The Old Printer and the Modern Press

by Charles Knight

In June, 1846, the last number of 'The Penny Magazine' was published. Mr. Knight, who had been its editor from the commencement, in 1832, thus writes in his concluding 'Address to the Reader,' after stating that there then were published 14 three-halfpenny and penny miscellanies, and 37 weekly sheets, forming separate books:—"It is from this competition that the 'Penny Magazine' now withdraws itself. Its editor most earnestly wishes success to those who are keeping on their course with honesty and ability.... He rejoices that there are many in the field, and some who have come at the eleventh hour, who deserve the wages of zealous and faithful labourers. But there are others who are carrying out the principle of cheap weekly sheets to the disgrace of the system, and who appear to have got some considerable hold upon the less informed of the working people, and especially upon the young. There are manufactories in London whence hundreds of reams of vile paper and printing issue weekly; where large bodies of children are employed to arrange types, at the wages of shirt-makers, from copy furnished by the most ignorant, at the wages of scavengers. In truth, such writers, if they deserve the name of writers, are scavengers. All the garbage that belongs to the history of crime and misery is raked together, to diffuse a moral miasma through the land, in the shape of the most vulgar and brutal fiction." This is a curious and instructive record. 'The Penny Magazine,' popular as it once was, to the extent of a sale of 200,000, could not contend with a cheapness that was wholly regardless of quality; and it could not hold its place amidst this dangerous excitement. The editor had his hands fettered by the necessity of keeping up the purely instructive character of that journal. Without a large supply of fiction it necessarily ceased to be popular. A French writer, who laments over the "immondices" of the literature of Paris in 1840, calls for romances "appropriés par une imagination souple et brillante au goût des classes laborieuses;" and he suggests the principle upon which such works should be founded, viz. "L'étude des mœurs populaires, entreprise par un esprit pénétrant, et dirigée vers un but philosophique."[34] The "immondices" have for the most part vanished from our English penny literature. The host of penny Newgate novels, whether known as 'The Convict,' 'The Feast of Blood,' 'The Murder at the Old Jewry,' 'Claude Duval,' 'The Hangman's Daughter,' and so forth, may continue to be sold; but, as far as we can trace, there are no novelties in this once popular literature of the gallows. Abominations, called 'Mysteries' and 'Castles,' still lurk in dark corners; but the bulk of single Penny Novels, and the novels which "drag their slow length along" in penny journals, are marvellously changed. The most prudish regard to decency presides over every sentence and syllable. William the Conqueror has lost the brief ignoble title by which the old Saxons designated their oppressor, through a special interdict of the proprietor of one of these papers; and a lady of doubtful character must be mentioned by no more rugged name than that of a belle amie, which may be understood or not. But the "études des mœurs populaires," and the "but philosophique," have not yet entered into the minds of the conductors of these elaborate works. Their scenes are invariably laid in the lord's palace or the right honourable's mansion; marriages are made at St. George's, Hanover Square, and the diamonds are bought at Storr and Mortimer's. If a young lady, who has the slight misfortune to be connected by the filial tie with a convicted felon, has a quarrel with her juvenile lover, she immediately rushes to the arms of an ancient baronet, who conducts her the next morning to the altar of his parish church. Boileau said of Mademoiselle Scudery, that she would never let her heroine get out of a house till she had taken an inventory of all the furniture. So, for the bewilderment of those who read these weekly novels by the one glimmering candle upon the deal table, their sick ladies recline in easy chairs, "astral" lamps diffuse their rich glow upon crimson curtains, and aromatic perfumes fill the air from pastiles burning in miniature castles of gilded porcelain. The style of these productions is magnificent: with golden zones on the summits of the mountains, and roseate tints edging the canopy of heaven; plants drooping with voluptuous languor, and shining insects skimming the air, as if borne on the wings of ardent passion. In all this we are speaking au pied de la lettre. Johnson described three sorts of unnatural style—the bombastic, the affected, and the weak. Most of these performances unite the three qualities, and are equally satisfactory to the "love of imbecility," which Johnson thought was to be found in many. We have only seen one penny journal which places its incidents, and somewhat adapts its language, in consonance with the habits of the classes which these works seek to interest. In 'The Leisure Hour,' issued by the Religious Tract Society, we have an Australian story, with 'Sydney by Gaslight.' We are now amongst convicts, and hear drunken shouts come out from miserable huts. The success of this publication is considerable. Perhaps those who really understand such matters may say of the writer of these laudable attempts to imitate the homely style, something akin to what the great Pierce Egan said of a fashionable novelist twenty years ago—"Ah! he's very clever, but uncommon superficial in slang." Nevertheless, it is satisfactory to find that a mean has been sought, in the quarter where we might least have expected it, between the representations of humble and even of low life which are corrupting, and those pretended pictures of society which exhibit no life at all. In the number of 'The Leisure Hour' for February 16, 1854, there is a clever woodcut of a night auction at Sydney, which is as suggestive of a congregation of real vulgar sellers and bidders, with the necessary accompaniments of gin and tobacco, as might be connected with any of the exciting scenes of 'Life in London' at any period. The pictures of the penny sheets which the masses now greedily buy are quite genteel. This is something to reflect upon. Some of the members of the Tract Society may think that "Chaos is come again." We do not. This sort of subject will be attractive to the better portion of male readers amongst the artisans, and especially amongst the very large number who belong to "temperance societies;" but for the girls, who devour the novels of the other penny journals, certainly not. Those who have been watching the workings of the penny literature are unanimous in their conviction that very few men read these mawkish and unnatural fictions. The readers for the most part belong, in point of cultivation, to the same class of females, who, half a century ago, gave up their whole leisure—if they did not neglect every domestic duty—for the ghosts and the elopements of 'The Minerva Press.' The intelligence of the readers is the same, however widened the attraction.

But, with all their bad taste, there is partial merit and manifest utility in some portions of the best of these penny journals. 'The Family Herald' has constantly a serious article of great good sense and shrewdness. This paper, and one or two others, have pages of "Answers to Correspondents," which, for the most part, contain useful information and judicious advice. Real young ladies often pour their doubts into the ear of this "Family" oracle, about love, and courtship, and marriage; and, as far as we can judge, receive very safe counsel. In the whole range of these things we can detect nothing that bears a parallel with what used to be called "the blasphemous and seditious press." Neither, although these papers do not wholly abstain from comment upon what is passing in the world, can they be called newspapers. We see, however, that the new trump of war is calling up again one or two of the old class of unstamped violators of the law. In quiet times they cannot flourish. They may be difficult to suppress,

'Now all the youth of England are on fire.'

[34] Frégier, 'Les Classes Dangereuses.'

CHAPTER VII.

Degrees of Readers—General Improvement—Newspaper Press—Newspaper Press National—Agricultural Readers—General desire for Amusement—Supply of real Knowledge.

Our readers can scarcely have failed to make for themselves the deduction which naturally arises out of this survey of the progress of popular literature—that there always have been, still are, and always will be, various classes of readers and purchasers; and that the invariable progress of knowledge and intelligence—from the learned to the rich, from the rich to the middle classes, from the middle classes to the multitude—has produced as invariably a corresponding change in the number of books published, their quality, and their price. As the rich began to gather knowledge, books ceased to be wholly adapted to the learned or professional student; as the burgesses began to employ their leisure in reading, books ceased to be dependent upon courtly influence; as the multitude acquired the rudiments of instruction, books became less conventional, and began to adapt themselves to all classes. But it cannot, without a judicial blindness, be assumed that we are arrived at that state in which there are no degrees of intellectual advancement. It is said, to use the language of the most popular journal of our day, that the masses "do not yet feel the assurance that, if they go in thousands to the counters of the great publishing houses, as they congregate around the more plebeian shops, they will get the exact article they want, or what they consider value for their money." Here is the point. The masses, who are yet more imperfectly educated than some of their own class, and most of the class above them, would not consider, as they have never yet considered, solid and instructive reading "value for their money." Unquestionably "books to please the million must not only be good but attractive." The chief popular labour of the last quarter of a century has been to convert the ponderous ores of learning into the fine gold of knowledge. The multitude have been reached in many directions; and the influences of "good but attractive" books have penetrated where the books themselves have not yet had a direct influence. But the multitude stand precisely in the same relation to works of instruction, even the most attractive, as they do to Mechanics' Institutes and Athenæums. In Manchester and its dependencies, in 1851, there were 3447 members of these Institutions, and 1793 pupils in classes.[35] But the great mass of the youth of both sexes in Manchester were frequenting the Casinos. Here they neither drank, nor danced, nor gambled: they listened to recitations and comic songs at a penny an hour. They wanted mere amusement, and they found it. It is the same with the great bulk of the readers of cheap books. "It is most worthy of note," says the writer just mentioned, whose anxiety for cheap literature we honour and appreciate, "that, when there has been no doubt of the substantial value of the commodity issued from the Row or Albemarle Street, the sale of the books has been by no means equivocal." Certainly not. Macaulay and Layard have found large numbers of purchasers, and will find them, in their cheap form. But are these purchasers what are called, in the same breath, "the multitude"—"the needy"? Not at all. Even the most successful of the periodical works above a penny—'Chambers' Journal,' 'Household Words,'—reach only the advanced guard of this class. Mr. Dickens collected around him at Birmingham such an audience as never before waited upon an author. He read his beautiful, humanizing 'Christmas Carol' to two thousand working-men. They felt every point—they laughed, or they grew serious, with understanding. But are we to suppose that the whole mass of the mechanical classes—men, women, and children—throughout the kingdom, would rush by millions to buy 'The Christmas Carol' at a penny or two—at a price that would compensate in fame what was wanting in profit? Its sterling merit—its nature, its simplicity, its purity, its quiet humour—require a far higher amount of taste and cultivation to appreciate than the immaturity of mind to which the coarseness and imbecility of the penny journals are acceptable. An author of less popular acceptation published a poem at a farthing, but we never heard that he employed a steam-press in its production. The multitude have their own weekly literature, and we have seen what it is. Are the novels of the author of 'Pelham' to be speedily found in every cottage of the farm-labourer, and in every garret of the Lancashire cotton-spinner? The time may come, but it is not as yet. If a despotic government, in the desire to disseminate knowledge, were to follow the example which our free Government has set with regard to the 'School-books published by authority of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland,' they might produce sound popular literature as cheap again as the most adventurous of publishers. But if they left competition free to what they considered unsound knowledge—if they permitted the lowest-priced Fiction, however bad or indifferent, to circulate without their unequal competition—we believe the free-traders would beat the monopolists in point of numbers; and it would be found an easier task, even with every commercial disadvantage of price, to "tickle and excite the palate" than "strengthen the constitution."

Do such considerations as these make us hopeless of the steady progress of a sound as well as cheap popular literature? Decidedly no. There is improvement all around us. The halfpenny ballad of Seven Dials is not yet extinct; but let the collectors look sharply about them, for that relic of the chap-books, with the woodcuts that have served every generation, will soon be gone. In its place has come the decent penny book of a hundred songs. The shades of Scott, and Moore, and Campbell will not quarrel with this new popularity. There are "flash" songs; but they are not for the penny buyers. Thackeray has described the dens in which these abominations are current. The whole aspect of the humbler press has changed within these few years. Unquestionably the people have changed. Visit, if you can, the interior of that marvellous human machine, the General Post-Office, on a Friday evening, from half-past five to six o'clock. Look with awe upon the tons of newspapers that are crowding in to be distributed through the habitable globe. Think silently how potent a power is this for good or for evil. You turn to one of the boxes of the letter-sorters, and your guide will tell you, "this work occupies not half the time it formerly did, for everybody writes better." General education furnishes the solution of the otherwise doubtful origin of the improvement, in all the more manifest characteristics of improvement, of all popular literature.

In 1801 the annual circulation of newspapers in England and Wales was 15 millions, and in Scotland 1 million. In 1853 the annual circulation of England and Wales was 72 millions, and of Scotland 8 millions, that of Ireland being also about 8 millions. In September, 1836, the stamp-duty on newspapers was reduced to one penny. Immediately previous to the reduction the annual circulation of newspapers in Great Britain was about 29 millions. The increase, therefore, in seventeen years, has been 51 millions. We have cast up the twenty-two folio pages of the 'Return of the number of Newspaper Stamps, at one penny, issued in 1853,' and we find these results, as derived from the stamps, excluding supplements, used by 913 newspapers in England, 18 in Wales, 146 in Scotland, and 121 in Ireland, making a total number of 1198. But it must be borne in mind that about one-half of the publications in this return, called newspapers, are not newspapers in any sense of the word. Every publication can be stamped as a newspaper, for which the proprietor and printer give the necessary legal securities; and thus hundreds of price-currents, catalogues, and circulars—and many literary journals which are only partially stamped, and which none but political pedants, calling for a definition, term newspapers—find their way into this Official Return. There are, in round numbers, 600 newspapers proper in the United Kingdom. There are in London 14 daily papers, 6 twice and thrice a week, and 71 weekly; and about 500 provincial papers in the United Kingdom. Of the London Daily Papers, about 24 millions are annually circulated, of which the 'Times' has the lion's share of 14 millions. There are four weekly papers, published at the surpassingly cheap rate of threepence, which circulate 13 millions. The 'Illustrated London News' has a circulation of 4 millions; and eleven other leading weekly papers issue, annually, 6 millions. There are 6 religious papers, which have a circulation of about a million and a quarter. Thus, 36 London publications engross 48 million stamps, out of 71 millions. Of the Provincial English Press there are 26 great towns which number 80 papers, and these 80 consume 13 millions of stamps. We have, therefore, only 10 millions more to distribute amongst the entire newspaper press of England. The Welsh annual circulation is under a million.