have written a quiet line to _The Times_,
certifying to my own state of health, and have also begged Dixon to do
the like in _The Athenaeum_. I mention the matter to you, in order that
you may contradict, from me, if the nonsense should reach America
unaccompanied by the truth. But I suppose that _The New York Herald_
will probably have got the letter from Mr. ---- aforesaid. . . .

Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins are here; and the joke of the time is
to feel my pulse when I appear at table, and also to inveigle innocent
messengers to come over to the summer-house, where I write (the place is
quite changed since you were here, and a tunnel under the highroad
connects this shrubbery with the front garden), to ask, with their
compliments, how I find myself _now_.

If I come to America this next November, even you can hardly imagine
with what interest I shall try Copperfield on an American audience, or,
if they give me their heart, how freely and fully I shall give them
mine. We will ask Dolby then whether he ever heard it before.

I cannot thank you enough for your invaluable help to Dolby. He writes
that at every turn and moment the sense and knowledge and tact of Mr.
Osgood are inestimable to him.

Ever, my dear Fields, faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Lord Lytton.]

"ALL THE YEAR ROUND" OFFICE,
_Tuesday, 17th September, 1867._

MY DEAR LYTTON,

I am happy to tell you that the play was admirably done last night, and
made a marked impression. Pauline is weak, but so carefully trained and
fitted into the picture as to be never disagreeable, and sometimes (as
in the last scene) very pathetic. Fechter has played nothing nearly so
well as Claude since he played in Paris in the "Dame aux Camelias," or
in London as Ruy Blas. He played the fourth act as finely as Macready,
and the first much better. The dress and bearing in the fifth act are
quite new, and quite excellent.

Of the Scenic arrangements, the most noticeable are:--the picturesque
struggle of the cottage between the taste of an artist, and the domestic
means of poverty (expressed to the eye with infinite tact);--the view of
Lyons (Act v. Scene 1), with a foreground of quay wall which the
officers are leaning on, waiting for the general;--and the last scene--a
suite of rooms giving on a conservatory at the back, through which the
moon is shining. You are to unders