CHAPTER II
The Kingdom of Books
II
THE KINGDOM OF BOOKS
A paraphrase of, “Would that mine adversary had written a book,” might well be, “Would that mine enemy had printed a book”; for the building of books has always yielded smaller financial returns for the given amount of labor and ability than is offered in any other line of intelligent human effort.
“Are all the workmen in your establishment blank fools?” an irate publisher demanded of a printer after a particularly aggravating error.
“If they were not,” was the patient rejoinder, “they would not be engaged in making books!”
There is an intangible lure that keeps all those associated with the book under subjection. There is a mysterious fascination in being a party to the perpetuation of a human thought that yields something in addition to pecuniary returns. To the author, the inestimable gratification of conveying a message to the world makes him forget the tedious hours of application required before that message can be adequately expressed. To the publisher, the satisfaction of offering the opportunity for occasional genius to come into its own more than balances the frequent disappointments. To the book architect, the privilege of supplying the vehicle for thought, and of creating the physical form of its expression, yields returns not altogether measurable in coin of the realm.
In 1891, during my apprenticeship at the old University Press, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Wilson, its famous head, permitted me to sit in at a conference with Eugene Field and his friend and admirer, Francis Wilson, the actor, booklover, and collector. The subject under discussion was the manufacture of a volume of Field’s poems, then called A New Book of Verses, which later became famous under the title of Second Book of Verse.
Field’s personal appearance made a deep impression that first time I saw him. I was then an undergraduate at Harvard, and this was a live author at close range! He entered the office with a peculiar, ambling walk; his clothes were ill-fitting, accentuating his long legs and arms; his hands were delicate, with tapering fingers, like a woman’s; his face was pallid; his eyes blue, with a curiously child-like expression. I remember my feeling of respect, tinged somewhat with awe, as I saw the pages of manuscript spread out upon the table, and listened eagerly to the three-cornered conversation.
Autograph Page of Eugene Field Manuscript
From Second Book of Verse, New York, 1892
In considering the manufacture of his book, Eugene Field had clearly defined ideas of the typographical effect he wished to gain; John Wilson possessed the technical knowledge that enabled him to translate those ideas into terms of type. The examination of the various faces of type, the consideration of the proportions of the page, the selection of the paper, the plan for the design of the cover and the binding,—all came into the discussion.
As I listened, I was conscious of receiving new impressions which gave me a fuller but still incomplete understanding. Until that moment I had found little of interest in the adventure of making books. Now came a realization that the building of a book, like the designing of a house, offered opportunity for creative work. This possibility removed the disturbing doubts, and I undertook to discover for myself how that creative element could be crystallized.
Years later came an unexpected echo to the Field episode. After the publication of the Second Book of Verse, the manuscript was returned to Field, who had it bound in half leather and placed it in his library. Upon his death many of his books went by bequest to his life-long friend, Horace Fletcher, the genial philosopher and famous apostle of dietetics. When Fletcher died, he bequeathed Field’s personal volumes to me. By this curious chain of circumstances, thirty-three years after I had seen the manuscript spread out upon the table at the University Press, it came into my possession, bearing the identical memoranda of instruction made upon it by John Wilson, whose large, flowing hand contrasted sharply with the small, copper-plate characters of the author’s handwriting.
Autograph Verse in Eugene Field’s Own Copy of Trumpet and Drum
The present generation of booklovers would think themselves transported back ages rather than decades were they to glance into a great book-printing office of thirty-five years ago. The old University Press at that time acknowledged competition only from the Riverside and the De Vinne Presses, and conditions that obtained there were typical of the times. The business office was called the “counting-room”; the bookkeeper and the head-clerk were perched up on stools at high, sloping desks, and wore long, linen dusters and black skull caps. John Wilson sat at a low table desk, and his partner, who was the financial executive, was the proud possessor of the only roll-top desk in the establishment. Near him, perhaps because of its value as a novelty and thus entitled to the same super-care as the cash, was installed the telephone. Most of the letters were written by Mr. Wilson in his own hand. One of my first responsibilities was to copy these letters on the wetted tissue pages of the copy-book with the turn-screw press.
JOHN WILSON IN 1891
Master-Printer
There was no particular system in effect, and scientific management was unknown. Mr. Wilson used to make out his orders on fragments of paper,—whatever came to hand. When the telephone was first installed he refused to use it, as he considered this method of conducting business as “sloppy” and even discourteous. To employ a stenographer would have been an evidence of a lazy disposition, and a dictated letter was an offence against dignity and decorum.
A week’s work at that time consisted of fifty-nine hours instead of the present forty-eight. Hand composition and electrotyping were figured together as one process and charged at from 80 cents to $1 per thousand ems. Changes required in the type by authors cost 50 cents an hour. An author could afford in those days to rewrite his book after it was in type, but today, with alterations costing five times as much, it is a different proposition!
The wages were as ridiculously low as the prices charged to customers. The girls in the composing room made from $9 to $12 a week, and those receiving the maximum considered themselves potential Hetty Greens. Today, receiving $40 to $45 a week, they find difficulty in making both ends meet. The make-up man, with the “fat” he received in addition to his wage of $16, actually earned about $20 a week, as against $50 to $60 a week now. The foreman of the composing room, with more than two hundred employees under him, received a weekly return of $23, as against $75 to $100 now.
Typesetting, thirty-five years ago, was almost entirely by hand, as this was before the day of the linotype and the monotype. Thorne typesetting machines, which then seemed marvels of mechanical ingenuity, failed to prove economical because they required two operatives and so easily got out of order. The composing room itself was laid out with its main avenues and side streets like a well-ordered town, divisions being marked by the frames bearing the cases of type in various faces and sizes. The correcting stones ran down the center.
The foreman of the composing room was the king of his domain and a power unto himself. Each side street was an “alley,” in which from four to eight typesetters worked, back to back. These were sometimes boys or men, but usually girls or women. The “crew” in each alley was in charge of an experienced typesetter. It was he who received from the foreman the manuscript to be put into type; who distributed the copy, a few pages at a time to each of his subordinates; who supervised the work, and arranged for the galleys to be collated in their proper order for proofing; and who was generally responsible for the product of his alley. As was characteristic of the times in well-conducted industrial plants, the workers in this department, as in the others, were simply a large family presided over by the foreman, who interpreted the instructions from the management; and by the heads of the crews, who carried out the detailed instructions of the foreman.
There was a pride in workmanship that is mostly lacking in manufacturing plants today, due largely to the introduction of labor-saving machinery, and again to the introduction of efficiency methods. Both were inevitable, but the price paid for the gain in production was high. I am old-fashioned enough to hope that modern ideas of efficiency will never be applied in the printing industry to the extent of robbing the workman of his individuality. Books are such personal things! I am in full sympathy with that efficiency which cuts out duplication of effort. I believe in studying methods of performing each operation to discover which one is the most economical in time and effort. I realize that in great manufacturing plants, where machines have replaced so largely the work of the human hand, it is obviously necessary for workmen to spend their days manufacturing only a part of the complete article; but when the organization of any business goes so far as to substitute numbers for names I feel that something has been destroyed, and that in taking away his individuality from the workman the work suffers the same loss.
I have even asked myself whether the greatest underlying cause of strikes and labor disturbances during the past ten years has not been the unrest that has come to the workman because he can no longer take actual pride in the product of his hand. Years ago, after the death of one of my oldest employees, I called upon his widow, and in the simple “parlor” of the house where he had lived, prominently placed on a marble-top table as the chief ornament in the room, lay a copy of Wentworth’s “Geometry.” When I picked it up the widow said proudly, “Jim set every page of that book with his own hands.” It was a priceless heirloom in which the workman’s family took continued and justifiable pride.
The old University Press family was not only happy but loyal. When the business found itself in financial difficulties, owing to outside speculations by Mr. Wilson’s partner, the workmen brought their bankbooks, with deposits amounting to over twenty thousand dollars, and laid them on Mr. Wilson’s desk, asking him to use these funds in whatever way he chose. The sum involved was infinitesimal compared to the necessities, but the proffer was a human gesture not calculable in financial digits.
Proofreading was an art in the eighteen-nineties instead of an annoying necessity, as it now seems to be considered. The chief readers were highly educated men and women, some having been clergymen or schoolteachers. One proofreader at the University Press at that time could read fourteen languages, and all the readers were competent to discuss with the authors points that came up in the proof. The proof was read, not only to discover typographical errors, but also to query dates, quotations, and even statements of fact. Well-known authors were constantly running in and out of the Press, frequently going directly to the proofreaders, and sometimes even to the compositors themselves, without coming in touch with the counting-room. Mr. Wilson looked upon the authors and publishers as members of his big family, and “No Admittance” signs were conspicuous by their absence.
The modern practice of proofreading cannot produce as perfect volumes as resulted from the deliberate, painstaking, and time-consuming consideration which the old-time proofreaders gave to every book passing through their hands. Today the proof is read once, and then revised and sent out to the author. When made up into page form and sent to foundry it is again revised, but not re-read. No proof used to go out from a first-class printing office without a first and a second reading by copy. It was then read a third time by a careful foundry reader before being made into plates. Unfortunately, with labor at its present cost, no publisher could produce a volume at a price that the public would pay, if the old-time care were devoted to its manufacture.
Time was when a reputation for careful proofreading was an asset to a Press. One day the office boy came to my private office and said that there was a man downstairs who insisted upon seeing me personally, but who declined to give his name. From the expression on the boy’s face I concluded that the visitor must be a somewhat unique character, and I was not disappointed.
As he came into my office he had every aspect of having stepped off the vaudeville stage. He had on the loose garments of a farmer, with the broad hat that is donned only on state occasions. He wore leather boots over which were rubbers, and carried a huge, green umbrella.
He nodded pleasantly as he came in, and sat down with great deliberation. Before making any remarks he laid his umbrella on the floor and placed his hat carefully over it, then he somewhat painfully removed his rubbers. This done, he turned to me with a broad smile of greeting, and said, “I don’t know as you know who I am.”
When I confirmed him in his suspicions, he remarked, “Well, I am Jasper P. Smith, and I come from Randolph, New Hampshire.”
(The names and places mentioned are, for obvious reasons, not correct.)
I returned his smile of greeting and asked what I could do for him.
“Well,” he said, “my home town of Randolph, New Hampshire, has decided to get out a town history, and I want to have you do the printin’ of it. The selectmen thought it could be printed at ——, but I says to them, ‘If it’s worth doin’ at all it’s worth doin’ right, and I want the book to be made at the University Press in Cambridge.’”
I thanked Mr. Smith for his confidence, and expressed my satisfaction that our reputation had reached Randolph, New Hampshire.
“Well,” he said, chuckling to himself, “you see, it was this way. You made the history of Rumford, and I was the feller who wrote the genealogies. That’s what I am, a genealogy feller. Nobody in New Hampshire can write a town history without comin’ to me for genealogies.”
After pausing for a moment he continued, “It was your proofreadin’ that caught me. On that Rumford book your proofreader was a smart one, she was, but I got back at her in good style.”
His memory seemed to cause him considerable amusement, and I waited expectantly.
“It was in one of the genealogies,” he went on finally. “I gave the date of the marriage as so and so, and the date of the birth of the first child as two months later. Did she let that go by? I should say not. She drew a line right out into the margin and made a darned big question mark. But I got back at her! I just left that question mark where it was, and wrote underneath, ‘Morally incorrect, historically correct!’”
When the first Adams flat-bed press was installed at the University Press, President Felton of Harvard College insisted that no book of his should ever be printed upon this modern monstrosity. Here was history repeating itself, for booklovers of the fifteenth century in Italy for a long time refused to admit that a printed volume had its place in a gentleman’s library. In the eighteen-nineties one whole department at the University Press consisted of these flat-bed presses, which today can scarcely be found outside of museums. If a modern publisher were to stray into the old loft where the wetted sheets from these presses were hung over wooden rafters to dry, he would rub his eyes and wonder in what age he was living. The paper had been passed through tubs of water, perhaps half a quire at a time, and partially dried before being run through the press. The old Adams presses made an impression that could have been read by the blind, and all this embossing, together with the wrinkling of the sheet from the moisture, had to be taken out under hydraulic pressure. Today wetted sheets and the use of hydraulic presses for bookwork are practically obsolete. The cylinder presses, that run twice as fast, produce work of equal quality at lower cost.
In those days the relations between publishers and their printers were much more intimate. Scales of prices were established from time to time, but a publisher usually sent all his work to the same printer. It was also far more customary for a publisher to send an author to the printer to discuss questions of typography with the actual maker of the book, or to argue some technical or structural point in his manuscript with the head proofreader. The headreader in a large printing establishment at that time was a distinct personality, quite competent to meet authors upon their own ground.
One of my earliest and pleasantest responsibilities was to act as Mr. Wilson’s representative in his business relations with Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, which required frequent trips to “Pleasant View” at Concord, New Hampshire. Mrs. Eddy always felt under deep obligation to Mr. Wilson for his interest in the manuscript of Science and Health when she first took it to him with a view to publication, and any message from him always received immediate and friendly consideration.
In the past there have been suggestions made that the Rev. James Henry Wiggin, a retired Unitarian clergyman and long a proofreader at the University Press, rewrote Science and Health. Mr. Wiggin was still proofreader when I entered the Press, and he always manifested great pride in having been associated with Mrs. Eddy in the revision of this famous book. I often heard the matter referred to, both by him and by John Wilson, but there never was the slightest intimation that Mr. Wiggin’s services passed beyond those of an experienced editor. I have no doubt that many of his suggestions, in his editorial capacity, were of value and possibly accepted by the author,—in fact, unless they had been, he would not have exercised his proper function; but had he contributed to the new edition what some have claimed, he would certainly have given intimation of it in his conversations with me.
The characteristic about Mrs. Eddy that impressed me the first time I met her was her motherliness. She gave every one the impression of deepest interest and concern in what he said, and was sympathetic in everything that touched on his personal affairs. When I told her of John Wilson’s financial calamity, she seemed to regard it as a misfortune of her own. Before I left her that day she drew a check for a substantial sum and offered it to me.
“Please hand that to my old friend,” she said, “and tell him to be of good cheer. What he has given of himself to others all these years will now return to him a thousand-fold.”
At first one might have been deceived by her quiet manner into thinking that she was easily influenced. There was no suggestion to which she did not hold herself open. If she approved, she accepted it promptly; if it did not appeal, she dismissed it with a graciousness that left no mark; but it was always settled once and for all. There was no wavering and no uncertainty.
After Mrs. Eddy moved from Concord to Boston, her affairs were administered by her Trustees, so I saw her less frequently. To many her name suggests a great religious movement, but when I think of her I seem to see acres of green grass, a placid little lake, a silver strip of river, and a boundary line of hills; and within the unpretentious house a slight, unassuming woman,—very real, very human, very appealing, supremely content in the self-knowledge that, no matter what others might think, she was delivering her message to the world.
By this time, I had discovered what was the matter with American bookmaking. It was a contracting business, and books were conceived and made by the combined efforts of the publisher, the manufacturing man, the artist, the decorator, the paper mills’ agent, and, last of all, the printer and the binder. This was not the way the old-time printers had planned their books. With all their mechanical limitations, they had followed architectural lines kept consistent and harmonious because controlled by a single mind, while the finished volume of the eighteen-nineties was a composite production of many minds, with no architectural plan. No wonder that the volumes manufactured, even in the most famous Presses, failed to compare with those produced in Venice by Jenson and Aldus four centuries earlier!
When I succeeded John Wilson as head of the University Press in 1895, I determined to carry out the resolution I had formed four years earlier, while sitting in on the Eugene Field conference, of following the example of the early master-printers so far as this could be done amidst modern conditions. Some of my publisher friends were partially convinced by my contention that if the printer properly fulfilled his function he must know how to express his clients’ mental conception of the physical attributes of prospective volumes in terms of type, paper, presswork, and binding better than they could do it themselves. The Kelmscott publications, which appeared at this time, were of great value in emphasizing my contention, for William Morris placed printing back among the fine arts after it had lapsed into a trade.
I had no idea, when I presented my plan, of persuading my friends to produce typographical monuments. No demand has ever existed for volumes of this type adequate to the excessive cost involved by the perfection of materials, the accuracy of editorial detail, the supreme excellence of typography and presswork, and the glory of the binding. Sweynheim and Pannartz, Gutenberg’s successors, were ruined by their experiments in Greek; the Aldine Press in Venice was saved only by the intervention of Jean Grolier; Henri Étienne was ruined by his famous Thesaurus, and Christophe Plantin would have been bankrupted by his Polyglot Bible had he not retrieved his fortunes by later and meaner publications. Nor was I unmindful of similar examples that might have been cited from more modern efforts, made by ambitious publishers and printers.
What I wanted to do was to build low-cost volumes upon the same principles as de luxe editions, eliminating the expensive materials but retaining the harmony and consistency that come from designing the book from an architectural standpoint. It adds little to the expense to select a type that properly expresses the thought which the author wishes to convey; or to have the presses touch the letters into the paper in such a way as to become a part of it, without that heavy impression which makes the reverse side appear like an example of Braille; or to find a paper (even made by machine!) soft to the feel and grateful to the eye, on which the page is placed with well-considered margins; or to use illustrations or decorations, if warranted at all, in such a way as to assist the imagination of the reader rather than to divert him from the text; to plan a title page which, like the door to a house, invites the reader to open it and proceed, its type lines carefully balanced with the blank; or to bind (even in cloth!) with trig squares and with design or lettering in keeping with the printing inside.
By degrees the publishers began to realize that this could be done, and when once established, the idea of treating the making of books as a manufacturing problem instead of as a series of contracts with different concerns, no one of which knew what the others were doing, found favor. The authors also preferred it, for their literary children now went forth to the world in more becoming dress. Thus serving in the capacity of book architect and typographical advisor, instead of merely as a contrasting printer, these years have been lived in a veritable Kingdom of Books, in company with interesting people,—authors and artists as well as publishers,—in a delightfully intimate way because I have been permitted to be a part of the great adventure.
During these years I have seen dramatic changes. Wages were somewhat advanced between 1891 and the outbreak of the World War, but even at this latter date the cost of manufacturing books was less than half of what it is now. This is the great problem which publishers have to face today. When the cost of everything doubled after the World War, the public accepted the necessity of paying twice the price for a theater ticket as a matter of course; but when the retail price of books was advanced in proportion to the cost of manufacture, there was a great outcry among buyers that authors, publishers, and booksellers were opportunists, demanding an unwarranted profit. As a matter of fact, the novel which used to sell at $1.35 per copy should now sell at $2.50 if the increased costs were properly apportioned. The publisher today is forced to decline many promising first novels because the small margin of profit demands a comparatively large first edition.
Unless a publisher can sell 5,000 copies as a minimum it is impossible for him to make any profit upon a novel. Taking this as a basis, and a novel as containing 320 pages, suppose we see how the $2.00 retail price distributes itself. The cost of manufacture, including the typesetting, electrotype plates, cover design, jacket, brass dies, presswork, paper, and binding, amounts to 42 cents per copy (in England, about 37 cents). The publisher’s cost of running his office, which he calls “overhead,” is 36 cents per copy. The minimum royalty received by an author is 10 per cent. of the retail price, which would give him 20 cents. This makes a total cost of 98 cents a copy, without advertising. But a book must be advertised.
Every fifty dollars spent in advertising on a five thousand edition adds a cent to the publisher’s cost. The free copies distributed for press reviews represent no trifling item. A thousand dollars is not a large amount to be spent for advertising, and this means 20 cents a copy on a 5000 edition, making a total cost of $1.18 per copy and reducing the publisher’s profit to 2 cents, since he sells a two-dollar book to the retail bookseller for $1.20. The bookseller figures that his cost of doing business is one-third the amount of his sales, or, on a two-dollar book, 67 cents. This then shows a net profit to the retail bookseller of 13 cents, to the publisher of 2 cents, and to the author of 20 cents a copy.
Beyond this, there is an additional expense to both bookseller and publisher which the buyer of books is likely to overlook. It is impossible to know just when the demand for a book will cease, and this means that the publisher and the bookseller are frequently left with copies on hand which have to be disposed of at a price below cost. This is an expense that has to be included in the book business just as much as in handling fruit, flowers, or other perishable goods.
When a publisher is able to figure on a large demand for the first edition, he can cut down the cost of manufacture materially; but, on the other hand, this is at least partially offset by the fact that authors whose books warrant large first editions demand considerably more than 10 per cent. royalty, and the advertising item on a big seller runs into large figures.
I wish I might say that I had seen a dramatic change in the methods employed in the retail bookstores! There still exists, with a few notable exceptions, the same lack of realization that familiarity with the goods one has to sell is as necessary in merchandizing books as with any other commodity. Salesmen in many otherwise well-organized retail bookstores are still painfully ignorant of their proper functions and indifferent to the legitimate requirements of their prospective customers.
Some years ago, when one of my novels was having its run, I happened to be in New York at a time when a friend was sailing for Europe. He had announced his intention of purchasing a copy of my book to read on the steamer, and I asked him to permit me to send it to him with the author’s compliments. Lest any reader be astonished to learn that an author ever buys a copy of his own book, let me record the fact that except for the twelve which form a part of his contract with the publisher, he pays cash for every copy he gives away. Mark Twain dedicated the first edition of The Jumping Frog to “John Smith.” In the second edition he omitted the dedication, explaining that in dedicating the volume as he did, he had felt sure that at least all the John Smiths would buy books. To his consternation he found that they all expected complimentary copies, and he was hoist by his own petard!
With the idea of carrying out my promise to my friend, I stepped into one of the largest bookstores in New York, and approached a clerk, asking him for the book by title. My pride was somewhat hurt to find that even the name was entirely unfamiliar to him. He ran over various volumes upon the counter, and then turned to me, saying, “We don’t carry that book, but we have several others here which I am sure you would like better.”
“Undoubtedly you have,” I agreed with him; “but that is beside the point. I am the author of the book I asked for, and I wish to secure a copy to give to a friend. I am surprised that a store like this does not carry it.”
Leaning nonchalantly on a large, circular pile of books near him, the clerk took upon himself the education of the author.
“It would require a store much larger than this to carry every book that is published, wouldn’t it?” he asked cheerfully. “Of course each author naturally thinks his book should have the place of honor on the bookstalls, but we have to be governed by the demand.”
It was humiliating to learn the real reason why this house failed to carry my book. I had to say something to explain my presumption even in assuming that I might find it there, so in my confusion I stammered,
“But I understood from the publishers that the book was selling very well.”
“Oh, yes,” the clerk replied indulgently; “they have to say that to their authors to keep them satisfied!”
With the matter thus definitely settled, nothing remained but to make my escape as gracefully as circumstances would permit. As I started to leave, the clerk resumed his standing position, and my eye happened to rest on the pile of perhaps two hundred books upon which he had been half-reclining. The jacket was strikingly familiar. Turning to the clerk I said severely,
“Would you mind glancing at that pile of books from which you have just risen?”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, smiling and handing me a copy, “that is the very book we were looking for, isn’t it?”
It seemed my opportunity to become the educator, and I seized it.
“Young man,” I said, “if you would discontinue the practice of letting my books support you, and sell a few copies so that they might support me, it would be a whole lot better for both of us.”
“Ha, ha!” he laughed, graciously pleased with my sally; “that’s a good line, isn’t it? I really must read your book!”
The old-time publisher is passing, and the author is largely to blame. I have seen the close association—in many cases the profound friendship—between author and publisher broken by the commercialism fostered by some literary agents and completed by competitive bids made by one publishing house to beguile a popular author away from another. There was a time when a writer was proud to be classified as a “Macmillan,” or a “Harper” author. He felt himself a part of the publisher’s organization, and had no hesitation in taking his literary problems to the editorial advisor of the house whose imprint appeared upon the title pages of his volumes. A celebrated Boston authoress once found herself absolutely at a standstill on a partially completed novel. She confided her dilemma to her publisher, who immediately sent one of his editorial staff to the rescue. They spent two weeks working together over the manuscript, solved the problems, and the novel, when published, was the most successful of the season.
Several publishers have acknowledged to me that in offering unusually high royalties to authors they have no expectation of breaking even, but that to have a popular title upon their list increases the sales of their entire line. The publisher from whom the popular writer is filched has usually done his share in helping him attain his popularity. The royalty he pays is a fair division of the profits. He cannot, in justice to his other authors, pay him a further premium.
Ethics, perhaps, has no place in business, but the relation between author and publisher seems to me to be beyond a business covenant. A publisher may deliberately add an author to his list at a loss in order to accomplish a specific purpose, but this practice cannot be continued indefinitely. A far-sighted author will consider the matter seriously before he becomes an opportunist.
In England this questionable practice has been of much slower growth. The House of Murray, in London, is one of those still conducted on the old-time basis. John Murray IV, the present head of the business, has no interest in any author who comes to him for any reason other than a desire to have the Murray imprint upon his book. It is more than a business. The publishing offices at 50a, Albemarle Street adjoin and open out of the Murray home. In the library is still shown the fireplace where John Murray III burned Byron’s Memoirs, after purchasing them at an enormous price, because he deemed that their publication would do injury to the reputation of the writer and of the House itself.
John Murray II was one of the publishers of Scott’s Marmion. In those days it was customary for publishers to share their contracts. Constable had purchased from Scott for £1,000 the copyright of Marmion without having seen a single line, and the honorarium was paid the author before the poem was completed or the manuscript delivered. Constable, however, promptly disposed of a one-fourth interest to Mr. Miller of Albemarle Street, and another one fourth to John Murray, then of Fleet Street.
By 1829 Scott had succeeded in getting into his own hands nearly all his copyrights, one of the outstanding items being this one-quarter interest in Marmion held by Mr. Murray. Longmans and Constable had tried in vain to purchase it. When, however, Scott himself approached Murray through Lockhart, the following letter from Mr. Murray was the result:
So highly do I estimate the honour of being even in so small a degree the publisher of the author of the poem that no pecuniary consideration whatever can induce me to part with it. But there is a consideration of another kind that would make it painful to me if I were to retain it a moment longer. I mean the knowledge of its being required by the author, into whose hands it was spontaneously resigned at the same instant that I read the request.
There has always been a vast difference in authors in the attitude they assume toward the transformation of their manuscripts into printed books. Most of them leave every detail to their publishers, but a few take a deep and intelligent personal interest. Bernard Shaw is to be included in the latter group.
A leading Boston publisher once telephoned me that an unknown English author had submitted a manuscript for publication, but that it was too socialistic in its nature to be acceptable. Then the publisher added that the author had asked, in case this house did not care to publish the volume, that arrangements be made to have the book printed in this country in order to secure American copyright.
“We don’t care to have anything to do with it,” was the statement; “but I thought perhaps you might like to manufacture the book.”
“Who is the author?” I inquired.
“It’s a man named Shaw.”
“What is the rest of his name?”
“Wait a minute and I’ll find out.”
Leaving the telephone for a moment, the publisher returned and said,
“His name is G. Bernard Shaw. Did you ever hear of him?”
“Yes,” I replied; “I met him last summer in London through Cobden-Sanderson, and I should be glad to undertake the manufacture of the book for Mr. Shaw.”
“All right,” came the answer. “Have your boy call for the manuscript.”
This manuscript was Man and Superman.
From that day and for many years, Shaw and I carried on a desultory correspondence, his letters proving most original and diverting. On one occasion he took me severely to task for having used two sizes of type upon a title page. He wrote four pages to prove what poor taste and workmanship this represented, and then ended the letter with these words, “But, after all, any other printer would have used sixteen instead of two, so I bless you for your restraint!”
We had another lengthy discussion on the use of apostrophes in printing. “I have made no attempt to deal with the apostrophes you introduce,” he wrote; “but my own usage is carefully considered and the inconsistencies are only apparent. For instance, Ive, youve, lets, thats, are quite unmistakable, but Ill, hell, shell, for I’ll, he’ll, she’ll, are impossible without a phonetic alphabet to distinguish between long and short e. In such cases I retain the apostrophe, in all others I discard it. Now you may ask me why I discard it. Solely because it spoils the printing. If you print a Bible you can make a handsome job of it because there are no apostrophes or inverted commas to break up the letterpress with holes and dots. Until people are forced to have some consideration for a book as something to look at as well as something to read, we shall never get rid of these senseless disfigurements that have destroyed all the old sense of beauty in printing.”
“Ninety-nine per cent. of the secret of good printing,” Shaw continued, “is not to have patches of white or trickling rivers of it trailing down a page, like rain-drops on a window. Horrible! White is the enemy of the printer. Black, rich, fat, even black, without gray patches, is, or should be, his pride. Leads and quads and displays of different kinds of type should be reserved for insurance prospectuses and advertisements of lost dogs.…”
His enthusiasm for William Morris’ leaf ornaments is not shared by all booklovers. Glance at any of the Kelmscott volumes, and you will find these glorified oak leaves scattered over the type page in absolutely unrelated fashion,—a greater blemish, to some eyes, than occasional variation in spacing. Shaw writes:
If you look at one of the books printed by William Morris, the greatest printer of the XIX century, and one of the greatest printers of all the centuries, you will see that he occasionally puts in a little leaf ornament, or something of the kind. The idiots in America who tried to imitate Morris, not understanding this, peppered such things all over their “art” books, and generally managed to stick in an extra large quad before each to show how little they understood about the business. Morris doesn’t do this in his own books. He rewrites the sentence so as to make it justify, without bringing one gap underneath another in the line above. But in printing other people’s books, which he had no right to alter, he sometimes found it impossible to avoid this. Then, sooner than spoil the rich, even color of his block of letterpress by a big white hole, he filled it up with a leaf.
Do not dismiss this as not being “business.” I assure you, I have a book which Morris gave me, a single copy, by selling which I could cover the entire cost of printing my books, and its value is due solely to its having been manufactured in the way I advocate; there’s absolutely no other secret about it; and there is no reason why you should not make yourself famous through all the ages by turning out editions of standard works on these lines whilst other printers are exhausting themselves in dirty felt end papers, sham Kelmscott capitals, leaf ornaments in quad sauce, and then wondering why nobody in Europe will pay twopence for them, whilst Kelmscott books and Doves Press books of Morris’ friends, Emery Walker and Cobden-Sanderson, fetch fancy prices before the ink is thoroughly dry.… After this I shall have to get you to print all my future books, so please have this treatise printed in letters of gold and preserved for future reference