THE AMERICAN POSTAL TREATY--THE QUESTION OF COPYRIGHT WITH
AMERICA--FOUR MORE NOVELS.
In the spring of 1868,--before the affair of Beverley, which, as
being the first direct result of my resignation of office, has been
brought in a little out of its turn,--I was requested to go over to
the United States and make a postal treaty at Washington. This, as
I had left the service, I regarded as a compliment, and of course I
went. It was my third visit to America, and I have made two since.
As far as the Post Office work was concerned, it was very far from
being agreeable. I found myself located at Washington, a place I do
not love, and was harassed by delays, annoyed by incompetence, and
opposed by what I felt to be personal and not national views. I had
to deal with two men,--with one who was a working officer of the
American Post Office, than whom I have never met a more zealous, or,
as far as I could judge, a more honest public servant. He had his
views and I had mine, each of us having at heart the welfare of the
service in regard to his own country,--each of us also having certain
orders which we were bound to obey. But the other gentleman, who was
in rank the superior,--whose executive position was dependent on his
official status, as is the case with our own Ministers,--did not
recommend himself to me equally. He would make appointments with me
and then not keep them, which at last offended me so grievously,
that I declared at the Washington Post Office that if this treatment
were continued, I would write home to say that any further action
on my part was impossible. I think I should have done so had it not
occurred to me that I might in this way serve his purpose rather
than my own, or the purposes of those who had sent me. The treaty,
however, was at last made,--the purport of which was, that everything
possible should be done, at a heavy expenditure on the part of
England, to expedite the mails from England to America, and that
nothing should be done by America to expedite the mails from thence
to us. The expedition I believe to be now equal both ways; but it
could not be maintained as it is without the payment of a heavy
subsidy from Great Britain, whereas no subsidy is paid by the
States.[11]
[Footnote 11: This was a state of things which may probably have
appeared to American politicians to be exactly that which they
should try to obtain. The whole arrangement has again been
altered since the time of which I have spoken.]
I had also a commission from the Foreign Office, for which I had
asked, to make an effort on behalf of an international copyright
between the United States and Great Britain,--the want of which is
the one great impediment to pecuniary success which still stands in
the way of successful English authors. I cannot say that I have never
had a shilling of American money on behalf of reprints of my work;
but I have been conscious of no such payment. Having found many years
ago--in 1861, when I made a struggle on the subject, being then in
the States, the details of which are sufficiently amusing[12]--that
I could not myself succeed in dealing with American booksellers, I
have sold all foreign right to the English publishers; and though I
do not know that I have raised my price against them on that score,
I may in this way have had some indirect advantage from the American
market. But I do know that what the publishers have received here is
very trifling. I doubt whether Messrs. Chapman & Hall, my present
publishers, get for early sheets sent to the States as much as 5 per
cent on the price they pay me for my manuscript. But the American
readers are more numerous than the English, and taking them all
through, are probably more wealthy. If I can get £1000 for a book
here (exclusive of their market), I ought to be able to get as much
there. If a man supply 600 customers with shoes in place of 300,
there is no question as to such result. Why not, then, if I can
supply 60,000 readers instead of 30,000?
[Footnote 12: In answer to a question from myself, a certain
American publisher--he who usually reprinted my works--promised
me that if any other American publisher republished my work
on America before he had done so, he would not bring out a
competing edition, though there would be no law to hinder
him. I then entered into an agreement with another American
publisher, stipulating to supply him with early sheets; and he
stipulating to supply me a certain royalty on his sales, and to
supply me with accounts half-yearly. I sent the sheets with
energetic punctuality, and the work was brought out with equal
energy and precision--by my old American publishers. The
gentleman who made the promise had not broken his word. No
other American edition had come out before his. I never got any
account, and, of course, never received a dollar.]
I fancied that I knew that the opposition to an international
copyright was by no means an American feeling, but was confined to
the bosoms of a few interested Americans. All that I did and heard
in reference to the subject on this further visit,--and having a
certain authority from the British Secretary of State with me I
could hear and do something,--altogether confirmed me in this view.
I have no doubt that if I could poll American readers, or American
senators,--or even American representatives, if the polling could
be unbiassed,--or American booksellers,[13] that an assent to an
international copyright would be the result. The state of things as
it is is crushing to American authors, as the publishers will not pay
them on a liberal scale, knowing that they can supply their customers
with modern English literature without paying for it. The English
amount of production so much exceeds the American, that the rate at
which the former can be published rules the market. It is equally
injurious to American booksellers,--except to two or three of the
greatest houses. No small man can now acquire the exclusive right of
printing and selling an English book. If such a one attempt it, the
work is printed instantly by one of the leviathans,--who alone are
the gainers. The argument of course is, that the American readers are
the gainers,--that as they can get for nothing the use of certain
property, they would be cutting their own throats were they to pass
a law debarring themselves from the power of such appropriation. In
this argument all idea of honesty is thrown to the winds. It is not
that they do not approve of a system of copyright,--as many great men
have disapproved,--for their own law of copyright is as stringent as
is ours. A bold assertion is made that they like to appropriate the
goods of other people; and that, as in this case, they can do so
with impunity, they will continue to do so. But the argument, as
far as I have been able to judge, comes not from the people, but
from the bookselling leviathans, and from those politicians whom
the leviathans are able to attach to their interests. The ordinary
American purchaser is not much affected by slight variations in
price. He is at any rate too high-hearted to be affected by the
prospect of such variation. It is the man who wants to make money,
not he who fears that he may be called upon to spend it, who controls
such matters as this in the United States. It is the large speculator
who becomes powerful in the lobbies of the House, and understands how
wise it may be to incur a great expenditure either in the creation
of a great business, or in protecting that which he has created from
competition. Nothing was done in 1868,--and nothing has been done
since (up to 1876). A Royal Commission on the law of copyright is
now about to sit in this country, of which I have consented to be a
member; and the question must then be handled, though nothing done
by a Royal Commission here can affect American legislators. But
I do believe that if the measure be consistently and judiciously
urged, the enemies to it in the States will gradually be overcome.
Some years since we had some _quasi_ private meetings, under the
presidency of Lord Stanhope, in Mr. John Murray's dining-room, on the
subject of international copyright. At one of these I discussed this
matter of American international copyright with Charles Dickens,
who strongly declared his conviction that nothing would induce an
American to give up the power he possesses of pirating British
literature. But he was a man who, seeing clearly what was before him,
would not realise the possibility of shifting views. Because in this
matter the American decision had been, according to his thinking,
dishonest, therefore no other than dishonest decision was to be
expected from Americans. Against that idea I protested, and now
protest. American dishonesty is rampant; but it is rampant only among
a few. It is the great misfortune of the community that those few
have been able to dominate so large a portion of the population among
which all men can vote, but so few can understand for what they are
voting.
[Footneote 13: I might also say American publishers, if I might
count them by the number of heads, and not by the amount of work
done by the firms.]
Since this was written the Commission on the law of copyright has sat
and made its report. With the great body of it I agree, and could
serve no reader by alluding here at length to matters which are
discussed there. But in regard to this question of international
copyright with the United States, I think that we were incorrect
in the expression of an opinion that fair justice,--or justice
approaching to fairness,--is now done by American publishers to
English authors by payments made by them for early sheets. I have
just found that £20 was paid to my publisher in England for the use
of the early sheets of a novel for which I received £1600 in England.
When asked why he accepted so little, he assured me that the firm
with whom he dealt would not give more. "Why not go to another firm?"
I asked. No other firm would give a dollar, because no other firm
would care to run counter to that great firm which had assumed to
itself the right of publishing my books. I soon after received a copy
of my own novel in the American form, and found that it was published
for 7½d. That a great sale was expected can be argued from the fact
that without a great sale the paper and printing necessary for the
republication of a three-volume novel could not be supplied. Many
thousand copies must have been sold. But from these the author
received not one shilling. I need hardly point out that the sum of
£20 would not do more than compensate the publisher for his trouble
in making the bargain. The publisher here no doubt might have refused
to supply the early sheets, but he had no means of exacting a higher
price than that offered. I mention the circumstance here because it
has been boasted, on behalf of the American publishers, that though
there is no international copyright, they deal so liberally with
English authors as to make it unnecessary that the English author
should be so protected. With the fact of the £20 just brought to my
knowledge, and with the copy of my book published at 7½d. now in my
hands, I feel that an international copyright is very necessary for
my protection.
They among Englishmen who best love and most admire the United
States, have felt themselves tempted to use the strongest language
in denouncing the sins of Americans. Who can but love their personal
generosity, their active and far-seeking philanthropy, their love of
education, their hatred of ignorance, the general convictions in the
minds of all of them that a man should be enabled to walk upright,
fearing no one and conscious that he is responsible for his own
actions? In what country have grander efforts been made by private
munificence to relieve the sufferings of humanity? Where can the
English traveller find any more anxious to assist him than the normal
American, when once the American shall have found the Englishman to
be neither sullen nor fastidious? Who, lastly, is so much an object
of heart-felt admiration of the American man and the American woman
as the well-mannered and well-educated Englishwoman or Englishman?
These are the ideas which I say spring uppermost in the minds of the
unprejudiced English traveller as he makes acquaintance with these
near relatives. Then he becomes cognisant of their official doings,
of their politics, of their municipal scandals, of their great
ring-robberies, of their lobbyings and briberies, and the infinite
baseness of their public life. There at the top of everything he
finds the very men who are the least fit to occupy high places.
American public dishonesty is so glaring that the very friends he
has made in the country are not slow to acknowledge it,--speaking of
public life as a thing-apart from their own existence, as a state
of dirt in which it would be an insult to suppose that they are
concerned! In the midst of it all the stranger, who sees so much
that he hates and so much that he loves, hardly knows how to express
himself.
"It is not enough that you are personally clean," he says, with what
energy and courage he can command,--"not enough though the clean
outnumber the foul as greatly as those gifted with eyesight outnumber
the blind, if you that can see allow the blind to lead you. It is
not by the private lives of the millions that the outside world will
judge you, but by the public career of those units whose venality is
allowed to debase the name of your country. There never was plainer
proof given than is given here, that it is the duty of every honest
citizen to look after the honour of his State."
Personally, I have to own that I have met Americans,--men, but more
frequently women,--who have in all respects come up to my ideas of
what men and women should be: energetic, having opinions of their
own, quick in speech, with some dash of sarcasm at their command,
always intelligent, sweet to look at (I speak of the women), fond of
pleasure, and each with a personality of his or her own which makes
no effort necessary on my own part in remembering the difference
between Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Green, or between Mr. Smith and Mr.
Johnson. They have faults. They are self-conscious, and are too
prone to prove by ill-concealed struggles that they are as good as
you,--whereas you perhaps have been long acknowledging to yourself
that they are much better. And there is sometimes a pretence at
personal dignity among those who think themselves to have risen high
in the world which is deliciously ludicrous. I remember two old
gentlemen,--the owners of names which stand deservedly high in public
estimation,--whose deportment at a public funeral turned the occasion
into one for irresistible comedy. They are suspicious at first, and
fearful of themselves. They lack that simplicity of manners which
with us has become a habit from our childhood. But they are never
fools, and I think that they are seldom ill-natured.
There is a woman, of whom not to speak in a work purporting to be a
memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of the
chief pleasures which has graced my later years. In the last fifteen
years she has been, out of my family, my most chosen friend. She
is a ray of light to me, from which I can always strike a spark by
thinking of her. I do not know that I should please her or do any
good by naming her. But not to allude to her in these pages would
amount almost to a falsehood. I could not write truly of myself
without saying that such a friend had been vouchsafed to me. I trust
she may live to read the words I have now written, and to wipe away a
tear as she thinks of my feeling while I write them.
I was absent on this occasion something over three months, and on
my return I went back with energy to my work at the _St. Paul's
Magazine_. The first novel in it from my own pen was called _Phineas
Finn_, in which I commenced a series of semi-political tales. As I
was debarred from expressing my opinions in the House of Commons, I
took this method of declaring myself. And as I could not take my seat
on those benches where I might possibly have been shone upon by the
Speaker's eye, I had humbly to crave his permission for a seat in the
gallery, so that I might thus become conversant with the ways and
doings of the House in which some of my scenes were to be placed. The
Speaker was very gracious, and gave me a running order for, I think,
a couple of months. It was enough, at any rate, to enable me often to
be very tired,--and, as I have been assured by members, to talk of
the proceedings almost as well as though Fortune had enabled me to
fall asleep within the House itself.
In writing _Phineas Finn_, and also some other novels which followed
it, I was conscious that I could not make a tale pleasing chiefly,
or perhaps in any part, by politics. If I write politics for my own
sake, I must put in love and intrigue, social incidents, with perhaps
a dash of sport, for the benefit of my readers. In this way I think
I made my political hero interesting. It was certainly a blunder to
take him from Ireland--into which I was led by the circumstance that
I created the scheme of the book during a visit to Ireland. There
was nothing to be gained by the peculiarity, and there was an added
difficulty in obtaining sympathy and affection for a politician
belonging to a nationality whose politics are not respected in
England. But in spite of this Phineas succeeded. It was not a
brilliant success,--because men and women not conversant with
political matters could not care much for a hero who spent so much of
his time either in the House of Commons or in a public office. But
the men who would have lived with Phineas Finn read the book, and the
women who would have lived with Lady Laura Standish read it also. As
this was what I had intended, I was contented. It is all fairly good
except the ending,--as to which till I got to it I made no provision.
As I fully intended to bring my hero again into the world, I was
wrong to marry him to a simple pretty Irish girl, who could only be
felt as an encumbrance on such return. When he did return I had no
alternative but to kill the simple pretty Irish girl, which was an
unpleasant and awkward necessity.
In writing _Phineas Finn_ I had constantly before me the necessity of
progression in character,--of marking the changes in men and women
which would naturally be produced by the lapse of years. In most
novels the writer can have no such duty, as the period occupied
is not long enough to allow of the change of which I speak. In
_Ivanhoe_, all the incidents of which are included in less than a
month, the characters should be, as they are, consistent throughout.
Novelists who have undertaken to write the life of a hero or heroine
have generally considered their work completed at the interesting
period of marriage, and have contented themselves with the advance
in taste and manners which are common to all boys and girls as they
become men and women. Fielding, no doubt, did more than this in _Tom
Jones_, which is one of the greatest novels in the English language,
for there he has shown how a noble and sanguine nature may fall away
under temptation and be again strengthened and made to stand upright.
But I do not think that novelists have often set before themselves
the state of progressive change,--nor should I have done it, had
I not found myself so frequently allured back to my old friends.
So much of my inner life was passed in their company, that I was
continually asking myself how this woman would act when this or that
event had passed over her head, or how that man would carry himself
when his youth had become manhood, or his manhood declined to old
age. It was in regard to the old Duke of Omnium, of his nephew and
heir, and of his heir's wife, Lady Glencora, that I was anxious to
carry out this idea; but others added themselves to my mind as I
went on, and I got round me a circle of persons as to whom I knew
not only their present characters, but how those characters were
to be affected by years and circumstances. The happy motherly
life of Violet Effingham, which was due to the girl's honest but
long-restrained love; the tragic misery of Lady Laura, which was
equally due to the sale she made of herself in her wretched marriage;
and the long suffering but final success of the hero, of which he
had deserved the first by his vanity, and the last by his constant
honesty, had been foreshadowed to me from the first. As to the
incidents of the story, the circumstances by which these personages
were to be affected, I knew nothing. They were created for the most
part as they were described. I never could arrange a set of events
before me. But the evil and the good of my puppets, and how the evil
would always lead to evil, and the good produce good,--that was clear
to me as the stars on a summer night.
Lady Laura Standish is the best character in _Phineas Finn_ and its
sequel _Phineas Redux_,--of which I will speak here together. They
are, in fact, but one novel, though they were brought out at a
considerable interval of time and in different form. The first was
commenced in the _St. Paul's Magazine_ in 1867, and the other was
brought out in the _Graphic_ in 1873. In this there was much bad
arrangement, as I had no right to expect that novel-readers would
remember the characters of a story after an interval of six years, or
that any little interest which might have been taken in the career
of my hero could then have been renewed. I do not know that such
interest was renewed. But I found that the sequel enjoyed the same
popularity as the former part, and among the same class of readers.
Phineas, and Lady Laura, and Lady Chiltern--as Violet had become--and
the old duke,--whom I killed gracefully, and the new duke, and the
young duchess, either kept their old friends or made new friends for
themselves. _Phineas Finn_, I certainly think, was successful from
first to last. I am aware, however, that there was nothing in it to
touch the heart like the abasement of Lady Mason when confessing her
guilt to her old lover, or any approach in delicacy of delineation to
the character of Mr. Crawley.
_Phineas Finn_, the first part of the story, was completed in May,
1867. In June and July I wrote _Linda Tressel_ for _Blackwood's
Magazine_, of which I have already spoken. In September and October
I wrote a short novel, called _The Golden Lion of Granpère_, which
was intended also for _Blackwood_,--with a view of being published
anonymously; but Mr. Blackwood did not find the arrangement to be
profitable, and the story remained on my hands, unread and unthought
of, for a few years. It appeared subsequently in _Good Words_. It was
written on the model of _Nina Balatka_ and _Linda Tressel_, but is
very inferior to either of them. In November of the same year, 1867,
I began a very long novel, which I called _He Knew He Was Right_,
and which was brought out by Mr. Virtue, the proprietor of the _St.
Paul's Magazine_, in sixpenny numbers, every week. I do not know that
in any literary effort I ever fell more completely short of my own
intention than in this story. It was my purpose to create sympathy
for the unfortunate man who, while endeavouring to do his duty to all
around him, should be led constantly astray by his unwillingness to
submit his own judgment to the opinion of others. The man is made to
be unfortunate enough, and the evil which he does is apparent. So far
I did not fail, but the sympathy has not been created yet. I look
upon the story as being nearly altogether bad. It is in part redeemed
by certain scenes in the house and vicinity of an old maid in Exeter.
But a novel which in its main parts is bad cannot, in truth, be
redeemed by the vitality of subordinate characters.
This work was finished while I was at Washington in the spring of
1868, and on the day after I finished it, I commenced _The Vicar of
Bullhampton_, a novel which I wrote for Messrs. Bradbury & Evans.
This I completed in November, 1868, and at once began _Sir Harry
Hotspur of Humblethwaite_, a story which I was still writing at the
close of the year. I look upon these two years, 1867 and 1868, of
which I have given a somewhat confused account in this and the two
preceding chapters, as the busiest in my life. I had indeed left
the Post Office, but though I had left it I had been employed by it
during a considerable portion of the time. I had established the _St.
Paul's Magazine_, in reference to which I had read an enormous amount
of manuscript, and for which, independently of my novels, I had
written articles almost monthly. I had stood for Beverley and had
made many speeches. I had also written five novels, and had hunted
three times a week during each of the winters. And how happy I was
with it all! I had suffered at Beverley, but I had suffered as a
part of the work which I was desirous of doing, and I had gained my
experience. I had suffered at Washington with that wretched American
Postmaster, and with the mosquitoes, not having been able to escape
from that capital till July; but all that had added to the activity
of my life. I had often groaned over those manuscripts; but I had
read them, considering it--perhaps foolishly--to be a part of my
duty as editor. And though in the quick production of my novels I
had always ringing in my ears that terrible condemnation and scorn
produced by the great man in Paternoster Row, I was nevertheless
proud of having done so much. I always had a pen in my hand. Whether
crossing the seas, or fighting with American officials, or tramping
about the streets of Beverley, I could do a little, and generally
more than a little. I had long since convinced myself that in such
work as mine the great secret consisted in acknowledging myself to
be bound to rules of labour similar to those which an artisan or a
mechanic is forced to obey. A shoemaker when he has finished one
pair of shoes does not sit down and contemplate his work in idle
satisfaction. "There is my pair of shoes finished at last! What a
pair of shoes it is!" The shoemaker who so indulged himself would
be without wages half his time. It is the same with a professional
writer of books. An author may of course want time to study a new
subject. He will at any rate assure himself that there is some such
good reason why he should pause. He does pause, and will be idle for
a month or two while he tells himself how beautiful is that last pair
of shoes which he has finished! Having thought much of all this, and
having made up my mind that I could be really happy only when I was
at work, I had now quite accustomed myself to begin a second pair as
soon as the first was out of my hands.