MRS. OLIPHANT BEGAN this year in a house which had been lent to her in Hans Place, and which was convenient, both because of Cyril’s preparations for going to Ceylon, and of the marriage of her cousin, which took place in London. Cyril started on January 29th. Mrs. Oliphant and Cecco went on straight to Italy, via Lucerne and Milan, to stay at Bordighera, and later ending with Venice. She made at Bordighera the acquaintance of Lady Cloncurry and her daughter, Miss Lawless, and this proved the beginning of one of the warmest friendships of Mrs. Oliphant’s later years. She saw also at this time a good deal of Mr. and Mrs. George MacDonald. George MacDonald’s first book, or at any rate his first successful book, ‘David Elginbrod,’ had been published many years before by Messrs Hurst & Blackett, at Mrs. Oliphant’s warm recommendation. She always spoke of it as a work of genius, and quoted it as one of the instances of publishers’ blunders, for when the MS. came to her it came enveloped in wrappings that showed how many refusals it had already suffered. ‘John Inglesant’ was another typical case of the same blundering — less important, however, to the author than the former one.
To Mr. Craik.
44 Hans Place, S.W.,
January.
I don’t know why people should be so anxious to add to my age. I am quite old enough without any addition. I protested in the case of Mr. Henry Morley’s Tauchnitz book, and also as to an American one, but I did not know I had the honour of being included in the ‘Men of the Time.’
According to my father’s family Bible I was born on the 4th of April 1828 — I understand that is legal evidence. I think I have heard that I was baptised in Tranent parish. I must write for a certificate, so as to crush the gainsayers.
Thank you for taking so much interest in the matter....
I hope the rest of Professor Nichol’s Literary Facts are more reliable. If I had done this, how all the critics would have fallen upon me!
When Mr. and Mrs. Craik were going to Rome, Mrs. Craik asked if she could undertake any commission. This letter is Mrs. Oliphant’s answer.
To Mrs. Craik,
February 19,
Dear Mrs. Craik, — Only to make a little pilgrimage out to the sacred place where my darling lies by her father’s side — that is all. You knew him too. Yes, I remember as if it were yesterday you sitting by my bedside holding that miracle of Heaven, my firstborn. What dark waters since then one has waded through!
Don’t be nervous, dear friend, only take this one precaution. Carry a shawl with you for yourself and the child, and when you go into one of those ice-cold churches out of the warm Italian sunshine put it on. The cold is indoors, the warmth out.
I enclose a note for an old artist acquaintance who once lived in Capo le Case, close to the Via Sistina, and will be heard of no doubt at Spithoever’s, an old Roman who knows all about the place. Her husband is an American, a painter, she a sculptor — neither at all distinguished, but in her own particular way she might be of some use. All my friends in Rome have died out. I know absolutely nobody now, except one kind dear fellow, whom indeed I scarcely know, who watches over my little sanctuary in the English Cemetery with a delicate sympathy which that dear people has the secret of. He is the Marchese Landolfo Carcano, and lives, when he is in Rome, at the Palazzo Carcano, Via dei due Macelli. If you should meet him or hear anything of him, make friends with him, please; but I think most likely he may not be in Rome just now.
Do you know the W. W. Storys? They are good people to be acquainted with. I could easily get you an introduction to them if you like.
I hope — nay, I am sure — you will enjoy it when you are there. I wish I were going with you. “Buon viaggio, felice ritorno,” as our old Capri friends used to say.
The custode at the Cimeterio Inglese will show you the place.
7th March.
My dear Mrs. Craik, — Enclosed I send you a letter to Mr. Story from William Blackwood. I don’t know the Storys myself, but they are intimate with the Blackwoods.
I hope you have got over your journey comfortably, and that you may get a great deal of pleasure out of Rome. You will take your child to gather violets in the Borghese gardens, and watch the sunset from the Pincio — how well I know what you will be doing. I never did much sight-seeing in Rome, but go if you can to Albano, and to Tivoli, and to the little town on Lake Nemi — Genzano I think it is called. Nemi is so lovely.
Think of me sometimes walking about those ways, where I have shed so many tears. My kindest regards to Mr. Craik.
To Mr. Blackwood.
Venice,
2nd April.
I send you my certificate of existence, attested by no less a personage than the Prefect of Venice, the vice-king here. I don’t know whether his certificate, which he thought it better to put into divine Italian, as he does not understand English, will be received by the authorities at home, but if not I can send to Windsor to get it done. My friend, Miss Fitzmaurice, who knows everybody, especially in Italy, has this great functionary under her orders, so we are very well cared for; and I have already made acquaintance with several of the English and American residents, to whom I had letters, chiefly by means of Professor Villari, to whom I hope my friends in Edinburgh will kindly repay his civilities to me.
My object in writing now, however, is to tell you that we have at length acquired an address, which after so many wanderings is quite a luxury. I shall be so thankful to have the Magazine.
We have the most glorious weather, and Venice is looking beautiful, notwithstanding the intrusion of the steamboat, which is fortunately as little oppressive as may be. We are on the Grand Canal, in a tolerable apartment, after resisting the seductions of a quite lovely little palace, which tempted me mightily, though too dear.
I have heard from Cyril, who is already up in the wilds of Ceylon, at a place called Cornegalle, with his Governor, driving elephants! which sounds a very extraordinary first step into Eastern life.
I trust you are all well, and getting no harm from the east winds....What a sad, miserable thing poor Prince Leopold’s death is! He was the only one I knew of the Royal Family, and was always nice and pleasant. Everybody will feel it, I am sure.
To Mrs. Harry Coghill.
112 Ebury Street,
July 30.
My dear Cousin Annie, — I got your kind letter when I was in a state of great anxiety about Cyril, who has come back from Ceylon under doctor’s orders, the climate having proved quite unfit for him. By way of making me less anxious he did not let me know till the last moment, and I had to hurry back to meet him. He had an illness some time ago, of which he made as little as possible, and I felt at the time that it must have been more serious than he would allow. It turns out now that he was very ill indeed, and that after he got so far better he had repeated attacks of fever, and the doctor declared that Colombo would be fatal to him. I had a very kind letter from the Governor — much more explicit, as you will understand, than Cyril would ever be — to tell me all this. I got home last Sunday in consequence, not knowing when the ship would arrive, which it did on Tuesday morning. I went down to Gravesend on Monday night, and so was in time to board the Cathay at seven on Tuesday morning. I found him looking better than I had hoped, the sea voyage having set him up again; but after we got home here, I was not by any means so well satisfied with his appearance as at first....I had taken a house in St. Andrews from the 1st, as we can’t get home till the beginning of September at soonest, and we shall go on there on the 30th or 31st. As of course this unexpected return involves me in great expense, I intend to leave the girls behind; but I think St. Andrews is the best place for Cyril to get up his strength, which is the first thing for me to think of. It is a great disappointment, but that seems my lot in life. In the circumstances you will see that I can make no answer but by thanks to your kind invitation. Some other time, perhaps, I may have the pleasure of seeing you in your own house. I am very tired of my own unsettledness, as you will easily imagine, and would be most thankful to get home. I suppose one always regrets it when one lets one’s house, and I hate this supplementary journey to St. Andrews, but it is better for Cyril to have the bracing air of the North. I miss you dreadfully here — it would have been such a comfort to go to S. Place and talk it all over: however, it would be selfish indeed to regret that, when all is so happy and well with you.
The girls — and boys too — send their love. (By the bye, Cecco has entered the band of critics, and had a paper in the ‘Spectator’ the other week, and I hope will get on in that way.)
Pilmour Links, St. Andrews,
Sept. 7.
...I have been a month here alone with the boys, and though they are of course out from morning to night, I have really enjoyed it, strolling out upon the sands by myself with great peacefulness and refreshment of soul. It is half amusing and always interesting to see new developments of this kind in one’s self, and I am quite glad to find that age gives this pleasure in silence and solitude, which I had not anticipated. The boys, especially Cecco, have been very good, and now and then take me out for walks; and I have been much tranquillised and renovated altogether by my quiet time here, and almost grudge the modification of it now that the girls have joined me again....
They came to me in the middle of last week, so that now we are all here till the end of the month, when we shall return to Windsor. It scarcely feels like going home, for I have only a year and a half now of my lease of the house, and probably after that will not continue in Windsor — that is, if nothing new occurs: of course all the problems of life may be solved long before that....
The sea is tumbling in with great white waves before the window where I am writing, and the Links have their usual Sunday look — very green with the rain. We had a catastrophe here the other day, a poor boy drowned bathing at the Step rock, which, though we did not know him, upset us all very much. Cyril, out all day and golfing, is much better, and has got his old mahogany colour; but he is still not very strong — much less strong than he looks. Cecco is very well, and fatter than is expedient at his age. I have got through the most portentous amount of work in my long spell of quiet, but have still an intolerable quantity before me, after the delays and idleness of our long rambling.
To Mr. Blackwood.
19 Pilmour Links, St. Andrews.
...Do you think you could hear of a collie for me? I should not like to give much for it, but I have a great hankering after one — an honest fellow who has worked for his living like my dear old Yarrow, not one of the slim fancy articles.
I suppose you are immersed in odious politics — I get more sick of them every day. The Gladstone fever is by far the strongest proof I have heard of the old slander that Scotland is without any sense of humour. I wish Lord Neaves was to the fore to immortalise the thirty-two bites which my grave young acquaintance Edward Lyttelton has had the solemnity to make known to the world.
Windsor,
October 18.
I sent you my big photograph, enclosing one for Miss Blackwood. It makes me a much more imposing person than I ever was in reality, but on the whole it has been liked by most people, though I think the strength of jaw in it equals Father William’s, or Mr. Gladstone’s, which is far from being the case in the original.
Windsor,
13th November.
I shall return the proof in a day or two, but in the meantime I want you to tell me whether you would mind me putting your dear mother’s initials, E. B., with the date, Colinton, 188-, in the little dedication to the “Open Door”? I forget what the date was, but you could tell me — the year only, I think, but I should like to put the name of the place.
Stories of this description are not like any others. I can produce them only when they come to me. I should be glad to do one for the New Year number, but nothing suggests itself. By the way, a notion has been coming and going in my mind (I think it was suggested by your aunt Isabella, to whom I said that it was a thing impossible, but since then the idea has returned to me) of a monthly article on “Things in General.” Should you be at all disposed for anything of the kind? Short of politics, I should be inclined to take in everything that was going on — theatres, pictures, books, even a taste of gossip when legitimate. What do you think? It might be made very interesting, though whether I can do it or not remains to be seen.
The following refers to the short story, “Old Lady Mary,” which was dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Duncan Stewart: —
Windsor,
3rd December.
You said I was probably preparing something for Christmas, to come upon you as a surprise. I had no thought of it at the time, but the enclosed has presented itself, and here it is if you like it. It wants the strong effects of “The Open Door” and the others, but still it may not come amiss. Look at it, and let me know — but soon, please....
I hope you are better. I am afraid you have too much to do, which seems the most general malady now, for everybody is saying that you don’t write. I have a philippic from Lady Cloncurry this morning about the delay of “Plain Lady Frances.” Poor Editor! you can’t do everything, for everybody, at once. Nevertheless I should like to have your opinion of the enclosed soon. But if Bessie or Emma will kindly send me your message, that will do quite well.