TO MR. BLACKWOOD.
WINDSOR,
2nd February.
...You would not care (would you?) to send me as your own commissioner to report upon the state of Italy? I am doing a Life of S. Francis of Assisi for Macmillan’s Sunday Library, and I wish some benevolent person would send me out to Umbria. I should not mind taking a situation as courier at £100 a-month to a party of inexperienced tourists. Recommend me, please! My acquirements are mild French and a little Italian, and a capacity for getting up any given subject so as to be able to filter it into the millionaire mind, and I would not mind dedicating the book to my patron or patroness! Do find me a place.
Windsor.
The ‘Edinburgh Review,’ in the person of Mr. Reeve, is coming to see me to-morrow. Do you think he will, eat me? I feel very nervous. If you should never hear anything more of me you will know how to account for it.
Please tell Mrs. Blackwood that I have just finished the most enchanting little pole-screen, made out of a series of heavenly little coloured French pictures supplied by our friend Mr. Patch. He is willing to send whole portfolios of them to be chosen from, and I have no adjectives superlative enough to describe the dainty little Marquises and Cherubinos. Please to convey this message in its integrity, without any fear of being ruined by the consequences — they are so cheap!...
I hope your nephew is better. I am in the doctor’s hands myself, and ordered not to work!!!
Windsor.
The question I am going to ask you is not one I had any idea of asking you yesterday, nor will your answer in the negative at all disappoint me. Do you care for having a story from me, a full-sized story, during next year? I have (ca va sans dire) something planned, though not written as yet, three-volume size. And yesterday an American publisher called upon me, offering me some money for the advance sheets of my next serial story. He offered me the appalling sum of two hundred pounds! and my head is a little turned with the intense novelty of the notion; therefore I write to ask you whether you would be disposed to have my story, and aid me in spoiling the Egyptians. My Yankee friend wants something beginning in January. Tell me, please, whether you are disengaged, and if you have room for anything of mine; but pray don’t have any feeling on the subject if your answer is No, for I shall not be disappointed — except of the undercurrent of delight of getting some money out of those transatlantic robbers. My visitor was so flattering about my popularity in America that I felt mightily disposed to fling a sofa cushion at his head, or else to impound him, and hold him to ransom, which perhaps would have been the better way,
Windsor.
With this I send proofs of both ‘John’ and the t’other papers, feeling rather spiteful at myself, and a little at you in respect to the former. I wanted to cut the half of it out, and I have not done it, lacking encouragement. And I am wounded to the depths of my soul by one word in your criticism — Cuddling! Good heavens, that I should have lived to hear such a word spoken of my heroine! It is a sign that I should abandon novel-writing and take to plain sewing, for the rest of my life, I suppose.
I am up to my eyes in the ‘Acta Sanctorum’ at present, and unless you would like a review of one or two volumes of that elegant and light work, I don’t think I shall attempt anything further this month. Tiddy is going down to St. Andrews with the bridegroom in about ten days. In respect to the war, the said bridegroom is like you golfers. I asked him just at the moment of greatest excitement whether there was any news, and he answered me complacently, Yes, he had got a letter by the midday post! Our interest here, however, has been much enhanced by the excitement of my friend Mrs. Macdonald, who has gone to France to join her daughter, I had a real mind to have gone over to Paris with her, and sent you a paper to pay my expenses withal.
Mrs. Macdonald, who was a very near neighbour of Mrs. Oliphant, was the mother of Madame Canrobert, and of course all the events of the Franco-German war became more vividly interesting as they affected these two ladies.
Windsor,
18th August.
I am very glad you liked the Piccadilly paper. I feel rather strongly on the subject myself, and consequently (I suppose) thought it rather bad. I have made most of the corrections you suggest. Mr. Oliphant told me he had the intention of returning to his original work, and I rejoiced like you; but what if he should fall into an ordinary man of the world again, and like to hear his book praised, and himself applauded like the rest of us? In that case would you not rather have had him stay away? It is so difficult to know what is the right way. It is all very well for Mr. Stopford Brooke (his letter is very good and clear, and I have quoted from it), but I had rather, for my part, having a high esteem for Mr. Oliphant and great admiration of his powers, that he went in for any amount of extravagance and enthusiasm than that he fell back into your banal world, and contented himself like other people. I do not agree with you in thinking that he has begun to find out the weakness of his system, and I trust he will not find it out. When he does it will kill him, either body or soul — or such at least my conviction.
This war is too frightful. I cannot say I sympathise really with either party, but I know much more of the French than of the Germans, and, right or wrong, one’s heart goes with the losing side.
Thanks, very much, for your kind invitation.
Windsor,
21st October.
You put me into rather a whimsical puzzle by your letter. You say you like my paper, and then object to almost everything in it. If you remember, my object in beginning these criticisms was to speak the truth and shame the newspapers — praising and blaming without fear or favour. Of course when my opinion is opposed to yours, it is but right and natural that mine should go to the wall; but I cannot stultify myself and deny my judgment, you know, with my own hand. I can hold my tongue, but if I do speak it must be according to my own judgment. I think the Oliphant12 book extremely vapid (by the way, they are not my family in the least; I daresay my forebears were quite as stupid and not half so well off, but at all events they were totally distinct), and I sympathise most warmly in a great deal that is said in the ‘Ginx’s Baby’ book, and do actually express my own sentiments in what I say about it. And I admire immensely the “Peasant Life.” What is to be done? I will strike out as far as my own judgment will permit me, but I can’t do any more. Of course the final excision of it, even of the entire paper, remains always in your hands.
Windsor,
2nd November.
...I am glad Mr. Oliphant is out of town, for I had been half disappointed not to hear anything of him. I have just had a letter this morning from a lady who is a medium, and who invites me to inspect a drawing made by her under spiritual guidance of my own “crown of glory in water-colours.” What do you suppose it can be? I have the Scriptural requisite for a crown of glory in the shape of grey hair, but you don’t suppose she can have a hair-wash to recommend? It is very funny.