as well as to 'Friendship's Offering.' For her he published, also in 1844 (in June), another work in two volumes, 'Our Actresses, or Glances at Stage Favourites Past and Present,' with five engravings in each volume, including portraits of Miss O'Neill, Miss Helen Faucit, and Mrs. Charles Kean. His third literary undertaking in the first year of his publishing career was of more permanent interest; it was Leigh Hunt's 'Imagination and Fancy.'
It was characteristic of Smith's whole life as a publisher that he was never content to maintain with authors merely formal business relations. From boyhood the personality of writers of repute deeply interested him, and that interest never diminished at any point of his career. In early manhood he was rarely happier than in the society of authors of all degrees of ability. With a city clerk of literary leanings, Thomas Powell,[1] he was as a youth on friendly terms, and at Powell's house at Peckham he was first introduced to, or came to hear of, many rising men of letters. It was there that he first met Horne, and afterwards Robert Browning. It was there that he found the manuscript of Leigh Hunt's 'Imagination and Fancy,' and at once visited the author in Edwardes Square, Kensington, with a generous offer for the rights of publication which was immediately accepted. Thenceforth Leigh Hunt was a valued literary acquaintance, and Smith published for him a whole library of attractive essays or compilations. Another house at which he was a frequent guest at this early period was that of Ruskin's father at Denmark Hill. Powell introduced him to a small convivial club, called the Museum Club, which met in a street off the Strand. Douglas Jerrold and Father Prout were prominent members. There he first made the acquaintance of George Henry Lewes, who became a lifelong associate. The club, however, fell into pecuniary difficulties, from which Smith strove in vain to relieve it, and it quickly dissolved.
The grim realities of life were soon temporarily to restrict Smith's opportunities of recreation. Towards the end of 1844 a grave calamity befell his family. His father's health failed; softening of the brain declared itself; and recovery was seen to be hopeless. The elder Smith removed from Denmark Hill to Boxhill, where he acquired some eight to ten acres of land, and developed a lively interest in farming. But he was unable to attend to the work of the firm, and his place at Cornhill was taken by his son very soon after he came of age in 1845. On 3 May 1846 George Smith was admitted by patrimony a freeman of the Stationers' Company, and little more than three months later his father died, at the age of fifty-seven (21 Aug. 1846). Thereupon the whole responsibility of providing for his mother, his young brothers and sisters, devolved upon him.
- ↑ In 1849 Powell emigrated to America, where he became a professional man of letters, and published some frankly ill-natured sketches of writers he had met, under the title of 'Living Authors of England;' this was followed by 'Living Authors of America' (first series, 1850).
