bookselling annals of Little Britain, and the best-known member
(Christopher) of the family is described in the usual sugared style of
John Dunton: 'There are few booksellers in England (if any) that
understand books better than Mr. Bateman, nor does his diligence and
industry come short of his knowledge. He is a man of great reputation
and honesty.' Nichols states that Bateman would allow no person to look
into books in his shop, and when asked a reason for this extraordinary
rule, he answered: 'I suppose you may be a physician or an author, and
want some recipe or quotation; and, if you buy it, I will engage it to
be perfect before you leave me, but not after, as I have suffered by
leaves being torn out, and the books returned, to my very great loss and
prejudice.' Bateman's shop was a favourite resort of Swift, who several
times speaks of it in his 'Journal to Stella:' 'I went to Bateman's, the
bookseller, and laid out eight and forty shillings for books. I bought
three little volumes of Lucian, in French, for our Stella, and so, and
so' (January 6, 1710-11); and again: 'I was at Bateman's, to see a fine
old library he has bought, and my fingers itched as yours would do at a
china-shop' (July 9, 1711).
One of the most frequent visitors to Bateman's shop was Thomas Britton,
'the small-coal man,' who died in September, 1714. His knowledge of
books, of music and chemistry was certainly extraordinary, having regard
to his ostensible occupation. His collection of manuscripts and printed
music and musical instruments was very large. Lord Somers gave £500 for
his collection of pamphlets, and Sir Hans Sloane was also a purchaser of
many curious articles. He was a very well-known character, and 'was so
much distinguished that, when passing through the streets in his blue
linen frock, and with his sack of small coal on his back, he was
frequently accosted with the following expression: "There goes the
famous small-coal man, who is a lover of learning, a performer in music,
and a companion for gentlemen."' Saturday, when Parliament was not
sitting during the winter, was the market day with the booksellers of
Little Britain; and in the earlier part of the last century, the
frequenters of this locality included such worthies as the Duke of
Devonshire, Edward, Earl of Oxford, and the Earls of Pembroke,
Sunderland, and Winchelsea. After the 'hunt' they often adjourned to the
Mourning Bush in Aldersgate, where they dined and spent the remainder of
the day.
[Illustration: _Thomas Britton, 'the small-coal man,' Collector of
Musical Instruments and MSS._]
Another famous Little Britain bookseller was Robert Scott whose sister
was the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North's 'grandmother's woman.' Scott was
a man of 'good parts,' and was in his time, says Roger North, the
'greatest librarian in Europe; for besides his stock in England, he had
warehouses at Frankfort, Paris, and other places, and dealt by factors.'
When an old man, Scott 'contracted with one Mills, of St. Paul's
Churchyard, near £10,000 deep, and articled not to open his shop any
more. But Mills, with his auctioneering, atlases, and projects, failed,
whereby poor Scott lost above half his means. . . . He was not only an
expert bookseller, but a very conscientious, good man, and when he threw
up his trade, Europe had no small loss of him.'
The most celebrated family of booksellers, perhaps, who lived in Little
Britain, was that of Ballard, or Bullard, as the original name appears
by the auction catalogues. The family were connected with the trade for
over a century, and were noted, says Nichols, 'for the soundness of
their principles in Church and State.' One Henry Ballard lived at the
sign of the Bear without Temple Bar, over against St. Clement's Church,
in 1597, but whether he was an ancestor of the family in question is not
certain. Thomas Ballard, the founder of the bookselling branch, was
described by Dunton, in 1705, as 'a young bookseller in Little Britain,
but grown man in body now, but more in mind:
'His looks are in his mother's beauty drest,
And all the Father has inform'd the rest.'
Samuel Ballard, for many years Deputy of the Ward of Aldersgate Within,
died August 27, 1761, and his only son, Edward, January 2, 1796, aged
eighty-eight, in the same house in which he was born, having outlived
his mental faculties. He was the last of the profession in Little
Britain.
Among the scores of Little Britain men who combined publishing with
second-hand bookselling, one of the more interesting is William Newton,
who resided there during the earlier years of the last century. In 1712
he published Quincy's 'Medicina Statica,' at the end of which is this
curious 'Advertisement' (minus the superfluity of capitals): 'Those
persons who have any Librarys (_sic_) or small parcels of old books to
dispose of, either in town or countrey, may have ready money for them of
Will. Newton, Bookseller in Little Britain, London. Also all gentlemen,
and schoolmasters, may be furnished with all sorts of classics, in usum
Delphi, Variorum, etc. Likewise, he will exchange with any person, for
any books they have read and done with.'
It was from the Dolphin, in Little Britain, that Samuel Buckley first
issued the _Spectator_, March 1, 1711, _et seq._ Tom Rawlinson resided
here for some years, as did another and different kind of celebrity,
Benjamin Franklin, who worked at Palmer's famous printing-house in
Bartholomew Close. 'While I lodged in Little Britain,' says Franklin, in
his 'Autobiography,' 'I made an acquaintance with one Wilcox, a
bookseller, whose shop was at the next door. He had an immense
collection of second-hand books. Circulating libraries were not then in
use; but we agreed that, on certain reasonable terms, which I have now
forgotten, I might take, read, and return any of the books. This I
esteemed a great advantage, and made as much use of as I could.'
[Illustration: _Duke Street, Little Britain, formerly called Duck
Lane._]
But by Franklin's time the book trade of Little Britain had declined
beyond any hope of recovery. In 1756 Maitland describes the place as
'very ruinous'; the part from 'the Pump to Duck Lane is well built, and
though much inhabited formerly by booksellers, who dealt chiefly in old
books, it is now much deserted and decayed.' A few years before Nichols
published his 'Literary Anecdotes,' two booksellers used to sport their
rubric posts close to each other here in Little Britain, and these
rubric posts[176:A] were once as much the type of a bookseller's shop as
the pole is of a barber's.
Nearly all the numerous lanes and alleys immediately contiguous to
Little Britain were more or less inhabited by second-hand booksellers.
The most important in every respect of these was Duck Lane, subsequently
rechristened Duke Street, and in 1885 as a part and parcel of Little
Britain. It is the street which leads from West Smithfield to one end of
Little Britain, and the change was a very foolish one. It was to this
street that Swift conjectured that booksellers might send inquiries for
his works.
'Some county squire to Lintot goes,
Inquires for Swift in verse and prose.
Says Lintot, "I have heard the name,
He died a year ago." "The same."
He searches all the shops in vain:
"Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane."'
And Garth tells how the learned Dr. Edward Tyson filled his library from
the Duck Lane shops:
'Abandoned authors here a refuge meet,
And from the world to dust and worms retreat
Here dregs and sediments and authors reign,
Refuse of fairs and gleanings of Duck Lane.'
Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt has noted the fact that a copy of Zach. Ursinus'
'Summe of Christian Religion,' translated by H. Parry (1617), contains
on the first leaf this note: 'Mary Rous her Booke, bought in Duck Lane
bey Smithfelde, this year, 1644.'
Not very far from Little Britain is the Barbican, which at the earlier
part of the century contained several bookshops, but has since
degenerated into forbidding warehouses. Charles Lamb, under date March
25, 1829, writes: 'I have just come from town, where I have been to get
my bit of quarterly pension, and have brought home from stalls in
Barbican the old "Pilgrim's Progress," with the prints--Vanity Fair,
etc.--now scarce. Four shillings; cheap. And also one of whom I have oft
heard and had dreams, but never saw in the flesh--that is in
sheepskin--"The Whole Theologic Works of Thomas Aquinas." My arms ached
with lugging it a mile to the stage, but the burden was a pleasure, such
as old Anchises was to the shoulders of Æneas, or the lady to the lover
in the old romance, who, having to carry her to the top of a high
mountain (the price of obtaining her), clambered with her to the top and
fell dead with fatigue.'
[Illustration: _Charles Lamb, after D. Maclise._]
The district to which the name of Moorfields was once applied has no
great historic interest. It remained moorfields until it was first
drained in 1527. In the reign of James I. it was first laid out into
walks, and during the time of Charles II. some portions of it were built
upon. It soon became famous for its musters and pleasant walks, its
laundresses and bleachers, its cudgel-players and popular amusements,
its bookstalls and ballad-sellers. Writing at the beginning of the last
century, that pungent critic of the world in general, Tom Brown,
observes: 'Well, this thing called prosperity makes a man strangely
insolent and forgetful. How contemptibly a cutler looks at a poor
grinder of knives; a physician in his coach at a farrier a-foot; and a
well-grown Paul's Churchyard bookseller upon one of the trade that sells
second-hand books under the trees in Moorfields!' In Thoresby's 'Diary'
we have an entry under the year 1709 of a very rare edition of the New
Testament in English, 1536, having been purchased in Moorfields.
[Illustration: _Old Houses in Moorfields._]
By the middle of the last century Moorfields became an assemblage of
small shops, particularly booksellers', and remained such until, in
1790, the handsome square of Finsbury arose on its site. That some of
these booksellers of Moorfields had considerable stocks is seen by the
fact that that of John King, of this place, occupied ten days in the
dispersal at Samuel Baker's in 1760. Perhaps one of the most famous of
the Moorfields booksellers was Thomas King, who published priced
catalogues of books from 1780 to 1796, and who deserted Moorfields at
about the latter date, to take premises in King Street, Covent Garden,
as a book-auctioneer. Horace Walpole, referring to James West's sale in
1773, says: 'Mr. West's books are selling outrageously. His family will
make a fortune by what he collected from stalls and Moorfields.' This
sale, which occupied twenty-four days, included, as we have said on a
previous page, books by Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, and others, and also
works on Old English literature, voyages and travels, not a few of which
were undoubtedly picked up in Moorfields. The Rev. John Brand, secretary
of the Society of Antiquaries, who died in 1806, visited almost daily
the bookstalls between Piccadilly and Mile End, and may be regarded as
another Moorfields book-hunter; he generally returned from these
excursions with his deep and wide pockets well laden. His books were
chiefly collected in this way, and for comparatively small sums. Brand
cared little for the condition of his books, many of which were
imperfect, the defects being supplied in neatly-written MS. (See p.
190.) John Keats, the poet, was born in Moorfields, and Tom Dibdin was
apprenticed to an upholsterer in this district.
FINSBURY.
[Illustration: _Interior of Lackington's Shop._]
When Moorfields became improved into Finsbury Circus, the bookselling
element was by no means extinguished. James Lackington (1746 to 1816),
who had established himself as a bookseller in Chiswell Street, was
issuing catalogues from that address from 1779 to 1793. He first started
selling books on Midsummer Day, 1774, in Featherstone Street, St.
Luke's. It was from Chiswell Street that Lackington dated those rambling
letters which he styles 'Memoirs of the Forty-five First Years' of his
life. In twelve years he had progressed so rapidly, from the sack of old
rubbish for which he paid a guinea and with which he began business as a
bookseller, that a move to more commodious premises became necessary. In
1794 he transferred his stock to one of the corners of Finsbury
Square--which had been then built about five years--and started his
'Temple of the Muses.' The original building was burnt down some years
ago, but the late Charles Knight has left on record an interesting
sketch of the place as it struck him in 1801: 'Over the principal
entrance is inscribed, "Cheapest Booksellers in the World." It is the
famous shop of Lackington, Allen and Co., "where above half a million of
volumes are constantly on sale." We enter the vast area, whose
dimensions are to be measured by the assertion that a coach and six
might be driven round it. In the centre is an enormous circular counter,
within which stand the dispensers of knowledge, ready to wait upon the
county clergyman, in his wig and shovel hat; upon the fine ladies, in
feathers and trains; or upon the bookseller's collector, with his dirty
bag. If there is any chaffering about the cost of a work, the shopman
points to the following inscription: "The lowest price is marked on
every book, and no abatement made on any article." We ascend a broad
staircase, which leads to "The Lounging Rooms" and to the first of a
series of circular galleries, lighted from the lantern of the dome,
which also lights the ground-floor. Hundreds, even thousands, of volumes
are displayed on the shelves running round their walls. As we mount
higher and higher, we find commoner books in shabbier bindings; but
there is still the same order preserved, each book being numbered
according to a printed catalogue. . . . The formation of such an
establishment as this assumes a remarkable power of organization, as
well as a large command of capital.'
[Illustration: _Jones and Co. (successors to Lackington)._]
Six years after he had started, Lackington, who had been joined by his
friend, John Denis--a man of some capital--published his first catalogue
(1779), the title of the firm being Lackington and Co., and the list
enumerating some 12,000 volumes. Denis appears to have been a genuine
book-collector and a man of some taste, with the very natural result
that they soon parted company. Lackington was as vain and officious a
charlatan as ever stepped in shoe-leather--a trade to which he had been
brought up, by the way--but that he had organizing abilities of a very
uncommon order there can be no question. He found the catalogue business
a great success, and in due course issued one of 820 pages, with
entries of nearly 30,000 volumes and sets of books, all classified under
subjects as well as sizes. For thirteen years (after 1763) Lackington
did all his own cataloguing. In 1798 the Temple of the Muses was made
over to George Lackington, Allen and Co. The former was a third cousin
of the founder of the firm, and is described by John Nichols as 'well
educated and gentlemanly.'
[Illustration: _Lackington's Halfpenny._]
When he retired from the business, Lackington enjoyed himself to the top
of his bent, travelling all over the kingdom in his state coach and
scribbling. His 'Confessions' appeared in 1804, and form a sequel to his
'Memoirs,' already mentioned. He died on November 22, 1815, and is
buried at Budleigh Salterton, Devon. As a bookseller, he certainly was a
success--perhaps, indeed, one of the most successful, all things
considered, that ever lived in London. He is a hero in pretty much the
same sense as James Boswell. He had, as a matter of course, his
detractors. His contemporary booksellers loved him not, for his methods
of quick sales and small profits were things unheard of until he
appeared on the scene. Peter Pindar's 'Ode to the Hero of Finsbury
Square, 1795,' is a choice specimen of this witty writer. It begins:
'Oh! thou whose mind, unfetter'd, undisguised,
Soars like the lark into the empty air;
Whose arch exploits by subtlety devised,
Have stamped renown on Finsbury's New Square,
Great "hero" list! Whilst the sly muse repeats
Thy nuptial ode, thy prowess great _in sheets_.'
Accompanying this ode was a woodcut, which represents Lackington
mounting his gorgeous carriage upon steps formed by Tillotson's
'Sermons,' a Common Prayer, and a Bible; from one of his pockets there
protrudes a packet of papers, labelled 'Puffs and lies for my book,' and
from the other 'My own memoirs.'
The 'Co.' of George Lackington, Allen and Co. was a Mr. Hughes. At the
next shuffling of cards the firm consisted of Lackington, A. Kirkman,
Mavor--a son of Dr. Mavor, of Woodstock--and Jones. In 1822 the firm
consisted of Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Lepard, and
subsequently of Harding and Lepard (who had absorbed the important
business of Triphook, the Cunning Bookseller of Beloe, and it was this
trio who published the second edition of Dibdin's 'Library Companion'),
by whom the business was transferred to Pall Mall East. George
Lackington died in March, 1844, aged seventy-six. In the _Bookseller_ of
December 16, 1886, there is an interesting memoir of Kames James Ford,
'the last of the Lackingtonians,' who died at Crouch Hill five days
previously, aged ninety-four.
CENTRAL AND EAST LONDON.
[Illustration: _The Poultry in 1550._]
Cheapside had never much attraction to the book-collector, but the
Poultry (which is in reality a continuation of the Cheapside
thoroughfare) was for two and a half centuries a bookselling locality.
In 1569, for example, John Alde was living at 'the long shop adjoining
to St. Mildred's Church in the Poultry.' From the middle to the end of
the seventeenth century the locality had become quite famous for its
bookshops. Nat Ponder, who 'did time' for publishing a seditious
pamphlet, was Bunyan's publisher. John Dunton's shop was at the sign of
the Black Raven. No. 22 was the residence of the brothers Charles and
Edward Dilly, and it was here, at a dinner, that Dr. Johnson's
prejudices against Wilkes were entirely broken down by the latter's
brilliant conversation. The Dillys were great entertainers, and all the
more notable literary people of the period were to be met at their
house. They amassed a very large fortune. Edward died in 1807, having
relinquished the business some years previously to Joseph Mawman, who
died in 1827. Mawman, it may be mentioned, wrote an 'Excursion to the
Highlands of Scotland,' 1805, which the _Edinburgh_ furiously assailed:
'This is past all enduring. Here is a tour, _travelled_, _written_,
_published_, _sold_, and, for anything we know, _reviewed_ by one and
the same individual! We cannot submit patiently to this monstrous
monopoly.' No. 31 was the shop of Vernor and Hood, booksellers. The
latter was father of the facetious Tom Hood, who was born here in 1798.
Spon, of 15, Queen Street, Cheapside, was issuing, half a century ago,
his 'City of London Old Book Circulars,' which often contained excellent
books at very moderate prices.
[Illustration: _The Old Mansion House, Cheapside._]
The district more or less immediately contiguous to the Bank of England
was for a long period a favourite bookselling locality, but heavy rents
and crowded thoroughfares have completely killed the trade in the heart
of commercial London. Early in the seventeenth century, Pope's Head
Alley, a turning out of Cornhill, contained a number of booksellers' and
publishers' shops. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, Thomas
Guy, with a capital of about £200, started selling books at 'the little
corner house of Lombard Street and Cornhill'; but his wealth was not
derived from this source. It is interesting to note, however, that this
little corner shop existed so recently as 1833 or 1834. Alexander
Cruden, of 'Concordance' fame, settled in London in 1732, and opened a
bookstall under the Royal Exchange, and it was whilst here that he
compiled the 'Concordance' which ruined him in business and deranged his
mind. William Collins, whose catalogues for many years 'furnished
several curiosities to the literary collectors,' started selling books
in Pope's Head Alley, in or about 1778, but was burnt out in the
following year, when he removed to Exchange Alley, where he remained
until the last decade of the last century. John Sewell, who died in 1802
(aged sixty-eight), was one of the last to sport the rubric posts, and
his shop in Cornhill was a highly popular resort with book-buyers; he
was succeeded by another original character in the person of James
Asperne. J. and A. Arch were in Cornhill contemporaneously with Asperne,
and it was to these kindly Quakers that Thomas Tegg turned, and not in
vain, after being summarily dismissed from Lane's, in Leadenhall Street,
and with whom he remained for some years. It was not until some time
after he had started on his own account that Tegg commenced his nightly
book-auctions at 111, Cheapside, an innovation which resulted in Tegg
finding himself a fairly rich man. His next move was to the old Mansion
House, once the residence of the Lord Mayor, and here he met with an
increased prosperity and popularity. He was elected a Common Councillor
of the ward of Cheap, and took a country house at Norwood. Up to the
close of 1840, Tegg had issued 4,000 works on his own account (chiefly
'remainders'), and not 'more than twenty were failures.' The more
noteworthy second-hand booksellers of this neighbourhood half a century
ago were Charles Davis, whose shop was at 48, Coleman Street, and T.
Bennett, of 4, Copthall Buildings, at the back of the Bank, each of whom
published catalogues. A quarter of a century ago the last-named address
was still in possession of second-hand booksellers--S. and T. Gilbert,
and subsequently of Gilbert and Field. One of the oldest bookselling
firms in the City is that of Sandell and Smith, of 136, City Road, which
dates back to 1830. It was whilst exploring in some of the upper rooms
of this shop that a well-known first-edition collector, Mr. Elliot
Stock, came upon an incomparable array of the class of book for which he
had an especial weakness. He obtained nearly a sackload at an average of
tenpence or a shilling each, and as many of these are now not only very
rare, but in great demand at fancy prices, it is scarcely necessary to
say that the investment was a peculiarly good one. The 'haul' included
works by Byron, Bernard Barton, Browning, Barry Cornwall, Lytton,
Cowper, Dryden, Hogg, Moore, Rogers, Scott, Wordsworth, and a lot of
eighteenth-century writers. Half a century ago Edwards' 'Cheap Random
Catalogues' were being issued from 76, Bunhill Row.
[Illustration: _Gilbert and Field's Shop in Copthall Court._]
[Illustration: _E. George's (late Gladding's) Shop, Whitechapel Road._]