"You are a bad boy not to have come up to town and let us have a shake hands together. I'll forgive you, however, if you make some pretext for seeing Venice, and come over here for a few days to me. There must surely be some dead time of the year, when magazines, like their writers, grow drowsy and dozy; at all events make time and take a short run abroad, and it will do you a world of good."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Aug_. 4,1869.
"I send you two O'Ds. which I have just done, and hope you will think them good. I imagine you will insert the small benefaction--which I think well enough--in next batch.
"The heat has been nigh killing us all here. Sydney was thrown down by sunstroke on Sunday coming from church, and is still in bed, but now better. The heat was 94 in the shade, and people who had come from Egypt say they had never suffered anything like it there. My poor wife has felt it severely, and the strongest of us have had to give up food and exercise, and merely wait for evening to breathe freely.
"Pray make them send me June No., for I can't follow the story till I get it.
"Don't you think that they have hunted down that blackguard, Grenville Murray, too inhumanly even for a blackguard!--I do. (I mean Knox's decision.)"
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Sept. 6._
"I thank you much for your generous remittance. I have not been doing anything lately for a heavy feverish cold, which has kept me in a dark room and a low diet.
"I want to write to you about Byron, but I will wait till I see if General Mengaldo (Byron's old Venetian friend) will give me leave to tell _his_ story of Byron's separation, and confute the Yankee woman whose name I have not temper to write.
"Mengaldo lived more in Byron's intimacy as an equal (not a dependant) than any one during Byron's life at Venice, and would be a mine of curious information if he could be led to open it. Hudson alone has influence with him, and since I saw that woman's book I wrote to H.
about it.
"There is a most curious little volume just out by Persano, 'The Hero of Lessa,' all about Cavour and Garibaldi, confirming everything I once wrote you about Cavour's complicity and duplicity. Would you like a short notice or review of it?
"My wife is most seriously ill, the rest all well."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"_Sept_. 26,1869.
"I have just read the O'D. about Canning to the Chief Baron, who has been dining here with me, and I send it hoping you will laugh at it as much as he did: he also liked the Fenian paper much, and I send them both at once, as if you have anything to add, &c, there will be ample time.
"I never write a line now but O'D., and I only send you about one in every five I invent, for the time is not propitious in new subjects.
"My poor wife continues seriously ill, and I am myself so worn by watching and anxiety that I am scarcely alive."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Oct_. 8,1869.
"I don't like delaying this O'D., though I thought at one time to keep it till I had heard from you. The 'Austrian Free Press' has translated the Austrian O'D. and the Persano one, and the German party seems greatly pleased with the tone of the first, though of course the Italians are indignant.
"I think you will like the bit about Baron Warde in this O'D. It was to Lord Normanby I presented him, at a party at Scarlett's, who was then British Charge d'Affaires.
"I have little heart to do anything. My wife has had to submit to a third operation, and cannot rally from the great nervous depression, and has now ceased her only nourishment, wine.
"Loss of rest at night and want of fresh air by day have worn me so much that I have no more energy left in me. Of course years have their share in this, and I don't try to blink that.
"Chas. Reade has found a sympathetic critic who has forgotten none of his merits; not but that on the whole I agree with him, and certainly concur in the belief that Reade has got nothing like his deserts in popular favour. The coarsenesses that disfigure him (and they do) are, after all, not worse than many in Balzac, and no one disputes _his_ supremacy.
"They tell me that the Cabinet can't agree about the Irish robbery bill; but I don't think the thieves will fall out, seeing how much booty they have to divide elsewhere. It's rather a good joke to see a Whig Radical Government trying to revive the Holy Alliance, and sending Lord Clarendon over Europe to concoct alliances against France. The fear of what will happen when L. N. dies is a strong bond of interest, and in the common fear of a great Democratic revolution even Austria and Prussia are willing to shake hands. Would it be well to O'Dowd them?
"I wish I had three days with you in your breezy atmosphere to shake off my dumps and my dreariness."
_To Mr William Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Sunday_, Oct. 10.
"As I have made a slight addition to the 'Canning' O'D., I do not like to delay the proof beyond to-day, to which I waited in hope of a letter from your uncle.
"I have no good news to send of my poor wife, and I am very low and dispirited in consequence.
"I had a capital O'D. in my head this morning, but a bad sermon I have just heard has driven it clean out of my mind. I am quite ready to disendow my consular chaplain, and won't give him his Sunday dinner in consequence."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Oct_. 14,1869.
"Many thanks for your cheque, which I have this moment received.
"You are not, I think, quite just about the last two O'Ds. First of all, an O'D. need not, nor can it, be always an epigram; it must occasionally be an argument epigrammatically treated, and 'Close and the Carmelite' is, I believe, such. The changed position of two Churchmen (representatives as they are of schools of thought) is well worth notice, and it would be well to show that the Dean's Protestantism is not the national religion.
"As to the Volunteers, respect for what you think of them (and I do not) always holds my hands when I allude to them. I would not take a foreigner's opinion on an English _institution_, though I would respectfully listen to his judgment on a professional matter,--as, for instance, if N. were to talk of a cancer or an aneurism, I would accept his competence to pronounce in the same way [as] when a French soldier like MacMahon or Pallitan, or an Austrian such as Hess, or a Russian like T., derides the idea of such bodies being called soldiers, and advises England not to trust to such defence if the hour of invasion approach. I really feel that it requires great self-restraint not to speak out on an inefficiency made all the more insufferable by an overweening vanity and bumptiousness of conduct (as witness the walk past t'other day at Brussels) that makes one anything but proud of the common countyship.
"Fortunately for your patience I am writing near the post hour, and I must spare you a long discourse on these two themes that you do not seem to think the world will much care for, but that I believe are both of them the very subjects men will be inclined to talk over.
"I half doubted whether, after your dissatisfaction with what I thought good and well-timed, I should forward this O'D. on 'Irish Queries '; but it is a mere argument, treated Hibernically, and you will do what you like with it.
"My home is a very sad one, and I see little prospect of brighter fortune.
"A serious revolt has just broken out in Dalmatia. The peasants refuse to be enrolled in the Landwehr, and have risen, and, up to this, resisted the troops with success. Of course the thing is deeper than a mere local row, and being on the Montenegrin frontier, has an uncommonly ugly look. Three thousand men have been despatched and two gunboats this morning to Cattaro, and there will be warm work there before to-morrow evening. Austria is in that state that any one movement of her incongruous nationalities may bring down the whole rotten edifice with a run.
"I think Sydney is 'brewing an MS.,' for I scarcely see her all day, and she has a half conscious air of authorship at dinner."