We have, by this time, given historico-biographical notices of
publishers and booksellers, representing very various phases of the
“trade;” but we have still to show how, in the economy of publishing,
and through an ingenious division of labour, the smaller booksellers in
town, and all the booksellers in the country and the colonies, are kept
constantly supplied with books and periodicals.
Before a new book is published, the work is taken round to the larger
houses in the “Row,” and other parts of London, and “subscribed,” that
is the first price to the trade, and the actual selling price to the
public are quoted, and orders at the former price are given, according
to the purchaser’s faith in the expected popularity of the work in
question.
The wholesale houses, in their turn, supply all the country, colonial,
and smaller London orders, reaping, of course, a due advantage from
having the volumes demanded already stowed in their warehouses.
By far the largest business in this branch of the trade is executed
by the old-established firm of Simpkin, Marshall, and Company,
and though they by no means confine their attention solely to the
commission-paying business of middlemen--for they are themselves
publishers of educational and other widely-circulating works--yet their
name has long, throughout the length and breadth of the land, been held
synonymous with this wholesale supply of the requirements of other
houses.
The real founder of this enormous traffic was, Benjamin Crosby. The
son of a Yorkshire grazier, he came to London to seek his fortunes,
and was apprenticed to James Nunn, a bookseller in Great Queen Street.
As soon as his indentures had expired, he obtained a situation under
George Robinson--the “King of the Booksellers”--and, in a few years
after this, succeeded to the business of Mr. Stalker, of Stationers’
Hall Court. Crosby was one of the first London booksellers who
travelled regularly through the country, soliciting orders for the
purpose of effecting sales and extending his connections. In a short
time he acquired a pre-eminence as a supplier of the country houses,
and also as one of the largest purchasers at trade sales, especially
when publishers’ stocks were sold off. The extension of the business
had been very materially assisted by the unremitting exertions of two
assistants--Simpkin and Marshall--and when, in 1814, he was stricken
by a sudden attack of paralysis, he made over a certain portion of
his stock and the whole of his country connection to Robert Baldwin,
and Cradock and Joy, he left the remainder, with the premises and the
London connection, to Simpkin and Marshall. Soon after this, a second
attack deprived him of his speech, and for a time of his reason, and
he died in the following year, 1815.
Under Simpkin and Marshall, which was now, of course, the new title
of the firm, the business soon began again to expand, for they
retained most of their London connections, and following Crosby’s
example, attracted the attention of many country clients, whom
they not only supplied with books, but for whose publications they
became the London agents--a business without speculative risk, and
consequently profitable. For instance, in 1827, an unpretentious little
volume--“Poems by Two Brothers,” having the modest motto, _Hæc nos
novimus esse nihil_, published by J. and J. Jackson, Louth, was also
stamped with the imprimatur of Simpkin and Marshall, and thus they had
the signal honour of being Mr. Tennyson’s first London publishers,
though very probably the honour in this case was greater than the
profit.
In 1828, Simpkin retired, or rather was bought out of the business by
Mr. Miles, who immediately took the financial management of the whole
concern, and the firm adopted the new title of “Simpkin, Marshall and
Co.” Simpkin, however, did not die until the 25th of December, 1854,
and thus enjoyed a long period of peaceful superannuation.
The practice of lending their names to the works published by their
country clients, though free from business venture, was not unattended
by legal risk, for in 1834 they had an action brought against them for
libel, which at the time attracted a very general and lively interest;
though they were indicted solely as the London agents of _Tait’s
Edinburgh Magazine_, in which a series of articles had appeared,
reflecting on the conduct of Richmond, a man notorious as a spy, and
who, as an instrument of the Government, had procured the execution of
Hardie and his companion at Glasgow in the winter of 1819-20. Richmond
laid the damages that his character had sustained at the absurd figure
of five thousand pounds, but Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, to whom the defence
was entrusted, so thoroughly exposed the antecedents and present means
of livelihood of the plaintiff that before the trial was over he was
absolutely fain to withdraw his action and elect to be non-suited.
In 1837 Baldwin and Cradock failed, and handed over the country
connection they had derived from Crosby, to Simpkin, Marshall and
Company. This occurred on the October “Magazine day” of that year; for
three days and three nights the partners and their assistants never
left the establishment at Stationers’ Hall Court, and Baldwin’s country
clients were so pleased that they had been spared so much expected
delay and annoyance that one and all resolved to keep their business
in the hands of their new agents; and with this addition to their
trade, the business relations of Simpkin, Marshall and Company were now
infinitely beyond anything that even Crosby had before experienced.
In 1855, Richard Marshall retired from the business, and consequently,
the management of the concern remained almost entirely in the hands of
Mr. Miles’s two sons. Marshall died at the ripe age of seventy-five, on
the 17th of November, 1863.
In 1859 the premises were rebuilt and enlarged, and every possible
improvement, to save trouble and economise time, was introduced into
the new establishment. Among the gentlemen who had been employed in the
old warehouse was Mr. F. Laurie, a barrister-at-law, who afterwards
served in the printed-book department of the British Museum, and who
was widely known as the author of a “Life of Henry Fielding,” and
as a frequent contributor to periodical literature. As none of the
country booksellers have more than one London agent, by him they are
supplied with the books and periodicals of all the London publishers,
an arrangement that saves an infinity of trouble, expense and delay.
A century ago, in the days of small things, the agent made himself
useful to the provincial bookseller in many other ways than in the mere
supplying of publications. In many cases he was expected to forward
the newspapers, but other and stranger commissions often fell to his
lot. A great wholesale house in London at the present day would be
rather surprised to receive the following orders, which, however, all
occur in a bookseller’s records late in the eighteenth century:--“1
sliding Gunter from some of the instrument makers;” “two-eighth share
of lottery-tickets;” “1 oz. of Maker’s Cobalt, as advertized on the
cover of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_;” or a direction “to please and
send on Saturday, and pay Mr. Barratt, Parliament Place, Palace Yard,
Westminster, £1 0_s._ 6_d._, King’s Rent, due 10th of October last, for
the Vicarage of Holy Cross, Shrewsbury.”
We cannot, perhaps, convey a better idea of the manner in which
business is conducted by these wholesale houses in the “Row,” than by
giving a description of “Magazine day,”--by far the busiest time in
each month. Very quiet is Paternoster Row generally, and its solitude
is broken only by the fitful and fleeting appearance of publishers,
their agents, and literary men--the latter, as a rule, in clerical
costume, with white neckties which betray their avocation as lying
in “the religious publication line of business;” while its silence
is broken by some venturous barrel-organ player, or by an old blind
fiddler, whose music is appreciated and encouraged by the young
shop-boys, lurking behind each alley corner to enjoy the furtive
pipe. But on “Magazine day” all this is changed, the street is now
a struggling scene of bustle and confusion; now every house is in
a thrill of agitation from the garret to the cellar, and now every
business nerve is strained. Owing to the inconvenient innovation of
magazine proprietors, in publishing their periodicals on different
days, “Magazine day” has lost much of its pristine glory, but even now
the work commences on the eve of the chief day of publication, which is
known consequently as “late night,” for the assistants are generally
kept busily engaged till twelve or one o’clock. By the morning’s post
of this preceding day the country orders arrive, and the invoices have
to be made out from the lists received. Every regular customer has
his allotted pigeon-hole, into which the invoices are put as soon as
copied, together with such of the books he has ordered as are on the
premises; for the majority of the smaller country booksellers take
advantage of their monthly parcels, and to save expense of frequent
railway carriage, include also in their orders such recent books as
they may require. Early in the morning, or sometimes on the night
before, the magazines arrive, and it is on this morning that the real
work begins, for though as large a stock of current literature is kept
in each warehouse as is possible, there are still many publishers to
be sent to. While the assistants are busily engaged sorting out the
books, and supplying each order with the works they have in hand,
the “collectors” are furnished with lists of the books required from
other houses. The “collector” is by no means an unimportant person in
a publisher’s establishment; though “seedy” in attire and suspicious
in general appearance, he is entrusted with large sums of money, for
the cheaper publications are all paid for in ready cash. Bag in hand he
rushes in hot haste all over London, and with an impudent tongue and
a pair of brawny shoulders, thrusts himself to the front place before
each publisher’s counter. As we listen for a moment to the reply he
receives as to the price of a cheap periodical, we may gain an insight
into the middleman’s system of profit. “Sixes are fours and twelves
are thirteens!” yells the shop-boy, the which being interpreted means
that the wholesale price of the sixpenny periodical in question is
fourpence, and that thirteen copies go to the dozen.
The bustle at each establishment is, of course, greatly increased by
the fact that each house has to supply the wants of others, as well
as to satisfy its own--all the counters of the wholesale booksellers
being filled with screeching collectors, with greedily-gaping bags.
Early in the afternoon, however, the collectors return, and now the
books, magazines, and invoices are carried into the packing department,
and such works as could not be obtained are written off as “out of
print,” &c. Packing is an art not easily acquired, and necessitates the
patient and skilful use of much brown paper, and, in many houses, of
paper-pulp stereo-moulds, by way of stiffening. The smaller parcels are
finished first, and as soon as all are ready for removal the carriers’
carts and vans arrive; all entering the Row in regular order from the
Ludgate Hill end, and leaving it in the direction of Cheapside. By
the time that peace and quietude are restored to the neighbourhood,
some two and a half millions of volumes and periodicals (Simpkin,
Marshall and Company alone having probably despatched from six to eight
hundred different parcels) are flying from London to all parts of the
kingdom--to be greedily devoured and depreciatingly criticised on the
morrow.
Not the least profitable portion of the business done by Simpkin,
Marshall and Company lies in their Colonial trade, for in this branch,
in common with other houses, they insist upon ready money payments, and
consequently all bad and doubtful debts are avoided.
Besides holding many valuable copyrights in educational works, and
publishing to a large extent upon commission, they, as we have
previously shown, are the London agents for all works published by
their country clients. Nothing, perhaps, is more curious among modern
“literary curiosities” than the sudden and unparalleled popularity of
a small pamphlet entitled “Dame Europa’s School,” written in a style
and manner not unfamiliar to us in Swift’s inimitable “Tale of a Tub;”
witty, certainly, and undeniably apropos to the times, this clever
skit was taken by its author, Mr. Pullen, a minor canon of Salisbury
Cathedral, through the usual round of the London publishers, and,
as usual with pamphlets, they one and all declined even to read the
manuscript. Mr. Pullen, in despair, gave it to Mr. Brown, a bookseller
of Salisbury, to publish on commission--that is, the author undertook
all the risk, and the publisher charged merely a certain percentage on
the sales--and limited the amount that was to be spent in advertising
to two or three pounds. As Simpkin, Marshall and Company were Mr.
Brown’s London agents, the metropolitan sale was entrusted to their
care. Without any further trouble or expenditure, the little venture
was launched, and in something like a week had created such a _furore_
that the printing had to be transferred to London, and Mr. Pullen is
stated to have cleared a handsome sum from the extraordinary sale
of his pamphlet, and the commissions gathered by the London and the
country publishers were certainly unprecedented in connection with a
little venture of this description. The London booksellers to whom it
had been offered now began to bestir themselves, and in a few weeks
there were no less than seven-and-thirty imitations of “Dame Europa’s
School” in the field, more than one of which are said to have been
written by very high dignitaries of the Church. All of these have,
however, already disappeared from circulation, though it seems probable
that the marvellously clever illustrations to the original “Dame
Europa’s School,” by Mr. Nast, one of the few really humorous artists
that America has produced, will preserve it for a time from the usual
fate of ephemeral literature.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_CHARLES EDWARD MUDIE_: