Friendshipʼs Offering

Initially, the full title of Relfeʼs publication was Friendshipʼs Offering, or the Annual Remembrancer, a Christmas Present, or New Yearʼs Gift, for 1824. All the keywords of this inclusive title are worked into the preface, which, as Katherine D. Harris remarks, mimicks the agenda of the Forget Me Not, the first of the British annuals. That publication had been published only one year earlier, for 1823, by the firm of Rudolf Ackermann, which had made its reputation by marshalling both established and new printing technologies in service of burgeoning British visual and literary culture (Harris, Forget Me Not, 114–26). (Indeed, the first Forget Me Not traded on previous and somewhat dated success, featuring a series of emblematic treatments of the twelve months, rendered in copper etching based on drawings by Edward Burney [1760–1848], and versified by William Combe [1742–1823], the author of Ackermannʼs bestseller, The Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of the Picturesque [1812, 1820, 1821], illustrated by Thomas Rowlandson [1757–1827] [Ford, Ackermann, 52–60].) Relfeʼs preface seems bent on covering all bases for the possible marketability of his attempt at this miscellaneous venue—to compete with Continental models (chiefly German) of the literary annual by translating the form to meet British taste; to supply the holiday gift market; to furnish (“independently”) both “graphic decorations” and “original contributions . . . from popular pens”; to “partially . . . supply” the features of a pocket‐book, thus incorporating yet “elevat[ing]” the function of this annual diary or “remembrancer”; and a purpose not mentioned directly by the competitors, to seize on the British pent‐up, post‐Napoleonic desire for travel, actual or virtual, by pairing engraved “views” of foreign cities with descriptions based on “personal observation” (see the preface to Friendshipʼs Offering for 1824, reprinted in Harris, Forget Me Not, 124–25; for the pocket‐book and almanac as predecessors of the annual, see Annuals and Other Illustrated Books: History and Characteristics of the Annuals).

In an 1858 article in the Bookseller, attempting an appreciative critical history of the annuals when they had declined in popularity, Relfeʼs early volumes were criticized for their weak contents and poor production and also their haphazard miscellaneity—“unpromising” assemblages of “indifferent views of Continental cities”, “poor verses”, and the occasional “tale by Mrs. Opie” (i.e., Amelia Opie [1769–1853]). The writer particularly dwelled on the inclusion of “ruled pages for memoranda”, as typically found in a pocket‐book, as the proof of unconsidered paste‐up, a feature that the writer condemned likewise in the Offeringʼs early rivals, Forget Me Not and The Graces (“The Annuals of Former Days”, 495–96). In the 1820s, however, reviews of Relfeʼs early volumes suggest that critics embraced the miscellany. The Gentlemanʼs Magazine, reviewing the Friendshipʼs Offering for 1825, explained that “the aim of the editor . . . appears to have been to combine the elegance of art and flowers of literature with the utility of the superior class of pocket‐books, and in this . . . he has in a great degree succeeded”—adding parenthetically, not that Relfe should have aimed at greater uniformity of purpose, but that he might have made up for “the deficiency of an almanack”, although admittedly that addition “would have necessarily much increased the price” (Unsigned review of Friendshipʼs Offering for 1825, 445). In the view of the Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Relfeʼs second volume of Friendshipʼs Offering (1825) had “much improved since last year” since it offered more, not less, variety of contents: “nearly three hundred pages of interesting articles in prose and verse; a Diary, with views at the head of each month [i.e., what the Gentlemanʼs Magazine described as “a blank Diary for memoranda, headed by 12 very neat wood engravings of ancient castles, churches, &c., all in the county of Kent”], and fourteen copper plate engravings, including four sweet views of the cities of St. Petersburgh, Constantinople, Berne, and Naples”; and rounding out the “literary department”, “some original music, and several enigmas, riddles, and rebuses” (“Christmas and New Yearsʼ Presents”, 409). In its next volume, the Mirror reprinted some of the riddles and songs (“Riddles and Conundrums”; “Discretion the Better Part of Valour”).

According to the 1858 Bookseller article, the fortunes of Friendshipʼs Offering were turned around by by the editorship of T. K. Hervey (1799–1859). In his prefatory remarks for Relfeʼs 1826 volume, Hervey announced “a view to an entire change in . . . [the annualʼs] character and plan”, by shifting emphasis from the transience of an annual to the permanence of a keepsake: the “alterations” were to “consist in the removal of all those features which marked it as more peculiarly adapted for one season of the year than another”. Starting with that volume, the almanac and pocket‐book features were suppressed, and the subtitle shortened to “A Literary Album” to signal the concentrated focus. What had happened was not solely Herveyʼs inspiration, however, but a broader trend reflected in a Monthly Review article published one year earlier, which is clearly the source of Herveyʼs announcement of changes being made in Friendshipʼs Offering. The article presents a brief critical history of the British annual, celebrating the “keen and enterprising spirit of emulation” that has enabled “our countrymen” in a short time to have so improved on the German Taschenbuch that “the least elegant of . . . [the British annuals] is greatly superior to any thing produced on the Continent”. The key to this progress, according to the article, lay in a marker that carried a rebuke to the proprietor of Frienshipʼs Offering:

Since Hervey quotes the phrase in italics nearly verbatim, it is evident that this review had determined Relfe to rescue Friendshipʼs Offering from among the “few minor productions” that formed the “exception” to this brilliant tale of British progress. In 1825, probably only one annual represented the pinnacle of achievement—the Literary Souvenir, edited by Alaric Watts, the sole publication under review in this Monthly Review article. Although only first published in 1825, the Literary Souvenir already benefitted from a nationalistic evolutionary narrative. (The narrative gained credence from the decision of the Souvenirʼs publisher, Hurst, Robinson, to make way for funding the Literary Souvenir by discontinuing an existing annual, The Graces, after publishing only one volume. Although the exchange was friendly, The Graces, which was born the same year as Friendshipʼs Offering, ironically contributed to the evolutionary narrative by claiming British superiority over Continental models for having disburdened itself of the their “loaded . . . weight” of almanac features, but then set itself “to embrace . . . every topic of accomplishment, elegance, and polite information, that can interest the general reader”, including a decorated diary for the userʼs memoranda, which it imitated from Forget Me Not [the Reverend George Croly, preface to The Graces, quoted in Harris, Forget Me Not, 119, and see 118–24, 126–28.)

What signaled the improved “literary character” promised by Hervey? As star material for the 1826 volume, Maria Edgeworth (1769–1849) supplied an essay by her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817); Washington Irving (1783–1859) and Lady Caroline Lamb (1785–1828) released scraps of verse by Lord Byron (1788–1824); and juvenilia were recovered by James Thomson (1700–1748). Otherwise, the roster of contributors for the 1826 volume proved similar to those for 1827. One or both volumes included poet/churchmen such as the Reverend Thomas Dale (1797–1870), Ruskinʼs future Camberwell schoolmaster, and the Reverend George Croly (1780–1860), Ruskinʼs future mentor. This class of writers also included the Reverend John Moultrie (1799–1874), the Rugby rector; and James Montgomery (1771–1854), the hymn writer. Among “poetesses” appeared L.E.L. (Letitia Landon, 1802–38) and—a poetess especially favored in the Ruskin household—Felicia Hemans (1793–1835). Among women writers of tales and sketches appeared Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855) and Emma Roberts (1791–1840).

These and other contributors to the 1826 and 1827 volumes of Friendshipʼs Offering were, as reviewers commented, almost invariable presences in other annuals, as well—writers who supplied mainly verse, but who could also be relied on for a variety of commissions: Bernard Barton (1784–1849), John Clare (1793–1864), Allan Cunningham (1784–1842), Hervey, William Jerdan (1782–1869), Henry Neele (1798–1828), D. Lester Richardson (1801–65), and the translator John Bowring (1792–1872). Relief from the sentiments of such verse came from humorists like John Galt (1779–1839), Thomas Hood (1799–1845), and Horace Smith (1779–1849). The contributors represented cultures of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, as well as lived experience from abroad. Some pieces were written in dialect. They represented a variety of religious and ideological stances, though never so aggressively as to perturb the unifying script of friendship, sentiment, and memory. Many contributors labored as editors of competing annuals, magazines, and newspapers, including Ruskinʼs future personal editor, W. H. Harrison (1792–1878), who appeared the for the first time as a contributor of tales in the Friendshipʼs Offering for 1827.

Thus the “improved literary character” of Friendshipʼs Offering succeeded in rendering the volume more predictable. The Monthly Review commented about the 1826 volume: “Where the character of this volume so closely corresponds to that of the ‘[Literary] Souvenir’”, reviewed in a previous issue for that year, “our general remarks may apply to either” (Unsigned review of Friendshipʼs Offering [1826] and Janus [1826], 161). Regarding the following yearʼs volume, that journal judged the “prose matter . . . [to be] upon the whole, the best that we have seen in any of these annual volumes”, but “after three or four pieces from the pens of Miss Landon, Mrs. Hemans, the Rev. Mr. Dale, and Mr. Hervey, we find nothing in the shape of verse, that rises above mediocrity” (Unsigned review of Friendshipʼs Offering [1827], 87).

When reviewers found little to distinguish Friendshipʼs Offering from other annuals, they sought comparisons in the plates, called embellishments, usually to Relfeʼs disadvantage (see “Miscellaneous” [Unsigned review of Friendshipʼs Offering (1827)], 300; Unsigned review of Friendshipʼs Offering [1826] and Janus [1826], 161; and Unsigned review of Friendshipʼs Offering [1827], 87). Fairly or not, reviewers turned to the Literary Souvenir as the standard for taste and execution in illustration, whereas Friendshipʼs Offering was at least typical of the period in highlighting the shared “poetry” of the Sister Arts (see Illustration: The Poetry of the Sister Arts in the Relfe Annual); and at least one of Relfeʼs volumes contained a unique venture, a 1826 sampling of contemporary French art (see Illustration: A Reflection of the Contest between the British Picturesque Aesthetic and French Neoclassicism in the 1826 Relfe Annual). Despite some achievements, however, the future success of Friendshipʼs Offering depended on finding a niche that made the annual distinctive in an increasingly crowded field, yet without disturbing the comforting predictability of sentimental memory combined with pretensions of friendship.

Smith, Elder released their first volume of the annual in time for the 1827–28 holiday season. The volume for 1828 was edited by Charles Knight (1791–1873), the future publisher for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. In his autobiography, Knight describes his role in the transition between publishers as hectic: “It was an enterprise hastily entered upon by Messrs. Smith and Elder, late in the season, and I had to obtain pictures for engraving, secure contributors, and see the book through the press in two or three months”. He credits the success of the ordeal to friends who “rallied round” with contributions that he considered more “original” than the “sentimental stories” and “mawkish” verses “with their bowers and flowers” typical of the annuals (Knight, Passages of a Working Life, 2:53). While his editorship was only transitory, and he held the annuals generally in low regard—all too characteristic, he believed, of “a period in which . . . mediocrity was essentially necessary to great literary success” (“The Editorʼs Room”, 548)—Knight characterized the editing of this volume in retrospect as an act of friendship more meaningful than the pretensions suggested by his annualʼs title.

The friends—the poets W. M. Praed (1802–39), the Reverend John Moultrie (1799–1874), and their circle—were identified in a review of the 1828 Friendshipʼs Offering as “chiefly formed from a set known to the world as the writers of the Etonian, one of the best books ever written by young men, . . . their talents . . . of a calibre well adapted for an annual, brisk, painted, and polished”. The Etonian was a short‐lived school magazine, which Knight published for Praed and his compatriots at Eton in 1820–21; and since this review of Friendshipʼs Offering was published in the London Magazine for January 1828, which Knight acquired as editor only a few months later in April 1828, one can reasonably suppose that Knight himself authored the review of his own annual, highlighting the fellowship of these writers as if they were still precocious Eton youths, and contrasting their “cheerful gaiety” with the “common‐place, leaden, empty, . . . vapid . . . fashion of these Souvenirs” (“The Annuals” [unsigned review of Friendshipʼs Offering (1828), The Winterʼs Wreath (1828), The Pledge of Friendship (1828), and The Christmas Box (1828)], 56; and for Knightʼs editorship of the London Magazine, see Bauer, The London Magazine, 90, 150, 245).

Knight was not himself an Etonian but found “a rare pleasure to have [had] an occasional companionship with these fresh young men . . . these blithe spirits” (Passages of a Working Life, 1:284). In 1829, Praed, who was by then a barrister and soon to become an M.P., contributed the poem “School and Schoolfellows” to Knightʼs final volume of the London Magazine: “I wish that I could run away / From House, and court, and levee / . . . / That I could be a boy again, / A happy boy, at Druryʼs!” Apart from personal attraction and nostalgia, however, Knightʼs part in the publication of the Etonian may have put him in mind of an alternative to the annuals. In a review of the annuals for 1827, a writer for the London Magazine, who despaired of the annuals ever amassing a pool of genuine talent, proposed a model based on “the Taschenbuchs of Germany, which were sometimes got up by a few men of genius, who, at the end of the year, clubbed their adversaria, and published together a little miscellaneous volume, which had or might not have some definite object. The hint might, we think, be adopted in this country with advantage”. Alhough “the time is gone by when men wrote in knots and schools”, the writer considering even the Lake School a thing of the past in 1826, he believed “[t]here are . . . many clubs or schools even at present existing, which might throw together an occasional periodical of this kind with effect, whether the object be grave or gay—pleasure or improvement”. The echoes of this proposal with Knightʼs experience of publishing the Etonian are striking (“Souvenir Books, or Joint‐Stock Literature“ [unsigned review of Forget Me Not (1827) and Friendshipʼs Offering (1827)], 480).

Whether written by Knight or by another writer, earlier reviews of the annuals in the London Magazine challenged the fundamental publishing enterprise of the annuals, which the magazine called “the system”: “The application to distinguished individuals for a specimen of their genius . . . is not likely to produce any thing beyond a very cold effort; so many of these Annuals, moreover, now appear, that many writers will be over‐tasked; it is impossible that they can have a good thing for each of these publications, which we fear in their rivalry will injure one another like the Paddington stages, which go from the Bank every quarter of an hour, and cross and jostle one another on the road” (“The Annuals” [unsigned review of Forget Me Not (1828), The Amulet (1828), and The Bijou (1828))). Despite these objections, and his gratitude to the Etonians for rescuing him from the “the system”, Knightʼs friends were far from comprising the totality of the contributors to the 1828 volume, although the Monthly Review did want to know who Moultrie was, and why the volume contained so many of his poems, “as bad as a dose of opium” (Unsigned review of The Keepsake (1828), Friendshipʼs Offering (1828), and The Christmas Box (1828), 72). Otherwise, despite Knightʼs contempt for “the system”, he collected a roster of contributors containing many of the same names as those found in rival annuals, doubtless because the shortened production of time compelled him to accept what he could get. An advertisement for the volume showcased celebrated names—Maria Edgeworth (1769–1849), Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859), and the poet laureate, Robert Southey (1774–1843) (“The Friendshipʼs Offering, for 1828”]).

Pringle was a native Scot like John James Ruskin as well as the publishers of Friendshipʼs Offering, George Smith and Alexander Elder. When Pringle took over the editorship of the annual, he was recently returned from South Africa, where, with a party of other Scots, he had emigrated in search of opportunities in the Cape Colony, which Britain had acquired as a possession in the Congress of Vienna. He returned to England with disappointed hopes, but with exotic experience to be made into poetry as well as a passion for the abolitionist cause. It was doubtless his earlier literary connections in Edinburgh, however, with figures no less auspicious than Walter Scott, James Hogg, and others, that made him a welcome guest at Herne Hill.

Pringle brought to his first volume of Friendshipʼs Offering a noticeable Caledonian emphasis. Under Knight, the annual for 1828 featured a handful of Scottish contributors. Under Pringle, the volume for 1829 presented over thirty contributions by Scots—more than a third of the total—including such poems as “The Highland Hunterʼs Coronach”, “On Leaving Scotland”, and “Auld Joe Nicholsonʼs Bonny Nannie: A Sang”; and such tales as “The Covenanters: A Scottish Traditionary Tale”. Scottish landscapes are also prominent among the engravings (see Pringleʼs Scottish Landscapes.

The reception of the Scotch emphasis contrasted between some reviewers in North Britain and in South Britain. The Edinburgh Literary Journal proudly highlighted two annuals for 1829—Friendshipʼs Offering and the Anniversary—that were “edited by Scotchmen” and that showcased Scotch “names . . . shin[ing] most conspicuously in their tables of contents”. Of the two, the Anniversary stood out most prominently for making “peculiar claims on the people of Scotland”. Edited by the poet Allan Cunningham, and making its debut that year, the Anniversary presented what the reviewer admitted may be considered “an over degree of nationality” by “[o]ur Southern friends” (“The Annuals for 1829”, 5).

Some southern journals did object, as did La Belle Assemblée, “that too many of the pieces” in Pringleʼs 1829 Friendshipʼs Offering “derive their origin north of the Tweed”, as well as presenting “somewhat too large proportion of what may be termed religious matter”, which “can seldom be amalgamated successfully with the lighter effusions of the Belles Lettres” (“The Annuals for 1829”, 197). A connection between those two objections was enforced more straightforwardly and stridently by the Monthly Review, which advised the Anniversary to rein in Scotch contributions since “a beautiful work of art” requires that “all the parts shall be in unison”;. Although denying that the journal “mean[t] to insinuate any dislike of the true Doric dialect, as it has been called, of Scotland”, the reviewer urged that “in every instance the current language of England . . . prevail in the literature of the Annuals” (Unsigned review of The Anniversary [1829], The Amulet [1829], The Juvenile Forget Me Not [1829], and The Juvenile Keepsake [1829], 527, 530). From the first emergence of the annuals, the Monthly Review had treated these publications as “ministers of taste” from the metropolis to the provinces, and from England to the empire, and here the presumed Englishness of that unifying standard of taste is made explicit (see Annuals and Other Illustrated Books: The Character and Reception of the Annuals).

Historically, the Monthly Review set itself up as a gatekeeper not only of taste but also of prescriptive diction and grammar—a prescriptiveness that, from the journalʼs eighteenth‐century beginnings, had taken aim especially at Scottish dialect, and all the more keenly so if the reviewer was himself a Scot (Percy, “Periodical Reviews and the Rise of Prescriptivism”). The journal was also known for a longstanding prejudice against religious “enthusiasm”, an animus that, in the eighteenth century, was directed against Methodism (McInelly, “When Worlds Collide”). In 1829, the Monthly Review linked what it perceived as linguistic parochialism with religious enthusiasm in the Anniversary, singling out a contribution by the Church of Scotland clergyman, Edward Irving (1792–1834), which the reviewer characterized as given to a “‘puritanic . . . phraseology, which literary persons belonging to that sect are too much in the habit of using on all occasions”. In contrast, as an example of “neatly written essays on popular subjects”, the reviewer quoted at length from piece in the volume “on the Female Beauty of the Three Kingdoms”, which argues that female beauty is independent of nation, being found wherever “gentleness of . . . [womanʼs] nature and the kindliness of her heart throw a household halo around her person” (Unsigned review of The Anniversary [1829], The Amulet [1829], The Juvenile Forget Me Not [1829], and The Juvenile Keepsake [1829], 526, 528; and see M., “English, Scotch, and Irish Beauty”, in Cunningham, ed., The Anniversary, 201–5, 205).

Editors of annuals faced risks in presenting any perceivable excess that reviewers might argue as deranging the aesthetic that the Monthlyʼs reviewer characterized as a “beautiful . . . unison”. While Barbara Onslow alerts us that certain classes of illustrated books during this period did pursue distinct audiences and agendas, the annuals were directed at “the emotions and associations aroused in the heart and mind of the beholder” (Onslow, “Gendered Production: Annuals and Gift Books”, 75). Reviewers might complain about the overall blandness and uniformity of the annuals, especially as the market grew increasingly competitive with new titles added each year, but at the same time the market tended toward uniformity. For whatever reason, Cunningham, or his publisher, ceased publication of the Anniversary in the midst of compiling only its second volume. Its demise may not have been connected directly with its Scottish emphasis (Cunninghamʼs biographer blamed the publisherʼs unsettled plans [Hogg, Life of Allan Cunningham, 332]), but Pringle survived criticism of the lopsided number of Scottish contributions to Friendshipʼs Offering, perhaps because the emphasis was offset by other vernacular tales. Although recognized as “one of Scotlandʼs true tuneful sons” by Blackwoodʼs Edinburgh Magazine—the reviewer admitting that the Scotch emphasis that Pringle imparted to Friendshipʼs Offering for 1830 brought out, “of all our critical qualities, nationality . . . [as] the chief” (“Monologue”, 967)—Pringle himself claimed in his preface to the annual (for 1829) to have “promote[d] . . . a sound and liberal national taste”. Alongside the many pieces about Scotland, he took care to include an “Irish Tale”, “A German Legend”, a tale of “an old Frenchman of the time of Louis XIV”, and—in the most broadly unifying spirit—an “Ode on the Death of Queen Charlotte” by Robert Southey, the English poet laureate. In 1829, George IIIʼs queen had been dead for a decade, but her image retained its currency for the annuals in the same spirit with which the Monthly Review admired the Anniversaryʼs essay on the universality of female virtues: all “future Queens [shall] to her / As to their best exemplar look”, the poet predicted, since, thanks to Charlotte, “At Court, the Household Virtues had their place” (Pringle, ed., Friendshipʼs Offering [1829], vi, 191, 93, 56, 106–7; and for more on British nationalism in reviews of the annuals, see Harris, Forget Me Not, 211–14).

Perhaps as a result of these precautions, even the Monthly Review, for all its militancy for unifying the empire under English taste, could allow Pringle the compliment of exerting “the influence of an individual mind” over his annual. The reviewer did not refer to the annualʼs Caledonian flavor specifically but to a warmth that lives up to the annualʼs title—a “pervading spirit . . . of a deep and heart‐stirring benevolence; not wanting an occasional mixture of deeper passion, but for the most part breathing of freedom, and of the all‐glorious sentiment of devotion to the cause of universal happiness” (Unsigned review of Friendshipʼs Offering [1830], etc., 437).