This scrap of a letter, on paper watermarked 1824, was discovered a few years ago in a pile of autographs. It had been sent by the rather obscure W.B.MacDonagh, author of The Hermit in London to Charles Molloy Westmacott, editor of the notorious Age newspaper, and author of the London Spy, and proposed a meeting to discuss business.
What little we know about Macdonagh suggests that he was a harmless hack who, like Westmacott himself, was familiar with the fashionable world of Pierce Egan’s Regency flaneurs Tom and Jerry and Corinthian Tom, the prize-fighting coteries of ‘The Fancy ‘and the dandies of the Burlington Arcade. Westmacott, however, was a very significant figure in the Regency smart-set, in that through his blackmailing activities as editor of The Age he became one of the most hated men in England.
Westmacott’s methods were simple enough.
