VIII.
ARRANGEMENT OF PRELIMINARIES.
AT the appointed time, Mr. Parry presented himself. But instead of proceeding, at once, to settling the preliminaries of the proposed arbitration, he wished to discuss the question at issue to see if we could not settle it between ourselves. I unhesitatingly declined, as I had from the beginning declined to do so. He said he had brought with him the papers and figures to show exactly how we stood. I declined to look at them, telling him that I was entirely incompetent to make a satisfactory examination of such a point, being unsound even on the multiplication-table. He asked if I would not be satisfied, supposing they could clearly prove that I had made more money out of the books than they had. I said not at all, that I had arrived at that point where I did not, in the least, care how much the publishers made; that if other authors had ten per cent., I wanted ten per cent., even if the publishers had to beg their bread from door to door. He seemed a little nonplused at such heartlessness; said he had come prepared to show that they had made only about seven tenths as much as I, and he had supposed that would satisfy me. As I affirmed it would not, he was somewhat at a loss how to proceed. I told him that in the beginning, that—and a great deal less, indeed—would have satisfied me, but that affairs had gone on so long, and feeling been so much aroused, that no sort of explanation would satisfy me; that I wished the matter to go entirely away from ourselves into the hands of unprejudiced and uninterested persons.
[After several months of profound reflection, I will here interpolate a remark which future commentators will please to remember does not belong to the original text, namely: that I do not see why the publisher's profits need be considered as the ultima Thule of an author's. Is it the phantom of a distorted imagination that the author has a far larger property in the book than the publisher? Does it not cost him infinitely more than it costs the publisher? And even leaving the infinite, and coming down to finite matters, are not the fields which the publisher reaps so much broader than the author's one little close, that a far smaller share in the gleanings would give the publisher a far more heaping granary. An author, we will say, publishes one book in a year. His profits are a thousand dollars. But the publisher publishes twenty books a year, on which, in the same ratio, he gets twenty thousand dollars. Suppose five hundred dollars were taken from the publisher's profits and added to the author's. The publisher would still have an income of ten thousand dollars, while the author would have one of only fifteen hundred.]
Mr. Parry then suggested leaving it to Mr. Stanhope, one of my friends, a suggestion which I did not adopt. He asked me if I still continued to prefer that it should be left to more than one person, and I left him no doubt on that point. He then suggested that we should give up the two we had chosen, and select entirely new ones. I assured him that I was not in the least dissatisfied with their choice or my own, and I would prefer to make no change. He suggested that Mr. Rogers was very hard of hearing, and might not be able to act on that account. I asked if he was materially harder of hearing now than when they selected him to settle the case alone. Mr. Parry did not know that he was, and finally consented to go on as we had begun. This, in the telling, does not sound quite straightforward, yet Mr. Parry seemed so frank and fair that I was more than half convinced, in spite of all other appearances, that they meant no wrong. At least I did not see how any one could be conscious of wrong, and yet seem so honest as he seemed. He was certainly entirely courteous, though, perhaps, it is not parliamentary to put that in. One tenth part of his fairness in the beginning would have set my doubts completely at rest. He said—but tenderly enough, as if he loved me à la Isaak Walton—that they lost money on “Holidays,” and that the books have not been selling very well for two years past. For all which I am very sorry. Still I remember that Mr. Hunt was always urgent for me to make books. The last two books were published in book form at his suggestion. My first notion was to publish them as magazine articles. The same was the case with “Old Miasmas.” They grew into books, and I have just found an old letter in which Mr. Hunt says, “Come out with a bang. The book's the thing in which you will catch the conscience of the public.” And again, “A volume by all means.” Nothing could be more encouraging, and stimulating, and agreeable than his tone and bearing. I recollect his saying to me, when we were discussing the last book, “You ought to write only books.” In a letter of October 23, 1767, he says, “I think you are quite right not to print your Burnet article at present, and I hope your thoughts will grow into a volume to be issued by B. & H., in the spring.” In a letter of December 11, 1765, he says, “Your sermon is good, but I hope you will not print it till you put it into a volume. Ask Brother S., your neighbor, if I am not right. If you were here, I could tell you a thousand reasons why your interest would not be served in the printing of this paper in a newspaper or magazine, nor the interest of the reading world, either. I speak as a fool, no doubt, but in your service.
“I hope you will give all your energy and time to ‘Winter Work.’ A new book from your pen in the spring will help the old ones, and is already asked for by our booksellers in the West and elsewhere.”
In short, as I look back, it seems to me that Mr. Hunt's influence—always pleasantly and heartily exerted—was towards the production and not the repression of books. I deeply regret that they have not enriched him to the extent of his desires and deserts, and I should regret it still more deeply had I urged the publications upon him as warmly as he urged them upon me.