Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/40

 xxxii transacted much publishing business with Wilkie Collins and with Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie). He published (separately from the magazine) all Miss Thackeray's novels. For a time he took over Wilkie Collins's books, issuing a collective edition of them between 1865 and 1870. But this connection was not lasting. Smith refused in the latter year to accede to Collins's request to publish a new work of his in sixpenny parts, and at the close of 1874 Collins transferred all his publications (save those of which the copyright had been acquired by Smith, Elder, & Co.) to the firm of Chatto & Windus. Smith was not wholly unversed in the methods of publication which Collins had invited him to pursue. He had in 1866 purchased the manuscript of Trollope's 'Last Chronicles of Barset' for 3,000l., and had issued it by way of experiment in sixpenny parts. The result did not encourage a repetition of the plan.

One of the pleasantest features of the early history of the 'Cornhill' was the monthly dinner which Smith gave the contributors for the first year at his house in Gloucester Square. Thackeray was usually the chief guest, and he and Smith spared no pains to give the meetings every convivial advantage. On one occasion Trollope thoughtlessly described the entertainment to Edmund Yates, who was at feud with Thackeray, and Yates wrote for a New York paper an ill-natured description of Smith in his character of host, which was quoted in the 'Saturday Review.' Thackeray made a sufficiently effective retaliation in a 'Roundabout Paper' entitled 'On Screens in Dining-rooms.' The hospitality which Smith offered his 'Cornhill' coadjutors and other friends took a new shape in 1863, when he acquired a house at Hampstead called Oak Hill Lodge. For some ten years he resided there during the summer, and spent the winter at Brighton, travelling to and from London each day. Partly on Thackeray's suggestion, at the beginning of each summer from 1863 onwards, there was issued by Mr. and Mrs. George Smith a general invitation to their friends to dine at Hampstead on any Friday they chose, without giving notice. This mode of entertainment proved thoroughly successful. The number of guests varied greatly: once they reached as many as forty. Thackeray, Millais, and Leech were among the earliest arrivals; afterwards Trollope rarely failed, and Wilkie Collins was often present. Turgenieff, the Russian novelist, was a guest on one occasion. Subsequently Du Maurier, a regular attendant, drew an amusing menu-card, in which Mrs. Smith was represented driving a reindeer in a sleigh which was laden with provisions in a packing-case. Few authors or artists who gained reputation in the seventh decade of the nineteenth century failed to enjoy Smith's genial hospitality at Hampstead on one or other Friday during that period. Under the auspices of his numerous literary friends, he was admitted to two well-known clubs during the first half of the same decade. In 1861 he joined the Reform Club, for which Sir Arthur Buller, a friend of Thackeray, proposed him, and Thackeray himself seconded him. In 1865 he was elected to the Garrick Club on the nomination of Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins, supported by Charles Reade, Tom Taylor, (Sir) Theodore Martin, and many others. He also became a member of the Cosmopolitan Club.