“I hope--but I scarcely have courage to assure myself--that you like ‘Cro-Martin.’ At the same time, I think its more reflective characters will please you, and I own I wrote it with due thought.
“It is just possible that events might bring the Magazine into the market. If so, there is nothing I’d make such an effort to obtain. It would be in my hands a property--a great one.
“Charley is dallying at Corfu, and anxiously hoping to see the Crimea. I tell him not to hurry: he’ll be in good time for the taking of Sebastopol--in ‘56 or ‘57.”
Early in September Lever received a pitiful letter from M’Glashan: “I am utterly ruined in health and fortune; they have given me a pittance to live on, but taken away the Magazine and all that I care to live for. You have always treated me generously and never made hard bargains with me. Now I hope you will look to yourself, and not give ‘Glencore’ away without being well and handsomely paid.”
“My contract for ‘Tiernay’ and ‘Carew’ was £20 a sheet, the copyright remaining mine, and my name not to be disclosed as author. These were terms conceded to M’Glashan out of personal regard to himself. So disadvantageous were they to me, that when pressing me to contribute my present tale of ‘Glencore’ M’Glashan said, ‘Make the arrangement as will suit and fairly reimburse you, and do in all respects what you think right between us.’ In this way, and without any more definite understanding, I began, nor have we to this hour any real contract between us.
“I want you to see Mr Wardlaw, and (amongst other inquiries) demand £2 per page--£32 per sheet--for ‘Glencore,’ copyright to be preserved to me.
“In your conversation with Wardlaw could you ascertain whether the present proprietors, whoever they are, might be disposed to treat with me for the editorship? You might suggest that such an arrangement would be very likely to meet liberal acceptance at my hands. The state of the Magazine when before under my management might be referred to for evidence of its success.”
“The deaths in Tuscany [from cholera] are reported at 700 a-day. I am not myself afraid of the disease, but I am more than usually anxious about my children.
“As to M’Glashan: the last letter said the Magazine had been reserved to him by some arrangement, and would, he hoped, yield him wherewithal to live on; but my impression is that the creditors have only done this in the prospect that his days are numbered, and not wishing to do anything like severity to a man so painfully placed.... Wardlaw, who encloses the proofs, says, ‘M’Glashan grows more and more helpless.’ I believe his malady is softening of the brain--and if so, incurable.”