The door was suddenly opened and fastened back by one of the servants.
The man looked inquiringly at the shrinking figure in the lobby.
Evidently she was not a beggar and he said nothing.
Lavinia glanced inside from no feeling other than that of curiosity. At
the same time she was reluctant to leave the protection of the house
until she was sure her persecutor was not lurking near.
The candles cast a lurid yellowish light; the shadows were deep; only
the faces of those nearest the flame could be clearly distinguished. One
table was surrounded by a boisterous group in the centre of which was a
fat man in a frowsy wig. He had a malicious glint in his squinting eyes
and was evidently of some importance. When he spoke the others listened
with respect.
This pompous personage was Edmund Curll, bookseller, whose coarse and
infamous publications once brought him within the law. Curll, we are
told, possessed himself of a command over all authors whatever; he
caused them to write what he pleased; they could not call their very
names their own. Curll was the deadly enemy of Pope and his friends, and
his unlimited scurrility drew from the poet of Twickenham a retaliation
every whit as coarse and as biting as anything the bookseller's warped
mind ever conceived.
Had Lavinia been told this was the notorious Curll, the name would have
conveyed nothing. The quarrels of poets and publishers were to her a
sealed book.
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