Mrs. Beverley, but my time is so taken up with "an infinite
deal of nothing" that I have not had an hour to call my own till
this evening, and this evening is my only unengaged one for nearly
three weeks to come.

The papers will probably have set your mind at ease as to the
result of my appearance in "The Gamester;" but although they have
forestalled me in the sum total of the account, there are some
small details which may perhaps interest you, of which they can
give you no knowledge. I shall talk to you much of myself, dearest
H----, and hope it will not weary you; that precious little self is
just now so fully occupied with its own affairs that I have little
else to talk of. [I probably also felt much as our kind and most
comical friend Dessauer used, when he emphatically declared, "Mais,
je m'interesse extremement a ce qui me regarde."]

I do not think I ever spent a more miserable day than the one in
which I acted Mrs. Beverley for the first time. Stage nervousness,
my father and mother both tell me, increases instead of diminishing
with practice; and certainly, as far as my own limited experience
goes, I find it so. The first hazard, I should say, was not half so
fearful as the last; and though on the first night that I ever
stood upon the stage I thought I never could be more frightened in
my life, I find that with each new part my fear has augmented in
proportion as previous success would have rendered it more damaging
to fail. A stumble at starting would have been bad enough, and
might have bruised me; but a fall from the height to which I have
been raised might break my neck, or at any rate cripple me for
life. I do not believe that to fail in a part would make me
individually unhappy for a moment; but so much of real importance
to others, so much of the most serious interests and so much of the
feelings of those most dear to me, is involved in the continuance
of my good fortune, that I am in every way justified in dreading a
failure. These considerations, and their not unnatural result, a
violent headache and side-ache, together with no very great liking
for the part (interesting as it is, it is so perfectly prosaic),
had made me so nervous that the whole of the day was spent in fits
of crying; and when the curtain drew up, and I was "d