As you are beginning to discover—I fancy too many of you, in this rich country. If you only would discover it a little faster, and demand dinners, instead of Liberty! For what possible liberty do you want, which does not depend on dinner? Tell me, once for all, what is it you want to do, that you can’t do? Dinner being provided, do you think the Queen will interfere with the way you choose to spend your afternoons, if only you knock nobody down, and break nobody’s windows? But the need of dinner enslaves you to purpose!
On reading the letter spoken of in my last correspondence sheet, I find that it represents this modern form of slavery with an unconscious clearness, which is very interesting. I have, therefore, requested the writer’s permission to print it, and, with a passage or two omitted, and briefest comment, here it is in full type, for it is worth careful reading:—
Glasgow,
12th February, 1872.“Sir,
“You say in your ‘Fors’ that you do not want any one to buy your books who will not give a ‘doctor’s fee’ per volume, which you rate at 10s. 6d.; now, as the ‘Herald’ remarks, you are clearly placing yourself in a wrong position, as you arbitrarily fix your doctor’s fee far too high; indeed, while you express a desire, no doubt quite sincerely, to elevate the working-man, morally, mentally, and physically, you in the meantime absolutely preclude him from purchasing your books at all, and so almost completely bar his way from the enjoyment and elevating influence of perhaps the most” [etc., complimentary terms—omitted].
“Permit me a personal remark:—I am myself a poorly paid clerk, with a salary not much over the income-tax minimum; now no doctor, here at least, would ever think of charging me a fee of 10s. 6d., and so you see it is as much out of my power to purchase your books as any working-man. While Mr. Carlyle is just now issuing a cheap edition of his Works at 2s. per volume, which I can purchase, here, quite easily for 1s. 6d.;” [Presumably, therefore, to be had, as far north as Inverness, for a shilling, and for sixpence in Orkney,] “I must say it is a great pity that a Writer so much, and, in my poor opinion, justly, appreciated as yourself, should as it were inaugurate with your own hands a system which thoroughly barriers your productions from the great majority of the middle and working classes. I take leave, however, to remark that I by no means shut my eyes to the anomalies of the Bookselling Trade, but I can’t see that it can be remedied by an Author becoming his own Bookseller, and, at the same time, putting an unusually high price on his books. Of course, I would like to see an Author remunerated as highly as possible for his labours.” [You ought not to like any such thing: you ought to like an author to get what he deserves, like other people, not more, nor less.] “I would also crave to remark, following up your unfortunate analogy of the doctor’s fee, that doctors who have acquired, either professionally or otherwise, a competence, often, nay very often, give their advice gratis to nearly every class, except that which is really wealthy; at least, I speak from my own experience, having known, nay even been attended by such a benevolent physician in a little town in Kirkcudbrightshire, who, when offered payment, and I was both quite able and willing to do so, and he was in no way indebted or obliged to me or mine, positively declined to receive any fee. So much for the benevolent physician and his fees.
“Here am I, possessed of a passionate love of nature in all her aspects, cooped up in this fearfully crammed mass of population, with its filthy Clyde, which would naturally have been a noble river, but, under the curse of our much belauded civilization, forsooth, turned into an almost stagnant loathsome ditch, pestilence-breathing, be-lorded over by hundreds upon hundreds of tall brick chimney-stacks vomiting up smoke unceasingly; and from the way I am situated, there are only one day and a half in the week in which I can manage a walk into the country; now, if I wished to foster my taste for the beautiful in nature and art, even while living a life of almost servile red-taped routine beneath the too frequently horror-breathing atmosphere of a huge overgrown plutocratic city like Glasgow, I cannot have your Works” [complimentary terms again] “as, after providing for my necessaries, I cannot indulge in books at 10s. 6d. a volume. Of course, as you may say” [My dear sir, the very last thing I should say], “I can get them from a library. Assuredly, but one (at least I would) wishes to have actual and ever-present possession of productions such as yours” [more compliments]. “You will be aware, no doubt, that ‘Geo. Eliot’ has adopted a ‘new system’ in publishing her new novel by issuing it in 5s. ‘parts,’ with the laudable view of enabling and encouraging readers to buy the work for themselves, and not trusting to get it from ‘some Mudie’ or another for a week, then galloping through the three volumes and immediately forgetting the whole matter. When I possess a book worth having I always recur to it now and again. Your ‘new system,’ however, tends to prevent the real reading public from ever possessing your books, and the wealthy classes who could afford to buy books at 10s. 6d. a volume, as a rule, I opine, don’t drive themselves insane by much reading of any kind.
“I beg a last remark and I’ve done. Glasgow, for instance, has no splendid public buildings. She has increased in wealth till I believe there are some of the greatest merchants in the world trading in her Exchange; but except her grand old Cathedral, founded by an almost-forgotten bishop in the twelfth century, in what we in our vain folly are pleased to call the dark ages, when we ourselves are about as really dark as need be; having no ‘high calling’ to strive for, except by hook or by crook to make money—a fortune—retire at thirty-five by some stroke of gambling of a highly questionable kind on the Share market or otherwise, to a suburban or country villa with Turkey carpets, a wine-cellar and a carriage and pair; as no man now-a-days is ever content with making a decent and honest livelihood. Truly a very ‘high calling!’ Our old Cathedral, thank God, was not built by contract or stock-jobbing: there was, surely, a higher calling of some sort in those quiet, old, unhurrying days. Our local plutocratic friends put their hands into their pockets to the extent of 150,000l. to help to build our new University buildings after a design by G. Gilbert Scott, which has turned out a very imposing pile of masonry; at least, it is placed on an imposing and magnificent site. I am no prophet, but I should not wonder if old St. Mungo’s Cathedral, erected nearly six hundred years ago to the honour and glory of God, will be standing a noble ruin when our new spick-and-span College is a total wreck after all. Such being the difference between the work of really earnest God-fearing men, and that done by contract and Trades’ Unions. The Steam Engine, one of the demons of our mad, restless, headlong civilization, is screaming its unearthly whistle in the very quadrangles of the now deserted, but still venerable College buildings in our High Street, almost on the very spot where the philosophic Professors of that day, to their eternal honour, gave a harbourage to James Watt, when the narrow-minded guild-brethren of Glasgow expelled him from their town as a stranger craftsman hailing from Greenock. Such is the irony of events! Excuse the presumption of this rather rambling letter, and apologizing for addressing you at such length,
“I am, very faithfully yours.”
I have only time, just now, to remark on this letter, first, that I don’t believe any of Mr. Scott’s work is badly done, or will come down soon; and that Trades’ Unions are quite right when honest and kind: but the frantic mistake of the Glaswegians, in thinking that they can import learning into their town safely in a Gothic case, and have 180,000 pounds’ worth of it at command, while they have banished for ever from their eyes the sight of all that mankind have to learn anything about, is,—Well—as the rest of our enlightened public opinion. They might as well put a pyx into a pigsty, to make the pigs pious.
In the second place, as to my correspondent’s wish to read my books, I am entirely pleased by it; but, putting the question of fee aside for the nonce, I am not in the least minded, as matters stand, to prescribe my books for him. Nay, so far as in me lies, he shall neither read them, nor learn to trust in any such poor qualifications and partial comforts of the entirely wrong and dreadful condition of life he is in, with millions of others. If a child in a muddy ditch asked me for a picture-book, I should not give it him; but say, “Come out of that first; or, if you cannot, I must go and get help; but picture-books, there, you shall have none!”
Only a day and a half in the week on which one can get a walk in the country, (and how few have as much, or anything like it!) just bread enough earned to keep one alive, on those terms—one’s daily work asking not so much as a lucifer match’s worth of human intelligence;—unwholesome besides—one’s chest, shoulders, and stomach getting hourly more useless. Smoke above for sky, mud beneath for water; and the pleasant consciousness of spending one’s weary life in the pure service of the devil! And the blacks are emancipated over the water there—and this is what you call “having your own way,” here, is it?
Very solemnly, my good clerk-friend, there is something to be done in this matter; not merely to be read. Do you know any honest men who have a will of their own, among your neighbours? If none, set yourself to seek for such; if any, commune with them on this one subject, how a man may have sight of the Earth he was made of, and his bread out of the dust of it—and peace! And find out what it is that hinders you now from having these, and resolve that you will fight it, and put end to it. If you cannot find out for yourselves, tell me your difficulties, briefly, and I will deal with them for you, as the Second Fors may teach me. Bring you the First with you, and the Third will help us.
And believe me, faithfully yours,