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23 Weymouth Street, Portland Pl'ce
23
April 24th '81
Dear Jervy -
I am positively ashamed of my letters to you lately. You have written me such excellent ones---touching me to the very core, yet have I been unable to do more than acknowledge their receipt by a few hurried lines of thanks and selfish moanings. The truth is, Jervy, my brain seems to be threadbare---I feel full of matter and take up my pen to give it vent when a daze comes over my mind & ideas (what few I may possess) fly off at a tangent and leave me in utter vacuity. For all this, Jervy, do not cease to write me just the same for fear your letters are unappreciated, indeed they are not; I keep them all and value them dearly. Under the strange and distressing con-
ditions to which I am now subjected you can, I know, fully understand just how helpless I am. What a complication of troubles are upon me! My professional success, so far, & its uncertainty in the future (here, I mean) is alone enough to keep me on tenterhooks. I am over run with invitations & various courtesies that cannot be slighted & wh. are a devilish bore to me at best, and the doubt as to the possibility of riveting my hold upon the English by another engagement (for this with Irving is but a few nights' spurt in characters I've already acted here)---and the uncertainty of Mary's condition; whether she will die soon, as the doctors predicted weeks ago, or live a lunatic, and the anxiety I feel for Edwina---whose complexion & frequent
ails convince me of her ill health---all these agonies drive me nearly distracted sometimes. Then to think that I have to endure the presence of Mrs. McVicker---a vile-tongued virago & slanderer, and shall soon have her husband too, a man who owes me gratitude and gives me unkindness in its stead,--- by Jupiter! my Jervy, the case is complicated, & twisted like the crown of thorns; intertwined and filled with painful prickles. Dear Edwina is, as you said she would be, brave and perfectly capable. She feels great pride in her responsibility & does all things remarkably well. indeed it seems now, at the end of her third week of actual housekeeping, as though she had been as it always; her mistakes have been so few & trifling that they serve merely as a foil to her successes. She is quite matronly---in manner, if not in appearance. She is doubly anxious, for me as well as for Mary---for whom,
of course, she retains great affection---despite the evils that have chilled the warmth of her filial love. and I worry a great deal on her account. If I were only free now I could start at once for the Continent & give her the advantage of baths &c at the various spas---but I'm kept in bondage by my engagements in the Provinces & Mary's sickness & so must take the chances. If Edwina breaks down I shall give up for "good & all". Mary's madness is assuming a violent form now. 'till recently she has been very docile. Edwina is at church & Mistress McWicked, my delicious mother-in-law, has just entered with a hell-cat's glare in her pale green eyes, so I'll quit you here, with a God Bless you! You see---not a word of you! all of myself, as usual. I expect [Hennessey?] every minute. Will tell of him in my report. Love to all your folks. Adieu!
Edwin