_To Miss Henrietta Reubell._
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
December 31st, 1894.
Dear Miss Etta,
This is to wish you a brand-New Year, and to wish it very
affectionately--and to wish it of not more than usual length but of more
than usual fulness. I have had an unacknowledged letter from you longer
than is decorous. But I have shown you ere this that epistolary decorum
is a virtue I have ceased to pretend to. And during the last month I
have not pretended to any other virtue either--save an endless patience
and an heroic resignation, as I have been, and still am, alas, in the
sorry position of having in rehearsal a little play--3 acts--which is to
be produced on Saturday next, at the St. James's Theatre, as to which I
beg you heartily to indulge for me, about 8.30 o'clock on that evening,
in very fervent prayer. It is a little "romantic" play of which the
action is laid (in England) in the middle of the last century, and it
will be exquisitely mounted, dressed &c., and very creditably acted, as
things go here. But rehearsal is an _ecoeurment_ is the right
spelling] and one's need of heroic virtues infinite. I have been in the
breach daily for 4 weeks, and am utterly exhausted. To-night (the
theatre being closed for the week on purpose) is the first dress
rehearsal--which is here of course not a public, as in Paris, but an
intensely private function--all for me, _me prelassant dans mon
fauteuil_, alone, like the King of Bavaria at the opera. There are to be
three nights more of this, to give them ease in the wearing of their
clothes of a past time, and that, after the grind of the earlier work,
is rather amusing--as amusing as anything can be, for a man of taste and
sensibility, in the odious process of practical dramatic production. I
may have been meant for the Drama--God knows!--but I certainly wasn't
meant for the Theatre. C'est pour vous dire that I am much pressed and
am only sending you mes voeux tres-sinceres in a shabbily brief little
letter. There are a number of interesting things in your last to which I
want to respond. I send you also by post 3 or 4 miserable little (old)
views of Tunbridge Wells, which I have picked up in looking, at rare
leisure moments, for one good one for you. I haven't, alas, found that;
but I think I am on the track of it, and you shall have it as soon as it
turns up. Accept these meanwhile as a little stop-gap and a symbol of my
New Year's greeting.... I hope you are in good case and good hope. We
are having here an excellent winter, almost fogless and generally
creditable. Write me a little word of hope and help for the 5th; I shall
regard it as a happy influence for yours forever,