30 Great Queen Street Decemberr8th1820.

PrepareWe have not completed transcription and encoding of this letter, which is extremely long. However, due to its interesting details on theater history, we present it in incomplete state, to be finished and updated here. for an astounding Compliment my own dear Mary Webb--I am going to write to you because I have nothing else to do. Are you content to read on after such a confession? "Yes" say--"yes"--very well then I shall proceed.--Miss Eliza may have told you that she saw me as far on my road to London last Tuesday (by the way I hope she found your French tutor & that he is sound mind & limb)--as the famous town of Reading.--I got here Tuesday night--here--the house of a friend who is out of town where I am for the first time in my life the perfect mistress of myself & my time in London--not obliged to truckle to fine ways or submit my sight seeing desires to five hours.Checking the Oxford English Dictionary, "truckle" is a verb defining the process of yielding/submitting/cowering to something or someone. The references displayed for this usage are dated around Mitford’s time.--So being close to the Theaters showing always orders for either house at no greater expense than that of listening to a good deal of flattery & paying it by some half dozen smiling words I determined to try what I could do in the way of liking plays by going every night & giving them a fair chance--Certain in the last resort that if I had no other pleasure I was quite sure of the great comfort of finding fault.--Well on Wednesday I went to see the new tragedy & the new melo drama (one is quite as much a melodrama as t'other by the bye) both by the same author, & that author a lad of nineteen, son of Peter Walker the Westminster Patriot. is very well-- considering--a good deal of stage effect--& some fine situations -- there is no promise in it--no luxuriance to prune away -- no glorious faults--the author will never write better--but as he never means to write again that does not much signify--he got up these two things merely to earn money enough to pay his expenses at Oxford for a year or two--& is I hear a modest meritorious youth. is a Miss Porterish person -- as little like the real as her hero--always praising & puffing himself & talking sentimentally to the woods & mountains & dropping his sword at the sound of treachery (the real Wallace would have cloven men into the earth first & been shocked at this treachery afterwards) & leaving his fate to this wife's decision & so forth. To redeem these faults he had two great merits--he was born before the invention of gunpowder, & he is acted by W. Macready--who to say nothing of his being really a very fine & enthusiastic actor has a voice which is as delicious to hear as the finest music, & gives like that a pleasure totally unconnected with the words which he has to offer.--By the way W. Mccready is likewise an accomplished man full of taste & literature--he is confident general of all authors--Barry Cornwall's new Tragedy which is to come out after Xmas & is a fine thing on the same story with Lord Byron's , though without the objections to which that was liable--has been written scene by scene under his supervision to use my informant's own word.--The melodrama is like all other melodramas neither better nor worse--except that it has one laudable peculiarity--there is no ruffian stalking about with pistols in his girdle to frighten one out of one's own wits--the assassins kill people with swords as Christians ought to do.-- --Yes Yesterday morning I went to Drury Lane to see --three new people in it --Cooper in Antony, stock taught!-- Wallack in Brutus not much better--a cold copy of John Kemble--softer & younger but still a copy in every tone & movement--& with that indescribable difference which one feels in painting between the copy and the original--cold & dead & the shadow of a shade--no hopes of him--Booth's Cassius was a much more hopeful effort--he has all Kean's faults & plenty of his own--a bad voice, an ugly face, a mean person, a constant awkwardness-- & a good deal of rant--but there is soul in the man with all these defects--spirit & vigour--he rushed into the famous quarrel with Jul Brutus slapdash & really is to my fancy as good as Kean--which is not saying much for him. The farce was the spoilt child--in which that disagreeable person Madame Vestris acted very ill & that pleasant person Elliston very well--I am going to night tonight to see him in Rover in which is his best character & a capital play. I hope the audience will be a little less raggamuffin for really the dress circle last night looked as if tilled from the stalls--I hear that they don't take to a night at either house--Talfourd who breakfasted a good deal of the morning with us, was there with Godwin, & added much to the pleasure of my evening.--This philosopher (Godwin I mean) has just gained a great triumph having tripped up Mr. Malthus's heels completely.--I suppose my dear you don't know more of the subject than I do.--but Godwin's work is on population & goes to prove very comfortably that there is no danger of the worlds being over peopled & therefore no need of war to kill us downThe book being referenced here is Godwin's book. It is called "On Population" (1820). It refutes Malthus' Principle of Population. It covers many populations in Europe.--Talfourd is gone today to meet the new Editor of the --no less a man Mr. Thomas Campbell, a pretty fellow he for an editor! Did I ever talk to you about him--the delicate little mincing ladylike man--with a face that would look so pretty in a mob cap--He's an absolute ? & more of a ? in writing them even in his person. Never was such a delayer, such a doubter, such a hummer & hawer--Lord Eldon is a decided man to him--a pretty editor he! He to supervise & manage Talfourd--Lord how we laughed at the Talfourd will turn him round his little finger. He caught town & was laid up six days on the road so he will one few days this month & never overtake the again is after his time to a tea party--think what will be to a magazine. Talfourd had never seen him. So I had pleasure of drawing his portrait mind & body.--I have been to Lisson Grove & seen Haydon's exquisite new picture--not the great picture of the raising of Lazarus--but the Agony in the garden--all is got in but nothing finished but the figure & head of Christ--such a head!--never was such an union of beauty & expression!The letter continues, but we have not finished transcription beyond this point.

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