A third hope of no less importance was to erect a cotton-printery in Munich or Augsburg in association with His Excellency Count von Arco, Court Chamberlain of Her Royal Highness the widowed Kurfürstin of Bavaria. This was ruined by the clumsiness of a Munich wood-turner, who made such uneven cylinders that we could not produce any satisfactory specimens. Although I made arrangements at once for a large English machine, like those used by Mr. Thornton, its manufacture was so slow that two years elapsed, and during this time our entire lithographic establishment was dissolved.
The idea of a cotton-printery was an unfortunate one, which not only cost much time and a great sum of money, but also had the unpleasant result that I could not fulfill my contract with the Faber brothers and thus, in addition to the resultant personal financial loss, had the pain of appearing before these most noble men in a poor light.
All this trouble was caused as follows. On invitation of Count von Arco, his brother-in-law, Count von Montgelas, Royal Minister of State, visited our institution and examined our work. At the request of Freiherr von Aretin I made an experimental printing with the little model cotton-printing press that I had brought from Vienna. It won his approval. Freiherr von Aretin intended to ask for a franchise for this process in Bavaria, where it had not yet been introduced. The Minister promised this and also held out the hope of a considerable financial assistance from the Government. Then I was foolish enough to try to increase his interest by telling him of the value that foreign lands set on this process, and thus I informed him of my contract with the Fabers. But this had an unexpected result. His Excellency heard the information most ungraciously, and said that I must not hope for the least assistance in Bavaria if I permitted myself to be used for the advantage of another state. He even declared that there was a royal rescript forbidding Bavarian subjects from using an art in foreign lands if its exclusive use were of importance for Bavaria. This rescript, said he, fitted my case exactly, and it was forbidden to me, under pain of highest disfavor, to proceed farther with the Austrians.
This embarrassed me mightily. Freiherr von Aretin and Count von Arco promised to urge the Minister to permit me to go to Vienna, on the ground that this method of printing cotton was no invention of mine, having been used long ago in England and for some time in Austria. But Freiherr von Aretin was not very desirous that I should absent myself for several months in the very beginning of our enterprise, and thus time passed without the hoped-for permission.
As the Fabers pressed me earnestly to fulfill my agreement, I devised a subterfuge that might permit me to keep my promise and still not lay myself open to too great a responsibility. I wrote to them advising them to have their correspondent in Munich demand through the court that I be forced to fulfill the contract. I considered that the city courts in Munich would have no particular knowledge of the royal rescript or, at least, that they would not immediately remember it, and that, when I admitted the existence of the contract, they would command me to keep it at once. Then I would obey immediately, and afterward could justify myself with the Bavarian Government by pointing to the court's decree.
It would surely have succeeded had not the correspondent of the Fabers failed in business after bringing suit, owing to which the matter got into another lawyer's hands. This man immediately adopted a new strange course. Instead of demanding a fulfillment of the contract, he sued for twelve thousand gulden damages for their loss of time. Of course I had to fight for my skin now; and as he refused to content himself with my agreement to fulfill the contract, I was forced at last to defend myself by falling back on the royal rescript. Thus I escaped by merely repaying the money already advanced; but I lost the considerable sum that would have been assured to me had I been permitted to spend only two months in St. Polten.
Thus none of the good prospects that opened themselves through my connection with Freiherr von Aretin proved so good as I had been justified in hoping: nay, it seemed as if I had only labored day and night to give others the benefits accruing from my painful labors, while I barely supported existence.
Freiherr von Aretin wished that the management of the business be in the hands of a man who possessed his own fullest confidence, but whom I did not consider at all suitable, as he was a royal official and as such could not do business in a public shop. Consequently the trade was carried on in his own residence, which was known to only few people and where nobody looked for the manifold things that we could have produced to good profit. This at last lowered our establishment to a mere job printery, which finally could not maintain itself, because more and more similar establishments were started in Munich, and the prices for work became lower and lower through their hungry competition.
It may not be uninteresting to tell briefly how so many printeries happened to be undertaken.
The first was established by Gleissner and myself, and was continued afterward in my name by my brothers Theobald and George, until 1805. They sold the secret to the Feyertag School, where an excellent art institute developed gradually under Herr Mitterer.