In 1737 we find him venturing in a very different path. “Two booksellers,” writes Richardson, “my particular friends (Rivington and Osborne), entreated me to write for them a little volume of letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers who were unable to indite for themselves. ‘Would it be any harm,’ said I, ‘in a piece you want to be written so low, if one should instruct them how they should think and act in common cases, as well as indite?’ They were the more urgent for me to begin the little volume for the hint. I set about it, and in the progress of writing two or three letters to instruct handsome girls who were obliged to go out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue, the above story occurred to me, and hence sprang ‘Pamela.’” The first two volumes of the story were written in three months, and never was a book of this kind more generally or more quickly admired. Pope asserted that it would do more good than twenty sermons, mindful, perhaps, of its publisher; Slocock and many other eminent divines recommended it from the pulpit; a critic declared that if all books were burnt, the Bible and ‘Pamela’ ought to be preserved; and even at fashionable Ranelagh, where the former was in but little request, “it was usual for the ladies to hold up the volume (the latter) to one another, to show that they had got the book that every one was talking of.” What, however, was more to Rivington’s purpose, the volume went through five editions in the year of publication, 1741.
This success closed Charles Rivington’s business life, for he died on the 25th of February, 1742.
By Ellen Pease, his wife, a native of Durham, he had six children, to whom his friend Samuel Richardson, the executor also of his will, acted as guardian.
Charles, the founder, was succeeded by John and James, who carried on the publishing business conjointly for several years, after which James joined a Mr. Fletcher, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, with whom he brought out Smollett’s “History of England,” by which £10,000 was cleared--the largest profit that had yet been made on any single book. This success, however, encouraged James to neglect his affairs, and he took to frequenting Newmarket; racing and gambling soon ended in a failure, and in 1760 he thought it advisable to start for the New World. Here, in Philadelphia, he commenced his celebrated _Gazette_, and, as he advocated the British interests and took the loyal side, his premises were destroyed by the rebels, and his type cast into republican bullets. James Rivington then came back to London, where he obtained the appointment of “King’s printer to America,” and furnished afresh with types and presses he returned to recommence his _Royal Gazette_, which he carried on boldly up to the withdrawal of the British troops; and as he had contrived somehow, it is said by forwarding early intelligence, to propitiate the enemy, he was allowed to continue his paper, which soon died for want of subscribers; but until 1802 he lived in New York, leaving many descendants there. Even in those early and unsophisticated days, Yankee gentlemen had contracted the habit of “cowhiding” obnoxious or impertinent editors, and the wit of the _Royal Gazette_ was in its time sufficiently stinging and personal to involve its proprietor in many of these little difficulties. James Rivington relates rather an amusing story of an interview with Ethan Allen, one of the republican heroes, who came for the express purpose of administering chastisement. He says:--