To Mr. Blackwood.
Windsor,
29th January.
Thank you very much for the ‘Life of George Eliot,’ and for the kind and flattering inscription, I am very glad to have the book, which is as curious a book as any I ever saw. The personality of the great writer is as yet very confusing to me in the extreme flatness of the picture. I don’t mean by flatness dulness, though there is something of that, but only that it is like mural painting or sculpture in very low relief. I have just run over your reviewer’s article and think it very good. He has most cleverly eluded the difficulties by making a picture of his own. I don’t think that, from the point of view naturally necessary for ‘Maga,’ it could have been better done.
At the same time, I don’t think any one will like George Eliot better from this book, or even come nearer to her. However, she is a big figure to be taken in all at once, and may grow upon one. I am glad that I have time to consider, should I make up my mind to say anything on the subject. Would you kindly say nothing about that, as very likely it will come to nothing? and even if it does, the excellences of anonymity are always evident....
Would you care to have a few chapters of my Venetian book that is to be for ‘Maga’? — they would take the form of detached biography of the olden time. One I have in my mind is Carmagnola, a very romantic personage in the beginning of the fifteenth century....
Send me Laurence Oliphant’s book, please! I had a delightful letter from Mrs. L. the other day, and am pledged to go to visit them next year, when my lease of this house will be out, and when I shall be a wanderer on the face of the earth.
Windsor.
...Let me congratulate you on the great success of ‘George Eliot’s Life.’ It was bound to be a great success in a pecuniary point of view, but not in a literary, I think. It is quite curious how much more interesting her correspondence with your uncle is than any of her other correspondences. He seems to have roused her out of that ponderousness which must have been natural to her. It is quite astounding to see how little humour or vivacity she had in real life. Surely Mr. Cross must have cut out all the human parts.
I have the mother of your correspondent Miss Lawless — Lady Cloncurry — with me just now. She is the most charming old beauty of seventy — as bright as seventeen, and full of fun and cleverness. It was quite worth a journey to Italy to make friends with her.
Laurence Oliphant’s sketches of the Druse villages are delightful, but his philosophy is something too tremendous. I am making the most prodigious effort to understand his book, but I have to catch hold of the furniture after a few pages to keep myself from turning round and round, and yet the absorption of such a man of the world as he is in a religious idea has something very fine in it. I should like immensely to go and visit them, but I fear I am too old for that sort of thing. When do you come to London this spring?
Cecco, I believe, has begged to have his story put into type. Will you kindly let me be at the extra expense, for I want to give him a lesson in literature in this way, — this of course strictly between ourselves — but please humour me.
Windsor,
23rd March.
...I should like to send you something light for next month — an account of what is to be seen in London by people going up in May — the various pictures which are now being exhibited separately — a few of those in the studios preparing for Academy exhibition — the theatres, &c. Should you care for it? Let me know at once, if you do.
The next letter refers to Cecco’s candidature for the post of Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries. Failing the Heralds’ College, on which his heart was set, this was the kind of employment most congenial to him, and naturally his mother greatly desired that he might obtain it. He did not, however, being probably too young and too little known; but he was now beginning to write stories and articles, some of them exceedingly clever and of great interest to Mrs. Oliphant, who was, however, no lenient critic of her son’s work.
Windsor,
21st July.
...I enclose a list of the Council of the Society of Antiquaries. There are not many distinguished names. I know Mr. Evans the President, Lord Carnarvon the late President (who has now too much to do, I fear, to take any trouble about this), and very slightly Dr. William Smith, but none of the others. Please help me if you can. It appears that the appointment is more important than we supposed, and that many good men, of much longer standing than Cecco, are in for it, so that success is extremely unlikely. Still it can do no harm to try. Cecco was rather idle in his Oxford career, and did not do so well as he ought to have done; but I am happy to say he sees the folly of that sort of thing now, and is as determined to get work and to get on as I could desire, as well as being my almost constant companion and the greatest help and comfort to me....
Here is a story on the best authority, told to the man who told it to me by one of the guests. At a great dinner-party lately the Prince of Wales took it into his head to inquire into people’s incomes. He asked Sir Henry Thompson what a great doctor might make a year, who answered £15,000; then he asked (I think) Sir Henry James what a great barrister could do, who replied £20,000. Then the Prince turned to Millais and asked what a great painter could make: Millais said £25,000. The Prince took it as a joke, whereupon Millais explained. “For the last ten years,” he said, “I should have made £40,000 had not I given myself a holiday of four months in the year: what I did actually make was £30,000, so that I gave an estimate considerably under the fact”! What do you think of this? It will be a long time before an author makes half so much, at least nowadays. George Eliot, I suppose, must have been almost the highest in our day.
The next letters are addressed to Principal Tulloch, and refer to his dedication of ‘Movements of Religious Thought’ to Mrs. Oliphant. She was greatly pleased and touched by this proof of affection from so old and well-loved a friend. She would have valued it perhaps even more could she have known that it was the last of his long series of literary work.
To Principal Tulloch.
Windsor,
4th August.
My dear Principal, — I am very much touched and warmed by your letter. What you propose is a very great honour to me, one of the greatest possible. It is not in the least deserved, but as a token of a long and faithful friendship, the sort of brother-and sister-hood of so many years, I need not say it will be most sweet to me…
No, do not send me the letter before it is published, only don’t make me ashamed by saying anything of me that would imply knowledge I don’t possess. Those old long talks were always delightful, but I am sure there never was anything on my side save a sympathetic understanding of what you said.
Thanks from my heart for so kind a thought.
Ever affectionately yours, M. O. W. Oliphant.
My love to my dear padrona. I should have written yesterday, but I was kept anxious about Cyril, who was extremely unwell. I feared rheumatic fever, but he is better to-day.
St. Andrews,
October 2.
Dear Principal, — I don’t know what to say to you in reply to the words, more than kind and far more than deserved, by which you have placed our long friendship on record. As an outward sign and token of that which has been so large an element in my life for many years, it is very delightful and flattering to me, and to feel that you think anything like so well of me goes to my heart. I should break down if I spoke, so I write to say the poor little return I can for what is at once a great honour and an affectionate kindness which touches me to the very depths. Your friendship and that of my dearest padrona have been among the best things in my life, and I hope it will never, either here or on the other side, come to an end. With thanks that are beyond words, and the warmest return of constant and faithful regard, believe me, dear Principal, affectionately yours,
M. O. W. Oliphant.
To Miss Bessie Blackwood.
Windsor,
October 7.
We got home quite comfortably yesterday morning, a little cold, and thinking regretfully of the rugs you were so kind as to offer us, but still in very good preservation on the whole. We find the trees still wonderfully green, and the Virginian creeper in great glory; but the skies are very much decreased in extent, which is a phenomenon I always remark in returning from Scotland!
I don’t know how to thank you for the kindness which we always experience in your delightful house. It is a constant pleasure to see you all together in such a perfect home. I hope the flowers may bloom and the animals thrive even better and better year by year.
F. R. Oliphant to Mr. Blackwood.
Windsor,
October 18.
I am ashamed not to have written before to thank you for your kindness in proposing me for the Scottish Club. I got in most wonderfully quickly, chiefly through the kindness of Archie Smith, who took a great deal of trouble about it and was also very kind, but I have not yet had the chance of inspecting my new quarters. It will, however, be a great convenience to me when I have to be in town. I am at present occupied on an article, which I hope to have the pleasure of submitting to you, on the life and works of John Gwillim the herald, not of course from a technical or heraldic point of view, but entirely as a gospel for the Gentiles. I think that any lay reader, however absolutely ignorant of anything connected with heraldry, would be amused with his book, — the quaintest combination of learning and ignorance, philosophy and superstition, that I ever came across, seasoned with some contemporary scientific theories of a description calculated to make a modern Royal Society gnash its teeth and howl with horror. You spoke of sending me a revise of the “Grateful Ghosts.” Might I suggest that the close season for ghosts ends with the approach of Christmas, and that in December and January they are considered lawful game?
Mrs. Oliphant to Mr. Blackwood.
Windsor,
2nd December.
I sympathise with you very much in respect to the obstinacy of Scotland about Mr. Gladstone. It is very strange, and if it brings about disestablishment it will be very unfortunate. Still you know the upper classes in Scotland have separated themselves so long from the people in that respect that they cannot say much. It has always seemed to me a great misfortune for the country that the Church of the nation was not the Church of the gentry: that, of course, is a standing weakness, and I have no doubt lies at the bottom of the separation in other matters. I trust the Conservative majority in Scotland will suffice at least to keep Lord Salisbury in power, and to free him from Parnell, who is a fearful rock ahead. I can well understand how disappointed you must be after all your exertions....
Windsor,
27th December.
This is just a word to wish you everything that is good for the New Year. I hope you are better, and will begin 1886 in good health and spirits, and that you may find it a prosperous and pleasant year — the anno venturo, as the Italians say. I trust too that your last new contributor, Cecco, will give you and the public satisfaction, and that this may be the beginning of a long connection, though I do not think it will be in the way of fiction.
I am looking forward with interest to Laurence Oliphant’s new beginning. But this is not intended for a business epistle, so I stop short with once more the expression of my kindest wishes....
I wonder if you have heard the delightful story about Lady Randolph Churchill which is going about. I must tell you on the chance that you have not heard it. She was electioneering on behalf of Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, and some impertinent elector expressed his wish that ladies conducted their canvassing on the principles prevalent in former times, in the Duchess of Devonshire’s way, in which case he should have been delighted to promise his vote at once. “Thank you very much,” said Lady Randolph, demurely; “I’ll tell Lady Burdett-Coutts!”