"3 Portsdown Road,
"Saturday.
"Dear Sirs,—I like the proofs you sent very much, but they require just a little alteration, the 'Rokby'[14] especially. I will touch upon them and return them to you.
"I have such an accumulation of work on hand just now that I do not feel justified in undertaking the two new subjects you have sent, as I do not know when I shall be able to let you have the drawings. I am doing some work for the Queen, and as it is wanted as soon as possible, all things else must wait till it is finished. But apart from this, the 'Coronation' subject, although a good one, is very painful. I should not like doing it on that account. And the other, although certainly very beautiful, I do not care much about illustrating just now—it requires too much thought to be disposed of hurriedly. I will, however, do my best to let you have the 'Barry Cornwall'[15] soon.
"Yours, my dear Sirs,
"Very truly,
"John Tenniel."
When the Cornhill Magazine, in 1859, was first advertised for publication at the price of one shilling, with Thackeray as editor, the announcement fell like a bomb in the midst of the magazine publishers—Blackwood, Frazer, Colburn, Bentley and others—for nothing of this description had even been so much as dreamt of before at a less price than the orthodox half-crown. The heavy government duty on paper, then only recently removed, may have been some apology for the high price hitherto charged for this class of literature, which at the present day is so far surpassed, if not always in quality certainly in quantity, at less than half the price of the great "Cornhill innovation."
Lady Lufton and the Duke of Omneum.