it would be hard to deny the claim of Aldus and the Estiennes to a
disinterested love of good printing, as well as a desire to get the
books in which they were interested into print. It is true that the
rich scholars of Italy and France were used to a high standard of
excellence in the books, manuscript or printed, which they put on their
shelves, but it is to the credit of Aldus and the Estiennes and Simon
Colines and Geoffroy Tory that they catered also for the needs of less
wealthy scholars, not by cheapening paper or crowding more old types
on a page, but by designing, or causing to be designed, new fonts,
with which they could print more economically without loss of beauty.
Moreover, more especially at Lyons, the new ideals of compact printing,
of the small book beautiful, were applied to printing not only in Greek
and Latin, but in the vernacular, and these sixteenth century models
can still be imitated without archaism or ostentation, which, when
fifteenth century masterpieces are followed, are often difficult to
avoid.
"A penny, I trow, is enough for books," said one of Robert Copland's
customers to him, somewhere about 1530, and the spirit of that remark
haunted the vernacular English book trade for nearly a century and a
half. Amid all the outpouring of the wonderful Elizabethan and Jacobean
literature, though no printing was allowed in the provinces except
at Oxford and Cambridge, there was not a sufficient demand for books
in all England to provide work for more than about five and twenty
master printers many of whom had only a single press, with a couple of
journeymen and an apprentice. The Privy Council was always trying to
keep down the number, both of printers and presses, and its action in
so doing is usually represented as solely dictated by the fear of their
being employed in producing seditious or schismatic pamphlets. No doubt
this fear was the main cause of the Council's action. But if there had
been enough lawful work for twice as many printers and presses, the
number might have been doubled with no increase of risk. The risk lay
solely in the fact that a man who owned and could use a press, if he
could not get enough lawful work to give him a living, might be tempted
to take secret work. Unless they were desperate, men would not risk
hanging to earn a few shillings, or a few pounds, but there is ample
evidence that in Shakespeare's day some of the small master printers
really were desperate, and it was only natural that they should do bad
work--as indeed they did. All over Europe printing at the beginning of
the seventeenth century was bad; in England it was very bad indeed.
During the second half of the seventeenth century and the whole of the
eighteenth, the wealth of England steadily increased, and with its
wealth the standard of education. There was a much greater demand for
books, and though printing was permitted after 1693 in the provinces
without restrictions, there was clearly more work to do in London.
Printing became neat, and on occasion elaborate, and throughout the
eighteenth century, both in England and Scotland, there were constant
experiments and efforts to improve it, to which full justice has not
yet been done. Among these efforts to improve it there is no reason
to include Horace Walpole's private press at Strawberry Hill, or any
of the other private presses which, possibly in imitation of his
example, subsequently sprang up, except perhaps that at Lee Priory.
The Strawberry Hill books were handsomely printed according to the
taste of the day, but they showed no originality, such as was displayed
by Baskerville or even the Foulises, and they certainly started no
style. The other private presses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries were purely literary in their aims, and many of the books
produced at them are below the average good commercial work of the day.
In the middle of the nineteenth century the great spread of education
caused a demand for very cheap books, both for amusement and
instruction, which led to some lowering of standard. More dangerous
still were the very gaudy ideals of decorative work which found
favour during the era inaugurated by the Great Exhibition of 1851.
There was an epidemic of bad taste among book buyers and publishers,
and therefore printers responded to it, as they always will, whether
gladly or reluctantly, respond to any popular demand which brings grist
to their mill. Meanwhile much quite good work was being done by the
Chiswick Press and other firms, but the influence of the amateur on the
professional printing of that period is not much in evidence, either
for good or for evil.
The Daniel Press, worked as an amusement by the Rev. C. H. O. Daniel,
Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, for a good many years, beginning
about 1874, seems to me one of the best examples of a really amateur
press that can be adduced. The interest of its books is mainly
literary, but it is also typographical, and though the performance is
usually slight, and even thin, Dr. Daniel showed real _flair_ in his
revival of the old Fell types, his uses of italics, and the happy knack
with which the work was put on the page. I think that Dr. Daniel's
influence may possibly be traced, though only quite slightly, in some
of the pretty books (often a little spoilt by the weakness of the ink)
published by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., in the eighties, most of them
printed by Messrs. Ballantyne. If this is true, it is so much more to
Dr. Daniel's credit.
We come now to the movement of which William Morris was the leader,
which placed to the credit of English typography some of the finest
books the world has ever seen. Morris must be classed as an amateur,
and his press as a private press, because he printed to please himself,
and no offer of money, however great, would have induced him to print
anything he really disliked. We must not, however, allow the private
income which enabled Morris to carry out his ideas without worrying
over cash-returns, or the fact that he sold most of his books by
means of circulars from a private house instead of over a counter,
or any other consideration, to blind us to the fact that he was one
of the world's greatest craftsmen, and certainly, if we consider his
versatility, his sureness of touch and his imagination, the finest
that the British Isles have ever produced. If he had had the largest
printing house in London, and had printed the Kelmscott books in a
special department of it to advertise the rest, it could not have made
him more of a craftsman than he was. He stands in a very real sense
alone by virtue of his unique and splendid personality.
[Illustration]
Admiration for Morris led to the setting up of several private or
amateur presses, which did excellent work in his spirit: notably
the Doves Press, conducted at first by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, an
ex-barrister, who had produced some real masterpieces as a bookbinder,
and Mr. Emery Walker, the photo-engraver, who had ever been ready
to help anyone trying to promote good printing; afterwards by Mr.
Cobden-Sanderson alone. There was also the Ashendene Press of Mr. St.
John Hornby, one of the partners in Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son, who, I
fancy, has done rather more of the work with his own hands than most
other private printers. Robert Proctor's Greek type, again, was brought
into existence by love of Morris, but Proctor, like Messrs. Ricketts
and Shannon, who were responsible for the Vale Press books, had no
press of his own.
The beauty of all these books reinforced the influence of the
Kelmscott Press ones, by proving that what Morris had done on his
own lines could be done by lesser men with the variations suggested
by their individual tastes. They reinforced also the proof which
Morris had given, that so long as it is regarded as a hobby (or in a
commercial house as an advertisement) the production of really fine
specimens of printing is not an impossibly expensive one. Morris made
no profit from the Kelmscott books as a publisher; could allot himself
no payment for all the magnificent decorative work which he put into
them with his own hands. He got nothing from his venture save the joy
of achievement and pleasure of giving copies to his friends. But he
proved the existence of a public willing to pay for the cost of print
and paper, even when both print and paper were the best which money
could buy; and I believe that most venturers in the same field have
been supported to about the same extent. From our present point of
view, this is one of the most important results which Morris achieved.
The direct influence of his work on men like Mr. Updike and Mr. Bruce
Rogers can only be reckoned very slight. But if the Kelmscott books had
not made the success they did, neither Mr. Updike nor Mr. Bruce Rogers
would have been given his chance, and to make it possible for younger
men to get their chance is one of the finest things a master craftsman
can do.
Private presses have multiplied greatly in the last thirty years,
and some of them have done fine work. But the influence which they
are exercising on the commercial printing of the present day is not
in any way comparable to that which the Kelmscott and Doves books
exercised a generation ago. There is no virtue in a book being printed
in a small edition or in a private house, and no virtue in producing
endless specimens of printing rather than books. Mr. Meynell and the
Nonesuch Press (whose achievements I should admire much more joyously
if it had not been called a "press") have shown what a diversity of
interesting work can be obtained from commercial printers by a man who
has good taste and knows how to get what he wants. When fine work can
be obtained in this way private presses seem of little use save as an
amusement to their owners. But no one is as yet making full use of the
revolution (a much greater revolution than that inaugurated by the
Aldine italics) which the "Monotype" machine has effected in modern
printing just at the moment when (owing to the economic conditions,
compositors having at last secured a fair wage) it was most needed.
Thanks to the wonderful facility with which small types can now be cut
and the greater quickness of machine-setting there is now only one
obstacle to a new triumph of the Small Book Beautiful; and that is the
obsession of the paymaster, the Customer, that it is unreasonable to
expect him to pay anything approaching the same price for compact books
in small clear type with no needless expanse of blank paper around
the type page, as for the same number of words printed in larger type
and with much more blank paper. The obsession is fostered by the fact
that the reprints of popular books which have passed out of copyright
and which often are produced in very pretty forms, are sold in large
quantities at small prices, because no author has to make a livelihood
out of them. But if a book does not appeal to a large public and yet
has to earn money for its author it cannot be sold at a low price,
and it is childish for the customer to insist that this fact should
be concealed from him by books being made needlessly large in order
that he may persuade himself that he is still getting plenty for his
money. Publishers and Printers and Authors should unite to educate
their paymaster the Customer on this point, and it is much to their
interest to do so, for the book space which is now occupied by a couple
of hundred volumes might easily hold two or three times as many if all
books were printed with pleasant compactness. If an Amateur would arise
who would help to train Customers to pay high prices for beautiful
compact books he would be doing good service. At present most of the
finely printed books are needlessly and inconveniently large.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] The story of Bible-printing in England runs on very much the
same lines. As soon as it was decided that English Bibles were to be
placed in all churches, the printers were chosen, the price was fixed
and every Parish was ordered to supply itself with a copy. From that
day to this, with only a very partial exception for a few years under
Queen Elizabeth, the printing of the plain text of the Bible has been
a monopoly in England. Since the seventeenth century it has been kept
absolutely in the hands of the King's Printers and the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge. From about 1770 onwards various provincial
printers tried to circumvent this monopoly by printing Bibles with only
a nominal amount of commentary, but hardly any of them found it worth
while to issue a second edition. The monopolists knew that to maintain
their rights in the nineteenth century, which made unrestricted
competition into a fetish, they must give good value to buyers, ensure
good workmanship, and give their workmen no ground for complaint. They
have fulfilled all three conditions, and as a result we still have a
Bible Trust in England, which is a Trust in the true meaning of the
word, because it is worked in the interest of everyone concerned.
[Illustration]FRANCIS MEYNELL[Illustration]
SOME COLLECTORS READ
This essay appeared originally in _The Colophon_, Part IV, 1930. It
was revised and retitled The Personal Element for inclusion in _The
Nonesuch Century_, 1936, from which it is here reprinted.
It wouldn't be easy to imagine an idea, a policy and a business more
"personal" than our Nonesuch has been. This is my excuse for the
personal (worse, the first-personal) character of these ensuing notes.
Nonesuch was started by three of us in the close quarters of a basement
room (two of the three became husband and wife); at our busiest and
most successful we have never had an office staff of more than three,
usually our friends as well as our associates; we later lived above
and in our office; we have been responsible ourselves not only for
every decision of policy of what to publish and not to publish but also
for every piece of printing, of make-up, of advertising; for jackets,
catalogues, specimen pages and a vast deal of miscellaneous editing.
And, more than anything else, it is our own taste which has determined
our choice of books and choice of styles. In short everything (except
typing and account-adding in later days) has been done by Vera Meynell
or David Garnett or me.
When I set myself to the making of these notes I thought I should only
have to remember, not to reconstruct. I had by heart all that was worth
knowing about the beginnings of the Nonesuch in itself. But for its
remoter beginnings in myself I found that I had in fact to go back to
my childhood.
What induced this revision of my opinion was a phrase (quoted in my
brother Everard's "Life" of Francis Thompson) from a letter of my
mother's. "Please return" she had written to Thompson, "the revise
proofs sixteen pages at a time."
First of all (said I to myself) I am the son of a mother who was not
only a poet but who knew also that page proofs have to be dealt with
in units of sixteen. Yes, and that was only a trifle of the family's
knowledge. I have often seen my mother unflinchingly cut a treasurable
phrase in one of her essays so that it should end to the line or
paragraph of the printer's prescription; and correct a proof so that a
word deleted here would be promptly balanced by an added word there to
save the over-running of the corrected lines. Where did she learn this
tenderness towards my craft? But from my father, of course.
And then I realised that, if he likes it or not, the Nonesuch Press is
really my father's grand-son. In establishing it I was doing no more
than reverting to type.
There was of course the literary background, the great names and
exciting personalities of the writers who were my parents' friends.
There was George Meredith whose limping descent of the staircase I can
just, and whose yearly tip of a pound at Christmas I can very easily,
remember. There was the silver teapot which I never carried to be
replenished without remembering my father's solemn sanctification of
it: "Robert Browning has taken his tea from this." There was W. B.
Yeats standing owl-like at the door blinking to discover my mother
through the smoke emitted from the Egyptian cigarettes which I had
lately been sent at top speed to buy, my father sometimes going
twice through his pockets before he assembled the necessary tenpence
halfpenny. (Tenpence halfpenny was also the price of a box of soldiers,
and once I thought of buying soldiers instead of cigarettes and
running away from home.) There was Francis Thompson, "The Poet" as
we children always called him, fragile, mannered, and complaining of
the weather or of the quality of our food. Much later I remember Jack
Squire discussing the plans for the first _London Mercury_; and Hilaire
Belloc brought by Wilfrid Blunt because of my father's "discovery" of
his first writing in the _Morning Post_. I don't remember Stevenson or
Patmore; but framed holographs of _In the Highlands_ and _The Toys_
were set between the gold Japanese embroideries which surrounded the
sitting room. This literary "atmosphere" was more continuously and
intensively itself than anything I know today--even in psycho-analytic
or Communist circles. "Does he write? Then do bring him." "Is he a
Thompsonian? Of course he must come."
Every Sunday afternoon and evening my parents were "at home." There
was endless poetry-reading, endless "literary talk" by my mother's
devoted admirers. No, not endless. There were two signals for their
departure. The first gong, so to speak, was the arrival of the hot
blackcurrant jam drink. The second was my father unbuttoning, almost
unostentatiously, the top button of his boots.
But all this was literature, not letters, and letters was after all
the chief occupation of the house. A literary hot-house should have
produced in me, very nearly did produce, an over-sensitive literary
plant. And sure enough I wrote poetry, with three of my sisters and one
of my brothers. (George Moore in one of the "Hail and Farewell" volumes
has a disconcerting fancy of the young Meynells assembling for their
verse-writing hour once a week.) But letters made me into a printer.
In a play about Francis Thompson which was lately produced my father
had necessarily to be represented. He objected to his portrayal under
his own name, and he was therefore made to appear as John Oldcastle,
his writing-name before I was born. In one scene he was shown sitting
in the office of the paper which he edited, _Merry England_. He struck
the bell twice for his sub-editor, once for his office boy, three
times for his secretary. There was indeed such a magazine. But there
was never an office, never a secretary, never a sub-editor, never an
office boy. The whole work was done by my mother and father and amateur
helpers on and about the library table. If I was allowed in the room on
press-days the bargain was that I was to sit under the table. Mostly
this was fun. I learned a lot about the leg-fidgets of writers. And
"under the table" became my own kingdom, from which I could at the age
of seven declaim without embarrassment Gray's "Elegy" to the Sunday
night supper guests. But one memory survives which still carries horror
with it--the memory of my mother suddenly going down on her knees, down
to my level, and burying her face in her hands. She had just been told,
in the midst of proof-correcting, of the death of Coventry Patmore.
"The Poet" was one of the helpers--a feared helper. He would wish to
engage all the rest in argument as to the desirability of this or that
paragraph. On one occasion, J. L. Garvin, who could disturb by his
brilliant relevance almost as much as Thompson by his dull irrelevance,
made an unexpected call. Proofs were already overdue. By a masterly
manoeuvre "the poet" was sent to entertain him. Garvin, the liveliest
talker of our day, was overwhelmed by Thompson's discussion of the
relative merits of Lyons and A.B.C. tea shops. He sat mumchance an
afternoon through. Thompson reported: "Never have I known Garvin so
brilliant."
_Merry England_ was a monthly, but its crises were not less acute for
that. You can put off so easily until too late what has to be done only
once a month. But _The Weekly Register_, which was also my father's
property, and which was written almost wholly by himself and my mother,
was a weekly. The correction of proofs was a diurnal occupation with
Thursdays as the grand climax. It was printed by the Westminster Press;
and here, too, my father was the begetter of my trade. For he was
part-owner of the Westminster Press and helped to establish with it a
style of typography and a care for detail in printing which were far
ahead of the run of commercial presses.
When he was over fifty my father added the last segment to the
circle. Magazine proprietor, editor, writer, printer, he now became
book publisher, as managing director of Burn & Oates. He transferred
from John Lane Francis Thompson's books and my mother's, and he gave me
my first job. He gave me also my first lesson in detail. _The Collected
Works of Francis Thompson_ were issued by Burns & Oates a few months
after I had joined the firm, and I was allowed to have a hand in
designing the edition. When it was printed my father discovered that
several commas had broken away from the ends of lines and that a number
of the kerns or top loops of the letter "f" had been broken. Day after
day piles of the imperfect volumes were massed in his flat, which was
immediately above the office. We had a sort of fire-bucket drill. One
of my sisters would find the page, my father would dab in the comma, I
would do the blotting and another sister would restack the books. Some
scores of thousands of pen corrections were thus made. I don't think my
father would have trusted any one of us to do the actual pen work. He
leant back, he quizzed, he admired after every stroke.
[Illustration: The title page of Bunyan's classic, composed in Caslon
and Deutsche Zeitschrift, printed by the Kynoch Press, edition, 1600
copies.]
In 1913, pursuing a common typographical errand, I chanced to meet
Stanley Morison, who had just emerged from a bank and was anxious to
concern himself with book-production, and he joined forces with me
at Burns & Oates. A year later as a personal venture I purchased a
hand press, which I kept in my dining room; and my next step was to
persuade the delegates of the Oxford University Press to let me use
some of their seventeenth century Fell types. They were very obliging,
and they let me have what I wanted, charged me for it as if it were
sold, but very properly kept the legal title to it, so that if I were
to misuse this cherished type they could at any time call upon me to
surrender it. I still have these Fell types in my possession. "The
Romney Street Press," since I lived in that street, was my new "style,"
and I issued a prospectus, which I regard now with mixed feelings of
shame and admiration at my audacity; for if ever there was a gold-brick
prospectus this was one! Here it is:
"The Romney Street Press at 67 Romney Street, Westminster, has been
set up for the better and unaffected production of Books, & Pamphlets,
& single sheets of poetry. The type of the Press (used for this
prospectus) is the finest of the series imported from Holland in
about 1660 by Bishop Fell for the Oxford University Press, by whose
courtesy it is now used. The editions of the Romney Street Press
will be limited to a maximum of fifty copies. The preliminary costs
of equipment amount to £40, & Francis Meynell, the Director of the
Press, invites subscriptions to cover this amount. Subscribers will
have first call upon the publications of the Press at cost price,
upon the amount of their subscription. The first publications will be
Seven Poems by Alice Meynell, written since the issue of the Collected
Poems. There will follow Mary Cary, the meditations, occasional poems
and spiritual diary of the wife of a Cromwellian captain, now first
published, from her MS. note-book; & Love in Dian's Lap, by Francis
Thompson. But the process of production will be slow. Suggestions for
other books, particularly of 17th century reference, will be welcome.
APRIL 1915."