In various ways, according to the nature of the thing sold, and circumstances of sale. Sometimes by priority; sometimes by privilege; sometimes by lot; and sometimes by auction, at which whatever excess of price, above its recorded value, the article brings, shall go to the national treasury. So that nobody will ever buy anything to make a profit on it.
11th January, 1874.—Thinking I should be the better of a look at the sea, I have come down to an old watering-place, where one used to be able to get into [[38]]a decent little inn, and possess one’s self of a parlour with a bow window looking out on the beach, a pretty carpet, and a print or two of revenue cutters, and the Battle of the Nile. One could have a chop and some good cheese for dinner; fresh cream and cresses for breakfast, and a plate of shrimps.
I find myself in the Umfraville Hotel, a quarter of a mile long by a furlong deep; in a ghastly room, five-and-twenty feet square, and eighteen high,—that is to say, just four times as big as I want, and which I can no more light with my candles in the evening than I could the Peak cavern. A gas apparatus in the middle of it serves me to knock my head against, but I take good care not to light it, or I should soon be stopped from my evening’s work by a headache, and be unfit for my morning’s business besides. The carpet is threadbare, and has the look of having been spat upon all over. There is only one window, of four huge panes of glass, through which one commands a view of a plaster balcony, some ornamental iron railings, an esplanade,—and,—well, I suppose,—in the distance, that is really the sea, where it used to be. I am ashamed to ask for shrimps,—not that I suppose I could get any if I did. There’s no cream, “because, except in the season, we could only take so small a quanity, sir.” The bread’s stale, because it’s Sunday; and the cheese, last night, was of the cheapest tallow sort. The bill will be at least three times my old bill;—I shall get no thanks [[39]]from anybody for paying it;—and this is what the modern British public thinks is “living in style.” But the most comic part of all the improved arrangements is that I can only have codlings for dinner, because all the cod goes to London, and none of the large fishing-boats dare sell a fish, here.
And now but a word or two more, final, as to the fixed price of this book.
A sensible and worthy tradesman writes to me in very earnest terms of expostulation, blaming me for putting the said book out of the reach of most of the persons it is meant for, and asking me how I can except, for instance, the working men round him (in Lancashire),—who have been in the habit of strictly ascertaining that they have value for their money,—to buy, for tenpence, what they know might be given them for twopence-halfpenny.
Answer first:
My book is meant for no one who cannot reach it. If a man with all the ingenuity of Lancashire in his brains, and breed of Lancashire in his body; with all the steam and coal power in Lancashire to back his ingenuity and muscle; all the press of literary England vomiting the most valuable information at his feet; with all the tenderness of charitable England aiding him in his efforts, and ministering to his needs; with all the liberality of republican Europe rejoicing in his dignities as a man and a brother; and with all the science of enlightened Europe directing his opinions on the subject [[40]]of the materials of the Sun, and the origin of his species; if, I say, a man so circumstanced, assisted, and informed, living besides in the richest country of the globe, and, from his youth upwards, having been in the habit of ‘seeing that he had value for his money,’ cannot, as the upshot and net result of all, now afford to pay me tenpence a month—or an annual half-sovereign, for my literary labour,—in Heaven’s name, let him buy the best reading he can for twopence-halfpenny. For that sum, I clearly perceive he can at once provide himself with two penny illustrated newspapers and one halfpenny one,—full of art, sentiment, and the Tichborne trial. He can buy a quarter of the dramatic works of Shakspeare, or a whole novel of Sir Walter Scott’s. Good value for his money, he thinks!—reads one of them through, and in all probability loses some five years of the eyesight of his old age; which he does not, with all his Lancashire ingenuity, reckon as part of the price of his cheap book. But how has he read? There is an act of Midsummer Night’s Dream printed in a page. Steadily and dutifully, as a student should, he reads his page. The lines slip past his eyes, and mind, like sand in an hour-glass; he has some dim idea at the end of the act that he has been reading about Fairies, and Flowers, and Asses. Does he know what a Fairy is? Certainly not. Does he know what a flower is? He has perhaps never seen one wild, or happy, in his life. Does he even know—quite distinctly, inside and out—what an Ass is? [[41]]
But, answer second. Whether my Lancashire friends need any aid to their discernment of what is good or bad in literature, I do not know;—but I mean to give them the best help I can; and, therefore, not to allow them to have for twopence what I know to be worth tenpence. For here is another law of Florence, still concerning fish, which is transferable at once to literature.
“Eel of the lake shall be sold for three soldi a pound; and eel of the common sort for a soldo and a half.”
And eel of a bad sort was not allowed to be sold at all.