Joseph Parkes to Bessie Rayner Parkes, ,[July 1854]
Title
Joseph Parkes to Bessie Rayner Parkes, ,[July 1854]
Title
Joseph Parkes to Bessie Rayner Parkes, ,[July 1854]
Sender
Joseph Parkes
Recipient
Bessie Rayner Parkes
Date(s)
- 1854-07
Place
London
Letter Content
Joseph Parkes to Bessie Rayner Parkes, ,[July 1854]
Text: Copy by the late Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. Hitherto unpublished.
As to Mr. Chapman's affairs, all that it is needful for me to say is that his debts are about £9,000 (the £2,500 he managed to extract from his wife's trustees I call the worst). Nearly all the creditors decided to accept 7/- or 8/- in £ dividend in 4, 8, or 12 months. Now to provide this sum, a third of which is guaranteed by some person [Harriet Martineau], his business will be crippled by the withdrawal of the needful money to meet so large a payment, and with credits damaged at his failure, how can his matters be mended?
The fact is that without continuing his business, he does not know what to engage in, having no capital or qualifications for any other business. . . . His talents and activities I respect, but he is not a man I would trust. He is also so self-opinionated and wilful that no one can be of real use to him in aid of his own judgment. He would have had, I think, a better chance in the present barely-paying state of the "Westminster Review" had he devoted himself to that work only. He cannot carry on writing, and maintain his business and his own family expenditure. The way he is behaving is, between ourselves, generally the prelude to bankruptcy. . . . I have seen so many ups and downs of the "Westminster Review" and so many thousands of pounds lost on it, that I am not sanguine. Mr. Bentham lost ten thousand pounds at first, and Sir William Molesworth, I believe, nearly as much.
Text: Copy by the late Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. Hitherto unpublished.
As to Mr. Chapman's affairs, all that it is needful for me to say is that his debts are about £9,000 (the £2,500 he managed to extract from his wife's trustees I call the worst). Nearly all the creditors decided to accept 7/- or 8/- in £ dividend in 4, 8, or 12 months. Now to provide this sum, a third of which is guaranteed by some person [Harriet Martineau], his business will be crippled by the withdrawal of the needful money to meet so large a payment, and with credits damaged at his failure, how can his matters be mended?
The fact is that without continuing his business, he does not know what to engage in, having no capital or qualifications for any other business. . . . His talents and activities I respect, but he is not a man I would trust. He is also so self-opinionated and wilful that no one can be of real use to him in aid of his own judgment. He would have had, I think, a better chance in the present barely-paying state of the "Westminster Review" had he devoted himself to that work only. He cannot carry on writing, and maintain his business and his own family expenditure. The way he is behaving is, between ourselves, generally the prelude to bankruptcy. . . . I have seen so many ups and downs of the "Westminster Review" and so many thousands of pounds lost on it, that I am not sanguine. Mr. Bentham lost ten thousand pounds at first, and Sir William Molesworth, I believe, nearly as much.
Citation
Joseph Parkes, Joseph Parkes to Bessie Rayner Parkes, ,[July 1854], Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/95522