adelphia, on our
way to Washington, and it is Thursday, the 3d of March.... It has
been matter of serious regret to me that I have not, from the very
first day of my becoming a worker for wages, looked more into the
details of my earnings and spendings. I have felt this particularly
lately from circumstances relative to V----'s position, which is a
very sad one, from which I have been very anxious to relieve
her.... All I know at present is, that since we have been here in
America our earnings have already been sufficient to enable us to
live in tolerably decent comfort on the Continent.... Do you know,
dearest H----, that it is not impossible that I may never return to
England to reside there. See it again, I will, please God to grant
me life and eyes, but the state of my father's property in Covent
Garden is such that it seems more than likely that he may never be
able to return to England without risking the little which these
last toilsome years will have enabled him to earn for the support
of his own and my mother's old age. He will be compelled, in all
likelihood, to settle and die abroad, as my uncle John did, by the
liabilities of that ruinous possession of theirs, the first theater
of London. When first my father communicated this chance to me, and
expressed his determination, should the affairs of the theater
remain in their present situation, to buy a small farm in Normandy,
and go and live there, my heart sank terribly. This was very
different from my girlish dream of a life of lonely independence
among the Alps, or by the Mediterranean; and the idea of living
entirely out of England seems to me now very sad for all of us....
However, there are earth and skies out of England. What does Imogen
say?--

"I prithee think, there's livers out of Britain;"

and if God vouchsafe me my faculties, and I can bid farewell to
this life of distasteful toil, I have visions of studies and
pursuits which I think might make existence very happy in a farm in
Normandy, though such might not have been my own choice.... What
special inquiries did you wish me to make about General Washington?
I was, when at Washington, within fifteen miles of Mount Vernon,
his home and burying-place, but could not make time to go thither.
I have one of his autograph