Particular friend
Sir: Not the least of the surprises in John Martin Robinson's panegyric to Westmor- land (Books, 9 October) was to learn that Wordsworth was the first editor of the Westmorland Gazette. He in fact turned the job down when the Lowther committee founded the paper in Kendal in 1818 as a counterblast to the anti-Tory Kendal Chronicle. Wordsworth acted as Lowther's spy and intermediary in dealing with the Gazette, his official post as Distributor of Stamps in Westmorland facilitating his gathering of intelligence around the county, and in the election campaign of 1818 he wrote the tract Two Addresses to the Free- holders of Westmorland against Brougham's fitness to hold office. Following the Lowther v. Brougham riots in Kendal in 1818, the Gazette was launched in May under the editorship of one C. J. Fisher, imported from London, but by July he had been replaced by Thomas De Quincey who was to remain editor until November 1819.
De Quincey took the editorial chair on the condition that he could continue to live in Grasmere and commute into Kendal,
LETTERS
being responsible for the literary style and flavour of the paper rather than the deci- sive management of news. Wordsworth Continued to act as an eminence grise, but was happy to see 'one of my particular friends' take control of the paper. De Quincey's Tory commitment was never in doubt. He later remarked that archaeolo- gists in the future could dig him up and find a perfect example of a 'fossilised Tory'. Richard Hall,
Cumberland and Westmorland Archeaology Society
2 High Tenterfell, Kendal,
Cumbria
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