Several days after the exhilarating interview with the Poet-Laureate of
England, I was honored by a dinner given to me by the Honorable Company
of Lady Copy-Mongers at their guildhall in Piccadilly Circus, S.W. It
was a delightful affair, and I met many ladies of prominence in literary
fields. Miss Braddon and John Oliver Hobbes were there, and one rather
stout old lady, of regal manner, who was introduced as Clara Guelph, but
whom I strongly suspected to be none other than the authoress of that
famous and justly popular work, _Leaves from My Diary in the Highlands,
or Sixty Years a Potentate_. She was very gracious to me, and promised
to send me an autograph copy of her publisher's circular.
Most interesting of all the persons encountered at the banquet, however,
was Miss Philippa Phipps-Phipps, forewoman of the Andrew Lang
Manuscript-Manufacturing Company, from whom I gained much startling
information which I am certain will interest the public.
In the course of our conversation I observed to Miss Phipps-Phipps, of
whom I had never heard before, that nothing in modern letters so amazed
me as the output of Andrew Lang, for both its quality and its quantity.
The lady flushed pleasurably, and said, modestly:
[Illustration: TRADE-MARK. NONE GENUINE WITHOUT IT]
"We try to keep up to the standard, Miss Witherup. As a worker in
literary fields, you perhaps realize how hard it is to do this, but of
one thing I assure you--we have never in the last ten years allowed a
bit of scamp work of any description to go out of our factory. Of course
we have grades of work, but the lower grades do not go out with the Lang
mark upon them."
I looked at Miss Phipps-Phipps in a puzzled way, for the full import of
her words did not dawn upon me instantly.
"I don't quite understand," said I. "We? Who are we?"
"The Lang Manuscript-Manufacturing Company," explained the young woman.
"You are aware, of course, that Andrew Lang is not an individual, but a
corporation?"
"I certainly never dreamed it," said I, with a half-smile.
"How could it be otherwise?" asked Miss Phipps-Phipps. "No human being
could alone turn out an average of 647,000,000 words a year, Miss
Witherup, not even if he could run two type-writers at once, and write
with his feet while dictating to a stenographer. It would be a physical
impossibility."
"Dear me!" I cried in amazement. "I know that there were thousands of
articles from Lang every year, but 647,000,000 words! Why, it is
incredible!"
"That is only the average, you know," said Miss Phipps-Phipps, proudly.
"In good years we have run as high as 716,000,346 words; and this year,
if all goes well and our operatives do not strike, we expect to turn out
over 800,000,000. We have signed contracts to deliver 111,383,000 words
in the month of June alone--mostly Christmas stuff, you know, to be
published next November. Last month we turned out 39,000 lines of poetry
a day for twenty-five working-days, and our essay-mill has been running
over-time for sixteen weeks."
"Well, I am surprised!" said I. "Yet, when I come to think of it, there
is no reason why I should be. This is an age of corporations."
"Precisely," said Miss Phipps-Phipps. "Furthermore, ours had a
philanthropic motive at the bottom of it all. Here was Mr. Lang simply
killing himself with work, and some 700 young men and women of an
aspiring turn of mind absolutely out of employment. The burdens of the
one, we believed, could be made to relieve the necessities of the
other, and we made the proposition to Mr. Lang to make himself over to
us, promising to fill his contracts and relieve him of the necessity of
doing any further literary work for the rest of his life. We
incorporated him on a basis of L2,000,000, giving him L1,000,000 in
shares. The rest was advertised as for sale, and was oversubscribed ten
to one. Workshops were built at Woking, and as a starter 600 operatives
were employed. Working night and day, at the end of the first year we
were just three months behind our orders. We immediately doubled our
force to 1200, and so it has gone until to-day, and the business is
constantly increasing. Our stock is at a premium of 117%, and we keep
3750 people, with a capacity of 10,000 words a day each, constantly
employed."
"I am astonished!" I cried. "The magnitude of the work is appalling. Are
your shops open to visitors?"
"Certainly. I shall be pleased if you will come out to Woking
to-morrow, and I will show you over the establishment," replied Miss
Phipps-Phipps, courteously. And then for the moment the conversation
stopped.
The next day I was at Woking, where Miss Phipps-Phipps met me at the
station. A ten-minutes' drive brought us to the factory, a detailed
description of which would be impossible in the limits at my disposal.
Suffice it to say that after an hour's walk through the various
departments I was still not half acquainted with the marvels of the
establishment. In the Essay and Letters to Dead Authors Department
sixty-eight girls were driving their pens at a rate that made my head
whirl. A whole floor was given over to the Fairy-Tale Department, and I
saw fairy-books of all the colors in the rainbow being turned out at a
rapid rate.
[Illustration: IN THE MEREDITH SHOP]
"Here," said the forelady, as we reached a large, capacious, and
well-lighted writing-room, "is our latest venture. There are 700
employees in here, and they work from 9 A.M. to 12, have a half hour
for luncheon, and resume. At five they go home. They have in hand the
Lang Meredith. We have purchased from Mr. Meredith all right and title
to his complete works, which we are having rewritten. These will appear
at the proper time as '_The Lucid Meredith_, by Andrew Lang.' The old
gentleman at the desk over there," she added, pointing to a keen-eyed,
sharp-visaged fellow, with a long nose and nervous manner, "is Mr.
Fergus Holmes, who began life as a detective, and became a critic. He is
here on a large salary, and has nothing to do but use his critical
insight and detective instinct to find the thought in some of Mr.
Meredith's most complicated periods. After all, Miss Witherup, our
operators are only human, and some of them cannot understand Meredith as
well as they might."
"I am glad to know," said I, with a laugh, "that you pay Mr. Fergus
Holmes a large salary. A man employed to detect the thought of some of
Mr. Meredith's paragraphs--"
"Oh, we understand all about that," Miss Phipps-Phipps smiled, in
return. "We know his value, which is very great in this particular
matter."
"And does he never fail?" I asked.
"I presume he does, but he never gives up. Once he asked to be allowed
to consult with Mr. Meredith before giving an opinion, and we consented.
He wrote to the author, and it turned out that Mr. Meredith had
forgotten the paragraph entirely, and couldn't tell himself what he
meant. But he was very nice about it. He gave us carte blanche to make
it mean anything that would fit into the rest of the story."
We passed on into another room.
[Illustration: "WRITING HERRICK"]
"This room," said Miss Phipps-Phipps, "is at present devoted to the
British poets. There have been a great many bad poets in Britain who
have become immortal, and we are trying to make them good. That young
man over there with red hair is rewriting Burns--the introduction we
are doing in our essay-room. The young lady in blue glasses is doing Gay
over again; and we have intrusted our Lang edition of Herrick to the
retired clergyman whom you see sitting on that settee by the window with
a slate on his lap. To show you how completely we do our work, let me
tell you that in this case of Herrick all his poems were first copied
off on slates by our ordinary copyists, so that the clergyman who is
doing them over again has only to wet his finger to rub out what might
strike some people as an immortal line."
"It's a splendid idea!" I cried. "But wouldn't a blackboard prove less
expensive?"
"We never consider expense," said Miss Phipps-Phipps. "We really do not
have to. You see, with a capacity of 800,000,000 words a year at the
rates for Lang, for which we pay at rates for the unknown, we are left
with a margin of profit which pleases our stockholders and does not
arouse the cupidity of other authors."
"What a wonderful system!" said I.
"We think it so," said Miss Phipps-Phipps, placidly.
"And do you never have any troubles?" I asked.
"Oh yes," replied my hostess. "Only last week the Grass of Parnassus and
Blue Ballade employees rose up and struck for sixpence more per
quatrain. We locked them out, and to-day have filled their places with
equally competent employees. You can always find plenty of unemployed
and unpublished poets ready to step in. Our prose hands do not give us
much trouble, and our revisers never say a word."
"Have you any novelties in hand?" I asked.
"Oh yes," said Miss Phipps-Phipps. "We are going to supersede Boswell
with _Lang's Johnson_. We are preparing a _Lang Shakespeare_; and when
the copyrights on Thackeray and Dickens have expired, we'll do them
all over again. Then we are experimenting in colors for a new
fairy-book; and our chromatic Bibles will be a great thing. We are also
contemplating an offer to the French Academy to permit all the works of
its members to be issued as ours. I really think that _Daudet_ by Andrew
Lang would pay. _Hugo_ by Lang might prove too much for the British
public, but we shall do it, because we have confidence in ourselves. We
shall issue the _Philosophy of Schopenhauer_ by Andrew Lang next week."
"How about our American authors?" I queried. "Are you going to rewrite
any of them?"
"Who are they?" asked Miss Phipps-Phipps, with an admirable expression
of ingenuousness.
"Well," said I, "myself, and--ah--Edgar Poe."
"Any poets?" said Miss Phipps-Phipps.
"Some," I answered. "Myself and--ah--Longfellow."
"I don't know," said Miss Phipps-Phipps, becoming somewhat reserved.
"Send me your manuscripts. I have heard of you, of course--but--ah--who
is Miss Longfellow?"
I contented myself with a reference to the scenery, and then I said:
"Miss Double Phipps, I wish you would conduct me into the presence of
Mr. Lang. I like him as a manly man, and I love him for the books he has
put forth, which not only show his manliness, but his appreciation of
everything in letters that is good."
"Well, really, Miss Witherup," said Miss Phipps-Phipps, "we don't know
where he is, but we think--it is not my thought, but that of the
corporation--we think you will find him playing golf at St. Andrews."
"Thank you," said I. "But, after all," I added, "it is not what the
corporation thinks so much as what you as an individual think. Where do
you believe I may find Mr. Lang?"
"Among the Immortals," was the answer, spoken with enthusiasm.
And believing that the lady was right, I ceased to look for Mr. Lang,
for in the presence of immortals I always feel myself to be foolish.
Nevertheless, I am very glad to have seen the Lang Company at Woking,
and I now understand many things that I never understood before.