I will have, if you please, three dozen of the extraordinary champagne;
and I am much obliged to you for recollecting me.
I ought not to be sorry to hear of your abdication, but I am,
notwithstanding, most heartily and sincerely sorry, for my own sake and
the sake of thousands, who may now go and whistle for a theatre--at
least, such a theatre as you gave them; and I do now in my heart believe
that for a long and dreary time that exquisite delight has passed away.
If I may jest with my misfortunes, and quote the Portsmouth critic of
Mr. Crummles's company, I say that: "As an exquisite embodiment of the
poet's visions and a realisation of human intellectuality, gilding with
refulgent light our dreamy moments, and laying open a new and magic
world before the mental eye, the drama is gone--perfectly gone."
With the same perverse and unaccountable feeling which causes a
heart-broken man at a dear friend's funeral to see something
irresistibly comical in a red-nosed or one-eyed undertaker, I receive
your communication with ghostly facetiousness; though on a moment's
reflection I find better cause for consolation in the hope that,
relieved from your most trying and painful duties, you will now have
leisure to return to pursuits more congenial to your mind, and to move
more easily and pleasantly among your friends. In the long catalogue of
the latter, I believe that there is not one prouder of the name, or more
grateful for the store of delightful recollections you have enabled him
to heap up from boyhood, than,
My dear Macready,
Yours always faithfully.
[Sidenote: Mr. Thomas Mitton.]
NEW LONDON INN, EXETER,
_Wednesday Morning, March 6th, 1839._