Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 11

idleness; Goldsmith retorted that she had rationed what he ate and cut what he wrote.

Like many such magazines, the privilege of appearing in it was thought sufficient not to merit any great payment for the labours involved.

In its heyday the magazine was earning £2,000 a year, a huge sum in those days, and more than £150,000 in today’s money.4 The good Doctor Griffiths – his degree was honorary from the University of Philadelphia – was a very rich man and starved his contributors to feast his friends.

As he entertained in his mansion or whirled the few miles to London in one of his two carriages he could reflect with satisfaction on the good fortune he had striven so hard to earn. The Dictionary of National Biography described him as “lively, free-hearted and intelligent.” He was also snobbish, arrogant and extravagant; failings which he passed on in good measure to his grandson.

As well as the magazine there was another goldmine. He had bought for 20 guineas a manuscript by a former British Consul in Smyrna; his name was John Cleland, the title of the work Fanny Hill or The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Dr. Griffiths published – and the erotic book was a

4. The 19th Century equivalent of sums of money to today’s values throughout this book are taken from the Bank of England’s online Inflation Calculator for 2017. As the Bank points out, the figures should be taken with caution as the definitions of goods and services included in the price index have changed. For example, a family’s food and clothes today are very different to those of a typical family 200 years ago.

JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS

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