"I shall not talk, or write about vulgar editors: but shall act, the first time I come to England, practically; and, if you like, you shall see me."
This will do, for the present, from the husband and the publisher. Mrs. Rochfort speaks also for herself, of the learned doctor who edits the New Times and I shall venture to add, ex uno, disce omnes.
HER ANSWER, TO THE EDITOR OF THE "NEW TIMES," IS AS FOLLOWS:
"While expressing my sincere gratitude to such friends as have held out a helping hand towards me, it would have been very ungrateful on my part, to have omitted some brief acknowledgment to my most cordial supporter the brilliant editor of the New Times newspaper. He, in a paragraph of at least a foot long, with true, genuine, manly dignity loads me, a female, who never injured him nor meant him harm, with the coarsest abuse, bestowing on me the most ungentlemanlike epithets!
"My book was going on well, it is true: still, there were, no doubt, thousands of young ladies who had neither read it, nor dreamt of reading it, when this paragraph of the kind and judicious editor, like the apple upon Eve, so worked upon their imagination and excited their curiosity:
"'Most earnestly do we call on our fair countrywomen not to suffer such pollution to approach them, &c. &c. &c.'
"He then goes on to prose something about pickling or preserving the chastity of virgins and matrons.
"Now, if such a notice as the above was not actually meant to excite curiosity, and, by making the book circulate, effect the very horrors which he deprecates, I appeal to the candour of readers in general, whether this editor's total ignorance of human nature as well as of the nature and properties of young ladies, does not entirely disqualify him for the profession of an editorial partisan. He must indeed be a weak and silly and spiteful sort of a reptile not worth my notice, were it not for my naturally grateful disposition, the man's long-winded oration having put money into my pocket; yet he is said to be a doctor, learned in the law, ycleped LL.D. and very probably A.S.S.