Fanny's style was novel and sparkling, if not very refined, and her fame sprang up almost in a night-time. Messrs. Derby & Miller, booksellers, of Auburn, N. Y., had the shrewdness to see that a volume of her sketches would be apt to make a stir in the market, and wrote to us for information touching her real name and address. We replied that we were not then at liberty to divulge the name, but that any communications directed to our care would reach her. A correspondence was at once opened, and Mrs. Farrington was offered four hundred dollars for sufficient material for a volume--or, if she preferred, ten cents a copy on every edition printed.
Now four hundred dollars cash, was tempting. It would purchase a rich dress, a dashing shawl, "several pairs of gaiter-boots," and numerous boxes of those sovereign preparations, noted for the qualities that "impart a natural beauty to the complexion." In accordance with our advice, however, (for we foresaw a large sale for the book,) she resolved to risk a little, in the hope that much might be gained, and accept the commission of ten cents a copy. The volume was easily thrown together, being compiled principally from the files of the Olive Branch and the True Flag. It was stereotyped at the New-England Foundry, in this city, and all the proof-sheets passed through our hands.
At this time, Mrs. Farrington and her youngest child, "little Ella," boarded with a respectable family, in the spacious brick dwelling-house, No. 642 Washington-street; her eldest daughter residing with her grandfather Eldredge. Fanny occupied an elegant suite of rooms on the second floor. The parlor was sumptuously furnished; chairs of solid mahogany, covered with velvet--with centre-table, sofa, carpet, &c., of corresponding richness. The numerous visitors had no reason to suspect that all these luxuries were only poverty in disguise. Nor would one readily imagine that the plump Ella and her blooming mother were accustomed to breakfast on shadowy dishes of hope, have the same served up, cold, for dinner, and then go supperless to bed. The landlady had an excellent reputation for liberality and kindness, and looked like anything but the cruel ogress represented in Fanny's writings. The fact is--whatever may be said to the contrary by Fanny and her especial sympathizers,--she was at this time living in a style of luxury and elegance which would have reflected no discredit upon any lady of fashion. There may be some good reason for concealing this suggestive fact, but we cannot discover any.