town. A townsman picks up twenty letters, snatches the envelopes open,
and casts them aside. The letters delivered in the country have
marvellously multiplied, but still country people do not treat letters
offhand. The arrival of a letter or two is still an event; it is read
twice or three times, put in the pocket, and looked at again. Suburban
residents receive circulars by every other post of every kind and
description, and cast them contemptuously aside. In the country the
delivery of a circular is not so treated. It is certain to be read.
Nothing may come of it, but it is certain to be looked over, and more
than once. It will be left on the table, or be folded up and put on the
mantelpiece: it will not be destroyed. Country people have not yet got
into the habit which may be called slur-reading. They really read. The
circulars at present delivered in the country are counted by ones and
twos where suburban residents get scores and fifties. Almost the only
firms who have found out the value of circulars in the country are the
great drapery establishments, and their enterprise is richly rewarded.
The volume of business thus transacted and brought to the London house
by the circular is enormous. There are very few farmhouses in the
country which do not contribute orders once or twice a year. Very many
families get all their materials in this way, far cheaper, better, and
more novel than those on sale in the country towns. Here, then, is a
powerful lever ready to the hand of the publisher. Every circular sent
to a country house will be read--not slurred--and will ultimately yield
a return. Cottagers never receive a circular at all. If a circular came
to a cottage by post it would be read and re-read, folded up neatly,
and preserved. After a time--for an advertisement is exactly like seed
sown in the ground--something would be done. Some incident would
happen, and it would be remembered that there was something about it in
the circular--some book that dealt with the subject. There is business
directly. The same post that brought the original circular,
distributing knowledge of books, can bring the book itself. Those who
understand the importance attached by country people, and especially by
cottagers, to anything that comes by post, will see the use of the
circular, which must be regarded as the most effective means of
reaching the rural population.
Next in value to the circular is the poster. The extent to which
posters are used in London, which contains a highly educated
population, is proof sufficient of its utility as a disseminator. But
in the country the poster has never yet been resorted to as an aid to
the bookseller. The auctioneers have found out its importance, and
their bills are freely dispersed in every nook and corner. There are no
keener men, and they know from experience that it is the cheapest way
of advertising sales. Their posters are everywhere--on walls,
gate-posts, sign-posts, barns, in the bars of wayside inns. The local
drapers in the market towns resort to the poster when they have a sale
at "vastly reduced" prices, sending round the bill-sticker to remote
hamlets and mere settlements of two or three houses. They, too, know
its value, and that by it customers are attracted from the most
outlying places. People in villages and hamlets pass the greater part
of their time out-of-doors and are in no hurry, so that if in walking
down the road to or from their work they see a bill stuck upon a wall,
they invariably stop to read it. People on the London railway platforms
rather blink the posters displayed around them: they would rather avoid
them, though they cannot altogether. It is just the reverse in the
hamlet, where the inhabitants lead such monotonous lives, and have so
little excitement that a fresh poster is a good subject for
conversation. No matter where you put a poster, somebody will read it,
and it is only next in value to the circular, appealing to the public
as the circular appeals to the individual. Here are two methods of
reaching the country and of disseminating a knowledge of books other
than the employment of expensive travellers. Even if travellers be
called in, circular and poster should precede their efforts.
There is then the advertisement column of the local press. The local
press has never been used for the advertisement of such books as are
suitable to country readers, certainly not for the class hitherto
chiefly borne in view and for convenience designated villager. The
reason why such books have not been advertised in the local press is
probably because the authors and publishers had no idea of the market
that exists in the country. For the most part readers in town and the
suburbs only glance at the exciting portions of papers, and then cast
them aside. Readers in the villages read every line from the first
column to the last, from the title to the printer's address. The local
papers are ploughed steadily through, just as the horses plough the
fields, and every furrow conscientiously followed from end to end,
advertisements and all. The brewer's, the grocer's, the draper's, the
ironmonger's advertisements (market-town tradesmen), which have been
there month after month, are all read, and the slightest change
immediately noted. If there were any advertisement of books suitable to
their taste it would be read in exactly the same manner. But in
advertising for country people one fact must be steadily borne in
mind--that they are slow to act; that is, the advertisement must be
permanent. A few insertions are forgotten before those who have seen
them have made up their minds to purchase. When an advertisement is
always there, by-and-by the thought suggested acts on the will, and the
stray coin is invested--it may be six months after the first
inclination arose. The procrastination of country people is
inexplicable to hurrying London men. But it is quite useless to
advertise unless it is taken into account. If permanent, an
advertisement in the local press will reach its mark. It is this
permanency which gives another value to the circular and the poster;
the circular is folded up and preserved to be looked at again like a
book of reference; the poster remains on the dry wall of the barn, and
the ink is legible months after it was first put up.
Having now informed the hamlets of the books which are in existence, if
complete success is desired, the next step should be to put specimens
of those books before the eyes of the residents. To read of them, to
know that they exist, and then to actually see them--as Londoners see
them in every street--is a logical process leading to purchases. As
already pointed out, there are little shops in every village and hamlet
where the local paper can be obtained which would gladly expose books
for sale if the offer were made to them. The same remark applies to the
shops in the market towns. These, too, require to be supplied; they
require the thing explained to them, and they would at once try it.
Finally, let a traveller once now and then come along, and call at
these shops to wake up and stir the business and change the face of the
counter. Let him while in the hamlet also call at as many houses and
cottages as he can manage in a few hours, leaving circulars--always
circulars--behind him. There would then be a complete system of supply.
SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE [Footnote: The sunlight and the winds enter
London, and the life of the fields is there too, if you will but see
it.]
There are days now and again when the summer broods in Trafalgar
Square; the flood of light from a cloudless sky gathers and grows,
thickening the air; the houses enclose the beams as water is enclosed
in a cup. Sideways from the white-painted walls light is reflected;
upwards from the broad, heated pavement in the centre light and heat
ascend; from the blue heaven it presses downwards. Not only from the
sun--one point--but from the entire width of the visible blue the
brilliant stream flows. Summer is enclosed between the banks of
houses--all summer's glow and glory of exceeding brightness. The blue
panel overhead has but a stray fleck of cloud, a Cupid drawn on the
panel in pure white, but made indefinite by distance. The joyous
swallows climb high into the illuminated air till the eye, daunted by
the glow, can scarce detect their white breasts as they turn.
Slant shadows from the western side give but a margin of contrast; the
rays are reflected through them, and they are only shadows of shadows.
At the edges their faint sloping lines are seen in the air, where a
million motes impart a fleeting solidity to the atmosphere. A
pink-painted front, the golden eagle of the great West, golden
lettering, every chance strip and speck of colour is washed in the
dazzling light, made clear and evident. The hands and numerals of the
clock yonder are distinct and legible, the white dial-plate polished; a
window suddenly opened throws a flash across the square. Eastwards the
air in front of the white walls quivers, heat and light reverberating
visibly, and the dry flowers on the window-sills burn red and yellow in
the glare. Southwards green trees, far down the street, stand, as it
seems, almost at the foot of the chiselled tower of
Parliament--chiselled in straight lines and perpendicular grooves, each
of which casts a shadow into itself. Again, the corners advanced before
the main wall throw shadows on it, and the hollow casements draw
shadows into their cavities. Thus, in the bright light against the blue
sky the tower pencils itself with a dark crayon, and is built, not of
stone, but of light and shadow. Flowing lines of water rise and fall
from the fountains in the square, drooping like the boughs of a weeping
ash, drifted a little to one side by an imperceptible air, and there
sprinkling the warm pavement in a sparkling shower. The shower of
finely divided spray now advances and now retreats, as the column of
water bends to the current of air, or returns to its upright position.
By a pillared gateway there is a group in scarlet, and from time to
time other groups in scarlet pass and repass within the barrack-court.
A cream-tinted dress, a pink parasol--summer hues--go by in the stream
of dark-clothed people; a flower fallen on the black water of a river.
Either the light subdues the sound, or perhaps rather it renders the
senses slumberous and less sensitive, but the great sunlit square is
silent--silent, that is, for the largest city on earth. A slumberous
silence of abundant light, of the full summer day, of the high flood of
summer hours whose tide can rise no higher. A time to linger and dream
under the beautiful breast of heaven, heaven brooding and descending in
pure light upon man's handiwork. If the light shall thus come in, and
of its mere loveliness overcome every aspect of dreariness, why shall
not the light of thought, and hope--the light of the soul--overcome and
sweep away the dust of our lives?
I stood under the portico of the National Gallery in the shade looking
southwards, across the fountains and the lions, towards the green trees
under the distant tower. Once a swallow sang in passing on the wing,
garrulous still as in the time of old Rome and Augustan Virgil. From
the high pediments dropped the occasional chatter of sparrows and the
chirp of their young in the roofs. The second brood, they were late;
they would not be in time for the harvest and the fields of stubble. A
flight of blue pigeons rose from the central pavement to the level line
of the parapet of the western houses. A starling shot across the
square, swift, straight, resolute. I looked for the swifts, but they
had gone, earliest of all to leave our sky for distant countries. Away
in the harvest field the reaper, pausing in his work, had glanced up at
the one stray fleck of cloud in the sky, which to my fancy might be a
Cupid on a blue panel, and seeing it smiled in the midst of the corn,
wiping his blackened face, for he knew it meant dry weather. Heat, and
the dust of the straw, the violent labour had darkened his face from
brown almost to blackness--a more than swarthiness, a blackness. The
stray cloud was spreading out in filaments, each thread drawn to a
fineness that ended presently in disappearance. It was a sign to him of
continued sunshine and the prosperity of increased wages. The sun from
whose fiery brilliance I escaped into the shadow was to him a welcome
friend; his neck was bare to the fierceness of the sun. His heart was
gladdened because the sky promised him permission to labour till the
sinews of his fingers stiffened in their crooked shape (as they held
the reaping-hook), and he could hardly open them to grasp the loaf he
had gained.
So men laboured of old time, whether with plough or sickle or
pruning-hook, in the days when Augustan Virgil heard the garrulous
swallow, still garrulous. An endless succession of labour, under the
brightness of summer, under the gloom of winter; to my thought it is a
sadness even in the colour and light and glow of this hour of sun, this
ceaseless labour, repeating the furrow, reiterating the blow, the same
furrow, the same stroke--shall we never know how to lighten it, how to
live with the flowers, the swallows, the sweet delicious shade, and the
murmur of the stream? Not the blackened reaper only, but the crowd
whose low hum renders the fountain inaudible, the nameless and unknown
crowd of this immense city wreathed round about the central square. I
hope that at some time, by dint of bolder thought and freer action, the
world shall see a race able to enjoy it without stint, a race able to
enjoy the flowers with which the physical world is strewn, the colours
of the garden of life. To look backwards with the swallow there is
sadness, to-day with the fleck of cloud there is unrest; but forward,
with the broad sunlight, there is hope.
Except you see these colours, and light, and tones, except you see the
blue heaven over the parapet, you know not, you cannot feel, how great
are the possibilities of man. At my back, within the gallery, there is
many a canvas painted under Italian skies, in glowing Spain, in bright
Southern France. There are scenes lit with the light that gleams on
orange grove and myrtle; these are faces tinted with the golden hue
that floats in southern air. But yet, if any one impartial will stand
here outside, under the portico, and forgetting that it is prosaic
London, will look at the summer enclosed within the square, and
acknowledge it for itself as it is, he must admit that the view--light
and colour, tone and shade--is equal to the painted canvas, is full, as
it were, to the brim of interest, suggestion, and delight. Before the
painted canvas you stand with prepared mind; you have come to see
Italy, you are educated to find colour, and the poetry of tone.
Therefore you see it, if it is there. Here in the portico you are
unprepared, uneducated; no one has ever given a thought of it. But now
trace out the colour and the brightness; gaze up into the sky, watch
the swallows, note the sparkle of the fountain, observe the distant
tower chiselled with the light and shade. Think, then, of the people,
not as mere buyers and sellers, as mere counters, but as human
beings--beings possessed of hearts and minds, full of the passions and
the hopes and fears which made the ancient poets great merely to
record. These are the same passions that were felt in antique Rome,
whose very name is a section of human life. There is colour in these
lives now as then.
VENICE IN THE EAST END
The great red bowsprit of an Australian clipper projects aslant the
quay. Stem to the shore, the vessel thrusts an outstretched arm high
over the land, as an oak in a glade pushes a bare branch athwart the
opening. This beam is larger than an entire tree divested of its
foliage, such trees, that is, as are seen in English woods. The great
oaks might be bigger at the base where they swell and rest themselves
on a secure pedestal. Five hundred years old an oak might measure more
at six feet, at eight, or ten feet from the ground; after five hundred
years, that is, of steady growth. But if even such a monarch were
taken, and by some enormous mechanic power drawn out, and its substance
elongated into a tapering spar, it would not be massive enough to form
this single beam. Where it starts from the stem of the vessel it is
already placed as high above the level of the quay as it is from the
sward to the first branch of an oak. At its root it starts high
overhead, high enough for a trapeze to be slung to it upon which grown
persons could practise athletic exercises. From its roots, from the
forward end of the deck, the red beam rises at a regular angle,
diminishing in size with altitude till its end in comparison with the
commencement may be called pointed, though in reality blunt. To the
pointed end it would be a long climb; it would need a ladder. The dull
red of the vast beam is obscured by the neutral tint of the ropes which
are attached to it; colour generally gives a sense of lightness by
defining shape, but this red is worn and weatherbeaten, rubbed and
battered, so that its uncertain surface adds to the weight of the boom.
It hangs, an immense arm thrust across the sky; it is so high it is
scarcely noticed in walking under it; it is so great and ponderous, and
ultra in size, that the eye and mind alike fail to estimate it. For it
is a common effect of great things to be overlooked. A moderately large
rock, a moderately large house, is understood and mentally put down, as
it were, at a certain figure, but the immense--which is beyond the
human--cannot enter the organs of the senses. The portals of the senses
are not wide enough to receive it; you must turn your back on it and
reflect, and add a little piece of it to another little piece, and so
build up your understanding. Human things are small; you live in a
large house, but the space you actually occupy is very inconsiderable;
the earth itself, great as it is, is overlooked, it is too large to be
seen. The eye is accustomed to the little, and cannot in a moment
receive the immense. Only by slow comparison with the bulk of oak
trees, by the height of a trapeze, by the climbing of a ladder, can I
convey to my mind a true estimate and idea of this gigantic bowsprit.
It would be quite possible to walk by and never see it because of its
size, as one walks by bridges or travels over a viaduct without a
thought.
The vessel lies with her bowsprit projecting over the quay, moored as a
boat run ashore on the quiet sandy beach of a lake, not as a ship is
generally placed with her broadside to the quay wall or to the pier.
Her stern is yonder--far out in the waters of the dock, too far to
concern us much as we look from the verge of the wall. Access to the
ship is obtained by a wooden staging running out at the side; instead
of the ship lying beside the pier, a pier has been built out to fit to
the ship. This plan, contrary to preconceived ideas, is evidently
founded on good reason, for if such a vessel were moored broadside to
the quay how much space would she take up? There would be, first, the
hull itself say eighty yards, and then the immense bowsprit. Two or
three such ships would, as it were, fill a whole field of water; they
would fill a whole dock; it would not require many to cover a mile. By
placing each stem to the quay they only occupy a space equal to their
breadth instead of to their length. This arrangement, again, tends to
deceive the eye; you might pass by, and, seeing only the bow, casually
think there was nothing particular in it. Everything here is on so
grand a scale that the largest component part is diminished; the quay,
broad enough to build several streets abreast; the square, open
stretches of gloomy water; and beyond these the wide river. The wind
blows across these open spaces in a broad way--not as it comes in
sudden gusts around a street corner, but in a broad open way, each puff
a quarter of a mile wide. The view of the sky is open overhead, masts
do not obstruct the upward look; the sunshine illumines or the
cloud-shadows darken hundreds of acres at once. It is a great plain; a
plain of enclosed waters, built in and restrained by the labour of man,
and holding upon its surface fleet upon fleet, argosy upon argosy.
Masts to the right, masts to the left, masts in front, masts yonder
above the warehouses; masts in among the streets as steeples appear
amid roofs; masts across the river hung with drooping half-furled
sails; masts afar down thin and attenuated, mere dark straight lines in
the distance. They await in stillness the rising of the tide.
It comes, and at the exact moment--foreknown to a second--the gates are
opened, and the world of ships moves outwards to the stream. Downwards
they drift to the east, some slowly that have as yet but barely felt
the pull of the hawser, others swiftly, and the swifter because their
masts cross and pass the masts of inward-bound ships ascending. Two
lines of masts, one raking one way, the other the other, cross and
puzzle the eye to separate their weaving motion and to assign the
rigging to the right vessel. White funnels aslant, dark funnels, red
funnels rush between them; white steam curls upwards; there is a hum, a
haste, almost a whirl, for the commerce of the world is crowded into
the hour of the full tide. These great hulls, these crossing masts
a-rake, the intertangled rigging, the background of black barges
drifting downwards, the lines and ripple of the water as the sun comes
out, if you look too steadily, daze the eyes and cause a sense of
giddiness. It is so difficult to realise so much mass--so much
bulk--moving so swiftly, and in so intertangled a manner; a mighty
dance of thousands of tons--gliding, slipping, drifting onwards, yet
without apparent effort. Thousands upon thousands of tons go by like
shadows, silently, as if the ponderous hulls had no stability or
weight; like a dream they float past, solid and yet without reality. It
is a giddiness to watch them.
This happens, not on one day only, not one tide, but at every tide and
every day the year through, year after year. The bright summer sun
glows upon it; the red sun of the frosty hours of winter looks at it
from under the deepening canopy of vapour the blasts of the autumnal
equinox howl over the vast city and whistle shrilly in the rigging;
still at every tide the world of ships moves out into the river. Why
does not a painter come here and place the real romance of these things
upon canvas, as Venice has been placed? Never twice alike, the changing
atmosphere is reflected in the hue of the varnished masts, now
gleaming, now dull, now dark. Till it has been painted, and sung by
poet, and described by writers, nothing is human. Venice has been made
human by poet, painter, and dramatist, yet what was Venice to
this--this the Fact of our own day? Two of the caravels of the Doge's
fleet, two of Othello's strongest war-ships, could scarcely carry the
mast of my Australian clipper. At a guess it is four feet through; it
is of iron, tubular; there is room for a winding spiral staircase
within it; as for its height, I will not risk a guess at it. Could
Othello's war-ships carry it they would consider it a feat, as the
bringing of the Egyptian obelisk to London was thought a feat. The
petty ripples of the Adriatic, what were they? This red bowsprit at its
roots is high enough to suspend a trapeze; at its head a ladder would
be required to mount it from the quay; yet by-and-by, when the tide at
last comes, and its time arrives to move outwards in the dance of a
million tons, this mighty bowsprit, meeting the Atlantic rollers in the
Bay of Biscay, will dip and bury itself in foam under the stress of the
vast sails aloft. The forty-feet billows of the Pacific will swing
these three or four thousand or more tons, this giant hull which must
be moored even stem to shore, up and down and side to side as a handful
in the grasp of the sea. Now, each night as the clouds part, the north
star looks down upon the deck; then, the Southern Cross will be visible
in the sky, words quickly written, but half a globe apart. What was
there in Venice to arouse thoughts such as spring from the sight of
this red bowsprit? In two voyages my Australian clipper shall carry as
much merchandise as shall equal the entire commerce of Venice for a
year.