The consequences to me were variously disastrous.  In the first place I was deluged with applications from authors of still unestablished transatlantic reputation to secure for them offers from “Scribner’s” for the advance sheets of their books.  In the second I was treated to a torrent of abuse as “the friend of piracy” ("Daily News” leading article), and for some days not a single London paper would print a word of reply or explanation from me.  The “Echo” was the first to do me the justice of printing a defense, and it was followed by the “Times,” which printed my letter and one from Mr. Appleton; but of the authors who, having a transatlantic reputation, had profited by the “courtesy right,” only Mr. Trollope came forward to sustain me with the statement that he had received more from the Harpers—­his American publishers—­than from his English publishers.  The author whose novel had been the occasion of the original trouble, grateful for what I had done in her case, declared that the English authors ought to make me a testimonial (or perhaps it was a monument she suggested), but from no other source did I receive a word of thanks.  And the third consequence was that the “Pall Mall Gazette” dropped me “like a hot potato.”  As my monthly cheques had reached the sum of ten pounds, and were slowly increasing, the inroad on my income arising from my crusade against publishing abuses was a serious item in my outlook.

As misfortunes never come alone, this was followed by my supersession, as literary agent of “Scribner’s,” by Mr. Gosse, who had been making a visit to New York.  It was in curious coincidence with these disasters that I addressed (with a letter of introduction from Madame Bodichon, who always was the kindest of friends to me) a distinguished lady member of the staff of an evening paper, with a request to help me to get work on it, and was told distinctly that she did not favor the entry of foreigners on the staff, as English writers had too much competition amongst themselves, and “the crumbs from the table” should be reserved for them, so that while I had opened the door for English writers in my native land, to the disadvantage of myself and my compatriots, I was to be excluded from the English market as a foreigner.  My old friend the editor of the “Daily News,” had, during my absence in America, been appointed to the “Gazette,” and the new Pharaoh “knew not Joseph.”  And so we decided to throw up the sponge and go back to America, though even there the new influx of English competitors (for which I was in part responsible) had made our chance less brilliant.  My father-in-law offered us, if we withdrew from our decision, to settle £400 a year on my wife.  With this aid we felt that we might carry through; and to her the change from English life, surrounded by old friends and an artistic atmosphere, to the strange and comparatively cruder surroundings of America, was to be avoided at any possible price, and I had no right to hesitate.