The “Number Publishers” may be looked upon as the modern pioneers of
literature; their books are circulated by a peculiar method, among
a peculiar public, almost entirely through the agency of their own
canvassers, without the intervention of any other bookseller, and
the works thus sold are scarcely known to the ordinary members of
the publishing world. As the business is conducted by house to house
visitation, a substratum of the public is reached which is entirely
out of the stretch of the regular bookselling arm, though, when once
a taste for reading has been developed, the regular bookseller cannot
fail to benefit, as he will from every onward step in education and
progress.
The _Canvassing Trade_ is conducted by only a few houses in London,
Edinburgh, and Glasgow. In our introductory chapter we caught a glimpse
of some of the earlier members, but in modern times two names--Kelly,
and, in a much broader sense, Virtue--stand forward prominently, and to
these two we shall address ourselves.
Thomas Kelly[27] was born at Chevening, in Kent, on the 7th of January,
1777. His father was a shepherd, who, having received a jointure of
£200 with his wife, risked the capital first in a little country
inn, and afterwards in leasing a small farm of about thirty acres of
cold, wet land, where he led a starving, struggling life during the
remainder of his days. When only twelve years old, barely able to read
and write, young Kelly was taken from school, and put to the hard work
of the farm, leading the team or keeping the flock, but he was not
strong enough to handle the plough. The fatigue of this life, and its
misery, were so vividly impressed upon his memory, that he could never
be persuaded to revisit the neighbourhood in after-life; and though
at the time he endeavoured to conceal his feelings from his family,
the bitterness of his reflections involuntarily betrayed his wishes.
He fretted in the daytime until he could not lie quietly in his bed
at night, and early one morning he was discovered in a somnambulant
state in the chimney of an empty bedroom, “on,” as he said, “his road
to London.” After this his parents readily consented that he should
try to make his way elsewhere, and a situation was obtained for him
in the counting-house of a Lambeth brewer. After about three years’
service here, the business failed, and he was recommended to Alexander
Hogg, bookseller of Paternoster Row. The terms of his engagement were
those of an ordinary domestic servant; he was to board and lodge on the
premises, and to receive ten pounds yearly, but his lodging, or, at all
events, his bed, was under the shop counter.
Alexander Hogg, of 16, Paternoster Row, had been a journeyman to Cooke,
and had very successfully followed the publication of “Number” books.
In the trade he was looked upon as an unequalled “puffer,” and when the
sale of a book began to slacken, he was wont to employ some ingenious
scribe to draw up a taking title, and the work, though otherwise
unaltered, was brought out in a “new edition,” as, according to a
formula, the “Production of a Society of Gentlemen: the whole revised,
corrected, and improved by Walter Thornton, Esq., A.M., and other
gentlemen.”
Kelly’s duties were to make up parcels of books for the retail
booksellers, and his zeal displayed itself even in somnambulism, and
one night when in a comatose state, he actually arranged in order
the eighty numbers of “Foxe’s Martyrs,” taken from as many different
compartments. He spent all his leisure in study, and soon was able
to read French with fluency, gaining the proper accent by attending
the French Protestant church in Threadneedle Street. The good old
housekeeper, at this time his only friend, was a partaker of his
studies; at all events, he gave her the benefit of all the more amusing
and interesting matter he came across. His activity, though it rendered
the head-shopman jealous, attracted Hogg’s favourable attention,
and the clever discovery of a batch of stolen works, still further
strengthened the interest he felt in his serving boy. The thieves,
owing to the lad’s ingenuity, were apprehended and convicted, and Kelly
had to come forward as a witness. “This was my first appearance at the
Old Bailey, and as I was fearful I might give incorrect evidence, I
trembled over the third commandment. How could I think, while shaking
in the witness-box, that I should ever be raised to act as Her
Majesty’s First Commissioner at the Central Criminal Court of England!”
Half of his scanty pittance of ten pounds was sent home to aid his
parents, and as his wages increased, so did this dutiful allowance. In
this situation Kelly remained for twenty years and two months, and at
no time did he receive more than eighty pounds per annum, and it is
believed that when his stipend reached that petty maximum, he defrayed
the whole of his father’s farm rent. That he was not entirely satisfied
with his prospects, is evident from the fact that about ten years after
he joined Hogg he accepted a clerkship in Sir Francis Baring’s office,
but so necessary had he become to the establishment he was about to
leave, that his late master prevailed upon him to accept board and
residence in exchange for what assistance he might please to render
over hours. After six weeks of this double work, poor Kelly’s health
began to suffer, and it was plain that he must confine his labours to
one single branch of trade. “Thomas,” said his master, sagaciously
enough, though probably with a view to his own interests, “you never
can be a merchant, but you _may_ be a bookseller.” This advice chimed
in with his inclination, if not with his immediate prospects, and Kelly
devoted himself to bookselling.
At length Hogg, falling into bad health, and desiring to be relieved
from business, proposed to Kelly that he should unite in partnership
with his son; but the conscientious assistant felt constrained to
decline the tempting offer, by reason of the young man’s character,
and resolved rather to attempt business on his own account. In 1809,
therefore, he started in a little room in Paternoster Row, sub-rented
from the landlord--a friendly barber. On his small front room he wrote
his name, “Thomas Kelly,” and by way of advertising his change of
position, he generally stood downstairs in the common doorway. To all
the “Row” Hogg’s able assistant had been known simply as “Thomas,” and
one old acquaintance actually asked him, “Well, Thomas, who is this
Kelly that you have taken up with?”
For the first two years his operations were confined solely to the
purchase and sale of miscellaneous books on a small scale, and the
limited experiment proved successful. Of “Buchan’s Domestic Medicine”
he bought one thousand copies in sheets at a low price, and, having
prefixed a short memoir of the author, and divided them into numbers
or parts, he went out himself in quest of subscribers; and a thousand
copies of the “New Week’s Preparation” were treated in a like manner
and with similar success. Henceforth he resolved to print at his own
risk, always adopting the sectional method, and working his books, from
first to last, entirely through the hands of his own agents, and the
profit he found in this scheme depended almost entirely upon the happy
knowledge he possessed of human character, and the cautious foresight
with which he was able to select his canvassers. One of the first works
he published in this manner was a large Family Bible, edited by J.
Mallam, Rector of Hilton, afterwards known as “Kelly’s Family Bible.”
To each of his canvassers he gave stock on credit, worth from twenty
to one hundred pounds, ready money was insisted on, and this plan
insured a speedy return of capital. The Bible extended to one hundred
and seventy-three numbers, and the entire work cost the subscribers
£5 15_s._, paid, of course, in weekly or monthly driblets; and, as
80,000 copies were soon sold, the gross receipts must have reached
£460,000. Nearly half this sum, however, went in the agents’ allowances
for canvassing and delivery. The paper duty alone on this one work was
estimated at upwards of £20,000. To this Bible succeeded “The Life of
Christ,” “Foxe’s Martyrs,” and the “History of England,” all in folio,
with copper-plate embellishments; and “Hervey’s Meditations,” “Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress,” and various other popular works, in octavo.
Six months after he had left his former situation, Hogg died, and the
son soon fell into difficulties, and was obliged to relinquish the
business, which Kelly immediately purchased, speedily adding to it the
trade of Cooke, the owner of No. 17, and thus uniting the two concerns
into one.
About the year 1814 the system of printing books from stereotype plates
began to be very generally adopted for large editions, and Kelly at
once saw its advantages, but, of course, as in all improvements, the
trade set themselves against the innovation, and he had to purchase
land at Merton, and erect a foundry of his own, and then, and not till
then, the printers relinquished their opposition, and the building was
abandoned. It was about this time, in March, 1815, that he very nearly
lost a moiety of his fortune through fire. Luckily, upon the outbreak
of a fire in the neighbourhood a few days before, he had been alarmed,
and had gone straightway to the office of the Phœnix Company, and paid
a deposit on the insurance. Before the policy was made out, the whole
of his stock was destroyed, but the Phœnix Company paid up without an
hour’s delay, and, in return, he never cancelled a single policy with
them until this sum had been reimbursed. How largely Kelly traded may
be gathered from the fact that from one of his agents alone he often
received from £4000 to £5000 per annum.
To revert for a moment to his private life; his father had died in
1810, when the bookseller was still a struggling man, but, in spite of
his difficulties, he paid at once the amount of his father’s debts;
and brought his mother up to Wimbledon, where she lived to see her son
a wealthy and prosperous man. To his old master’s widow he generously
allowed an annuity, and even aided young Hogg, who had pursued him with
inveterate hatred, with the loan of £600. He never married. When little
known he saved a member of the Court of Aldermen from bankruptcy by
an advance of £4000, and he was always ready to lend out his money to
those in trouble. But once, when asked to give his acceptance to ten
or twelve thousand pounds worth of bills--in these terms, “Will you,
for once in your life, do a good action, and oblige me?”--he thought
himself perfectly justified in refusing, and soon after the acceptor of
these bills failed. In 1823 he was elected into the Common Council of
his ward; in 1825 he served as Sheriff with Mr. Alderman Crowder, on
whose death he succeeded to the Alderman’s gown of Farringdon Without.
He always lamented his want of a systematic education, and late in life
he endeavoured, in some way, to supply the place of it by experience
gathered from foreign travel.
Notwithstanding his immense issues of costly books, he exercised the
most watchful prudence. “Books,” he says, “generally, printed in the
ordinary way, only sell 500 or 1000 copies, and periodical publications
would be ruinous. Nothing but a vast sale will prove remunerative,”
and this “vast sale” he certainly effected in almost every instance.
He published twelve separate issues of the Bible, and disposed of,
probably, not less than 250,000 copies. The following is a list of
his more important works:--“History of the French Revolution,” 20,000
copies at £4; “Hume’s England,” 5,000, at £4 18_s._; “The Gazetteer,”
4,000, at £4 10_s._; “The Oxford Encyclopædia,” 4,000 at £6 (and the
£24,000 only barely covered the original outlay); “The Geography,”
30,000 at £4 4_s._; and the “Architectural Works,” 50,000, at an
average of £1 13_s._ To these may be added “The Life of Christ,”
of which, in folio and quarto, not fewer than 100,000 copies were
distributed, at prices varying from £1 1_s._ to £2. No wonder, with
figures like these (for which we are indebted to Mr. Fell’s volume),
that the trade objected to this method of transacting business, but the
difference was confined merely to business relations, for every one of
the numerous booksellers in the Ward signed the request asking him to
stand as Alderman.
In 1836 he received the highest honour to which a citizen of London
can aspire, for he was elected Lord Mayor. His year of office was a
memorable one, and the first entertainment of Queen Victoria occurred
on the very day of his retirement from office, and thus he narrowly
escaped the honour of a baronetcy, for he had the good sense to decline
the requisition to stand a second time.
His appearance in his robes of office is thus described by M. Titus
Perondi, a French traveller:--“The new Lord Mayor appeared in a gilded
chariot, almost as grand as the King’s, drawn by six bay horses,
richly caparisoned.... He does not seem to be more than sixty-two years
of age, and his figure, slight as it is, is still imposing--for the
flowing wig and ermine mantle, which encircled all his person, added
not a little to the dignity of his presence.... A thriving bookseller,
yet a perfectly honest man, and very charitable.” The last sentence is
an admirable summary of his character.
The attainment of this honour terminated his commercial and public
life, for after this date he relinquished, in a great degree, his
business cares; but to an extreme old age he retained his faculties,
and he retained also his habits of quiet and discriminating charity,
doing good by stealth, and blushing to find it known. On the 20th
October, 1854, he paid his last visit to his parent’s grave, and was
there heard to murmur, “How very happy I am.” His failing health
compelled him to visit Margate, and here, on the 7th of September,
1855, he died in a ripe old age. A letter, written just before his
death, evidently betrays a lingering fondness for early childish
days:--“We are surrounded by fields of fully-ripening corn--some cut,
some cutting,” babbling, like Falstaff, of green fields, till the sixty
years of town life were forgotten.
Thomas Kelly was one of those men of whom the London citizens are
so proud--men who come to the mighty centre of commerce utterly
friendless, and worse still, penniless, and whom industry, labour, and
good fortune exalt to the very pinnacle of a good citizen’s fondest
dreams. But he was more than a Lord Mayor--he was a true friend; he was
a loving, dutiful, and tender son--qualities not always insured even by
commercial success.
Mr. George Virtue was another of those men of whom, in this history, we
have had not a few examples, who, beginning life without any fictitious
advantages, have made success their goal, and, in attaining it, have
not only amassed princely fortunes for themselves and their families,
but have opened up new branches of industry, and have afforded
employment to hundreds whose bread depends upon their daily labours.
His father was a native of Fogo, in Berwickshire, who first at
Coldstream, and afterwards at Wooler, in Northumberland, let out for
hire carts and carters to the neighbouring farmers. In the year 1793,
his second son, George, was born at Coldstream, and there and at
Wooler, he passed the early years of his boyhood. In 1810, his father
met with an accident, which caused him to relinquish the business he
had hitherto been engaged in. His eldest son, James, who had a good
engagement in London, gave up his employment and hastened home, and
removing with the family to Coldstream, commenced business there as a
mason, taking his brother George as an apprentice.
Mrs. Somerton, their married sister, had a large house, near the Houses
of Parliament, in London, which she let out, much on the plan of the
club-chambers of the present day. George had come up to London, partly
on business, partly on a visit to his sister, and not wishing to return
to the North, he made an arrangement to remain with Mrs. Somerton.
The house was chiefly frequented by members of Parliament and men in
the higher grades of life; and one of the former, who had taken a
fancy to George Virtue, asked him what he would like to be. George at
once replied, “A bookseller,” and his patron assisted him in stocking
a shop in the neighbourhood. This was about the year 1820. At first
his trade consisted entirely in the retail business, but by degrees
he was able to purchase entire remainders of that distinct class of
religious publications which were then sold chiefly in numbers. These
he re-issued; and as he did his own canvassing, no zeal was wanting
in the service, and his success was by no means indifferent. Once
established, he was able to canvass for the books of other publishers;
and on the 15th July, 1821, the first number of a work was published,
which took the town by storm. Whether Mr. Virtue’s canvassing powers
were acknowledged by the trade at this early period, or whether his
peculiar class of customers was considered as most amenable to the work
in question, we know not, but he was given an interest of one kind
or another, either as part proprietor or as a purchaser on unusually
liberal terms in the famous “Life in London; or, the Adventures of Tom
and Jerry,” issued by Sherwood, Neeley, and Jones, of Paternoster Row.
The book was written by Pierce Egan, afterwards the founder of _Bell’s
Life_.
Works describing country sports and pastimes had proved so acceptable
that it was imagined that a volume issued in numbers, setting forth
the humours of town life would be equally taking. The illustrations
by J. R. and George Cruikshank proved irresistible. The work was so
successful that innumerable imitations appeared, one of which (“Shade
of Lackington!”) was published by Jones and Co., who occupied his
former place of business, the “Temple of the Muses” in Finsbury Square.
There was absolutely a _furore_ for the work. Dibdin, Barryman, Farell,
Douglas Jerrold, Moncrieff, and others adapted it for the stage. It was
on the boards of ten theatres at one time; and at the Adelphi, where
Moncrieff’s adaptation was produced, it enjoyed the then unparalleled
run of three hundred nights. At last, Pierce Egan, declaring that no
less than sixty-five separate publications had been derived from his
work, brought forward his own characteristic version, which, however,
proved a failure.
All the world bought “Tom and Jerry,” and having roared over the
plates, tossed them not unnaturally aside; so that a work, which, in
popularity, had been the “Pickwick” of its day, became so wonderfully
scarce that when Mr. Thackeray, with whom it had been an early
favourite, wanted a copy for a review he was writing upon Mr. George
Cruikshank’s works, he applied at all the libraries, including the
British Museum, in vain. The work was advertised for in the _Times_
with like result, and he had to depend upon his memory for his
description. However, twenty years after, when he wished to make it
the subject of one of the most charming of the “Roundabout Papers,” he
found that it had been added to the Museum Library.
It was, however, with the contemporary popularity that Mr. Virtue was
concerned, and by it his business was largely increased.
In 1831, his affairs warranted an important move to the vicinity of
Paternoster Row, and about this time he married a Miss Sprent, a
lady from Manchester. From his new abode the works which he at first
issued were of much the same stamp as those which Messrs. Kelly, Hogg,
and Cooke had previously spread abroad; but he soon struck out into
a higher class of literature. His first very successful book was “A
Guide to Family Devotion,” by Dr. Alexander Fletcher. The work was
undertaken by Mr. Virtue, as Dr. Fletcher says, “at great expense
and some hazard, during the years 1833-1834.” The volume contained
730 prayers, 730 hymns, and 730 selected passages of Scripture,
suitable for Morning and Evening Service, throughout the year, and
was illustrated by engravings by the best artists. The popularity it
achieved was enormous: thirty editions of a thousand each were soon
issued, and, as the _Times_ said, “30,000 copies of a book of Common
Prayer, recommended by twenty-five distinguished ministers, cannot be
dispersed throughout England without effecting some change in the minds
of probably 200,000 persons.”
In America, the “Guide to Family Devotion” was as successful as at
home, and upwards of one hundred ministers there sent in testimonials
to its worth. By 1850, the sale is said to have exceeded 50,000 copies.
Mr. Virtue, about this time, entered into an engagement with W. Henry
Bartlett, who, pencil in hand, travelled over the four quarters of the
globe, making sketches, which that enterprising publisher issued in
volumes, illustrated with beautiful steel engravings and descriptive
letterpress. The first of these was “Switzerland,” published in 1835,
in two quarto volumes. This was followed by Scotland, Palestine, the
Nile, and America. Of the Switzerland, 20,000 copies were sold; and in
the production of the two volumes on Scotland, upwards of one thousand
persons were employed at a cost of £40,000. The number of engraved
plates in these volumes amounted to a thousand.
When Mr. Virtue commenced these illustrated volumes, the Fine Art
tastes of the public were in a very uneducated condition; but,
selecting the best artists and employing the best engravers, he set a
good example, which was speedily followed by others. In 1839, Messrs.
Hodgson and Graves had started a cheap periodical devoted to Art, under
the title of the _Art Union_, intended chiefly as an organ of the
print trade; but it was not till the year 1849 that this publication
passed into the hands of Mr. Virtue, who changed the title to the _Art
Journal_, and devoted it to the development of Fine Art and Industrial
Art, with illustrations on steel and wood by the first artists of the
day. The _Art Journal_, it is admitted, has done more than any private
venture or corporate body to disseminate true ideas of Art in England.
The _Art Journal_, though among the very earliest of those periodicals
in which Art was brought to the aid of Literature, still towers proudly
above all. Since its foundation, the _Art Journal_ has presented the
public with between eight and nine hundred steel engravings and above
30,000 engravings on wood.
No less than one hundred illustrated volumes were issued from Mr.
Virtue’s establishment, and for their production it was found necessary
to erect a large establishment in the City Road. Almost every engraver
of any reputation in this country has been employed on one or other of
Mr. Virtue’s illustrated works. Indeed, had it not been for the field
of labour opened by the _Art Union_, in their yearly distribution
of engravings, and for the encouragement held out by Mr. Virtue in
the production of his illustrated works and the _Art Journal_, it
is said that the art of line engraving would have quite died out in
England; and for his services to the public, and, through them, to the
profession, he is certainly entitled to be regarded as the first Art
publisher of his time.
To go to a very different branch of his business, Mr. Virtue was not
idle in the production of any book likely to win the favour of the
public. In 1847, Dr. Cumming, then widely known as a preacher only,
delivered a series of lectures at Exeter Hall upon the Apocalypse,
which riveted public attention. He was urged by his friends to publish
the lectures upon their completion, and said that he would be willing
to do so, if he was sure that the proceeds would suffice to pay for
putting up stained glass windows in his church. Mr. Virtue heard this,
ascertained the value of the windows, and offered their outside cost
down in hard cash in exchange for the copyright. Dr. Cumming eagerly
accepted the offer, and by the “Apocalyptic Sketches” the publisher
realized the handsome sum of four thousand pounds. He afterwards made
the author a present of a hundred pounds, and engaged him to write a
continuation, at an honorarium of five pounds per sheet of thirty-two
pages, which eventually proved to be equally successful.
Many years before his death, Mr. George Virtue parted with the business
to his son, Mr. James Sprent Virtue, the present head of the firm.
On the 8th December, 1868, George Virtue, senior, died in his
seventy-sixth year, having earned the respect of all the hundreds
to whom he afforded employment, and of the outside world; for all
recognised that integrity and strict justice to his _employés_ was
a main cause of his success, while his prosperity had been aided by
thorough business habits and intense application to his duties.
He had been one of the representatives of the ward of Farringdon
Without in the Common Council of the City of London for many years, and
was held in the highest esteem by his fellow-citizens. It was in his
civic capacity that he was invited by the Viceroy of Egypt, with other
members of the Corporation, to pay a visit to that country, an honour
which his constant attention to his public duties had fully merited in
selecting him as one of the representatives of the City of London on
that occasion.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_THOMAS TEGG_: