My dear Pollock,
. . . Had not Sunday followed Saturday I was a little tempted to run up to hear Cherubini’s Medea,
which I saw advertised for the Night. But I believe I should feel strange at a Play now: and probably should not have sat the Opera half out. So you have a good Play, [120] and that well acted, at last, on English Boards! At the old Haymarket, I think: the pleasantest of all the Theatres (for size and Decoration) that I remember; yes, and for the Listons and Vestrises that I remember there in the days of their Glory. Vestris, in what was called a ‘Pamela Hat’ with a red feather; and, again, singing ‘Cherry Ripe,’ one of the Dozen immortal English Tunes. That was in ‘Paul Pry.’ Poor Plays they were, to be sure: but the Players were good and handsome, and—oneself was young—1822-3! There was Macready’s Virginius at old Covent Garden, an event never to be forgotten.
One Date leads to another. In talking one day about different Quotations which get abroad without people always knowing whence they are derived, I could have sworn that I remember Spring Rice mentioning one that he himself had invented, and had been amused at seeing quoted here and there—
Coldly correct and critically dull.
Now only last night I happened to see the Line quoted in the Preface to Frederick Reynolds’ (the Playwright’s) stupid Memoirs, published in 1827;
some time before Spring Rice would have thought of such things, I suppose. . . .
What Plays Reynolds’ were, which made George III. laugh so, and put £500 apiece into the writer’s Pocket! But then there were Lewis, Quick, Kemble, Edwin, Parsons, Palmer, Mrs. Jordan, etc. to act them.
Woodbridge, Jan. 22, [1871].
My dear Pollock,