During the following year, in addition to dispensary worries, Lever was seriously disturbed about the state of his health. Rheumatism assailed him, and his left arm (according to himself) was “like a dead man’s limb.” He consulted his former professor, Surgeon Cusack, who told him that probably he would have to abandon Portstewart, and seek a more genial winter climate. To Spencer he wrote in June:--
“Our prospects here are black enough. Mr Cromie and his party have, by an overwrought severity in manners and opinion, completely terrified all people from frequenting this as a watering-place, and we are now destitute of all society,--save a few widows and old maids come to live on small means and talk scandal. The complete desertion of the place by all people of means has rendered my occupation gone, and my once high and mighty functions might also--and must be--transmitted to some country apothecary. Partly from illness, and partly from the causes I have mentioned, I have scarcely done anything these five last months.”
During the summer, however, the sick man rallied. His spirits rose as he observed the little watering-place filling up once more. In August his report to Dublin was that Portstewart was fast becoming a paradise for the lodging-house keepers,--cottages fetching £15 to £20 a-month. He goes on to say that “about four thousand strangers are here--glad to get any accommodation--living in hovels and sleeping on the ground. There is a great deal of company-seeing--but all heavy dinners. No music, nor any pleasant people to chat to. I have been gradually getting more illegible,” he continues, “till I find the last of this letter resembling a Chaldean MS. I am ready to shout from the pain of my right elbow,--my horse fell and rolled over me, and in the endeavour to rise fell back upon me. Those who saw the occurrence thought I was killed on the spot.”
Presently he formed one of the most important acquaintanceships of his life. Amongst the many visitors to Portstewart was William Hamilton Maxwell, Rector of Balla, near Castlebar. Maxwell had published his ‘Stories of Waterloo, in 1829, and his ‘Wild Sports of the West’ in 1830. To Lever at this period Maxwell was a literary demigod. The two men exchanged views about Irish life and character, and Maxwell fired the dispensary doctor with a desire to beget a novel of adventure.