Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/251

 haigh, however, consented to become personally known to Richardson at the beginning of 1750, and afterwards saw him occasionally in the little circle where he received the worship of numerous, chiefly feminine, admirers. With them he elaborately discussed the moral and literary problems suggested by his works, and especially by his final performance, ‘Sir Charles Grandison.’ It was to be a pendant to the portrait of a good woman in ‘Clarissa,’ and he originally intended to call it ‘The Good Man.’ He was reading the manuscript and consulting various friends about it in 1751. It was published in 1753, and, though it has never held so high a position as ‘Clarissa,’ was received with equal enthusiasm at the time. His fame had attracted pirates, and the treachery of some of his workmen enabled Dublin booksellers to obtain and reprint an early, though not quite complete, copy. Richardson published a pamphlet, dated 14 Sept. 1755, complaining of his wrongs, and appears to have been greatly vexed by the injury. He was, however, prospering in his business. In 1754 he was chosen master of the Stationers' Company, a position, it is said, ‘not only honourable but lucrative’ (Correspondence, i. xlvi). In 1755 he pulled down his house at Salisbury Court, bought a row of eight houses, upon the site of which he erected a new printing office, and made a new dwelling-house of what had formerly been his warehouse. Everybody, he says, was better pleased with the new premises than his wife, which, as the new dwelling-house was less convenient than the old one, was not surprising. The trouble of the arrangement had, he said, diverted his mind from any further literary projects (ib. v. 63, 64). This house was demolished in 1896. In 1760 he bought half the patent of ‘law-printer to his majesty,’ and carried on the business in partnership with Miss Catherine Lintot. He had taken into partnership a nephew, who succeeded to the business. He had become nervous and hypochondriacal. He was rarely seen by his workmen in later years, and communicated with them by written notes, a circumstance perhaps explained by the deafness of his foreman. He died of apoplexy on 4 July 1761, and was buried by the side of his first wife in St. Bride's Church.

Richardson's first wife died on 25 Jan. 1730–1. All their children (five sons and a daughter) died in childhood—two boys in 1730. By his second wife, Elizabeth, sister of James Leake, a bookseller at Bath, he had a son, who died young, and five daughters. Four daughters survived him—Mary, married in 1757 to Philip Ditcher, a Bath surgeon; she died a widow in 1783; Martha, married in 1762 to Edward Bridgen; Anne, who died unmarried on 27 Dec. 1803; and Sarah, who married a surgeon named Crowther. The second Mrs. Richardson died on 3 Nov. 1773, aged 77, and was buried with her husband.

Richardson had a country house at North End, Hammersmith, now occupied by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. In this most of his novels were composed. He generally spent his Saturdays and Sundays there (ib. vi. 21). A picture of the house forms the frontispiece to the fourth volume of his ‘Correspondence,’ and a picture of the ‘grotto’ in the gardens, with Richardson reading the manuscript of ‘Sir Charles Grandison’ to his friends in 1751, forms the frontispiece to the second volume. In 1754 he moved to Parson's Green, Fulham (ib. iii. 99), where he generally had some friends to stay with him. The little circle of admirers never failed him, and he seems to have deserved their affection.

Richardson was a type of the virtuous apprentice—industrious, regular, and honest. He was a good master, and used to hide a half-crown among the types in the office so that the earliest riser might find it. Though cautious, and even fidgety, about business, he was exceedingly liberal in his dealings. He was generous to poor authors; he helped Lætitia Pilkington [q. v.] in her distresses; forgave a debt to William Webster [q. v.], who calls him ‘the most amiable man in the world’ (, Lit. Anecd. v. 165). Johnson, when under arrest for debt in 1756, applied to him with a confidence in his kindness justified by the result (see anecdotes in Boswell, i. 303 n.) Richardson appears to have made Johnson's acquaintance through the ‘Rambler’ (1750), to which he contributed No. 97. Johnson prefaced the paper with a note to the effect that the author was one who ‘taught the passions to move at the command of virtue,’ and, though not blind to Richardson's foibles, always extolled him as far superior to Fielding. Aaron Hill [q. v.] and Thomas Edwards [q. v.], who died in his house, and Young of the ‘Night Thoughts’ were among the authors with whom he exchanged compliments, and who found in him both a friend and a publisher. He appears to have been respected by his fellow-tradesmen, especially Cave, who exchanged verses with him (given in Lit. Anecd. ii. 75) on occasion of a dinner of printers. Richardson, however, was unfit for the coarse festivities of the time, and was probably regarded as a milksop, fitter for the society of admiring ladies. He refers constantly to his nervous complaints, which