*** “Send no more sheets to Mr. Law till you hear from me again. My eyes have been opened since my arrival here. Four times the sum now paid can be obtained from Messrs. Harper, and negotiations are going on with them in which they must not have the advantage of having the sheets. You shall not lose by any new arrangement—of that you may trust to the word of one who has I think never failed you.”
He adds, in a postscript: “Tell him [Mr. Newby] I have been shamefully imposed upon by false statements of the sale here and if I had taken his advice I should have been some hundreds of pounds richer.”
On October 5, 1851, he writes from Stockbridge to Ollier:
“I have not written to you earlier because I wanted to find the treaty with Russia in regard to Copyright, and also to see the head of a great German house here in America so as to put you in the way of negotiating for the sale of my next book in Germany. But I have been too lame to leave my own house for anything but a morning drive. I am so far better that I can now walk out for a mile or two, but my right hand and arm remain very painful. However, I think I shall be able to go to New York in ten days and will write to you from that place.*** I am anxious to dedicate the first book I write to my own satisfaction, to Lord Charles Clinton. He is one of the noblest-minded men I ever met with—all truth and honor and straightforwardness. If you see him will you ask him for me whether he has any objection. The Fate is highly popular here—considered the best book I ever wrote—by the critics at least. The whole of the first chapter was read in the Supreme Court the other day before Chief Justice Shaw to prove what was the state of England in the reign of James II. So says the ‘N. Y. Evening Post’ and I suppose it is true. I wish I had you here with me to see the splendor of an American autumn in the most lovely scene. The landscape is all on fire with the coloring of the foliage and yet so harmoniously blended are the tints, from the brightest crimson to the deep green of the pines that the effect is that of a continuous sunset. Mountains, forests, lakes, streams are all in a glow round.”
A letter to Ollier, written at Stockbridge on March 22, 1852, deals with some financial matters and then proceeds:
“I am glad to hear what you say of Revenge—though the title is not one I would myself have chosen, there being a tale of that name in the book of the Passions. I think it is a good book, better in conception than in execution perhaps. Your comparison of Richardson and Johnson with myself and you will not hold. You are scantily remunerated for much trouble. Johnson had done nothing that I can remember for Richardson. As to Richardson’s parsimony towards the great, good man, you explain it all in one word. The former was rich. Do you remember the fine poem of Gaffer Grey—Holcrofft’s I believe—
‘The poor man alone,
To the poor man’s moan,
Of his morsel a morsel will give Gaffer Grey.’
“But this rule is not without splendid exceptions, of which I will one day give you an instance, which I think will touch you much. At present I am writing in great haste in the grey of the morning with snow all around me, the thermometer at 18, and my hand nearly frozen. Verily, we have here to pay for the hot summer and gorgeous autumn in the cold silver coinage of winter.”