By-and-by, as I extended my connection with magazine work, I was brought into contact with Mrs. Riddell, the gifted writer of that admirable novel "George Geith," and of other stories of equal merit. Mrs. Riddell was the editor and proprietor of the _St. James's Magazine_, and I became a regular contributor to its pages. Here I was brought into intimate association with a phase of literary life which belongs rather to the past than to the present. Mrs. Riddell had achieved sudden fame by her brilliant stories. In these days such fame would have meant for her a handsome income and a recognised position in society. But forty years ago fame as a writer was not necessarily rewarded in this way. My first interview with Mrs. Riddell, who was a lady of delightful manners and charming appearance, took place literally in a cellar beneath a shop in Cheapside. The shop was her husband's, and here certain patent stoves, of which he was the inventor and manufacturer, were exposed for sale. I had been greatly surprised when Mrs. Riddell, wishing to speak to me about certain contributions to the _St. James's Magazine_, had asked me to call, not at the office in Essex Street, but at this shop in Cheapside. I was still more surprised on finding this gifted woman, in whose brilliant pages I had found so much to delight me, acting as her husband's clerk, and engaged in making out invoices in the cellar beneath the shop. I am afraid that, in spite of her husband's occupation, I cannot give Mrs. Riddell a testimonial as a business woman. She was, as I have said, delightful as a writer, and charming as a woman, but her editorship of the _St. James's Magazine_ did not suggest that she had the aptitude necessary to success in business. She was very kind to me, and gave me the opportunity of writing on any subject, and at almost any length, in the pages she controlled. More than once I have had three long articles in one number of the magazine; but I was always harassed by the fact that the magazine was never "out" on the proper day, and that the editor was always in a hurry for the copy I had to supply. My chief contributions to the _St. James's_ were a series of sketches of statesmen, subsequently republished in a volume, entitled "Cabinet Portraits," another series of sketches of London preachers, and a novel called "The Lumley Entail."