King Street, Wednesday, March 8th, 1848.
My little finger has recovered from Macready. It is gradually getting much better, but he certainly did it an injury. With regard to his "relenting," he is, I am told, quite uncommonly gracious and considerate to me....
VIOLENCE OF MACREADY. I was told by a friend of mine who was at "Hamlet" the other evening, that in the closet scene with his mother he had literally knocked the poor woman down who was playing the Queen. I thought this an incredible exaggeration, and asked her afterwards if it was true, and she said so true that she was bruised all across her breast with the blow he had given her; that, happening to take his hand at a moment when he did not wish her to do so, he had struck her violently and knocked her literally down; so I suppose I may consider it "relenting" that he never yet has knocked me down....
We are quite lively now in London with riots of our own—a more exciting process than merely reading of our neighbors' across the Channel. Last night a mob, in its playful progress though this street, broke the peaceful windows of this house. There have been great meetings in Trafalgar Square these two last evenings, in which the people threw stones about, and made a noise, but that was all they did by all accounts. They have smashed sundry windows, and the annoyance and apprehension occasioned by their passage wherever they go is very great. Nothing serious, however, has yet occurred; and I suppose, if the necessity for calling out the military can be avoided, nothing serious will occur. But if these disorderly meetings increase in number and frequency the police will not be sufficient to moderate and disperse them, and the troops will have to be called out, and we shall have terrible mischief, for our soldiers will not fraternize with the London mob, the idea of duty—of which the French soldiers or civilians have but a meagre allowance (glory, honor, anything else you please, in abundance)—being the one idea in the head of an English soldier and of most English civilians, thank God!
The riots in Glasgow have been very serious; the population of that city, especially the women, struck me as the most savage and brutal looking I had ever seen in this country; and I remember frequently, while I was there, thinking what a terrible mob the lowest class of its inhabitants would make.
Metternich's resignation, of which I wrote you yesterday, is, alas! uncertain. I had rejoiced at it for the sake of that beautiful Italy, and all her political martyrs past and to come.
Good-bye, God bless you. I shall go and see some of those great mobs of ours. It must be a curious and interesting spectacle.
Believe me ever yours,
Fanny.
King Street, Saturday and Sunday,
March 11th and 12th, 1848.