The Canvassing Trade is conducted by only a few houses in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. In our introductory chapter we caught a glimpse of some of the earlier members, but in modern times two names—Kelly, and, in a much broader sense, Virtue—stand forward prominently, and to these two we shall address ourselves.
Thomas Kelly[27] was born at Chevening, in Kent, on the 7th of January, 1777. His father was a shepherd, who, having received a jointure of £200 with his wife, risked the capital first in a little country inn, and afterwards in leasing a small farm of about thirty acres of cold, wet land, where he led a starving, struggling life during the remainder of his days. When only twelve years old, barely able to read and write, young Kelly was taken from school, and put to the hard work of the farm, leading the team or keeping the flock, but he was not strong enough to handle the plough. The fatigue of this life, and its misery, were so vividly impressed upon his memory, that he could never be persuaded to revisit the neighbourhood in after-life; and though at the time he endeavoured to conceal his feelings from his family, the bitterness of his reflections involuntarily betrayed his wishes. He fretted in the daytime until he could not lie quietly in his bed at night, and early one morning he was discovered in a somnambulant state in the chimney of an empty bedroom, “on,” as he said, “his road to London.” After this his parents readily consented that he should try to make his way elsewhere, and a situation was obtained for him in the counting-house of a Lambeth brewer. After about three years’ service here, the business failed, and he was recommended to Alexander Hogg, bookseller of Paternoster Row. The terms of his engagement were those of an ordinary domestic servant; he was to board and lodge on the premises, and to receive ten pounds yearly, but his lodging, or, at all events, his bed, was under the shop counter.
Alexander Hogg, of 16, Paternoster Row, had been a journeyman to Cooke, and had very successfully followed the publication of “Number” books. In the trade he was looked upon as an unequalled “puffer,” and when the sale of a book began to slacken, he was wont to employ some ingenious scribe to draw up a taking title, and the work, though otherwise unaltered, was brought out in a “new edition,” as, according to a formula, the “Production of a Society of Gentlemen: the whole revised, corrected, and improved by Walter Thornton, Esq., A.M., and other gentlemen.”
Kelly’s duties were to make up parcels of books for the retail booksellers, and his zeal displayed itself even in somnambulism, and one night when in a comatose state, he actually arranged in order the eighty numbers of “Foxe’s Martyrs,” taken from as many different compartments. He spent all his leisure in study, and soon was able to read French with fluency, gaining the proper accent by attending the French Protestant church in Threadneedle Street. The good old housekeeper, at this time his only friend, was a partaker of his studies; at all events, he gave her the benefit of all the more amusing and interesting matter he came across. His activity, though it rendered the head-shopman jealous, attracted Hogg’s favourable attention, and the clever discovery of a batch of stolen works, still further strengthened the interest he felt in his serving boy. The thieves, owing to the lad’s ingenuity, were apprehended and convicted, and Kelly had to come forward as a witness. “This was my first appearance at the Old Bailey, and as I was fearful I might give incorrect evidence, I trembled over the third commandment. How could I think, while shaking in the witness-box, that I should ever be raised to act as Her Majesty’s First Commissioner at the Central Criminal Court of England!”
Half of his scanty pittance of ten pounds was sent home to aid his parents, and as his wages increased, so did this dutiful allowance. In this situation Kelly remained for twenty years and two months, and at no time did he receive more than eighty pounds per annum, and it is believed that when his stipend reached that petty maximum, he defrayed the whole of his father’s farm rent. That he was not entirely satisfied with his prospects, is evident from the fact that about ten years after he joined Hogg he accepted a clerkship in Sir Francis Baring’s office, but so necessary had he become to the establishment he was about to leave, that his late master prevailed upon him to accept board and residence in exchange for what assistance he might please to render over hours. After six weeks of this double work, poor Kelly’s health began to suffer, and it was plain that he must confine his labours to one single branch of trade. “Thomas,” said his master, sagaciously enough, though probably with a view to his own interests, “you never can be a merchant, but you may be a bookseller.” This advice chimed in with his inclination, if not with his immediate prospects, and Kelly devoted himself to bookselling.
At length Hogg, falling into bad health, and desiring to be relieved from business, proposed to Kelly that he should unite in partnership with his son; but the conscientious assistant felt constrained to decline the tempting offer, by reason of the young man’s character, and resolved rather to attempt business on his own account. In 1809, therefore, he started in a little room in Paternoster Row, sub-rented from the landlord—a friendly barber. On his small front room he wrote his name, “Thomas Kelly,” and by way of advertising his change of position, he generally stood downstairs in the common doorway. To all the “Row” Hogg’s able assistant had been known simply as “Thomas,” and one old acquaintance actually asked him, “Well, Thomas, who is this Kelly that you have taken up with?”
For the first two years his operations were confined solely to the purchase and sale of miscellaneous books on a small scale, and the limited experiment proved successful. Of “Buchan’s Domestic Medicine” he bought one thousand copies in sheets at a low price, and, having prefixed a short memoir of the author, and divided them into numbers or parts, he went out himself in quest of subscribers; and a thousand copies of the “New Week’s Preparation” were treated in a like manner and with similar success. Henceforth he resolved to print at his own risk, always adopting the sectional method, and working his books, from first to last, entirely through the hands of his own agents, and the profit he found in this scheme depended almost entirely upon the happy knowledge he possessed of human character, and the cautious foresight with which he was able to select his canvassers. One of the first works he published in this manner was a large Family Bible, edited by J. Mallam, Rector of Hilton, afterwards known as “Kelly’s Family Bible.” To each of his canvassers he gave stock on credit, worth from twenty to one hundred pounds, ready money was insisted on, and this plan insured a speedy return of capital. The Bible extended to one hundred and seventy-three numbers, and the entire work cost the subscribers £5 15s., paid, of course, in weekly or monthly driblets; and, as 80,000 copies were soon sold, the gross receipts must have reached £460,000. Nearly half this sum, however, went in the agents’ allowances for canvassing and delivery. The paper duty alone on this one work was estimated at upwards of £20,000. To this Bible succeeded “The Life of Christ,” “Foxe’s Martyrs,” and the “History of England,” all in folio, with copper-plate embellishments; and “Hervey’s Meditations,” “Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,” and various other popular works, in octavo.
Six months after he had left his former situation, Hogg died, and the son soon fell into difficulties, and was obliged to relinquish the business, which Kelly immediately purchased, speedily adding to it the trade of Cooke, the owner of No. 17, and thus uniting the two concerns into one.
About the year 1814 the system of printing books from stereotype plates began to be very generally adopted for large editions, and Kelly at once saw its advantages, but, of course, as in all improvements, the trade set themselves against the innovation, and he had to purchase land at Merton, and erect a foundry of his own, and then, and not till then, the printers relinquished their opposition, and the building was abandoned. It was about this time, in March, 1815, that he very nearly lost a moiety of his fortune through fire. Luckily, upon the outbreak of a fire in the neighbourhood a few days before, he had been alarmed, and had gone straightway to the office of the Phœnix Company, and paid a deposit on the insurance. Before the policy was made out, the whole of his stock was destroyed, but the Phœnix Company paid up without an hour’s delay, and, in return, he never cancelled a single policy with them until this sum had been reimbursed. How largely Kelly traded may be gathered from the fact that from one of his agents alone he often received from £4000 to £5000 per annum.
To revert for a moment to his private life; his father had died in 1810, when the bookseller was still a struggling man, but, in spite of his difficulties, he paid at once the amount of his father’s debts; and brought his mother up to Wimbledon, where she lived to see her son a wealthy and prosperous man. To his old master’s widow he generously allowed an annuity, and even aided young Hogg, who had pursued him with inveterate hatred, with the loan of £600. He never married. When little known he saved a member of the Court of Aldermen from bankruptcy by an advance of £4000, and he was always ready to lend out his money to those in trouble. But once, when asked to give his acceptance to ten or twelve thousand pounds worth of bills—in these terms, “Will you, for once in your life, do a good action, and oblige me?”—he thought himself perfectly justified in refusing, and soon after the acceptor of these bills failed. In 1823 he was elected into the Common Council of his ward; in 1825 he served as Sheriff with Mr. Alderman Crowder, on whose death he succeeded to the Alderman’s gown of Farringdon Without. He always lamented his want of a systematic education, and late in life he endeavoured, in some way, to supply the place of it by experience gathered from foreign travel.