Dear Miss Novello,—I thank you very
sincerely for your present, though I cannot but fear its fatal effect upon my
limited fortunes, for it is so very handsome that whenever I produce it I feel that
I have thousands a year, and, as in duty bound, am inclined to pay accordingly. I
shall go about, to the astonishment of all omnibii men,
insisting upon paying sovereigns for sixpences. Happily, however, this
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About this comedy. I am writing it under the most significant warnings. As the Eastern king—name unknown, to me at least—kept a crier to warn him that he was but mortal and must die, and so to behave himself as decently as it is possible for any poor king to do, so do I keep a flock of eloquent geese that continually, within ear-shot, cackle of the British public. Hence, I trust to defeat the birds of the Haymarket by the birds of Putney.
But in this comedy I do contemplate such a heroine, as a set-off to the many sins imputed to me as committed against woman, whom I have always considered to be an admirable idea imperfectly worked out. Poor soul! she can’t help that. Well, this heroine shall be woven of moon-beams—a perfect angel, with one wing cut to keep her among us. She shall be all devotion. She shall hand over her lover (never mind his heart, poor wretch!) to her grandmother, who she suspects is very fond of him, and then, disguising herself as a youth, she shall enter the British navy, and return in six years, say, with epaulets on her shoulders, and her name in the Navy List, rated Post-Captain. You will perceive that I have Madame Celeste in my eye—am measuring her for the uniform. And young ladies will sit in the boxes, and with tearful eyes, and noses like rose-buds, say, “What magnanimity!” And when this great work is done—this monument of the very best gilt gingerbread to woman set up on the Haymarket stage—you shall, if you will, go and see it, and make one to cry for the “Author,” rewarding him with a crown of tin-foil, and a shower of sugar-plums.
In lively hope of that ecstatic moment, I remain, yours truly,
