University of Virginia Library

"The Unspeakable Curll": Prolegomena
by
Robert L. Haig

In 1879 W. J. Thoms reprinted for private circulation some "Stray Notes on the Life and Publications of Edmund Curll" which had previously appeared in Notes and Queries. The earliest evidence for Curll's activity as a publisher that he adduced there was in John Spinke's London's Medicinal Informer (1710) where Curll was designated as publisher of a rival medical treatise, The Charitable Surgeon. In Spinke's work, too, there appeared the only known reference to Curll's apprenticeship under one "Mr. Smith, by Exeter Change" and the enigmatic suggestion that Curll had not served Smith "honestly during the whole of the time for which he was bound 'prentice to him."

Thirty years ago, in his biography of Curll, Ralph Straus cited evidence from contemporary newspaper advertisements for Curll's having been in business as an auctioneer and publisher as early as 1706.[1] The fact that Curll's name appeared with that of a Richard Smith in the 1706 imprint to a "second edition" of Bladen's translation of Caesar's Commentaries (apparently a reissue of the sheets published in the preceding year by Smith

alone)[2] led Straus to conclude, as H. R. Tedder had earlier concluded in the DNB, that this Richard Smith was the "Mr. Smith" later referred to by Spinke, and that the former master and his old apprentice were partners in the publication of what was "probably the earliest book to bear Curll's name." Of Smith, Straus could say only what Dunton had said: that he had been "born with auspicious Starrs . . . and increases daily, both in Fame and Riches." Straus did not press his researches into Curll's early career further.

A document has now come to light which not only substantiates fully the inference of Tedder and Straus that Spinke's "Mr. Smith" was the Richard Smith of the imprint to Bladen's "Caesar," but provides some possible justification for Spinke's hint that Curll had wronged his old master, and suggests the manner by which Curll may have acquired his "interest" in the Bladen volume. Further, it supplies information upon the career of Richard Smith which indicates that Dunton's testimony to his affluence was somewhat premature. Finally, the document gives evidence of one of Curll's earliest activities as a full-fledged member of "the trade."

On 3 June 1708, Richard Smith, bookseller, of the parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, exhibited in Chancery a Bill of Complaint against Thomas Brookhouse, chandler, Thomas Hues (or Hughes), bookbinder, and Edmund Curle [sic], bookseller, in which he accused the defendants of conspiracy to defraud him.[3] The allegations of Smith's complaint are lengthy and complicated, but a bare summary will adequately convey what is relevant here.

In 1702, requiring money to carry on his business, Smith had borrowed fifty pounds from Brookhouse. Hues had become bound with Smith for one hundred pounds security on the loan. In the four years following, Smith had obtained other loans, so that by May, 1706, he was indebted for seven hundred pounds "and upwards," and several of his creditors were demanding immediate payment under threat of arrest. As a result of the pressure of their demands, and in fear of arrest, Smith "did . . . unadvisedly abscond and withdraw himself from his dwelling house." On 3 May 1706, a commission of bankruptcy was issued against him, authorizing seizure of his "goods[,] effects and estate." The "auspicious Starrs" that Dunton had ascribed to him were hardly influential in 1706.

Sometime after the conveyance of his assets into trusteeship, Smith's creditors, "upon cooler thoughts," and believing him to be "an honest and industrious man," decided to forbear prosecution of the bankruptcy proceedings and to allow him to pay fifty pounds quarterly toward the full discharge of his debts. Subsequently, the property that had been seized under the bankruptcy commission had been made available for his use.

Before his abscondence, Smith had sent to his security, the bookbinder

Thomas Hues, "a great number and severall parcells of books in quires to the value of one hundred pounds and upwards to be by him bound. . . ." Hues, in 1708, had not yet returned those books. Moreover, Hues and Thomas Brookhouse, after Smith had "withdrawn himself as aforesaid," and apparently while he was still in hiding, had taken from Smith's warehouse one hundred unbound copies in folio of "Bull's Works or Bulli Opera," and one hundred copies "in quires" of Bladen's Commentaries. In addition, the two men had taken, "or caused to be taken and carryed away in sacks or baggs from the Marine Coffee House in Birchin Lane" a large quantity of other books, valued at one hundred pounds "and upwards." These books were probably the stock for Smith's auctions.

Hues and Brookhouse had seized the books, Smith complained, without the authority of the bankruptcy commission. The value of the books had been much greater than his debts to the two men. They still, in 1708, refused either to cancel his debts to them and pay him the difference between the debts and the value of the books, or to surrender the books to the trustee for Smith's other creditors. Smith was, he declared, both able and willing to pay his debts to Hues and Brookhouse in full. At the time he instituted proceedings in Chancery, Hues and Brookhouse were denying that the books they had taken were of sufficient value to discharge Smith's debts to them. The principal dispute arose, therefore, over the accuracy of their appraisal. And it is in connection with the process of appraisal that the name of Edmund Curll enters the affair.

The value of each set of the sheets of Bishop Bull's Works, according to Smith, was £1 5s. od. Hues and Brookhouse, after seizing the sheets, had engaged appraisers who placed their value at seven shillings per volume. The names of the "two understanding and indifferent . . . booksellers" whom Hues and Brookhouse had employed in the appraisal were Edmund Curll and Robert Halsey, "a partner with the said Edmund Curle in buying and selling of books." The value that they had assigned to the Bull volumes, Smith claimed, was less than half what they might have been sold for to other booksellers, and their printing had cost twice the amount at which Curll and Halsey had appraised them. Edmund Curll, Smith declared further, "well knew and knoweth," that the subscription price of the volumes, "with all allowances," was £1 1s. 6d. each, and that the wholesale price of each volume in quires was 18s. 9d., for Curll had been Smith's own apprentice, and he was at the time of the appraisal "but lately out of his service and apprenticeship."

If Smith's valuation of the Bull volumes was accurate, and perhaps he would not have insisted on what he could not prove, then this transaction may be part of the basis of John Spinke's innuendo against Curll in 1710. Smith declared that Curll had been bribed by the other "confederates," Hues and Brookhouse, to submit a low appraisal by the promise that he would be allowed to buy a part of the stock at the price he himself should place upon it. Moreover, according to Smith, Curll actually had

bought a considerable portion of the stock soon after the appraisal, and he and the "conferedates" had by 1708 already "sold great part of the books that were bound," and "raised great sums of money thereby." Among those designated as having been sold by the "confederates" were "the said books called Bladen's Commentaries." This would account for the new title-page and imprint that proclaimed a "Second Edition Improv'd" of Bladen in 1706.

A search has failed to produce Curll's answer to Smith's complaint, if indeed he ever made one. This account of his activities in the Smith-Hues-Brookhouse affair is therefore deeply biased. The document does suggest, however, that if he was not guilty in 1706 of the unscrupulous business practices for which he later became notorious, he was at least susceptible, at that early date, to accusations of them.

Notes