It is curious to notice the frank and simple manner in which he speaks of his profits, and of the way in which he did his business. “The profits of my business the present year [1791] will amount to four thousand pounds,“ he writes, and goes on to say that ”the cost and selling price of every book was marked in it, whether the price is sixpence or sixty pounds, is entered in a day-book as they are sold, with the price it cost and the money it sold for; and each night the profits of the day are cast up by one of my shopmen, as every one of them understands my private marks. Every Saturday night the profits of the week are declared before all my shopmen, etc., the week’s profits, and also the expenses of the week, then entered one opposite another; the whole sum taken in the week is also set down, and the sum that has been paid for books bought. These accounts are kept publicly in my shop, and ever have been so, as I never saw any reason for concealing them.” He speaks in the same letter of selling more than one hundred thousand volumes annually, and adds, in his own complacent manner, “I believe it is universally allowed that no man ever promoted the sale of books in an equal degree!”
Lackington at length quitted Chiswell Street, and took the enormous building at the corner of Finsbury Square, which was styled “The Temple of the Muses,” and to which the public were invited as the cheapest bookshop in the world. He declared in his catalogue that he had half a million of books constantly on sale, “and these were arranged in galleries and rooms rising in tiers—the more expensive books at the bottom, and the prices diminishing with every floor, but all numbered according to a catalogue which Lackington compiled by himself.”[6] His profits on the first year’s trade at “The Temple of the Muses” amounted to £5000. He retired from business in 1798, having made a large fortune.
His capacity for business was remarkable. Until he was nearly thirty years of age he had no opportunity of exercising it. But once having given up the gentle craft, in which he was no great proficient, he proved himself one of the smartest and cleverest business men in London. We can readily pardon the simple vanity of the self-made and self-taught merchant prince who writes about his recently acquired chariot in the following strain: “And I assure you, sir, that reflecting on the means by which the carriage was procured adds not a little to the pleasure of riding in it. I believe I may, without being deemed censorious, assert that there are some who ride in their carriages who cannot reflect on the means by which they were acquired with an equal degree of satisfaction.” For several years, both before and after he retired from business, he made a journey through different parts of England and Scotland, calling at the chief towns, such as York, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Carlisle, Lancaster, Manchester, Bristol, and inspecting the bookshops. His observations are of the most quaint and out-of-the-way character. At Newcastle he found nothing more remarkable to record than “the celebrated crow’s nest affixed above the weather-cock on the upper extremity of the steeple in the market-place,” and the famous brank, an iron instrument, shown in the town-hall, and used in olden time to punish notorious scolds. At Glasgow the most notable spectacle, and one that calls forth a considerable amount of remark, is that of the washerwomen, whose practice of getting into their tubs, placed by the river-side, and dollying the linen with their bare feet, awoke his profound astonishment. Of his visits to Bristol and the west of England, the scene of his early life, he gives the following curious and interesting account: “In Bristol, Exbridge, Bridgewater, Taunton, Wellington, and other places, I amused myself in calling on some of my masters, with whom I had, about twenty years before, worked as a journeyman shoemaker. I addressed each with, ‘Pray, sir, have you got any occasion?’ which is the term made use of by journeymen in that useful occupation when seeking employment. Most of those honest men had quite forgot my person, as many of them had not seen me since I worked for them, so that it is not easy for you to conceive with what surprise and astonishment they gazed on me. For you must know that I had the vanity (I call it humor) to do this in my chariot, attended by my servants; and on telling them who I was, all appeared to be very happy to see me. And I assure you, my friend, it afforded me much real pleasure to see my old acquaintances alive and well.” Coming to Wellington, his birthplace and home during boyhood, he says: “The bells rang merrily all the day of my arrival. I was also honored with the attention of many of the most respectable people in and near Wellington and other parts, some of whom were pleased to inform me that the reason of their paying a particular attention to me was their having heard, and now having themselves an opportunity of observing, that I did not so far forget myself as many proud upstarts had done; and that the notice I took of my poor relations and old acquaintance merited the respect and approbation of every real gentleman.”
Lackington’s kindness to his own relatives, and to the poor, was one of his best qualities. In fact, he declares in 1791 that he would have retired from business five years previously if it had not been for the thought of his poor relations, many of whom were helpless, and whom he felt bound to relieve and protect. Besides supporting his “good old mother“ for many years, he says, ”I have two aged men and one aged woman whom I support: and I have also four children to maintain and educate; ... many others of my relations are in similar circumstances and stand in need of my assistance.” He also made provision for the support of the very aged parents of his first wife, Nancy.
On abandoning business he left his third cousin George Lackington at the head of the firm, while he and his wife went to live at Thornbury in Gloucestershire, in order to be in the neighborhood of the Turtons, his wife’s relations. He bought two estates in Alvestone, on one of which was a genteel house, where he lived in good style for several years. Here he employed his time in visiting the sick and poor, and sometimes in preaching. For he had now returned to the faith of a Christian, and threw himself with his accustomed ardor into all kinds of religious work. His contrition for the severe and ungracious things he had said of the Wesleyans in the first editions of his “Memoirs” was evidently very deep. He acknowledges in plain terms that he owed to them all his early advantages, and the moral and mental awakening which opened before him a new path in life. He says, in the introduction to his last edition of his book, “If I had never heard the Methodists preach, in all probability I should have been at this time a poor, ragged, dirty cobbler.... It was also through them that I got the shop in which I first set up for a bookseller.”
He built a small chapel at Thornbury on his own estate, where the Wesleyan ministers regularly officiated. In 1806 he removed to Taunton, where he resided for about six years, built a chapel at a cost of £3000, adding £150 a year for the minister.
On the decline of his health in 1812, he went to live by the seaside at Budleigh Sulterton, in Devonshire. Here also he erected a chapel which cost £2000, and endowed it with a minister’s stipend of £150 per annum.
James Lackington died of paralysis in the seventieth year of his age, on the 22d of November, 1815, and was buried in the Budleigh Churchyard. None will deny the successful bookseller the right to the Latin motto with which he has adorned the frontispiece to the first edition of “Memoirs and Confessions,” viz., Sutor ultra crepidam feliciter ausus.[7]