Read it through once

Writing to Haydon late in the year to congratulate him on a success, she said:—“Be quite assured that my sympathy with you and with art is as strong as ever, albeit the demonstration have lost its youthfulness and its enthusiasm, just as I myself have done. The fact is that I am much changed, much saddened—am older in mind than in years—have entirely lost that greatest gift of nature, animal spirits, and am become as nervous and good-for-nothing a person as you can imagine. Conversation excites me sometimes, but only, I think, to fall back with a deader weight. Whether there be any physical cause for this, I cannot tell. I hope so, for then perhaps it may pass away; but I rather fear that it is the overburthen, the sense that more is expected of me than I can perform, which weighs me down and prevents me doing anything. I am ashamed to say that a play bespoken last year at Drury Lane, and wanted by them beyond measure, is not yet nearly finished. I do not even know whether it will be completed in time to be produced this season. I try to write it and cry over my lamentable inability, but I do not get on. Women were not meant to earn the bread of a family—I am sure of that—there is a want of strength.... God bless you and yours! Do not judge of the sincerity of an old friendship, or the warmth of an old friend, by the unfrequency or dulness of her letters.”