212520_The_Adve ... _Way_Through_The_World.pdf - OUDL Home

xl PHILIP
Here is a passage from a letter to his mother :—
"July 5,1862.
" I can tell you one person of the congregation was very thankful
for our preservation, and all the blessings of this life which have
fallen to us. Think of the beginning of the story of the ' Little
Sister' in the 'Shabby Genteel Story' twenty years ago, and the
wife ill, and the publisher refusing me £15, who owed me £I3,10s.,
and The Times, to which I applied for a little more than five guineas
for a week's work, refusing to give me more—and all that money
difficulty ended, God be praised, and an old gentleman sitting in a
fine house like the hero at the end of the story !
" The actual increase of health and comfort since we got into the
Palazzo is quite curious. I am certainly much better in body. . . .
" I wonder shall we make out the Petersburg journey. I have
a fancy for it, because it will pay itself in a couple of papers that
will be as easy to write as letters, and won't wear and tear the
brains. Then we must do some more work. I think of the story
which I began twenty years ago—and then and then—and etc. . . .
"Did you read about poor Buckle when he got the fever at
Damascus, crying out, 'O my book, my book.' I don't care enough
about mine to be disquieted when that day comes. Shall I live to
do the big history ? * Who knows ? But I think I shall like to
work on it, if the time is left me. God bless you, dear old mother.
I don't write by post, but am writing through the printer all
day long." . . .
" Philip " did not have the success it deserved. To me it seems
to contain some of the wisest and most beautiful things my father
ever wrote.
I can remember hearing him say how much of his own early
life was written down in its pages.
Among the letters which Mr. George Smith has given me, there
is this passage :—
"July 9,1861
"Philip is unfortunately going into poverty and struggle, but
this can't be helped ; and as he will, entre nous, take pretty much
* In an undated note to Mr. George Smith my father wrote : " Come and
talk to me about THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE," but the project
went no further.