“Obscene with filth the miscreant lies bewrayed,
Fallen in the plash his wickedness had laid;
Then first (if poets aught of truth declare)
The caitiff vaticide conceived a prayer.”
In reference to Curll there is a note to this passage, “He carried the
trade many lengths beyond what it ever before had arrived at; he was
the envy and admiration of all his profession. He possessed himself
of a command over all authors whatever; he caused them to write what
he pleased; they could not call their very names their own. He was
not only famous among them; he was taken notice of by the state, the
church, and the law, and received particular marks of distinction from
each.”
We have no space to discuss the vexed question as to how the letters
of Pope published by Curll came into his hands--the discussion would
occupy a volume and remain a moot question after all. But we are
disposed to believe with Johnson and Disraeli that “being inclined
to print his own letters, and not knowing how to do so without the
imputation of vanity, what in this country has been done very rarely,
he contrives an appearance of compulsion; that when he could complain
that his letters were surreptitiously published, he might decently
and defensively publish them himself.” The letters at all events were
genuine, and Pope in a feigned or real indignation caused Curll to
be brought for a third time (the second had been for publishing the
Duke of Buckingham’s words) before the bar of the House of Lords for
disobeying its standard rules; but on examination the book was not
found to contain any letters from a _peer_, and Curll was dismissed,
and boldly continued the publication till five volumes had been issued.
In spite, or perhaps on account of the unblushing effrontery with
which he run amuck at everything and everybody, Curll was a successful
man, as his repeated removals to better and better premises plainly
testifies. Over his best shop in Covent Garden he erected the Bible as
a sign. He has had many apologists, among others worthy John Nichols,
as deserving commendation for his industry in preserving our national
remains, but the scavenger, when he gathers his daily filth, lays
little claim to doing a meritorious action, he only works unpleasantly
for his daily bread; and it has been the repeated cry of publishers,
even in our own times, in reproducing an immoral book, that they were
wishing only for the preservation of something rare and curious. It
were not well that any book once written should ever die,--that any one
link in the vast chain of human thought should ever be irrecoverably
lost, but the publisher of such a book must, at least, bear the same
penalty of stigma as the author, for he has not even the author’s
self-vanity as an excuse, but only the still more wretched plea of
mercenary motive. We will conclude our notice of Curll by an extract
from “John Buncle,” by Thomas Amory, who knew him personally and
well. “Curll was in person very tall and thin--an ungainly, awkward,
white-faced man. His eyes were a light gray--large, projecting,
goggle, and purblind. He was splay-footed and baker-kneed.... He was
a debauchee to the last degree, and so injurious to society, that by
filling his translations with wretched notes, forged letters, and bad
pictures, he raised the price of a four-shilling book to ten. Thus, in
particular, he managed Burnet’s ‘Archæology.’ And when I told him he
was very culpable in this and other articles he sold, his answer was,
‘What would I have him do? He was a bookseller;--his translators, in
pay, lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter Inn, in Holborn, and he
and they were for ever at work deceiving the public.’ He, likewise,
printed the lewdest things. He lost his ears for the ‘Nun in her Smock’
and another thing. As to drink, he was too fond of money to spend any
in making himself happy that way; but, at another’s expense, he would
drink every day till he was quite blind and as incapable of self-motion
as a block. This was Edmund Curll. But he died at last as great a
penitent, I think, in the year 1748 (it was 1747), as ever expired. I
mention this to his honour.”[7]
Thomas Guy, more eminent certainly as a very successful money-maker,
and a generous benefactor to charitable institutions, than as a
bookseller, was born in Horsley-down, the son of a coal-heaver and
lighterman. The year of his birth is uncertain, but in 1660, he
was bound apprentice to John Clarke, bookseller, in the porch of
Mercers’ Chapel, and, in 1668, having been admitted a liveryman of the
Stationers’ Company, he opened a small shop in “Stock Market” (the site
of the present Mansion House, then a fruit and flower market, where,
also, offenders against the law were punished) with a stock-in-trade
worth above £200. From the first, Guy’s chief business seems to have
been in Bibles, for Maitland, his biographer relates, “The English
Bibles, printed in this kingdom, being very bad, both in the letter
and the paper, occasioned divers of the booksellers in this city to
encourage the printing thereof in Holland, with curious types and
fine paper, and imported vast numbers of the same to their no small
advantage. Mr. Guy, soon becoming acquainted with this profitable
commerce, became a large dealer therein.” As early as Queen Elizabeth’s
time, the privilege of printing Bibles had been conferred on the
Queen’s (or King’s) printer, conjointly, of course, with the two
Universities, and the effect of this prolonged monopoly resulted, not
only in exorbitant prices, but in great typographical carelessness,
and, says Thomas Fuller, under the quaint heading of “Fye for Shame,”
“what is but carelessness in other books is impiety in setting forth
of the Bible.” Many of the errors were curious;--the printers in
Charles I.’s reign had been heavily fined for issuing an edition in
which, the word “not” being omitted, the seventh, commandment had been
rendered a positive, instead of a negative injunction. The _Spectator_
wickedly suggests that, judging from the morals of the day, very many
copies must have got abroad into continuous use. In the Bible of 1653,
moreover, the printers allowed “know ye not that the _un_righteous
shall inherit the kingdom of God” to stand uncorrected. However, the
Universities and the King’s printer still possessed the monopoly, and
this new trade of good cheap Bibles “proving not only very detrimental
to the public revenues, but likewise to the King’s printer, all ways
and means were devised to quash the same, which, being vigorously put
in execution, the booksellers, by frequent seizures and prosecutions,
became so great sufferers, that they judged a further pursuit thereof
inconsistent with their interests.” Defeated in this manner, Guy
cautiously induced the University of Oxford to contract with him for an
assignment of their privilege, and not only obtained type from Holland,
and printed the Bible in London, but was, later on, in 1681, according
to Dunton, a partner with Parker in printing the Bible, at Oxford
(Parker could have been no connection of the famous publishing family).
[Illustration: Thomas Guy, founder of Guy’s Hospital. 1644-1724.
(_From the statue by J. Bacon, R.A._)]
[Illustration: Guy’s Hospital.
(_Bird’s-eye view from a Print, 1738._)]
Guy seems to have contracted in his early days very frugal and
personally pernicious habits. According to Nichols, he is said to have
dined every day at his counter, “with no other table-cloth than an old
newspaper,” and if the “Intelligence” or the “Newes” of that period
really served him for a cloth, the dish that contained his meat must
have been uncommonly small. “He was also,” it is added, “as little
nice in his apparel.” It was probably, too, in the commencement of his
career, that, looking round for a tidy and inexpensive helpmate,
he asked his servant-maid to become his wife. The girl, of course,
was delighted, but, alas! presumed too much upon her influence over
her careful lover; seeing that the paviours who were repairing the
street, in front of the house (an order was issued, in 1671, to every
householder to pave the street in front of his dwelling, “for the
breadth of six feet at least from the foundation”) had neglected a
broken place, she called their attention to it, but they told her that
Guy had carefully marked a particular stone, beyond which they were not
to go. “Well,” said the girl, “do you mend it; tell him I bade you,
and I know he will not be angry.” When Guy saw the extra charge in the
bill, however, he at once renounced his matrimonial scheme.
The Bible trade proved prosperous, and Guy, ready for any lucrative and
safe investment for his money, speculated in Government securities,
and, according to Nichols and Maitland, acquired the “bulk of his
fortune” by purchasing seaman’s tickets; but the practice of paying the
royal sailors by ticket does not seem to have existed later than the
year 1684; so that if he dealt in them at all it must have been a very
early period in his career, when it appears unlikely that he would have
had much spare cash to invest. Maitland adds “_as well as in Government
securities_, and this was probably the manner in which the ‘bulk of his
fortune’ was really acquired.”
That his finances were in a healthy condition, is apparent, from his
appearance in Parliament as member for Tamworth, from 1695 to 1707.
According to Maitland, “as he was a man of unbounded charity, and
universal benevolence, so he was likewise a good patron of liberty,
and the rights of his fellow-subjects; which, to his great honour,
he strenuously asserted in divers parliaments.” An honourable
testimony to his character, supported also by Dunton: “Thomas Guy, of
Lombard-street, makes an eminent figure in the Company of Stationers,
having been chosen sheriff of London, and paid the fine.... He is a man
of strong reason, and can talk very much to the purpose on any subject
you can propose. He is truly charitable.”
Throughout his life, he was very kind to his relatives, lending money
when needed to help some, and pensioning others. To charities, whose
purpose was pure benevolence, apart from sectarian motive, his purse
was ever open, and St. Thomas’s Hospital and the Stationers’ Company
were largely indebted to his generosity.
In his latter days, Guy was able to multiply his fortune many fold.
The South Sea Company was a good investment for a wary, cool-headed
business man, and he became an original holder in the stock. “It no
sooner received,” says Maitland, “the sanction of Parliament, than the
national creditors from all parts came crowding to subscribe into the
said company the several sums due to them from the government, by which
great run, £100 of the Company’s stock, that before was sold at £120
(at which time, Mr. Guy was possessed of £45,500 of the said stock)
gradually arose to above £1,050. Mr. Guy wisely considering that the
great use of the stock was owing to the iniquitous management of a few,
prudently began to sell out his stock at about £300 (for that which
probably at first did not cost him about £50 or £60) and continued
selling till it arose to about £600 when he disposed of the last of his
property in the said company,” and then the terrible panic came.
He was between seventy and eighty years of age when he determined to
devote his fortune to building and endowing a hospital which should
bear his name, and, dying in 1724, he lived just long enough to see
the walls roofed in. The cost of building “Guy’s Hospital” amounted to
£18,793, and he left £219,499 as endowment. At Tamworth, his mother’s
birthplace, which he represented in Parliament for many years, he
erected alms-houses and a library. Christ’s Hospital received £400 a
year for ever, and, after many gifts to public charities, he directed
that the balance of his fortune, amounting to about £80,000, should
be divided among all who could prove themselves in any degree related
to him. Guy’s noble philanthropy would be unequalled in bookselling
annals, but that Edinburgh, happily boasting of a Donaldson, can rival
London in the generosity of a bookseller.
We have had occasion to quote several times from “Dunton’s Characters;”
and, as the author was himself a bookseller, and was, moreover, the
only contemporary writer who thought it worth his while to preserve any
continuous record of the bookselling fraternity, we must give him a
passing notice here. John Dunton, the son of a clergyman, was born in
1689, and, after passing through a disorderly apprenticeship, commenced
bookselling “in half a shop, a warehouse, and a fashionable chamber.”
“Printing,” he says, “was the uppermost in my thoughts, and hackney
authors began to ply me with specimens as earnestly and with as much
passion and concern as the waterman do passengers with oars and sculls.”
Having some private capital he went ahead merrily, printing six
hundred books, of which he repented only of seven, and these he
recommends all who possess to burn forthwith. Somewhat erratic in his
habits he went to America to recover a debt of £500, consoling his
wife, “dear Iris,” through whom he became connected with Wesley’s
father, by sending her sixty letters in one ship. Here he stayed for
nearly a twelvemonth, pleasantly viewing the country at his leisure,
and cultivating a platonic friendship with maids and widows. At his
return he found his business disordered, and sought to make amends by
another voyage to Holland. By this time he had pretty nearly dissipated
his capital, but luckily came “into possession of a considerable
estate” through the death of a cousin. “The world,” he says, “now
smiled on me, and I have humble servants enough among the stationers,
booksellers, printers, and binders.”
Of all his publications, the only one that attained any fame was the
“Athenian Mercury,” which reached twenty volumes. His three literary
associates in this work were Samuel Wesley, Richard Sault, and Dr. John
Norris, and with his aid they resolved all “nice and curious questions
in prose and verse,” concerning physic, philosophy, love, &c. They were
afterwards reprinted in four volumes, under the title of the _Athenian
Oracle_, and form a curious picture of the wants, manners, and opinions
of the age; but the work is, perhaps, chiefly to be remembered as one
of the earliest periodicals not professing to contain “news.”
Dunton now, finding that he did not make much money by bookselling in
London, went over to Dublin for six months with a cargo of books and
started as auctioneer, naturally falling foul of the Irish booksellers,
whom he dressed off in a tract entitled “The Dublin Scuffle.” He
returned to England complacently believing that he had done more
service to learning by his auctions “than any single man that had come
into Ireland these hundred years.”
In London, however, he was by this time so involved in commercial
difficulties, that he was fain to give up bookselling altogether, and
take to bookmaking instead; and his pen was so indefatigable that he
soon bid fair to be the author of as many volumes as he had published.
The book that concerns us most here is the “Life and Errors of John
Dunton, written by himself in Solitude,” in which is included the
“Lives and Characters of a Thousand Persons now living in London.” In
this latter part he was obliged, “out of mere gratitude,” “to draw
the characters of the most eminent of the profession in the three
kingdoms;” consequently we find some half-dozen lines of “character”
given to every bookseller of his time in London, “gratitude” compelling
him, however, to be almost invariably laudatory; the other parts of the
“three kingdoms” are thus summarily and easily dealt with, “Of three
hundred booksellers now trading in country towns, I know not of one
knave or a blockhead amongst them all.” The book, however rambling and
incoherent, contains much worth preservation, and is not unpleasant
desultory reading.
Dunton’s own “character” has been preserved elsewhere than in his _Life
and Confessions_. Warburton describes him as “an auction bookseller
and an abusive scribbler;” Disraeli, “as a crack-brain, scribbling
bookseller, who boasted that he had a thousand projects, fancied he had
methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed.” His
greatest project, by the way, was intended “to extirpate lewdness from
London.” “Armed with a constable’s staff, and accompanied by a clerical
companion, he sallied forth in the evening, and followed the wretched
prostitutes home to a tavern, where every effort was used to win the
erring fair to the paths of virtue; but these he observes were perilous
adventures, as the cyprians exerted every art to lead him astray in the
height of his spiritual exhortations.”
There is something so Quixotic about his schemes, so complacent about
his marvellous self-vanity, that we are really grieved when we find him
ending his life, as most “projectors” do, with _Dying Groans from the
Fleet Prison; or, a Last Shift for Life_. Shortly after this, in 1733,
his teeming brain and his eager pen were at rest for ever.
Another bookseller, also a “man of letters,” but of very different
calibre from poor John Dunton, must have a niche here, not because he
was eminent as a publisher, but because he was, taken altogether, the
most famous man who has ever stood behind a bookseller’s counter. One
of our greatest novelists, his general life is so well known, that we
will only treat here of his bookselling career. Samuel Richardson,
born in 1689, was the son of a joiner in Derbyshire; a quiet shy boy,
he became the confident and love-letter writer of the girls in his
neighbourhood, gaining thereby his wonderful knowledge of womankind.
Fond of books, and longing for opportunities of study, he was, at the
age of sixteen, apprenticed to John Wilde, of Stationers’ Hall, but
his master, though styling him the “pillar of his house,” grudged him,
he says, “every hour that tended not to his profit.” So Richardson
used to sit up half the night over his books, careful at that time to
burn only his own candles. On the termination of his apprenticeship,
he became a journeyman and corrector of the press, and six years later
commenced business in an obscure court in Fleet-street, where he filled
up his leisure hours by compiling indices, and writing prefaces and
what he terms “honest dedications” for the booksellers.
Through his industry and perseverance his business became much
extended, and he was selected by Wharton to print the _True Briton_;
but, after the publication of the sixth number, he would not allow his
name to appear, and consequently escaped the results of the ensuing
prosecution. Through the friendly interest of Mr. Speaker Onslow he
printed the first edition of the _Journal of the House of Commons_,
completed in twenty-six folio volumes, for which, after long and
vexatious delays, he received upwards of £3000. He also printed from
1736 to 1737 the _Daily Journal_, and in 1738 the _Daily Gazette_.
In 1740 Mr. Rivington and Mr. Osborne proposed that he should write
for them a little volume of letters, which resulted in his first novel
_Pamela_, the publication of which will be treated in our account of
the Rivingtons. This was followed by _Clarissa_, one of the few books
from which it is absolutely impossible to steal away, when once the
dread of its size has been overcome. Though famous now as the first
great _novelist_ who had written in the English tongue, Richardson was
not then above his daily work. He writes to his friend Mr. Defreval,
“You know how my business engages me. You know by what snatches of time
I write, that I may not neglect that, and that I may preserve that
independency which is the comfort of my life. I never sought out of
myself for patrons. My own industry and God’s providence have been my
sole reliance.” In 1754, he was, to the great honour of the members,
chosen master of the Stationers’ Company, the only fear of his friends
being that he would not play the _gourmand_ well. “I cannot,” writes
Edwards, “but figure to myself the miserable example you will set at
the head of their loaded tables, unless you have two stout jaw-workers
for your wardens, and a good hungry court of assistants.”
[Illustration: Samuel Richardson, Bookseller and Novelist. 1689-1761.
(_From a Picture by Chamberlin._)]
The honourable post he occupied shows his position in the trade at this
time. This was improved in 1760, by the purchase of a moiety of the
patent of law-printer, which he carried on in partnership with Miss
Lintot, grand-daughter of Bernard Lintot. He died in the following
year, leaving funeral-rings to thirty-four of his acquaintances, and
adding in his will, “Had I given rings to all the ladies who have
honoured me with their correspondence, and whom I sincerely venerate
for their amiable qualities, it would, even in this last solemn act,
appear like ostentation.” It is impossible in treating of Richardson
not to refer to his vanity; but the love of praise was his only fault,
and it has grown to us, like the foible of a loved friend, dearer than
all his virtues. It is not unpleasant to think that the ladies of
that time, by the way in which they petted, coaxed, and humoured him,
conferred an innocent pleasure upon the truest of all the delineators
of their sex, except perhaps Balzac, who, if he knows it better, is
more unfortunate in his knowledge. With all Richardson’s vanity, he
drew a portrait of himself that is not far removed from caricature.
“Short, rather plump than emaciated, notwithstanding his complaints;
about five feet five inches; fair wig; lightish cloth coat, all black
besides; one hand generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it,
which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat usually, that it may
imperceptibly serve him as a support, when attacked by sudden tremors
or startlings, and dizziness which too frequently attacks him, but,
thank God, not so often as formerly; looking directly foreright as
passers-by would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either side
of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a
light brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; smoothish face and
ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about sixty-five, at other
times much younger; regular even pace, stealing away ground rather than
seeming to rid it; a gray eye, too often over-clouded by mistiness from
the head; by chance lively--very lively it will be, if he have hope of
seeing a young lady whom he loves and honours; his eye always on the
ladies; if they have very large hoops, he looks down supercilious, and
as if he would be thought wise, but, perhaps, the sillier for that; as
he approaches a lady, his eyes are never set upon her face but upon her
feet, and thence he raises it pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one
would think (if one thought him at all worthy of observation) that from
her air and (the last beheld) her face, he sets her down in his mind as
so and so, and then passes on to the next object he meets.”
Among other letters to Richardson we come across an affecting one
from Dr. Johnson: “I am obliged to entreat your assistance, I am under
arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings.” As round Pope and Dryden
formerly, so it is now round Johnson that the booksellers of the next
decade cluster; and from the moment when first he rolled into a London
bookseller’s shop, his huge unwieldy body clad in coarse country
garments, worn and travel-stained, his face scarred and seamed with
small-pox--to ask for literary employment, and to be told he had better
rather purchase a porter’s knot, the future of the trade was very much
wrapt up in his own. Forced by hunger to work for the most niggardly
pay, he was yet not to be insulted with impunity. “Lie there, thou
lump of lead,” he exclaims as he knocked down Osborne of Gray’s Inn
Gate, with a folio. “Sir,” he explains to Boswell afterwards, “he was
impertinent to me, and I beat him.”
[Illustration: Edward Cave, founder of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.”
1691-1754.]
[Illustration: The King’s Printing House, Blackfriars.
(_From a drawing made about 1750._)]
Among the earliest of Johnson’s employers was Edward Cave. The son
of a shoemaker at Rugby, he contrived, in spite of the contumely
excited by his low estate, to pick up much learning at the Grammar
School, and after narrowly escaping an university training, and for a
while obtaining his livelihood as clerk to a collector of excise and
apprentice to a timber merchant, he found more congenial employment
in a printing office, and conducted a weekly newspaper at Norwich.
Returning to London, he contrived by multifarious work--correcting for
the press, contributing to _Mist’s Journal_, writing news letters, and
filling a situation in the Post Office simultaneously--to save a small
sum of money sufficient to start a petty printing office at St. John’s
Gate. He was now able to realize a project he had before offered
to half the booksellers in London, of establishing the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, and to Cave must be conceded the honour of inventing that
popular species of periodical literature. The first number was printed
in 1731, and its success induced several rivals to enter the field,
but only one--_The London Magazine_--and that a joint concern of the
leading publishers, was at all able to hold any opposition to it; and
the _London Magazine_ ceased to exist in 1785, while the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ has only quite recently displayed a sudden rejuvenation. In
its early days Johnson was the chief contributor to its pages. He had
a room set apart for him at St. John’s Gate, where he wrote as fast as
he could drive his pen, throwing the sheets off, when completed, to the
“copy” boy. The _Life of Savage_ was written anonymously, in 1744, and
Mr. Harte spoke in high terms of the book, while dining with Cave. The
publisher told him afterwards: “Harte, you made a man very happy the
other day at my house by your praise of _Savage’s Life_.” “How so? none
were present but you and I.” Cave replied, “You might observe I sent a
plate of victuals behind the screen; there lurked one whose dress was
too shabby for him to appear; your praise pleased him much.”
In 1736, Cave began to carry out his scheme of publishing the reports
of the debates in Parliament in the monthly pages of his magazine. With
a friend or two he used to lurk about the lobby and gallery, taking sly
notes in dark corners, remembering what they could of the drift of the
argument, and then retiring to a neighbouring tavern to compare and
adjust their notes. This rough material was placed in the hands of an
experienced writer, and thus dressed up, presented to the readers of
the magazine. In 1738, the House complained of the breach of privilege
committed by Cave, and, among other debaters, Sir William Younge
earnestly implored the House to put a summary check to these reports,
prophesying that otherwise “you will have the speeches of the House
every day printed, even during your session, and we shall be looked
upon as the most contemptible assembly on the face of the earth.”
After this check some expedient was necessary, and the proceedings in
Parliament were given as _Debates in the Senate of Great Lilliput_, and
were entrusted to Johnson’s pen. On one occasion a large company were
praising a speech of Pitt’s; Johnson sat silent for a while, then said,
“That speech I wrote in a yard in Exeter Street.” It had been reprinted
_verbatim_ from the magazine, and had been drawn up entirely from
rough notes and hints supplied by the messengers. When congratulated
on his uniform political impartiality, Johnson replied: “That is not
quite true, sir; I saved appearances well enough, but I took care that
the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.” Cave’s attention to
the magazine was unremitting to the day of his death; “he scarce ever
looked out of the window,” says Johnson, “but for its improvement.”
In 1749, the first popular review was started, by Ralph Griffiths; but
before the time of the _Monthly Review_ there had been various journals
professing to deal only with literature. In 1683, had been published
a _Weekly Memento for the Ingenius, or an Account of Books_, and,
in 1714, the first really critical journal, under the quaint title,
_The Waies of Literature_, and these had been succeeded by others.
Still, the _Monthly Review_ was a very great improvement. Among the
chief early contributors was Goldsmith, who escaped the miseries of
ushership, and the weariness of a diplomaless doctor, waiting for
patients who never came, or, at all events, never paid, to live as a
hack writer in Griffiths’ house. Here, induced by want, or kindliness
to a fellow-starver, he got into trouble by borrowing money from his
master to pay for clothes, and appropriating it to other purposes.
Termed villain and sharper, and threatened with the Roundhouse, he
writes: “No, sir; had I been a sharper, had I been possessed of less
good nature and native generosity, I might surely now have been in
better circumstances; I am guilty I own of meanness, which poverty
unavoidably brings with it.”
As to the payment for periodical writing in that day, we are told
by an author who recollected the _Monthly Review_ for fifty years,
that in its most palmy days only four guineas a sheet were given to
the most distinguished writers, and as late as 1783, when it was
reported that Doctor Shebbeare received as much as six guineas, Johnson
replied, “Sir, he might get six guineas for a particular sheet, but not
_communibus sheetibus_;” and yet he afterwards explains the fact of so
much good writing appearing anonymously, without hope of personal fame,
“those who write in them write well in order to be paid well.”
Of all the booksellers of the Johnsonian era, Robert Dodsley, however,
was _facile princeps_. Born in the year 1703, he commenced life as a
footman, but a poem entitled _The Muse in Livery_, so interested his
mistress, the Hon. Mrs. Lowther, that she procured its publication
by subscription. After this he entered the service of Dartineuf, a
celebrated voluptuary, the reputed son of Charles II., and one of the
most intimate friends of Pope. Here he wrote a dramatic satire, _The
Toy Shop_, with which Pope was so pleased, that he interested himself
in procuring its acceptance at Covent Garden. The piece was successful,
and Pope, adding a substantial present on his own account of one
hundred pounds, Dodsley was enabled to open a small bookseller’s shop
in Pall Mall, then far from enjoying its present fashionable repute.
In this new situation, without any apprenticeship whatever, he soon
attracted the attention not only of celebrated literary men, but his
shop became a favourite lounge for noble and wealthy _dilettanti_.
In 1738, began his first acquaintance with Johnson, who offered him
the manuscript of _London, a Satire_. “Paul Whitehead had a little
before got ten guineas for a poem, and I would not take less than Paul
Whitehead,” and without any haggling, the bargain was concluded. Busy
as he soon began to be in his shop, Dodsley did not neglect original
composition. He produced several successful farces, and in 1744,
edited and published the work by which his name is best known now, _A
Collection of Plays by Old Authors_, which did much to revive the study
of Elizabethan literature, and was most fruitful in its influence on
later generations.
In about the following year Dodsley proposed to Johnson that he should
write a dictionary of the English language, and after some hesitation
on the author’s part, the proposal was accepted. The dictionary was
to be the joint property--as was then beginning to be the case with
all works of importance--of several booksellers, viz.: Robert Dodsley,
Charles Hitch, Andrew Millar, Messrs. Longman, and Messrs. Knapton; the
management of it during publication being confided to Andrew Millar.
The work took eight years, instead of the three on which Johnson
had calculated, of very severe study and labour, and the £1575 which
was then considered a very handsome _honorarium_, was all drawn out
in drafts, for at the dinner given in honour of the completion of
the great work, when the receipts were produced it was found that he
had nothing more to receive. Johnson, after sending his last “copy”
to Millar, inquired of the messenger what the bookseller said. “He
said, ‘Thank God I have done with him.’” “I am glad,” said the Doctor
smiling, “that he thanks God for anything.”
Andrew Millar was by this time the proprietor of Tonson’s shop in
Fleet Street, and was a man of great enterprise. He was the publisher,
among other authors, of Thomson, Fielding, and Hume, and Johnson
invariably speaks well of him. “I respect Millar, sir; he has raised
the price of literature:” “and,” writes John Nichols, “Jacob Tonson and
Andrew Millar were the best _patrons_ of literature, a fact rendered
unquestionable by the valuable works produced under their fostering
and genial hands.” Literature now was rapidly changing its condition.
Johnson had discovered that the subscription system was essentially a
rotten one, and that the real reading public, the author’s legitimate
patrons, were reached of course through the medium of the booksellers:
“He that asks for subscriptions soon finds that he has enemies. All
who do not encourage him defame him:” and then again--“Now learning
is a trade; a man goes to a bookseller and gets what he can. We have
done with patronage. In the infancy of learning we find some great men
praised for it. This diffused it among others. When it becomes general
an author leaves the great and applies to the multitude.” As to what
the booksellers of the eighteenth century were, and as to how they
compare with the publishers of the nineteenth century, we will quote
from an unedited letter of Mr. Thomas Carlyle, dated 3rd May, 1852,
addressed to Mr. John Chapman, bookseller (Emerson’s first English
publisher, we believe), now Dr. Chapman:--
“The duties of society towards literature in this new condition of
the world are becoming great, vital, inextricably intricate, little
capable of being done or understood at present, yet all important to
be understood and done if society will continue to exist along with
it, or it along with society. For the highest provinces of spiritual
culture and most sacred interests of men down to the lowest economic
and ephemeral concerns, where ‘free press’ rules supreme, society was
itself with all its sovereignties and parliaments depending on the
thing it calls literature; and bound by incalculable penalties in many
duties in regard to that. Of which duties I perceive finance alone,
and free trade alone will by no means be found to be the sum....
What alone concerns us here is to remark that the present system of
book-publishing discharges none of these duties--less and less makes
even the appearance of discharging them--and, indeed, as I believe,
is, by the nature of the case, incapable of ever, in any perceptible
degree, discharging any of them in the times that now are. A century
ago, there was in the bookselling guild if never any royalty of
spirit, as how could such a thing be looked for there? yet a spirit
of merchanthood, which had its value in regard to the prosaic parts
of literature, and is even to be thankfully remembered. By this solid
merchant spirit, if we take the victualling and furnishing of such an
enterprise as Samuel Johnson’s _English Dictionary_ for its highest
feat (as perhaps we justly may); and many a _Petitor’s Memories_,
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, &c., in this country and others, for its
lower, we must gratefully admit the real usefulness, respectability,
and merit to the world. But in later times owing to many causes, which
have been active, not on the book guild alone, such spirit has long
been diminished, and has now ‘as good as disappeared without hope of
reinstation in this quarter.’”
To return to Dodsley, we find that in 1753 he commenced the _World_, a
weekly essay ridiculing “with novelty and good humour, the fashions,
follies, vices, and absurdities of that part of the human species
which calls itself the World”. Three guineas was allowed as literary
remuneration for each number, but Moore, the editor, a receiver
of this allowance, obtained much gratuitous assistance from Lord
Chesterfield, Horace Walpole, and other men of wit and fashion. Another
periodical, but a bi-weekly, the _Rambler_, all the work of Samuel
Johnson, appeared without intermission for the space of two years,
and in its gravity, its high morality, and its sententious language
presents a curious contrast to its livelier companion. Dodsley, after
having published Burke’s earliest productions, entrusted to his care
the management of a very important venture, the _Annual Register_,
which was to carry Dodsley’s name up to our own times. In the same
year, 1758, his last play _Cleone_, in which he ventured to rise to
tragedy, after having been declined by Garrick was acted at Covent
Garden amidst the greatest applause, and for a number of nights, that,
in those times, constituted a wonderful “run.” And the author, fond
to distraction of his last child, “went every night to the stage side
and cried at the distress of poor Cleone;” yet when it was reported
that Johnson had remarked that if Otway had written it, no other of his
pieces would have been remembered, Dodsley had the good sense to say
“it was too much.”
A long and prosperous career enabled Dodsley to retire some years
before his death, which occurred at Durham, in 1764.
Thomas Cadell, who had served his apprenticeship to Andrew Millar, was
now taken into partnership, and in a few years he and the Strahans
quite filled the place that Dodsley and Millar had previously occupied.
Together they became the proprietors of the copyright of works by the
great historical and philosophical writers who shed a lustre round
the close of the eighteenth century, and among their clients we find
the names of Robertson, Gibbon, Adam Smith and Blackstone. For the
_History of Charles V._ Robertson received £4500, then supposed to be
the largest sum ever paid for the copyright of a single work, and out
of Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ the booksellers are
said to have cleared £60,000. Cadell retired with an enormous fortune,
and was honoured by being elected Sheriff of London at a very critical
and important time. Alexander Strahan, became King’s printer, and left
a fortune of upwards of a million. His business was eventually carried
on by the Spottiswoodes.
[Illustration: Thomas Cadell.
1742-1802.]
The practice, we have already referred to, of booksellers fraternising
pleasantly together for the purpose of bringing out expensive editions
at a lessened risk, led to many famous associations, the earliest
of which, the “Congers,” will be dealt with hereafter in connection
with the history of families still represented in the trade, but the
“Chapter Coffee House” is too important to be passed over altogether.
There is an amusing account of the Chapter Coffee House in the first
number of the _Connoisseur_. It “is frequented by those encouragers of
learning, the booksellers.... Their criticisms are somewhat singular.
When they say a good book, they do not mean to praise the style or
sentiment, but the quick and extensive sale of it.... A few nights ago
I saw one of these gentlemen take up a sermon, and after seeming to
peruse it for some time, with great attention, he declared it was ‘very
good English.’ The reader will judge whether I was most surprised or
diverted, when I discovered that he was not commending the purity or
elegance of the diction, but the beauty of the type, which, it seems,
is known among the printers by that appellation.... The character of
the bookseller is generally formed on the writers in his service. Thus
one is a politician or a deist; another affects humour, or aims at
turns of wit or repartee; while a third perhaps is grave, moral, and
sententious.”
In this Coffee House the associated booksellers met to talk over their
plans, and many a germ of most valuable projects was originated here;
the books so published coming in time to be called “Chapter Books.”
Among the chief members of the association were John Rivington, John
Murray, and Thomas Longman, James Dodson, Alderman Cadell, Tom Davies,
Robert Baldwin (whose name, if not family, figured in bookselling
annals for a century and a half), Peter Elmsley, and Joseph Johnson.
Johnson was Cowper’s publisher; the first volumes of the poems fell
dead, and he begged the author to think nothing further of the loss,
which they had agreed to share. In gratitude Cowper sent him the _Task_
as a present; it was a wonderful success, and altogether Johnson is
said to have made £10,000 out of Cowper’s poems. He assisted in the
publication of the _Homer_ without any compensation at all. The most
important “Chapter books” were Johnson’s _English Poets_, including his
_Lives of the English Poets_, for which latter he received two hundred
guineas, and a present of another hundred, and, on their re-publication
in a separate edition, a fourth hundred. “Sir,” observed the Doctor to
a friend, “I have always said the booksellers were a generous set of
men. Nor in the present instance have I reason to complain. The fact
is, not that they paid me too little, but that I have written too much.”
Of course when the booksellers met, the literary men were not far
absent. “I am quite familiar” (writes poor Chatterton in his sad,
boastful letters, meant to cheer up the hearts of the dear ones at
home, while his own heart was breaking in London) “at the Chapter
Coffee House, and know all the geniuses there. A character is now quite
unnecessary; an author carries his character in his pen.”
Later on, the Chapter Coffee House became the place of call for poor
parsons, who stood there ready for hire, on Sunday mornings, at sums
varying from five shillings to a guinea. Sermons, too, were kept in
stock here for purchase, or could be written, there and then, to order.
At the very close of the last century a fresh band of “Associated
Booksellers” was formed, consisting of the following: Thomas Hood
(father of the poet), John Cuthel, James Nunn, J. Lea, Lackington,
Allen and Co., and others. The vignette which ornamented their books
was a Beehive, with the inscription of “Associated,” and thus they got
the title of the “Associated Busy Bees.”
Two of the principal booksellers towards the end of the last century,
require, from the magnitude of their business, a somewhat lengthier
notice.
George Robinson, born at Dalston near Carlisle, received his business
training under John Rivington. In 1764 he started as a wholesale
bookseller in Paternoster Row, and, by 1780, he could boast of the
largest wholesale trade in London. Nor were the higher branches of his
calling neglected, and in the purchase of copyrights he rivalled the
oldest established firms. Among his publications we may mention the
_Critical Review_, the _Town and Country Magazine_, and the _New Annual
Register_; the _Modern Universal History_ (in sixty volumes), the
_Biographica Britannica_, and Russell’s _Ancient and Modern Europe_;
_Bruce’s Travels_ and the _Travels of Anacharsis_; the illustrated
works of Hogarth, Bewick, and Heath; and the lighter productions of
Macklin, Murphy, Godwin, Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Radcliffe, Dr. Moore, and
Dr. Wolcot.
For the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Mrs. Radcliffe received five hundred
guineas, the largest sum that had at that time been given for a
novel, and Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) made a still better bargain for
his poems. They had already acquired a prodigious popularity, and in
selling the copyright a question arose, as to whether they should be
purchased for a lump sum or an annuity. While the treaty was pending
Wolcot was seized with a violent and rather ostentatious attack of
asthma, which sadly interrupted him in discussing the arrangements, and
he was eagerly offered an annuity of £250. The arrangement was made by
Walker, a partner with Robinson in this transaction. Walker soon called
to inquire after his friend’s illness, “Thank you, much better,” said
Wolcot, “I have taken measure of my asthma, the fellow is troublesome,
but I know his strength and am his master.” Walker’s face grew longer,
and when he rejoined his wife in the next room, the doctor heard a
shrill, feminine expostulation, “There, you’ve done it, I told you he
wouldn’t die!” He outlived all the parties concerned, and was in his
own case, perhaps, scarcely justified in originating the famous saying,
“that publishers quaff champagne out of the skulls of authors.”
This over-eager parsimony was not in any way due to Robinson; his
generosity to his authors was well known, and his house became a
general rendezvous for the literary men of the day, who were heartily
welcome whenever they chose to turn up, provided always that they did
not come late for dinner. After Robinson’s death in 1801, his son and
brother carried on the business, but met with reverses, principally
through loss of stock at a fire; but the wonderful prices that were
realized at the auction, consequent on their declared bankruptcy,
fairly set them afloat again. One bookseller, alone, is said to
have invested £40,000 at the sale, and even the copyright of Vyse’s
_Shilling Spelling Book_ was sold for £2,500, with an annuity of fifty
guineas a year to the old schoolmaster Vyse.
James Lackington, in his _Memoirs and Confessions_ has left plenty of
material, had we space, for an amusing and instructive biography. He
was born at Wellington in 1746, and his father, a drunken cobbler,
would not even pay the requisite twopence a week for his son’s
education. Loafing about the streets all day as a child, he thought he
might turn his wanderings to account by crying pies, and as a pie-boy
he acquired such a pre-eminence that he was soon engaged to vend
almanacs. At fourteen he left this vagrant life to be apprenticed to a
shoemaker, and his master’s family becoming strong adherents to the new
sect of Methodists, he too was converted, and would trudge, he says,
through frost and snow at midnight to hear “an inspired husbandman,
shoemaker, blacksmith, or a woolcomber” preach to ten or a dozen
people, when he might have quietly stopped at home to listen to “the
sensible and learned ministers at Taunton.”
However, what he heard “made me think they knew many matters of which I
was totally ignorant,” and he set to work arduously at night to learn
his letters, and when he was able to read, he bought Hobbe’s _Homer_ at
a bookstall, and found that his letters did but little in assisting his
comprehension; however, in his zeal for knowledge he allowed himself
“but three hours’ sleep in the twenty-four.” The art of writing was
acquired in a similar manner, and then he started on a working tour,
making shoes on the road for sustenance, but suffering many hardships
and miseries. To make matters worse, at Bristol he married a young
girl of his own class, whose ill-health, though he was passionately
fond of her, added no little to his troubles. Accordingly he went
to London, that for her sake he might earn higher wages, and not
altogether unhopeful of the fortunes he had heard were to be gained
there by dogged hard work and endurance. They arrived with the typical
half-crown in their pockets, and then Lackington, anxious to obtain
the small legacy of £10 he had left at home, went for it personally;
“it being such a prodigious sum that the greatest caution was used
on both sides, so that it cost me about half the money in going down
for it, and in returning to town again.” After working some time as a
journeyman bookseller he opened a little cobbler’s shop; and, thinking
he knew as much about books as the keeper of an old bookstall in the
neighbourhood, wishing also to have opportunity for study, he invested
a guinea in a bagful of old books. To increase his stock he borrowed £5
from a fund “Mr. Wesley’s people kept to lend out, for three months,
without interest, to such of their society whose characters were good,
and who wanted a temporary relief.... In our new situation we lived in
a very frugal manner, often dining on potatoes and quenching our thirst
with water; being absolutely determined, if possible, to make some
provision for such dismal times as sickness, shortness of work, &c.,
which we had frequently been involved in before, and could scarcely
help expecting not to be our fate again.” He soon found customers,
and “as ‘soon laid out the money’ in other old trash which was daily
brought for sale.”
[Illustration: James Lackington, Bookseller.
1746-1816.]
In a short time he had realized £25, and was able to take a book-shop
in Chiswell Street; and here he almost immediately lost his wife, which
for a time involved him in the deepest distress, but in the following
year he married again, and then resolved to quit his Wesleyan friends,
a sect he thought incompatible with the dignity of a bookseller;
indeed “Mr. Wesley often told his society in Broadment, Bristol, in
my hearing, that he could never keep a bookseller six months in his
flock.” From this time success uniformly attended his undertakings,
and was due, he says, primarily to his invariable principle of selling
at very low figures and only for ready-money. When he began to attend
the trade sales he created consternation among his brethren. “I was
very much surprised to learn that it was common for such as purchased
remainders to destroy or burn one-half or three-fourths of such books,
and to charge the full publication price, or nearly that, for such as
they kept on hand.” With this rule he complied for a short time; but
afterwards resolved to keep the whole stock. The trade endeavoured to
hinder his appearance at the sale-rooms, but in time they were forced
to yield, and he continued to sell off remainders at half or a quarter
the published price.[8] “By selling them in this cheap manner, I have
disposed of many hundred thousand volumes, many thousand of which
have been intrinsically worth their original prices.” Such a method
attracted a crowd of customers, and he soon began to buy manuscripts
from authors. As to how his circumstances were improving we read, “I
discovered that lodgings in the country were very healthy. The year
after, my country lodging was transformed into a country house, and in
another year the inconveniences attending a stage coach were remedied
by a chariot,” on the doors of which “I have put a motto to remind me
to what I am indebted to my prosperity, viz.:--Small Profits do Great
Things.” Again, he was very fond of repeating, “I found all I possess
in small _profits_, bound by _industry_ and clasped with _economy_.”
The shop in Chiswell Street was now changed into a huge building at the
corner of Finsbury Square, grandly styled the “Temple of the Muses;”
above it floated a flag, over the door was the inscription “Cheapest
bookshop in the world,” and inside appeared the notice that “the lowest
price is marked on every Book, and no abatement made on any article.”
“Half-a-million of volumes” were said, according to his catalogue,
“to be constantly on sale,” and these were arranged in galleries and
rooms, rising in tiers--the more expensive books at the bottom, and
the prices diminishing with every floor, but all numbered according to
a catalogue, which Lackington compiled himself, and even the first he
issued contained 12,000 volumes. During his first year at the “Temple
of the Muses” he cleared £5000. In 1798, he was able to retire with
a large fortune, and he again joined the Methodists, building and
endowing three chapels for them, in contrition for having maligned them
in his rambling _Memoirs_. Latterly he was fond of travelling, and made
a tour of bookselling inspection through England and Scotland, seeing
discouraging signs in every town but Edinburgh, “where indeed a few
capital articles are kept.” “At York and Leeds there were a few (and
but very few) good books; but in all the other towns between London and
Edinburgh nothing but trash was to be found.” In Scotland, he looked
forward with great curiosity to seeing the women washing soiled linen
in the rivers, standing bare-legged the while, and indeed this incident
seems to have afforded him more gratification than any in his travels
except the following: “In Bristol, Uxbridge, Bridgewater, Taunton,
Wellington, and other places, I amused myself in calling on some of
my masters, with whom I had, about twenty years before, worked as a
journeyman shoemaker. I addressed each with ‘Pray, sir, have you got
any occasion?’ which is the term made use of by journeymen in that
useful occupation, when seeking employment. Most of these honest men
had quite forgotten my person, as many of them had not seen me since I
worked for them; so that it is not easy for you to conceive with what
surprize and astonishment they gazed on me. For you must know that I
had the vanity (I call it humour) to do this in my chariot, attended
by my servants; and on telling them who I was all appeared to be very
happy to see me.”
James Lackington died in his country house in Budleigh Lutterton, in
Devonshire, in 1815. His life is an eminent example how a man of no
attainments or advantages can conquer success by sheer hard work and
perseverance.
Lackington was not the only man of his time who perceived that the
conditions of literature were displaying at least a chance of change;
that the circle of the book-buying public was incessantly enlarging,
and that, by supplying the best books at the cheapest remunerative
rates, not only would the progress of education be accelerated, but
that the very speculation would bring fortune as well as honour to
the innovators in the Trade. One of the first booksellers to adopt
this principle was John Bell, whose name is still preserved in
_Bell’s Weekly Messenger_. His _British Poets_, _British Theatre_ and
_Shakespeare_, published in small pocket volumes, carried consternation
into the trade, but scattered the English classics broadcast among
the people. He was the first to discard the long s. He was soon
rivalled by Cook and Harrison, and all three were distinguished, not
only by publishing in little pocket volumes, exquisitely printed, and
embellished by the best artists for the many, what had before been
produced in folios and quartos for the few, but as the inventors of the
“number trade,” by which even expensive works were sold in small weekly
portions to those to whom literature had hitherto been an unknown
luxury. Such were the _Lives of Christ_, _The Histories of England_,
_Foxe’s Book of Martyrs_, _Family Bibles with Notes_, and _The Works
of Flavius Josephus_. Many of these “number books,” though of no
great literary merit, exhibited every possible attraction on their
copious title-pages, and were announced with the then novel terms of
“beautiful,” “elegant,” “superb,” and “magnificent.”
[Illustration: Andrew Donaldson.
(_From an Etching by Kay. 1789._)]
[Illustration: Stationers’ Hall, near Paternoster Row.
(_From an Etching by R. Cole. 1750._)]
But the pioneer to whom the cheap book-buying public is most indebted
was Alexander Donaldson, who, though an Edinburgh man, fought out his
chief battles among his London brethren. Donaldson’s contemporaries in
Edinburgh in the middle of the eighteenth century were Bell, Ellis,
and Creech, the only bookseller worth recording before that date being
Alexander Ramsay, the poet. Donaldson having struck out the idea of
publishing cheap reprints of popular works, extended his business by
starting a bookshop in the Strand, London--a step that brought him into
collision with the London publishers--and authors, for Johnson calls
him “a fellow who takes advantage of the state of the law to injure
his brethren ... and supposing he did reduce the price of books is no
better than Robin Hood who robbed the rich in order to give to the
poor.” In 1771, Donaldson reprinted Thomson’s _Seasons_, and an action
at law was brought against him by certain booksellers. He proved that
the work in question had first been printed in 1729, that its author
died in 1748, and that the copyright consequently expired in 1757; and
the Lords decided in his favour, thereby settling finally the vulgar
and traditional theory that copyright was the interminable possession
of the purchaser. To follow this interesting question for a moment. In
Anne’s reign it was decided that copyright was to last for fourteen
years, with an additional term of fourteen years, provided that the
author was alive at the expiry of the first. In 1773-4, following upon
Donaldson’s prosecution, a bill to render copyright perpetual passed
through the Commons, but was thrown out in the Lords, and in 1814 the
term of fourteen years and a conditional fourteen was extended to
a definite and invariable period of twenty-eight years. Finally in
1842, the present law was passed, by which the term was prolonged to
forty-two years, but the copyright was not to expire in any case before
seven years after the author’s death.
Donaldson left a very large fortune, which was greatly augmented by his
son, who bequeathed the total amount, a quarter of a million, to found
an educational hospital for poor children in Edinburgh, under the title
of “Donaldson’s Hospital.”
During the period under review the localities affected by the
bookselling and publishing trade had greatly changed and altered. The
stalls of the “Chap. Book” venders had disappeared from London Bridge
and the Exchange, and even Little Britain had been entirely vacated.
Little Britain, from the time of the first Charles to Mary and
William, was as famous for books as Paternoster Row afterwards became.
But, even in 1731, a writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ says, “The
race of booksellers in Little Britain is now almost extinct; honest
Ballard, well known for his curious divinity catalogues (he was said
to have been the first to print a catalogue), being then the only
genuine representative ... it was, in the middle of the last century, a
plentiful and learned emporium of learned authors, and men went thither
as to a market. This drew to the place a mighty trade, the rather
because the shops were spacious and the learned gladly resorted to
them, where they seldom failed to meet with agreeable conversations.”
The son of this Ballard died in 1796, and was by far the best of the
Little Britain booksellers. When the “trade” deserted Little Britain,
about the reign of Queen Anne, they took up their abode in Paternoster
Row, then principally in the hands of mercers, haberdashers, and
lace-men--a periodical in 1705 mentioning even the “semptresses of
Paternoster Row;” for the old manuscript venders, who had christened
the whole neighbourhood, had died out centuries before. It now became
the headquarters of publishers and more especially of old booksellers,
but with the introduction of magazines and “copy” books, that latter
portion of the trade migrated elsewhere, and the street assumed its
present appearance of wholesale warehouses, and general and periodical
publishing houses. It was not long indeed before the tide of fashion
carried many of the eminent firms westward, and the movement in that
direction is still apparent.
[Illustration]
_THE LONGMAN FAMILY._