by Thomas Moore
“As he complained that his salary was insufficient, I determined to have his accounts examined, and the enclosed was the result. — It is all in black and white with documents, and I have despatched Fletcher to explain (or rather to perplex) the matter.
“I have had much civility and kindness from Mr. Dorville during your journey, and I thank him accordingly.
“Your letter reached me at your departure, and displeased me very much: — not that it might not be true in its statement and kind in its intention, but you have lived long enough to know how useless all such representations ever are and must be in cases where the passions are concerned. To reason with men in such a situation is like reasoning with a drunkard in his cups — the only answer you will get from him is, that he is sober, and you are drunk.
“Upon that subject we will (if you like) be silent. You might only say what would distress me without answering any purpose whatever; and I have too many obligations to you to answer you in the same style. So that you should recollect that you have also that advantage over me. I hope to see you soon.
“I suppose you know that they said at Venice, that I was arrested at Bologna as a Carbonaro — story about as true as their usual conversation. Moore has been here — I lodged him in my house at Venice, and went to see him daily; but I could not at that time quit La Mira entirely. You and I were not very far from meeting in Switzerland. With my best respects to Mrs. Hoppner, believe me ever and truly, &c.
“P.S. Allegra is here in good health and spirits — I shall keep her with me till I go to England, which will perhaps be in the spring. It has just occurred to me that you may not perhaps like to undertake the office of judge between Mr. E. and your humble servant. — Of course, as Mr. Liston (the comedian, not the ambassador) says, ‘it is all hoptional;’ but I have no other resource. I do not wish to find him a rascal, if it can be avoided, and would rather think him guilty of carelessness than cheating. The case is this — can I, or not, give him a character for honesty? — It is not my intention to continue him in my service.”
LETTER 342. TO MR. HOPPNER.
“October 25. 1819.
“You need not have made any excuses about the letter: I never said but that you might, could, should, or would have reason. I merely described my own state of inaptitude to listen to it at that time, and in those circumstances. Besides, you did not speak from your own authority — but from what you said you had heard. Now my blood boils to hear an Italian speaking ill of another Italian, because, though they lie in particular, they speak truth in general by speaking ill at all; — and although they know that they are trying and wishing to lie, they do not succeed, merely because they can say nothing so bad of each other, that it may not, and must not be true, from the atrocity of their long debased national character.
“With regard to E., you will perceive a most irregular, extravagant account, without proper documents to support it. He demanded an increase of salary, which made me suspect him; he supported an outrageous extravagance of expenditure, and did not like the dismission of the cook; he never complained of him — as in duty bound — at the time of his robberies. I can only say, that the house expense is now under one half of what it then was, as he himself admits. He charged for a comb eighteen francs, — the real price was eight. He charged a passage from Fusina for a person named Iambelli, who paid it herself, as she will prove if necessary. He fancies, or asserts himself, the victim of a domestic complot against him; — accounts are accounts — prices are prices; — let him make out a fair detail. I am not prejudiced against him — on the contrary, I supported him against the complaints of his wife, and of his former master, at a time when I could have crushed him like an earwig; and if he is a scoundrel, he is the greatest of scoundrels, an ungrateful one. The truth is, probably, that he thought I was leaving Venice, and determined to make the most of it. At present he keeps bringing in account after account, though he had always money in hand — as I believe you know my system was never to allow longer than a week’s bills to run. Pray read him this letter — I desire nothing to be concealed against which he may defend himself.
“Pray how is your little boy? and how are you? — I shall be up in Venice very soon, and we will be bilious together. I hate the place and all that it inherits.
“Yours,” &c.
LETTER 343. TO MR. HOPPNER.
“October 28. 1819.
“I have to thank you for your letter, and your compliment to Don Juan. I said nothing to you about it, understanding that it is a sore subject with the moral reader, and has been the cause of a great row; but I am glad you like it. I will say nothing about the shipwreck, except that I hope you think it is as nautical and technical as verse could admit in the octave measure.
“The poem has not sold well, so Murray says— ‘but the best judges, &c. say, &c.’ so says that worthy man. I have never seen it in print. The third Canto is in advance about one hundred stanzas; but the failure of the two first has weakened my estro, and it will neither be so good as the two former, nor completed, unless I get a little more riscaldato in its behalf. I understand the outcry was beyond every thing. — Pretty cant for people who read Tom Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Bath Guide, and Ariosto, and Dryden, and Pope — to say nothing of Little’s Poems! Of course I refer to the morality of these works, and not to any pretension of mine to compete with them in any thing but decency. I hope yours is the Paris edition, and that you did not pay the London price. I have seen neither except in the newspapers.
“Pray make my respects to Mrs. H., and take care of your little boy. All my household have the fever and ague, except Fletcher, Allegra, and mysen (as we used to say in Nottinghamshire), and the horses, and Mutz, and Moretto. In the beginning of November, perhaps sooner, I expect to have the pleasure of seeing you. To-day I got drenched by a thunder-storm, and my horse and groom too, and his horse all bemired up to the middle in a cross-road. It was summer at noon, and at five we were bewintered; but the lightning was sent perhaps to let us know that the summer was not yet over. It is queer weather for the 27th October.
“Yours,” &c.
LETTER 344. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Venice, October 29. 1819.
“Yours of the 15th came yesterday. I am sorry that you do not mention a large letter addressed to your care for Lady Byron, from me, at Bologna, two months ago. Pray tell me, was this letter received and forwarded?
“You say nothing of the vice-consulate for the Ravenna patrician, from which it is to be inferred that the thing will not be done.
“I had written about a hundred stanzas of a third Canto to Don Juan, but the reception of the two first is no encouragement to you nor me to proceed.
“I had also written about 600 lines of a poem, the Vision (or Prophecy) of Dante, the subject a view of Italy in the ages down to the present — supposing Dante to speak in his own person, previous to his death, and embracing all topics in the way of prophecy, like Lycophron’s Cassandra; but this and the other are both at a stand-still for the present.
“I gave Moore, who is gone to Rome, my Life in MS., in seventy-eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816. But this I put into his hands for his care, as he has some other MSS. of mine — a Journal kept in 1814, &c. Neither are for publication during my life; but when I am cold you may do what you please. In the mean time, if you like to read them you may, and show them to anybody you like — I care not.
“The Life is Memoranda, and not Confessions I have left out all my loves (except in a general way), and many other of the most important things (because I must not compromise other people), so that it is like the play of Hamlet— ‘the part of Hamlet omitted by particular desire.’ But you will find many opinions, and some fun, with a detailed account of my marriage, and its consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such account, for I suppose we are all prejudiced.
“I have never read over this Life since it was written, so that I know not exactly what it may repeat or contain. Moore and I passed so
me merry days together.
“I probably must return for business, or in my way to America. Pray, did you get a letter for Hobhouse, who will have told you the contents? I understand that the Venezuelan commissioners had orders to treat with emigrants; now I want to go there. I should not make a bad South-American planter, and I should take my natural daughter, Allegra, with me, and settle. I wrote, at length, to Hobhouse, to get information from Perry, who, I suppose, is the best topographer and trumpeter of the new republicans. Pray write.
“Yours ever.
“P.S. Moore and I did nothing but laugh. He will tell you of ‘my whereabouts,’ and all my proceedings at this present; they are as usual. You should not let those fellows publish false ‘Don Juans;’ but do not put my name, because I mean to cut R —— ts up like a gourd, in the preface, if I continue the poem.”
LETTER 345. TO MR. HOPPNER.
“October 29. 1819.
“The Ferrara story is of a piece with all the rest of the Venetian manufacture, — you may judge. I only changed horses there since I wrote to you, after my visit in June last. ‘Convent’ and ‘carry off’, quotha! and ‘girl.’ I should like to know who has been carried off, except poor dear me. I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war; but as to the arrest and its causes, one is as true as the other, and I can account for the invention of neither. I suppose it is some confusion of the tale of the F * * and of Me. Guiccioli, and half a dozen more; but it is useless to unravel the web, when one has only to brush it away. I shall settle with Master E. who looks very blue at your in-decision, and swears that he is the best arithmetician in Europe; and so I think also, for he makes out two and two to be five.
“You may see me next week. I have a horse or two more (five in all), and I shall repossess myself of Lido, and I will rise earlier, and we will go and shake our livers over the beach, as heretofore, if you like — and we will make the Adriatic roar again with our hatred of that now empty oyster-shell, without its pearl, the city of Venice.
“Murray sent me a letter yesterday: the impostors have published two new third Cantos of Don Juan; — the devil take the impudence of some blackguard bookseller or other therefor! Perhaps I did not make myself understood; he told me the sale had been great, 1200 out of 1500 quarto, I believe (which is nothing after selling 13,000 of the Corsair in one day); but that the ‘best judges,’ &c. had said it was very fine, and clever, and particularly good English, and poetry, and all those consolatory things, which are not, however, worth a single copy to a bookseller: and as to the author, of course I am in a d —— ned passion at the bad taste of the times, and swear there is nothing like posterity, who, of course, must know more of the matter than their grandfathers. There has been an eleventh commandment to the women not to read it, and, what is still more extraordinary, they seem not to have broken it. But that can be of little import to them, poor things, for the reading or non-reading a book will never * * * *.
“Count G. comes to Venice next week, and I am requested to consign his wife to him, which shall be done. What you say of the long evenings at the Mira, or Venice, reminds me of what Curran said to Moore:— ‘So I hear you have married a pretty woman, and a very good creature, too — an excellent creature. Pray — um! how do you pass your evenings?’ It is a devil of a question that, and perhaps as easy to answer with a wife as with a mistress.
“If you go to Milan, pray leave at least a Vice-Consul — the only vice that will ever be wanting in Venice. D’Orville is a good fellow. But you shall go to England in the spring with me, and plant Mrs. Hoppner at Berne with her relations for a few months. I wish you had been here (at Venice, I mean, not the Mira) when Moore was here — we were very merry and tipsy. He hated Venice, by the way, and swore it was a sad place.
“So Madame Albrizzi’s death is in danger — poor woman! Moore told me that at Geneva they had made a devil of a story of the Fornaretta:— ‘Young lady seduced! — subsequent abandonment! — leap into the Grand Canal!’ — and her being in the ‘hospital of fous in consequence!’ I should like to know who was nearest being made ‘fou,’ and be d —— d to them I Don’t you think me in the interesting character of a very ill used gentleman? I hope your little boy is well. Allegrina is flourishing like a pomegranate blossom. Yours,” &c.
LETTER 346. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Venice, November 8. 1819.
“Mr. Hoppner has lent me a copy of ‘Don Juan,’ Paris edition, which he tells me is read in Switzerland by clergymen and ladies with considerable approbation. In the second Canto, you must alter the 49th stanza to
“’Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down Over the waste of waters, like a veil Which if withdrawn would but disclose the frown Of one whose hate is mask’d but to assail; Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown, And grimly darkled o’er their faces pale And the dim desolate deep; twelve days had Fear Been their familiar, and now Death was here.
“I have been ill these eight days with a tertian fever, caught in the country on horseback in a thunderstorm. Yesterday I had the fourth attack: the two last were very smart, the first day as well as the last being preceded by vomiting. It is the fever of the place and the season. I feel weakened, but not unwell, in the intervals, except headach and lassitude.
“Count Guiccioli has arrived in Venice, and has presented his spouse (who had preceded him two months for her health and the prescriptions of Dr. Aglietti) with a paper of conditions, regulations of hours and conduct, and morals, &c. &c. &c. which he insists on her accepting, and she persists in refusing. I am expressly, it should seem, excluded by this treaty, as an indispensable preliminary; so that they are in high dissension, and what the result may be I know not, particularly as they are consulting friends.
“To-night, as Countess Guiccioli observed me poring over ‘Don Juan,’ she stumbled by mere chance on the 137th stanza of the first Canto, and asked me what it meant. I told her, ‘Nothing — but “your husband is coming.”’ As I said this in Italian, with some emphasis, she started up in a fright, and said, ‘Oh, my God, is he coming?’ thinking it was her own, who either was or ought to have been at the theatre. You may suppose we laughed when she found out the mistake. You will be amused, as I was; — it happened not three hours ago.
“I wrote to you last week, but have added nothing to the third Canto since my fever, nor to ‘The Prophecy of Dante.’ Of the former there are about 100 octaves done; of the latter about 500 lines — perhaps more. Moore saw the third Juan, as far as it then went. I do not know if my fever will let me go on with either, and the tertian lasts, they say, a good while. I had it in Malta on my way home, and the malaria fever in Greece the year before that. The Venetian is not very fierce, but I was delirious one of the nights with it, for an hour or two, and, on my senses coming back, found Fletcher sobbing on one side of the bed, and La Contessa Guiccioli weeping on the other; so that I had no want of attendance. I have not yet taken any physician, because, though I think they may relieve in chronic disorders, such as gout and the like, &c. &c. &c. (though they can’t cure them) — just as surgeons are necessary to set bones and tend wounds — yet I think fevers quite out of their reach, and remediable only by diet and nature.
“I don’t like the taste of bark, but I suppose that I must take it soon.
“Tell Rose that somebody at Milan (an Austrian, Mr. Hoppner says) is answering his book. William Bankes is in quarantine at Trieste. I have not lately heard from you. Excuse this paper: it is long paper shortened for the occasion. What folly is this of Carlile’s trial? why let him have the honours of a martyr? it will only advertise the books in question. Yours, &c.
“P.S. As I tell you that the Guiccioli business is on the eve of exploding in one way or the other, I will just add that, without attempting to influence the decision of the Contessa, a good deal depends upon it. If she and her husband make it up, you will, perhaps, see me in England sooner than you expect. If not, I shall retire with her to France or America, change my name, a
nd lead a quiet provincial life. All this may seem odd, but I have got the poor girl into a scrape; and as neither her birth, nor her rank, nor her connections by birth or marriage are inferior to my own, I am in honour bound to support her through. Besides, she is a very pretty woman — ask Moore — and not yet one and twenty.
“If she gets over this and I get over my tertian, I will, perhaps, look in at Albemarle Street, some of these days, en passant to Bolivar.”
LETTER 347. TO MR. BANKES.
“Venice, November 20. 1819.
“A tertian ague which has troubled me for some time, and the indisposition of my daughter, have prevented me from replying before to your welcome letter. I have not been ignorant of your progress nor of your discoveries, and I trust that you are no worse in health from your labours. You may rely upon finding every body in England eager to reap the fruits of them; and as you have done more than other men, I hope you will not limit yourself to saying less than may do justice to the talents and time you have bestowed on your perilous researches. The first sentence of my letter will have explained to you why I cannot join you at Trieste. I was on the point of setting out for England (before I knew of your arrival) when my child’s illness has made her and me dependent on a Venetian Proto-Medico.
