TO MR. BLACKWOOD.
WINDSOR,
9th Febry.
Thanks for letting me read Lord Lytton’s letter. I see no reason why he should not know who his reviewer is, except that I think one usually thinks much less of the praise when one is aware of the identity of the writer. However, as it is an object worth considering, to connect the name which my boys, I hope, will make something of, with here and there a favourable prepossession, I have no objection to your telling him. In cases where the prepossession will be unfavourable, it is always known!
I am not doing anything for this month but ‘Valentine,’ which I am anxious to get on with. I wish I could have the advantage of reading this out to you: even the mere fact of hearing how it reads is such an advantage to a writer, and it is one of the drawbacks of getting old that domestic criticism becomes impossible — at least to a person in my position. I am going to Florence in the Easter holidays to revive my impressions of the place for a book to be published with illustrations which Mr. Macmillan has asked me to do. I shall take Tids with me, but the trip will be a very rapid one, as we shall only have about three weeks. Should you care to have one or two articles about the subjects which I am going to Study? Dante, Michael Angelo, and Savonarola are my three chief points, and I should not like to lose any of my material. I should be very glad of any introductions you could give me in Florence, as you have been so lately there — or were you there? Perhaps I am making a mistake.
What a curious change in the political world! I hope Mr Disraeli, who I suppose must come in, will be able to work with everybody, and will have a good majority. I have no great sympathy with your side, but the Emperor Gladstone has been getting really too much. We have a terrible man here as the successful Conservative candidate, which does not help one to get over one’s prejudices.
Windsor,
12th March.
...I meant my Val to be the least good of the two lads, but I am getting to like him! The other must turn out to be the eldest. I will revise it all carefully, and if I can find anything to shorten will do so. I want to have an election for the county with Valentine, grown up, as candidate, which should bring up all the floating stories about him, and give the other side a chance of saying their worst; but the boyhood is perhaps too attractive to me, surrounded as I am by boys.
I shall send you my paper on Saturday. The books I have taken are Mrs. Somerville (with which I am enchanted, and which recalls to me my mother and even my own recluse childhood in the most delightful way), Ampère’s pretty touching story, I think the letters of Merimée (‘A une Inconnue’), on which you can conclude when you see them, and your prodigious Elliot book, which does not charm me so much. The Merimée letters are absolutely spotless so far as morals go, and very pretty in many parts. I suppose the Inconnue must be Connue; but there is sufficient mystery to permit the critic to deal with it as an entirely dark matter, and there is much that is very charming, humorous, and tender in the letters themselves. If you do not like what I say about them, you can cut it out. Dr. Guthrie I meant to treat as the most rampant specimen of the good-natured complacent Philistine I have met with for a long time. The smug self-content of the book is simply odious to me, and gives a very miserable exhibition of what his public like and esteem as the best. Must I not be permitted to say so? On this question too you must decide when you get the paper, I don’t mind doing it, even if you don’t publish it at all, for it serves the purpose of one of those little walks an artist takes away from his picture which he is in the act of painting — letting me see my more important work from a little distance.
Windsor,
24th July.
...About the Classics. I think the most effective review of them would be done from the unlearned point of view, without any pretence of knowing better — in short, as one of the English readers for whom they are intended: don’t you think so? You might put an editorial note to say that this was done on purpose.
Have you no mind for my Continental Classics, now that the others are done? I think they would be quite as attractive.
We have been roasted and baked and grilled here to such an extent that the coolness of St. Andrews is very tempting. Fortunately even here the heat has moderated. The Lord Mayor’s dinner was amusing. I sat next Matthew Arnold, with whom I struck up an acquaintance, and liked him better in his own person than in his books. He, Anthony Trollope, Mr. Hughes, Charles Reade, and myself were the sole representatives of literature (barring the press) that I could see; but oh! my ladies of the Opera, how fine they were! The dinner was bad! fancy that in the Mansion House! I offered Tiddy 5s. for a copy of verses on the occasion (he was with me), but the monkey thinks the price too small, and wants to know first how much I get for mine!
To Miss Blackwood.
Windsor,
22nd Sept.
...Tids has attained the dignity of sixth form, and thinks no small-beer of himself, and Cecco is already an old and experienced Etonian. I am sure you will be pleased to know also that my nephew Frank has done admirably, gained himself a scholarship at his college, and quite justified me in my expenditure for him, which is a great comfort.
Windsor,
19th October.
I have, I trust, done what you want in respect to the paper enclosed. I agree with you that Mr. Collins’s volumes are very good, but I don’t agree with you about Mr. Trollope, whose ‘Caesar’ I cannot read without laughing — it is so like Johnny Eames. I hope your supplementary series will include Lucretius. The two little bits from Virgil in this paper are Tiddy’s, as were the Greek quotations in my last, so I can scarcely put a name to them. They are his first appearance in print.
Windsor,
26th December.
….Tiddy, I am sorry to say, was not successful in the Balliol examination. I said all along that I did not hope it, as he was a year under age; but I suppose I must have hoped all the same, for I was considerably disappointed. He was mentioned as having distinguished himself in the examination, but did not get anything. However, I hope he will get either a scholarship somewhere else or an exhibition at Balliol next year. He will be just a fortnight too old next November to try for the scholarship there again, which is very annoying. The others have been getting on very well....
Let me hear about yourself and your boys, poor fellows, scattered as they are. As this is Frank’s last Christmas at home, we are doing all we can to make it a merry one for him. Next year I expect everything to be changed. The little girls are going to a school we have found for them in Germany, and my brother will also leave me for a time at least. And Frank goes to India and Tids to Oxford, and I mean to let my house and try six months’ utter retrenchment in a lodging at Eton. But all this, I think, I told you before.