[_24 Dec. '08_]
In a recent number of the _Athenæum_ appeared a letter from Mr. E.H.
Cooper, novelist and writer for children, protesting against the
publication of the Queen's Gift-Book and the royally commanded cheap
edition of "Queen Victoria's Letters" during the autumn season, and
requesting their Majesties to forbear next year from injuring the general
business of books as they have injured it this year. That some
semi-official importance is attached to Mr. Cooper's statements is obvious
from the fact that the _Athenæum_ (which is the organ of the trade as well
as of learning) thought well to print his letter. But Mr. Cooper
undoubtedly exaggerates. He states that the two books in question "have
ruined the present publishing season rather more effectively than a
Pan-European war could have done." Briefly, this is ridiculous. He says
further: "Men and women who could trust to a sale of 5000 or 6000 copies
of a novel, equally with authors who can command much larger sales, find
that this year the sale of their annual novel has reached a tenth part of
the usual figures." This also is ridiculous. The general view is that,
while the season has been scarcely up to the average for fiction, it has
not been below the average on the whole. But Mr. Cooper is nothing if not
sweeping. A few days later he wrote to the _Westminster Gazette_ about the
House of Lords, and said: "I am open to wager a considerable sum that if
the Government fights a general election next year they will win back all
their lost by-elections and get an increased majority besides." Such
rashness proves that grammar is not Mr. Cooper's only weak point.
* * * * *
It is a pity that Mr. Cooper's protest was not made with more moderation,
for it was a protest worth making. The books of the two Queens have not
ruined the season, nor have they reduced the sales of popular novels by 90
per cent.; but they have upset trade quite unnecessarily. The issue of
"Queen Victoria's Letters" at six shillings was a worthy idea, but its
execution was thoughtlessly timed. The volumes would have sold almost
equally well at another period of the year. As for "Queen Alexandra's
Gift-Book," I personally have an objection to the sale of books for
charity, just as I have an objection to all indirect taxation and to the
paying of rates out of gas profits. In such enterprises as the vast,
frenzied pushing and booming of the "Gift-Book," the people who really pay
are just the people who get no credit whatever. The public who buy get
rich value for their outlay; the chief pushers and boomsters get an
advertisement after their own hearts; and the folk who genuinely but
unwillingly contribute, without any return of any kind, are authors whose
market is disturbed and booksellers who, partly intimidated and partly
from good nature, handle the favoured book on wholesale terms barely
profitable. I will have none of Mr. Cooper's 90 per cent.; but I dare say
that I have lost at the very least £10 owing to the "Gift-Book." That is
to say, I have furnished £10 to the Unemployed Fund. I share Mr. Cooper's
resentment. I do not want to give £10 to any fund whatever, and to force
me to pay it to the Unemployed Fund, of all funds, is to insult my most
sacred convictions. £10 wants earning. And the fact that £10 wants earning
should be brought to the attention of Windsor and Greeba Castles.
* * * * *
Still, I am not depressed about the general cause of serious literature.
Serious literature is kept alive by a few authors who, not owning
motor-cars nor entertaining parties to dinner at the Carlton, find it
possible and agreeable to maintain life and decency on the money paid down
by very small bands of truly bookish readers. And these readers are not
likely to deprive themselves completely of literature for ever in order to
possess a collection of royal photographs. The injury to serious
literature is slight and purely temporary.
* * * * *
[_31 Dec. '08_]
A melancholy Christmas, it seems! According to "a well-known member of the
trade," the business is once again--the second time this year--about to
crumble into ruins. This well-known member of the trade, who discreetly
refrains from signing his name, writes to the _Athenæum_ in answer to Mr.
E.H. Cooper's letter about the disastrous influence of royal books on the
publishing season. According to him, Mr. Cooper is all wrong. The end of
profitable publishing is being brought about, not by their Majesties, but
once more by the authors and their agents. It appears that too many books
are published. Authors and their agents have evidently some miraculous
method of forcing publishers to publish books which they do not want to
publish. I am not a member of the trade, but I should have thought that
few things could be easier than not to publish a book. Presumably the
agent stands over the publisher with a contract in one hand and a revolver
in the other, and, after a glance at the revolver, the publisher signs
without glancing at the contract. Secondly, it appears, authors and their
agents habitually compel the publisher to pay too much, so that he
habitually publishes at a loss. (Novels, that is.) I should love to know
how the trick is done, but "a well-known member of the trade" does not go
into details. He merely states the broad fact. Thirdly, the sevenpenny
reprint of the popular novel is ruining the already ruined six-shilling
novel. It is comforting to perceive that this wickedness on the part of
the sevenpenny reprint cannot indefinitely continue. For when there are no
six-shilling novels to reprint, obviously there can be no sevenpenny
reprints of them. There is justice in England yet; but a well-known member
of the trade has not noticed that the sevenpenny novel, in killing its own
father, must kill itself. At any rate he does not refer to the point.
I have been young, and now am nearly old. Silvered is the once brown
hair. Dim is the eye that on a time could decipher minion type by
moonlight. But never have I seen the publisher without a fur coat in
winter nor his seed begging bread. Nor do I expect to see such sights. Yet
I have seen an author begging bread, and instead of bread, I gave him a
railway ticket. Authors have always been in the wrong, and they always
will be: grasping, unscrupulous, mercenary creatures that they are! Some
of them haven't even the wit to keep their books from being burnt at the
stake by the executioners of the National Vigilance Association. I wonder
that publishers don't dispense with them altogether, and carry on unaided
the great tradition of English literature. Anyhow, publishers have had my
warm sympathy this Christmas-time. When I survey myself, as an example,
lapped in luxury and clinking multitudinous gold coins extorted from
publishers by my hypnotizing rascal of an agent; and when I think of the
publishers, endeavouring in their fur coats to keep warm in fireless rooms
and picking turkey limbs while filling up bankruptcy forms--I blush. Or I
should blush, were not authors notoriously incapable of that action.
1909
"ECCE HOMO"
[_7 Jan. '09_]
The people who live in the eye of the public have been asked, as usual, to
state what books during the past year have most interested them, and they
have stated. This year I think the lists are less funny than usual. But
some items give joy. Thus the Bishop of London has read Mr. A.E.W. Mason's
"The Broken Road" with interest and pleasure. Mr. Frederic Harrison, along
with two historical works, has read "Diana Mallory" with interest and
pleasure. What an unearthly light such confessions throw upon the
mentalities from which they emanate! As regards the Bishop of London I
should not have been surprised to hear that he had read "Holy Orders" with
interest and pleasure. But Mr. Frederic Harrison, one had naïvely
imagined, possessed some rudimentary knowledge of the art which he has
practised.
* * * * *
This confessing malady is infectious, if not contagious. I suppose that
few persons can resist the microbe. I cannot. I feel compelled to announce
to all whom it may not concern the books of the year which (at the moment
of writing) seem to have most interested me--apart from my own, _bien
entendu_: H.G. Wells's "New Worlds for Old." If it is not in its fiftieth
thousand the intelligent masses ought to go into a month's sackcloth.
"Nature Poems," by William H. Davies. This slim volume is quite
indubitably wondrous. I won't say that it contains some of the most
lyrical lyrics in English, but I will say that there are lyrics in it as
good as have been produced by anybody at all in the present century. "A
Poor Man's House," by Stephen Reynolds. Young Mr. Reynolds has already
been fully accepted by the aforesaid intelligent masses, and I have no
doubt that he is tolerably well satisfied with 1908. Nietzsche's "Ecce
Homo." When this book gets translated into English (I have been reading it
in Henri Albert's French translation) it will assuredly be laughed at. I
would hazard that it is the most conceited book ever written. Take our
four leading actor-managers; extract from them all their conceit; multiply
that conceit by the self-satisfaction of Mr. F.E. Smith, M.P., when he has
made a joke; and raise the result to the Kaiser-power, and you will have
something less than the cube-root of Nietzsche's conceit in this the last
book he wrote. But it is a great book, full of great things.