My dear Henry
Many thanks for all your trouble. It is too bad of Mr Macmillan <1> even as Editors go, who are a tiresome set, but pray do not be afraid of offending him. They are all the more civil for self-assertion on the part of their aspirants; & if he does accept it, pray do not let him have it without a positive statement of good pay – & no further curtailment. You can act more freely as your name is known, & commands respect, & your also are acting for another person. Certainly not less than 10/ a page, I should expect, & if such an article is taken at all, it should be 15/ – I have been looking at all the monthly advertisements of contents of various Magazines & of those I can see, only two seem to have the kind of articles which Mrs Campbell would suit<2> – The Cornhill, & the Covent Garden; – but neither Chambers, nor Fraser’s, which I think very likely, nor the Gentleman’s Magazine, are advertised at all.<3>
Pray be bold, & refuse everything doubtful without my consent – & if it does not suit for my finances, or is not taken as it is, I should wish to get it back as soon as possible – unless you would not mind trying Fraser – but I am bound to offer it to Chambers first, so I must get it back.
Yr aff. Louisa C. Frampton
Sir R. Cristison is very kind<4>
Lulworth Villa St Mary Church
Torquay – July 5
[envelope:]
H. Fox Talbot Esqre
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. From 1868-1883, George Grove was the editor of MacMillan's Magazine, a monthly published in London and Cambridge.
2. Frampton eventually published this as ‘Princess Charlotte and Mrs Campbell’, The Gentleman’s Magazine, n.s. v. 27, September 1876, pp. 275-289. Alicia Campbell, née Kelly, ‘Tam’ (1768–1829), a close family friend of the Framptons, first joined Princess Charlotte’s household in 1805.
3. The Cornhill Magazine, a Victorian literary journal, was founded by George Murray Smith in 1860 and published until 1975; it was named after Cornhill Street, London. Chambers Edinburgh Journal was a weekly started by William Chambers in Edinburgh in 1832; by the 1850s, its publication had moved to London, under the title Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Arts. The first number of The Covent Garden Magazine, edited by W. H. C. Nation, an author and thespian, was issued in London at the start of 1875; it ceased publication in 1880. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a monthly literary journal published in London from 1830-1882; by the time of this letter, it had drifted away from its strong Tory roots. The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer, later shortened to The Gentleman's Magazine was started in London in 1731 as a monthly digest and published through 1907; from then until 1922, the name continued as a small monthly.
4. Sir Robert Christison (1797–1882), M.D., Scottish physician, chemist and botanist.