“I cannot suffer this parcel to go to you, my dearest mother, without writing a few lines to tell you of the complete success of my play. It was received with rapturous applause [and] without the slightest symptoms of disapprobation from beginning to end.... William Harness and Mr. Talfourd are both quite satisfied with the whole affair, and my other friends are half crazy.... “I quite long to hear how you, my own dearest darling, have borne the suspense and anxiety consequent on this affair, which, triumphantly as it has turned out, was certainly a very nervous business. They expect the play to run three times a week till Christmas. It was so immense a house that you might have walked over the heads in the pit; and great numbers were turned away, in spite of the wretched weather. All the actors were good.... Mr. Young gave out the tragedy amidst immense applause.” [Illustration: FRITH STREET, SOHO SQUARE] Mary herself was not present at this wonderful scene. Writing in later years she remarks: “I had not nerve enough to attend the first representation of my tragedies. I sat still and trembling in some quiet apartment near, and thither some friend flew to set my heart at ease. Generally the messenger of good tidings was poor Haydon, whose quick and ardent spirit lent him wings on such an occasion, and who had full sympathy with my love for a large canvas, however indifferently filled.” When thanking Sir William Elford for his congratulations upon the success of _Foscari_, Miss Mitford says: “Hitherto the success has been very brilliant. We can hardly expect it to last.... But great good has been done if (which Heaven avert) the tragedy stop not to-night.” The agreement between the theatre and Miss Mitford for _Foscari_, we are told, was £100 on the third, the ninth, the fifteenth, and the twentieth nights, while the copyright of the play (together with a volume of Dramatic Sketches) was sold to Whittaker for £150. Miss Mitford had some new and strange experiences connected with the performance of her plays, and amongst these she has recorded her first sight of a theatre by daylight. “To one accustomed to the imposing aspect of a great theatre at night,” she writes, “blazing with light and beauty, no contrast can be greater than to enter the same theatre at noontide. Leaving daylight behind you, and stumbling as best you may through dark passages and amidst the inextricable labyrinth of scenery, [you are] too happy if you be not projected into the orchestra or swallowed up by a trap-door....