“I stopped at Newport Pagnell. My landlord told me ‘my shoes were not fit for travelling;’ however, I had no other, and, like my blistered feet, I must try to bear them. Next day, Monday, 15th, I slept at Market Harborough, and on the 16th called at Leicester. The landlady had carefully secured my knife, with a view to return it should I ever come that way. Reached Nottingham in the afternoon, forty miles.
“I had been out nearly nine days;—three in going, which cost three and eightpence; three there, which cost about the same; and three returning, nearly the same. Out of the whole eleven shillings I brought four pence back.
“London surprised me; so did the people, for the few with whom I formed a connection deceived me by promising what they never performed, and, I have reason to think, never intended it. This journey furnished vast matter for detail among my friends.
“It was time to look out for a future place of residence. A large town must now be the mark, or there would be no room for exertion. London was thought on between my sister and I, for I had no soul else to consult. This was rejected for two reasons. How could I venture into such a place without a capital? And how could my work pass among a crowd of judges? My plan must be to fix upon some market town within a stage of Nottingham, and open a shop on the market-day, till I should be better prepared to begin the world at Birmingham.
“I therefore, in the following February, took a journey to that populous place, to pass a propable judgment upon my future success.
“I fixed upon Southwell as the first step of elevation, fourteen miles distant, a town as despicable as the road to it. I went over at Michaelmas, took a shop at the rate of 20s. a-year, sent a few boards for shelves, tools to put them up, and about two hundred weight of trash, which a bookseller would dignify with the name of books (and with, perhaps, about a year’s rent of my shop); was my own joiner, put up the shelves and their furniture, worth, perhaps, 20s., and in one day became the most eminent bookseller in the place.
“During this wet winter I had to set out at five every Saturday morning (carrying a burthen of three pounds’ weight to thirty), open shop at ten, starve in it all day upon bread, cheese, and half a pint of ale; take from 1s. to 6s., shut up at four, and by trudging through the deep roads and the solitary night five hours more, arrive at Nottingham by nine, carrying a burthen from three to thirty pounds, where I always found a mess of milk porridge by the fire, prepared by my valuable sister.
“Nothing short of a surprising resolution and rigid economy could have carried me through this dreadful scene.” But Hutton did not despair; he lived to a good old age, and was a wealthy man.
The life of Kelly, the London publisher, is full of interest. Thomas Kelly was born at Chevening, in Kent, on the 7th of January, 1779. 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 somnambulent 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 £10 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., M.A., and other gentlemen.”