Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters Volume I Part 27

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Bagni di Lucca, _April_ 17, 1849.

"I confess myself at a dead loss what to counsel. My only opinion (and I have come to it after much thought) is this:--

"In the event of Chapman consenting to advance the sum and not succeeding--or in the case of his unwillingness to make such proposal,--I would at once [? dispose of] the copyrights in the usual formal manner, but would take no steps by newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt, inasmuch as this would give the impression of illegality on our part.

"It would be also well to ascertain if we could not restrain any future sale of stock at depreciated prices. If this required a Chancery order, I would be slow to resort to such means for fear of [? legal] expense.

"Chapman, from whom I had a letter two days ago, thinks that it is the stock and not the copyrights that Curry is now negotiating, but he owns himself baffled by the roguery of this conduct.

"Do you think that anything would be obtained by my going over to Ireland?... I am really exhausted in resources, and can add nothing to this.

"I am very uneasy about my insurances: my means of late--although working an opposition coach to myself--are very considerably diminished (political causes having damaged book-writing to a fearful extent), so that I wish to know have you anything of mine to meet the Globe policy, and whether at next period of payment the Guardian will be able to meet its own demand on the acc.u.mulated profits?

"I ask this now, but I regret to say that it will puzzle me sorely what to do if I am called upon, but I ought to learn it in time, so as to make what provision I can.

"All post communications with England ceased for eleven days during the Genoa insurrection....

"The mail-boats were twice burned going from this, and I (with my accustomed luck) lost a whole number of 'Roland Cashel'--twelve days'

work, of which I have, of course, not a note or memorandum. The proof of 'Con' is also lost, so that if it appears next month it will be with all the printer's imperfections as well as my own.

"I have met with the accompanying advertis.e.m.e.nt [from a tutor]. Could you find out who he is, what he is like, and if he would feel inclined to reside on the Continent?... I am sorely in want of some means of educating the children, who are far more intelligent than instructed.

"The political reaction here is complete: the Grand Duke very soon will be expected back again, and Italy be 'as you were.'

"I wonder if Mr M'Glashan wrote to me, and that his letter has been lost? I asked for proofs of my two papers on Italy, 'Italy and the Italian Tourists,' which I greatly desire to have."

At the Baths of Lucca, in the summer of 1849, Lever was introduced to the Brownings. Mrs Browning's first impression of him is confided to Miss Mitford, in a letter dated August 31, 1849:* "A most cordial, vivacious manner, a glowing countenance, with the animal spirits predominant over the intellect, yet the intellect by no means in default; you can't help being surprised into being pleased with him, whatever your previous inclination may be. Natural, too, and a _gentleman_ past mistake.

* 'The Letters of Mrs Browning,' edited by Frederic G.

Kenyon (Smith, Elder, & Co.)--E. D.

His eldest daughter is nearly grown up, and his youngest six months old.

He has children of every sort of intermediate age almost, but he himself is young enough still. He seems to have spent nearly his whole life on the Continent, and by no means to be tired of it. Not the slightest Irish accent."*

Miss Mitford** was a staunch admirer of Lever. "I think him," she said, "one of our best living writers of fiction." She must have expressed her appreciation to Mrs Browning, for the latter writes in the autumn of 1849 to the author of 'Our Village': "I told Mr Lever your opinion of him, dearest friend, and then he said, all in a glow and animation, that you were not only his own delight but the delight of his children, which is affection by refraction, isn't it?" Then follows a further description of the Irish novelist and of his ways. "Not only," says Mrs Browning, "is he the notability _par excellence_ of these Baths of Lucca, where he has lived a whole year during the snow upon the mountains, but he presides over the weekly b.a.l.l.s at the Casino, where the English do congregate (all except Robert and me), and is said to be the light of the flambeaux and the spring of the dancers. There is a general desolation when he _will_ retire to play whist. In addition to which he really seems to be loving and lovable in his family. You always see him with his children and his wife; he drives her and her baby up and down along the only carriageable road of Lucca--so set down that piece of domestic life on the bright side in the broad charge against married authors; now do! I believe he is to return to Florence this winter with his family, having had enough of the mountains."

* "Lever's accent," according to Major Dwyer, "was _au fond_ Dublinian." "He never dropped his Irish manner or his Irish tongue," says Anthony Trollops, who was an excellent judge of Irish manners and dialect. _Tot homines, quot aures!_--E. D.

** In 1843 Lever had made in his Magazine a special appeal to his readers to testify their grat.i.tude to the author of 'Our Village,' by subscribing to a fund which had been started for her benefit.--E. D.

As he had been the life and soul of social enjoyment at the Baths of Lucca, so was he the life and soul of Anglo-Florentine society when he returned to Florence. One of his numerous friends of the period declares that his appearance in the Cascine always provoked attention. His manner of riding was, if anything, less graceful than it used to be in his Templeogue days, when he clattered into Dublin city: he did not rise in the stirrups, but allowed himself to be jogged up and down like a trooper. Dr Fitzpatrick conjectures that "the shaking to which he surrendered himself was meant as a counter-irritant to sedentary habits." Though at this time he did not speak Italian fluently, he was able to hold his own in the language. Being unlucky enough to embroil himself in a small lawsuit, he decided to conduct his own case. He was warned that this would be courting defeat; but his confidence in himself was unshaken, and not only did he plead his own cause, but he gained a verdict in his favour.

He tells a tale of another case in which (also pleading his own cause) he did not make so successful an advocata In front of his Florentine house was a terrace reached by a flight of steps. This was a favourite lounging-place for the novelist. One day his reveries were disturbed by a visitor who presented a bill. The visitor was a tailor, and the bill was a monstrous doc.u.ment. Lever protested vehemently against the charges, and the tailor protested that they were moderate. In his endeavour to convince the novelist of his rect.i.tude, the visitor became wildly excited, and, moving backwards, he fell headlong down the flight of steps. Lever was summoned, and the tailor swore that his accident was due to alarm caused by the threatening manner of the Englishman,--it was owing to his eagerness to escape from a.s.sault that he had fallen down the steps. Lever denied that he had done or said anything which would indicate a possible a.s.sault. The court inquired how could the defendant account for the panic-stricken condition of the man. "On two grounds,"

replied Lever, flippantly; "he is a tailor and a Tuscan." Needless to say, the Tuscan court awarded the plaintiff ample damages. When he released himself from his writing-table, and when he was not riding or driving with his family, he was to be found in the clubs, or in salons, or at receptions at the Grand Duke's. He divided his leisure moments between whist-playing and conversation. Occasionally he danced--when dancing was the order of the night,--his wife, as a general rule, being his partner. It is said that he was never at his best in the society of literary ladies, and that he was particularly nervous in the company of Mrs Trollope. Possibly he was in dread that this auth.o.r.ess might be taking a leaf out of his own book and endeavouring to make a character sketch of him. "It was amusing," says a friend, "to observe his transparent manoeuvrings to avoid Mrs Trollope as a whist-partner; and it was equally amusing to observe Mrs Trollope's undisguised desire to secure Lor-requer as her partner."

XI. FLORENCE AND SPEZZIA 1850-1854

Towards the close of 1849 'Roland Cashel' was published in book form by Messrs Chapman & Hall. It was dedicated to G. P. R. James--"a Roland for your Oliver, or rather for your Stepmother," according to Lever (to whom James had dedicated the last-named novel). The opening of 1850 found the author of 'Roland Cashel' struggling to make headway with a new work of fiction, for which he was troubled not only to find a satisfactory plot but even a satisfactory t.i.tle. Ere long, however, the story shaped itself, and the t.i.tle came trippingly--'Maurice Tiernay, the Soldier of Fortune.' M'Glashan had written to Lever asking him to contribute a new serial to 'The Dublin University'; and choosing to forget his Dublin quarrellings, he agreed to write a novel which would run for twelve or twenty numbers according to the humour, or at the discretion, of the author. He was also busy with 'The Daltons.' 'Maurice Tiernay' was to be a tale of military adventure, 'The Daltons'--possibly his most ambitious book--a novel of a more homely pattern. The story of the Daltons was a long time in the making. The author employed some of the ideas he had entertained for 'Corrig O'Neill,' the novel which he had abandoned in 1845--most likely because of Miss Edgeworth's objections. He had commenced 'The Daltons' late in 1849. He tells us that it was no labour to sit at his desk for the easy hour and a half which sufficed to carry on his literary labours at this period. The incidents came to him as he required them without effort, and the sayings and doings of his characters afforded him infinite amus.e.m.e.nt. "Although no longer a young man," he writes, "I had not yet felt one touch of age, nor knew myself other than I was at five-and-twenty; and it was this conscious buoyancy of temperament, joined to a shrewder knowledge of the life, that imparted to me a sense of enjoyment in society for which I have no word but ecstasy. The increasing business of life went on before me like a play in which, if occasionally puzzled by the plot, I could always antic.i.p.ate the _denoument_ by my reading of the actors. Such a theatre was Florence in these old grand-ducal times--times which, whatever the political shortcomings, were surrounded with a charm of existence words cannot picture. If it were an obligation on me to relive any portion of my life, I should select this part, even in preference to earlier youth and more hopeful ambitions."

His only anxieties or troubles arose whenever he was suddenly aroused to a knowledge of the fact that money was going out much more rapidly than it was coming in--a discovery which always spurred him to renewed literary exertions.

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Casa Ximenes, _Jan_. 14, 1850

"It is a very short-sighted view of the past year which regards the struggle as one between the principles of Monarchy and Democracy. The real question at issue is the far greater question of Social Equality.

It was begun in Switzerland, attempted at Cracow, mooted [?] in Pau, in Vienna, throughout Italy and Germany and Hungary, and is yet in litigation,--with all men to urge and argue it, and with starving half-enlightened millions to drive them forward. Not the least dangerous part of this tremendous commotion is that many worthy and right-minded men wish it success. Some see in it the hope of a grand advance in human happiness and civilisation. Others predict that Protestantism--the religion of liberty and enlightenment--will overcome the old foe of superst.i.tion. But all seem to forget to restore order, for chaos is not man's prerogative, and that in every history we read how such convulsion inevitably threw mankind back almost into elemental barbarism, glad even of the refuge of a tyranny against the more cruel dominion of their own pa.s.sions. Pray, my dear friend, don't set my [? lamentation] down as a worse evil than what it is intended to typify. And now for ourselves!

"Here we are, with snow a yard deep and the thermometer at 18 to 20 Fahrenheit, and this with Italian houses, marble halls and floors, marble tables, and every accessory for icing poor human nature on a grand scale. We never suffered as much from cold in the Tyrol Alps, for really there is not one single preparation here against it,--and as to fire, I have burned a small forest already.

"Socially we are far worse off than before. The worst feeling exists between the Austrians and the Italians: they seldom meet, and never amicably. The consequence is that few houses are open, and those few admit only a certain set of intimates. The Court, to avoid difficulties, does nothing; and theatres--of which there are seven--every night are deplorably bad. So you can see how dull one can be even in this favoured region. We are, however, all well, and the children not the less happy that sliding and skating replace mere promenading.

"I am in the throes of a new book, of which after a few months' full pondering over I cannot even fix up the name, so that you see I haven't made much progress."

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Florence, _Feb_. 2, 1850.

"The enclosed bulky packet--which I need not say is entirely open to you if you care to read it--I want you to negotiate with M'Glashan for 'The Dublin University Magazine'; the ground of the treaty being that I am to write a serial story, of which this is the opening chapter,* [?

instalments] of a length varying from 16 to 18 pp. in the Magazine, the copyright of which I am to retain,--the whole to be concluded in twelve or twenty contributions, as we may see best, and for which I ask 20 per sheet, but if obliged will take 16 guineas--terms he offered me before.

My plan is a story which, embracing the great changes in the present century, would bring my hero _en scene_ in the recent convulsions of the world--in the years '48 and '49."

* 'Maurice Tiernay.'

_To Mr Alexander Spencer._

"Florence, _Feb_. 26,1850.

"As to his [M'Glashan's] codicil. He knows me by this time well enough to be aware that if he but gives me the wind of a word, I am always ready to pull up short; and if the story should not be found to tell with his readers, I'll make a short yarn of it willingly. Only I beg that I may not be asked to spoil a catastrophe by any abruptness, but get fair notice to shorten sail....

"With 'Tiernay' I may be able to work along in these hard times, when, besides my confoundedly wasteful habits, education--or what affects to be education--for the brats runs away with every sixpence I can make.

"I have said nothing about [using] my name in the M'Glashan compact, because as he does not in the Magazine append other names, he will not of course do so with mine. But in any other way I have no desire to blink the authors.h.i.+p, intending, as I do, to make the story as interesting as I am able.

"In another six weeks we shall be in the mountains,--in our old delightful quarters at the Bagni di Lucca,--where cheapness and glorious scenery are happy a.s.sociates.