From the Rarified Air to the Lower Orders of London

Over the past two weeks, Booktryst contributor Cokie Anderson has written about How the Other .0001 % Lives, Part I and II, presenting us with the splendid estates and extravagant parties of the wealthy as documented in a few rare and sumptuously exquisite volumes.

We now turn our attention away from the thin-air blue-blood status exosphere to its polar opposite, the thick swamp gas red-blood low-life troposphere where most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries' population endured its have-not existence.

Rabbit-Man.

By its title and subtitle, Costume of the Lower Orders of London Painted and Engraved From Nature, a volume of twenty-four hand-colored etched plates by Thomas Lord Busby published in 1820, succinctly expresses the contemporary view amongst a certain socio-economic class that other socio-economic classes of people were of a lower order of primate. There is an almost zoo-like quality to this suite of plates, the viewer (undoubtedly of means; this was not an inexpensive book when originally issued) fascinated by these strange creatures heard about but rarely seen - you had to leave the castle, cross the defensive social moat, and step in the muck to meet them.

Billy Waters.

Match Girl.

You will have perhaps noticed that these portraits have been cleaned up to keep the visual stink of reality from offending the viewer; it is a Hollywood-lesque version of a reality that was deeply begrimed and malodorous.

No such visual euphemism is employed in Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor.

Mayhew was “the first to strike out the line of philanthropic journalism which takes the poor of London as its theme. His principal work, in which he was assisted by John Binny and others, was ‘London Labour and London Poor,’ a series of articles, anecdotic and statistical, on the petty trades of London, originally appearing in the ‘Morning Chronicle.’ Two volumes were published in 1851, but their circulation was interrupted by litigation in chancery, and was long suspended, but in March 1856 Mayhew announced its resumption, and a continuation of it appeared in serial monthly parts as ‘The Great World of London,’ which was ultimately completed and published as ‘The Criminal Prisons of London,’ in 1862. The last portion of it was by Binny. ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ appeared in its final form in 1864, and again in 1865” (DNB).

In the London of this era a large number of people had no fixed place employment and a significant number had no fixed place to live; you earned your money on the streets and slept there. At the lowest rung of the social ladder stood the "mudlarks" who searched the reeking sludge on the banks of the Thames for wood, metal, rope and coal from passing ships, and the "pure-finders," whose job it was to gather dog feces to sell to tanners. These do not make for pretty portraits; let's leave Smell-O-Vision to the next century. No amount of scrubbing, with soap or paint brush, could make this class of untouchables clean enough to be viewed by those highest in England's pecking order.

While Mayhew took a journalistic and, at times, maddeningly pedantic approach to his research, Lord Busby went slumming and the result was a romanticized, nobless oblige view of the impoverished yet  apparently happy, carefree, laughing, singing, dancing folk whose spirit and love of life were as inspiring to the British nobility as the noble Tom, Jemima, and pickaninny were to the plantation owner of the antebellum American South.

In short, poverty and degradation ennobled as a blessing. Oh, long green envying deep grime! If only all our money could buy their joie de vivre but, alas, we're filthy rich and will just have to make the best of it. (Heavy sigh). Now, let's get out of this zoo and get back home; I feel gamy.

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[BUSBY, Thomas Lord]. Costume of the Lower Orders of London. Painted and Engraved from Nature, by T.L. Busby. London: Published for T.L. Busby, by Messrs. Baldwin, Craddock, and Joy… [1820]. Quarto (11 1/4 x 9 1/16 inches; 286 x 231 mm.). iv, [24] pp. Twenty-four hand-colored etched plates. Text watermarked 1817, plates watermarked 1822. Abbey, Life 423. Colas 491. Hiler, p. 129. Lipperheide 1025. Tooley 123.

MAYHEW, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor: The Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Cannot Work, and Will Not Work. London: Griffin, Bohn and Co. 1851-61. Four octavo volumes (numbered I-III and “Extra Volume” subtitled, “a cyclopædia of the condition and earnings of those that will work…,” etc.). With ninety-seven wood-engraved plates. Text in two columns.

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The World of 19th Century Coach Travel Revealed in a Beat-Up Ledger

Royal Mail Coach, 1827.

The era of British coaches and coaching are brought back to life with a manuscript account book of one of the most renowned coaches and routes of them all, the London - Seven Oaks, for the years 1868 through 1872.

It appears as if it had been run over by the mail coach - and an entire football team that later enjoyed cups of coffee and used the book as a coaster; there are more rings on its lower board than around Saturn. This book was used, and used well.

I enjoy it when items such as this land on my desk. Manuscript account books, at first glance, appear to be fairly boring but nothing could be farther from the truth. While I generally can't account for my whereabouts and, too often, who I am, a good account book can tell  you quite a bit about the particular business it accounts for, and the milieu in which the business operated.

The fun, for a rare book cataloger, lies in the detective work. Here, it begins with the initials found at the bottom of the upper board.

"C.A.R.H" was, it turns out, Charles A. R.  Hoare, Esq., who, prior to assuming proprietorship of the London Seven Oaks coach, was Master of the Vale of White Horse hounds. Having identified who C.A.R.H. was the world opens up and a story emerges.

"Towards the end of the season of 1867, Mr. Charles Hoare started a coach between Beckenham and Sevenoaks. This developed the following year into the Seven Oaks coach, starting from Hatchett's [White Horse Cellar, in London], and this carried such good loads, that in 1868 its proprietor carried it on to Tunbridge Wells, to the delight of thousands who have since enjoyed the exquisite scenery it has introduced them to. Since 1868 the Brighton has continued a single coach, but several new candidates for public favour have appeared" (Old and New London: Volume Four 1878, p. 262).

 

"Mr. Charles Hoare appeared for the second year in the role of coach proprietor; but this time ran from London to Seven Oaks instead of between Beckenham and Sevenoaks, with Comley as professional coachman, and Ike Simmons as guard. Mr. Hoare's coach was another link to the past. It was one of the mails built in the year 1831 by Wright, and when it was bought by Messrs. Holland & Holland (by whom it was let to Mr. Hoare on the usual mileage terms) it had V.R. and a crown on it, a proof that it had seen mail service during the reign of Her Majesty. 

"It had, of course, a single seat only behind the guard, whose blunderbuss case was opposite, and where the second seat would be. The hind boot opened at the top, beneath the guard's feet, so that he could easily drop his mail bags into the depths below. In order to give as much room as possible for the letter bags, the hind boot was deeper tha usual; and differing from the general plan, the boot was brought out flush with the body of the coach. In order to allow of the extra depth of the boot, the hind axle was bent downwards. 

"The 'old school' will perhaps smile at notice being drawn to these details; but they will pardon the digression on remembering that since coaches were driven off the road, a race has arisen to which the 'revival' is history, and the fashion of the Park drags a pattern, Such, at all events, was the Sevenoaks coach when it first came into the possession of Messrs. Holland & Holland; but, in order to adapt it to modern requirements, the guard's seat was lengthened to carry four, and a like number of passengers were accommodated where the guard's armory had erstwhile been" (Fitz Roy, Henry Charles, Duke of Beaufort. Driving. London: Longmans, Green, 1890, pp. 277-278).

The manuscript begins on the verso of first leaf with a list the fares from London to Dulwich, “Crystal Pal’e,” Beckenham, Farnboro, Riverhead, and Sevenoaks, both “Inside” and “Outside,” with “Box Seat 1/- extra.”

The accounts begin with the first season, “Friday May 1st/[18]68” to “Monday 26th Octr.” ([40] leaves, followed by [2] blank leaves).

Each page is divided into columns listing the passengers’ names, the destination, the number and location of their seats, and the amount/fare paid.

The accounts end August 21, 1872. It was in that year that Charles Hoare retired, leaving the Earl of Bective and Colonel Hathorn in command of the coach and route.

In all, what has been left to us is a unique relic of a bygone era in British mail and personal transportation, and the day-to-day details, found nowhere else, of one of its most famous coaches. 

It is because of the unique details found in vintage manuscript account books that make them so attractive as a collectible. It's as if you're a silent partner in the business.

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[COACHES]. [MANUSCRIPT ACCOUNT BOOK]. Tunbridge, London and Sevenoaks Coach. Begun and Ended! [N.p. (London)]: [1868]-1872.

Folio (12 7/16 x 7 7/8 inches; 317 x 201 mm.). Written in ink on blue paper (watermarked “W. Stradling 1863") ruled in ink. [178] leaves.

Quarter parchment over vellum boards. Front cover lettered in ink: London and Sevenoaks Coach/Begun Ended. Marbled edges and endpapers. Ink initials at foot of front cover: C.A.R.H. Additional ink initials on front cover: J.J.H.
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Images courtesy David Brass.

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Deceit, Thy Name Is Woman! Woman, Thy Name Is Delilah!

 

 Hedy Lamarr as Delilah in Sampson and Delilah (1949). 

Booktryst readers on the distaff side who, based upon today's headline, have been called to arms will kindly refrain from launching a pitchfork offensive against your humble reporter. Be assured that fourberies - deceptions - were not exclusive to females in 1840 France, nor at any other time.

It's just that with Fourberies des Femmes, French caricaturist Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier aka Paul Gavarni completed the work of Daumier, whose Les Robert-Macaire (1839-1840) pretty much covered the waterfront regarding the deceptions and follies of men.
 

Daumier's Robert Macaire deceiving a lover by exploiting her love for him.

"When politics became a forbidden topic in Le Charivari, where Caricaturana [Les Robert-Macaire] first appeared, Daumier and [publisher Charles] Philipon turned to social satire. If they could not attack Louis Philippe directly, they could at least show the kind of society that flourished under his gross and venal regime. Taking the flamboyant and florid swindler Macaire from the character that Frédérick Lemaître had created in a hack melodrama called L’Auberge des adrets, they showed him and his inseparable companion, the dejected and meager Bertrand, ranging through all kinds of commercial enterprise, in the stock market, in the banks, in the courts, and in dozens of other public settings, never failing to find eager dupes. Macaire is equally persuasive in the encounters of private life, where no situation finds him at a loss for an appropriate flower of sentiment…" (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 234-236).

 

The old pretend-to-be-sleeping routine.

Yet Gavarni's deceptive women were neither venal, criminal frauds, nor full-blown viragoes. With charm and wit, he gently illustrated the psychology of women who deceive themselves as well as their lovers, a foible not exclusive to women.
 

Charles! Charles! Do not ogle me and therefore all women ... it's indecent!
(But of course she enjoys it).

 “In 1837 Gavarni began his connection with Le Charivari, which did not conclude until 1848. In all he drew 1054 lithographs for his journal…Most of these appeared in series, some twenty-five of which extend to ten or more plates, and were afterwards published by Aubert in albums. Perhaps the best of these collections are Fourberies de femmes en matière de sentiment...
 

Screwed again by feminine wiles.

 "...Baudelaire had this part of Gavarni’s work particularly in mind when he wrote…that ‘the true glory and the true mission of Gavarni and Daumier has been to complete Balzac.’ Certainly the pictures of Parisian society provided by the two artists perfectly complement each other. Daumier’s preoccupation was the working middle class with faces and figures heavily marked by life. Gavarni remained for the most part outside the humdrum bourgeois round. He preferred to show ‘youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm.’
 

 You are free! You are simple! Have confidence in yourself! 
You! You are you! You! 
But you are a brat just for the pleasure of deceiving!

 "His pretty girls and sleek young men are bent on enjoyment. They live lives of graceful dissipation, with love intrigues and balls on the one hand, and pawnbrokers’ shops and debtors’ prisons on the other. Their motto is carpe diem, and they rarely think of the day or reckoning” (Ray, p. 217).

 

 On receipt of this letter mount a horse and hurry! 

Looking on the Avenue de Neuilly a yellow awning drops,

gray horse, Weller - 108 - Lanturn one lighted. Follow! 

Stop at the door of Sablonville house, a man and a woman go down

- this man was my lover - And this woman is yours!

  

“After the initial success of Caricaturana, Philipon proposed to Gavarni that he draw ‘Mme. Robert Macaire’ for Le Charivari. He responded with twelve studies of female deception in which he seems to have adopted Vigny’s belief that ‘A woman, more or less, is always Delilah.’ 

 

Allow me, Clara! Allow me, Clara!!... 
It is I who am just a fool with my stupid things ... 

you can have your velvet shawl ... Allow me, Clara! Come!
(The "I'll just die w/o it" routine).

"They made little impression, but three years later Gavarni returned to the theme in a subtler and more amiable way with one of his most searching and amusing series. In no. 37 he offers this exchange: ‘How did you know, papa, that I loved Mr. Leon?—Because you always talked to me about Mr. Paul.’ Gavarni’s playful mastery of female psychology is not the only attraction of the series. If Daumier could not draw a pretty woman, as is sometimes alleged, Gavarni at this period could hardly draw an ugly one” (Ray, pp. 220-221).
 

 How did you know, papa, that I loved Mr. Leon?

— Because you always talked to me about Mr. Paul.

 It is safe to say that the Delilah of the Bible practiced deception to a degree far in excess of these innocents at worst coquettes.

The name Delilah is a play on the Hebrew word, Laylah, or "night." Gavarni's dainty Delilahs do not possess the dark charms of their biblical counterpart; they may be fairly characterized as sunshine Delilahs, vexing, perhaps, but not cruel vixens. They perpetrate misdemeanors, not felonies. They may drive their men to distraction but are not bringing them to their knees as this latter-day destroyer of men did:

Yet the Layla here is based upon Patti Boyd, Eric Clapton's unrequited love and wife of his best friend, Beatle George Harrison. She didn't deceive him; he deceived himself.

Cherchez la femme? Non, mon ami. Cherchez le imbécile, the man who allows himself to fall for and continue with the femme who deceives. Is it Lola's fault that Herr Rath is an idiot?

The Blue Angel (1930), based upon Heinrich Mann's novel,  

Professor Unrat (1905).

One of the most interesting characters/goddesses in the world of the Old Testament is mentioned only  by obscure, indirect Biblical references. The ancient cities of Anathoth and Beth Anath are, in their earliest roots, identified with Anath, the sister of Baal, and Canaanite  goddess of love and war, one of the more dramatic job combos in the pagan pantheon. Square that, Sigmund Freud.

Which brings us back to Hollywood goddess of love and war Hedy Lamarr, whose 1942 U.S. Patent 2,292,387 for a secret communications device based on frequency hopping to aid radio-guided torpedoes was  a technological breakthrough. Though contemporary mechanical technology was not able to realize the device's potential, it was used in 1962 during the Cuban Missile-blockade crisis.

The device had the power to deceive the enemy's radio signals and prevent jamming a torpedo's wireless path.

Hedy Lamarr, secret sunshine Delilah.
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GAVARNI [pseudonym of Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier]. Fourberies de femmes. Paris: Chez Aubert gal. Véro-Dodat, [n.d., 1837]. [Together with:] Fourberies de femmes en matière de sentiment. 2e. série. Paris: Chez Bauger [and] Chez Bauger & Cie., [n.d., 1840-1841].

Two large quarto volumes bound in one. A total of sixty-four hand-colored lithographed plates, heightened with gum arabic, including twelve in the first series and fifty-two in the second.

Contemporary vertical-ribbed purple cloth, lettered in gilt on front cover.

Armelhault & Bocher 662-702; 1728-1739. Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 150 and 151.
 

[DAUMIER, Honoré, illustrator]. Les Cent et un Robert-Macaire, composés et dessinés par M. H. Daumier, sur les idées et les légendes de M. Ch. Philipon, réduits et lithographiés par MM. ***; texte par MM Maurice Alhoy et Louis Huart. Paris: Chez Aubert et Cie, Éditeurs du Musée pour Rire, 1840 and 1839.

Two quarto volumes. [8], [200], [4, publisher’s advertisements]; [8], [204], [4, publisher’s advertisements] pp. With 101 hand-colored lithographed plates, heightened with gum arabic.
   

Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 162. Vicaire III, cols. 31-32 (under Alhoy) and V, cols. 572-573 (under Philipon).     

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Images courtesy of David Brass.
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Of related interest:

Femme Fatales Go Down Under.   
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Hey, Rare Book Guy! What’s “Mock Love”?

(Not our correspondent).

Hey, Rare Book Guy!
 

I've come across a book that's got me a stumped: Love and Mock Love; or How to Marry to the end of Conjugal Satisfaction by George Stearns. Boston: Bela Marsh, 14 Bromfield St. 1860. It was in a box of old books I bought.

I recognized the name George Stearns - famous Garrisonian Abolitionist.  I'm also curious about the misspelling of the publisher on the title page: i.e. Bela Marsh - instead of Bella Marsh.

So, I'm hoping to 'tap' this resource to learn a little bit more about his book. Thank you in advance for your time!

C.W.
Ames, Iowa

•••

Dear C.W.:

“Shmock! Shmock!”

(Forgive me, I read the words “mock love,” was thrown into Mr. Peabody’s WABAC Machine and caromed back to the early-1960s, comedian Steve Allen, and his trademark nonsense exclamation).

You have unearthed a scarce little gem, a book that played a role in the early Feminist movement in the United States. George Stearns was, indeed, an abolitionist but also a prominent feminist free-thinker and social reformer. Love and Mock Love is his contribution to early feminist literature.

In True Love and Perfect Union: The Feminist Reform of Sex and Society (1981), author William Leach discusses the book. And what, pray tell, is true love? According to Stearns, “True love inspires no jealousies, perpetuates no murders, suggests no suicides, induces no miscarriages, creates no family wars, and warrants no selfish lusts.” It is an idealized vision of intimate relationships somewhat divorced from reality and devoid of human drama.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, married people (and, I’m told, singles) have sex. And there’s the rub.

To the 19th century feminist, romantic love was a “counterfeit passion,” and dangerous. Ideal love and the perfect marriage was, according to Leach, a social regime that stressed symmetry in all things, from the physical to the social contract. Sexual freedom, for the 19th century feminist, meant exactly that: Freedom from sex. It messed things up and turned women away from their intellectual, career, and moral potential. But if you have to have it, let it be symmetrical, and not inspire jealousy, murder, and suicide. Unselfish lust, apparently, was the goal. And, one supposes, without the emotional entanglements that lead to jealousy, murder, and suicide. In other words, placid, dispassionate sex.

I’ve noticed that a few other scholars have picked up upon Love and Mock Love; it is recognized as one of the more interesting period  books on love and marriage.

In an 1863 advertisement found in the Christmas Annual, William White & Co. of Boston offers Love and Mock Love for 25 cents. In 1865, William White advertised the book thus: “Plain 30 cents, gilt 50 cents. Postage 4 cents.”

Stearns was a very interesting individual.

“George Luther Stearns (8 Jan. 1809-9 Apr. 1867), manufacturer and abolitionist, was born in Medford, outside of Boston, Massachusetts...Stearns'...[industrial] pipe business produced a sizable fortune, and he would draw from it liberally to support his reform interests...In the political struggle against slavery, Stearns...supported antislavery third-party candidates... 

George Luther Stearns
Founding member of ZZ Top.

“...Stearns raised money (much of it his own) to purchase Sharpe's rifles and other supplies to support the free state settlers... Deeply impressed with John Brown's call for retributive justice, Stearns became an important financial backer of the guerrilla chieftain in Kansas...supporting and financing Brown's plans to extend his antislavery guerrilla war into Virginia. After Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Stearns and a fellow conspirator, Samuel Gridley Howe, fled briefly to Montreal. But Stearns returned to defend his actions before a Senate committee investigating the role of 'subversive organizations.' He admitted that he supported Brown's efforts to 'go into Virginia or some other state and relieve slaves,' but he denied any knowledge of plans to commit treason against the United States...

“At the close of the [Civil] war Stearns joined with J. Miller McKim and Charles Eliot Norton to establish The Nation. It was to be 'a weekly newspaper,' announced Stearns, 'to advocate advanced opinions.' Stearns [was] the single largest financial contributor to the new publication...He did not live to see his goal of universal suffrage constitutionally secured” (Louis S. Gerteis. "Stearns, George Luther"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000).  

Incredibly, OCLC and KVK locate only one copy in institutional holdings, at the British Library (shelfmark 8415.aa.19.).

As for Bela Marsh - that’s the way the Boston publisher, active c. 1840-1865, spelled his name; it is of Hungarian origin, i.e. Bela Lugosi and Bela Bartok. In 1841, his (then) firm, Marsh, Capen, and Lyon, was sued by another publisher for piracy. He seems to have sold his stock to William White; hence White's ads for this book originally published by Marsh.

Thanks, C.W., for the question. You made my day.
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STEARNS, George. Love and Mock Love or How to Marry to the end of Conjugal Satisfaction by George Stearns, author of "The Mistake of Christendom," etc. Boston: Bela Marsh, 14 Bromfield St. 1860. 32mo (thirtytwomo, i.e. tricesimo-secundo; 12 cm). vxvi, 17-128 p.
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Have a question about an old or rare book? The Rare Book Guy is here for you. But first you need to get the full details.
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Images of Love and Mock Love courtesy of the questioner. Image of George Stearns courtesy of the West Virginia State Archives. Header image is licensed from Corbis Images and is protected by copyright.
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Sex! Scandal! Political Intrigue! (What Else is New?)

Those who, like your ace reporter, avidly track the national SPRM (Sex&Politics-Related Meltdown) count will have noticed the recent spike in SPRM motility; the press has been absolutely pregnant with recent news from this fertile field of government.

Nothing new here to report except that this is nothing new - really nothing new. Presenting:

The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania, a roman à clef from 1727 that tore the royal bedsheets off the reigning monarch's bedstead, exposed his intimate dalliances, and laid bare political hostilities.

I will not torture you with guessing games. "The central character and the unifying theme in SHC is George II (1683-1760, ruled from 1727) and his amours" (Spetting).

The author of this bombshell was something of a bombshell herself.

"This woman was authoress of the most scandalous book call'd The Court of Caramania (1727)..." (Pope, The Dunciad Valorium, Bk. II, line 149).

"A licentious publication by Mrs. Eliza Haywood" (Lowndes).

"This publication...owing to [its] looseness and immorality, involved the authoress in considerable disgrace, and promoted her to a situation in the Dunciad of Pope" (Dr. Drake, on the 2nd edition as cited in Lowndes).

Eliza Haywood (1693-1756) dominated the contemporary British market for amorous fiction and in this political roman á clef assumed a major place in the political sphere of her time with the private indiscretions of public figures elevated to political acts. As such, the novel is oh, so modern, and can be considered on a par (though better written and more explosive when issued) with Joe Klein's anonymously written Primary Colors (1996) which did not depict the Clintons in the most favorable light, and savaged the President for his extra-curricular activities, pre-Lewinsky.

The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania was a smash sensation and went into an immediate second edition later in the year of its publication.

Haywood (née Elizabeth Fowler) was an English writer, actress and publisher. Since the 1980s, Eliza Haywood's literary works have been gaining in recognition and interest. Described as "prolific even by the standards of a prolific age" (Blouch, Christine. Introduction to Eliza Haywood and the Romance of Obscurity. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 no. 31 (1991): 535-551.), Haywood wrote and published over seventy works during her lifetime including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood is a significant figure in the 18th century as one of the important founders of the novel in English.

Haywood's writing career began in 1719 with the first two installments of Love in Excess, a novel, and ended in the year she died with the marital conduct books The Wife and The Husband, and the biweekly periodical The Young Lady. She wrote in several genres and many of her works were published anonymously.

Haywood, Delarivier Manley and Aphra Behn were known as the Fair Triumvirate of Wit and are considered the most prominent writers of amatory fiction. Eliza Haywood's prolific fiction developed from titillating romance novels and amatory fiction during the early 1720s to works focused more on "women's rights and position" (Schofield, Mary Anne. Eliza Haywood. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985, p. 63)

Haywood's first novel, Love in Excess; or The Fatal Enquiry (1719-1720) touches on themes of education and marriage. Termed an amatory bodice-ripper by some, this novel is also notable for its treatment of the fallen woman.

She began her career as an actress in 1715. During the second half of the 1720s, Haywood continued acting, moving over to the Haymarket Theatre to join with Henry Fielding in the opposition plays of the 1730s. In 1729, she wrote Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburgh to honor the future George II of the United Kingdom. George II, as Prince of Wales, was the focus of Tory opposition to the ministry of Robert Walpole. As he had made it clear that he did not favor his father's policies or ministry, praise for him was demurral from the present king.

Eliza Haywood was active in politics during her entire career, although she had a party change around the time of the reconciliation of George II with Robert Walpole: She became a staunch Tory and an enemy of Walpole. She wrote a series of parallel histories/roman á clefs, beginning with Memoirs of a Certain Island, Adjacent to Utopia (1724), and the present novel (1727), these her most well known. In 1746 she began to publish a journal, The Parrot, which got her questioned by the government for political statements about Charles Edward Stuart, as she was writing just after the Jacobite Rising. This would happen again with the publication of A Letter from H-- G----g, Esq. in 1750.

Eliza Haywood is now regarded as "a case study in the politics of literary history" (Blouch, pp. 7-8). She has also been reevaluated by feminist scholars and is highly rated. Interest in Haywood's work has been steadily growing as her importance has been recognized, with much scholarship, biographies, and collections and reprints of her novels, which are regarded as stylistically innovative. Her plays and political writing attracted most of the attention in her own time, and she was a full player in the difficult public sphere of the era.

An actress turned writer turned politician...public figures...indiscretions...political consequences: This novel could have been written yesterday.

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HAYWOOD, Eliza. The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania. London: Printed and Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1727. First edition, first issue. Octavo (7 5/8 x 4 5/8 in; 192 x 117 mm). [4], 348 pp. Woodcut head- tailpieces, and initials by Woodfall.

Spetting, A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood, Ab.33.1a. McBirney 213. Lowndes, p. 369 (1st edition), p. 1019 (2d edition). Graesse, vol. C, p. 44 (1st ed.), vol. H, p. 224 (2d edition).

Sources not cited above: Staves, A Literary History of Women's Writing in Britain 1160-1789, p. 187. Paula R. Backscheider on Haywood, Eliza, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Lowndes provides a Key to the true identities of the characters, which we reproduce below:

Ismonda: Mrs. Howard
Adrastus: Mr. Howard
Marmillio: Earl Scarborough
Lutetia: Mrs. Balladin
Irene: L--y Douglas
Arilla: Mrs. Meadows
Arbanes: Lord Nottingham
Euridice: Lady Charlotte Finch
Doraspe: Duke of Somerset
Ernestus: Lord Finch
Clotus: Earl Suffolk
Aridanor: Duke of Argyle
Barsina: Duchess of Argyle
Elaria: Miss Bridgeman
Her cousin: Lady Craven
Orsabia: Sir Orlando Bridgeman
Almira: Miss Warburton
Idomeus: Lady Isley
Cleomenes: Mr. Lumley
Attalinda" Lady Romney
Arsinoe: L--y Rich
Mazares; Lord Essex
Elearchus: Mr. Berkeley
Cariclea: L--y Hern
Her sister: Miss Hern
Olimpia: Mrs. Foley
Luthelina: Miss Titchburn
Her aunt: Mrs. Stanley

Title page and page one images courtesy of David Brass.

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Rare Book Mythbusters #1

The reason that Charles Dickens's books are so long is because he was paid by the word.

Contrary to popular belief, Dickens was not paid by the word for his books. He was, rather, paid per installment.

All but five of Dickens' novels were originally published in twenty 32-page installments in nineteen issues (the last a double installment) that sold for one shilling each, though some, i.e. Oliver Twist, were issued in ten installments.

This formula allowed Dickens, like a modern-day soap opera writer, to whet his readers' interest in each episode and stoke their hunger to find out what would happen next. He never wrote too far in advance of the next episode, which allowed him to incorporate feedback from his readers as to how the story should unfold, or ignore his rabid fanbase: Despite desperate pleas he allowed the Grim Reaper to prematurely claim Little Nell, from The Old Curiosity Shop, as his own. (Later, Oscar Wilde, who had no patience for sentimentality, would invert it and dryly tell a friend: "It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell")

More to the point, at one shilling each, the installments were so inexpensive that just about anyone could afford them: At the time, books cost an average of thirty-one shillings, six pence (£1, 11s, 6p), a lot of money for the average British citizen of the era. The average weekly wage then was one pound; a standard book cost over a week's salary.

Thus Dickens reached a much broader audience than if the novels had been originally issued in book form. Sketches By Boz and Oliver Twist, originally serialized in the weekly magazine, Bentley's Miscellany, were later issued in separate book form yet were subsequently issued in monthly parts: Once again, the cost of books was prohibitive for many of Dickens's readers and by reissuing the books in parts the publishers hoped to increase their financial return through volume sales of installments.

While I have yet to discover how much Dickens was paid later in his career, in 1836 he earned £20 for each monthly episode of The Pickwick Papers, an extremely handsome salary.

Yet it was not enough. For most of his career Dickens also edited and wrote for magazines. He was part owner of Household Words, which he also edited. For this, he received an annual salary of £500; with income from his contributions to the magazine his annual income was £1,163-£1,652, well over $350,000 in today's money.

Yet Dickens enjoyed the fruits of fame to the extent that he was frequently in debt due to his lavish lifestyle. By early winter, 1843, for example, sales of Martin Chuzzlewit, whose first installment had been issued in January 1843, were poor and his publisher, Chapman & Hall, threatened to reduce his salary. He owed money, his wife was pregnant...

Ai caramba! Bestseller needed, pronto, ASAP, PDQ, NOW...

And so Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, and at warp speed, completing it in six weeks on top of all the other writing and editing he was simultaneously engaged with. Originally issued on December 17, 1843, it sold 6,000 copies within five days. Another 2,000 copies were printed and sold out by January 6, 1844. It was a smash success.

But a financial disaster. Priced at five shillings to stimulate holiday gift sales, the elaborate production that Dickens, with contractual rights, insisted upon - John Leech was commissioned to produce eight illustrations, four to be hand-colored steel engravings, the others as woodcuts; expensive green end- papers were used, and then replaced with others of similar quality but yellow; the titlepage, originally printed in blue and red was re-printed in green and red; all edges gilt -  was such that the book was unable to earn a profit. Dickens blamed Chapman and Hall and broke with them.

Most of the thirty-two page installments were forty-nine lines to the page; total words for each installment approx. 18,800 words; times twenty installments equals 376,320 total words per book. At £20 per installment, Dickens earned £400 per book. Many believe that Dickens earned a penny a word. It was less than that. He earned a farthing per word. A farthing is a quarter of a British penny. But a farthing went a lot farther in those days. That £400 in 1836 equals approximately $238,000 in today's money.

And, remember, that was for his first novel, Pickwick Papers. Nowadays, a first-time novelist needs a super-agent to get a deal like that.

The pay scale for writers has declined dramatically over the last 170 years. A farthing is beginning to look pretty good to me: "Please Sir, may I have some more?"

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References

Hatton & Cleaver. Bibliography of the Periodical Works of Charles Dickens.

Smith, Walter. Charles Dickens in the Original Cloth.

Allingham, Philip. A Review of Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins & Victorian Authorship.

The Dickens Project, University of California, Santa Cruz

University of Glasgow, Book of the Month, December 1999. Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol.

The Complete Works of Charles Dickens at dickens-literature.com

Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde. (1988).

A tip o' the hat to David Brass for providing images, and for explaining the mysteries of the British monetary system to me; I couldn't fathom farthings.

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