SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS
'That's a strange man!' said I to myself, after I had left the house, 'he is evidently very clever; but I cannot say that I like him much with his Oxford Reviews and Dairyman's Daughters.'—Lavengro.
Borrow lost his father on the 28th February 1824. He reached London on the 2nd April of the same year, and this was the beginning of his many wanderings. He was armed with introductions from William Taylor, and with some translations in manuscript from Danish and Welsh poetry. The principal introduction was to Sir Richard Phillips, a person of some importance in his day, who has so far received but inadequate treatment in our own.[49] Phillips was active in the cause of reform at a certain period in his life, and would seem to have had many sterling qualities before he was spoiled by success. He was born in the neighbourhood of Leicester, and his father was 'in the farming line,' and wanted him to work on the farm, but he determined to seek his fortune in London. After a short absence, during which he clearly proved to himself that he was not at present qualified to capture London, young Phillips returned to the farm. Borrow refers to his patron's vegetarianism, and on this point we have an amusing story from his own pen! He had been, when previously on the farm, in the habit of attending to a favourite heifer:
During his sojournment in London this animal had been killed; and on the very day of his return to his father's house, he partook of part of his favourite at dinner, without his being made acquainted with the circumstance of its having been slaughtered during his absence. On learning this, however, he experienced a sudden indisposition; and declared that so great an effect had the idea of his having eaten part of his slaughtered favourite upon him, that he would never again taste animal food; a vow to which he has hitherto firmly adhered.[50]
Farming not being congenial, Phillips hired a small room in Leicester, and opened a school for instruction in the three R's, a large blue flag on a pole being his 'sign' or signal to the inhabitants of Leicester, who seem to have sent their children in considerable numbers to the young schoolmaster. But little money was to be made out of schooling, and a year later Phillips was, by the kindness of friends, started in a small hosiery shop in Leicester. Throwing himself into politics on the side of reform, Phillips now started the Leicester Herald, to which Dr. Priestley became a contributor. The first number was issued gratis in May 1792. His Memoir informs us that it was an article in this newspaper that secured for its proprietor and editor eighteen months imprisonment in Leicester gaol, but he was really charged with selling Paine's Rights of Man. The worthy knight had probably grown ashamed of The Rights of Man in the intervening years, and hence the reticence of the memoir. Phillips's gaoler was the once famous Daniel Lambert, the notorious 'fat man' of his day. In gaol Phillips was visited by Lord Moira and the Duke of Norfolk. It was this Lord Moira who said in the House of Lords in 1797 that 'he had seen in Ireland the most absurd, as well as the most disgusting tyranny that any nation ever groaned under.' Moira became Governor-General of Bengal and Commander-in-Chief of the Army in India. The Duke of Norfolk, a stanch Whig, distinguished himself in 1798 by a famous toast at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Arundel Street, Strand:—'Our sovereign's health—the majesty of the people!' which greatly offended George III., who removed Norfolk from his lord-lieutenancy. Phillips seems to have had a very lax imprisonment, as he conducted the Herald from gaol, contributing in particular a weekly letter. Soon after his release he disposed of the Herald, or permitted it to die. It was revived a few years later as an organ of Toryism. He had started in gaol another journal, The Museum, and he combined this with his hosiery business for some time longer, when an opportune fire relieved him of an apparently uncongenial burden, and with the insurance money in his pocket he set out for London once more. Here he started as a hosier in St. Paul's Churchyard, lodging meantime in the house of a milliner, where he fell in love with one of the apprentices, Miss Griffiths, 'a native of Wales.' His affections were won, we are naïvely informed in the Memoir, by the young woman's talent in the preparation of a vegetable pie. This is our first glimpse of Lady Phillips—'a quiet, respectable woman,' whom Borrow was to meet at dinner long years afterwards. Inspired, it would seem, by the kindly exhortation of Dr. Priestley, he now transformed his hosiery business in St. Paul's Churchyard into a 'literary repository,' and started a singularly successful career as a publisher. There he produced his long-lived periodical, The Monthly Magazine, which attained to so considerable a fame. Dr. Aikin, a friend of Priestley's, was its editor, but with him Phillips had a quarrel—the first of his many literary quarrels—and they separated. This Dr. Aikin was the father of the better-known Lucy Aikin, and was a Nonconformist who suffered for his opinions in these closing years of the eighteenth century, even as Priestley did. He was the author of many works, including the once famous Evenings at Home, written in conjunction with his sister, Mrs. Barbauld;[51] and after his quarrel with Phillips he founded a new publication issued by the house of Longman, and entitled The Athenæum. Hereupon he and Phillips quarrelled again, because Dr. Aikin described himself in advertisements of The Athenæum as 'J. Aikin, M.D., late editor of The Monthly Magazine.' Aikin's contributors to The Monthly included Capell Lofft, of whom we know too little, and Dr. Wolcot, of whom we know too much. Meanwhile Phillips's publishing business grew apace, and he removed to larger premises in Bridge Street, Blackfriars, an address which we find upon many famous publications of his period. A catalogue of his books lies before me dated 'January 1805.' It includes many works still upon our shelves. Almon's Memoirs and Correspondence of John Wilkes, Samuel Richardson's Life and Correspondence, for example, several of the works of Maria Edgeworth, including her Moral Tales, many of the works of William Godwin, including Caleb Williams, and the earlier books of that still interesting woman and once popular novelist, Lady Morgan, whose Poems as Sydney Owenson bears Phillips's name on its title-page, as does also her first successful novel The Wild Irish Girl, and other of her stories. My own interest in Phillips commenced when I met him in the pages of Lady Morgan's Memoirs.[52] Thomas Moore, Lady Morgan tells us,
had come back to Dublin from London, where he had been 'the guest of princes, the friend of peers, the translator of Anacreon!' From royal palaces and noble manors, he had returned to his family seat—a grocer's shop at the corner of Little Longford Street, Angier Street.
Here, in a little room over the shop, Sydney heard him sing two of his songs, and was inspired thereby to write her first novels, St. Clair and The Novice of St. Dominick. The first was published in Dublin; over the second she corresponded with Phillips, and his letters to her commence with one dated from Bridge Street, 6th April 1805, in which he wishes her to send the manuscript of The Novice to him as one 'often (undeservedly) complimented as the most liberal of my trade!' She determined, fresh from a governess situation, to bring the manuscript herself. Phillips was charmed with his new author, and really seems to have treated her very liberally. He insisted, however, on having The Novice cut down from six volumes to four, and she was wont to say that nothing but regard for her feelings prevented him from reducing it to three.[53] The Novice of St. Dominick was a favourite book with the younger Pitt, who read it over again in his last illness. Then followed—in 1806—Sydney Owenson's new novel, The Wild Irish Girl, and it led to an amusing correspondence with its author on the part of Phillips on the one side, and Johnson, who, it will be remembered, was Cowper's publisher, on the other. Phillips was indignant that, having first brought Sydney into fame, she should dare to ask more money on that account. As is the case with every novelist to-day who scores one success, Miss Owenson had formed a good idea of her value, and there is a letter to Johnson in which she admitted that Phillips's offer was a generous one. Johnson had offered her £300 for the copyright of The Wild Irish Girl. Phillips had offered only £200 down and £50 each for the second and third editions. When Phillips heard that Johnson had outbidden him, he described the offer as 'monstrous,' and that it was 'inspired by a spirit of revenge.' He would not, he declared, increase his offer, but a little later he writes from Bridge Street to Sydney Owenson as his 'dear, bewitching, and deluding Syren,' and promises the £300. A few months later he gave her a hundred pounds for a slight volume of poems, which certainly never paid for its publication, although Scott and Moore and many another were making much money out of poetry in those days. In any case Phillips did not accept Miss Owenson's next story with alacrity, in spite of the undoubted success of The Wild Irish Girl. She no doubt asked too much for Ida of Athens. Phillips probably thought, after reading the first volume in type, that it was very inferior work, as indeed it was. Athens was described without the author ever having seen the city. After much wrangling, in which the lady said that her 'prince of publishers,' as she had once called him, had 'treated her barbarously,' the novel went into the hands of the Longmans, who published it, not without some remonstrance as to certain of its sentiments. The successful Lady Morgan afterwards described Ida as a bad book, so perhaps here, as usually, Phillips was not far wrong in his judgment. A similar quarrel seems to have taken place over the next novel, The Missionary. Here Phillips again received the manuscript, discussed terms with its author, and returned it. The firm of Stockdale and Miller were his successful rivals. Later and more prosperous novels, O'Donnel in particular, were issued by Henry Colburn, and Phillips now disappears from Lady Morgan's life. I have told the story of Phillips's relation with Lady Morgan at length because at no other point do we come into so near a contact with him. In Fell's Memoir Phillips is described—in 1808—as 'certainly now the first publisher in London,' but while he may have been this in the volume of his trade—and school-books made an important part of it—he was not in mere 'names.' Most of his successful writers—Sydney Owenson, Thomas Skinner Surr, Dr. Gregory, and the rest—have now fallen into oblivion. The school-books that he issued have lasted even to our own day, notably Dr. Mavor's Spelling Book. Dr. Mavor was a Scotsman from Aberdeen, who came to London and became Phillips's chief hack. There are no less than twenty of Mavor's school-books in the catalogue before me. They include Mavor's History of England, Mavor's Universal History, and Mavor's History of Greece. In the Memoir of 1808 it is claimed that 'Mavor' is but a pseudonym for Phillips, and the claim is also made, quite wrongfully, by John Timbs, who, before he became acting editor of the Illustrated London News under Herbert Ingram, and an indefatigable author, was Phillips's private secretary.[54] It seems clear, however, that in the case of Blair's Catechism and Goldsmith's Geography, and many another book for schools, Phillips was 'Blair' and 'Goldsmith' and many another imaginary person, for the books in question numbered about two hundred in all. For these books there must have been quite an army of literary hacks employed during the twenty years prior to the appearance of George Borrow in that great army. On 9th November 1807, the Lord Mayor's procession through London included Richard Phillips among its sheriffs, and he was knighted by George III. in the following year. During his period of office he effected many reforms in the City prisons. John Timbs, in his Walks and Talks about London, tells us that Phillips's colleague in the shrievalty was one Smith, who afterwards became Lord Mayor:
The personnel of the two sheriffs presented a sharp contrast. Smith loved aldermanic cheer, but was pale and cadaverous in complexion; whilst Phillips, who never ate animal food, was rosy and healthful in appearance. One day, when the sheriffs were in full state, the procession was stopped by an obstruction in the street traffic; when droll were the mistakes of the mob: to Smith they cried, 'Here's Old Water-gruel!' to Phillips, 'Here's Roast Beef! something like an Englishman!'
Two volumes before me show Phillips as the precursor of many of the publishers of one-volume books of reference so plentiful in our day. A Million of Facts is one of them, and A Chronology of Public Events Within the Last Fifty Years from 1771 to 1821 is another, while one of the earliest and most refreshing guides to London and its neighbourhood is afforded us in A Morning Walk from London to Kew, which first appeared in The Monthly Magazine, but was reprinted in 1817 with the name 'Sir Richard Phillips' as author on the title-page. Phillips was now no longer a publisher. Here we have some pleasant glimpses of a bygone era, many trite reflections, but not enough topography to make the book one of permanent interest. It would not, in fact, be worth reprinting.[55]
This, then, was the man to whom George Borrow presented himself in 1824. Phillips was fifty-seven years of age. He had made a moderate fortune and lost it, and was now enjoying another perhaps less satisfying; it included the profits of The Monthly Review, repurchased after his bankruptcy, and some rights in many of the school-books. But the great publishing establishment in Bridge Street had long been broken up. Borrow would have found Taylor's introduction to Phillips quite useless had the worthy knight not at the moment been keen on a new magazine and seen the importance of a fresh 'hack' to help to run it. Moreover, had he not written a great book which only the Germans could appreciate, Twelve Essays on the Phenomena of Nature? Here, he thought, was the very man to produce this book in a German dress. Taylor was a thorough German scholar, and he had vouched for the excellent German of his pupil and friend. Hence a certain cordiality which did not win Borrow's regard, but was probably greater than many a young man would receive to-day from a publisher-prince upon whom he might call laden only with a bundle of translations from the Danish and the Welsh. Here—in Lavengro—is the interview between publisher and poet, with the editor's factotum Bartlett, whom Borrow calls Taggart, as witness: