VII
At this time Cobbett, then better known as Peter Porcupine, a name which on becoming an author he had assumed, and which had at least the merit of representing his character appropriately, having quarrelled with a legion of booksellers, determined to set up in the bookselling line for himself; and in the spring of 1796, he took a house in Second Street for that purpose.
Though he was not so universally obnoxious then as he subsequently became, his enemies were already many and violent—his friends warm, but few. These last feared for him in the course he was entering upon; they advised him, therefore, to be prudent—to do nothing, at all events, on commencing business, that might attract public indignation; and, above all, not to put up any aristocratic portraits in his windows.
Cobbett’s plan was decided. His shop opened on a Monday, and he spent all the previous Sunday in so preparing it that, when he took down his shutters on the morning following, the people of Philadelphia were actually aghast at the collection of prints, arrayed in their defiance, including the effigies of George III., which had never been shown at any window since the rebellion. From that moment the newspapers were filled, and the shops placarded, with “A Blue Pill for Peter Porcupine,” “A Pill for Peter Porcupine,” “A Boaster for Peter Porcupine,” “A Picture of Peter Porcupine.” Peter Porcupine had become a person of decided consideration and importance.
“Dear father,” says the writer who had assumed this name, in one of his letters home, “when you used to set me off to work in the morning, dressed in my blue smock-frock and woollen spatterdashes, with a bag of bread and cheese and a bottle of small beer over my shoulder, on the little crook that my godfather gave me, little did you imagine that I should one day become so great a man.”