first arrived now travel on and circulate. If you had given a cottager
a newspaper a few years since he would have been silent and looked
glum. If you give him one now he says, "Thank you," briskly. He and his
read anything and everything; and as he walks beside the waggon he will
pick up a scrap of newspaper from the roadside and pore over it as he
goes. Girls in service send home papers from London; so do the lads
when from home--and so many are away from home now. Papers come from
Australia and America; the latter are especial favourites on account of
the oddities with which the editors fill the corners. No one ever talks
of the Continent in agricultural places; you hear nothing of France or
Germany; nothing of Paris or Vienna, which are not so very distant in
these days of railways, if distance be measured by miles. London and
London news is familiar enough--they talk of London and of the United
States or Australia, but particularly of the United States. The
Continent does not exist to them; but the United States is a sort of
second home, and the older men who have not gone sigh and say, "If I
had 'a emigrated, now you see, I should 'a done well." There must be an
immense increase in the number of papers passing through country
post-offices. That the United States papers do come there is no doubt,
for they are generally taken up by the cottage people to the farmhouses
to show where the young fellows are who have left the place. But the
remarkable fact is not in the increase of the papers, but in the growth
of the desire to read them--the demand of the country for something to
read.
In cottages of the better sort years ago you used to find the most
formal of old prints or coloured pictures on the walls, stiff as
buckram, unreal, badly executed, and not always decent. The favourites
now are cuttings from the _Illustrated London News_ or the _Graphic_,
with pictures from which many cottages in the farthest away of the far
country are hung round. Now and then one may be entered which is
perfectly papered with such illustrations. These pictures in themselves
play no inconsiderable part in educating the young, whose eyes become
accustomed to correct representations of scenes in distant places, and
who learn as much about such places and things as they could do without
personally going. Besides which, the picture being found there is
evidence that at fourth or fifth, or it may be the tenth hand, the
paper itself must have got there, and if it got there it was read.
The local press has certainly trebled in recent times, as may be
learned by reference to any newspaper list and looking at the dates.
The export, so to say, of type, machines, rollers, and the material of
printing from London to little country places has equally grown. Now,
these are not sent out for nothing, but are in effect paid for by the
pennies collected in the crooked lanes and byways of rural districts.
Besides the numerous new papers, there are the old-established ones
whose circulation has enlarged. Altogether, the growth of the local
country press is as remarkable in its way as was the expansion of the
London press after the removal of the newspaper stamp. This is
conclusive evidence of the desire to read, for a paper is a thing
unsaleable unless some one wants to read it. They are for the most part
weeklies, and their primary object is the collection of local
information; but they one and all have excerpts from London
publications, often very well selected, and quite amusing if casually
caught up by persons who may have fancied they knew something of
London, current gossip, and the world at large. For you must go from
home to learn the news; and if you go into a remote hamlet and take up
the local paper you are extremely likely to light on some paragraph
skilfully culled which will make an impression on you. It is with these
excerpts that the present argument is chiefly concerned, the point
being that they are important influences in the spread of general
information. After the local gossip has been looked at the purchasers
of these prints are sure to turn to these pieces, which serve them and
theirs the most of the week to absorb.
II
SCARCITY OF BOOKS
Some little traffic in books, or rather pamphlets, goes on now in rural
places through the medium of pedlars. There are not so many pedlars as
was once the case, and those that remain are not men of such substance
as their predecessors who travelled on foot with jewellery, laces,
watches, and similar articles. The packmen who walk round the villages
for tradesmen are a different class altogether: the pedlar does not
confine himself to one district, and he sells for his own profit. In
addition to the pins and ribbons, Birmingham jewellery, dream-books,
and penny ballads, the pedlar now produces a bundle of small books,
which are practically pamphlets, though in more convenient form than
the ancient quartos. They are a miscellaneous lot, from fifty to one
hundred and fifty pages; little monographs on one subject, tales, and
especially such narratives as are drawn up and printed after a great
calamity like the loss of the _Atalanta_. It is a curious fact that
country people are much attracted to the sea, and the story of a
shipwreck known to be true easily tempts the sixpences from their
pockets. Dream-books and ballads sell as they always did sell, but for
the rest the pedlar's bundle has nothing in it, as a rule, more
pernicious than may be purchased at any little shop. Romantic
novelettes, reprints of popular and really clever stories, numbers of
semi-religious essays and so on--some only stitched and without a
wrapper--make up the show he spreads open before the cottage door or
the servants at the farmhouse. Often the gipsy women, whose vans go
slowly along the main roads while they make expeditions to the isolated
houses in the fields, bring with them very similar bundles of
publications. The sale of books has thus partly supplanted that of
clothes-pegs and trumpery finery. Neither pedlars nor gipsies would
carry such articles as books unless there was a demand for them, and
they thereby demonstrate the growth of the disposition to read.
There are no other persons engaged in circulating books in the actual
country than these. In the windows of petty shops in villages it is
common to see a local newspaper displayed as a sign that it is sold
there; and once now and then, but not often, a few children's
story-books, rather dingy, may be found. But the keepers of such shops
are not awake to the new condition of things; very likely they cannot
read themselves, and it does not occur to them that the people now
growing up may have different feelings to those that were general in
their own young days. In this inability to observe the change they are
not alone. If it was explained to them, again, they would not know how
to set about getting in a suitable stock; they would not know what to
choose nor where to buy cheaply. Somebody would have to do it all for
them. Practically, therefore, in the actual country there are no other
traders distributing cheap books than pedlars and gipsy women. Coming
in thence to those larger villages which possess a market and are
called towns--often only one long street--there is generally a sort of
curiosity shop, kept perhaps by a cobbler, a carver and gilder, or
brazier, where odds and ends, as old guns and pistols, renovated
umbrellas, a stray portmanteau, rusty fenders, and so forth, are for
sale. Inside the window are a few old books, with the brown and faded
gilt covers so common in days gone by, and on market days these are put
outside on the window-sill, or perhaps a plank on trestles forming a
bookstall. The stray customers have hardly any connection with the
growing taste for reading, being people a little outside the general
run--gentlemen with archaeological or controversial tendencies, who
never pass a dingy cover without going as far as the
title-page--visitors, perhaps, at houses in the neighbourhood wandering
round to look at an ancient gateway or sun-dial left from monastic
days. Villagers beginning to read do not care for this class of work;
like children, they look for something more amusing, and want something
to wonder at for their money.
At the post-office there is often an assortment of cheap stationery on
sale, for where one cottager wrote a letter a few years ago ten write
them now. But the shopkeeper--most likely a grocer or storekeeper of
some kind--knows nothing of books, and will tell you, if you ask him,
that he never sells any or has any orders. How should he sell any,
pray, when he does not put the right sort into his window? He does not
think people read: he is occupied with moist sugar. So that in these
places literature is at a standstill. Proceeding onwards to the larger
market town, which really is a town, perhaps a county town, or at least
with a railway station, here one or two stationers may be found. One
has a fair trade almost entirely with the middle-class people of the
town; farmers when they drive in call for stationery, or for books if
there is a circulating library, as there usually is. The villagers do
not come to this shop; they feel that it is a little above them, and
they are shy of asking for three pennyworth of writing-paper and
envelopes. If they look in at the window in passing they see many
well-bound books from 5s. to 10s., some of the more reputable novels,
and educational manuals. The first they cannot afford; for the second
they have not yet acquired the taste; the last repel them. This
bookseller, though of course quite of a different stamp, and a man of
business, would probably also declare that the villagers do not read.
They do not come to him, and he is too busy to sit down and think about
it. The other stationer's is a more humble establishment, where they
sell cheap toys, Berlin wool, the weekly London papers with tales in
them, and so on. The villagers who get as far as this more central town
call here for their cheap stationery, their weekly London novelette, or
tin trumpets for the children. But here, again, they do not order
books, and rarely buy those displayed, for exactly the same reason as
in the lesser village towns. The shopkeeper does not understand what
they want, and they cannot tell him. They would know if they saw it;
but till they see it they do not know themselves. There is no medium
between the villager who wants to read and the books he would like.
There is no machinery between the villager who wants to read and the
London publisher. The villager is in utter ignorance of the books in
the publisher's warehouse in London.
The villager who has just begun to read is in a position almost
incomprehensible to a Londoner. The latter has seen books, books, books
from boyhood always around him. He cannot walk down a street, enter an
omnibus, go on a platform without having books thrust under his eyes.
Advertisements a yard high glare at him from every hoarding, railway
arch, and end-house facing a thoroughfare. In tunnels underground, on
the very roofs above, book advertisements press upon his notice. It is
impossible to avoid seeing them, even if he would. Books are
everywhere--at home, at the reading-room, on the way to business; and
on his return it is books, books, books. He buys a weekly paper, and
book advertisements, book reviews, occupy a large part of it. Buy what
sort of print he will--and he is always buying some sort from mere
habit--books are pushed on him. If he is at all a student, or takes an
interest--and what educated Londoner does not?--in some political,
scientific, or other question, he is constantly on the watch for
publications bearing upon it. He subscribes to or sees a copy of one or
other of the purely literary papers devoted to the examination of
books, and has not the slightest difficulty in finding what he wants;
the reviews tell him precisely the thing he requires to know, whether
the volume will suit him or not. The reading Londoner is thus in
constant contact with the publisher, as much as if the publisher spoke
to him across the breakfast table.
But the villager has never heard the publisher's name; the villager
never sees a literary review; he has never heard, or, if so, so
casually as not to remember, the name of any literary paper describing
books. When he gets hold of a London paper, the parts which attract him
are certainly not the advertisements; if he sees a book advertised
there, it is by chance. Besides which, the advertisements in London
papers are, from necessity of cost, only useful to those who frequently
purchase books or have some reason for keeping an eye on those that
appear. There are thousands of books on publishers' shelves which have
been advertised, of course, but are not now ever put in the papers. So
that when the villager gets a London paper, as he does now much more
frequently, the advertisements, if he sees them, are not designed for
his eye and do not attract him. He never sees a gaudy poster stuck on
the side of the barn; there are no glazed frames with advertisements in
the sheds or hung on the trees; the ricks are not covered, like the
walls of the London railway stations, with book advertisements, nor are
they conspicuous on the waggons as they are on the omnibuses. When he
walks down the village there are no broad windows piled with books
higher than his head--books with the backs towards him, books with the
ornamented cover towards him, books temptingly open at an illustration:
nothing of the sort. There is not a book to be seen. Some few books are
advertised in the local press and receive notices--only a few, and
these generally of a class too expensive for him. Books of real value
are usually dear when first published. If he goes to a stationer's, as
already pointed out, for a few sheets of writing paper and a packet of
envelopes, he sees nothing displayed there to tempt him. Lastly, he
hears no talking about books. Perhaps the most effective of all
advertisements in selling a book is conversation. If people hear other
people continually alluding to, or quoting, or arguing about a book,
they say, "We must have it;" and they do have it. Conversation is the
very life of literature. Now, the villager never hears anybody talk
about a book.
III
THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING
The villager could not even write down what he would like to read, not
yet having reached the stage when the mind turns inwards to analyse
itself. If you unexpectedly put a boy with a taste for reading in a
large library and leave him to himself, he is at a loss which way to
turn or what to take from the shelves. He proceeds by experiment,
looking at cover after cover, half pulling out one, turning over a few
leaves of another, peeping into this, and so on, till something seizes
his imagination, when he will sit down on the steps at once instead of
walking across the room to the luxurious easy-chair. The world of books
is to the villager far more unknown than to the boy in the library, who
has the books before him, while the villager looks into vacancy. What
the villager would like can only be gathered from a variety of little
indications which hint at the unconscious wishes of his mind.
First, the idea that he would require something easy and simple like a
horn-book or primer must be dismissed. Villagers are not so simple by
any means. Nor do they need something written in the plainest language,
specially chosen, as words of one syllable are for children. What is
designed for the village must not be written down to it. The village
will reject rice and corn-flour--it will only accept strong meat. The
subject must be strong, the manner strong, and the language powerful.
Like the highest and most cultured minds--for extremes meet--the
intelligence of the villagers naturally approves the best literature.
Those authors whose works have a world-wide reputation (though totally
unknown by name in hamlets sixty miles from London) would be the most
popular. Their antiquity matters nothing; they would be new in the
hamlet. When a gentleman furnishes a library he chooses representative
authors--what are called library-books--first, forming a solid
groundwork to the collection. These are the very volumes the country
would like.
Every one when first exploring the world of books, and through them the
larger world of reality, is attracted by travels and voyages. These are
peculiarly interesting to country people, to whom the idea of
exploration is natural. Reading such a book is like coming to a hill
and seeing a fresh landscape spread out before them. There are no
museums in the villages to familiarise them with the details of life in
distant parts of the earth, so that every page as it is turned over
brings something new. They understand the hardships of existence, hard
food, exposure, the struggle with the storm, and can enter into the
anxieties and privations of the earlier voyagers searching out the
coast of America. They would rather read these than the most exciting
novels. If they could get geography, without degrees of longitude,
geography, or rather ethnography, which deals with the ways of the
inhabitants, they would be delighted. All such facts being previously
unknown come with the novelty of fiction. Sport, where it battles with
the tigers of India, the lions of Africa, or the buffalo in
America--with large game--is sure to be read with interest. There does
not appear to be much demand for history, other than descriptions of
great battles, not for history in the modern sense. A good account of a
battle, of the actual fighting without the political movements that led
to it, is eagerly read. Almost perhaps more than all these the wonders
of science draw country readers. If a little book containing an
intelligible and non-technical description of the electric railway were
offered in the villages, it would be certain to sell. But it must not
be educational in tone, because they dislike to feel that they are
being taught, and they are repelled by books which profess to show the
reader how to do this or that. Technical books are unsuitable; and as
for the goody-goody, it is out of the question. Most of the
reading-rooms started in villages by well-meaning persons have failed
from the introduction of goody-goody.
These are the principal subjects which the villager would select or
avoid had he the opportunity to make a choice. As it is, he has to take
what chance brings him, and often to be content with nothing, because
he does not know what to ask for. If any one ever takes up the task of
supplying the country with the sound and thoroughly first-class
literature for which it is now ready, he will at least have the certain
knowledge that he is engaged in a most worthy propaganda--with the
likelihood of a large pecuniary reward. Such profits must of necessity
be slow in the beginning, as they are in all new businesses, but they
would also be slow in working off. It is a peculiarity of the country
to be loyal. If country people believe in a bank, for instance--and
they always believe in the first bank that comes among them--they
continue to believe, and no effort whatever is necessary to keep the
connection. It will be generations in dying out. So with a newspaper,
so with an auctioneer--with everything. That which comes first is
looked on with suspicion and distrust for a time, people are chary of
having anything to do with it; but by-and-by they deal, and, having
once dealt, always deal. They remain loyal; competition is of no use,
the old name is the one believed in. Whoever acquires a name for the
supply of the literature the country wants will retain that name for
three-quarters of a century, and with a minimum of labour. At the same
time the extent of country is so large that there is certainly room for
several without clashing.
In working out a scheme for such a supply, it may be taken for granted
that books intended for the villages must be cheap. When we consider
the low prices at which reprinted books, the copyrights of which have
expired, are now often met with, there really seems no difficulty in
this. Sixpence, a shilling, eighteenpence; nothing must be more than
two shillings, and a shilling should be the general maximum. For a
shilling how many clever little books are on sale on London bookstalls!
If so, why should not other books adapted to the villager's wishes be
on sale at a similar price in the country? Something might, perhaps, be
learned in this direction from the American practice. Books in America
are often sold for a few cents; good-sized books too. Thousands of
books are sold in France at a franc--twopence less than the maximum of
a shilling. The paper is poor, the printing nothing to boast of, the
binding merely paper, but the text is there. All the villager wants is
the text. Binding, the face of the printing, the quality of the
paper--to these outside accidents he is perfectly indifferent. If the
text only is the object, a book can be produced cheaply. On first
thoughts, it appeared that much might be effected in the way of
reprinting extracts from the best authors, little handbooks which could
be sold at a few pence. Something, indeed, might be done in this way.
But upon the whole I think that as a general rule extracts are a
mistake. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as an extract. You cannot
supply the preceding part nor the following with success. The extract
itself loses its force and brilliance because the mind has not been
prepared to perceive it by the gradual approach the author designed. It
is like a face cut out of a large picture. The face may be pretty, but
the meaning is lost. Such fragments of Shakspeare, for instance, as one
sometimes still meets with reprinted in this way strike the mind like a
fragment of rock hurled at one's head. They stun with rugged grandeur.
As a rule, extracts, then, are a mistake--not as a rigid rule, but as a
general principle. It would be better for the village reader to have a
few books complete as to text, no matter how poorly printed, or how
coarsely got up, than numerous partial reprints which lead the thoughts
nowhere.
There must be no censorship, nothing kept back. The weakness and
narrowness of mind which still exists--curious relic of the past--among
some otherwise worthy classes who persist in thinking no one must read
what they dislike, must not be permitted to domineer the village
bookstall. There must be absolute freedom, or the villager will turn
away. His mind, though open to receive, is robust like his body, and
will not accept shackles. The propaganda should be of the best
productions of the highest intellects, independent of creed and party.
A practical difficulty arises from the copyrights; you cannot reprint a
book of which the copyright still exists without injury to the original
publisher and the author. But there are many hundred books of the very
best order of which the copyright has expired, and which can be
reprinted without injury to any one. Then there are the books which it
may be presumed would be compiled on purpose for the object in view
when once the scheme was in working order. Thirdly, it is probable that
many living authors when about publishing a volume would not object to
an arrangement for a production in cheap form after a reasonable time.
So that there is no such difficulty here but that it might be overcome.
IV
PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION
When you have got your village library ready, how is it to be sold? How
is it to be distributed and placed in the hands of the people? How are
these people to be got at? They are scattered far apart, and not within
sound of trumpet. Travellers, indeed, could be sent round, but
travellers cost money. There is the horse and the man to attend to it,
turnpikes, repairs, hotels--all the various expenses so well known in
business. Each traveller could only call on a certain number of
cottages and country houses per day, comparatively a small number, for
they are often at long distances from each other; possibly he might
find the garden gate locked and the people in the field. At the best
after a long day's work he would only have sold a few dozen cheap
books, and his inn bill would cover the profit upon them. Reduced thus
to the rigid test of figures, the chance of success vanishes. But so,
too, does the chance of success in any enterprise if looked at in this
fashion. It must be borne in mind that the few copies of a cheap book
sold in a day by a single traveller would not represent the ultimate
possible return. The traveller prepares the ground which may yield a
hundredfold afterwards. He awakens the demand and shows how it can be
supplied. He teaches the villager what he wants, and how to get it. He
lays the foundation of business in the future. The few pence he
actually receives are the forerunners of pounds. Nothing can be
accomplished without preliminary outlay. But conceding that the
regulation traveller is a costly instrument, and putting that method
upon one side for the present, there are other means available. There
is the post.