“pleasing portrait under the disguise”: Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 143, June 1828, p. 539.
“This minstrel is an imposter”: London Magazine, 1828, “Notes on Art,” p. 383.
“pseudo portrait”: LG, March 31, 1827.
“Oh, I don’t chuse to believe anything against Miss Landon”: Unpublished Letters of Lady Bulwer Lytton, p. 129.
The riotous parties the Bulwers hosted: Journal of Thomas Moore, vol. 4 (1831–35), p. 1463.
Jerdan boasting in his cups about his sexual conquest: Unpublished Letters of Lady Bulwer Lytton, p. 128.
“against all the world”: Ibid., p. 127.
helped fix up a curacy: Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray (London: Chapman and Hall, 1884), pp. 235–36.
Jerdan’s complicity: The vicar’s wife, Anna Eliza Bray, records in her autobiography that Jerdan had given her first book, a travelogue, a warm review in the Gazette in 1820, which she put down to his good-natured desire to “cheer and encourage a writer of the weaker sex” (p. 157). They remained in touch into the 1830s, as is shown by a surviving letter from Mrs. Bray to Jerdan, Bodleian, MSS. Eng. lett., d. 113–14.
“(H)all’s well”: AWJ, vol. 4, p. 327.
“slow to believe that…evil words could harm her”: S. C. Hall, A Book of Memories, p. 264.
“still her face was bow’d”: L.E.L., The Venetian Bracelet, p. 208.
“The Dying Child”: Ibid., p. 247.
Letitia wrote to a Mrs. Tayler: Letters, p. 51.
contributor to S. C. Hall’s The Amulet: Charles B. Tayler, “Soldier’s Wives,” The Amulet (1833), pp. 191–204. Other contributors to the same volume include Mary Howitt, Laman Blanchard, and L.E.L. herself.
to influence Elizabeth Gaskell’s famous factory novel: Rudolph Beck, “The Writing on the Cartridge: A Note on Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and Charles B. Tayler,” Notes and Queries 45, no. 2 (June 1998): 216–17.
Dr. Thomson’s first wife was Elizabeth Gaskell’s aunt: Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell, pp. 21–22, 34–35, 182.
“work calculated to do much good”: Puff quoted in an advertisement at the back of Thomas Taylor, The Life of William Cowper (London: Smith, Elder, 1833).
“I am disappointed at not being in town before this”: Letters, p. 48. Letitia has not dated her letter. “June 1828” has been added in pencil by another hand, but the reference to “The Lost Pleiade” makes it far more likely to have been 1829, since Letitia rarely wrote so long in advance of publication, and that poem was published in The Venetian Bracelet in November 1829.
missed “so very much not being able to talk to you”: AWJ, vol. 4, p. 404. As in this case, Jerdan often reproduces letters out of context, and without commentary, leaving their actual import unspoken.
“coquetted at her”: Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Circle, p. 142.
a torn-up fragment: L.E.L. to Mary Anne Browne, Letters, p. 201.
A letter from Browne to Jerdan: AWJ, vol. 4, p. 314.
“With thine ‘own people’ dost thou dwell”: “Stanzas to the author of ‘Mont Blanc,’ ‘Ada,’ etc.,” The Venetian Bracelet, pp. 287–94.
a strange short story: Reprinted in AWJ, vol. 4, appendix, pp. 411–20.
“nourishing of sickly aspirations”: LG, no. 663, October 3, 1829, pp. 641–43; no. 664, October 10, 1829, pp. 660–61.
The Royal Lady’s Magazine: Cited in Mason, Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism, p. 111.
“dear Creature”: Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 533.
her baptismal certificate: London Metropolitan Archives, St Michael Queenhithe, Register of Baptisms, P69/MIC6/A/01/Ms 9150, Item 1.
the census was taken: Class: HO107; Piece: 680; Book: 4; Civil Parish: St Marylebone; County: Middlesex; Enumeration District: 4; Folio: 7; Page: 6; Line: 1; GSU roll: 438796.
“that it is well known to everyone”: Disraeli, Letters, vol. 1, p. 408n.
“Our gifted friend defied slander”: [Thomson], “Memorials,” p. 182.
CHAPTER 8 THE CASH NEXUS
“cash payment”: Works of Thomas Carlyle, vol. 4, p. 164.
“cash will not pay”: Ibid.
“fame and profit”: Grant, The Great Metropolis, p. 341.
“A record of L.E.L.’s personal expenses‘: Roberts, A Memoir, p. 16.
“But in spite of great and constant success”: [Thomson], “Memorials,” p. 186.
“saying gently that she need not keep it”: Quoted in Sypher, A Biography, p. 337.
“the Middle Classes consist of those families”: Grant, The Great Metropolis, p. 274.
Patrick Brontë’s annual salary: The Letters of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, p. 46.
lodger of Thomas Carlyle’s postman: Jane Welsh Carlyle to John A. Carlyle, November 15, 1851, Carlyle Letters Online.
squib on Jerdan’s reputation for puffery: Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 123.
“Miss Landon in swansdown muff”: The Age, December 16, 1827.
“made use of his influence in the literary world”: Berkeley, My Life and Recollections, vol. 2, pp. 47–48.
The surviving accounts: BL, Bentley Papers, Add. 44, Vol. CXV, ff. 314.
“poets’ food”: From “An Exhortation,” in The Poetical Works of P. B. Shelley (London: C. Daly, 1839), p. 502.
“lovers’ correspondence”: PLG, p. 103.
“Conclusion”: PLG, pp. 124–25.
“ ‘What is Freedom?—Ye can tell’ ”: Shelley, Selected Poems and Prose, p. 362.
many of Shelley’s antiestablishment political poems: Reiman and O’Neil, Percy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 8, p. 71.
promoting the pictures in a commercial gallery: Poetical Catalogue of Pictures [to be continued occasionally.] Vandyke consulting his mistress in a Picture in Cooke’s Exhibition. PLG, pp. 125ff. See also note p. 503. W. B. Cooke (1778–1855), a publisher of engravings, had his place of business in Soho Square.
“As to pecuniary recompense”: Letters, p. 26.
she had made over £900: Letters, p. 27.
Jerdan provided a list: AWJ, vol. 3, p. 185.
“[T]hough I will correct the press”: MS in the University of Edinburgh quoted in Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 145.
“I have not a friend in the world but himself”: Letters, p. 28.
“an order if procureable”: Letters, p. 211.
“blunders in attempting numbers”: AWJ, vol. 4, p. 229.
“A note from Jerdan asking me to withhold the cheque”: Diaries of William Charles Macready, vol. 1, pp. 482–83.
The Golden Violet: Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 192.
The Venetian Bracelet: Ibid., p. 216.
“in purchasing and furnishing Grove House”: William Jerdan to Edward Bulwer, December 23, [1830], marked “Private,” Hertfordshire Archives D/EK C/11/23.
“puppet”: Personal Reminiscences by Chorley, Planché and Young, p. 8.
“I am afraid it is out of order”: Jerdan to Richard Bentley, February 1830, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
“the only money I spent on myself”: S. C. Hall, A Book of Memories, p. 274.
“Now society is a market place”: Romance and Reality, vol. 1, p. 156.
An aristocratic lady sells tickets: Ibid., vol. 1, p. 63.
“A part is to be played in company”: Ibid., vol. 1, p. 157.
Yes and No: Ibid., vol. 1, p. 279.
“Miss Amesbury”: Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 142–43.
“ ‘Mr Lillian,’ observed Mr Morland”: Ibid., vol. 1, p. 283.
“the novel is now…the popular vehicle”: Ibid., vol. 1, p. 198.
“the fair accountant”: Westminster Review, vol. 16, January 1832, pp. 204–17.
Letitia’s formal written statement: BL, Original Letters to Thomas Hill, Add. 20081, fol. 262–64.
“defamatory gossip”: Personal Reminiscences by Chorley, Planché and Young, p. 89.
“upon the round, rosewood, brass-inlaid drawing-room table”: Saintsbury, Paris Sketch Book, p. 170.
“to get the Profit of my own Labour and Talent”: Heath, The Heath Family Engravers, vol. 2, p. 24.
Nothing better exemplifies: On the phenomenon of the annual, see Harris, Forget Me Not.
surviving ladies’ albums of the period: William St Clair collection.
In late 1830: Alexander and Sellars, The Art of the Brontës, p. 15.
Ned Plymdale attempts to impress Rosamond Vincy: Eliot, Middlemarch, pp. 302–4.
“only wanted to know what her audience liked”: Ibid., p. 190.
“The Madonna puzzled me the most”: Letters, p. 73.
“with the loathing of a slave”: [Thomson], “Memorials,” p. 88.
Jerdan had got to know two brothers: AWJ, vol. 4, p. 358.
They offered him an instant loan: Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 161.
“I suppose troubling a friend”: Jerdan to Bulwer, December 25 [1830], Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, DE/K/C11/23.
“lost the whole of the proceeds”: L.E.L. to Bulwer, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, DE/K/C1/96.
CHAPTER 9 FRENCH CONNECTIONS
“I thought (not, I hope, uncharitably)”: Diaries of William Charles Macready, vol. 1, p. 124.
In June, Letitia jumped: [Thomson], “Memorials,” p. 183.
“it would be something to be out of the perpetual worry”: Letters, p. 101.
The onboard lunch: Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, p. 3.
“delightful”: Letters, p. 103.
“pleasant apartments, looking on the Boulevards”: Letters, p. 104.
“We parted on Thursday”: Letters, p. 102.
“Pray write to me”: Letters, p. 105.
“Love and fear are the greatest principles of human existence”: Letters, p. 105.
“I was so glad of your letter”: Letters, p. 107.
“I hope you will not think that I intend writing you to death”: Letters, p. 107.
“I write on purpose to scold you”: Letters, p. 109.
“The Talisman”: Tales and Sketches, pp. 61–90.
“annual, consisting entirely of French translations”: Letters, p. 113.
“an old friend and relative”: Letters, p. 118.
Christopher Sullivan Fagan: Made a colonel in the Bengal army 1815, and a general in 1837. See Alphabetical List of the Officers of the Bengal Army, pp. 102–3.
In October 1797: Mrs. Morgan John Connell, The Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade: Count O’Connell and Old Irish Life at Home and Abroad, 1745–1833 (London: Kegan Paul, 1892), vol. 2, p. 216.
Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland…the Earl of Mornington: Farmer, A Regency Elopement, pp. 169–71.
“her ability to play the secret for all it was worth”: Jenson, Trauma and Its Representations, p. 121.
“poem authored by pain”: Ibid., p. 117.
“chronically wounded enigma”: Ibid., p. 119.
“Willow Leaves”: PLG, p. 353.
admiring piece on L.E.L.: Revue des deux mondes, vol. 6, 1832, pp. 404–8.
“gallantry”: Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, p. 143.
“The soirées are where”: Letters, p. 109.
Heinrich Heine: Mende, Heinrich Heine, p. 116.
“He said, ‘Mademoiselle’ ”: Letters, p. 108.
“you know it takes a long time”: Letters, pp. 107–8.
“I am unconquerably irresolute”: Letters, p. 115.
“pale, dark, sombre”: Letters, p. 115.
They went on to elope: See Knapp, Marie Dorval.
“As far as I can judge”: Letters, p. 110.
“of course it is impossible”: Letters, p. 110.
“love dashing her head blindly”: Quoted in Miller, The Brontë Myth, p. 13.
“making an experimental voyage through the carte”: Letters, p. 112.
“I am obliged to force”: Letters, p. 118.
a litany of complaints: Letters, p. 108.
Rosina Wheeler…Edward Bulwer: Mitchell, Bulwer Lytton, p. 38.
Lady Caroline Lamb was particularly warned: Farmer, A Regency Elopement, p. 170.
cohabited informally: Frost, Living in Sin.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Carnell, Literary Lives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
strip-searched by a suspicious female customs officer: AWJ, vol. 3, p. 192.
“excess of feminine timidity”: AWJ, vol. 4, p. 203.
“done all I could for the last three years”: Whittington Landon to Jerdan, Bodleian Library, MSS. Eng. lett. d. 113–14.
penning comic epigrams: Jerdan, 1848 memoir, p. x.
“a character of no ordinary cast”: Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray, p. 236.
“I cannot get over my disappointment”: Letters, p. 124.
where she had been christened: Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 18.
She pointedly described: TNA, Class: HO107; Piece: 1679; Folio: 427; Page: 5.
a baptismal record: London Metropolitan Archives, Register of Baptisms for Parish of Walworth St Peter in the district of Southwark, 1834, p. 6.
dancers at the Strand Theatre: LG, 1834, p. 853.
in the 1841 census: Matoff refers to this record, Conflicted Life, p. 374, but is wrong to state that the eldest child, Marion, was not christened.
Stendhal’s girl: Weis, The Real Traviata, pp. 51–52.
she eventually died: Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 523.
“I have often been told that my writings are too melancholy”: L.E.L., Francesca Carrara, vol. 3, p. 4.
“tender” friendship: Graves, Goodbye to All That, p. 28.
Letitia and Hemans: Morrison, “Effusive Elegies or Catty Critic.”
“like that lost lyre”: Works of Mrs Hemans, vol. 7, “The Lyre and Flower,” p. 83.
“When I have the good luck or ill luck”: Letters, p. 121.
“As for falling in love”: Letters, p. 131.
“cruel slander was old”: L.E.L. to Bulwer, Sypher, A Biography, Appendix 1, p. 273.
“two other nice girls”: Diaries of William Charles Macready, vol. 1, p. 173.
“Jerdan was in the box”: Ibid.
“Called on Forster”: Ibid., p. 262.
CHAPTER 10 VILE LINKS
“set of coarse men”: Chorley, Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 252.
“the personal scurrility”…“the sausage”: Cited in Mitchell, Bulwer Lytton, p. 110.
“hardly intelligible”: Thomas Carlyle to Margaret A. Carlyle, June 25, 1833, Carlyle Letters Online.
The text snidely insinuated: Fraser’s, vol. 1, June 1830, pp. 605–6.
In her Fraser’s profile: Fraser’s, vol. 8, October 1833, p. 433.
“pernicious” practical effects on “the happiness of women”: Westminster Review, vol. 7, January 1827, p. 66.
“And, whoever was out, and whoever was in”: Mackenzie, Miscellaneous Writings of the Late Dr Maginn, vol. 5, p. cviii.
“I am refreshing my Tory principles”: Letters, p. 127.
their political enemy Bulwer: Bulwer, The Last Days of Pompeii, vol. 1, pp. 75–76.
Comte d’Orsay quipped: Le Fèvre-Deumier, Célébrités anglaises, p. 307.
The first, now lost: Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, vol. 4, p. 152.
asking for his permission: Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 251.
puffed it in the Gazette: LG, no. 700, June 18, 1830, pp. 402–3.
; quick-fire pen-and-ink drawing: Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
“short and ill-made”: Quoted in Sypher, A Biography, p. 10.
“kitten-like mignonnerie”: Quoted in Bates, The Maclise Portrait Gallery, p. 200.
“most women have no Characters at all”: Alexander Pope, Of the Characters of Women, Epistle 2, line 2.
obtrude a review copy on Blackwood’s: W. Jerdan to Messrs Blackwood, December 29, 1835, MS letter in National Library of Scotland, cited in Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 312.
Jerdan failed to pay the ten guineas: Matoff, Conflicted Life, p. 312.
“a lady in distress”: L.E.L., The Vow of the Peacock, introduction.
“We give it as London gossip”: Rural Repository, March 25, 1837, vol. 13, p. 164.
“an extraordinary advertisement”: The Spectator, August 5, 1837, p. 12.
Maginn first made his mark: Latané, William Maginn and the British Press, p. 28.
The one recorded instance: Ibid., p. 160.
“Papa and ma delighted that I’m getting on so well”: “Poets of the Day,” Fraser’s, vol. 7, June 1833, p. 662.
“dark ladye”: Latané, William Maginn and the British Press, p. 202.
“dearest William”: Mackenzie, Miscellaneous Writings of the Late Dr Maginn, vol. 5, p. lxxxv.
“You must no longer call”: Davies, John Forster, p. 76.
Letitia rebuts the idea of an “attachment” with Maginn: Letters, p. 140.
Forster also received anonymous letters: Mackenzie, Miscellaneous Writings of the Late Dr Maginn, vol. 5, p. lxxxv.
she had gone on to alienate him: Letters, pp. 16–17.
A surviving drawing by Maclise: Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.
“the principal fribble among the namby-pambies”: Quoted in Latané, William Maginn and the British Press, p. 205.
“Temper”: Watts, Alaric Watts, vol. 2, p. 77.
“pray, Alaric Attila, where do you find those fine names”: Quoted in Latané, William Maginn and the British Press, p. 205.
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