Miss Hogarth.
Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, Monday, Jan. 21st, 1867.
My dearest Georgy,
First I send you my most affectionate wishes for many, many happy returns of your birthday. That done, from my heart of hearts, I go on to my small report of myself.
The readings have produced such an immense effect here that we are coming back for two more in the middle of February. "Marigold" and the "Trial," on Friday night, and the "Carol," on Saturday afternoon, were a perfect furore; and the surprise about "Barbox" has been amusingly great. It is a most extraordinary thing, after the enormous sale of that Christmas number, that the provincial public seems to have combined to believe that it won't make a reading. From Wolverhampton and Leeds we have exactly the same expression of feelings beforehand. Exactly as I made "Copperfield"—always to the poorest houses I had with Headland, and against that luminary's entreaty—so I should have to make this, if I hadn't "Marigold" always in demand.
It being next to impossible for people to come out at night with horses, we have felt the weather in the stalls, and expect to do so through this week. The half-crown and shilling publics have crushed to their places most splendidly. The enthusiasm has been unbounded. On Friday night I quite astonished myself; but I was taken so faint afterwards that they laid me on a sofa at the hall for half an hour. I attribute it to my distressing inability to sleep at night, and to nothing worse.
Scott does very well indeed. As a dresser he is perfect. In a quarter of an hour after I go into the retiring-room, where all my clothes are airing and everything is set out neatly in its own allotted space, I am ready; and he then goes softly out, and sits outside the door. In the morning he is equally punctual, quiet, and quick. He has his needles and thread, buttons, and so forth, always at hand; and in travelling he is very systematic with the luggage. What with Dolby and what with this skilful valet, everything is made as easy to me as it possibly can be, and Dolby would do anything to lighten the work, and does everything.
There is great distress here among the poor (four thousand people relieved last Saturday at one workhouse), and there is great anxiety concerning seven mail-steamers some days overdue. Such a circumstance as this last has never been known. It is supposed that some great revolving storm has whirled them all out of their course. One of these missing ships is an American mail, another an Australian mail.
Same Afternoon.
We have been out for four hours in the bitter east wind, and walking on the sea-shore, where there is a broad strip of great blocks of ice. My hands are so rigid that I write with great difficulty.