"Now to your kind questions. I am getting ready a fifth and last
volume of _Our Village_ as fast as I can, though with pain and
difficulty, having hurt my left hand so much by a fall from an
open carriage that it affects the right, and makes writing very
uncomfortable to me. And I am in a most perplexed state about my
opera, not knowing whether it will be produced this season or not, in
consequence of Captain Polhill and his singers having parted. This
would not have happened had my coadjutor the composer kept to his
time. And I have still hopes that when the opera be [shall, omitted
probably] taken in (the music is even now not finished), a sense of
interest will bring the parties together again. I hope that it may,
for it will not only be a tremendous hit for all of us, but it will
take me to London and give me the pleasure of a peep at you, a
happiness to which I look forward very anxiously. I know Mr. Tom, and
like him of all things, as everybody who knows him must, and I hear
that his sisters are charming. God bless you, my dear friend. My
father joins me in every good wish, and
"I am ever most affectionately yours,
"M.R. MITFORD."
* * * * *
A few weeks later she writes a very long letter almost entirely filled
with a discussion of the desirability or non-desirability of writing
in this, that, and the other "annual" or magazine. Most of those she
alludes to are dead, and there is no interest in preserving her mainly
unfavourable remarks concerning them and their editors and publishers.
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