y was too late for the train, and
we posted down with four horses in order to save our time, which on the
great Ascot day was not, as you may suppose, a very economical
proceeding....

Good-bye, dear. I will answer all your questions about "The Hunchback"
another time.

Ever yours,
FANNIE.

HARLEY STREET, June 12th, 1842.
MY DEAREST HAL,

... I am now going to answer your various questions to the best of my
ability. You wanted to know how I felt at acting "The Hunchback" again.
Why, so horribly nervous the first night that the chair shook under me
while my hair was being dressed. I trembled to such a degree from head
to foot, and the rustling of the curl-papers as the man twisted them in
my hair almost drove me distracted, for it sounded like a forest
cracking and rattling in a storm. After the performance, my limbs ached
as if I had been beaten across them with an iron bar, and I could
scarcely stand or support myself for exhaustion and fatigue. This,
however, was only the first night, and I suppose proceeded from the
painful uncertainty I felt as to whether I had not utterly forgotten how
to act at all. This one representation over, I had neither fright,
nervousness, nor the slightest fatigue, and it is singular enough that
no recollections or associations whatever of past times were awakened by
the performance. I was fully engrossed by the endeavor to do the part
as well as I could, and, except in the particular of copying, as well as
I could recollect it, my dress of former days, the Julia of nine years
ago did not once present herself to my thoughts. The first time I played
it, I rather think I was worse than formerly, but after that probably
much the same....

How does this dreadfully hot weather agree with you, my dear? For my own
part, I am parboiled and stupid beyond all expression. I hate heat
always and everywhere, and it seems to me that in our damp climate it is
even more oppressive than under the scorching skies of August in
Pennsylvania. However, of that I won't be sure, for the present is, with
me, always better or worse than the absent.

I think I have nothing more to tell you about "The Hunchback." ...
Beyond doing it as well as I could, I cared very little about it; it
seemed a sort of routine business, just as it used to be, except for the
inevitable unwhol