e difficult subjects, and I have certainly not at
present the proper leisure or opportunities for doing so, and therefore
but for your last letter I should say it was a _shame_ to speak upon
them. But since the vague suggestions which arise in my mind upon these
only important matters comfort and are of any use to you, then, my
beloved friend, they have a value and virtue, and I shall no longer feel
reluctant to utter them.

I have written this last page since my return from Covent Garden
Theatre, where I have been enacting the dying scene of Queen Katharine,
and doing what I am as sorry for as I can be for anything of that kind.

At the conclusion of my performance the audience called for me, but I
was seized with a perfect nervous terror at the idea of going on, and
left the house as quickly as possible.

All the other actors will be called for, and will go on, and I shall
incur unpleasant comments and probably have very untrue motives
attributed to me for having, as it must appear, ungraciously withdrawn
myself from the public call. This does not trouble me very deeply, but I
am sorry for it because I am afraid it will be misinterpreted and
noticed, and considered disrespectful, which it was not....

Give my dear love to Dorothy. I hope to be with you on the 3d of
January.

I am ever as ever yours,
FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET, Tuesday, 8th.

Now I must lump my answer to you, my dearest Hal--a thing that I hate
doing; but here are three unanswered letters of yours on my table, and I
shall never get through the payment of them if one letter may not do for
the three, for every day brings fresh claims of this sort, and I feel a
kind of smothering sensation as they accumulate round me, such as might
attend one's gradually sinking into a well: what though Truth were at
the bottom--if one was drowned before one got to her?...

Send the pamphlet on "Bread" to Lenox, and write to Elizabeth Sedgwick
about it--that is pure humanity, and I see you do not think I shall copy
the recipe and measurements correctly. (It's pouring with rain, and
thundering as loud as it knows how in England)....

My spirits are fair enough, though the first evening I spent alone here,
after I came back, tried them a little, and I had a cowardly impulse to
rush in next door [my friends the Miss Hamiltons, Mrs. F