About the year 1825, Constable devised a scheme greater than any he had yet floated, and the adoption of which was eventually destined to effect an entire revolution in the bookselling trade. After long study of the annual schedule of tax-payers, he established his premises clearly enough. There was undoubtedly an immense majority of respectable British families who never thought of buying a book. “Look,” he cried to Scott, “at the small class of people who pay the powder tax, what a trifle it is to each, and yet what a fortune it would bring to a bookseller! If I live for half-a-dozen years,” he continued, “I shall make it as impossible that there should not be a good library in every decent house in Great Britain, as that the shepherd’s ingle nook should want the ‘saut poke.’”
“Troth,” said Scott, “if you live you are indeed likely to be
‘The great Napoleon of the realms of print.’”
“If you outlive me,” retorted Constable, “I bespeak that line for my tombstone.... At three shillings or half-a-crown a volume every month, which must and shall sell, not by thousands, and tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands, and, ay, by millions! Twelve volumes in the year, a halfpenny of profit on every copy of which will make me richer than all the copyrights of all the quartos that ever were, or ever will be, hot-pressed! Twelve volumes so good that millions must wish to possess them, and so cheap that every butcher callant may have them if he pleases to let me tax him sixpence a week!”
Scott saw the feasibility of the scheme, and it was decided to start at once with a life of the “other Napoleon,” and a portion of one of the “Waverley Novels.”
But, alas! before the plan could be carried into execution, the crisis came. Lockhart received a letter from London stating that Constable’s London banker had thrown up his book, and he galloped over at once to Sir Walter’s, who smiled, re-lit his cigar, took the news coolly, and declined to believe it, and for the moment he was right.
Lockhart’s account of the terrible failure in which Scott was involved is this: Whenever Constable signed a bill for the purpose of raising money among the bankers, for fear of accident, or any neglect in taking the bill up before it fell due, he deposited a counter-bill, signed by Ballantyne, on which, if need were, Constable might raise a sum of money equivalent to that for which he had pledged his word; but these counter-bills were allowed to lie in Constable’s desk till they assumed the size of a “sheaf of stamps;” and when the hour of distress came, Constable rushed with these bills to the money-changers, and thus the Ballantynes who were liable to Constable for, say £25,000, were legally liable for £50,000. Constable, in his turn, carried on the same game with the London house of Hurst, Robinson, and Co., his agents—and upon a much larger scale. They neglected their own business of bookselling and entered heavily into speculation in hops, and in the panic of the close of 1825, availed themselves of Constable’s credit, and he of the Ballantynes, and the loss descended upon their principal partner, Scott.
This account has been contradicted by the representatives of John Ballantyne, in two pamphlets, refuting Lockhart’s history of the affair, and proving their side of the question by reference to the old account books; Cadell, Constable’s quondam partner, and certainly not biassed in his favour, throws his vote in with the Ballantynes. The responsibilities they undertook were solely at the bidding of Scott, and for his benefit; and in proof of this, they quote a clause from the last deed of partnership, dated 1st April, 1822.
“The said Sir Walter Scott shall remain liable for such bills and debts as there shall be due and current.”
When the persons most interested differ vitally, it is hard to decide; however, the result of it all was, that when Hurst, Robinson, and Co. stopped payment in London, Constable failed for upwards of a quarter of a million, and the Ballantynes were also bankrupt to the extent of £88,607 19s. 9d. It was in the middle of January, 1826, that the actual crash came. Splendid and magnificent to the very last, Constable rushed off to town as fast as post-horses could carry him. He drove straight to Lockhart’s house, “and asked me,” says that gentleman, “to accompany him as soon as he could get into his carriage to the Bank of England, and support him (as a confidential friend of the author of the ‘Waverley Novels’) in his application for a loan of £100,000 to £200,000 on the security of the copyrights in his possession”—a proposal that would have rather startled the old lady of Threadneedle-street, who was, at that time of unparalleled panic, according to Mr. Huskisson’s subsequent confession in the House, on the very verge of suspending payment herself. When Lockhart refused—and, of course, without direct instructions from Sir Walter, he could not hazard such a step—Constable became livid with rage, stamped on the ground, and swore that he could and would go alone.