ree weary times we
dragged through it last night."--"That infernal E. forgets
everything."--"I plainly see that F. when nervous, which he is sure to
be, loses his memory. Moreover his asides are inaudible, even at Miss
Kelly's; and as regularly as I stop him to say them again, he exclaims
(with a face of agony) that 'he'll speak loud on the night,' as if
anybody ever did without doing it always!"--"G. not born for it at all,
and too innately conceited, I much fear, to do anything well. I thought
him better last night, but I would as soon laugh at a kitchen
poker."--"Fancy H. ten days after the casting of that farce, wanting
F.'s part therein! Having himself an excellent old man in it already,
and a quite admirable part in the other farce." From which it will
appear that my friend's office was not a sinecure, and that he was not,
as few amateur-managers have ever been, without the experiences of Peter
Quince. Fewer still, I suspect, have fought through them with such
perfect success, for the company turned out at last would have done
credit to any enterprise. They deserved the term applied to them by
Maclise, who had invented it first for Macready, on his being driven to
"star" in the provinces when his managements in London closed. They were
"splendid strollers."[143]

On Monday the 26th July we played at Manchester, and on Wednesday the
28th at Liverpool; the comedy being followed on the first night by _A
Good Night's Rest_ and _Turning the Tables_, and on the second by
_Comfortable Lodgings, or Paris in 1750_; and the receipts being, on the
first night L440 12_s._, and on the second, L463 8_s._ 6_d._ But though
the married members of the company who took their wives defrayed that
part of the cost, and every one who acted paid three pounds ten to the
benefit-fund for his hotel charges, the expenses were necessarily so
great that the profit was reduced to four hundred guineas, and,
handsomely as this realised the design, expectations had been raised to
five hundred. There was just that shade of disappointment, therefore,
when, shortly after we came back and Dickens had returned to
Broadstairs, I was startled by a letter from him. On the 3rd of August
he had written: "All well. Children" (who had been going through
whooping cough) "immensely improved. Business arising out of the late
blaze of triumph, worse than ever." Then came what startled me, the very
next day. As if his business were not enough, it had occurred to h