STAGE-LIFE. The actors here are not more inattentive than they generally are, everywhere, to their business; their carelessness and want of conscience about it is nothing new to me, and all my bygone professional experience had fully prepared me for it. The company here is a better one than I shall probably find anywhere, even in London; and I have the advantage of having to do with a very civil, considerate, and obliging stage-manager.
I have made, at present, no further engagement for acting here. I shall spend Passion-week at Sutton Park with the Arkwrights, who have written to beg me to do so, and whose vicinity to this place makes that arrangement every way best for me, as in Easter-week I am to act in Manchester again, for the benefit of the above-mentioned courteous stage-manager. From the 12th to the 17th of April, I act at Bath and Bristol; and after that I think it is probable I shall act for a short time in London,—but this is uncertain.
Your questions, for which you apologize, are particularly agreeable to me, as, in spite of the ready invention and fluent utterance on which you compliment me, I am always charmed to have the subject of my letters suggested to me by the questions of my friends.
As my engagement in Dublin, like all the engagements I make, is a nightly one, if it does not answer to the manager I shall of course immediately put an end to it. I am secured from loss by payment after each performance but should never think of taking what I do not bring to my employer.
Mr. Calcraft writes me that he is sanguine about the engagement, in spite of the public distress, and wants me to leave three nights open after the 22d for the extension of it. We shall see.
God bless you, dear Hal. Give my affectionate love to Dorothy. I am most happy to hear she is better. The kindness of the Manchester people has filled my room with flowers, my "good angels," about which I am becoming every day more superstitious, for I am never four-and-twenty hours in a place that some do not make their appearance, to cheer and comfort me. Farewell.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
Birmingham, Sunday, 28th.
My dear Lady Dacre,