Round Henry Colburn clusters a body of writers, lighter and gayer,
and consequently more ephemeral than any we have yet noticed--men and
women, too, for the matter of that, who purchased immediate success too
often with a disregard of future reputation.
As a lad, Henry Colburn was placed in the establishment of William
Earle, bookseller, of Albemarle Street, and after this preliminary
training obtained the situation of assistant to a Mr. Morgan, the
principal of a large circulating library in Conduit Street. Here he
had, of course, ample opportunity of gauging the reading taste of the
general public, and it is probably from this early connection with
the library-subscribing world that he determined henceforth to devote
himself almost exclusively to the production of the light novelties
which he saw were so eagerly and so incessantly demanded. In 1816
he succeeded to the proprietorship of the library, and conducted
the business with great spirit and success until, removing to New
Burlington Street, he resigned the Conduit Street Library to the hands
of Messrs. Saunders and Ottley, who, until their recent dissolution,
were famous, not only for their circulating library, but for the
tender care they bestowed upon the works of suckling poets and
poetasters.
Before this change of residence, however, Colburn had already made
several serious ventures on his own account. All through his long
career we shall find that he speculated in journalistic venture with as
much spirit as he showed in any of his daring schemes to win popular
credit and applause. In 1814, with the assistance of Mr. Frederick
Shoberl, he originated the _New Monthly Magazine and Universal
Register_, on “the principles of general patriotism and loyalty,”
founded, as its name implied, in direct opposition to Sir Richard
Philips’ _Old Monthly_. Among the early editors were Dr. Watkins
and Alaric Watts, but in 1820 a new series was commenced under the
title of the _New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal_, and Thomas
Campbell, the poet, was appointed editor. The agreement still exists in
Beattie’s “Life of Campbell,” and was unusually liberal. He agreed to
edit the periodical for three years, to supply in all twelve articles,
six in verse, six in prose; and for these and his editorial services
he received five hundred pounds per annum, to be increased if the
circulation of the magazine materially improved. He was, of course,
assisted by a sub-editor, and allowed a liberal sum for the payment of
contributors. The magazine prospered, and passed successively through
the editorial hands of Bulwer Lytton (1832) and Theodore Hook. In
1836 a third series appeared under Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and though
Colburn parted with the proprietorship to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, and
they in their turn to Messrs. Adams and Francis, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth
was till yesterday at his editorial post, delighting our children with
precisely the same kind of enthralling romances with which he beguiled
our fathers.
In 1817 Colburn determined to introduce a paper upon the plan of a
popular German prototype, and on the 26th January the first number of
the _Literary Gazette_ appeared, price one shilling. H. E. Lloyd, a
clerk in the Foreign Department of the Post-Office, a good linguist,
and a well-known translator from the German, was the chief contributor,
and appears to have shared the editorial duties with Miss Ross, a lady
afterwards pensioned by the Government. The reputation achieved was
great, especially in reference to the Fine Arts, which were skilfully
handled by William Carey, and at the twenty-sixth number Mr. Jerdan,
formerly editor of the _Sun_, purchased a third of the property, and
became the regular editor. Messrs. Longman eagerly embraced the offer
of a third share, and with a staff of contributors, who varied from
Canning to Maginn, the _Literary Gazette_ obtained a wide popularity,
and was recognized as an authority upon other matters than literature.
At present, however, the _Gazette_ is most gratefully remembered as
having encouraged in its poetical columns (fairly and impartially
opened to merit, however obscure), the earliest writings of Mrs.
Hemans, Bowles, Hood, Swain, James Smith, Howitt, and even Tupper.
In 1842 Jerdan bought out Colburn and the Messrs. Longman, and from
his hands the editorship passed to L. Phillips, L. Beeve, and J. L.
Jephson. In 1858 a new series was commenced, under, successively, S.
Brooks, H. Christmas, W. R. Workman, F. Arnold, John Morley, and C. W.
Goodwin. In 1862 it was finally incorporated with the _Parthenon_.
In 1816, the year before the foundation of the _Literary Gazette_,
Colburn had, as we have seen, migrated to New Burlington Street, and
soon rendered his shop famous as the chief emporium for the purchase
and sale of novels and other light literature. The first book issued
from the new establishment was Lady Morgan’s “Zana”--a work certainly
not worth much, but scarcely meriting an attack in the _Quarterly_,
which Talfourd stigmatises as “one of the coarsest insults ever offered
in print by man to woman;” however, through the power of her ladyship’s
name, and with the aid of skilful advertising--in which Colburn was
perhaps the greatest expert in a time when the art had not reached its
present high state of development--“Zana” proved eminently successful.
Talented in a manner Lady Morgan certainly was, and, as a proof, is
said to have made more than twenty-five thousand pounds by her pen.
She had published a volume of verses at the unfortunately early age of
fourteen, and this idea of precocity seems to us to accompany all her
works.
At the suggestion of his friend Mr. Upcott, Colburn undertook, in
1818, the publication of “Evelyn’s Diary,” and its success would have
been almost unparalleled had it not been followed in 1825 by the
“Diary of Pepys.” For more than 150 years this work reposed unread and
unknown, until Mr. John Smith succeeded in deciphering the stenographic
characters which had concealed so much amusement from the world. The
work, edited by Lord Braybrooke, was published in two volumes at six
guineas, and though this and the two succeeding editions, at five
guineas, were almost worthless from the editorial excisions they had
undergone from the too-modest fingers of the noble editor, the issues
went off very rapidly, and Colburn obtained a very handsome profit on
the £2200 he had paid for the copyright. In the fourth edition of 1848
Lord Braybrooke was urged to restore those characteristic passages
which he had before condemned, and the full value of the work, as a
photographic picture of an amusing, though dissolute, time was firmly
established. Evelyn had before given us the history of Charles the
Second’s Court, with a gravity and openly-expressed reprobation which
finely suited his character of a worthy and dignified old English
country gentleman; but still it is now to the pages of Pepys that all
the world turns for an account of the royal domestic life of certainly
the most infamous period of our annals. He is so charmingly garrulous,
jotting down each night such quaint thoughts on what he had seen during
the day, writing them by his fireside, with the same nonchalance with
which he put on his night-cap, and with as little suspicion of ever
being surprised in the one act as the other, that his truthfulness, his
openness, and his scarcely-concealed partiality for as much vagabonding
and frolicsome society as Mrs. Pepys would permit, carry the reader
irresistibly along with him.
It is, however, when we come to the novels that Colburn ushered into
the world, that we strike upon the one vein of profitable ore that he
made so peculiarly his own; and _facile princeps_ of all his novelistic
clients, stands Theodore Hook. To understand the genius of all Hook’s
works, it is essential to take a short retrospective view of his life
and character. Two things, above all else, strike us in regarding
him--that he possessed the greatest love of joke and frolic, and the
most marvellous memory with which ever man was gifted. As a boy of
seventeen, he dashed off an amusing comedy; this, he tells us in the
really autobiographical sketch of “Gilbert Gurney,” was the process.
“To work I went, bought three or four French vaudevilles, and filching
an incident from each, made up my very effective drama, the ‘Soldier’s
Return.’” And for this bantling he received the handsome first-earnings
of fifty pounds. Living, at a time when other boys were at school,
in the gayest of all society in London, a welcome guest behind the
curtain at every theatre, and hailed as a good fellow in every literary
coterie, young Hook led a rollicking, devil-may-care life, giving the
world back with interest the rich amusement he gathered from it. Now,
making a random bet that a corner house in Berners Street should,
within a week, be the most famous house in London; and within the time
taking his opponent to a commanding window, that he might acknowledge
that the wager had been fairly won; and the strange scene in the
thoroughfare must have soon convinced him. The Duke of York, drawn by
six grey horses, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor in
formal state, every woman of notorious virtue, every man of any fame
or notoriety, porters bustling up with wine-casks and beer-barrels,
milliners with bonnet-boxes crushed and battered, pastry-cooks with
dainty dishes that the street gamins soon picked out of the gutters,
undertakers with rival coffins, variously made to exact measurement,
hackney-coaches, and vans, and waggons by the hundred--in fact, half
the world of London was there by invitations especially adapted to
move each individual case, and the other half soon came as spectators.
The impotent “Charleys” of the day found their efforts useless to
dispel the block and crush, and long before the crowd was cleared away,
the next day’s papers were ringing with the “Berners Street Hoax.”
Again, we find him donning a scarlet coat, and, as the Prince Regent’s
messenger, delivering a letter to an obnoxious actor, eagerly inviting
him to dine with that august personage; and then joining in the crush
outside Holland House, to see his enemy come away discomfited as an
impostor. No occasion was sacred from his jests, and his exuberant
spirits were scarcely in accordance with the tranquillity of academic
life. At his very matriculation the Vice-chancellor, struck by his
youthful appearance, asked him if he was fully prepared to sign the
thirty-nine articles. “Oh, certainly, sir,” replied Hook with cool
assiduity, “forty, if you please.” Indignantly he was told to withdraw,
and it took weeks of friendly interposition to appease the outraged
dignitary. At the age of twenty he wrote his first novel, but it was
a failure, and he shortly afterwards received the appointment of
accountant-general and treasurer at the Mauritius. Here he stayed
for some years, leading a life of pleasure, and going to the office
only five times in the whole period, when suddenly a commission was
appointed to inquire into the accounts, and he was dragged off from
a supper, given in his honour, to prison, charged with a theft of
£20,000, and sent under arrest to England. This “complaint of the
chest,” as he observed to a friend who was astonished to see him back
so soon, was afterwards reduced to £12,000, and for this he was judged
to be accountable, and put into the debtors’ prison. Here, from his
diary, he seems to have enjoyed himself as much as ever, drinking as a
loyal subject should, to the “health of my august detainer, the king.”
However, political influence was brought to bear upon the Government,
and he was set at liberty with the burden of the debt hanging very
lightly round his neck.
In 1820 he founded the _John Bull_ newspaper, strongly in favour of the
king’s interests, scurrilous as it was witty; everybody read it, and
for some years it yielded him £2000 per annum. His life we see had been
sufficiently various, and not an incident of it was ever forgotten, for
his memory was probably unrivalled. He made a bet that he would repeat
in order the names of all the shops on one side of Oxford Street, and
he only misplaced one; and he gained another wager by saying from
memory a whole column of _Times_ advertisement, which he had only once
conned over; and on another occasion he utterly discomfited a universal
critic, by engaging him in a conversation anent lunar eclipses, and
then discharging three columns of the “Encyclopædia Britannica” at
him, without pause or hesitation. He had, too, the gift of improvising
verse in our stubborn English tongue, and was known on one occasion to
introduce the names of fifty guests at a supper-table, in a song of
fifty verses--each verse a rhymed epigram.
With attainments and experiences like these, Colburn may be considered
as a wise rather than a venturous man when he offered Hook £600 to
write a novel. The idea of the “Sayings and Doings” was struck out at
a _John Bull_ gathering, and the book when published in 1824, was so
successful that 6000 copies of the three volumes were soon disposed
of,[21] and the generous publisher made the author a present of
£350. For the _second series_ (published in 1825), and the _third
series_ (published in 1828), he received a thousand guineas each. In
1830 appeared “Maxwell,” perhaps the best of his novels, and this was
followed by the “Parson’s Daughter” (1833), “Jack Brag” (1837), and
numerous others, for all of which he was very handsomely paid. But
though he was earning at this period, upwards of £3000 a year by his
pen, he was spending more than £6000, and was obliged, not only to make
fresh engagements with his publishers, but to fore-draw to a very large
extent, and to change his plans considerably with each instalment of
indebtedness. Colburn and Bentley seem to have treated him with marked
esteem and consideration, and his letters perpetually show this: “I
have been so liberally treated by your house, that it seems almost
presuming upon kindnesses” (1831). Again, in 1837: “I assure you I
would not press the matter in a quarter where I am proud and happy to
say--as I do to everybody--I have met with the greatest liberality.”
In 1834 he took the management of the _New Monthly_, and to its pages
he contributed what may be considered an autobiographical sketch.
“Gilbert Gurney” and the sequel “Gilbert Married,” the second of which
unfortunately was not autobiographical; for he had formed ties with a
woman who had not only sacrificed everything to him, but during the
period of his imprisonment and his many troubles had behaved with
exemplary faithfulness and unremitting attention; and these ties he had
not the courage to legally strengthen. At his death the crown seized
what little property he possessed, in the shape of household chattels
and newspaper shares, to liquidate his unfortunate debt, and his
children were left penniless. A subscription was raised--if literary
men are improvident (though many have more excuses for improvidence
than Theodore Hook), they are at least kindly-hearted--and a sum of
£3000 was collected, to which the King of Hanover contributed £500.
As a strange test of Hook’s joviality it is stated that the receipts
of the dining-room of the Athenæum Club fell off by £300 when his
well-known seat in “Temperance Corner” became vacant.
Another of the novelists with whom Colburn had long and intimate
dealings was G. P. R. James, one of the most indefatigable writers that
ever drove pen over paper. We give for the sake of clearness, a tabular
statement of his extraordinary labours:--
51 Novels in 3 Volumes 153 Volumes.
2 ” 4 ” 8 ”
6 ” 2 ” 12 ”
16 ” 1 ” 16 ”
Edited Works 14 ”
Miscellaneous Contributions would fill say 10 ”
---
223 Volumes.
Truly a gargantuan labour! Some of James’s early writings had
attracted the attention of Washington Irving, who strongly advised
the undertaking of some more important work, and as a consequence
“Richelieu” was commenced. After it had received Scott’s approval it
was submitted to Colburn, and published in 1828 with a success that
determined the young author’s future career. We cannot, of course,
follow the progress of the 223 volumes as they issued from the press.
It would be absurd to look for originality in a book-manufacturer
of this calibre, and, as Whipple says, James “was a maker of books
without being a maker of thought.” Still they served their purpose of
enriching the author and publishers, and at a time when the public
appetite was less jaded than at present, his works were eagerly looked
for, and even now many readers agree with Leigh Hunt:--“I hail every
fresh publication of James, though I hardly know what he is going to do
with his lady, and his gentleman, and his landscape, and his scenery,
and his mystery, and his orthodoxy, and his criminal trial.”
In 1826 Colburn published Banim’s “Tales of the O’Hara Family,” a book
that excited a very strong interest in the public mind, and in the same
year he issued “Vivian Grey,” by a young author whose life was to be
as romantic as his story. Mr. Disraeli’s first book contains a curious
confession of his youthful aspirations, and even a curiously exact
prototype of his future life. This was followed in 1831 by the “Young
Duke.” “Bless me!” the elder Disraeli exclaimed when he read this
eloquent account of aristocratic circles, “why the boy has never sat in
the same room as a duke in his life.” Mr. Disraeli’s novels soon became
famous for the portraits or caricatures of distinguished living people,
scarcely disguised under the slightest of all possible pseudonyms; to
those living in the metropolis the likenesses were evident enough, and
a regular key was published to each for the benefit of our country
cousins.
In 1829 Colburn published “Frank Mildmay,” a novel full of false
morality and falser style, but delineating sea life with such a flavour
of fun and frolic, adventures and brine, that Marryat was at once
hailed as a true successor to Smollett. This was followed by a rapid
succession of sea stories, among the best of which undoubtedly are
“Peter Simple” and “Midshipman Easy.” The perusal of these works has
probably done more to turn youthful aspiration and energies to the
choice of a profession than any series of formal injunctions ever
penned. Old King William, the Sailor-King, was so entranced with “Peter
Simple” that he begged to be introduced to the author, and promised
to bestow some honourable distinction upon him for his services; but
afterwards recollecting suddenly that he “had written a book against
the impressment of seamen,” he refused to fulfil his pledge. When,
later on, Colburn published Marryat’s “Diary in America,” the Yankees
felt terribly outraged, and the severe criticism that followed speedily
emptied his shelves of a large edition.
This was emphatically the period of fashionable novels, and the great
outside world was perpetually calling out for more and more romantic
accounts of that attractive region to which middle-class thought
could only aspire in reverent fancy. And though these novels seemed
written primarily to illustrate the moral lesson of Touchstone to
the Shepherd--“Shepherd, wert thou ever at court?” “No.” “Then thou
art damned”--the public received the oracle, not only with humility,
but thankfulness. For a time Mr. Bulwer Lytton was a disciple of
this fashionable school, but even “Pelham” has an interest greater
than any other specimen of its class, for though, in some degree, an
illustration of the maxim that “manners make the man,” the threads
of a darker and more tragic interest are interwoven with the tale.
As an artistic worker, as a true delineator of our subtler and
deeper passions, Lord Lytton was far above any other of Colburn’s
writers--above, indeed, any other writer of the day; while his
sophistry, immense as it undoubtedly is, only lends a more forcible and
enthralling interest to his plots. None of Colburn’s novelists--and
their name was legion--brought in more grist to the publishing mill
than Lord Lytton; and, when the meal had been baked several times,
Messrs. Routledge paid the author £20,000 for all future use of these
works--as popular now perhaps in their cheap editions as they have ever
been before.
To return for a moment more immediately to Colburn’s life, we find him
still speculating in periodical literature, and with the same success
as ever. In 1828 he commenced the _Court Journal_, and in the following
year started the _United Service Magazine_, while for many years he
possessed a considerable interest in the _Sunday Times_ newspaper; and
all these periodicals are still held in popular esteem.
The printing expenses of his enormous business had been very
considerable, and in 1830 he resolved to take his principal printer,
Mr. Richard Bentley, into partnership; but the alliance did not last
long, and in August, 1832, the connection was dissolved, and Colburn
relinquished the business in New Burlington Street to Mr. Bentley,
giving him a guarantee in bond that he would not recommence publishing
again within twenty miles of London.
However, his heart was so intuitively set upon the profitable risks of
a publisher’s career, that he could not quietly retire in the prime
of life, and, accordingly, he started a house at Windsor, so as to
be within the letter of the law, but the garrison town was sadly
quiet after the literary circles of London, and to London he again
returned, paying the forfeiture in full. This time he opened a house in
Great Marlborough Street, as his old establishment in New Burlington
Street was, of course, in possession of Mr. Bentley, whose business
had already assumed formidable proportions. At Great Marlborough
Street, Colburn succeeded in rallying round him all his old authors,
and, perhaps, the greatest triumphs that date from thence, are Miss
Strickland’s “Lives of the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland,”
for the copyright of the first of which he paid £2000. Burke’s
“Peerage,” “Baronetage,” and “Landed Gentry” were also among his most
profitable possessions.
Throughout the whole of his business life, Colburn had a very keen
perception as to what the public required, and of the market value of
the productions offered him; and yet he was almost uniformly liberal in
his dealings. His judgment of copyrights was occasionally assisted by
Mr. Forbes and Mr. Charles Ollier.
Of course, among the multitude of books he produced, many were utterly
worthless, beyond affording a passing recreation to the library
subscribers, and many even were pecuniary failures. The most ludicrous
of these failures was a scheme originated by John Galt, a constant
contributor to the _New Monthly_. This was a periodical, which, under
the title of the _New British Theatre_, published the best of those
dramatic productions, which the managers of the great playhouses had
previously rejected. The audacity of the scheme carried it through for
a short time, but soon the unfortunate editor was smothered amid such
a heap of dramatic rubbish, coming at every fresh post, to the table of
the benevolent encourager of youthful aspirations, that he was fain to
acknowledge the justice of the managers’ previous decisions.
Although Colburn was throughout his career chiefly successful as a
caterer for the libraries, supplying them with novels, which, by some
mysterious law, were required to consist of three volumes of about
three hundred pages each, the cost of the whole fixed immutably at
one guinea and a half, his “Modern Novelists,” containing his best
copyright works, in a cheap octavo form, attained the number of
nineteen, being published at intervals between 1835 and 1841, and
formed a valuable addition to the popular literature of the time.
Finally, Colburn, having acquired an ample competence, retired from
business, in favour of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett, still, however,
retaining his name to some favourite copyrights. He had been twice
married, the second time, in 1841, to the daughter of Captain Crosbie,
R.N.
After a period of well-earned leisure, rendered pleasingly genial by
the constant society of his literary friends, Henry Colburn died, on
the 16th of August, 1855, at his house in Bryanston Square.
The whole of his property was sworn to be under £35,000, and went to
his wife and her family. Two years later, the seven copyrights he had
reserved were sold by auction, and realised the large sum of £14,000,
to which Miss Strickland’s “Lives of the Queens of England” alone
contributed £6900.
As publisher of three volume novels, Colburn was succeeded by two
principal rival houses, with the foundation of each of which he was in
some way concerned. As Mr. Bentley’s establishment in New Burlington
Street was only a further development of Colburn’s old house, a few
words may not be out of place concerning it. In 1837, Mr. Bentley
proposed to start a periodical to rival the _New Monthly_, and at the
preliminary meeting it was proposed to call it the _Wit’s Miscellany_,
but James Smith objected to this as being too pretentious, upon which
Mr. Bentley proposed the title of _Bentley’s Miscellany_. “Don’t you
think,” interposed Smith, “that that would be going too far the other
way?” However, the name was adopted (Mr. Bentley denies the accuracy of
this anecdote--but _se non è vero, è ben trovato_). One of the chief
contributors to the new _Miscellany_ was Barham, who had been a school
chum of Mr. Bentley’s at St. Paul’s, and, until 1843, the “Ingoldsby
Legends” delighted the public in the pages of the _Miscellany_. The
last poem of the “Legends” was published in Colburn’s _New Monthly_,
but by Barham’s express wish, the song he wrote on his death-bed, “As I
Lay Athynkynge,” appeared, as fitly closing his career, in _Bentley_.
The first editor of _Bentley’s Miscellany_, was no less a man than
Charles Dickens, who had previously contributed the “Sketches by Boz”
to the _Morning Chronicle_, and who soon, as the author of _Pickwick_,
became the most popular writer of the day. Mr. Bentley was one of the
first publishers to secure Dickens’s services, and in his magazine
“Oliver Twist” appeared. The editorship afterwards passed into the
hands of Mr. Harrison Ainsworth and Mr. A. Smith. For the magazine, as
for his ordinary business, Mr. Bentley secured the aid of most of the
writers who had graduated first under Colburn; and to enumerate them
would, with the exception of “Father Prout,” be merely a repetition
of names already mentioned, and those who have won popularity since
then have scarcely yet had time to lose it. An amusing story, however,
worth repeating, has been recently told by the _Athenæum_, anent
“Eustace Conway,” a novel by the late Mr. Maurice. “We believe,” says
that journal, “we are not going too far in telling the following story
about it. Mr. Maurice sold the novel to the late Mr. Bentley somewhere
about the year 1830; but the excitement caused by the Reform Bill
being unfavourable to light literature, Mr. Bentley did not issue it
till 1834, when he had quite lost sight of its author, then a curate
in Warwickshire. The villain of the novel was called Captain Marryat;
and Mr. Maurice, who first learned of the publication of his book
from a review in our columns, had soon the pleasure of receiving a
challenge from the celebrated Captain Marryat. Great was the latter’s
astonishment on learning that the anonymous author of ‘Eustace Conway’
had never heard of the biographer of ‘Peter Simple,’ and, being in Holy
Orders, was obliged to decline to indulge in a duel.” Mr. Bentley died
in September, 1871, and was succeeded in the business by his son, who
for many years had been associated with him.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_THE RIVINGTONS, THE PARKERS, AND JAMES NISBET_: