertain how far his evident ill-temper on that occasion had subsided; but I owed him too much kindness, I honored him too profoundly, not to pardon him, unasked, my share of the offence. I found him installed in the new house he had built in Palace Gardens, Kensington. He received me with the frank welcome of old, and when we were alone, in the privacy of his library, made an opportunity (intentionally, I am sure) of approaching the subject, which, he knew, I could not have forgotten. I asked him why he wrote the article.
"I was unwell," he answered,—"you know what the moral effects of my attacks are,—and I was indignant that such a shameful proposition should be made in your American newspapers, and not a single voice be raised to rebuke it."
"But you certainly knew," said I, "that the —— —— does not represent American opinion. I assure you, that no honest, respectable man in the United States ever entertained the idea of cheating an English stockholder."
"I should hope so, too," he answered; "but when I saw the same thing in the —— ——, which, you will admit, is a paper of character and influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent. from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate than four per cent."
I said to him, playfully, that he must not expect me, as an American, to feel much sympathy with this loss: I, in common with his other friends beyond the Atlantic, expected from him a juster recognition of the national character.
"Well," said he, "let us say no more about it. I admit that I have made a mistake."