"But she was a good Customer to me. Whilst I took her money I humoured her pride, and paid her (I blush to say it) a mighty observance."
He speaks plainly too of the men book-buyers. One Mr. Gouge, who was also "a Secret Friend to the Fair Sex," bought to give away two hundred copies of a book written by Parson Gouge, his father. Another "young beau who boasts more Villany than he ever committed bought a many of books;" hence Dunton tolerated the "Young Spark's" demoralizing acquaintance. Mr. Thorncomb, another book-dealer from London, also bought of him, and, with the ever prevailing luck was "Acceptable to the Fair Sex, so extremely charming as makes 'em fond of being in his Company. However he is a virtuous person and deserved all the Respect they shewed him." Nor can I doubt, from the pervasive spirit of his books, that Dunton too found favor with the fair.
Though he spoke so warmly of individual purchasers and so positively of the wealth of his ilk in Boston, his own venture was not vastly prosperous. He took back to England but £400. He gave the Boston Yankees, too, rather a bad name in commercial transactions, saying:
"There is no trading for a stranger with them but with a Grecian Faith which is not to part with your own ware without ready Money; for they are generally very backward in their payments; great censors about other Mens manner but Extremely Careless about their own. When you are dealing with 'em you must look upon 'em as at cross purposes and read 'em like Hebrew backward; for they seldom speak & mean the same thing but like the Watermen Look one way & row another."
Josselyn gave them no better name, saying:
"Their leading men are damnable rich, inexplicably covetous and proud; like Ethiopians, white in the teeth only; full of ludification and injurious dealing."
Of Dunton's patrons the majority were ministers, and I hope all the reverend gentlemen were as prompt payers as they were liberal purchasers. Since Dunton called ministers "the greatest benefactors to Booksellers," I think they were not included in his black list. Surely Cotton Mather was not, for he gave away one thousand books in one year, and I know he paid for them too. One Boston schoolmaster, however, bought £200 worth of books, and when we consider the excessively small pay of members of that calling at that time, we feel that he showed a liberal interest in promoting in every manner the spread of learning, and only trust that he paid the bill promptly.
In 1719 there was but one book-shop in New York, but of cultured Boston Neal wrote at that date: "The Exchange is surrounded with booksellers' shops which have a good trade. There are five Printing Presses." Succeeding years did not change the luck of the craft in Boston, nor dim its honors, still wealth and love poured in on its members. The names of Henchman and Hancock show the opulence; while Knox, in war and love alike prospered, winning the wealthy "belle of Massachusetts" for his bride, and winning equal glory with his sword in the Revolution. In other New England towns did book-publishing succeed, though Boston's earlier start, its leading position, and its more carefully preserved history give it place as a type of the whole province.
And now, what was the fruit of all this fairly garnished and richly nourished tree? What did these prosperous New England book-merchants bring forth in the first century of book-printing in the province? What return did they make for all the romantic and material support given them? No love-poems or mild tales of gallantry, as you might expect from their alleged fascinating traits, but, instead, an almost unvaried production of dreary and dull funeral, execution, wedding, election, and baptismal sermons, and of psalm-books, with here and there a "two penny jeering gigge," or perhaps an anagram or acrostic or "pindarick," on some virtuous citizen or industrious dame, recently deceased. In business relations the deacon prevailed powerfully over the gallant. If, as Tyler says, the New England theocracy was a social structure resting on a book, that corner-stone was the Bay Psalm-Book and the walls above it were built of sermons. These sermons seem to us technical, sapless, and jejune, "as soporific as a bed of poppies," but they show the intelligence, energy, and assiduity of the writers just as plainly as they show the gloomy theology and sad earnestness of the time. And though no one now reads them, we profoundly respect them, for they have been conned by our honored forefathers with more studious and loving attention than falls to the lot of most modern books, no matter what their subject or who their author.
I have told at length the story of the publication of the Bay Psalm-Book and of other psalm-books printed and used in New England, in "The Sabbath in Puritan New England" and I need not dwell upon it here.