AUTOGRAPHS AND ADVERTISEMENTS.
A word or two about autographs, surely a topic suitable to this book: in
fact, I have sometimes preferred to spell it authorgraphs: most public
men are troubled nowadays with this sort of petty homage, and I more
than suspect that some collectors make merchandise of them; "my valuable
collection" being often the form in which strangers solicit the
flattering boon. Once I had a queer proof as to the money value of my
own,--as thus: I went quite casually into an auctioneer's in Piccadilly,
to a book-sale; a lot of some half-dozen volumes were just being knocked
down for next to nothing (such is our deterioration in these newspaper
days) when the wielder of Thor's fateful hammer, dissatisfied at the
price, asked for the lot to look at,--and coming amongst others to a
certain book with handwriting in it, said, "Why, here's one with Martin
Tupper's autograph,"--on which a buyer called out, "I'll give you
eighteenpence more for that,"--suggestive to me of my auction value,--as
I have sometimes said. If, however, the more than hundreds (thousands) I
have been giving for these fifty years, really have so easily gratified
friends known or unknown, I am glad to be in that way so much a gainer.
Americans in particular ask frequently, and sometimes with wisely
enclosed stamped and addressed envelopes, which is a thing both
considerate and praiseworthy; but a very different sort and not easily
to be excused are those who send registered albums by post for one's
handwriting, expecting to have them returned similarly at no small cost.
Longfellow told me of this kind of young lady taxation, and mentioned
that he once had to pay twelve shillings for a registered return quarto.
I dare say that our popular Laureate has had similar experiences.
The most "wholesale order" for my signature was at New York in 1851,
when at a party there my perhaps too exacting hostess put a large pack
of plain cards into my hand, posted me at a corner table with pen and
ink, and flatteringly requested an autograph for each of her 100 guests!
of course, even this was graciously conceded,--though rather too much of
a good thing, I thought.
There is wisdom (some have hinted to me) in preferring a card to a sheet
of paper; not only because "I promise to pay" might possibly be written
_ab extra_ over one's signature, but also because (and far more
probably) any special "fad," political, social, or religious, might be
added above--to all seeming--your written approbation: _e.g._, I was
told in America that my autographed opinion in favour of Unitarianism
had been so seen at Boston. Some zealots for a "cause" even go so far as
that. My safe course is to write "the handwriting of so-and-so," where
from total ignorance of my correspondent I cannot honestly say "I am
truly yours."
Other forms of authorial homage are to be met with in the way of
complimentary photographs, and oil or water-colour portraits. Like all
other book celebrities, I have had to stand for minutes or sit for days,
dozens of times; and seeing that, wherever I have been on my Reading
Tours, on this side of the Atlantic or the other, photographic "artists"
have continually "solicited the honour," the result has been that I used
to keep "a book of horrors," proving how variously and oftentimes how
vulgarly one's features come out when the impartial sun portrays them.
As with the contradictory critiques about one's writings, so also is it
with the conflicting apparitions of comeliness or ugliness in the
heliotyped exploits of different--some of them
indifferent--photographers. Several, however, have succeeded well with
me; as Sarony in New York, Elliott & Fry of Baker Street and Brighton,
Negretti & Zambra at the Crystal Palace, and divers others; but one need
not reckon up "our failures," as Brummell's valet has it.
As to the several oil portraitures of me, there is extant a splendid
full-length of myself and my brother Dan, with large frilled collars and
the many-buttoned suits of the day, when we were severally ten and nine
years old, now hanging at Albury, painted by my great-uncle, Arthur
William Devis, the celebrated historical painter: this has been
exhibited among works of the British old masters in Pall Mall. Also,
there is one by T.W. Guillod, in my phase as an author at twenty-seven;
another is by the older Pickersgill, so dark and lacking in Caucasian
comeliness that the engraving therefrom in one of my books makes me look
like a nigger, insomuch that some Abolitionists claimed me as all the
more their favourite for my black blood! On the other hand, Mr. Edgar
Williams has made me much too florid; while recently that rising young
artist, Alfred Hartley, has caught my true likeness, and has depicted me
aptly and well, as may now be seen in the picture-gallery of the Crystal
Palace. Then Mr. Willert Beale (Walter Maynard by literary _nom de
pinceau et de plume_, for he is both a painter and an author) has lately
portrayed me in crayons, life-sized, an unmistakable likeness; and years
ago Monsieur Rochard, in a large water-coloured drawing, made me look
very French, quite a _petit-maitre_, in which disguise I was engraved
for some book of mine: all the above, except Rochard's, having been done
complimentarily. In America Mr. Pettit's life-sized oil portrait is the
most noticeable.
* * * * *
Two queer anecdotes I must give about another form of author-worship to
which we poor vain mortals are occasionally exposed, viz., what Pope
called in Belinda's case "The Rape of the Lock." I can remember (as once
by Lady---- in London) more than one such ravishment attempted if not
accomplished; but most especially was I in peril at the Philadelphian
Exhibition when three duennas who guarded some lady exhibitors (too
modest to ask themselves) pursued a certain individual, scissors in
hand, like Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, in vain hope of sheared
tresses; had they been, like many of our American sisters, both juvenile
and lovely, very possible success might have crowned their daring; or,
instead of the three seductive graces, had they posed as three
intellectual muses, I might have succumbed; but a leash of fates obliged
a rapid retreat. And for a second queer anecdote take this: a 'cute
negro barber had persuaded me to have my hair cut, to which suggestion,
as it was hissing hot weather, I agreed. He had a neat little shop close
to a jeweller's; next morning I passed that shop and noticed my name
placarded there, surrounded by gold lockets, for that cunning nigger and
his gilded friend were making a rich harvest of my shaved curls. Sambo
can be as sharp as Jonathan, when a freeman, if he likes.
"Interviewing" is another sort of homage nowadays to popular authorship;
in America it is very rife,--and I never came to any city but,
immediately on arrival, two or three representatives of opponent editors
would call, and very courteously request to be allowed to turn me inside
out, and then to report upon me: I only remember one or two cases (which
I will not specify) wherein my inquisitor was not all I could have
wished, or treated his patient victim more unkindly than perhaps a
venial native humour might make necessary. Almost always the scribes
were fair and gentlemanly. And in next morning's papers it was a
pleasing excitement to find that one's extorted opinions on all manner
of topics--social, religious, and political--were published by tens of
thousands in conflicting newspapers, which took partisan views of the
_obiter dicta_ of an illustrious being. I have many of these recorded
conversations and comments thereon pasted down in the scrap-books
aforesaid. In England, also, one does not escape; and indeed the
pleasure of being examined for publication is here less mixed; for on
this side of the Atlantic it has been found dangerous to report what
might be damaging to a man socially or financially; although, however,
no judicial notice is taken of ridicule or false criticism; and therein
an author (however little he may care for it) can be libelled to any
extent and without all remedy. Not but that some of the society papers
have treated my unworthiness generously enough,--in particular, Edmunds'
_World_, which, with too great severity and too little justice, has been
taught to tell all truths charitably, if smartly,--and therefore I was
glad to welcome his pleasant accredited interviewer, Mr. Becker, a year
or two ago at Albury, who compliments me, not quite accurately perhaps,
on "good looks and a passion for heart's-eases." Also, the gentleman who
represents the _Glasgow Mail_ did his work wisely and kindly: and Mr.
Meltzer of the _New York Herald_; and I might name some others, not
excepting my Sydenham friend, Mr. Leyland, who lately wrote a very
pleasant paper about me at Norwood for a Philadelphian journal.
As to Advertising.
A word about advertisements, surely an authorial topic. The absurdly
extravagant profusion in which thousands of pounds are now being
continually flung away in advertising, is one which was never approved
by me, and as long as my books remained in print, at my suggestion they
all got sold without it. At present there are almost none in the market
except Proverbial Philosophy, my Poems, Stephan Langton, and Dramas, and
these still live and sell as before, after a silent life of many years.
I suppose advertising must answer, or it would not be persisted in; and
certainly the newspapers (that chiefly live thereby) exhort all to crowd
their columns, if they wish to win fortune: but how the perpetual and
reiterated obtrusion of such single words as Oopack, or Syndicates, or
Beecham's Pills, or Argosy Braces, or Grateful and Comforting, &c. &c.,
can prove seductive baits, I do not see nor feel: the shameless amount
of space they fill in our newspapers, and especially the impertinent way
in which they intrude upon us while reading, as interleaved into books
and magazines, so entirely disgusts me that I have often declared I
would rather go without "tea, coffee, tobacco, or snuff" (this is a
phrase, for the two latter I abominate) than deign to patronise those
persistent advertisers A, B, C, D, or E. And yet I do know a splendid
church at Eastbourne wholly built of pills,--and Professor Holloway's
ointment has produced a palatial institute, and another wholesale
advertiser tells me he spends £30,000 a year on notices and paragraphs,
to gain thereby £50,000,--and so one cannot but acquiesce in Carlyle's
cynical dictum, so cruelly alluded to by Dean Stanley in his funeral
sermon at Westminster, that there are in our community "26,000,000,
mostly fools," otherwise how can folks be weak enough to be forced to
pay for "goods," or "bads," merely by dint of reiteration?
There is, however, one form of advertisement which I have found to
pay,--and that is not praise, but abuse. A certain article, written as I
was told by Alaric Watts, and stigmatising my readers as idiots, and
their author as a bellman, was said to have actually sold off 3000
copies at a run; and Hepworth Dixon's attack in some other paper--I
forget the name--was so lucrative to me in its results that I entreated
him at Moxon's one day to do it again.
Once I took it into my head to collect and publish a page of adverse
criticisms (if I can find a copy it shall be printed here) to excellent
sale-effect as regarded my tales. And I remember hearing at a
publisher's, that when a book didn't sell through puffing, their Herald
of Fame upstairs was directed to abuse it, and in one case a society
novel by a lady of title was prosecuted (by management) for libel, in
order to get off the edition. That publishing-house used to advertise in
"five figures"--that is, upwards of £10,000 a year, and was
professionally antagonistic to another, from which it had sprung
originally. The critical organs of the one house always used to run down
the publications of the other. And I daresay other Sosii are aware of
the like mutual warfare going on even now.