THE LATE MR. ODGER.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.1 SIR,—I have no sympathy whatever with Professor Beesly's suspicions of the grounds of your coldness towards my friend, Mr. Odger, but I certainly agree with him in thinking the latter part of your article not only cold, but unjust. I allude to the part in which you dwelt on the bitterness which you said Mr. Odger was always expressing about his Parliamentary defeats. It is true, you introduced it by a phrase about his not being given to repining, but that phrase could hardly counteract the effect of your allusions on men who did not know Mr. Odger.
Now, having seen a great deal of him during the last years of his life, I must say that nothing struck me more than his great good-humour and absence of morbid bitterness, through attacks of the most vulgar and brutal kind. I do not mean that he did not feel them at the time, but I do assert that they did not dwell on his mind in the way in which your words would lead people to suppose. I fully recognised the generous readiness of the Spectator to take Mr. Odger's part, while other journals were abusing him in his life-time, but for that very reason, I regret that your zeal for sincerity and impartiality should have led you to be unjust, at a time when injustice is peculiarly painful to his friends.—I am, Sir, &c., Eland House, Hampstead, March 19. C. E. AlAunicE.
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