I want you--you being quite well again, as I trust you are, and resolute
to come to Paris--so to arrange your order of march as to let me know
beforehand when you will come, and how long you will stay. We owe Scribe
and his wife a dinner, and I should like to pay the debt when you are
with us. Ary Scheffer too would be delighted to see you again. If I
could arrange for a certain day I would secure them. We cannot afford
(you and I, I mean) to keep much company, because we shall have to look
in at a theatre or so, I daresay!
It would suit my work best, if I could keep myself clear until Monday,
the 7th of April. But in case that day should be too late for the
beginning of your brief visit with a deference to any other engagements
you have in contemplation, then fix an earlier one, and I will make
"Little Dorrit" curtsy to it. My recent visit to London and my having
only just now come back have thrown me a little behindhand; but I hope
to come up with a wet sail in a few days.
You should have seen the ruins of Covent Garden Theatre. I went in the
moment I got to London--four days after the fire. Although the audience
part and the stage were so tremendously burnt out that there was not a
piece of wood half the size of a lucifer-match for the eye to rest on,
though nothing whatever remained but bricks and smelted iron lying on a
great black desert, the theatre still looked so wonderfully like its
old self grown gigantic that I never saw so strange a sight. The wall
dividing the front from the stage still remained, and the iron
pass-doors stood ajar in an impossible and inaccessible frame. The
arches that supported the stage were there, and the arches that
supported the pit; and in the centre of the latter lay something like a
Titanic grape-vine that a hurricane had pulled up by the roots, twisted,
and flung down there; this was the great chandelier. Gye had kept the
men's wardrobe at the top of the house over the great entrance
staircase; when the roof fell in it came down bodily, and all that part
of the ruins was like an old Babylonic pavement, bright rays tesselating
the black ground, sometimes in pieces so large that I could make out the
clothes in the "Trovatore."
I should run on for a couple of hours if I had to describe the spectacle
as I saw it, wherefore I will immediately muzzle myself. All here unite
in kindest loves to dear Miss Macready, to Katie, Lillie, Benvenuta, my
godson, and the noble Johnny. We are charmed to hear such happy accounts
of Willy and Ned, and send our loving remembrance to them in the next
letters. All Parisian novelties you shall see and hear for yourself.
Ever, my dearest Macready,
Your affectionate Friend.
P.S.--Mr. F.'s aunt sends her defiant respects.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]
49, AVENUE DES CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS,
_Thursday Night, March 27th, 1856 (after post time)._