To Mr. Blackwood.
Windsor,
21st January.
...I am a good deal amused and rather flattered in my amour propre by the revelations of the ‘Times’ this morning about Lord Lytton. His name had occurred to me in connection with the ‘Coming Race,’ but I dismissed the idea as impossible. The second number of the ‘Parisians’ I was convinced came somehow from him, but circumstances seemed so much against it that I propounded to my friends the notion that the author must be Mrs. Lytton, which might account for the unquestionable Bulwerism of the book. I feel quite pleased that I was so close on the heels of the mystery. I hope it is true that the story is finished.
Windsor,
6th February.
...I enclose Mr. Kinglake’s letter. Thanks for sending it to me. Your other correspondent is hypercritical. That I should extract the only amusing thing out of a slight and dull book may, I think, be easily pardoned me. As for the Hares, I refrained from saying anything about the sonship, which was no sonship, simply because it seemed to take away the only excuse for the mawkish worship of the book; and seeing I expressed my opinion of it fully, I did not think it necessary to dwell upon this detail. The book was (before I opened it) more interesting than usual to me, from the fact that I knew Mrs. Julius Hare very well. But your correspondent’s opinion, even had I had the advantage of knowing it before I wrote my paper, is not mine, and I can only review books at all on the condition that I express my own feelings in respect to them. It is of course in your power to bid me refrain from reviewing any particular book or any books at all, but I can only say what I think and not what other people think, whatever the universities may say. I read every word of both the books mentioned, to my pain and sorrow...The tremendous applause which has greeted this performance is a good specimen of the sort of thing which I am anxious to struggle against — the fictitious reputation got up by men who happen to be “remembered at the Universities,” and who have many connections among literary men.
Windsor,
13th May.
What a terrible question you ask me about the sequence of my books! Thank Heaven, I don’t remember much one year what I wrote the year before, which is a special dispensation of Providence, I think, in my behalf; for how could I write another word more if my conscience was oppressed with a recollection of all the rubbish I have poured upon the world? ‘Katie Stewart’14 was, I think, the third — the proofs of it came to me, I remember, on the morning of my wedding-day; and there was a book called ‘Merkland,’ of which I have a faint recollection, between. The Carlingford books were begun in the year ‘60 or ‘61, when I was very low in spirit and hope, and after you had snubbed me very much, as you have been doing lately! Please don’t let anybody upbraid me with writing too much until the year 1876, if we live to see it, by which time I hope the bulk of the schooling will be over, and I will not mind it.
I am sorry that Browning’s last appearance is not worthy of him. The only amends Miss Thackeray can make him for seducing him to choose such an absurd title for a book15 is to marry him, it seems to me.
Windsor,
5th June.
By that curious chance which seems to rule over accidents, the Magazine never arrived this month, and I have only seen it for the first time this morning, having written to Mr. Langford to ask for a copy. A thousand thanks for the friendly thought which suggested the review. The article itself is excellent and full of good feeling, but let me thank you first for thinking of it. I have not had too many encouragements of the kind. Your contributor says so much that is most flattering and delightful to me, that I am sure he could have said much that would have been valuable also in the way of criticism had he chosen; but probably I should not have liked that so much! I am very much gratified by his notice of my earlier books, sad stuff though many of them seem to me now, and by his appreciation of some special characters which have not caught the public eye perhaps so much as I thought they might have done, and especially by his notice of the ‘Son of the Soil,’ which was written at the most sorrowful moment of my life, when I was wading very deep in grief and doubt and all the discouragement which grief brings. I do not venture to guess who the author is, but I should be very glad to know. Certain geographical deficiencies prove his confession that he is not Scotch. Will you tell me to whom I am indebted for so kind an appreciation of my work? Anyhow, I am heartily grateful to him (I suppose it is him?) and you.
Windsor,
26th November.
...I have entirely given up the notion of writing a story at present for the ‘Graphic’...
Tids has just come back from Oxford, where he was trying for the Balliol scholarship (though without the least idea of getting it, as he has still two years at Eton). I hear that he passed a very creditable examination, and that his English essay was the second in order of merit. I am sure you will sympathise with me in my special pleasure in this respect. I had not had much confidence in his literary powers.