e always suits me better than a relaxing one.... I cannot,
however, agree with you that there is more "excitement" in rehearsing
every morning, and sitting in a dull, dirty, hired room, and acting that
everlasting "Hunchback" every evening, than in being your mounted escort
to Bex Hill and Fairlight church, and reading to you either "Mary
Stuart" or "Jane Eyre." I am glad to see that L---- and I agree about
what always seems to me the most improbable part of the latter very
remarkable book. I am slow in determining in my own mind the course that
other women would pursue in exceptionally difficult circumstances; many
of them would doubtless display an amount of principle of which I should
be quite incapable; and so I am glad that L---- thinks, as I do, that
Jane Eyre's safest course would have been to have left Thornfield
without meeting her lover's despair.

Fever at the gates of Ardgillan, my dear Hal, must indeed make you
anxious; but as your family have moved thence, I suppose they will not
return while there is any danger to be apprehended from doing so.

And now, dear Hal, from the Beeches, where I arrived yesterday
afternoon, and am now writing to you.... I have really kept both cold
and cough down wonderfully, considering the horrible weather and
exposure I have gone through travelling, and in those damp barns of
theatres. Hayes will certainly not recover as soon as I do, for she has
all the aversion of her class to physic and spare diet....

Charles Greville is here, and I asked him your question, if he had ever
published any other book but the one upon Ireland you are reading. He
said no. He has, however, written pamphlets and newspaper articles of
considerable ability upon political subjects. I have been taking a long
walk, and will now resume my letter to you. I perceive I have brought
Charles Greville and his book into the middle of what I was telling you
about those poor young Norwich actors.

A very pretty and charming niece of my dear friend, Mr. Harness, is
married and living within a short distance of Lynn, and as I had not
time to stay with her now, I have promised to go back into Norfolk to
visit her, and at the same time I have promised to act a night for these
poor people if they can get their manager's leave for me to do so.

My dear Hal, this letter seems destined to pass its unfinished existence
on the railroads. I am now at this present moment finishing it in my
King Street lodging, to which