You know all the news, and you know I love you; so I no more know why I
write than I do why I "come round" after the play to shake hands with
you in your dressing-room. I say come, as if you were at this present
moment the lessee of Drury Lane, and had ---- with a long face on one
hand, ---- elaborately explaining that everything in creation is a
joint-stock company on the other, the inimitable B. by the fire, in
conversation with ----. Well-a-day! I see it all, and smell that
extraordinary compound of odd scents peculiar to a theatre, which bursts
upon me when I swing open the little door in the hall, accompanies me as
I meet perspiring supers in the narrow passage, goes with me up the two
steps, crosses the stage, winds round the third entrance P.S. as I wind,
and escorts me safely into your presence, where I find you unwinding
something slowly round and round your chest, which is so long that no
man can see the end of it.
Oh that you had been at Clarence Terrace on Nina's birthday! Good God,
how we missed you, talked of you, drank your health, and wondered what
you were doing! Perhaps you are Falkland enough (I swear I suspect you
of it) to feel rather sore--just a little bit, you know, the merest
trifle in the world--on hearing that Mrs. Macready looked brilliant,
blooming, young, and handsome, and that she danced a country dance with
the writer hereof (Acres to your Falkland) in a thorough spirit of
becoming good humour and enjoyment. Now you don't like to be told that?
Nor do you quite like to hear that Forster and I conjured bravely; that
a plum-pudding was produced from an empty saucepan, held over a blazing
fire kindled in Stanfield's hat without damage to the lining; that a box
of bran was changed into a live guinea-pig, which ran between my
godchild's feet, and was the cause of such a shrill uproar and clapping
of hands that you might have heard it (and I daresay did) in America;
that three half-crowns being taken from Major Burns and put into a
tumbler-glass before his eyes, did then and there give jingling answers
to the questions asked of them by me, and knew where you were and what
you were doing, to the unspeakable admiration of the whole assembly.
Neither do you quite like to be told that we are going to do it again
next Saturday, with the addition of demoniacal dresses from the
masquerade shop; nor that Mrs. Macready, for her gallant bearing always,
and her best sort of best affection, is the best creature I know. Never
mind; no man shall gag me, and those are my opinions.
My dear Macready, the lecturing proposition is not to be thought of. I
have not the slightest doubt or hesitation in giving you my most
strenuous and decided advice against it. Looking only to its effect at
home, I am immovable in my conviction that the impression it would
produce would be one of failure, and a reduction of yourself to the
level of those who do the like here. To us who know the Boston names and
honour them, and who know Boston and like it (Boston is what I would
have the whole United States to be), the Boston requisition would be a
valuable document, of which you and your friends might be proud. But
those names are perfectly unknown to the public here, and would produce
not the least effect. The only thing known to the public here is, that
they ask (when I say "they" I mean the people) everybody to lecture. It
is one of the things I have ridiculed in "Chuzzlewit." Lecture you, and
you fall into the roll of Lardners, Vandenhoffs, Eltons, Knowleses,
Buckinghams. You are off your pedestal, have flung away your glass
slipper, and changed your triumphal coach into a seedy old pumpkin. I am
quite sure of it, and cannot express my strong conviction in language of
sufficient force.
"Puff-ridden!" why to be sure they are. The nation is a miserable
Sindbad, and its boasted press the loathsome, foul old man upon his
back, and yet they will tell you, and proclaim to the four winds for
repetition here, that they don't need their ignorant and brutal papers,
as if the papers could exist if they didn't need them! Let any two of
these vagabonds, in any town you go to, take it into their heads to make
you an object of attack, or to direct the general attention elsewhere,
and what avail those wonderful images of passion which you have been all
your life perfecting!
I have sent you, to the charge of our trusty and well-beloved Colden, a
little book I published on the 17th of December, and which has been a
most prodigious success--the greatest, I think, I have ever achieved. It
pleases me to think that it will bring you home for an hour or two, and
I long to hear you have read it on some quiet morning. Do they allow you
to be quiet, by-the-way? "Some of our most fashionable people, sir,"
denounced me awfully for liking to be alone sometimes.
Now that we have turned Christmas, I feel as if your face were directed
homewards, Macready. The downhill part of the road is before us now, and
we shall travel on to midsummer at a dashing pace; and, please Heaven, I
will be at Liverpool when you come steaming up the Mersey, with that red
funnel smoking out unutterable things, and your heart much fuller than
your trunks, though something lighter! If I be not the first Englishman
to shake hands with you on English ground, the man who gets before me
will be a brisk and active fellow, and even then need put his best leg
foremost. So I warn Forster to keep in the rear, or he'll be blown.
If you shall have any leisure to project and put on paper the outline of
a scheme for opening any theatre on your return, upon a certain list
subscribed, and on certain understandings with the actors, it strikes me
that it would be wise to break ground while you are still away. Of
course I need not say that I will see anybody or do anything--even to
the calling together of the actors--if you should ever deem it
desirable. My opinion is that our respected and valued friend Mr. ----
will stagger through another season, if he don't rot first. I understand
he is in a partial state of decomposition at this minute. He was very
ill, but got better. How is it that ---- always do get better, and
strong hearts are so easy to die?
Kate sends her tender love; so does Georgy, so does Charlie, so does
Mamey, so does Katey, so does Walter, so does the other one who is to be
born next week. Look homeward always, as we look abroad to you. God
bless you, my dear Macready.
Ever your affectionate Friend.
[Sidenote: Mr. Laman Blanchard.]