Thomas Tegg[28] was born at Wimbledon, in Surrey, on the 4th of
March, 1776. His father was a grocer, who not only was successful in
business, but “wore a large wig,” was a Latin scholar, and something
of a mathematician; he died, however, when his son was only five years
old, and was speedily followed by his wife, and the poor little lad
“found it to be a dreadful thing when sorrow first takes hold of an
orphan’s heart.” For the sake of economy, he was sent to Galashiels, in
Selkirkshire, where he was boarded, lodged, clothed, and educated for
ten guineas per annum. This severance from all home ties was at first
more than the little orphan could bear, and many a time, he tells us,
did he steal off to the quiet banks of the Tweed, and cry himself to
sleep in his loneliness. A scrap of paper, which had been given him
before leaving home, bearing the magic word “London,” was carefully
treasured in all his wanderings, and in the associations it called
up, in the hopes it excited in all his wondering, childish dreams,
proved a soothing solace to his troubles. His schoolmaster, too, was a
kind-hearted man, who made a point of studying each boy’s individual
character, and of educating each for his individual calling. Ruling by
“kindness rather than by flagellation,” he frequently took his pupils
for country rambles, and taught them lessons out of the great book
of Nature. Nor was he wholly forgotten by his relatives, for we read
that he was sent a parcel of tea--then a wonderful luxury. After much
consultation as to the best method of cooking the delicacy, one-half
of it was boiled in the “big pot,” the liquor strained off and the
leaves served up as greens; “but,” he adds, “it was not eaten.” After
staying at Galashiels for four years, he was given the choice of being
apprenticed either to a saddler or a bookseller; and his fondness for
books, and the desire already formed of being at some time a bookseller
in the London he pictured to himself every night in his dreams, led him
at once to select the latter alternative. His dominie at parting, gave
him a copy of “Dr. Franklin’s Life and Essays,” a book he treasured in
all times of prosperity and adversity, and kept to the day of his death.
On a cold, raw morning in September, he started on foot for Dalkeith,
with only sixpence in his pocket; some friendly farmers on the road
gave him a lift in their cart, and in his gratitude he confided to them
his boyish hopes of being by-and-by a great book-merchant in London. At
Dalkeith he was bound apprentice to Alexander Meggett, a bookseller,
and “from this humble origin,” says Tegg, proudly, “I, who am now one
of the chief booksellers in London, have risen.” His master, kindness
itself before the indentures were signed, turned out to be “a tyrant as
well as an infidel.” “Every market-day he got drunk and came home and
beat the whole of us. Once I said, ‘I have done nothing to deserve a
beating.’ ‘Young English rascal,’ said he, ‘you may want it when I am
too busy, so I will give it to you now.’” Tegg’s fellow-apprentice had,
like him, an ambition, but it was to become the first whistler in the
kingdom.
Tegg’s apprenticeship had by this time become intolerable, and, as he
had been latterly engaged in reading “Robinson Crusoe” and “Roderick
Random,” he resolved to run away and lead an adventurous life himself.
Though it was in the depth of winter, he travelled along on foot,
sleeping sometimes under hedges laden with hoar-frost. But soon his
little hoarding of ten shillings was exhausted; at Berwick, therefore,
he tried to make a livelihood by selling chap-books, but was recognised
for a runaway apprentice and had again to fly. At this period he tells
us he found out the utility of pawnbrokers’ shops, and discovered,
also, the value of small sums. “He who has felt the want of a penny is
never likely to dissipate a pound.” Another lesson, too, he gathered
from his wanderings, which was always when in trouble to apply to a
woman. “Never,” he says, “did I plead to a woman in vain.” At Newcastle
he made the acquaintance of Bewick, the engraver; there he might have
remained, but his heart was set upon reaching London. At Sheffield he
was seized by the parish officer for travelling on Sunday, but when
he told his story the severity of Bumbledom itself relented, and the
beadle found him a home, and even paid the requisite eighteenpence a
week which defrayed the cost of lodging, bread-making, and a weekly
clean shirt. Here he was engaged by Mr. Gale, the proprietor of the
_Sheffield Register_, at seven shillings a week, a wretched pittance,
but sufficient for his small wants, even enabling him to purchase
new clothes. At the _Register_ office he met some men of note, among
others, Tom Paine and Dibdin. Paine was “a tall, thin, ill-looking
man. He had a fiend-like countenance, and frequently indulged in oaths
and blasphemy.” After a nine months’ sojourn, Tegg left Sheffield, and
having visited Ireland and North Wales, entered the service of a Mr.
Marshall, at Lynn, where he remained for three or four years.
Early in 1796, however, he mounted the London and Cambridge coach, and,
with a few shillings in his pockets, with a light heart in his breast,
he bade good-bye to friends, telling them that he would never come back
till he could drive down in his carriage.
On the coach he met some other young men, who, like himself, were going
up to London in search of employment, but who intended to spend the
first few days in sight-seeing, and asked him to join their party.
But Tegg resisted the temptation, and when London, the London of his
dreams--but how black, smoke-filled, and inhospitable!--was really
reached, he alighted at the Green Dragon in Bishopsgate Street, and,
struggling through the busy stream of men who filled the city streets,
he went straightway in search of employment, to the first book-shop
that met his eyes. This happened to be Mr. Lane’s “Minerva Library,” in
Leadenhall Street. “What can you do?” asked Lane. “My best,” rejoined
Tegg. “Do you wear an apron?” Tegg produced one and tied it on. “Go
to work,” said Lane, and thus, “in less than half-an-hour from my
arrival, I was at work in one of the best houses in London.” Early next
morning, map in hand, he took an exploring walk, and was astonished
and delighted with all he saw, for to the young bookseller, with his
mind wrapt up entirely in his projects of success, the perpetual rush
of unknown faces--that he had never seen before, would never see
again--the jostling eagerness of crowds, going incessantly this way
and that, the noisy din of carts and carriages, the vastness of the
buildings, and the vagueness of the never-ending streets, did not
bring that feeling of utter loneliness which so many of us remember in
our first solitary entry into London. Nor was the country lad to be
beguiled by any of the myriad temptations that were ready on all sides
to divide his attention from his business. “I resolved,” he writes, “to
visit a place of worship every Sunday, and to read no loose or infidel
books; that I would frequent no public-houses, that I would devote
my leisure to profitable studies, that I would form no friendships
till I knew the parties well, and that I would not go to any theatre
till my reason fortified me against my passions.” This perseverance
did not immediately meet with its deserved reward, for having been
sent, with the other shopmen, to make an affidavit as to the numbers
of an election bill that had been struck off, before the Lord Mayor,
he said boldly, that he did not even know that they had been printed;
the Lord Mayor was pleased with the answer, and censured Lane severely
for tempting the boy to commit a perjury; and Lane, in his rage,
dismissed him forthwith. Tegg walked out of the shop, down-hearted for
the moment, perhaps, but self-possessed and reliant, and entering the
shop of John and Arthur Arch, at the corner of Gracechurch Street,
the kindly Quakers took him at once into their employ, and here he
stayed until entering into business on his own account. His new masters
were strict but affectionate. He soon asks for a holiday, “We have no
objection, but where art thou going, Thomas?” “To Greenwich fair, sir.”
“Then we think thou hadst better not go. Thou wilt lose half a day’s
wages. Thou wilt spend at least the amount of two days’ wages more, and
thou wilt get into bad company.” At two, however, he was told he might
go; but as soon as he reached London Bridge his heart smote him, and
he returned. “Why, Thomas, is this thee? Thou art a prudent lad.” And
when Saturday came, his masters added a guinea to his weekly wages as
a present. From this, Tegg says, he himself learnt to be a kind though
strict master, and during his fifty years of business life, he never
used a harsh word to a servant, and dismissed but three.
Having received £200 from the wreck of the family prospects, Tegg
took a shop, in partnership with a Mr. Dewick, in Aldersgate Street,
and became a “bookmaker” as well as a bookseller; and his first book,
the “Complete Confectioner,” though it contained only one hundred
lines of original matter, reached a second edition. After a short
time he indulged in a tour to Scotland, where he found that his old
schoolmaster had died from the effects of an amputation; and in
this same journey he honestly bought up the unlapsed time of his
apprenticeship. On returning to London he re-entered the service of
the Messrs. Arch, and took unto himself a wife. The story of his
courtship is pleasantly and naïvely told. Coming down the stairs
of his new lodgings, “I was met by a good-looking, fresh-coloured,
sweet-countenanced country girl; and without thinking of the
impropriety I ventured to wink as she passed. On looking up the stairs,
I saw my fair one peeping through the balusters at me. I was soon on
speaking terms with her, and told her I wanted a wife, and bade her
look out for one for me; but if she failed in the search she must take
the office herself. After waiting a short time, no return being made, I
acted on this agreement. Young and foolish both, we were married at St.
Bride’s church, April 20, 1800.... I was most happy in my choice, and
cannot write in adequate terms of my dear partner, who possesses four
qualities seldom found in one woman--good nature, sound sense, beauty,
and prudence.”
After his marriage, he again opened a shop in St. John’s Street,
Clerkenwell, and here he “wrote all night and worked all day,” while
his partner was drinking himself to death. His wife was ill, two of the
children died, and the future looked terribly gloomy; for a “supposed
friend” prevailed upon him to discount a bill for £172 14_s._ 9_d._ out
of his little capital of two hundred pounds, and the bill, of course,
turned out to be utterly worthless. In this strait he acted with much
energy, dissolved his partnership, called a meeting of his creditors,
and found a friend who nobly came forward as a security; and he left
his home, declaring he would never return until he could pay the
uttermost farthing. “God,” he writes solemnly, “never forsook me. A man
may lose his property and yet not be ruined; peace and pride of heart
may be more than equivalents.”
Tegg now took out a country auction licence, and determined to try his
fortune in the provinces.
A few words on the book-auction trade may have a passing interest here.
According to Dibdin, the first book auction of which we have any record
in England occurred in 1676, when Cooper, the bookseller, prefixed the
following address to his catalogue:--“Reader, it hath not been usual
here in England to make sale of books by way of auction, or who will
give most for them; but it having been practised in other countries,
to the great advantage of both buyers and sellers, it was therefore
conceived (for the encouragement of learning) to publish the sale of
those books in this manner of way.” The innovation was successful.
Cooper established a reputation as a book-auctioneer, and in London
such sales became common. In a few years we read of the practice being
extended to Scotland, and to the larger towns in England, such as Leeds
and York. John Dunton, with his usual versatility, took over a cargo of
books to sell at Dublin, and after that date attendance at the country
fairs with books to sell by auction became quite a distinct branch
among the London booksellers. The leading auctioneer in Dunton’s time
was Edward Millington. “He had a quick wit and a wonderful fluency
of speech. There was usually as much wit in his ‘One, two, three!’
as can be met with in a modern play. ‘Where,’ said Millington, ‘is
your generous flame for learning? Who but a sot or a blockhead would
have money in his pocket, and starve his brains?’” At this time it
appears that bids of one penny were very commonly offered and accepted.
Book-auctioneering soon became a distinct trade altogether, and
required not only much fluency of speech and power of persuasion,
but a very exact knowledge of the science of bibliography. For this
latter speciality Samuel Paterson, of King Street, Covent Garden, was
particularly famous. Perhaps no bookseller ever lived who knew so
much about the contents of the books he sold. When, in compiling his
catalogues, he met with an unknown book he would sit perusing it for
hours, utterly unmindful of the time of sale, and oblivious of the
efforts of his clerk to call his attention to the lateness of the time.
Baker, Leigh, and Sotheby, all of York Street, Covent Garden, were also
eminent in this branch of the trade; but the prince of book-auctioneers
was James Christie, whose powers of persuasion were rendered doubly
effective by a quiet, easy flow of conversation, and a gentle
refinement of manners. At the close of the century, the booksellers’
trade sales were held at the Horn Tavern, in Doctors’ Commons, and were
preceded by a luxurious dinner, when the bottle and the jest went round
merrily, and the competition was heightened by wine and laughter.
Tegg, to retake the thread of our story after this digression, started
with a very poor stock, consisting of shilling political pamphlets,
and some thousands of the _Monthly Visitor_. At Worcester, however, he
purchased a parcel of books from a clergyman for ten pounds, but when
the time for payment arrived the good man refused to accept anything.
At Worcester, too, it was that he held his first auction. “With a
beating heart I mounted the rostrum. The room was crowded. I took £30
that first night, and in a few days a knife and fork was provided for
me at many of the houses of my customers. God helps those, I thought,
who help themselves.” With his wife acting as clerk, he travelled
through the country, buying up the duplicates at all the gentlemen’s
libraries he could hear of, and rapidly paying off his debts. This
led him to return to his shop in Cheapside, but his ardent desire
for advancement involved him again in difficulties. “One day I was
called from the shop three times by the sheriff’s officers (a few
years afterwards I paid a fine of £400 to be excused serving sheriff
myself). Bailiffs are not always iron-hearted. I have met with very
kind officers; some have taken my word for debt and costs, and one lent
me the money to pay both” (O rare bum-bailiff! why is not thy name
recorded?).
Still Tegg was making gradual way, in spite of occasional difficulties
which again led him to the pawnshops, but with more precious pledges
than when at Berwick he asked a rosy-cheeked Irish girl how he might
best raise money on a silk handkerchief, for now his watch and spoons
could accommodate him, when needful, with fifty pounds. About this
time one of the most interesting episodes of his life was commenced.
He had purchased a hundred pounds’ worth of books from Mr. Hunt, who,
hearing of his struggles, bade him to pay for them when he pleased.
Tegg, in the fulness of his gratitude, told him that should he, in
his turn, ever need aid he should have it; but the wealthy bookseller
smiled at the young struggler’s evident simplicity. We will tell the
rest of the story in Tegg’s own words. “Thirty years after, I was in
my counting-house, when Mr. Hunt, with a queer-looking companion, came
in and reminded me of my promise. He was under arrest, and must go to
prison unless I would be his bail. I acknowledged the obligation, but
I would first take my wife’s opinion. ‘Yes, my dear, by all means
help Mr. Hunt,’ was her answer. ‘He aided us in trouble; you can do no
less for him.’ Next morning I found I had become his surety for thirty
thousand pounds. I was sharply questioned in court as to my means, and,
rubbing his hands together, Mr. Barrister remarked that Book-selling
must be a fine trade, and wished he had been brought up to it. I
answered, ‘The result did not depend on the trade, but on the man;
for instance, if I had been a lawyer I would not have remained half
this time in your situation--I would have occupied a seat with their
lordships.’ There was a laugh in court, and the judge said, ‘You may
stand down.’”
When success first really dawned, Tegg began to feel poignantly the
want of a more complete education; however, he determined to employ
the powers he possessed as best he could. His earliest publications
consisted of a series of pamphlets, printed in duodecimo, with
frontispieces, containing abridgments of popular works; and the series
extended to two hundred, many of them circulating to the extent of
4000 copies. As an instance of his business energy, we may cite the
following:--Tegg heard one morning from a friend that Nelson had been
shot at Trafalgar. He set an engraver to work instantly on a portrait
of the hero, purchased the _Naval Chronicle_, found ample material for
a biography; and, in a few hours, “The Whole Life of Nelson” was ready
for the press. Such timely assiduity was rewarded by a sale of 5000
sixpenny copies. On another occasion, when on a summer jaunt to Windsor
with a friend, it was jocularly resolved that, as they had come to
see the king, they ought to make his Majesty pay the expenses of the
trip. Tegg suggested a Life of Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, with a coloured
portrait. 13,000 copies were sold at seven-and-sixpence each; and, as
he observes, the “bill was probably liquidated.”
Among his other cheap books were--“Tegg’s Chronology,” “Philip Quail,”
and--perhaps the most successful and useful of all--a diamond edition
of “Johnson’s Dictionary,” published when the original edition was
selling at five guineas.
In 1824 he purchased the copyright of Hone’s “Every-Day Book” and
“Table Book;” republished the whole in weekly parts, and cleared a very
large profit.
“I like you and your book, ingenious Hone!
In whose capacious, all-embracing leaves
The very marrow of traditions shown,
And all that History, much that Fiction weaves.”
So sang Charles Lamb; and Southey says of these two delightful
works:--“The ‘Every-Day Book’ and ‘Table Book’ will be a fortune a
hundred years hence, but they have failed to make Hone’s fortunes.”
However, Tegg gave him five hundred pounds to compile the “Year Book,”
which proved much less successful than the others.
Hone had been a bookseller in the Strand, where he probably acquired
his miscellaneous stock of quaint knowledge about old English customs,
and all that appertained to a race fast dying out. After the famous
trial, in which his “Parodies” were charged as being “blasphemy,” he
immediately stopped the sale of them; and, though at that time in
urgent need of money, he resolutely refused tempting offers for copies.
“The story of my three-days’ trial at Guildhall,” he writes, “may be
dug out from the journals of the period; the history of my mind, my
heart, my scepticism, and my atheism remain to be written.” It is
said that he was first awakened to a better way of thinking, in the
following manner:--One day, walking in the country, he saw a little
girl standing at a doorway, and stopped to ask her for a drink of milk;
and, observing a book in her hand, he inquired what it was. She said it
was a Bible; and, in reply to some depreciatory remark of his, added,
in her simple wonder--“I thought everybody loved their Bible, sir!”
By this time Tegg was thriving;--he bought his first great-coat, and
the first silk pelisse for his wife, and was able to make a rule
of paying in cash, which he found an immense advantage. The book
auctions, continued nightly at 111, Cheapside, formed the immediate
stepping-stone to his wealth. He visited all the trade sales, and
bought up the “remainders,” _i.e._, surplus copies of works in which
the original publishers had no faith;--“I was,” he writes, “the
broom that swept the booksellers’ warehouses.” At one of the dinners
preceding these trade sales, he heard Alderman Cadell give the then
famous toast--“The Bookseller’s four B’s”--Burns, Blair, Buchan, and
Blackstone. In the auctioneer’s rostrum he was very lively and amusing,
and the room became well known all over London. At one of the last
sales, a gentleman who purchased a book asked if “he ever left off
selling for a single night?” Fifteen years before, on his road to the
dock to embark for Calcutta, he found Tegg busy, and as busy still on
his return. “If ever man was devoted to his profession, I am that man,”
says Tegg; and again--“I feel that my moral courage is sufficient to
carry out anything I resolve to accomplish.”
Now that his own publications were proving very lucrative, Tegg
resolved to abandon the auctioneering portion of the business, and
confine himself to the more legitimate trade; and, at his last sale,
he took upwards of eighty pounds. The purchase and sale of remainders,
however, still formed a very important branch of his traffic.
About this time he took another journey to Scotland, and had an
interview with Sir Walter Scott, who had, he says, “nothing in his
manner or conversation to impress a visitor with his greatness.”
Immediately on his return he made his final remove to the Mansion
House, Cheapside--once the residence of the Lord Mayor--and the annual
current of sales rose in the proportion of from eighteen to twenty-two.
Now a popular as well as a wealthy man, he was elected a Common
Councillor of the Ward of Cheap, took a country house at Norwood, with
a beautiful garden attached--“though I scarcely knew a rose from a
rhododendron”--and set up a carriage.
It was, of course, from the Mansion House that his well-known
publications were dated. In 1825, the year after the purchase of the
“Table Book,” he published the “London Encyclopædia;” it was a time of
great financial difficulty (as we have, indeed, seen in almost all our
lives of contemporary publishers); his bills were dishonoured to the
extent of twenty thousand pounds; and the work was began solely to give
employment to those who had been faithful in more prosperous years. The
public, however, supported the undertaking, and Tegg was rewarded for
his courage.
The time of the panic, in 1826, was a season of severe trial, in
domestic as well as pecuniary matters; and Tegg, though he maintained
that few men were ever insolvent through mere misfortune, began to
fear that despondency would deprive him of his reason. And now it was
that he appreciated more than ever the brave qualities of his wife,
who roused and manned him again to the struggle; till, in the end, he
became a gainer rather than a loser by the crisis, for the best books
were then sold as almost worthless; and at Hurst and Robinson’s sale he
purchased the most popular of Scott’s novels at fourpence a volume.
Among his other great “remainder” bargains we may mention the purchase
of the remainder and copyright of “Murray’s Family Library” in 1834.
He bought 100,000 volumes at one shilling, and reissued them at more
than double the price. His greatest triumph of all was, however, the
acquisition of “Valpy’s Delphin Classics,” in one hundred and sixty-two
large octavo volumes, the stock amounting to nearly fifty thousand
copies, the whole of which were sold off in two years.
To return to his own publications, we find that, up to the close of
1840, he had issued four thousand works on his own account, and “not
more than twenty were failures.”
Tegg’s reputation as a bookseller chiefly rests upon his cheap reprints
and abridgments of popular works; and, in connection with these, his
name is mentioned in Mr. Carlyle’s famous petition on the Copyright
Bill. Though we have failed to ascertain to what general or particular
works Mr. Carlyle refers, the petition is of such curious interest
to all concerned in the writing and selling of books, that we do not
hesitate to quote it in extenso[29]:--
“To the honourable the Commons of England, in Parliament
assembled, the Petition of Thomas Carlyle, a Writer of Books,
“Humbly sheweth,
“That your petitioner has written certain books, being incited
thereto by various innocent or laudable considerations, chiefly
by the thought that the said books might in the end be found to
be worth something.
“That your petitioner had not the happiness to receive from
Mr. Tegg, or any Publisher, Re-publisher, Printer, Book-buyer,
or other the like men, or body of men, any encouragement or
countenance in the writing of said books, or to discern any
chance of receiving such; but wrote them by effort of his own
will, and the favour of Heaven.
“That all useful labour is worthy of recompense; that all
honest labour is worthy of the chance of recompense; that the
giving and assuring to each man what recompense his labour
has actually merited, may be said to be the business of
all Legislation, Polity, Government and social arrangement
whatsoever among men;--a business indispensable to attempt,
impossible to accomplish accurately, difficult to accomplish
without inaccuracies that become enormous, insupportable, and
the Parent of Social Confusion which never altogether end.
“That your petitioner does not undertake to say what recompense
in money this labour of his may deserve; whether it deserves
any recompense in money, or whether money in any quantity could
hire him to do the like.
“That this labour has found hitherto in money, or money’s
worth, small recompense or none; but thinks that, if so,
it will be at a distant time, when he, the labourer, will
probably be no longer in need of money, and those dear to him
will still be in need of it.
“That the law does, at least, protect all persons in selling
the productions of their labour at what they can get for it, in
all market-places, to all lengths of time. Much more than this
the law does to many, but so much it does to all, and less than
this to none.
“That your petitioner cannot discover himself to have done
unlawfully in this his said labour of writing books, or to have
become criminal, or to have forfeited the law’s protection
thereby. Contrariwise, your petitioner believes firmly that he
is innocent in said labour; that if he be found in the long-run
to have written a genuine, enduring book, his merit therein,
and desert towards England and English and other men will be
considerable, not easily estimated in money; that, on the other
hand, if his book prove false and ephemeral, he and it will be
abolished and forgotten, and no harm done.
“That in this manner your petitioner plays no unfair game
against the world: his stake being life itself, (for the
penalty is death by starvation), and the world’s stake nothing,
till it see the die thrown; so that in every case the world
cannot lose.
“That in the happy and long-doubtful event of the game’s going
in his favour, your petitioner submits that the small winnings
thereof do belong to him or his, and that no other man has
justly either part or lot in them at all, now, henceforth, or
for ever.
“May it, therefore, please your Honourable House to protect him
in said happy and long-doubtful event, and (by passing your
Copyright Bill), forbid all Thomas Teggs, and other extraneous
persons entirely unconcerned in this adventure of his, to steal
from him his small winnings, for a space of sixty years, at
shortest. After sixty years, unless your Honourable House
provide otherwise, they may begin to steal.
“And your petitioner will ever pray.
“THOMAS CARLYLE.”
Tegg did not confine his business to these cheap reprints, but issued
many books which were altogether beyond the popular taste and purse,
such as “Blackstone,” edited by Price; Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,”
Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” Locke’s Works, (in ten volumes),
Bishop Butler’s Works, and Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical Polity,” &c. Out
of Dr. Adam Clarke’s “Family Bible” he is said to have made a small
fortune; the work was stereotyped, and re-issue after re-issue was
published.
In 1835 he was nominated Alderman of his Ward, but was not elected; in
the following year he was chosen Sheriff, and paid the fine to escape
serving, having resolved to forego any further civic distinctions. To
the usual fine of £400 he added another hundred, and the whole went
to found a “Tegg Scholarship” at the City of London School, and he
still further increased the value of the gift by adding thereto a very
valuable collection of books.
On 21st April, 1845, Thomas Tegg died, after a long and painful
illness, brought on by over-exertion, mental and physical. His third
son, Alfred Byron Tegg, a youth of twenty, then studying at Pembroke
College, Oxford, was so affected by the shock of his father’s death
that he died almost on receipt of the news, and was buried the same day
as his father at Wimbledon--Thomas Tegg’s native village.
At the commencement of his autobiography, Tegg says, and the narrative
bears the veracity of the statement upon every page:--“In sitting down
to write some account of my past life, I feel as if I were occupied
in making my will. I feel at a loss to express fully my emotions. I
write in a grateful spirit. What I have acquired has been acquired by
industry, patience, and privation,” and he adds elsewhere, “I can say
in passing through life, whether rich or poor, my spirit never forsook
me so as to prevent me from rallying again. I have seen and associated
with all ranks and stations in society. I have lodged with beggars, and
had the honour of presentation to Royalty. I have been so reduced as to
plead for assistance, and, by the goodness of Providence, I have been
able to render it to others.”
He was generally believed to have been the original of Twigg in Hood’s
“Tylney Hall.”
From the commencement of his career, Tegg made commercial success
his one aim in life; and with much patience, much endurance, and
much labour, he achieved it thoroughly, and, in the achieving of it
honestly, he conferred a great and lasting benefit upon the world;
for the book merchant holds in his hands the power to do good, or
to do evil, far beyond any other merchant whatsoever. Rising from a
humble position in life, he never forgot his early friends, never left
unrewarded, when possible, his early encouragers and assistants. And
if he was proud in having thus been the architect of his own fortune
and position, this pride surely was a less ignoble one than that which
leads one-half the world to go through life exultantly, with no other
self-conscious merit than having, by a simple accident, been born in
wealthier circumstances than the other half.
Tegg left behind him a large family who inherited something of their
father’s energy and vigour. With his friendly aid and encouragement
they, many of them, went elsewhere to seek their fortunes--two to
Australia and two to Dublin; and with native perseverance, with a name
that was known wherever books were sold and bought, with their father’s
connection to support them, and their father’s stock to fill their
shops, they have not failed to reap something of their father’s success.
Thomas Tegg was succeeded in London by his son and late partner, Mr.
William Tegg, and under his management the business of the house has
assumed a graver and more staid appearance. In the preface to the
twelfth edition of Parley’s “Tales about Animals,” Mr. William Tegg
claims the authorship of the whole series published by him under the
pseudonyme of “Peter Parley,”[30] a _nom de plume_, we believe, that
has covered more names than any other ever adopted by English writers.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_THOMAS NELSON_: