One day among the advance sheets sent to me for judgment I found a novel by Mrs. Stannard, the lady who wrote under the pen name of John Strange Winter. It was a rather interesting piece of work, but it bore my title, "A Man of Honor." In advising its purchase I entered my protest against the use of that title in the proposed American edition. Of course the protest had no legal force, as our American copyright law affords no protection to titles, but with an honorable house like the Harpers the moral aspect of the matter was sufficient.
The situation was a perplexing one. The Harpers had in effect already bought the story from Mrs. Stannard for American publication. They must publish simultaneously with the English appearance of the novel or lose all claim to the protection of the trade courtesy. There was not time enough before publication day for them to communicate with the author and secure a change of title.
In this perplexity Mr. Joseph W. Harper, then the head of the house and a personal friend of my own, asked me if I would consent to the use of the title if he should print a footnote on the first page of the book, setting forth the fact of my prior claim to it and saying that the firm was indebted to my courtesy for the privilege of using it.
I readily consented to this and the book appeared in that way. A little later, in a letter, Mrs. Stannard sent me some pleasant messages, saying especially that she had found among her compatriots no such courteous reasonableness in matters of the kind as I had shown. By way of illustration she said that some years before, when she published "Houp-la," she had been compelled to pay heavy damages to an obscure writer who had previously used the title in some insignificant provincial publication, never widely known and long ago forgotten.
In the case of "A Man of Honor" the end was not yet. Mrs. Stannard's novel with that title and the footnote was still in its early months of American circulation when one day I found among the recently published English novels sent to me for examination one by John Strange Winter (Mrs. Stannard) entitled, "On March." Upon examining it I found it to be the same that the Harpers had issued with the "Man of Honor" title. I suppose that after the correspondence above referred to, Mrs. Stannard had decided to give the English edition of her work this new title, but had omitted to notify the Harpers of the change.
A "Warlock" on the Warpath
Mention of this matter of trouble with titles reminds me of a rather curious case which amused me at the time of its occurrence and may amuse the reader. In the year 1903 I published a novel entitled "The Master of Warlock." During the summer of that year I one day received a registered letter from a man named Warlock, who wrote from somewhere in Brooklyn. The missive was brief and peremptory. Its writer ordered me to withdraw the book from circulation instantly, and warned me that no more copies of it were to be sold. He offered no reason for his commands and suggested no explanation of his authority to give them. I wrote asking him upon what ground he assumed to interfere, and for reply he said briefly: "My grounds are personal and legal." Beyond that he did not explain.
He had written in the same way to the publishers of the book, who answered him precisely as I had done.
A month later there came another registered letter from him. In it he said that a month had passed since his demand was made and that as I had paid no heed to it, he now repeated it. He said he was armed with adequate proof that many copies of the book had been sold during that month—a statement which I am glad to say was true. There must now be a prompt and complete withdrawal of the novel from the market, he said.
This time the peremptory gentleman graciously gave me at least a hint of the ground upon which he claimed a right to order the suppression of the novel. He said I ought to know that I had no right to make use of any man's surname in fiction, especially when it was a unique name like his own.