“Your letters forwarded to me from Rheineck arrived here to-day. I have only to say how perfectly I concur with you in all that has been done--anxiously hoping, of course, that a good issue may follow, but quite satisfied to await with patience for the event. M’Glashan’s conduct is indeed a puzzle. He received from me (at his own urgent request too) a MS. on the 18th May. It was part of a small vol. which he purposed to treat with me for.* Since then he has not even written to acknowledge the receipt, much less to discuss the terms I proposed for the work. Prior to that he and Orr [? intended] to pay me a visit. I replied expressing my perfect readiness to receive them. But nothing followed. I should now be greatly gratified at recovering my MS., and if you could obtain it for me, Robert Maxwell of Gardiner Street would give it to our old friend, John Maxwell, who has promised to spend some days here on his way back to Florence, where he resides. I have not as yet made--nor do I see any immediate hope of making--a new literary engagement for the New Year, books and booksellers being at a discount. If, then, I could, by any means, obtain a hold on my former books, I would at once set about a new and cheap edition.
“I am so near the Swiss frontier--at the Canton of Tessin--that I prefer making my post town there, where all newspapers are admitted freely. Address me, then, Poste Restante, Chiasso, Switzerland.”
“I send you herewith a letter received from Chapman this day. You will see by one expression--the same crucible--that he, too, is [alive] to the possibility of a reprint of my books himself. As to ‘Horace Templeton,’--which is now my only spec,--it is a secret--to be published without my name. I thereby receive a small sum, but I hazard no fame, and would willingly try if, under a new sobriquet, I could lay siege to a new public.
“Have you any reason to believe that £500 to £600 with my claim would be accepted [for the copyrights]? I am more than ever eager to recover them, because, during the reissue, I could lie by and yet have some means of living till better bookselling days. Above all, obtain my MS. from M’Glashan, for independently of his cavalier treatment of me, I have now, _viâ_ ‘Horace Templeton,’ a local habitation to accommodate my stray sheep withal. And this ‘Tyrol Tale’ will now do me good service. Send it, therefore, and with it will you send the pages of my story called ‘Carl Stelling, the Painter of Dresden,’ printed in the July number of the D. U. M., 1845? M’Glashan could give the sheet without destroying a number, but if not, buy one and tear it out. This also finds a lodging in the Hôtel Templeton.
