“Perhaps, Madam, you may not be aware, that of your two hundred subscribers, all will not send for their copies, and of those who do, some will not send the money; that the expence is immediate, as no long credit can be given; so that, after the first advertisements, the poems of an unknown author are generally considered as waste paper.”
“It does not signify, Sir, I must and will have a thousand copies.”
The result may be easily anticipated; a thousand copies were actually printed, but after a lapse of several years, no less than seven hundred and fifty still groaned upon the shelves of the printer’s warehouse.
This was a most extraordinary young lady. She certainly possessed considerable talents, but she was vain, conceited, and pragmatical; and, as was before observed, a worthy disciple of the Wolstoncraftian school. Having failed as a teacher, as an authoress, and, above all, as an actress, she offered herself and was accepted as a governess in the family of a lady, who had formerly been brought up by her sister and herself. The lady was of an old and considerable family, and heiress to a large property; her husband was the elder son of a baronet, of no great pretensions on the score of intellect, but a well meaning, good sort of a man. Till the governess came among them, the family had lived tranquilly together, with no other or greater interruptions than are found to occur in all families. No sooner had the poetess entered upon her office, than she took it into her head, that delicacy was offended by the familiarity and unconcealed affection, with which her quondam pupil outwardly treated her husband. She endeavoured to persuade the wife that this was highly indecorous, and unhappily she but too well succeeded. Her familiarity was turned into cold civility, her affection changed into a reserved demeanour, and the whole character of her behaviour assumed a new form.
The husband was not insensible of the alteration, which at first excited his astonishment, and afterwards his indignation. On discovering the cause, he very naturally insisted that the governess should be dismissed. The foolish wife, however, resisted this, and so implicated her own case with that of her counsellor, that she declared one would not go without the other. The husband was firm, and the result was, that the indiscreet wife sacrificed three young children, and the society of her husband, with whom she had hitherto lived happily, to share with her female friend the disgrace, contempt, and privations, which accompanied their departure.
The husband instituted different suits in Doctors Commons, for the establishment of his just rights, in every one of which, the decisions, as might be expected, were in his favour. The fugitives at length found it expedient to retire from Great Britain to a remote island in its dependencies, where they lived, and may perhaps yet live, victims of self-reproach, of the grossest folly, and most unjustifiable perverseness. The name of this sage female counsellor, ought perhaps to be published by way of punishment. It was, however, printed in the proceedings of the Consistorial Court, where her conduct was most severely animadverted upon, by the Judge who presided. It is withheld in this place, merely from respect to the memory of her deceased brother.
Si lucri quid detur rem divinam deseram.