I am rather stiff to-day but am quite unhurt, except a slight scrape on my right hand. My clothes are burnt to pieces. My ladies are the wonder of Naples, and everybody is open-mouthed.
Address me as usual. All letters are forwarded. The children well and happy. Best regards.
Ever faithfully.
Mr. W. C. Macready.
Albion Hotel, Broadstairs, Sunday, Aug. 17th, 1845.
My dear Macready,
I have been obliged to communicate with the Punch men in reference to Saturday, the 20th, as that day of the week is usually their business dinner day, and I was not quite sure that it could be conveniently altered.
Jerrold now assures me that it can for such a purpose, and that it shall, and therefore consider the play as being arranged to come off on Saturday, the 20th of next month.
I don't know whether I told you that we have changed the farce; and now we are to act "Two o'clock in the Morning," as performed by the inimitable B. at Montreal.
In reference to Bruce Castle school, I think the question set at rest most probably by the fact of there being no vacancy (it is always full) until Christmas, when Howitt's two boys and Jerrold's one go in and fill it up again. But after going carefully through the school, a question would arise in my mind whether the system—a perfectly admirable one; the only recognition of education as a broad system of moral and intellectual philosophy, that I have ever seen in practice—do not require so much preparation and progress in the mind of the boy, as that he shall have come there younger and less advanced than Willy; or at all events without that very different sort of school experience which he must have acquired at Brighton. I have no warrant for this doubt, beyond a vague uneasiness suggesting a suspicion of its great probability. On such slight ground I would not hint it to anyone but you, who I know will give it its due weight, and no more and no less.