t to think of....

I have heard from Norwich, and find I shall have less to prepare than I
expected for two nights, Friday and Saturday. I shall act at Yarmouth,
and repeat what I play at Norwich.

Mrs. Jameson has taken rooms in this house, I find, and comes here
to-night, and I shall be very glad of some of her company.... Certainly
London, much as I hate it, agrees better with me than St. Leonard's;
either the air or the water there are bad for me. I am much better than
when I was there....

God bless you. Kiss your Good Angel for me--how much I love and revere
her, and how I rejoice that you have such an inestimable friend and
companion! I have been very happy with you, my dear and good and kind
friends.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

29 KING STREET, ST. JAMES'S, Saturday, January 15th.

I dined at home yesterday, dear Hal, and spent the evening in reading
"Vanity Fair." It is extremely clever, but hitherto I do not like it
very much. I began it at Bannisters last Winter, and then I did not like
it, wonderfully clever as I thought it. Lord Ellesmere says it is better
than anything of the kind (novels of manners and morals) since Fielding;
but as far as I have yet gone in it, it seems to me to have one very
disagreeable quality--the most prominent people in it are thorough
worldlings, and though their selfishnesses, and meannesses, and
dirtinesses, and pettinesses, are admirably portrayed--to the very life,
indeed--I do not much rejoice in their company. It is only within the
last year that I have been able to _get through_ "Gil Blas," for the
same reason; and though I did get through, I never got _over_ the
odiousness of the people I lived with during the four volumes of his
experiences of life.

Is not Shakespeare _true_ to human nature? Why does he never disgust one
with it? Why does one feel comparatively clean in spirit after living
with his creatures? Some of them are as bad as real men and women ever
were, but some of them are as good as real men and women ever are; and
one does not lose one's respect for one's kind while reading what he
writes of it; and his coarse utterances, the speech of his time, hurt
one comparatively little in the midst of his noble and sweet
thoughts....

I am going with Henry Greville to Drury Lane to-night, and perhaps he
will eat his dinner here. He has a perfect mania