"I do not, honestly speaking, know whether the notion is a good one, or whether I am doing the thing well or ill; my only guide (and it once was a safe one) is the pleasure I feel in the writing, and this though I am in no small bodily pain, and cannot get one night's rest in four--a great drawback to a poor devil whose stronghold was sleep through everything!
"Do write to me. I cannot tell you the amount of direction and comfort your letters give me."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Sept_. 30, 1870.
"I am disappointed on hearing that M'Caskey does not appear this month, and perhaps more so because I concur in the reasons for the postponement. I suppose, however, that once the great tension we now feel about these events is relieved, even by a short interval, we shall not be reprehended for the small levities which we extend to certain people and situations, by no means among the most serious interests of the hour.
"Of course I am sorry not to be in England at this time. There is scarcely a telegram of the day without its suggestion; but I have less regrets as I think how feeble and broken I am, and how low and depressed I feel, even at the tidings that might rally and cheer me.
"I am greatly gratified by your message from Mrs Oliphant, and I shall treasure a book from her hand as a very precious possession. She is a charming writer, and carries me along with her in all her sympathies; and I shall never forget the pleasure her books gave to the sick-bed wherein all my hopes rested."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Oct_. 22, 1870.
"As I am fairly knocked up at last--my malady making fierce way with me within the last week or so--I send you what I have done of M'Caskey. You will see that I have adhered to the _actual_ incidents of the campaign, though I fear I have not been remarkable for a truthful construction of them. When I see this in print, and hear what you say of it, I shall be better able, and perhaps stronger, to deal with it.
"From four o'clock I cannot sleep with pain, and to a sea-calf like myself, who requires about a double measure of sleep, you may imagine the injury.
"The ladies' wardrobe seized at Worth is a pure fact, and mentioned by 'The Times,' &c.
"If I could have counted on a little health and strength, I'd have asked you to let me translate the plays of Terence for your Ancient Classics.
I have some trick of dialogue, and used to enjoy the 'Adrian' as much as one of Moliere's. I cannot now dream of this: my own comedy has come to the fifth act, and I actually am impatient for the fall of the curtain."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Nov._ 8,1870.
"From a line in a newspaper I learned the great disaster that had befallen you, and felt for you with all my heart. It is a true consolation, the thought that those we love are in every way more mercifully dealt with by removal, and I have that feeling as the stronghold of my own poor support--after years of struggle with what could not be cured; but still the grief is _there_, and only time makes us able to reason with it. I am shamed when I read your letters to perceive how much I must have talked of my own health. I try at home to skulk the subject, but I see I am not so successful when I sit down to my desk. I am failing very fast, strength and spirits are going together, and I really see no reason to wish it otherwise. I only pray that with such faculties as I have I may live on to the end, and that the end may not be far off. My dear girls are doing all that they can think of to make my life easy and comfortable, and when I am free from pain I try to occupy myself and take interest in what I am doing.
"I had intended to wait your proof before sending a short additional part of M'Caskey, but if I have it ready, I believe I shall send it at once. Of course the proof will depend on you. I strongly suspect that Bismarck was endeavouring to get up a _querelle d'Allemand_ with us about neutrality, which certainly carried the nation with him, and might be found useful when, at the close of the war, he either determined to take Luxembourg or assume towards England a defiance--which, without some pretext, would have been impolitic, if not impossible. He has certainly so far worked on the German mind as to make them regard the splendid munificence of England with distrust and almost dislike. With all this, it was a gross stupidity of the Tories to be French in their sympathies, but certainly the readiness with which they made a wrong choice where there is an alternative looks like something more than German.
"It does seem scant justice to make a whole people responsible for the inflated rubbish of Victor Hugo, but still, any one that knows France, knows that this senseless bravado is exactly what supplies the peculiar spirit of the nation, and that nearly all that dash and _elan_ which is accepted as irresistible was only unconquerable by our own consent, and by a sort of conventional agreement.
"I think I remember Mr Wynne, a nice fellow, but an atrocious whist player. I have some dim recollection of having abused his play, and I hope he has lived to forgive me and can bear to think of me without malice.
"I wish I had had his campaigning opportunities,--not that I have the most fragmentary faculty of observation, but there is a colour and a keeping over all that one calls up in memory, which nothing replaces, and certainly Major M'Caskey would have been not only 'circumstantial'
but occasionally 'correct' if he had known how. I thought I was imagining a very boastful and pretentious rascal, who had few scruples in assuring himself to be a man of genius and a hero, but I have just read the new preface to 'Lothair,' and I actually feel Major M'Caskey to be a diffident and retiring character, very slow to put forward a claim to any superiority, and on the whole reluctant to take any credit for his own abilities."
_To Mr John Blackwood_.
"Trieste, Nov. 11, 1870.
"While waiting for the proof of M'C. I finish the part for December. I now suspect that the war will go on to an attack on Paris, and mean to bring the next No. up to the _actual_ events of the day. It is only by exhibiting him as an audacious liar that his impertinences on the correspondent class could be tolerated, but they will surely not be touchy at being called to account by such a critic.
"The Imperial correspondence now published shows it is scarcely possible to invent anything too bold or too outrageous for belief, and the absolute vulgarity of the State contrivances and expedients is not the least remarkable part of the whole. If I ever get to the diplomacies of the war I shall have some fun.
"Of course the present part must look to yourself for correction.
"'The Observer' has a short notice of M'C. this week, and 'The Sun'
another and more civil.
"Have you seen that the Emperor in his pamphlet endorses the very strategy recommended by M'Caskey--the attack on Central Germany?"
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Nov_. 14.
"It is not fair to pelt you with my 'letters' as well as my 'literature,' and you may reasonably claim some immunity on the former score.
"I remember a very important Englishwoman--she wrote a book called 'The Unprotected Female in Norway'--once stopping me in the street on the ground that 'no introduction was necessary, as I was _a public man_.'
"I send you back M'C, which reads in places so like reality; but on the whole I think it will do, and hope you think so too.
"Sir H. Seymour writes me word that he believes he is going to succeed to Lord Hertford's Irish estates, a bagatelle of 70,000 per an.! I know of none more deserving of good fortune.
"'John' reached me after my note was closed, with a charming note from Mrs O.
"Have you heard--that is, have I told you--that the 'Neue Presse of Vienna' quotes M'Caskey as a veritable correspondent? But the General Brialmont did more. In his 'Life of Napoleon' he states, 'Mon. Charles O'Malley raconte que,' &c, &c."
_To Mr John Blackwood._
"Trieste, _Nov_. 20, 1870.
"There is a new complication, and for _us_ I suspect a worse one than all--a Russian war! I believe that every one abroad knew that if even France had not the worst of it, the mere fact of her having gone through a stiff campaign, and been crippled of men and money by the effort, would have suggested to the Russians that _now_ was the time to deal with 'the sick man.' The inducement on seeing France totally disabled was too tempting, and they have denounced the treaty which they had determined not to assail before next spring.
"You know better than I do what people at home are disposed to do, and what's more, what they _can_ do. By the newspapers I gather that at last the English people are aware that they have no army; and as a fleet, even if it floats, cannot fight on dry land, we are comparatively powerless in ourselves. Of course we could subsidise, but whom? Not the Austrians, though I see all the correspondents say so, and even tell the number they could bring into the field and the places they would occupy, &c.: and our Ambassador at Vienna, I hear, writes home most cheery accounts of the Austrian resources. Now I _know_ that if Austria were to move to-morrow, her Slavic population, quite entirely in the hands and some in the pay of Russia, would rise and dismember the empire. Imagine Fenianism not only in Meath and Kerry but in Norfolk, Yorkshire, and Kent, and then you can have some idea of the danger of provoking such a rebellious element as the Austrian Greek.
"A friend just arrived from Florence tells me that the King made an ostentatious display of his cordiality to the Turkish Minister a few nights ago, and that we can have 150,000 Italians to come down to such assistance. Perhaps to accept the help might be regarded as a compromise by the Peace party in England. It is like the very small child of the unchaste young lady.
"A Cabinet courier went through here to-day for Constantinople, _the Danube route being judged no longer safe_, which is very significant: but what are we to do?
"Have you reviewed Henry Bulwer's 'Life of Palmerston'? I hear it very well spoken of. Bulwer has all the astuteness to relish the _raserie_ of Pam, and I understand what the world at last sees was his mock geniality. But what would we not give to have Lord Palmerston back again, and some small respect felt abroad for the sentiment and wishes of England!"