18, Orchard Street, December 28th.
My dearest Hal,
I would rather have the "garret" looking towards the sea than the "bedroom" looking over houses, provided I can have a fire in said garret; and pray, since I can have my choice of the two rooms, may I inquire why the one that I do not occupy may not be appropriated to Hayes's use? It seems to me that if there are two empty rooms for me to choose from, I may likewise hire them both if I choose, and give one to my maid, and keep whichever I like best for myself. Che ti pare, figlia mia? Have the goodness, if you can, to take both the vacant rooms for me, and I will inhabit the garret, if, as I said before, it is susceptible of a fire.
I left Mrs. Fitzhugh a little more quiet and composed, in spite of her having just received the news of Lord Harrowby's being at the point of death.... She has had much to try her in the melancholy events at Sandon, and she persists in looking over a whole collection of old letters, among which she found the other day a miniature of her boy, Henry, the sailor who died, which she had forgotten that she possessed; and she comes down from this most trying task of retrospection in a state of nerves so lamentable that no ingenuity of affection, or utmost desire to cheer and relieve her, can suggest a sufficiently soothing process for that purpose. She cannot be amused at all now by anything that does not excite her, and if she is, over-excited she suffers cruelly from it. Thus, the reading of "Jane Eyre," which, while I continued it, kept her in a state of extreme [expectation] and interest, appeared to me, upon the whole, afterwards, to have affected her very unfavorably....
I will bring you Charles Greville's book about your most painful country, and some music....
Good-bye, dearest Hal. My affectionate love to dear Dorothy.
Ever as ever yours,
Fanny.
18, Orchard Street.
DÉJAZET. ... You ask me for my impression of Déjazet, and the piece I went to see her in; and here they are. The piece in which she came out was called "Vert Vert." You remember, no doubt, Gresset's poem about the poor parrot, so called; well, instead of a bird, they make this Vert Vert a young boy of sixteen, brought up in a girls' convent, and taken out for a week, during which he goes to Nevers, falls in with garrison officers, makes love to actresses, sups and gets tipsy at the mess, and, in short, "gets ideas" of all sorts, with which he returns again to his convent. If you can conceive this part, acted to the life by a woman, who moves with more complete disinvoltura in her men's clothes than most men do, you may imagine something of the personal exhibition at which we assisted. As for me, my eyes and mouth opened wider and wider, not so much at the French actress, as at the well-born, well-bred English audience, who, women as well as men, were in a perfect ecstasy of amusement and admiration. I certainly never saw more admirable acting, but neither did I ever see such uncompromising personal exposure and such perfect effrontery of demeanor. I do not think even ballet-dancers more indecent than Mademoiselle Déjazet, for their revelations of their limbs and shapes are partial and momentary, while hers were abiding and entire through the whole of her performance, which she acted in tight-fitting knee-breeches and silk stockings; nor did I ever see such an unflinching representation of unmitigated audacity of carriage, look, and manner, in any male or female, on or off the stage....