ionately yours,
FANNY.

CLARGES STREET, Monday, May 3rd, 1841.

Thank you, dearest H----, for your prompt compliance with my request
about your travelling information.... About the daguerreotype, you know,
I should have precisely the same objection to taking another person's
appointed time that I have to mine being appropriated by somebody else;
but Emily has made another appointment for me: she had made one for the
day on which my sister arrived, which rather provoked me; but I was
resigned, nevertheless, because I had told her I would go at any time
she chose to name. She let me off, however; not, I believe, from any
compassion for me, but because my father had set his heart upon my going
with him to the private view of the new exhibition, just a quarter of an
hour after the time I was to have been at the daguerreotypist's. So to
the gallery I went, an hour after Adelaide had returned from Italy; as
you know, I had not seen her for several years (indeed, not since my
marriage). And so to the gallery I went, with buzzing in my ears and
dizziness in my eyes, and an hysterical choking, which made me afraid to
open my lips. Why my father was so anxious to go to this exhibition I
hardly know; but I went to please him, and came back to please myself,
without having an idea of a single picture in the whole collection.
Emily has now made another appointment for me, or rather for you, early
on Wednesday morning, and I hope we shall accomplish something at last.

Now you want to know something about Adelaide. There she sits in the
next room at the piano, singing sample-singing, and giving a taste of
her quality to Charles Greville, who, you know, is an influential person
in all sorts of matters, and to whom Henry has written about her merits,
and probable acceptability with the fashionable musical world. She is
singing most beautifully, and the passionate words of love, longing,
grief, and joy burst through that utterance of musical sound, and light
up her whole countenance with a perfect blaze of emotion. As for me, the
tears stream over my face all the time, and I can hardly prevent myself
from sobbing aloud.... She has grown very large, I think almost as large
as I remember my mother; she looks very well and very handsome, and has
acquired something completely foreign in her tone and manner, and even
accent.... She complains