Volume I Part 27 (1/2)

FOOTNOTE:

[72] ”A Strange Story.”

1862.

[Sidenote: The same.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Friday, Twenty-fourth January, 1862._

MY DEAR BULWER LYTTON,

I have considered your questions, and here follow my replies.

1. I think you undoubtedly _have_ the right to forbid the turning of your play into an opera.

2. I do _not_ think the production of such an opera in the slightest degree likely to injure the play or to render it a less valuable property than it is now. If it could have any effect on so standard and popular a work as ”The Lady of Lyons,” the effect would, in my judgment, be beneficial. But I believe the play to be high above any such influence.

3. a.s.suming you do consent to the adaptation, in a desire to oblige Oxenford, I would not recommend your asking any pecuniary compensation.

This for two reasons: firstly, because the compensation could only be small at the best; secondly, because your taking it would a.s.sociate you (unreasonably, but not the less a.s.suredly) with the opera.

The only objection I descry is purely one of feeling. Pauline trotting about in front of the float, invoking the orchestra with a limp pocket-handkerchief, is a notion that makes goose-flesh of my back. Also a yelping tenor going away to the wars in a scene a half-an-hour long is painful to contemplate. Damas, too, as a ba.s.s, with a grizzled bald head, blatently bellowing about

Years long ago, When the sound of the drum First made his blood glow With a rum ti tum tum--

rather sticks in my throat; but there really seems to me to be no other objection, if you can get over this.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. Baylis.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Sat.u.r.day, First February, 1862._

MY DEAR MR. BAYLIS,

I have just come home. Finding your note, I write to you at once, or you might do me the wrong of supposing me unmindful of it and you.

I agree with you about Smith himself, and I don't think it necessary to pursue the painful subject. Such things are at an end, I think, for the time being;--fell to the ground with the poor man at Cremorne. If they should be resumed, then they must be attacked; but I hope the fas.h.i.+on (far too much encouraged in its Blondin-beginning by those who should know much better) is over.

It always appears to me that the common people have an excuse in their patronage of such exhibitions which people above them in condition have not. Their lives are full of physical difficulties, and they like to see such difficulties overcome. They go to see them overcome. If I am in danger of falling off a scaffold or a ladder any day, the man who claims that he can't fall from anything is a very wonderful and agreeable person to me.

Faithfully yours always.

[Sidenote: Mr. Henry F. Chorley.]