To trace and to mark these developments was, he assures us, one of the great pleasures of his life. “Certain details, certain characteristics, I have of course borrowed--as he who would mould a human face must needs have copied an eye, a nose, a chin from some existent model,--but beyond this I have not gone; nor indeed have I ever found, in all my experiences of life, that fiction ever suggests what has not been implanted unconsciously by memory--originality in the delineation of character being little more than a new combination of old materials derived from that source.”
‘Glencore’ being disposed of, its author planned out a new tale, going again to Ireland for his scenery and his characters. He took for his hero, or leading villain, John Sadlier,* the once famous banker and politician, who put an end to his own career in 1856 by committing suicide on Hampstead Heath. Lever did not attempt to keep closely to the true story of Sadlier, or to depict the man as he had lived and moved: he merely used incidents in his career and traits in his character, and as he warmed to his work Davenport Dunn bore but a slight resemblance to John Sadlier. By this time the novelist had all but abandoned the portrayal of comic personages,--‘Glencore’ harboured Billy Traynor, but Billy was only a faint echo of Mickey Free or Darby the Blast,--and ‘Davenport Dunn,’ though it was full of spirit, bristled with character sketches, and was packed with adventure, was on the whole a much graver and possibly a stronger performance than anything which had preceded it. The story appeared in the monthly part form, Phiz’s illustrations embellishing it.
* It is said that Sadlier was one of the models for Dickens’s Mr Merdle.--E. D.
Lever paid another visit to London in the spring of 1857: it was chiefly a business visit He wished to discuss his forthcoming novel with Chapman & Hall and with Phiz. While he was in London he received some disturbing news of his son (who was still idling in Ireland), and he was half inclined to cross the Irish Sea, but he found he had lingered too long in London--a city in which he always managed to accomplish more card-playing than was good for his health or his pocket,--so he hurried back to Florence and ‘Davenport Dunn.’ Although there is no evidence to bear out the conjecture, it is most likely that he endeavoured during this visit to England to further his cause as a prospective diplomatist. On the whole, 1857 was a comparatively uneventful year.