I received, with great delight, your _excellent_ letter of this morning.
Do not regard this as my answer to it. It is merely to say that I have
been at Bradbury and Evans's all day, and have barely time to write more
than that I _will_ write to-morrow. I arrived about seven on Saturday
evening, and rushed into the arms of Mac and Forster. Both of them send
their best love to you and Georgy, with a heartiness not to be
described.
The little book is now, as far as I am concerned, all ready. One cut of
Doyle's and one of Leech's I found so unlike my ideas, that I had them
both to breakfast with me this morning, and with that winning manner
which you know of, got them with the highest good humour to do both
afresh. They are now hard at it. Stanfield's readiness, delight, wonder
at my being pleased with what he has done is delicious. Mac's
frontispiece is charming. The book is quite splendid; the expenses will
be very great, I have no doubt.
Anybody who has heard it has been moved in the most extraordinary
manner. Forster read it (for dramatic purposes) to A'Beckett. He cried
so much and so painfully, that Forster didn't know whether to go on or
stop; and he called next day to say that any expression of his feeling
was beyond his power. But that he believed it, and felt it to be--I
won't say what.
As the reading comes off to-morrow night, I had better not despatch my
letters to you until _Wednesday's_ post. I must close to save this
(heartily tired I am, and I dine at Gore House to-day), so with love to
Georgy, Mamey, Katey, Charley, Wally, and Chickenstalker, ever, believe
me,
Yours, with true affection.
P.S.--If you had seen Macready last night, undisguisedly sobbing and
crying on the sofa as I read, you would have felt, as I did, what a
thing it is to have power.