The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith

1784-90 "TO LIVE ONLY TO WRITE & WRITE ONLY TO LIVE"

1784–90 “to live only to write & write only to live” —22 august 1789 # Charlotte Smith began to write professionally under humiliating circumstances. Her husband, Benjamin, long a ne’er-do-well, was imprisoned for debt in December 1783. She spent most of his seven-month termwithhiminKing’s Bench Prison. Pro¤ts from her ¤rst publication, Elegiac Sonnets (1784), helped obtain his release. William Hayley, a neighbor and himself a poet, presented her work to James Dodsley, her ¤rst publisher. Letters are scarce in the years that follow, a troubled time during her marriage. After following Benjamin to Normandyto escapehis creditors inOctober 1784, sheseparatedfromhim, fearing, she admitted years later, for her life and her children’s safety. Burdened by the need to support them, she took up writing full-time. Hayley , John Sargent, andtheReverend CharlesDunster readher earlywork. Her second effort, a translation of Manon Lescaut, was considered scandalous, andits publisher,Thomas Cadell, Sr., withdrewitfrompublication.Hernext work for Cadell, The Romance of Real Life, another translation, met with more success. The experience of retellingbizarre real-life legal cases, along with the narrative of Manon, gave her con¤dence to undertake a ¤ction of her own. Her ¤rst novel, Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle (1788), was an immediate success. A misunderstanding with Cadell over advance money led her to offer Ethelinde, or the Recluse of the Lake secretly to G. G. and J. Robinson , but in the end Cadell published it in 1789. It, too, was well received. Her poetry continued to be very successful. After Dodsley published four editions , Cadell took over the volume and offered the expanded Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems in a subscription edition in 1789. By 1790, Smith’s third novel, Celestina, was under way. The younger children for whom Smith labored lived at home during these years, wherever home was. In 1784 they lived at Bignor Park, the Turner familyseat;in1785inNormandy;in1787inWoolbedingandLondon;and The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith in 1788 in Wyke and London again. In 1789 and 1790, Smith made several moves betweenLondonandBrightonwith most of the children in tow. Her eldest son,WilliamTowers Smith,achieved his rankas awriterwiththe East India Company in 1783 and was established in Bengal by 1788. Nicholas Hankey Smith earned his rank as a writer in 1788, arriving in Bombay in 1790. Charles Dyer and Lionel attended school at Winchester. The four daughters—Charlotte Mary, Anna Augusta, Lucy Eleanor, and Harriet Amelia—and the youngest son, George, stayed at home. Behind the scenes, Smith worked for a proper settlement of her father-in-law’s estate; her legal cause attracted the support of the earl of Egremont and his estate agent, James Upton Tripp. To James Dodsley1 Bignor Park,2 May 4th 1784, nr Petworth, Sussex Sir, I am this evening favor’d with yr Letter. I am so totally a novice in the business in question that I must beg yr excuse if I do not answer the querys you put to me by this post. A recent loss in a family, through whom some of the pieces you have of mine have been seen & approv’d by Mr Hayley, has made an application to him through them improper, till a few days ago.3 To night I am inform’d that a copy of the whole will be transmitted to him immediately, & I shall probably hear from him in the course of a few days, & I have reason to beleive I shall have his permission to dedicate them tohim:withsuchotherassistanceashecangivemetowardspublishingthem toadvantage.Thowe are near Neighbours, Ihavenot couragetoaddress myself directly to him & have therefore been oblig’d to wait till his friend, Mr Sarjent,4 could undertake to prefer my requestŒŒ I apprehend you may nevertheless go on with printing the manuscript. Mr Smith has a particular reason for wishing them to be advertis’d once at least in the morning papers before they are published. His motive relates to a matter I cannot explain to you, but you may be assur’d that whatever is the expence, if it should exceed what ye5 sale of the Verses produce, you shall be punctually reimburs’d. In regard to accounting, I dare say we shall have no dif¤culty, & You shall have as little trouble as possible. All I meant by a copy was that I wish’d to see one before publication as there are, I suppose, always some errors of the press, however carefully conducted, & even the manuscript you have got may have errors in it—As I wrote it out in great...