Part 16
“I have received a letter from the Custom House, Portsmouth, stating that ‘a great number of your works in foreign editions (in English) pass through this Custom House, and as we received no notice of copyright subsisting thereon, we cannot prevent their entrance. We deem it only fair to let you know the fact for your information and guidance.’ Now Mr Curry ought at once, through the Custom House, London, to take the requisite steps against this nuisance, which I already foresaw would be the result of the much boasted International Copyright Treaty.
“I am in a fix about Italy. I have my house at Como for June 1, but three avalanches have fallen in the Splügen, and the road will not be practicable before the middle of July, so that I have been compelled to retain my present house for three months longer,--a piece of the most ill-timed bad luck, as I never was more anxious to economise a little.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Bregenz, May 26,1847.
“Famine and money distress have cut off all the luxuries--of which books are the easiest to go without,--and so publishers won’t make any contracts till better days arrive, and we who have no capital but our brains must live how we can meanwhile. I am not impatient, but I will be very glad when any prospect offers of concluding something with Curry.” *
* With this letter he sent a cheque for the funeral expenses of a sister-in-law.--E. D.
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Bregenz, _May_ 31 [1847].
“....I have formed no literary engagement for next year. My present contract concludes in July. Chapman is now winding up the a/c of the partnership, as Hall is dead; and from this cause and the great monetary crisis in England, will not, I believe, engage in any new speculation hastily,--so that I am really, for the first time, at sea. If I could have any occupation such as re-editing, &c., on hand, it would be my best mode of employing a season which can scarcely fail to be a bad one for books. If not this, I must try to get money by selling my copyrights somehow or somewhere, and wait for better days.
“M’Glashan is, I hear, in London. He is not coming this way certainly. He has been at his old game of fast-and-loose with me; but as I never trusted him, I am not deceived.
“Curry should take prompt measures against the piracy, or we shall be inundated. All the United States out of the new treaty are at work robbing and stealing from every nation.
“P.S.--The thermometer stands at 118 Fahrenheit at the shady side of a room, as I write.”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Bregenz, _June_ 9, 1847.
“Though I am without any over-confidence in what is whimiscally termed ‘12 honest men’s award,’ I would rather cry heads or tails for my right--by a lawsuit--than be bullied out of it by Curry and his secret adviser Butt, who I know is at the bottom of the whole proceedings. I once laughed at Butt’s pretensions to represent the University in Parliament: some one told him so....
“In M’G.’s letter to me a month ago he writes:--‘I totally dissented from Curry’s notion of these sales being made at your charge, and said that if he--Curry--did not consent to your receiving the usual sum you had hitherto received as moiety of profits, I would decline all interposition as his negotiatee.’”
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Bregenz, _June_ 24, 1847.
“I hasten to say that the more I think of Curry and his conduct, the more I am impressed by the fear of some latent mischief. He is evidently
## acting under advice--Butt’s, I conjecture; and if he does resist on
threat of law, we have not the means of sustaining a costly suit--which, if merely requiring my presence in England, would more than counterbalance a victory, and make defeat half ruin. Before, therefore, making this last move,--if not yet too late,--I would advise your seeing M’G., and, having explained to him the impracticability of any dealings with Curry, whose subterfuges and evasions are never-ending, ask him if he would endeavour to effect an amicable arrangement. This I must submit to at great sacrifices, if requisite, because I find (within the last few days) the increasing difficulty of any new arrangement with booksellers, who, dreading a money crisis, are awaiting better and safer days.
“I have concluded an arrangement with Tauchnitz of Leipsic* to publish all my books in Germany,--with which Curry has nothing to do,--they (Tauchnitz) being limited to the circulation of the Continent; but I should be glad to have our affair with him (Curry) so concluded that he might not be disposed to give us any worry or inconvenience. In fact, sooner than risk a jury, I would take £300 for my interest, my debt of £300 being paid--£600 for all. M’G. values my interest at £400--at least, so Baker told me. Do not speak of my German arrangement to M’G.
“Where has M’G. been on the Continent? and what [? wickedness has he been] at? He received a MS. from me above a month back, and I have not yet heard any tidings of its acceptance or rejection.... I had asked him here. Orr of London was to join him on his trip.”
* On May 8, 1847, Lever wrote as follows to Baron Tauchnitz about ‘The Knight of Gwynne’:--
“....I am aware that the fact cannot in any way affect your views in the matter, but it is as well I should mention-- what, after all, is the only test of an author’s actual repute and standing in his own country--viz., the money value of his writings,--and for this same story I receive a sum little short of £3000. I then may safely leave to your consideration the scale on which it should be estimated by you.”
On July 21 he wrote: “You ask about the portrait annexed to ‘Jack Hinton.’ It is not--at least so say my friends--a resemblance, and I can myself assure you that _I_ do not squint, which _it_ does abominably.”--E. D.
_To Mr Alexander Spencer._
“Bregenz, _July_ 17, 1848.
“Your letter of the 8th has this day arrived, and I hasten to express my full concurrence in _your_--but not in Longfield’s--view of the transaction, save where you both concur in thinking that Curry’s failure may eventuate favourably for us. Is there any chance of my being able to purchase the stock and the copyrights of ‘O’Malley’ and ‘Lorrequer’? without which the set is incomplete. I cannot say that I anticipate such a probability. I could only hope for it through the intervention of a publisher, and in the existing state of monetary matters few would adventure in any speculation. M’G. will, I have no doubt, try and possess himself of the books; and if such be his intention, I would be glad to be a party to his purchase. It would be well to know his views and what course he may probably take, or what [course he would] advise us to pursue.
“In the event of any composition with creditors, what is your opinion of my claim? Should I expect to be rated in Curry’s assets? Or should I hope for my proportion of assets as _we_ claim?
“M’Glashan has not acknowledged a MS. sent two months ago. I can neither fathom his plans by this system nor see how his silence chimes in with his fervent protestations for a renewal of our relations.
“My meagre dedication did not, and could not, say a thousandth part of what I feel,--but even so much was pleasurable to say before the world. I would indeed be proud to associate you in any part of it. As it is, I believe ‘The Knight’ is the best of the breed, and hence the reason for calling it yours.
“I expect to leave for Italy about Aug. 4, but address me always ‘Coutts et Cie,’ who still will continue to exercise the sinecure of my bankers.”
IX. LETTERS TO MISS EDGEWORTH. 1843-1847
At Riedenburg Lever closed a correspondence, commenced in 1843, with Miss Edgeworth. In 1843 the author of ‘Castle Rackrent,’ in her seventy-seventh year, was still working assiduously in her Edgeworthstown home.
_To Miss Edgeworth_.
“Templeogue House, Co. Dublin, _Nov_. 10, 1843.
“Madam,--I have a great favour to ask at your hands--and, like most people in similar circumstances, not any claim whatever to support the prayer of my petition. My desire is to obtain your permission to dedicate to you a book of mine called ‘Tom Burke,’ the first volume of which will appear early in December. To associate, even on such slender terms, my humble effort with a name confessedly the first in my country’s literature, is the motive which prompts me to this request, while I gladly embrace the occasion to assure you that you have no more ardent admirer of your goodness and your genius than your very humble and devoted servant.”
_To Miss Edgeworth._
“Templeogue House, Co. Dublin, _Nov_. 13, 1843.
“Madam,--It may be, that while asking a favour I may be obliged to ask your pardon for importunity. About a week since I addressed a few lines to you requesting your permission to dedicate to you a book of mine called ‘Tom Burke of Ours,’ but not having heard from you in reply, I conclude my letter has not reached you. I cannot, however, relinquish--without another endeavour--a hope I have long cherished to write your name within a volume of mine, and be, even on such slender terms, associated with one whom I feel to be the first of Irish writers. If you will accord me this permission, I shall deem it a very great favour conferred on your very humble and obedient servant.”
In his ‘Life of Lever’ Dr Fitzpatrick states that Lever set out in 1844 on his driving tour through Ireland, with the intention of paying a formal visit to Miss Edgeworth. There is no evidence that this visit was paid. In a preface to ‘The Knight of Gwynne,’ the author declares his acquaintanceship with Miss Edgeworth arose out of a letter she wrote to him correcting a mistake he had made as to the authorship of an epigram on Sir William Gladowes (afterwards Lord Newcomen). Almost in the same breath he admits that he has no memory for dates, and he couples this admission with a regret that he never kept a note-book. Miss Edgeworth’s tardy reply did not reach Charles Lever till the summer of 1845, when he was lingering at Carlsruhe.
_To Miss Edgeworth._
“Carlsruhe in Baden, Hof von Holland, _Aug_. 19, 1845.
“Dear Madam,--Your letter addressed to me in Dublin followed me here into the heart of the Black Forest, where I have been sojourning for some time past. I have really no words to speak my gratitude for the kindness which dictated such a letter,--so full of flattering encouragement, so abounding in expressions of good cheer. It is not because I have met with so little approval from the Press of my own country that I set great store by your criticisms,--though even the contrast has its consolations,--but that I begin to feel confidence under an approval from you, which no praise from one less competent could inspire. Your kindness, too,--like every real kindness,--had the merit of an _apropos_. I was beginning to feel unusually depressed about the fortunes of my book. I had received so many hints, based on misconceptions, of the characters and the plot, that I found, or fancied I found, I had been misrepresenting my own intentions, praising what I deprecated, and apologising for what I felt condemnatory. Fancy, then, the delight I experienced on hearing that you had read me aright--nay, more, developed in full the shadowy and vague forms my weaker hand only dared to trace, but could not venture to colour! I am not able to tell you how full of hope, how full of ambition, you have left me,--how totally you have routed the growing despondency against which, unassisted, I struggled in vain. It is not, believe me, that your flattery has made me _tête montée_; but, even taking it as mere flattery, I can say to myself, ‘It is Miss Edgeworth, after all.’ If I am destined to do what may be worthy, I shall date the effort from the day I received your letter,--a day which made me prouder than I ever felt before, and happier than any praise hereafter can make me.”
After the lapse of a year we find Lever thirsting for further praise or encouragement. There is something almost pitiful in his timid appeal to Miss Edgeworth for her opinions concerning ‘The O’Donoghue’ and ‘The Knight of Gwynne,’--the latter novel was at the time appearing in monthly parts. Lever was always able to form a very shrewd estimate of the merits or demerits of his own writings, and in his later days press criticism, adverse or laudatory, seems to have affected him but little. It was different, however, in his earlier days, when abuse or neglect caused him grave disappointment and vexation, and when a laudatory review unduly elated him.
_To Miss Edgeworth._
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, l’Autriche, _July_ 14, 1846.
“Dear Madam,--It is exactly a year since you wrote to me the kindest and most flattering letter it has ever been my fortune to receive. I have read it over so often that I almost have it by heart, and yet I never recur to the precise phrases of your brilliant note without renewed pleasure, renewed encouragement. It may be that you have long since forgotten both the epistle and the object of it. It cannot be an isolated piece of kindness on your part, and may well have escaped your memory. Let me recall the circumstance by saying it was an allusion to a book of mine called ‘The O’Donoghue,’ of whose earlier numbers you augured well, but of whose later ones I will not dare to tax your opinion. My present object is to thank you for a piece of kindness, whose effect is as fresh this instant as when first conferred. I recur to the expression of your encouragement as a certain relief in hours of doubt and despondency; and as the prisoner in Schundau only permitted himself the relaxation of looking out on the Elbe in days of unusual depression, I have kept your letter for times when a failing heart and ebbing hope have made me need the voice of encouragement.
“May I ask if you have chanced upon the book called ‘The Knight of Gwynne’? I will not ask your opinion--nor do I wish one word of criticism. I feel too sensibly it should have been very different, for I _had_ in my head a good subject and wandered from it, but I would like to know that it reached you.
“I am living in a wild valley of the Austrian Tyrol, away from every source of information of what passes in the world--away equally from critical reproof or the word of cheering hope. I will not tell you with what pleasure I take up the lines whenever you bid me go forward, nor how anxiously I would learn what may be your present judgment, while I would willingly spare you (and myself) the pain of an unfavourable verdict should conscience dictate one.”
_To Miss Edgeworth_.
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, Lac De Constance,
_New Year’s Day_, 1847.
“Dear Madam,--That a letter of mine should have gone astray is of little moment to any one, but that I should be under the imputation of ingratitude for your most kind letter of last August is of very great consequence to me, and to prevent this possible event I write now--uncertain whether a note I had unluckily intrusted to a private hand may have ever reached you. I was travelling in the Tyrol when your letter found me, and I replied to it at once, giving my letter to a person returning to England, with several others, one of which I know for certain did not come to hand. By the same occasion I directed my publisher to send you a little volume called ‘St Patrick’s Eve’--has this miscarried?
“I am uncertain whether I should not prefer the unjust reproach of neglect to the possible offence of boring you in duplicate. Still, it is better to incur this _risque_, for not two nor twenty letters would convey my thankfulness for all your kindness and encouragement. It is not because your two letters are my only literary triumphs that I set such store by them, though such is truly the case; but that I see reflected in my own little children the eager delight with which I myself as a child read your writings and learned to love them. Your praise is then doubly dear, as it partakes of the character of a reward to one of your _élèves_. Let me add that there is a domestic triumph in this too, and that my little people felt proud of Papa when he told them what Miss Edgeworth said of him. I am afraid to speak of my ‘Knight of Gwynne,’ lest my former letter should be already before you, and all the [? gossip] about my intentions and how I lapsed from them be a twice-told tale. One thing is certain, however the story would have inclined, the same faults would cling to it. I have no constructiveness in my head; the most I am capable of is the portraiture of certain characters with more or less of contrast or ‘relief’ between them. These once formed, I put them _en scène_, to die out in an early chapter when their vitality is weak,--if stronger, to survive to the end of the volume. That such halting incoherency would make very slovenly inartistic narratives, I have only to look back on what I have written to see. My own deficiencies, added to the fatal facility of No. publication, have combined to make this a grave and, I fear, irremediable fault with me, and even when I strive after better things, I invariably find that every step upwards is made at the cost of injury to my popularity, and when my friends encourage, my publisher is sure to upbraid me.
“The epigram I quoted in ‘The Knight’ was repeated to me at least twenty years back by a singularly agreeable and gifted conversationalist, the late Wm. Gouldersby, my brother’s predecessor in the Rectory of Tullamore. I was only a boy when I heard it, and need not say how strong was the impression made that has endured to the present.
“Your kindness--like all real kindnesses--emboldens, and I would, if I dared, ask your permission to say something of my next story,--I mean, of one that I intend to write at a future day. As I have already confessed to my inability to construct a plot and continue all the tortuous difficulties and surprises of a well-imagined tale, the most I could inflict upon you would be a meagre outline of my object, and the purpose for which my narrative is constructed: so much--if I had your permission--I should certainly like [to do].
“The post-mortem recollections you are good enough to notice in ‘O’Leary’ were little else than a transcript of my own feeling during recovery from the only severe illness I ever had. [They] have so much of truth about them that they were actually present to my mind day after day.
“I have little doubt that volition, powerfully exerted under the pressure of religious fervour and faith, is the secret agency of those miraculous cures whose occasional authenticity is beyond question.
“My present task is writing a little volume of Tyrol sketches--partly to illustrate some of the national proverbs of that simple people. We have been living amongst them now for above a year, and hourly growing more and more attracted to their unaffected kindliness and sincerity. The little tales I am endeavouring to shape out have the veracity of real scenes and real people in their favour, so far as I can convey them, but are quite devoid of all high interest. But if you will allow me, whenever they appear, to send you a copy, it will give me sincere gratification.
“I will not trespass on the goodness which has already given me such heartfelt pleasure by asking you to write to me. I will only say that I have never felt at the same time so proud and so happy as when reading those [letters] you have sent me, and that I thank you again and again for the happiness in which I write myself.”
_To Miss Edgeworth_.
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, Lac De Constance, _Jan_. 28, 1847.
“Dear Madam,--Your letter is now before me, and although I can fancy how tired you are of _my_ gratitude, I am never weary of telling you how much I feel _your_ kindness. As a manager returns thanks for the _dramatis persona_ of his corps, I beg to repeat mine for Miss Darcy, Daly, Freney, and Co.,* who, I beseech you to believe, have derived any spirit of life they possess from the genial breath of your encouragements. Like the ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme,’ who spoke prose without knowing, I find I really had a story to tell, and, however late came the knowledge, your criticism set me about seeing how best to do it.
* Characters in ‘The Knight of Gwynne.’--E. D.
“Pray accept my excuses for what must have been a very bungling expression in my last note, and which has caused you an apprehension that, although only momentary, I am sincerely sorry for,--sorry, I will own not only on your account, but on my own--my _amour propre_, having no more tender point than the dread of being a bore. I never intended to inflict my MS. on you, for after some ninety-nine good and sufficient reasons comes the hundredth,--I never wrote more at any time than was sufficient for the monthly call of my printers, and that only at the spur of the emergency. In taking what I felt to be the great liberty of asking your counsel, I had still a sense of moderation for an author, and would not worry you by what is called a sketch. Indeed, it is your opinion as to the _intention_ of the tale I would sue for, and your judgment of how far the story seems suited to such a hand as mine,--whether in itself it contains enough of romantic and dramatic element to be a good theme to work out.
“And now _à l’ouvrage!_ It occurred to me when attached to a British Embassy to learn that the whole scheme and game of Irish politics were not only known to the members of the Roman Catholic clergy, but that they took the very deepest interest in the cause and progress of events, and, strangest of all, were informed thoroughly on all the points of social distinctions at issue amongst us--knowing the very names of such localities and obscure people as were the scenes or actors in outrage or disturbance,--were conversant with the petty details of magisterial justice, and aware of all that terrible machinery of crime which for years back has been at work in Ireland. That such knowledge should have originated in mere curiosity would be absurd to conceive; that it sprung from a deep interest in the events is far easier to see, and in some cases I even believe from a controlling, regulating power that, if not exercised to promote actual crime, yet could watch its progress and effect, withholding the opposing influences the Church could supply if she would. This, of course, is surmise, and mere surmise,--the former
## part I _know_. I know also that details of Irish outrage have been