How Scott bore the blow, and, what he dreaded infinitely more than the mere loss of money—the exposure it entailed of his connection with the printing house, we all know; how he declined to accept any compromise; how he sold off his Abbotsford estate, which he had devoted all the efforts of his genius to acquire, and which he loved so well; how he slaved and toiled until the incredible sum was repaid—but, alas! at the expense of a life more precious than all the lucre of creditors; and how his last words on his death-bed were his best epitaph:—“My dear, be a good man, be virtuous, be religious—be a good man! Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.”
Our matter, however, is with Constable. He saw his fortunes—the strong up-buildings of a gloriously successful lifetime—dashed to the ground at one blow. With a young family growing up around him, sick in body and weary in soul, he too had to begin life afresh. All his “sunshine” friends fell off, Scott was alienated, and his stock, which he had been wont to contemplate as a mine of wealth, was sequestered, and sold for a tithe of its value.[13] Cadell, his late partner, purchased the copyrights of the “Waverley Novels” for £8,500, and, securing Scott’s countenance, set up as a fortunate rival.
Constable, however, went manfully to work at his proposed Miscellany. Captain Basil Hall, in kindly consideration, made him a present of his Voyages, and this was brought out in 1827, for the small sum of one shilling, and proved fairly successful. This same year, by-the-by, was commenced the Library of Useful Knowledge, by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, who, following Constable, had the “honour of leading the way in that fearful inroad upon dearness of the good old times of publishing, which first developed itself in the wicked birth of what the literary exclusives called the Sixpenny Sciences.”
Constable’s prospects were brightening; he had now gathered round him all the younger literary men of the day, when, in the midst of his struggles, his old disease of dropsy again attacked him, and he died on the 21st July, 1827.
His widow and family were left in sorry circumstances, but his son Thomas eventually attained the position of an eminent and well-known printer in Edinburgh. The Ballantynes, with whom he had been so intimately connected, disproved many of Lockhart’s assertions, by showing that, by dint of hard work and good business habits, they were capable of success, unaided by the help of Sir Walter Scott.
Constable, if not the most successful, was certainly the most eminent of the Scotch publishers. It is pleasant where the two lives have been so curiously blended to be able to quote Scott’s estimate of his character:—
“His vigorous intellect and vigorous ideas have not only rendered his native country the merit of her own literature, but established there a court of letters which commanded respect even from those most inclined to dissent from many of its canons. The effect of these changes operated, in a great measure, by the strong sense and sagacious calculation of an individual who knew how to avail himself, to an unhoped-for extent, of the various kinds of talents which his country produced, will probably appear much clearer to the generation which shall follow the present.”
The remaining portion of this chapter will in itself bear ample testimony to the truth of this prediction; for we shall have to touch upon two distinct lives, and two long and very successful lives, to trace the progress of the chief works which passed out of Constable’s hands so shortly before his death.
Robert Cadell had been admitted a partner in the house upon his marriage with Constable’s daughter, but she died childless long before the failure, and Cadell was soon married again to a Miss Mylne. Thus the family ties were severed, and, when the crash came, Cadell felt no hesitation in entering the field as a rival to his late partner.
The stock of the Waverley Novels was sold off, far below the market value, and the London publishers, judging from this that the intrinsic worth of the copyright had irretrievably declined, allowed Cadell, as we have seen, in conjunction with Scott, to become the purchaser at the low price of £8500. The success of the republication was astounding, and showed what real life and vivacity was still left in the copyright. By this scheme the whole of the novels were reprinted in five-shilling volumes with excellent illustrations, giving for ten shillings in two volumes what had been originally published in three at a guinea and a half.