with musk and perfumes, that
if he were to give up his room to me I should not be able to breathe in
it. With my passion for perfumes, this, however, did not appear to me so
certain; but the room I now have answers my purpose quite well
enough....

Macready is not pleasant to act with, as he keeps no specific time for
his exits or entrances, comes on while one is in the middle of a
soliloquy, and goes off while one is in the middle of a speech to him.
He growls and prowls, and roams and foams, about the stage, in every
direction, like a tiger in his cage, so that I never know on what side
of me he means to be; and keeps up a perpetual snarling and grumbling
like the aforesaid tiger, so that I never feel quite sure that he _has
done_, and that it is my turn to speak. I do not think fifty pounds a
night would hire me to play another engagement with him; but I only say,
I don't think,--fifty pounds a night is a consideration, four times a
week, and I have not forgotten the French proverb, "Il ne faut pas dire,
fontaine jamais de ton eau je ne boirai."

I do not know how Desdemona might have affected me under other
circumstances, but my only feeling about acting it with Mr. Macready is
dread of his personal violence. I quail at the idea of his laying hold
of me in those terrible passionate scenes; for in "Macbeth" he pinched
me black and blue, and almost tore the point lace from my head. I am
sure my little finger will be rebroken, and as for that smothering in
bed, "Heaven have mercy upon me!" as poor Desdemona says. If that
foolish creature wouldn't persist in _talking_ long after she has been
smothered and stabbed to death, one might escape by the off side of the
bed, and leave the bolster to be questioned by Emilia, and apostrophized
by Othello; but she will uplift her testimony after death to her
husband's amiable treatment of her, and even the bolster wouldn't be
stupid enough for that.

Did it ever occur to you what a witness to Othello's agony in murdering
his wretched wife his inefficient clumsiness in the process was--his
half smothering, his half stabbing her? _That_ man not to be able to
kill _that_ woman outright, with one hand on her throat, or one stroke
of his dagger, how tortured he must have been, to have bungled so at his
work!

I wish I was with you and Dorothy at St. Leonard's, instead of
struggling here for my life--livelihood, at any rate--with Macready; but
that's foolish. He can't _touch_ me to