Chapter XII: Part 12

On the 3rd of June, 1858, Edward Moxon died, having, as a publisher, earned the esteem of all his clients and the gratitude of all the public. What his services to literature have been the names comprised in his catalogues bear ample witness. Truly Lamb’s dedicatory prophecy had been amply fulfilled! On his death the immediate management of the firm devolved upon Mr. J. Bertrand Payne, and under his rule the business was distinguished rather for the energy with which the already published works were pushed forward than for any encouragement held out to acknowledged genius. Mr. Payne himself undertook the superintendence of the “Moxon’s Miniature Series,” and, as soon as the “Idylls of the King” had been published, of the luxurious edition of them illustrated by that extraordinary genius, M. Gustave Doré. There was one exception to his lack of enterprise. In 1861 Mr. Pickering published the “Queen Mother” and “Rosamond,” two plays by Mr. Swinburne, then a young man of eighteen. Except in the case of a condemnatory notice in the _Athenæum_ these poems attracted little or no attention; but in 1865 “Moxon and Son” published the “Atalanta in Calydon,” which at once marked out the author as the most musical, and one of the greatest, of our living singers. It was at all events pretty generally acknowledged that for true poetic inspiration, momentary if it were, no poet of our generation could rival Mr. Swinburne. This opinion was still further strengthened by the publication of “Chastelard,” in 1866. When, however the “Poems and Ballads” appeared, they were met by such a whirlwind of abuse from critics, whose professional morality was supposed to have been shame-stricken, that the publishers explained that they were unaware of the nature of the poems they had laid before the public, and suppressed the edition before it got into circulation. As a consequence the few copies that had been sold were eagerly sought at a price of five guineas, and the volume was speedily republished in America. In this strait, Mr. J. Camden Hotten came forward, and to him Mr. Swinburne confided all his hitherto published poems, including the much-abused and also much-praised “Poems and Ballads.” His latest works, however, “The Ode to the French Republic,” and the “Songs before Sunrise,” have been issued by Mr. Ellis, who as the publisher of Mr. Morris, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. Rossetti, bids fair to occupy the position so long and so honourably occupied by Moxon as a distinctively poetical publisher.

Before this Mr. Tennyson had removed his copyrights to the care of Mr. Strahan, and though in 1869 Mr. Arthur Moxon was admitted a member of the firm, the old glory had departed from them; and in the summer of the year 1871 the whole business was transferred to Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Tyler, and Mr. Beeton was appointed manager; the house in Dover Street was no longer retained, though Mr. Arthur Moxon’s services have been secured to superintend the business department. The first volume issued under the new régime--the “Sonnets” of Edward Moxon--is a timely tribute to the founder of the famous house. We could not, perhaps, give him higher praise than in saying that he was as good as a publisher as he was indifferent as a poet.

_KELLY AND VIRTUE_:

THE “NUMBER” TRADE.

The “Number Publishers” may be looked upon as the modern pioneers of literature; their books are circulated by a peculiar method, among a peculiar public, almost entirely through the agency of their own canvassers, without the intervention of any other bookseller, and the works thus sold are scarcely known to the ordinary members of the publishing world. As the business is conducted by house to house visitation, a substratum of the public is reached which is entirely out of the stretch of the regular bookselling arm, though, when once a taste for reading has been developed, the regular bookseller cannot fail to benefit, as he will from every onward step in education and progress.

The _Canvassing Trade_ is conducted by only a few houses in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. In our introductory chapter we caught a glimpse of some of the earlier members, but in modern times two names--Kelly, and, in a much broader sense, Virtue--stand forward prominently, and to these two we shall address ourselves.

Thomas Kelly[27] was born at Chevening, in Kent, on the 7th of January, 1777. 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 somnambulant 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 ten pounds 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., A.M., and other gentlemen.”

Kelly’s duties were to make up parcels of books for the retail booksellers, and his zeal displayed itself even in somnambulism, and one night when in a comatose state, he actually arranged in order the eighty numbers of “Foxe’s Martyrs,” taken from as many different compartments. He spent all his leisure in study, and soon was able to read French with fluency, gaining the proper accent by attending the French Protestant church in Threadneedle Street. The good old housekeeper, at this time his only friend, was a partaker of his studies; at all events, he gave her the benefit of all the more amusing and interesting matter he came across. His activity, though it rendered the head-shopman jealous, attracted Hogg’s favourable attention, and the clever discovery of a batch of stolen works, still further strengthened the interest he felt in his serving boy. The thieves, owing to the lad’s ingenuity, were apprehended and convicted, and Kelly had to come forward as a witness. “This was my first appearance at the Old Bailey, and as I was fearful I might give incorrect evidence, I trembled over the third commandment. How could I think, while shaking in the witness-box, that I should ever be raised to act as Her Majesty’s First Commissioner at the Central Criminal Court of England!”

Half of his scanty pittance of ten pounds was sent home to aid his parents, and as his wages increased, so did this dutiful allowance. In this situation Kelly remained for twenty years and two months, and at no time did he receive more than eighty pounds per annum, and it is believed that when his stipend reached that petty maximum, he defrayed the whole of his father’s farm rent. That he was not entirely satisfied with his prospects, is evident from the fact that about ten years after he joined Hogg he accepted a clerkship in Sir Francis Baring’s office, but so necessary had he become to the establishment he was about to leave, that his late master prevailed upon him to accept board and residence in exchange for what assistance he might please to render over hours. After six weeks of this double work, poor Kelly’s health began to suffer, and it was plain that he must confine his labours to one single branch of trade. “Thomas,” said his master, sagaciously enough, though probably with a view to his own interests, “you never can be a merchant, but you _may_ be a bookseller.” This advice chimed in with his inclination, if not with his immediate prospects, and Kelly devoted himself to bookselling.

At length Hogg, falling into bad health, and desiring to be relieved from business, proposed to Kelly that he should unite in partnership with his son; but the conscientious assistant felt constrained to decline the tempting offer, by reason of the young man’s character, and resolved rather to attempt business on his own account. In 1809, therefore, he started in a little room in Paternoster Row, sub-rented from the landlord--a friendly barber. On his small front room he wrote his name, “Thomas Kelly,” and by way of advertising his change of position, he generally stood downstairs in the common doorway. To all the “Row” Hogg’s able assistant had been known simply as “Thomas,” and one old acquaintance actually asked him, “Well, Thomas, who is this Kelly that you have taken up with?”

For the first two years his operations were confined solely to the purchase and sale of miscellaneous books on a small scale, and the limited experiment proved successful. Of “Buchan’s Domestic Medicine” he bought one thousand copies in sheets at a low price, and, having prefixed a short memoir of the author, and divided them into numbers or parts, he went out himself in quest of subscribers; and a thousand copies of the “New Week’s Preparation” were treated in a like manner and with similar success. Henceforth he resolved to print at his own risk, always adopting the sectional method, and working his books, from first to last, entirely through the hands of his own agents, and the profit he found in this scheme depended almost entirely upon the happy knowledge he possessed of human character, and the cautious foresight with which he was able to select his canvassers. One of the first works he published in this manner was a large Family Bible, edited by J. Mallam, Rector of Hilton, afterwards known as “Kelly’s Family Bible.” To each of his canvassers he gave stock on credit, worth from twenty to one hundred pounds, ready money was insisted on, and this plan insured a speedy return of capital. The Bible extended to one hundred and seventy-three numbers, and the entire work cost the subscribers £5 15_s._, paid, of course, in weekly or monthly driblets; and, as 80,000 copies were soon sold, the gross receipts must have reached £460,000. Nearly half this sum, however, went in the agents’ allowances for canvassing and delivery. The paper duty alone on this one work was estimated at upwards of £20,000. To this Bible succeeded “The Life of Christ,” “Foxe’s Martyrs,” and the “History of England,” all in folio, with copper-plate embellishments; and “Hervey’s Meditations,” “Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,” and various other popular works, in octavo.

Six months after he had left his former situation, Hogg died, and the son soon fell into difficulties, and was obliged to relinquish the business, which Kelly immediately purchased, speedily adding to it the trade of Cooke, the owner of No. 17, and thus uniting the two concerns into one.

About the year 1814 the system of printing books from stereotype plates began to be very generally adopted for large editions, and Kelly at once saw its advantages, but, of course, as in all improvements, the trade set themselves against the innovation, and he had to purchase land at Merton, and erect a foundry of his own, and then, and not till then, the printers relinquished their opposition, and the building was abandoned. It was about this time, in March, 1815, that he very nearly lost a moiety of his fortune through fire. Luckily, upon the outbreak of a fire in the neighbourhood a few days before, he had been alarmed, and had gone straightway to the office of the Phœnix Company, and paid a deposit on the insurance. Before the policy was made out, the whole of his stock was destroyed, but the Phœnix Company paid up without an hour’s delay, and, in return, he never cancelled a single policy with them until this sum had been reimbursed. How largely Kelly traded may be gathered from the fact that from one of his agents alone he often received from £4000 to £5000 per annum.

To revert for a moment to his private life; his father had died in 1810, when the bookseller was still a struggling man, but, in spite of his difficulties, he paid at once the amount of his father’s debts; and brought his mother up to Wimbledon, where she lived to see her son a wealthy and prosperous man. To his old master’s widow he generously allowed an annuity, and even aided young Hogg, who had pursued him with inveterate hatred, with the loan of £600. He never married. When little known he saved a member of the Court of Aldermen from bankruptcy by an advance of £4000, and he was always ready to lend out his money to those in trouble. But once, when asked to give his acceptance to ten or twelve thousand pounds worth of bills--in these terms, “Will you, for once in your life, do a good action, and oblige me?”--he thought himself perfectly justified in refusing, and soon after the acceptor of these bills failed. In 1823 he was elected into the Common Council of his ward; in 1825 he served as Sheriff with Mr. Alderman Crowder, on whose death he succeeded to the Alderman’s gown of Farringdon Without. He always lamented his want of a systematic education, and late in life he endeavoured, in some way, to supply the place of it by experience gathered from foreign travel.

Notwithstanding his immense issues of costly books, he exercised the most watchful prudence. “Books,” he says, “generally, printed in the ordinary way, only sell 500 or 1000 copies, and periodical publications would be ruinous. Nothing but a vast sale will prove remunerative,” and this “vast sale” he certainly effected in almost every instance. He published twelve separate issues of the Bible, and disposed of, probably, not less than 250,000 copies. The following is a list of his more important works:--“History of the French Revolution,” 20,000 copies at £4; “Hume’s England,” 5,000, at £4 18_s._; “The Gazetteer,” 4,000, at £4 10_s._; “The Oxford Encyclopædia,” 4,000 at £6 (and the £24,000 only barely covered the original outlay); “The Geography,” 30,000 at £4 4_s._; and the “Architectural Works,” 50,000, at an average of £1 13_s._ To these may be added “The Life of Christ,” of which, in folio and quarto, not fewer than 100,000 copies were distributed, at prices varying from £1 1_s._ to £2. No wonder, with figures like these (for which we are indebted to Mr. Fell’s volume), that the trade objected to this method of transacting business, but the difference was confined merely to business relations, for every one of the numerous booksellers in the Ward signed the request asking him to stand as Alderman.

In 1836 he received the highest honour to which a citizen of London can aspire, for he was elected Lord Mayor. His year of office was a memorable one, and the first entertainment of Queen Victoria occurred on the very day of his retirement from office, and thus he narrowly escaped the honour of a baronetcy, for he had the good sense to decline the requisition to stand a second time.

His appearance in his robes of office is thus described by M. Titus Perondi, a French traveller:--“The new Lord Mayor appeared in a gilded chariot, almost as grand as the King’s, drawn by six bay horses, richly caparisoned.... He does not seem to be more than sixty-two years of age, and his figure, slight as it is, is still imposing--for the flowing wig and ermine mantle, which encircled all his person, added not a little to the dignity of his presence.... A thriving bookseller, yet a perfectly honest man, and very charitable.” The last sentence is an admirable summary of his character.

The attainment of this honour terminated his commercial and public life, for after this date he relinquished, in a great degree, his business cares; but to an extreme old age he retained his faculties, and he retained also his habits of quiet and discriminating charity, doing good by stealth, and blushing to find it known. On the 20th October, 1854, he paid his last visit to his parent’s grave, and was there heard to murmur, “How very happy I am.” His failing health compelled him to visit Margate, and here, on the 7th of September, 1855, he died in a ripe old age. A letter, written just before his death, evidently betrays a lingering fondness for early childish days:--“We are surrounded by fields of fully-ripening corn--some cut, some cutting,” babbling, like Falstaff, of green fields, till the sixty years of town life were forgotten.

Thomas Kelly was one of those men of whom the London citizens are so proud--men who come to the mighty centre of commerce utterly friendless, and worse still, penniless, and whom industry, labour, and good fortune exalt to the very pinnacle of a good citizen’s fondest dreams. But he was more than a Lord Mayor--he was a true friend; he was a loving, dutiful, and tender son--qualities not always insured even by commercial success.

Mr. George Virtue was another of those men of whom, in this history, we have had not a few examples, who, beginning life without any fictitious advantages, have made success their goal, and, in attaining it, have not only amassed princely fortunes for themselves and their families, but have opened up new branches of industry, and have afforded employment to hundreds whose bread depends upon their daily labours.

His father was a native of Fogo, in Berwickshire, who first at Coldstream, and afterwards at Wooler, in Northumberland, let out for hire carts and carters to the neighbouring farmers. In the year 1793, his second son, George, was born at Coldstream, and there and at Wooler, he passed the early years of his boyhood. In 1810, his father met with an accident, which caused him to relinquish the business he had hitherto been engaged in. His eldest son, James, who had a good engagement in London, gave up his employment and hastened home, and removing with the family to Coldstream, commenced business there as a mason, taking his brother George as an apprentice.

Mrs. Somerton, their married sister, had a large house, near the Houses of Parliament, in London, which she let out, much on the plan of the club-chambers of the present day. George had come up to London, partly on business, partly on a visit to his sister, and not wishing to return to the North, he made an arrangement to remain with Mrs. Somerton.

The house was chiefly frequented by members of Parliament and men in the higher grades of life; and one of the former, who had taken a fancy to George Virtue, asked him what he would like to be. George at once replied, “A bookseller,” and his patron assisted him in stocking a shop in the neighbourhood. This was about the year 1820. At first his trade consisted entirely in the retail business, but by degrees he was able to purchase entire remainders of that distinct class of religious publications which were then sold chiefly in numbers. These he re-issued; and as he did his own canvassing, no zeal was wanting in the service, and his success was by no means indifferent. Once established, he was able to canvass for the books of other publishers; and on the 15th July, 1821, the first number of a work was published, which took the town by storm. Whether Mr. Virtue’s canvassing powers were acknowledged by the trade at this early period, or whether his peculiar class of customers was considered as most amenable to the work in question, we know not, but he was given an interest of one kind or another, either as part proprietor or as a purchaser on unusually liberal terms in the famous “Life in London; or, the Adventures of Tom and Jerry,” issued by Sherwood, Neeley, and Jones, of Paternoster Row. The book was written by Pierce Egan, afterwards the founder of _Bell’s Life_.

Works describing country sports and pastimes had proved so acceptable that it was imagined that a volume issued in numbers, setting forth the humours of town life would be equally taking. The illustrations by J. R. and George Cruikshank proved irresistible. The work was so successful that innumerable imitations appeared, one of which (“Shade of Lackington!”) was published by Jones and Co., who occupied his former place of business, the “Temple of the Muses” in Finsbury Square. There was absolutely a _furore_ for the work. Dibdin, Barryman, Farell, Douglas Jerrold, Moncrieff, and others adapted it for the stage. It was on the boards of ten theatres at one time; and at the Adelphi, where Moncrieff’s adaptation was produced, it enjoyed the then unparalleled run of three hundred nights. At last, Pierce Egan, declaring that no less than sixty-five separate publications had been derived from his work, brought forward his own characteristic version, which, however, proved a failure.

All the world bought “Tom and Jerry,” and having roared over the plates, tossed them not unnaturally aside; so that a work, which, in popularity, had been the “Pickwick” of its day, became so wonderfully scarce that when Mr. Thackeray, with whom it had been an early favourite, wanted a copy for a review he was writing upon Mr. George Cruikshank’s works, he applied at all the libraries, including the British Museum, in vain. The work was advertised for in the _Times_ with like result, and he had to depend upon his memory for his description. However, twenty years after, when he wished to make it the subject of one of the most charming of the “Roundabout Papers,” he found that it had been added to the Museum Library.

It was, however, with the contemporary popularity that Mr. Virtue was concerned, and by it his business was largely increased.

In 1831, his affairs warranted an important move to the vicinity of Paternoster Row, and about this time he married a Miss Sprent, a lady from Manchester. From his new abode the works which he at first issued were of much the same stamp as those which Messrs. Kelly, Hogg, and Cooke had previously spread abroad; but he soon struck out into a higher class of literature. His first very successful book was “A Guide to Family Devotion,” by Dr. Alexander Fletcher. The work was undertaken by Mr. Virtue, as Dr. Fletcher says, “at great expense and some hazard, during the years 1833-1834.” The volume contained 730 prayers, 730 hymns, and 730 selected passages of Scripture, suitable for Morning and Evening Service, throughout the year, and was illustrated by engravings by the best artists. The popularity it achieved was enormous: thirty editions of a thousand each were soon issued, and, as the _Times_ said, “30,000 copies of a book of Common Prayer, recommended by twenty-five distinguished ministers, cannot be dispersed throughout England without effecting some change in the minds of probably 200,000 persons.”

In America, the “Guide to Family Devotion” was as successful as at home, and upwards of one hundred ministers there sent in testimonials to its worth. By 1850, the sale is said to have exceeded 50,000 copies.

Mr. Virtue, about this time, entered into an engagement with W. Henry Bartlett, who, pencil in hand, travelled over the four quarters of the globe, making sketches, which that enterprising publisher issued in volumes, illustrated with beautiful steel engravings and descriptive letterpress. The first of these was “Switzerland,” published in 1835, in two quarto volumes. This was followed by Scotland, Palestine, the Nile, and America. Of the Switzerland, 20,000 copies were sold; and in the production of the two volumes on Scotland, upwards of one thousand persons were employed at a cost of £40,000. The number of engraved plates in these volumes amounted to a thousand.

When Mr. Virtue commenced these illustrated volumes, the Fine Art tastes of the public were in a very uneducated condition; but, selecting the best artists and employing the best engravers, he set a good example, which was speedily followed by others. In 1839, Messrs. Hodgson and Graves had started a cheap periodical devoted to Art, under the title of the _Art Union_, intended chiefly as an organ of the print trade; but it was not till the year 1849 that this publication passed into the hands of Mr. Virtue, who changed the title to the _Art Journal_, and devoted it to the development of Fine Art and Industrial Art, with illustrations on steel and wood by the first artists of the day. The _Art Journal_, it is admitted, has done more than any private venture or corporate body to disseminate true ideas of Art in England. The _Art Journal_, though among the very earliest of those periodicals in which Art was brought to the aid of Literature, still towers proudly above all. Since its foundation, the _Art Journal_ has presented the public with between eight and nine hundred steel engravings and above 30,000 engravings on wood.

No less than one hundred illustrated volumes were issued from Mr. Virtue’s establishment, and for their production it was found necessary to erect a large establishment in the City Road. Almost every engraver of any reputation in this country has been employed on one or other of Mr. Virtue’s illustrated works. Indeed, had it not been for the field of labour opened by the _Art Union_, in their yearly distribution of engravings, and for the encouragement held out by Mr. Virtue in the production of his illustrated works and the _Art Journal_, it is said that the art of line engraving would have quite died out in England; and for his services to the public, and, through them, to the profession, he is certainly entitled to be regarded as the first Art publisher of his time.

To go to a very different branch of his business, Mr. Virtue was not idle in the production of any book likely to win the favour of the public. In 1847, Dr. Cumming, then widely known as a preacher only, delivered a series of lectures at Exeter Hall upon the Apocalypse, which riveted public attention. He was urged by his friends to publish the lectures upon their completion, and said that he would be willing to do so, if he was sure that the proceeds would suffice to pay for putting up stained glass windows in his church. Mr. Virtue heard this, ascertained the value of the windows, and offered their outside cost down in hard cash in exchange for the copyright. Dr. Cumming eagerly accepted the offer, and by the “Apocalyptic Sketches” the publisher realized the handsome sum of four thousand pounds. He afterwards made the author a present of a hundred pounds, and engaged him to write a continuation, at an honorarium of five pounds per sheet of thirty-two pages, which eventually proved to be equally successful.

Many years before his death, Mr. George Virtue parted with the business to his son, Mr. James Sprent Virtue, the present head of the firm.

On the 8th December, 1868, George Virtue, senior, died in his seventy-sixth year, having earned the respect of all the hundreds to whom he afforded employment, and of the outside world; for all recognised that integrity and strict justice to his _employés_ was a main cause of his success, while his prosperity had been aided by thorough business habits and intense application to his duties.

He had been one of the representatives of the ward of Farringdon Without in the Common Council of the City of London for many years, and was held in the highest esteem by his fellow-citizens. It was in his civic capacity that he was invited by the Viceroy of Egypt, with other members of the Corporation, to pay a visit to that country, an honour which his constant attention to his public duties had fully merited in selecting him as one of the representatives of the City of London on that occasion.

_THOMAS TEGG_:

BOOK-AUCTIONEERING AND THE “REMAINDER TRADE.”

Thomas Tegg[28] was born at Wimbledon, in Surrey, on the 4th of March, 1776. His father was a grocer, who not only was successful in business, but “wore a large wig,” was a Latin scholar, and something of a mathematician; he died, however, when his son was only five years old, and was speedily followed by his wife, and the poor little lad “found it to be a dreadful thing when sorrow first takes hold of an orphan’s heart.” For the sake of economy, he was sent to Galashiels, in Selkirkshire, where he was boarded, lodged, clothed, and educated for ten guineas per annum. This severance from all home ties was at first more than the little orphan could bear, and many a time, he tells us, did he steal off to the quiet banks of the Tweed, and cry himself to sleep in his loneliness. A scrap of paper, which had been given him before leaving home, bearing the magic word “London,” was carefully treasured in all his wanderings, and in the associations it called up, in the hopes it excited in all his wondering, childish dreams, proved a soothing solace to his troubles. His schoolmaster, too, was a kind-hearted man, who made a point of studying each boy’s individual character, and of educating each for his individual calling. Ruling by “kindness rather than by flagellation,” he frequently took his pupils for country rambles, and taught them lessons out of the great book of Nature. Nor was he wholly forgotten by his relatives, for we read that he was sent a parcel of tea--then a wonderful luxury. After much consultation as to the best method of cooking the delicacy, one-half of it was boiled in the “big pot,” the liquor strained off and the leaves served up as greens; “but,” he adds, “it was not eaten.” After staying at Galashiels for four years, he was given the choice of being apprenticed either to a saddler or a bookseller; and his fondness for books, and the desire already formed of being at some time a bookseller in the London he pictured to himself every night in his dreams, led him at once to select the latter alternative. His dominie at parting, gave him a copy of “Dr. Franklin’s Life and Essays,” a book he treasured in all times of prosperity and adversity, and kept to the day of his death.

On a cold, raw morning in September, he started on foot for Dalkeith, with only sixpence in his pocket; some friendly farmers on the road gave him a lift in their cart, and in his gratitude he confided to them his boyish hopes of being by-and-by a great book-merchant in London. At Dalkeith he was bound apprentice to Alexander Meggett, a bookseller, and “from this humble origin,” says Tegg, proudly, “I, who am now one of the chief booksellers in London, have risen.” His master, kindness itself before the indentures were signed, turned out to be “a tyrant as well as an infidel.” “Every market-day he got drunk and came home and beat the whole of us. Once I said, ‘I have done nothing to deserve a beating.’ ‘Young English rascal,’ said he, ‘you may want it when I am too busy, so I will give it to you now.’” Tegg’s fellow-apprentice had, like him, an ambition, but it was to become the first whistler in the kingdom.

Tegg’s apprenticeship had by this time become intolerable, and, as he had been latterly engaged in reading “Robinson Crusoe” and “Roderick Random,” he resolved to run away and lead an adventurous life himself. Though it was in the depth of winter, he travelled along on foot, sleeping sometimes under hedges laden with hoar-frost. But soon his little hoarding of ten shillings was exhausted; at Berwick, therefore, he tried to make a livelihood by selling chap-books, but was recognised for a runaway apprentice and had again to fly. At this period he tells us he found out the utility of pawnbrokers’ shops, and discovered, also, the value of small sums. “He who has felt the want of a penny is never likely to dissipate a pound.” Another lesson, too, he gathered from his wanderings, which was always when in trouble to apply to a woman. “Never,” he says, “did I plead to a woman in vain.” At Newcastle he made the acquaintance of Bewick, the engraver; there he might have remained, but his heart was set upon reaching London. At Sheffield he was seized by the parish officer for travelling on Sunday, but when he told his story the severity of Bumbledom itself relented, and the beadle found him a home, and even paid the requisite eighteenpence a week which defrayed the cost of lodging, bread-making, and a weekly clean shirt. Here he was engaged by Mr. Gale, the proprietor of the _Sheffield Register_, at seven shillings a week, a wretched pittance, but sufficient for his small wants, even enabling him to purchase new clothes. At the _Register_ office he met some men of note, among others, Tom Paine and Dibdin. Paine was “a tall, thin, ill-looking man. He had a fiend-like countenance, and frequently indulged in oaths and blasphemy.” After a nine months’ sojourn, Tegg left Sheffield, and having visited Ireland and North Wales, entered the service of a Mr. Marshall, at Lynn, where he remained for three or four years.

Early in 1796, however, he mounted the London and Cambridge coach, and, with a few shillings in his pockets, with a light heart in his breast, he bade good-bye to friends, telling them that he would never come back till he could drive down in his carriage.

On the coach he met some other young men, who, like himself, were going up to London in search of employment, but who intended to spend the first few days in sight-seeing, and asked him to join their party. But Tegg resisted the temptation, and when London, the London of his dreams--but how black, smoke-filled, and inhospitable!--was really reached, he alighted at the Green Dragon in Bishopsgate Street, and, struggling through the busy stream of men who filled the city streets, he went straightway in search of employment, to the first book-shop that met his eyes. This happened to be Mr. Lane’s “Minerva Library,” in Leadenhall Street. “What can you do?” asked Lane. “My best,” rejoined Tegg. “Do you wear an apron?” Tegg produced one and tied it on. “Go to work,” said Lane, and thus, “in less than half-an-hour from my arrival, I was at work in one of the best houses in London.” Early next morning, map in hand, he took an exploring walk, and was astonished and delighted with all he saw, for to the young bookseller, with his mind wrapt up entirely in his projects of success, the perpetual rush of unknown faces--that he had never seen before, would never see again--the jostling eagerness of crowds, going incessantly this way and that, the noisy din of carts and carriages, the vastness of the buildings, and the vagueness of the never-ending streets, did not bring that feeling of utter loneliness which so many of us remember in our first solitary entry into London. Nor was the country lad to be beguiled by any of the myriad temptations that were ready on all sides to divide his attention from his business. “I resolved,” he writes, “to visit a place of worship every Sunday, and to read no loose or infidel books; that I would frequent no public-houses, that I would devote my leisure to profitable studies, that I would form no friendships till I knew the parties well, and that I would not go to any theatre till my reason fortified me against my passions.” This perseverance did not immediately meet with its deserved reward, for having been sent, with the other shopmen, to make an affidavit as to the numbers of an election bill that had been struck off, before the Lord Mayor, he said boldly, that he did not even know that they had been printed; the Lord Mayor was pleased with the answer, and censured Lane severely for tempting the boy to commit a perjury; and Lane, in his rage, dismissed him forthwith. Tegg walked out of the shop, down-hearted for the moment, perhaps, but self-possessed and reliant, and entering the shop of John and Arthur Arch, at the corner of Gracechurch Street, the kindly Quakers took him at once into their employ, and here he stayed until entering into business on his own account. His new masters were strict but affectionate. He soon asks for a holiday, “We have no objection, but where art thou going, Thomas?” “To Greenwich fair, sir.” “Then we think thou hadst better not go. Thou wilt lose half a day’s wages. Thou wilt spend at least the amount of two days’ wages more, and thou wilt get into bad company.” At two, however, he was told he might go; but as soon as he reached London Bridge his heart smote him, and he returned. “Why, Thomas, is this thee? Thou art a prudent lad.” And when Saturday came, his masters added a guinea to his weekly wages as a present. From this, Tegg says, he himself learnt to be a kind though strict master, and during his fifty years of business life, he never used a harsh word to a servant, and dismissed but three.

Having received £200 from the wreck of the family prospects, Tegg took a shop, in partnership with a Mr. Dewick, in Aldersgate Street, and became a “bookmaker” as well as a bookseller; and his first book, the “Complete Confectioner,” though it contained only one hundred lines of original matter, reached a second edition. After a short time he indulged in a tour to Scotland, where he found that his old schoolmaster had died from the effects of an amputation; and in this same journey he honestly bought up the unlapsed time of his apprenticeship. On returning to London he re-entered the service of the Messrs. Arch, and took unto himself a wife. The story of his courtship is pleasantly and naïvely told. Coming down the stairs of his new lodgings, “I was met by a good-looking, fresh-coloured, sweet-countenanced country girl; and without thinking of the impropriety I ventured to wink as she passed. On looking up the stairs, I saw my fair one peeping through the balusters at me. I was soon on speaking terms with her, and told her I wanted a wife, and bade her look out for one for me; but if she failed in the search she must take the office herself. After waiting a short time, no return being made, I acted on this agreement. Young and foolish both, we were married at St. Bride’s church, April 20, 1800.... I was most happy in my choice, and cannot write in adequate terms of my dear partner, who possesses four qualities seldom found in one woman--good nature, sound sense, beauty, and prudence.”

After his marriage, he again opened a shop in St. John’s Street, Clerkenwell, and here he “wrote all night and worked all day,” while his partner was drinking himself to death. His wife was ill, two of the children died, and the future looked terribly gloomy; for a “supposed friend” prevailed upon him to discount a bill for £172 14_s._ 9_d._ out of his little capital of two hundred pounds, and the bill, of course, turned out to be utterly worthless. In this strait he acted with much energy, dissolved his partnership, called a meeting of his creditors, and found a friend who nobly came forward as a security; and he left his home, declaring he would never return until he could pay the uttermost farthing. “God,” he writes solemnly, “never forsook me. A man may lose his property and yet not be ruined; peace and pride of heart may be more than equivalents.”

Tegg now took out a country auction licence, and determined to try his fortune in the provinces.

A few words on the book-auction trade may have a passing interest here. According to Dibdin, the first book auction of which we have any record in England occurred in 1676, when Cooper, the bookseller, prefixed the following address to his catalogue:--“Reader, it hath not been usual here in England to make sale of books by way of auction, or who will give most for them; but it having been practised in other countries, to the great advantage of both buyers and sellers, it was therefore conceived (for the encouragement of learning) to publish the sale of those books in this manner of way.” The innovation was successful. Cooper established a reputation as a book-auctioneer, and in London such sales became common. In a few years we read of the practice being extended to Scotland, and to the larger towns in England, such as Leeds and York. John Dunton, with his usual versatility, took over a cargo of books to sell at Dublin, and after that date attendance at the country fairs with books to sell by auction became quite a distinct branch among the London booksellers. The leading auctioneer in Dunton’s time was Edward Millington. “He had a quick wit and a wonderful fluency of speech. There was usually as much wit in his ‘One, two, three!’ as can be met with in a modern play. ‘Where,’ said Millington, ‘is your generous flame for learning? Who but a sot or a blockhead would have money in his pocket, and starve his brains?’” At this time it appears that bids of one penny were very commonly offered and accepted. Book-auctioneering soon became a distinct trade altogether, and required not only much fluency of speech and power of persuasion, but a very exact knowledge of the science of bibliography. For this latter speciality Samuel Paterson, of King Street, Covent Garden, was particularly famous. Perhaps no bookseller ever lived who knew so much about the contents of the books he sold. When, in compiling his catalogues, he met with an unknown book he would sit perusing it for hours, utterly unmindful of the time of sale, and oblivious of the efforts of his clerk to call his attention to the lateness of the time. Baker, Leigh, and Sotheby, all of York Street, Covent Garden, were also eminent in this branch of the trade; but the prince of book-auctioneers was James Christie, whose powers of persuasion were rendered doubly effective by a quiet, easy flow of conversation, and a gentle refinement of manners. At the close of the century, the booksellers’ trade sales were held at the Horn Tavern, in Doctors’ Commons, and were preceded by a luxurious dinner, when the bottle and the jest went round merrily, and the competition was heightened by wine and laughter.

Tegg, to retake the thread of our story after this digression, started with a very poor stock, consisting of shilling political pamphlets, and some thousands of the _Monthly Visitor_. At Worcester, however, he purchased a parcel of books from a clergyman for ten pounds, but when the time for payment arrived the good man refused to accept anything. At Worcester, too, it was that he held his first auction. “With a beating heart I mounted the rostrum. The room was crowded. I took £30 that first night, and in a few days a knife and fork was provided for me at many of the houses of my customers. God helps those, I thought, who help themselves.” With his wife acting as clerk, he travelled through the country, buying up the duplicates at all the gentlemen’s libraries he could hear of, and rapidly paying off his debts. This led him to return to his shop in Cheapside, but his ardent desire for advancement involved him again in difficulties. “One day I was called from the shop three times by the sheriff’s officers (a few years afterwards I paid a fine of £400 to be excused serving sheriff myself). Bailiffs are not always iron-hearted. I have met with very kind officers; some have taken my word for debt and costs, and one lent me the money to pay both” (O rare bum-bailiff! why is not thy name recorded?).

Still Tegg was making gradual way, in spite of occasional difficulties which again led him to the pawnshops, but with more precious pledges than when at Berwick he asked a rosy-cheeked Irish girl how he might best raise money on a silk handkerchief, for now his watch and spoons could accommodate him, when needful, with fifty pounds. About this time one of the most interesting episodes of his life was commenced. He had purchased a hundred pounds’ worth of books from Mr. Hunt, who, hearing of his struggles, bade him to pay for them when he pleased. Tegg, in the fulness of his gratitude, told him that should he, in his turn, ever need aid he should have it; but the wealthy bookseller smiled at the young struggler’s evident simplicity. We will tell the rest of the story in Tegg’s own words. “Thirty years after, I was in my counting-house, when Mr. Hunt, with a queer-looking companion, came in and reminded me of my promise. He was under arrest, and must go to prison unless I would be his bail. I acknowledged the obligation, but I would first take my wife’s opinion. ‘Yes, my dear, by all means help Mr. Hunt,’ was her answer. ‘He aided us in trouble; you can do no less for him.’ Next morning I found I had become his surety for thirty thousand pounds. I was sharply questioned in court as to my means, and, rubbing his hands together, Mr. Barrister remarked that Book-selling must be a fine trade, and wished he had been brought up to it. I answered, ‘The result did not depend on the trade, but on the man; for instance, if I had been a lawyer I would not have remained half this time in your situation--I would have occupied a seat with their lordships.’ There was a laugh in court, and the judge said, ‘You may stand down.’”

When success first really dawned, Tegg began to feel poignantly the want of a more complete education; however, he determined to employ the powers he possessed as best he could. His earliest publications consisted of a series of pamphlets, printed in duodecimo, with frontispieces, containing abridgments of popular works; and the series extended to two hundred, many of them circulating to the extent of 4000 copies. As an instance of his business energy, we may cite the following:--Tegg heard one morning from a friend that Nelson had been shot at Trafalgar. He set an engraver to work instantly on a portrait of the hero, purchased the _Naval Chronicle_, found ample material for a biography; and, in a few hours, “The Whole Life of Nelson” was ready for the press. Such timely assiduity was rewarded by a sale of 5000 sixpenny copies. On another occasion, when on a summer jaunt to Windsor with a friend, it was jocularly resolved that, as they had come to see the king, they ought to make his Majesty pay the expenses of the trip. Tegg suggested a Life of Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, with a coloured portrait. 13,000 copies were sold at seven-and-sixpence each; and, as he observes, the “bill was probably liquidated.”

Among his other cheap books were--“Tegg’s Chronology,” “Philip Quail,” and--perhaps the most successful and useful of all--a diamond edition of “Johnson’s Dictionary,” published when the original edition was selling at five guineas.

In 1824 he purchased the copyright of Hone’s “Every-Day Book” and “Table Book;” republished the whole in weekly parts, and cleared a very large profit.

“I like you and your book, ingenious Hone!
In whose capacious, all-embracing leaves
The very marrow of traditions shown,
And all that History, much that Fiction weaves.”

So sang Charles Lamb; and Southey says of these two delightful works:--“The ‘Every-Day Book’ and ‘Table Book’ will be a fortune a hundred years hence, but they have failed to make Hone’s fortunes.” However, Tegg gave him five hundred pounds to compile the “Year Book,” which proved much less successful than the others.

Hone had been a bookseller in the Strand, where he probably acquired his miscellaneous stock of quaint knowledge about old English customs, and all that appertained to a race fast dying out. After the famous trial, in which his “Parodies” were charged as being “blasphemy,” he immediately stopped the sale of them; and, though at that time in urgent need of money, he resolutely refused tempting offers for copies. “The story of my three-days’ trial at Guildhall,” he writes, “may be dug out from the journals of the period; the history of my mind, my heart, my scepticism, and my atheism remain to be written.” It is said that he was first awakened to a better way of thinking, in the following manner:--One day, walking in the country, he saw a little girl standing at a doorway, and stopped to ask her for a drink of milk; and, observing a book in her hand, he inquired what it was. She said it was a Bible; and, in reply to some depreciatory remark of his, added, in her simple wonder--“I thought everybody loved their Bible, sir!”

By this time Tegg was thriving;--he bought his first great-coat, and the first silk pelisse for his wife, and was able to make a rule of paying in cash, which he found an immense advantage. The book auctions, continued nightly at 111, Cheapside, formed the immediate stepping-stone to his wealth. He visited all the trade sales, and bought up the “remainders,” _i.e._, surplus copies of works in which the original publishers had no faith;--“I was,” he writes, “the broom that swept the booksellers’ warehouses.” At one of the dinners preceding these trade sales, he heard Alderman Cadell give the then famous toast--“The Bookseller’s four B’s”--Burns, Blair, Buchan, and Blackstone. In the auctioneer’s rostrum he was very lively and amusing, and the room became well known all over London. At one of the last sales, a gentleman who purchased a book asked if “he ever left off selling for a single night?” Fifteen years before, on his road to the dock to embark for Calcutta, he found Tegg busy, and as busy still on his return. “If ever man was devoted to his profession, I am that man,” says Tegg; and again--“I feel that my moral courage is sufficient to carry out anything I resolve to accomplish.”

Now that his own publications were proving very lucrative, Tegg resolved to abandon the auctioneering portion of the business, and confine himself to the more legitimate trade; and, at his last sale, he took upwards of eighty pounds. The purchase and sale of remainders, however, still formed a very important branch of his traffic.

About this time he took another journey to Scotland, and had an interview with Sir Walter Scott, who had, he says, “nothing in his manner or conversation to impress a visitor with his greatness.” Immediately on his return he made his final remove to the Mansion House, Cheapside--once the residence of the Lord Mayor--and the annual current of sales rose in the proportion of from eighteen to twenty-two. Now a popular as well as a wealthy man, he was elected a Common Councillor of the Ward of Cheap, took a country house at Norwood, with a beautiful garden attached--“though I scarcely knew a rose from a rhododendron”--and set up a carriage.

It was, of course, from the Mansion House that his well-known publications were dated. In 1825, the year after the purchase of the “Table Book,” he published the “London Encyclopædia;” it was a time of great financial difficulty (as we have, indeed, seen in almost all our lives of contemporary publishers); his bills were dishonoured to the extent of twenty thousand pounds; and the work was began solely to give employment to those who had been faithful in more prosperous years. The public, however, supported the undertaking, and Tegg was rewarded for his courage.