I have devoted a couple of hours this evening to going very carefully
over your paper (which I had read before) and to endeavouring to bring
it closer, and to lighten it, and to give it that sort of compactness
which a habit of composition, and of disciplining one's thoughts like a
regiment, and of studying the art of putting each soldier into his right
place, may have gradually taught me to think necessary. I hope, when you
see it in print, you will not be alarmed by my use of the pruning-knife.
I have tried to exercise it with the utmost delicacy and discretion, and
to suggest to you, especially towards the end, how this sort of writing
(regard being had to the size of the journal in which it appears)
requires to be compressed, and is made pleasanter by compression. This
all reads very solemnly, but only because I want you to read it (I mean
the article) with as loving an eye as I have truly tried to touch it
with a loving and gentle hand. I propose to call it "My Mahogany
Friend." The other name is too long, and I think not attractive. Until I
go to the office to-morrow and see what is actually in hand, I am not
certain of the number in which it will appear, but Georgy shall write on
Monday and tell you. We are always a fortnight in advance of the public
or the mechanical work could not be done. I think there are many things
in it that are _very pretty_. The Katie part is particularly well done.
If I don't say more, it is because I have a heavy sense, in all cases,
of the responsibility of encouraging anyone to enter on that thorny
track, where the prizes are so few and the blanks so many; where----
But I won't write you a sermon. With the fire going out, and the first
shadows of a new story hovering in a ghostly way about me (as they
usually begin to do, when I have finished an old one), I am in danger of
doing the heavy business, and becoming a heavy guardian, or something of
that sort, instead of the light and airy Joe.
So good-night, and believe that you may always trust me, and never find
a grim expression (towards you) in any that I wear.
Ever yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. David Roberts, R.A.]
_February 21st, 1851._
Oh my dear Roberts, if you knew the trouble we have had and the money we
pay for Drury Lane for one night for the benefit, you would never dream
of it for the dinner. _There isn't possibility of getting a theatre._
I will do all I can for your charming little daughter, and hope to
squeeze in half-a-dozen ladies at the last; but we must not breathe the
idea or we shall not dare to execute it, there will be such an outcry.
Faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]