The public will at least believe that, though a once redoubtable author, like Giant Pope in the Pilgrim's Progress, by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger days, be grown crazy and stiff in his joints, he can at least sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at publishers as they go by, and biting his nails, because he cannot come at them!
It is not probable that these later paragraphs were actually written by the rose, but by some one who lives near the rose, and who takes roseate views of the situation.
When one has been introduced behind the scenes, these little touches go for what they are worth, but outside, they unquestionably, if imperceptibly, affect public opinion, and like an army of moral polyps build high the walls of lofty Rome. (A new species of polyps, the naturalist will say, but it answers my purpose.)
But while recognizing, to its fullest extent, the great power and prestige of a flourishing publishing house, and the great risk a writer runs in opposing it, I cannot bring myself to accept its invincibility, or its infallibility, or its indispensability. Of course a good reputation is, or ought to be, the sign of a good character; but a thing which is wrong is wrong, whatever be the reputation of him who does it. A charge of wrong is to be met by denial. It is not to dazzled out of sight in a general brilliancy. When the course of our true love ceased to run smooth, I supposed my pebble was the only obstacle which my publishers' rivulet had ever known, and I was dismayed accordingly. But if all the rocks I have since discovered could be cast into one heap, we should have a bigger monument than Joshua made to mark the passage of Jordan. But the monumenteers suffer in silence or speak with a bated breath that cannot be heard outside their own circle, while the flourishing firm keeps up such a continuous tooting with its rams' horns as would have flung flat the walls of Jericho had they been twice as stout as they were. Undoubtedly it is not wise always to make an outcry over your follies or misfortunes. Neither is it wise always to go through the world with a chip on your shoulder, challenging people to fillip it off. Yet we all admit that there are times when short, sharp, and decisive resistance to aggression is the wisest plan. So also is there a time to speak as well as a time to refrain from speaking. There may be dignity, there may be generosity, there may be prudence, or pusillanimity, or selfishness in silence. There may be all in speech. Of this I am certain, if any of those writers who have escaped harm by their own skill, or any of those who have thought to escape further harm by silence had but given warning of the existence of rocks, some of us, with less skill, would have avoided that vicinage and might have had smooth sailing through the whole voyage. By their silence they have not only indirectly contributed to our disaster, but they have actually strengthened against us the hands of our natural foes, the publishers. They make it possible for a newspaper to say, in reference to the present difficulty, “As the house (of H., P., & Co.) has been in thriving existence for more than a quarter of a century, and has never before quarreled with an author,—or more correctly speaking, never had an author quarrel with it,—there will be a general disposition,” and so forth. They thus directly increase the resistance which any succeeding author must overcome. “Nothing,” says “The Nation” newspaper of January 13, 1770, in harsher language than I care to use, but we must take language as we find it,—“Nothing so promotes swindle as the readiness of the victims to pocket their losses, go their way with a sickly smile, and let the rogues begin again.” But of course this must be left for each person to decide for himself. It is only that if one feels moved in the spirit to bear witness against wrong in any of the relations of life, there is nothing in the height, or depth, or breadth, or brilliancy of any reputation to overawe him. Nothing is real but the right. There is no life but in truth. When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead. Dead? He never was born. There never was any such person. He was a mirage, an apparition. The stars dim twinkle through his form.
As to the harm that may accrue to an author from adopting the course which he counts wise, it seems to me entirely insignificant. Nobody expects to go through the world intact, but we all expect to do that which presents itself to be done. If a writer has life in himself he will not easily die. If he has not life in himself the sooner he dies the better. If there is no life outside one charmed circle,
“Then am I dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.”
Nothing is indispensable but a mind at peace with itself. It is pleasant to celebrate the glory of those you love, but better trudge comfortably across country on foot and alone, with all your worldly goods knotted up in a yellow bandana than ride unwillingly behind anybody's triumphal car.
So then, while it is undoubtedly best as a general thing for an author to live at peace with publishers, and sinners, there is also no reason why he should not make war if it is borne in upon him to do so.
But the only royal road to justice is for authors, in the beginning, to be intelligent, prompt, exact and exacting on all business matters which come within their scope. This seems a little thing, but it would work a revolution in the literary world. Let writers deal with publishers, not like women and idiots, but as business men with business men. If an author chooses to relinquish all pecuniary rewards from his books and to make an outright gift of the profits to his publishers, he may leave the whole matter in their hands; but if he condescends to take any part in the spoils, he thereby becomes a business partner, and the only question is whether he shall be a good business man or a poor one. By not being prompt and intelligent, by neglecting to secure or to examine his accounts, or to correct them when they are wrong, or to understand them when they are obscure, he does not approve himself an unmercenary person; he simply shows himself to be shambling and shiftless, and puts a direct temptation in his publisher's path. Many a servant would be honest if her careless mistress would not leave money lying about. Had I but used the ordinary care and caution which a lawyer, or a merchant, or a marketman brings to his business, this trouble doubtless would never have happened, and we should all have been the happier for it. The simple consciousness on the part of a publisher, that an author is observant of what is visible, will have a tendency to make him exact and upright concerning what is invisible. An author should so order his affairs that a publisher must make an effort to be dishonest. On the contrary, he so neglects them that a publisher must make an effort to be honest. Confidence and trust are excellent things and never more excellent than when they have a solid basis of paper and ink. Do the best he can there will still be points enough for the author to exercise his trust on, but to do business wholly on the trust system is utterly childish. No confidence can be more complete than was mine, and none apparently can be founded on a more honorable reputation. The confidential, friendly way of conducting affairs is pretty and sentimental, grateful to one's indolence and vanity and over fastidiousness, and confirmatory of one's conviction that he is too dainty and delicate to touch a bargain with the tips of his fingers. But in fact we all do take money for our work when we can get it; we want just as much money and money just as much as other people—rather more—and, in sober truth, the friction, the sacrifice of delicacy in keeping your money affairs straight from day to day, is not for a moment to be compared to the delicacy which may be sacrificed by leaving them at the mercy of others. You run well for a while, but a day of reckoning is almost sure to come. The thriftless, hap-hazard way of bargaining or not bargaining, common among literary people, is the fruitful parent of uneasiness, anxiety, disappointment, and bitterness, before which delicacy must be rudely and ruthlessly brushed.