Ever faithfully yours. [Sidenote: Mr. Mitton.] DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _19th April, 1851._ MY DEAR MITTON, I have been in trouble, or I should have written to you sooner. My wife has been, and is, far from well. My poor father's death caused me much distress. I came to London last Monday to preside at a public dinner--played with little Dora, my youngest child, before I went--and was told when I left the chair that she had died in a moment. I am quite happy again, but I have undergone a good deal. I am not going back to Malvern, but have let this house until September, and taken the "Fort," at Broadstairs. Faithfully yours. [Sidenote: Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.] DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _Monday, 28th April, 1851._ MY DEAR BULWER, I see you are so anxious, that I shall endeavour to send you this letter by a special messenger. I think I can relieve your mind completely. The Duke has read the play. He asked for it a week ago, and had it. He has been at Brighton since. He called here before eleven on Saturday morning, but I was out on the play business, so I went to him at Devonshire House yesterday. He almost knows the play by heart. He is supremely delighted with it, and critically understands it. In proof of the latter part of this sentence I may mention that he had made two or three memoranda of trivial doubtful points, _every one of which had attracted our attention in rehearsal_, as I found when he showed them to me. He thoroughly understands and appreciates the comedy of the Duke--threw himself back in his chair and laughed, as I say of Walpole, "till I thought he'd have choked," about his first Duchess, who was a Percy. He suggested that he shouldn't say: "You know how to speak to the heart of a Noble," because it was not likely that he would call himself a Noble. He thought we might close up the Porter and Softhead a little more (already done) and was so charmed and delighted to recall the comedy that he was more pleased than any boy you ever saw when I repeated two or three of the speeches in my part for him. He is coming to the rehearsal to-day (we rehearse now at Devonshire House, three days a-week, all day long), and, since he read the play, has conceived a most magnificent and noble improvement in the Devonshire House plan, by which, I daresay, we shall get another thousand or fifteen hundred pounds. There is not a grain of distrust or doubt in him. I am perfectly certain that he would confide to me, and does confide to me, his whole mind on the subject.