“Nor is it necessary to scour the country for evidence, since Messrs. Hunt, Parry, & Co. recognize such a usage themselves, even if they do not follow it. On what other principle did they allow me ten per cent. in the beginning on ‘City Lights,’ when I was a new author, and they had the whole matter of price in their own hands? During the reference they have also offered to return to ten per cent. Why should they offer ten per cent. in the beginning, and ten per cent. at the close, and skip about meanwhile from six and two thirds to seven and a half per cent. according to their fancy or caprice? This is a specimen of piping on the part of publishers, and dancing on the part of authors, that I do not propose to take part in.
“My claim to compensation on five hundred of the fifteen hundred books exempted in the first edition of ‘City Lights,’ needs no labored argument. Their attempt to prove from their books that I had due notice of the fact, proves that I ought to have had notice, while the accounts received and produced by me prove that no such notice was given me. Mr. Markman thinks it may have been lost in the mail, but the accounts which I hold cover the whole time of my transactions with Messrs. Brummell & Hunt, and I submit that the mails shall be believed innocent till they are proved guilty, and that Messrs. Brummell & Hunt must be nipped in the bud, or they will soon, as Sidney Smith says, be speaking disrespectfully of the equator. Mr. Parry admits that without explanation the word edition means a thousand copies. He also admits that in all cases when more than a thousand copies are exempted, the specific number is given. He believes mine to be the only exception to this rule. He alleges as the reason of this unusual exemption the unusual cost of my books, saying that they cost a great deal more than any other on their list. To this I reply that I should have been told in the beginning that they did or would cost more than others. Mr. Markman then brings forward a letter of mine to prove that I was told, and did know that the books cost more. This letter bears date September 20th, 1762, two days after the publication of ‘City Lights,’ and the extract says: ‘The fact that I wish to impress upon your mind is that you have tricked out my book so beautifully that nothing could be lovelier. You would not have done it though, if I had not threatened you within an inch of your life, would you? [etc., etc., etc.] But now see, I never thought till yesterday that they must cost more than the other way, and I have been distressed all along and this makes me more so,’ etc.
“This does not prove what Mr. Markman introduced it to prove, but it proves just the opposite, which is the next best thing. It shows that until the day after the book was published I had never thought of the book's cost, and that then the thought was spontaneous, not suggested to me by others. It proves beyond question that nothing had ever been said to me about it.
“On one or two other points, not strictly necessary to the case but introduced by Mr. Parry, I must beg a moment's forbearance. Mr. Parry, feeling that my claim involves fraud, reads extracts from my early letters, to show that I was very urgent to publish ‘City Lights,’ that I expressed the greatest confidence in them, and that, in short, I came to them in such a way as, to use his own language, would have almost held out a temptation to defraud me. So that if they had been disposed to defraud me at all they would have done it then.
“Fraud is a hard word, and I believe I have not used it; but if Mr. Parry insists, I will say that the exemption of the fifteen hundred books under cover of an edition occurred with the first edition of my first book, and I really don't see how they could have begun much earlier if they had tried.
“Mr. Parry mentions as a proof of their friendly intentions, that they desired to refer the whole matter to Mr. Rogers because they thought he was my friend; that they offered to refer it to my friend Mr. Brook, of whom they knew nothing, and to my friend Mr. Greatheart, of whom they knew very little. It will be observed that they did not once ask me to select a friend, but generously took the whole burden of the selection upon themselves.
“The first person to whom they offered to refer it was Mr. Rogers, and I accepted him gladly. I was so much in earnest that I wrote him myself begging him not to decline—and this although I had never seen him. On account of his health he felt obliged to decline; but before he had declined, Messrs. Hunt, Parry, & Co. proposed to relinquish him, for what reason I do not know. They proposed that I should give up Mr. Russell, and they should give up Mr. Rogers, and we should each make a new selection. I was entirely satisfied both with my choice and theirs, and I saw no reason for changing. So that I not only accepted the nail they drove, but I clinched it myself. I not only kept to my own choice, but I had to make them keep to theirs. It was while they stood thus shivering on the brink, after Mr. Rogers had been proposed and accepted, and before he had declined, that they proposed Mr. Brook and Mr. Greatheart.
“But was it friendly in them to turn away from their own choice, and go about among my friends choosing persons of whose qualifications they were ignorant, forcing me to reject them, and thus to discriminate against my own friends? Did not Messrs. Hunt, Parry, & Co. know that this was a matter not to be settled by sentiment? I should have considered it a far more unequivocal sign of friendliness if they had permitted me to appear before the referees with the friend whom I had intelligently chosen, who had stood by me through the whole trouble, who was familiar with all the details of my case, and capable of understanding all the details of theirs, and by whose aid, therefore, arbitration might be satisfactory as well as conclusive. Instead of which they compelled me to stand alone, unaided, without preparation, without the possibility of being prepared, in a position for which their long acquaintance with me must have told them I was eminently unfit, and which one at least of their number must have known would be to me peculiarly embarrassing and distressing. Their idea of a friendly arbitration seems to be that of imposing upon me the friends I do not want, and taking away from me the friend I do want.
“Mr. Parry thinks indeed that Mr. Dane had poisoned my mind regarding them. But he also thought Mrs.——'s mind was jaundiced. Perhaps that question belongs to the doctors rather than the referees. Whether it be poison or jaundice it is to be hoped the disease may not spread.
“There are other parts of Mr. Parry's statements which I should like to lay before the referees, but I remember that they are mortal, and though the spirit is willing the flesh is weak, and I forbear.