Author André-Marc Aymé has once again rendered the Society an invaluable service by identifying the European Magazine review of a melodrama titled “Gordon the Gypsey”, staged at London’s English Opera House on 6 August 1822. The review attributes the story of Gordon the Gypsey to James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, and fails to mention Vardill’s version of the tale, which appeared in the European Magazine two years earlier as “Annals of Public Justice 1: The High Court of Justiciary, and a Gypsy Chief”. Vardill’s tale and the accompanying footnotes were subsequently included verbatim in several compilations of Hogg’s works. A brief account of this misattribution, with contemporary reviews of the melodrama, are now available on the Society’s website.
Category: Notes
List of Frequently Reproduced Tales
The Society is indebted to author André-Marc Aymé for his list of European Magazine tales that were reproduced three or more times in other publications, often with false or incorrect attributions.
With M. Aymé’s permission, the list has been added to the Articles section of the main Vardill website.
Vardill in the United States
Author André-Marc Aymé has kindly drawn the Society’s attention to an early uncredited publication of Anna Jane Vardill’s Legends of Lampidosa in the United States.
- The Legends of Lampidosa: Or the Seven Heroines. New York: W. H. Graham, 1844.
The stories had previously appeared in magazines such as:
- The Atheneum, or, Spirit of the English Magazines. Boston, 1817
- Robinson’s Magazine; A Repository of Original Papers; And Selections from the English Magazines. Baltimore: 1819.
- Cabinet: A Collection of Romantic Tales; Embracing the Spirit of the English Magazines. New York: 1836.
M. Aymé has also identified references to AJV’s stories in a letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and a novel by John Neal.
In a letter to Evert A. Duyckinck dated 1st July 1845, Hawthorne writes:
A good many years ago, turning over a series of volumes called the “Athenaeum”—a selection from the English Magazines, published at Boston—I met with a series of stories called the Legends of Lampidosa. They struck me as very remarkable productions, quite a species by themselves. I do not know that they ever made any impression on the public; nor am I altogether sure that they would impress me, now, with any of the admiration which I felt then. But I wish you would look them over, and see whether they might no be profitably republished as a number of the Library of Choice Reading. It is twelve years, or more, since I saw them; and they were then of old date—published at least a dozen years before. If I recollect rightly, they were credited to the European Magazine.
In the second volume of Randolph, A Novel by the Author of Logan and Seventy-six (Baltimore, 1823. p. 58) “Edward Molton” in a letter to “George Stafford” comments:
Byron still perseveres; and so do several of your moderns, particularly Moore and Barry Cornwell; and all of ours, who, like Mr. Percival, are addicted, grossly, to Byron. By the way, you have a she poet among you, with a more brilliant plumage, and a finer song, by far, than any female that I ever heard of—and far superior to most of your males. She is the author of Legends of Lampidosa—and is called Mrs. Lehman, I believe.
Law-Book Transcriptions
Transcription of the Vardill materials held by the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections of Washington State University is now complete and they can be accessed in the Other Works section of the Society’s website.
The WSU stories form a significant part of Vardill’s Law-Book series. This unfinished and unpublished three-part series (A Little Girl’s Law-Book, A Young Lady’s Law-Book, and An Old Lawyer’s Legends) consists of a sequence of inter-connected stories about assumed identities and false inheritance claims, initially written for Vardill’s daughter Agnes, but ultimately intended for the general reader (See L’Envoi)
General William Franklin
Dr. Marsha Keith Schuchard has kindly drawn the Society’s attention to an entry in Henry Crabb Robinson’s diary, in which he describes a visit to the Attic Chest and confirms the identity of the “General Franklin” who contributed several poems to the circle:
March 18th [1812] — Evening at Porden’s, the Society of the Attic Chest. This is a small society, the members of which send verses, which are put into a box, and afford an evening’s amusement at certain intervals. The box was actually made at Athens. Some verses, I suspect by Miss Flaxman, on music, pleased me best. The company was numerous, — the Rogets, Phillips the painter, and his wife. Old General Franklin, son of the celebrated Benjamin, was of the party. He is eighty-four years of age, has a courtier-like mien, and must have been a very fine man. He is now very animated and interesting, but does not at all answer to the idea one would naturally form of the son of the great Franklin.
Rem* — At these meetings Ellen Porden was generally the reader, and she was herself a writer of poetry. She even ventured to write an epic poem, called “Richard the Second.” When she presented a copy to Flaxman, who loved her for her amiable qualities (and more than amiable, for she was a good domestic character, an excellent sister and daughter), he thanked her and said: “Why, Ellen, my love, you’ve written a poem longer than Homer.” She married Captain, afterwards Sir John Franklin. The marriage took place with an express consent on her part to his making a second voyage of discovery towards the North Pole, if the government should give its permission. Before he went a daughter was born; but her own health had become so bad that her life was despaired of. I was one of the few friends invited to the last dinner at his house before his departure. Flaxman was of the party, and deeply depressed in spirits. Captain F. took an opportunity in the course of the evening to say to me: “My wife will be left alone with the infant. You will do me a great favor, if you will call on her as often as your engagements permit.” I promised. In a few days I went to the Quarter Sessions, and before I returned Mrs. Franklin was dead.
Henry Crabb Robinson. Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence. (One Volume Edition) Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1898. pp. 241-2.
Canzonet for Three Friends
The Society’s attention has been drawn to an earlier publication of two poems that appear in Vardill’s Poems and Translations from the Minor Greek Poets etc., published in 1809.
Canzonet for Three Friends appears on page 47 of La Belle Assemblée or, Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine for July, 1807, under the title An Original Air, by a Casmerian Indian. On the same page is The Hungarian Gipsy’s Song, another of Vardill’s poems that subsequently appeared in Poems and Translations. La Belle Assemblée credits both poems to “A. V—LL”, and Clipstone-street is given as the address of the poet. This confirms Vardill’s authorship, as she was known to have been living there at this time.
In 1817 The Canzonet for Three Friends was set to music by William Horsley and published as a music score by G. Graupner (Boston, Mass.), though no credit is given to the author of the lyrics.
In 1873 The Canzonet made its way into The Voice of Praise: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Church (James Robison, Pittsburgh, Penn.), in which it appears on page 353 as Hymn No. 521, where it is categorised as a “Parting Hymn”. No tune is given but the words are incorrectly attributed to A. A. Watts.
Editing Guidelines
The online anthology of Vardill’s poetry and prose has been edited and formatted for readability. Consequently documentation of column, paragraph, and page breaks has been omitted. Erratic punctuation such as unmatched quotation marks and missing full stops has been corrected. Spelling has been adjusted where appropriate. For example, the first instalment of the Annals of Public Justice contains the following variants: gipsy, gipsey, gypsy, gypsey. On the assumption that Vardill would have paid particular attention to the accuracy of her footnotes, ‘gypsy’ has been used throughout.
The European Magazine often uses apostrophised possessive pronouns such as ‘her’s’ and ‘our’s’, but this usage is by no means universal. An examination of Vardill’s published work reveals use of both forms (‘hers’ and ‘her’s’, ‘ours’ and ‘our’s’, etc.). This online anthology has standardised on current usage.
Where Vardill has consistently used spelling now considered obsolete, this has been preserved. For example, ‘controul’ instead of ‘control’, and ‘groupe’ instead of ‘group’.
Separators are often used by the European Magazine printer to adjust the height of text blocks. Such indiscriminate separators have been removed.
Major errors in the typesetting of Vardill’s early contributions to the European Magazine were duly noted in subsequent numbers, and the online text has been amended accordingly. Unfortunately notifications of errata all but disappear from later numbers of the magazine, perhaps an indication of changing editorial policy.