As to Advertising.
A word about advertisements, surely an authorial topic. The absurdly extravagant profusion in which thousands of pounds are now being continually flung away in advertising, is one which was never approved by me, and as long as my books remained in print, at my suggestion they all got sold without it. At present there are almost none in the market except Proverbial Philosophy, my Poems, Stephan Langton, and Dramas, and these still live and sell as before, after a silent life of many years. I suppose advertising must answer, or it would not be persisted in; and certainly the newspapers (that chiefly live thereby) exhort all to crowd their columns, if they wish to win fortune: but how the perpetual and reiterated obtrusion of such single words as Oopack, or Syndicates, or Beecham's Pills, or Argosy Braces, or Grateful and Comforting, &c. &c., can prove seductive baits, I do not see nor feel: the shameless amount of space they fill in our newspapers, and especially the impertinent way in which they intrude upon us while reading, as interleaved into books and magazines, so entirely disgusts me that I have often declared I would rather go without "tea, coffee, tobacco, or snuff" (this is a phrase, for the two latter I abominate) than deign to patronise those persistent advertisers A, B, C, D, or E. And yet I do know a splendid church at Eastbourne wholly built of pills,—and Professor Holloway's ointment has produced a palatial institute, and another wholesale advertiser tells me he spends £30,000 a year on notices and paragraphs, to gain thereby £50,000,—and so one cannot but acquiesce in Carlyle's cynical dictum, so cruelly alluded to by Dean Stanley in his funeral sermon at Westminster, that there are in our community "26,000,000, mostly fools," otherwise how can folks be weak enough to be forced to pay for "goods," or "bads," merely by dint of reiteration?
There is, however, one form of advertisement which I have found to pay,—and that is not praise, but abuse. A certain article, written as I was told by Alaric Watts, and stigmatising my readers as idiots, and their author as a bellman, was said to have actually sold off 3000 copies at a run; and Hepworth Dixon's attack in some other paper—I forget the name—was so lucrative to me in its results that I entreated him at Moxon's one day to do it again.
Once I took it into my head to collect and publish a page of adverse criticisms (if I can find a copy it shall be printed here) to excellent sale-effect as regarded my tales. And I remember hearing at a publisher's, that when a book didn't sell through puffing, their Herald of Fame upstairs was directed to abuse it, and in one case a society novel by a lady of title was prosecuted (by management) for libel, in order to get off the edition. That publishing-house used to advertise in "five figures"—that is, upwards of £10,000 a year, and was professionally antagonistic to another, from which it had sprung originally. The critical organs of the one house always used to run down the publications of the other. And I daresay other Sosii are aware of the like mutual warfare going on even now.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
KINDNESS TO ANIMALS.
As to my several efforts in print to hinder cruelty to animals, beside and beyond what a reader may already find in my published books, let me chiefly mention these two fly-leaves, widely circulated by the Humane Society in Jermyn Street; to wit, "Mercy to Animals," and my "Four anti-Vivisection Sonnets." The latter I must preface with an interesting anecdote. Before Louis Napoleon was Emperor, I accompanied a deputation from Guernsey to Cherbourg, met him, had pleasant speech with him, and gave him a book ("Proverbial Philosophy"), thus making his personal acquaintance; which many years after I utilised as thus. The horrors of that infernal veterinary torture-house at Alfort, where disabled cavalry horses were on system vivisected to death, had been known to us by letters in the Times, of course denouncing the criminality: I remember reading that one poor old horse survived more than threescore operations, and used to be led in daily strapped with bandages and plaisters amid the cheers of the demoniacal students!—and this excited me to make a strong personal effort to stop the outrages at Alfort. Accordingly I wrote from Albury a letter to the Emperor (if I kept and can find a copy I will print it here) as from one gentleman to another fond of his horse and dog, exhorting him to interfere and hinder such horrors. I told him that I purposely did this in a private way, and not through any newspaper or minister, because I wished him to cure, proprio motu, a crying evil whereof he was ignorant and therefore innocent: leaving the issue of my appeal to his own generous feeling and to Providence, but otherwise not expecting nor requesting any reply. I therefore got none; but (whether post hoc or propter hoc I do not know) the result was that vivisection at Alfort was suspended at once, though how long for is unknown to me. As, after all this, many may like to see my four sonnets before-mentioned, I have no room to place here more than one: it is fair to state that they are easily procurable for a penny at the S. P. C. A. office in Jermyn Street. They were written by me in the train between Hereford and London, at the request of a lady, the chatelaine of Pontrilas Court, for a bazaar at Brighton.
"If ever thou hast loved thy dog or horse,
Or other favourite affectionate thing,
If thou dost recognise in God the source
Of all that live, their Father and their King,
Stand with us on this rescue;—for the force
Of sciolists hath legal right to seize
Such innocents to torture as they please,
Alive and sentient, with demoniac skill;
Ungodly men! hot with the lawless lust
Of violating Nature's holiest fane,
Breaking it open at your wicked will,—
Yet shall ye tremble!—for the Judge is just;
To Him those victims do not plead in vain,
On you for æons crowd their hours of pain."
When I was last at Boston my spirit was stirred by what I have poetised below: it has only appeared in some American papers, but I hope will be acceptable here.