Page:William Jerdan.pdf/15

The "Fate of Adelaide" was published in August, 1821, dedicated to Mrs. Siddons, who was a friend of Mrs. Bishop, the grandmother of the author, and had undertaken to interest herself more for the volume than she had time or opportunity to perform. In this line of parentage there was a mystery I never understood, i. e., who were the progenitors of Mrs. Bishop, herself an old lady of lady-like manners, pleasing conversation, affectionately fond of her grand-daughter, and possessed of a sufficient life-income to enable her to live genteely, and often have her pet-child to stay with her. I have a confused idea that she was the natural daughter of an aristocratic family. A contribution from her purse assisted the publication, and was the more needed, as a dissolution of the army agency partnership of Adair & Co., of which Mr. Landon was a member, and his expensive experiments in amateur model-farming, at the handsome country residence where the childhood of L. E. L., as artlessly and sweetly described by herself, was passed—not only rendered the cost an object, but even excited hopes of profitable results. That these hopes were doomed to be disappointed, I need not add; but the popularity of the poem was so decided, that it placed the gifted author in a position to negotiate for and receive considerable sums for all her subsequent works; of which I shall state the items when I come to that part of my memoir. As the composition proceeded, the anxieties about it increased; and two or three very short documents may be inserted to show the outer world some of the tribulations which young aspirants to literary fame must undergo, even when they have a popular editor, intimate with publishers, to help and cheer them on:—