ndry plays of Shakespeare, sundry
American poems [which are very good], and old Captain John Smith's
quaint "History of Virginia." As fast as I gather my wits together
for any steady occupation, I am whisked off to some new place, and
do not recover from one journey before I have to take another. The
roads here shake one's body, soul, thoughts, opinions, and
principles all to pieces; I assure you they are wicked roads.

Our theater, Covent Garden, is, we understand, going to the dogs. I
cannot help it any more, that is certain, and feel about that as
about all things that have had their day--it must go. Taglioni is
like a dream, and you must not abuse Mademoiselle Mars to me. I
never saw her but twice--in "L'Ecole des Vieillards" and
"Valerie"--and I thought her perfection in both.... If I do not
leave off, you will be blind for the next fortnight with reading
this crossed letter. I wish you success most heartily in all you
undertake, and am truly and faithfully yours,

FANNY KEMBLE.

[Washington Irving was intimately acquainted with my father and mother,
and a most kind and condescending friend to me. He often told me that
when first he went to England, long before authorship or celebrity had
dawned upon him, he was a member of a New York commercial house, on
whose affairs he was sent to Europe. It was when he was a mere obscure
young man of business in London that he had been introduced to my
mother, whose cordial kindness to him in his foreign isolation seemed to
have made a profound impression on him; for when I knew him, in the days
of his great literary celebrity and social success, he often referred to
it with the warmest expressions of gratitude. I think, of all the
distinguished persons I have known, he was one of the least affected by
the adulation and admiration of society. He remained quite unchanged by
his extreme social popularity. Simple, unaffected, unconstrained,
genial, kindly, and good, he seemed so entirely to forget his own
celebrity, that one almost forgot it too in talking to him. I remember
his coming, the day after my first appearance at Covent Garden, to see
us, and congratulated my parents on the success of that terrible
experiment. I, who was always delighted to see him, ran to fetch the
pretty new watch I had received from my father the night before, and
displ