Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/37

25 grandfather, to get him lucrative promotion in his profession. I found this more difficult than I expected. The memory of Mr Sheridan among the Whig party, was not held in that affection which in my inexperience I had fancied; and if it had been, I do not know that it would have been a sufficient plea for serving Mr Norton, who could put forward no personal claims for employment. I did, however, what my husband requested. I besieged, with variously worded letters of importunity, the friends whom I knew as the great names linked with the career of my grandfather; and while waiting the result of the petitions I had sown on so wide a field, I turned my literary ability to account,, by selling the copyright of my first poem to Messrs. Ebers of Bond street. It is not without a certain degree of romantic pride that I look back, and know, that the first expenses of my son's life were defrayed from the price of that first creation of my brain; and before that child was two years old, I had procured for my husband,—(for the husband who has lately overwhelmed me, my sons, and his dead patron with slander, rather than yield a miserable annuity)—a place worth a thousand a year; the arduous duty of which consisted in attending three days in the week, for five hours, to hear causes tried in the simplest forms of law. From that day to the present, my husband has always considered that I ought to assist him—instead of his supporting me. The dependence upon my literary efforts for all extra resources, runs, as a matter of course, through all the letters I received from him during our union. The names of my publishers occur as if they were Mr Norton's bankers. If Murray of Albemarle street will not accept a poem,—if Bull of Holies street does not continue a magazine,—if Heath does not offer the editorship of an Annual,—if Saunders and Otley do not buy the MS. of a novel,—if Colburn's agreement is not satisfactory and sufficient,—if Power delays payment for a set of ballads,—if, in short, the has no earnings to produce, the  professes himself to be "quite at a loss to know"