your mind, bids me thank you for the kind things you say of her, at
the same time that she says, "though they are undeserved, she is
thankful for the affection that dictates them." She is excellent.
You bid me tell you of my father, and how his health and spirits
continue to struggle against his exertions and anxieties: tolerably
well, thank God! I sometimes think they have the properties of that
palm tree which is said to grow under the pressure of immense
weights. He looks very well, and, except the annoyances of his
position in the theater, has rather less cause for depression than
for some time past. Though we have not yet obtained our "decree,"
we understand that the Lord Chancellor says openly that we shall
get it, so that uncertainty of the issue no longer aggravates the
wearisome delays of this unlucky appeal.... I need not tell you
what my feeling about acting Queen Katharine is; you, who know how
conscious I am of my own deficiencies for such an undertaking, will
easily conceive my distress at having such a task assigned me.
Dall, who entirely agrees with me about it, wishes me to
remonstrate upon the subject, but that I will not do. I am in that
theater to earn my living by serving its interests, and if I was
desired to act Harlequin, for those two purposes, should feel bound
to do so. But I cannot help thinking the management short-sighted.
I think their real interest, as far as I am concerned, which they
overlook for some immediate tangible advantage, is not to destroy
my popularity by putting me into parts which I must play ill, and
not to take from my future career characters which require physical
as well as mental maturity, and which would be my natural resources
when I no longer become Juliet and her youthful sisters of the
drama. But of course they know their own affairs, and I am not the
manager of the theater. Those who have its direction, I suppose,
make the best use they can of their instruments.

[My performance of Queen Katharine was not condemned as an absolute
failure only because the public in general didn't care about it, and the
friends and well-wishers of the theater were determined not to consider
it one. But as I myself remember it, it deserved to be called nothing
else; it was a school-girl's performance, tame, feeble, and ineffective,
enti