One day the Trevanions had all gone into the country on a visit to a
retired minister distantly related to Lady Ellinor, and who was one of
the few persons Trevanion himself condescended to consult. I had almost
a holiday. I went to call on Sir Sedley Beaudesert. I had always
longed to sound him on one subject, and had never dared. This time I
resolved to pluck up courage.
"Ah, my young friend!" said he, rising from the contemplation of a
villanous picture by a young artist, which he had just benevolently
purchased, "I was thinking of you this morning.--Wait a moment, Summers
[this to the valet]. Be so good as to take this picture; let it be
packed up and go down into the country. It is a sort of picture," he
added, turning to me, "that requires a large house. I have an old
gallery with little casements that let in no light. It is astonishing
how convenient I have found it!" As soon as the picture was gone, Sir
Sedley drew a long breath, as if relieved, and resumed more gayly,--
"Yes, I was thinking of you; and if you will forgive any interference in
your affairs,--from your father's old friend,--I should be greatly
honored by your permission to ask Trevanion what he supposes is to be
the ultimate benefit of the horrible labor he inflicts upon you."
"But, my dear Sir Sedley, I like the labors; I am perfectly contented."
"Not to remain always secretary to one who, if there were no business to
be done among men, would set about teaching the ants to build hills upon
better architectural principles! My dear sir, Trevanion is an awful
man, a stupendous man, one catches fatigue if one is in the same room
with him three minutes! At your age,--an age that ought to be so
happy,"--continued Sir Sedley, with a compassion perfectly angelically
"it is sad to see so little enjoyment!"
"But, Sir Sedley, I assure you that you are mistaken, I thoroughly enjoy
myself; and have I not heard even you confess that one may be idle and
not happy?"
"I did not confess that till I was on the wrong side of forty!" said Sir
Sedley, with a slight shade on his brow. "Nobody would ever think you
were on the wrong side of forty!" said I, with artful flattery, winding
into my subject. "Miss Trevanion, for instance?"
I paused. Sir Sedley looked hard at me, from his bright dark-blue eyes.
"Well, Miss Trevanion for instance?"
"Miss Trevanion, who has all the best-looking fellows in London round
her, evidently prefers you to any of them."
I said this with a great gulp. I was obstinately bent on plumbing the
depth of my own fears.
Sir Sedley rose; he laid his hand kindly on mine, and said, "Do not let
Fanny Trevanion torment you even more than her father does!"
"I don't understand you, Sir Sedley."
"But if I understand you, that is more to the purpose. A girl like Miss
Trevanion is cruel till she discovers she has a heart. It is not safe
to risk one's own with any woman till she has ceased to be a coquette.
My dear young friend, if you took life less in earnest, I should spare
you the pain of these hints. Some men sow flowers, some plant trees:
you are planting a tree under which you will soon find that no flower
will grow. Well and good, if the tree could last to bear fruit and give
shade; but beware lest you have to tear it up one day or other; for
then--What then? Why, you will find your whole life plucked away with
its roots!"
Sir Sedley said these last words with so serious an emphasis that I was
startled from the confusion I had felt at the former part of his
address. He paused long, tapped his snuff-box, inhaled a pinch slowly,
and continued, with his more accustomed sprightliness,--
"Go as much as you can into the world. Again I say, 'Enjoy yourself.'
And again I ask, what is all this labor to do for you? On some men, far
less eminent than Trevanion, it would impose a duty to aid you in a
practical career, to secure you a public employment; not so on him. He
would not mortgage an inch of his independence by asking a favor from a
minister. He so thinks occupation the delight of life that he occupies
you out of pure affection. He does not trouble his head about your
future. He supposes your father will provide for that, and does not
consider that meanwhile your work leads to nothing! Think over all
this. I have now bored you enough."
I was bewildered; I was dumb. These practical men of the world, how
they take us by surprise! Here had I come to sound Sir Sedley, and here
was I plumbed, gauged, measured, turned inside out, without having got
an inch beyond the sur face of that smiling, debonnaire, unruffled ease.
Yet, with his invariable delicacy, in spite of all this horrible
frankness, Sir Sedley had not said a word to wound what he might think
the more sensitive part of my amour propre,--not a word as to the
inadequacy of my pretensions to think seriously of Fanny Trevanion. Had
we been the Celadon and Chloe of a country village, he could not have
regarded us as more equal, so far as the world went. And for the rest,
he rather insinuated that poor Fanny, the great heiress, was not worthy
of me, than that I was not worthy of Fanny.
I felt that there was no wisdom in stammering and blushing out denials
and equivocations; so I stretched my hand to Sir Sedley, took up my hat,
and went. Instinctively I bent my way to my father's house. I had not
been there for many days. Not only had I had a great deal to do in the
way of business, but I am ashamed to say that pleasure itself had so
entangled my leisure hours, and Miss Trevanion especially so absorbed
them, that, without even uneasy foreboding, I had left my father
fluttering his wings more feebly and feebly in the web of Uncle Jack.
When I arrived in Russell Street I found the fly and the spider cheek-
by-jowl together. Uncle Jack sprang up at my entrance and cried,
"Congratulate your father. Congratulate him!---no; congratulate the
world!"
"What, uncle!" said I, with a dismal effort at sympathizing liveliness,
"is the 'Literary Times' launched at last?"
"Oh! that is all settled,--settled long since. Here's a specimen of the
type we have chosen for the leaders." And Uncle Jack, whose pocket was
never without a wet sheet of some kind or other, drew forth a steaming
papyral monster, which in point of size was to the political "Times" as
a mammoth may be to an elephant. "That is all settled. We are only
preparing our contributors, and shall put out our programme next week or
the week after. No, Pisistratus, I mean the Great Work."
"My dear father, I am so glad. What! it is really sold, then?"
"Hum!" said my father.
"Sold!" burst forth Uncle Jack. "Sold,--no, sir, we would not sell it!
No; if all the booksellers fell down on their knees to us, as they will
some day, that book should not be sold! Sir, that book is a revolution;
it is an era; it is the emancipator of genius from mercenary thraldom,--
That Book!"
I looked inquiringly from uncle to father, and mentally retracted my
congratulations. Then Mr. Caxton, slightly blushing, and shyly rubbing
his spectacles, said, "You see, Pisistratus, that though poor Jack has
devoted uncommon pains to induce the publishers to recognize the merit
he has discovered in the 'History of Human Error,' he has failed to do
so."
"Not a bit of it; they all acknowledge its miraculous learning, its--"
"Very true; but they don't think it will sell, and therefore most
selfishly refuse to buy it. One bookseller, indeed, offered to treat
for it if I would leave out all about the Hottentots and Caffres, the
Greek philosophers and Egyptian priests, and confining myself solely to
polite society, entitle the work 'Anecdotes of the Courts of Europe,
Ancient and Modern.'"
"The--wretch!" groaned Uncle Jack.
"Another thought it might be cut up into little essays, leaving out the
quotations, entitled 'Men and Manners.' A third was kind enough to
observe that though this kind of work was quite unsalable, yet, as I
appeared to have some historical information, he should be happy to
undertake an historical romance from my graphic pen,'--that was the
phrase, was it not, Jack?"
Jack was too full to speak.
"Provided I would introduce a proper love-plot, and make it into three
volumes post octavo, twenty-three lines in a page, neither more nor
less. One honest fellow at last was found who seemed to me a very
respectable and indeed enterprising person. And after going through a
list of calculations, which showed that no possible profit could arise,
he generously offered to give me half of those no-profits, provided I
would guarantee half the very visible expenses. I was just meditating
the prudence of accepting this proposal, when your uncle was seized with
a sublime idea, which has whisked up my book in a whirlwind of
expectation."
"And that idea?" said I, despondently.
"That idea," quoth Uncle Jack, recovering himself, "is simply and
shortly this. From time immemorial, authors have been the prey of the
publishers. Sir, authors have lived in garrets, nay, have been choked
in the street by an unexpected crumb of bread, like the man who wrote
the play, poor fellow!"
"Otway," said my father. "The story is not true,--no matter."
"Milton, sir, as everybody knows, sold 'Paradise Lost' for ten pounds,--
ten pounds, Sir! In short, instances of a like nature are too numerous
to quote.--But the booksellers, sir, they are leviathans; they roll in
seas of gold; they subsist upon authors as vampires upon little
children. But at last endurance has reached its limit; the fiat has
gone forth; the tocsin of liberty has resounded: authors have burst
their fetters. And we have just inaugurated the institution of 'The
Grand Anti-Publisher Confederate Authors' Society,' by which,
Pisistratus, by which, mark you, every author is to be his own
publisher; that is, every author who joins the society. No more
submission of immortal works to mercenary calculators, to sordid tastes;
no more hard bargains and broken hearts; no more crumbs of bread choking
great tragic poets in the streets; no more Paradises Lost sold at L10 a-
piece! The author brings his book to a select committee appointed for
the purpose,--men of delicacy, education, and refinement, authors
themselves; they read it, the society publish; and after a modest
deduction, which goes towards the funds of the society, the treasurer
hands over the profits to the author."
"So that, in fact, uncle, every author who can't find a publisher
anywhere else will of course come to the society. The fraternity will
be numerous."
"It will indeed."
"And the speculation--ruinous."
"Ruinous, why?"
"Because in all mercantile negotiations it is ruinous to invest capital
in supplies which fail of demand. You undertake to publish books that
booksellers will not publish: why? Because booksellers can't sell them.
It's just probable that you'll not sell them any better than the
booksellers. Ergo, the more your business, the larger your deficit; and
the more numerous your society, the more disastrous your condition. Q.
E. D."
"Pooh! The select committee will decide what books are to be
published."
"Then where the deuce is the advantage to the authors? I would as lief
submit; my work to a publisher as I would to a select committee of
authors. At all events, the publisher is not my rival; and I suspect he
is the best judge, after all, of a book,--as an accoucheur ought to be
of a baby."
"Upon my word, nephew, you pay a bad compliment to your father's Great
Work, which the booksellers will have nothing to do with."
That was artfully said, and I was posed; when Mr. Caxton observed, with
an apologetic smile,--
"The fact is, my dear Pisistratus, that I want my book published without
diminishing the little fortune I keep for you some day. Uncle Jack
starts a society so to publish it. Health and long life to Uncle Jack's
society! One can't look a gift horse in the mouth."
Here my mother entered, rosy from a shopping expedition with Mrs.
Primmins; and in her joy at hearing that I could stay to dinner, all
else was forgotten. By a wonder, which I did not regret, Uncle Jack
really was engaged to dine out. He had other irons in the fire besides
the "Literary Times" and the "Confederate Authors' Society;" he was deep
in a scheme for making house-tops of felt (which, under other hands,
has, I believe, since succeeded); and he had found a rich man (I suppose
a hatter) who seemed well inclined to the project, and had actually
asked him to dine and expound his views.