Chapter VII: THE SPELL of the LAURENZIANA 271 (2)

He nodded pleasantly as he came in, and sat down with great deliberation. Before making any remarks he laid his umbrella on the floor and placed his hat carefully over it, then he somewhat painfully removed his rubbers. This done, he turned to me with a broad smile of greeting, and said, “I don’t know as you know who I am.”

When I confirmed him in his suspicions, he remarked, “Well, I am Jasper P. Smith, and I come from Randolph, New Hampshire.”

(_The names and places mentioned are, for obvious reasons, not correct._)

I returned his smile of greeting and asked what I could do for him.

“Well,” he said, “my home town of Randolph, New Hampshire, has decided to get out a town history, and I want to have you do the printin’ of it. The selectmen thought it could be printed at ----, but I says to them, ‘If it’s worth doin’ at all it’s worth doin’ right, and I want the book to be made at the University Press in Cambridge.’”

I thanked Mr. Smith for his confidence, and expressed my satisfaction that our reputation had reached Randolph, New Hampshire.

“Well,” he said, chuckling to himself, “you see, it was this way. You made the history of Rumford, and I was the feller who wrote the genealogies. That’s what I am, a genealogy feller. Nobody in New Hampshire can write a town history without comin’ to me for genealogies.”

After pausing for a moment he continued, “It was your proofreadin’ that caught me. On that Rumford book your proofreader was a smart one, she was, but I got back at her in good style.”

His memory seemed to cause him considerable amusement, and I waited expectantly.

“It was in one of the genealogies,” he went on finally. “I gave the date of the marriage as so and so, and the date of the birth of the first child as two months later. Did she let that go by? I should say not. She drew a line right out into the margin and made a darned big question mark. But I got back at her! I just left that question mark where it was, and wrote underneath, ‘Morally incorrect, historically correct!’”

* * * * *

When the first Adams flat-bed press was installed at the University Press, President Felton of Harvard College insisted that no book of his should ever be printed upon this modern monstrosity. Here was history repeating itself, for booklovers of the fifteenth century in Italy for a long time refused to admit that a printed volume had its place in a gentleman’s library. In the eighteen-nineties one whole department at the University Press consisted of these flat-bed presses, which today can scarcely be found outside of museums. If a modern publisher were to stray into the old loft where the wetted sheets from these presses were hung over wooden rafters to dry, he would rub his eyes and wonder in what age he was living. The paper had been passed through tubs of water, perhaps half a quire at a time, and partially dried before being run through the press. The old Adams presses made an impression that could have been read by the blind, and all this embossing, together with the wrinkling of the sheet from the moisture, had to be taken out under hydraulic pressure. Today wetted sheets and the use of hydraulic presses for bookwork are practically obsolete. The cylinder presses, that run twice as fast, produce work of equal quality at lower cost.

* * * * *

In those days the relations between publishers and their printers were much more intimate. Scales of prices were established from time to time, but a publisher usually sent all his work to the same printer. It was also far more customary for a publisher to send an author to the printer to discuss questions of typography with the actual maker of the book, or to argue some technical or structural point in his manuscript with the head proofreader. The headreader in a large printing establishment at that time was a distinct personality, quite competent to meet authors upon their own ground.

* * * * *

One of my earliest and pleasantest responsibilities was to act as Mr. Wilson’s representative in his business relations with Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, which required frequent trips to “Pleasant View” at Concord, New Hampshire. Mrs. Eddy always felt under deep obligation to Mr. Wilson for his interest in the manuscript of _Science and Health_ when she first took it to him with a view to publication, and any message from him always received immediate and friendly consideration.

In the past there have been suggestions made that the Rev. James Henry Wiggin, a retired Unitarian clergyman and long a proofreader at the University Press, rewrote _Science and Health_. Mr. Wiggin was still proofreader when I entered the Press, and he always manifested great pride in having been associated with Mrs. Eddy in the revision of this famous book. I often heard the matter referred to, both by him and by John Wilson, but there never was the slightest intimation that Mr. Wiggin’s services passed beyond those of an experienced editor. I have no doubt that many of his suggestions, in his editorial capacity, were of value and possibly accepted by the author,--in fact, unless they had been, he would not have exercised his proper function; but had he contributed to the new edition what some have claimed, he would certainly have given intimation of it in his conversations with me.

The characteristic about Mrs. Eddy that impressed me the first time I met her was her motherliness. She gave every one the impression of deepest interest and concern in what he said, and was sympathetic in everything that touched on his personal affairs. When I told her of John Wilson’s financial calamity, she seemed to regard it as a misfortune of her own. Before I left her that day she drew a check for a substantial sum and offered it to me.

“Please hand that to my old friend,” she said, “and tell him to be of good cheer. What he has given of himself to others all these years will now return to him a thousand-fold.”

At first one might have been deceived by her quiet manner into thinking that she was easily influenced. There was no suggestion to which she did not hold herself open. If she approved, she accepted it promptly; if it did not appeal, she dismissed it with a graciousness that left no mark; but it was always settled once and for all. There was no wavering and no uncertainty.

After Mrs. Eddy moved from Concord to Boston, her affairs were administered by her Trustees, so I saw her less frequently. To many her name suggests a great religious movement, but when I think of her I seem to see acres of green grass, a placid little lake, a silver strip of river, and a boundary line of hills; and within the unpretentious house a slight, unassuming woman,--very real, very human, very appealing, supremely content in the self-knowledge that, no matter what others might think, she was delivering her message to the world.

* * * * *

By this time, I had discovered what was the matter with American bookmaking. It was a contracting business, and books were conceived and made by the combined efforts of the publisher, the manufacturing man, the artist, the decorator, the paper mills’ agent, and, last of all, the printer and the binder. This was not the way the old-time printers had planned their books. With all their mechanical limitations, they had followed architectural lines kept consistent and harmonious because controlled by a single mind, while the finished volume of the eighteen-nineties was a composite production of many minds, with no architectural plan. No wonder that the volumes manufactured, even in the most famous Presses, failed to compare with those produced in Venice by Jenson and Aldus four centuries earlier!

When I succeeded John Wilson as head of the University Press in 1895, I determined to carry out the resolution I had formed four years earlier, while sitting in on the Eugene Field conference, of following the example of the early master-printers so far as this could be done amidst modern conditions. Some of my publisher friends were partially convinced by my contention that if the printer properly fulfilled his function he must know how to express his clients’ mental conception of the physical attributes of prospective volumes in terms of type, paper, presswork, and binding better than they could do it themselves. The Kelmscott publications, which appeared at this time, were of great value in emphasizing my contention, for William Morris placed printing back among the fine arts after it had lapsed into a trade.

I had no idea, when I presented my plan, of persuading my friends to produce typographical monuments. No demand has ever existed for volumes of this type adequate to the excessive cost involved by the perfection of materials, the accuracy of editorial detail, the supreme excellence of typography and presswork, and the glory of the binding. Sweynheim and Pannartz, Gutenberg’s successors, were ruined by their experiments in Greek; the Aldine Press in Venice was saved only by the intervention of Jean Grolier; Henri Étienne was ruined by his famous _Thesaurus_, and Christophe Plantin would have been bankrupted by his _Polyglot Bible_ had he not retrieved his fortunes by later and meaner publications. Nor was I unmindful of similar examples that might have been cited from more modern efforts, made by ambitious publishers and printers.

What I wanted to do was to build low-cost volumes upon the same principles as _de luxe_ editions, eliminating the expensive materials but retaining the harmony and consistency that come from designing the book from an architectural standpoint. It adds little to the expense to select a type that properly expresses the thought which the author wishes to convey; or to have the presses touch the letters into the paper in such a way as to become a part of it, without that heavy impression which makes the reverse side appear like an example of Braille; or to find a paper (even made by machine!) soft to the feel and grateful to the eye, on which the page is placed with well-considered margins; or to use illustrations or decorations, if warranted at all, in such a way as to assist the imagination of the reader rather than to divert him from the text; to plan a title page which, like the door to a house, invites the reader to open it and proceed, its type lines carefully balanced with the blank; or to bind (even in cloth!) with trig squares and with design or lettering in keeping with the printing inside.

By degrees the publishers began to realize that this could be done, and when once established, the idea of treating the making of books as a manufacturing problem instead of as a series of contracts with different concerns, no one of which knew what the others were doing, found favor. The authors also preferred it, for their literary children now went forth to the world in more becoming dress. Thus serving in the capacity of book architect and typographical advisor, instead of merely as a contrasting printer, these years have been lived in a veritable Kingdom of Books, in company with interesting people,--authors and artists as well as publishers,--in a delightfully intimate way because I have been permitted to be a part of the great adventure.

* * * * *

During these years I have seen dramatic changes. Wages were somewhat advanced between 1891 and the outbreak of the World War, but even at this latter date the cost of manufacturing books was less than half of what it is now. This is the great problem which publishers have to face today. When the cost of everything doubled after the World War, the public accepted the necessity of paying twice the price for a theater ticket as a matter of course; but when the retail price of books was advanced in proportion to the cost of manufacture, there was a great outcry among buyers that authors, publishers, and booksellers were opportunists, demanding an unwarranted profit. As a matter of fact, the novel which used to sell at $1.35 per copy should now sell at $2.50 if the increased costs were properly apportioned. The publisher today is forced to decline many promising first novels because the small margin of profit demands a comparatively large first edition.

Unless a publisher can sell 5,000 copies as a minimum it is impossible for him to make any profit upon a novel. Taking this as a basis, and a novel as containing 320 pages, suppose we see how the $2.00 retail price distributes itself. The cost of manufacture, including the typesetting, electrotype plates, cover design, jacket, brass dies, presswork, paper, and binding, amounts to 42 cents per copy (in England, about 37 cents). The publisher’s cost of running his office, which he calls “overhead,” is 36 cents per copy. The minimum royalty received by an author is 10 per cent. of the retail price, which would give him 20 cents. This makes a total cost of 98 cents a copy, without advertising. But a book must be advertised.

Every fifty dollars spent in advertising on a five thousand edition adds a cent to the publisher’s cost. The free copies distributed for press reviews represent no trifling item. A thousand dollars is not a large amount to be spent for advertising, and this means 20 cents a copy on a 5000 edition, making a total cost of $1.18 per copy and reducing the publisher’s profit to 2 cents, since he sells a two-dollar book to the retail bookseller for $1.20. The bookseller figures that his cost of doing business is one-third the amount of his sales, or, on a two-dollar book, 67 cents. This then shows a net profit to the retail bookseller of 13 cents, to the publisher of 2 cents, and to the author of 20 cents a copy.

Beyond this, there is an additional expense to both bookseller and publisher which the buyer of books is likely to overlook. It is impossible to know just when the demand for a book will cease, and this means that the publisher and the bookseller are frequently left with copies on hand which have to be disposed of at a price below cost. This is an expense that has to be included in the book business just as much as in handling fruit, flowers, or other perishable goods.

When a publisher is able to figure on a large demand for the first edition, he can cut down the cost of manufacture materially; but, on the other hand, this is at least partially offset by the fact that authors whose books warrant large first editions demand considerably more than 10 per cent. royalty, and the advertising item on a big seller runs into large figures.

* * * * *

I wish I might say that I had seen a dramatic change in the methods employed in the retail bookstores! There still exists, with a few notable exceptions, the same lack of realization that familiarity with the goods one has to sell is as necessary in merchandizing books as with any other commodity. Salesmen in many otherwise well-organized retail bookstores are still painfully ignorant of their proper functions and indifferent to the legitimate requirements of their prospective customers.

Some years ago, when one of my novels was having its run, I happened to be in New York at a time when a friend was sailing for Europe. He had announced his intention of purchasing a copy of my book to read on the steamer, and I asked him to permit me to send it to him with the author’s compliments. Lest any reader be astonished to learn that an author ever buys a copy of his own book, let me record the fact that except for the twelve which form a part of his contract with the publisher, he pays cash for every copy he gives away. Mark Twain dedicated the first edition of _The Jumping Frog_ to “John Smith.” In the second edition he omitted the dedication, explaining that in dedicating the volume as he did, he had felt sure that at least all the John Smiths would buy books. To his consternation he found that they all expected complimentary copies, and he was hoist by his own petard!

With the idea of carrying out my promise to my friend, I stepped into one of the largest bookstores in New York, and approached a clerk, asking him for the book by title. My pride was somewhat hurt to find that even the name was entirely unfamiliar to him. He ran over various volumes upon the counter, and then turned to me, saying, “We don’t carry that book, but we have several others here which I am sure you would like better.”

“Undoubtedly you have,” I agreed with him; “but that is beside the point. I am the author of the book I asked for, and I wish to secure a copy to give to a friend. I am surprised that a store like this does not carry it.”

Leaning nonchalantly on a large, circular pile of books near him, the clerk took upon himself the education of the author.

“It would require a store much larger than this to carry every book that is published, wouldn’t it?” he asked cheerfully. “Of course each author naturally thinks his book should have the place of honor on the bookstalls, but we have to be governed by the demand.”

It was humiliating to learn the real reason why this house failed to carry my book. I had to say something to explain my presumption even in assuming that I might find it there, so in my confusion I stammered,

“But I understood from the publishers that the book was selling very well.”

“Oh, yes,” the clerk replied indulgently; “they have to say that to their authors to keep them satisfied!”

With the matter thus definitely settled, nothing remained but to make my escape as gracefully as circumstances would permit. As I started to leave, the clerk resumed his standing position, and my eye happened to rest on the pile of perhaps two hundred books upon which he had been half-reclining. The jacket was strikingly familiar. Turning to the clerk I said severely,

“Would you mind glancing at that pile of books from which you have just risen?”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, smiling and handing me a copy, “that is the very book we were looking for, isn’t it?”

It seemed my opportunity to become the educator, and I seized it.

“Young man,” I said, “if you would discontinue the practice of letting my books support you, and sell a few copies so that they might support me, it would be a whole lot better for both of us.”

“Ha, ha!” he laughed, graciously pleased with my sally; “that’s a good line, isn’t it? I really must read your book!”

* * * * *

The old-time publisher is passing, and the author is largely to blame. I have seen the close association--in many cases the profound friendship--between author and publisher broken by the commercialism fostered by some literary agents and completed by competitive bids made by one publishing house to beguile a popular author away from another. There was a time when a writer was proud to be classified as a “Macmillan,” or a “Harper” author. He felt himself a part of the publisher’s organization, and had no hesitation in taking his literary problems to the editorial advisor of the house whose imprint appeared upon the title pages of his volumes. A celebrated Boston authoress once found herself absolutely at a standstill on a partially completed novel. She confided her dilemma to her publisher, who immediately sent one of his editorial staff to the rescue. They spent two weeks working together over the manuscript, solved the problems, and the novel, when published, was the most successful of the season.

Several publishers have acknowledged to me that in offering unusually high royalties to authors they have no expectation of breaking even, but that to have a popular title upon their list increases the sales of their entire line. The publisher from whom the popular writer is filched has usually done his share in helping him attain his popularity. The royalty he pays is a fair division of the profits. He cannot, in justice to his other authors, pay him a further premium.

Ethics, perhaps, has no place in business, but the relation between author and publisher seems to me to be beyond a business covenant. A publisher may deliberately add an author to his list at a loss in order to accomplish a specific purpose, but this practice cannot be continued indefinitely. A far-sighted author will consider the matter seriously before he becomes an opportunist.

* * * * *

In England this questionable practice has been of much slower growth. The House of Murray, in London, is one of those still conducted on the old-time basis. John Murray IV, the present head of the business, has no interest in any author who comes to him for any reason other than a desire to have the Murray imprint upon his book. It is more than a business. The publishing offices at 50_a_, Albemarle Street adjoin and open out of the Murray home. In the library is still shown the fireplace where John Murray III burned Byron’s Memoirs, after purchasing them at an enormous price, because he deemed that their publication would do injury to the reputation of the writer and of the House itself.

John Murray II was one of the publishers of Scott’s _Marmion_. In those days it was customary for publishers to share their contracts. Constable had purchased from Scott for £1,000 the copyright of _Marmion_ without having seen a single line, and the _honorarium_ was paid the author before the poem was completed or the manuscript delivered. Constable, however, promptly disposed of a one-fourth interest to Mr. Miller of Albemarle Street, and another one fourth to John Murray, then of Fleet Street.

By 1829 Scott had succeeded in getting into his own hands nearly all his copyrights, one of the outstanding items being this one-quarter interest in _Marmion_ held by Mr. Murray. Longmans and Constable had tried in vain to purchase it. When, however, Scott himself approached Murray through Lockhart, the following letter from Mr. Murray was the result:

_So highly do I estimate the honour of being even in so small
a degree the publisher of the author of the poem that no
pecuniary consideration whatever can induce me to part with it.
But there is a consideration of another kind that would make it
painful to me if I were to retain it a moment longer. I mean
the knowledge of its being required by the author, into whose
hands it was spontaneously resigned at the same instant that I
read the request._

There has always been a vast difference in authors in the attitude they assume toward the transformation of their manuscripts into printed books. Most of them leave every detail to their publishers, but a few take a deep and intelligent personal interest. Bernard Shaw is to be included in the latter group.

A leading Boston publisher once telephoned me that an unknown English author had submitted a manuscript for publication, but that it was too socialistic in its nature to be acceptable. Then the publisher added that the author had asked, in case this house did not care to publish the volume, that arrangements be made to have the book printed in this country in order to secure American copyright.

“We don’t care to have anything to do with it,” was the statement; “but I thought perhaps you might like to manufacture the book.”

“Who is the author?” I inquired.

“It’s a man named Shaw.”

“What is the rest of his name?”

“Wait a minute and I’ll find out.”

Leaving the telephone for a moment, the publisher returned and said,

“His name is G. Bernard Shaw. Did you ever hear of him?”

“Yes,” I replied; “I met him last summer in London through Cobden-Sanderson, and I should be glad to undertake the manufacture of the book for Mr. Shaw.”

“All right,” came the answer. “Have your boy call for the manuscript.”

This manuscript was _Man and Superman_.

From that day and for many years, Shaw and I carried on a desultory correspondence, his letters proving most original and diverting. On one occasion he took me severely to task for having used two sizes of type upon a title page. He wrote four pages to prove what poor taste and workmanship this represented, and then ended the letter with these words, “But, after all, any other printer would have used sixteen instead of two, so I bless you for your restraint!”

We had another lengthy discussion on the use of apostrophes in printing. “I have made no attempt to deal with the apostrophes you introduce,” he wrote; “but my own usage is carefully considered and the inconsistencies are only apparent. For instance, _Ive_, _youve_, _lets_, _thats_, are quite unmistakable, but _Ill_, _hell_, _shell_, for _I’ll_, _he’ll_, _she’ll_, are impossible without a phonetic alphabet to distinguish between long and short _e_. In such cases I retain the apostrophe, in all others I discard it. Now you may ask me why I discard it. Solely because it spoils the printing. If you print a Bible you can make a handsome job of it because there are no apostrophes or inverted commas to break up the letterpress with holes and dots. Until people are forced to have some consideration for a book as something to look at as well as something to read, we shall never get rid of these senseless disfigurements that have destroyed all the old sense of beauty in printing.”

“Ninety-nine per cent. of the secret of good printing,” Shaw continued, “is not to have patches of white or trickling rivers of it trailing down a page, like rain-drops on a window. Horrible! _White_ is the enemy of the printer. _Black_, rich, fat, even black, without gray patches, is, or should be, his pride. Leads and quads and displays of different kinds of type should be reserved for insurance prospectuses and advertisements of lost dogs....”

His enthusiasm for William Morris’ leaf ornaments is not shared by all booklovers. Glance at any of the Kelmscott volumes, and you will find these glorified oak leaves scattered over the type page in absolutely unrelated fashion,--a greater blemish, to some eyes, than occasional variation in spacing. Shaw writes:

_If you look at one of the books printed by William Morris,
the greatest printer of the XIX century, and one of the
greatest printers of all the centuries, you will see that he
occasionally puts in a little leaf ornament, or something of
the kind. The idiots in America who tried to imitate Morris,
not understanding this, peppered such things all over their
“art” books, and generally managed to stick in an extra large
quad before each to show how little they understood about the
business. Morris doesn’t do this in his own books. He rewrites
the sentence so as to make it justify, without bringing one gap
underneath another in the line above. But in printing other
people’s books, which he had no right to alter, he sometimes
found it impossible to avoid this. Then, sooner than spoil the
rich, even color of his block of letterpress by a big white
hole, he filled it up with a leaf._

_Do not dismiss this as not being “business.” I assure you, I
have a book which Morris gave me, a single copy, by selling
which I could cover the entire cost of printing my books, and
its value is due_ solely _to its having been manufactured
in the way I advocate; there’s absolutely no other secret
about it; and there is no reason why you should not make
yourself famous through all the ages by turning out editions
of standard works on these lines whilst other printers are
exhausting themselves in dirty felt end papers, sham Kelmscott
capitals, leaf ornaments in quad sauce, and then wondering why
nobody in Europe will pay twopence for them, whilst Kelmscott
books and Doves Press books of Morris’ friends, Emery Walker
and Cobden-Sanderson, fetch fancy prices before the ink is
thoroughly dry.... After this I shall have to get you to print
all my future books, so please have this treatise printed in
letters of gold and preserved for future reference_

III

FRIENDS THROUGH TYPE

In 1903 I again visited Italy to continue my study of the art of printing in the old monasteries and libraries, sailing on the S. S. _Canopic_ from Boston to Naples. Among the passengers on board I met Horace Fletcher, returning to his home in Venice. At that time his volume _Menticulture_ was having a tremendous run. I had enjoyed reading the book, and in its author I discovered a unique and charming personality; in fact, I have never met so perfect an expression of practical optimism. His humor was infectious, his philosophy appealing, his quiet persistency irresistible.

To many people the name of Horace Fletcher has become associated with the Gladstonian doctrine of excessive chewing, but this falls far short of the whole truth. His scheme was the broadest imaginable, and thorough mastication was only the hub into which the other spokes of the wheel of his philosophy of life were to be fitted. The scheme was nothing less than a cultivation of progressive human efficiency. Believing that absolute health is the real basis of human happiness and advancement, and that health depends upon an intelligent treatment of food in the mouth together with knowledge of how best to furnish the fuel that is actually required to run the human engine, Horace Fletcher sought for and found perfect guides among the natural human instincts and physiologic facilities, and demonstrated that his theories were facts.

* * * * *

During the years that followed I served as his typographic mentor. He was eager to try weird and ingenious experiments to bring out the various points of his theories through unique typographical arrangement (see _opp. page_). It required all my skill and diplomacy to convince him that type possessed rigid limitations, and that to gain his emphasis he must adopt less complicated methods. From this association we became the closest of friends, and presuming upon this relation I used to banter him upon being so casual. His copy was never ready when the compositors needed it; he was always late in returning his proofs. The manufacture of a Fletcher book was a hectic experience, yet no one ever seemed to take exceptions. This was characteristic of the man. He moved and acted upon suddenly formed impulses, never planning ahead yet always securing exactly what he wanted, and those inconvenienced the most always seemed to enjoy it.

“I believe,” he used to say, “in hitching one’s wagon to a star, but I always keep my bag packed and close at hand ready to change stars at a moment’s notice. It is only by doing this that you can give things a chance to happen to you.”

Among the volumes Fletcher had with him on board ship was one he had purchased in Italy, printed in a type I did not recognize but which greatly attracted me by its beauty. The book bore the imprint: _Parma: Co’tipi Bodoniani._ Some weeks later, in a small, second-hand bookstore in Florence, I happened upon a volume printed in the same type, which I purchased and took at once to my friend, Doctor Guido Biagi, at the Laurenziana Library.

“The work of Giambattista Bodoni is not familiar to you?” he inquired in surprise. “It is he who revived in Italy the glory of the Aldi. He and Firmin Didot in Paris were the fathers of modern type design at the beginning of the nineteenth century.”

“Is this type still in use?” I inquired.

“No,” Biagi answered. “When Bodoni died there was no one worthy to continue its use, so his matrices and punches are kept intact, exactly as he left them. They are on exhibition in the library at Parma, just as the old Plantin relics are preserved in the museum at Antwerp.”

From Engraving at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]

I immediately took steps through our Ambassador at Rome to gain permission from the Italian Government to recut this face for use in America. After considerable difficulty and delay this permission was granted, with a proviso that I should not allow any of the type made from my proposed matrices to get into the hands of Italian printers, as this would detract from the prestige of the city of Parma. It was a condition to which I was quite willing to subscribe! Within a year I have received a prospectus from a revived Bodoni Press at Montagnola di Lugano, Switzerland, announcing that the exclusive use of the original types of Giambattista Bodoni has been given them by the Italian Government. This would seem to indicate that the early governmental objections have disappeared.

While searching around to secure the fullest set of patterns, I stumbled upon the fact that Bodoni and Didot had based their types upon the same model, and that Didot had made use of his font particularly in the wonderful editions published in Paris at the very beginning of the nineteenth century. I then hurried to Paris to see whether these matrices were in existence. There, after a search through the foundries, I discovered the original punches, long discarded, in the foundry of Peignot, to whom I gave an order to cast the different sizes of type, which I had shipped to America.

This was the first type based on this model ever to come into this country. The Bodoni face has since been recut by typefounders as well as for the typesetting machines, and is today one of the most popular faces in common use. Personally I prefer the Bodoni letter to that of Didot (see _opp. page_). The Frenchman succumbed to the elegance of his period, and by lightening the thin lines robbed the design of the virility that Bodoni retained. I am not in sympathy with the excessive height of the ascending letters, which frequently extend beyond the capitals; but when one considers how radical a departure from precedent this type was, he must admire the skill and courage of the designers. William Morris cared little for it,--“The sweltering hideousness of the Bodoni letter,” he exclaimed; “the most illegible type that was ever cut, with its preposterous thicks and thins”; while Theodore L. De Vinne, in his _Practice of Typography_, writes:

_The beauty of the Bodoni letters consists in their regularity,
in their clearness, and in their conformity to the taste of the
race, nation, and age in which the work was first written, and
finally in the grace of the characters, independent of time or
place._

When authorities differ to such a wide extent, the student of type design must draw his own conclusions!

* * * * *

Fletcher’s idea of an appointment was something to be kept if or when convenient, yet he never seemed to offend any one. He did nothing he did not wish to do, and his methods of extricating himself from unwelcome responsibilities always amused rather than annoyed. “If you don’t want to do a thing very badly,” he confided to me on one such occasion, “do it very badly.”

On board the _Canopic_ Fletcher was surrounded by an admiring and interested group. General Leonard Wood was on his way to study colonial government abroad before taking up his first administration as Governor of the Philippines. On his staff was General Hugh Lennox Scott, who later succeeded General Wood as Chief of Staff of the United States Army. The conversations and discussions in the smokeroom each evening after dinner were illuminating and fascinating. General Wood had but recently completed his work as Governor of Cuba, and he talked freely of his experiences there, while General Scott was full of reminiscences of his extraordinary adventures with the Indians. He later played an important part in bringing peace to the Philippines.

It was at one of these four-cornered sessions in the smokeroom that we first learned of Fletcher’s ambition to revolutionize the world in its methods of eating. That he would actually accomplish this no one of us believed, but the fact remains. The smokeroom steward was serving the coffee, inquiring of each one how many lumps of sugar he required. Fletcher, to our amazement, called for five! It was a grand-stand play in a way, but he secured his audience as completely as do the tambourines and the singing of the Salvation Army.

“Why are you surprised?” he demanded with seeming innocence. “I am simply taking a coffee liqueur, in which there is less sugar now than there is in your chartreuse or benedictine. But I am mixing it with the saliva, which is more than you are doing. The sugar, as you take it, becomes acid in the stomach and retards digestion; by my method, it is changed into grape sugar, which is easily assimilated.”

“To insalivate one’s liquor,” he explained to us, “gives one the most exquisite pleasure imaginable, but it is a terrific test of quality. It brings out the richness of flavor, which is lost when one gulps the wine down. Did you ever notice the way a tea-taster sips his tea?”

As he talked he exposed the ignorance of the entire group on physiological matters to an embarrassing extent, clinching his remarks by asking General Wood the question,

“Would you engage as chauffeur for your automobile a man who knew as little about his motor as you know about your own human engine?”

No one ever loved a practical joke better than Horace Fletcher. I was a guest at a dinner he once gave at the Graduates’ Club in New Haven. Among the others present were President Hadley of Yale, John Hays Hammond, Walter Camp, and Professor Lounsbury. There was considerable curiosity and some speculation concerning what would constitute a Fletcher dinner. At the proper time we were shown into a private room, where the table was set with the severest simplicity. Instead of china, white crockery was used, and the chief table decorations were three large crockery pitchers filled with ice water. At each plate was a crockery saucer, containing a shredded-wheat biscuit. It was amusing to glance around and note the expressions of dismay upon the faces of the guests. Their worst apprehensions were being confirmed! Just as we were well seated, the headwaiter came to the door and announced that by mistake we had been shown into the wrong room, whereupon Fletcher, with an inimitable twinkle in his eye, led the way into another private dining room, where we sat down to one of the most sumptuous repasts I have ever enjoyed.

Today, twenty years after his campaign, it is almost forgotten that the American breakfast was at that time a heavy meal. Horace Fletcher revolutionized the practice of eating, and interjected the word _fletcherize_ into the English language. As a disciple of Fletcher Sir Thomas Barlow, physician-in-chief to King Edward VII, persuaded royalty to set the style by cutting down the formal dinner from three hours to an hour and a half, with a corresponding relief to the digestive apparatus of the guests. In Belgium, during the World War, working with Herbert Hoover, Fletcher taught the impoverished people how to sustain themselves upon meager rations. Among his admirers and devoted friends were such profound thinkers as William James who, in response to a letter from him, wrote, “Your excessive reaction to the stimulus of my grateful approval makes you remind me of those rich soils which, when you tickle them with a straw, smile with a harvest”; and Henry James, who closes a letter: “Come and bring with you plenary absolution to the thankless subject who yet dares light the lamp of gratitude to you at each day’s end of his life.”

* * * * *

My acquaintance with Henry James came through my close association with the late Sir Sidney Lee, the Shakesperian authority, and Horace Fletcher.

“Don’t be surprised if he is brusque or uncivil,” Sir Sidney whispered to me just before I met him at dinner; “one can never tell how he is going to act.”

As a matter of fact, I found Henry James a most genial and enjoyable dinner companion, and never, during the few later occasions when I had the pleasure of being with him, did he display those characteristics of ill humor and brusqueness which have been attributed to him. It may not be generally known that all his life--until he met Horace Fletcher--he suffered torments from chronic indigestion, or that it was in Fletcherism that he found his first relief. In a typically involved Jamesian letter to his brother William he writes (February, 1909):

_It is impossible save in a long talk to make you understand how
the blessed Fletcherism--so extra blessed--lulled me, charmed
me, beguiled me, from the first into the convenience of not
having to drag myself out into eternal walking. One must have
been through what it relieved me from to know how not suffering
from one’s food all the while, after having suffered all one’s
life, and at last having it cease and vanish, could make one
joyously and extravagantly relegate all out-of-door motion to a
more and more casual and negligible importance. To live without
the hell goad of needing to walk, with time for reading and
indoor pursuits,--a delicious, insidious bribe! So, more and
more, I gave up locomotion, and at last almost completely. A
year and a half ago the thoracic worry began. Walking seemed to
make it worse, tested by short spurts. So I thought non-walking
more and more the remedy, and applied it more and more, and ate
less and less, naturally. My heart was really disgusted all
the while at my having ceased to call upon it. I have begun to
do so again, and with the most luminous response. I am better
the second half hour of my walk than the first, and better the
third than the second.... I am, in short, returning, after an
interval deplorably long and fallacious, to a due amount of
reasonable exercise and a due amount of food for the same._

My one visit to Lamb House was in company with Horace Fletcher. The meeting with Henry James at dinner had corrected several preconceived ideas and confirmed others. Some writers are revealed by their books, others conceal themselves in their fictional prototypes. It had always been a question in my mind whether Henry James gave to his stories his own personality or received his personality from his stories. This visit settled my doubts.

The home was a perfect expression of the host, and possessed an individuality no less unique. I think it was Coventry Patmore who christened it “a jewel set in the plain,”--located as it was at the rising end of one of those meandering streets of Rye, in Sussex, England, Georgian in line and perfect in appointment.

In receiving us, Henry James gave one the impression of performing a long-established ritual. He had been reading in the garden, and when we arrived he came out into the hall with hand extended, expressing a massive cordiality.

“Welcome to my beloved Fletcher,” he cried; and as he grasped my hand he said, as if by way of explanation,

“He saved my life, you know, and what is more, he improved my disposition. By rights he should receive all my future royalties,--but I doubt if he does!”

His conversation was much more intelligible than his books. It was ponderous, but every now and then a subtle humor relieved the impression that he felt himself on exhibition. One could see that he was accustomed to play the lion; but with Fletcher present, toward whom he evidently felt a deep obligation, he talked intimately of himself and of the handicap his stomach infelicities had proved in his work. The joy with which he proclaimed his emancipation showed the real man,--a Henry James unknown to his characters or to his public.

* * * * *

If William James had not taken up science as a profession and thus become a philosopher, he would have been a printer. No other commercial pursuit so invited him as “the honorable, honored, and productive business of printing,” as he expressed it in a letter to his mother in 1863. Naturally, with such a conception of the practice of book manufacture, he was always particularly concerned with the physical _format_ of his volumes. He once told me that my ability to translate his “fool ideas” into type showed the benefit of a Harvard education! He had no patience with any lapse on the part of the proofreader, and when the galleys of his books reached this point in the manufacture even my most experienced readers were on the anxious seat. On the other hand, he was generous in his appreciation when a proofreader called his attention to some slip in his copy that he had overlooked.

After his volume _Pragmatism_ appeared and created such universal attention, a series of “popular” lectures on the subject was announced at Cambridge. The Harpers had just published a novel of mine entitled _The Spell_, in connection with which I had devoted much time to the study of humanism and the humanists of the fifteenth century. Because of my familiarity with a kindred subject, I must confess to a sense of mortification that in reading _Pragmatism_ I found myself beyond my depth. A “popular” presentation appealed to me as an opportunity for intellectual development, so I attended the first lecture, armed with pencil and notebook. Afterwards it so happened that Professor James was on the trolley car when I boarded it at Harvard Square, and I sat down beside him.

“I was surprised to see you at my lecture,” he remarked. “Don’t you get enough of me at your office?”

I told him of my excursions into other philosophic pastures, and of my chagrin to find so little in pragmatic fields upon which my hungry mind could feed. He smiled at my language, and entered heartily into the spirit.

“And today?” he inquired mischievously.--“I hope that today I guided you successfully.”

“You did,” I declared, opening my notebook, and showing him the entry: “Nothing is the only resultant of the one thing which is not.”

“That led me home,” I said soberly, with an intentional double meaning.

Professor James laughed heartily.

“Did I really say that? I have no doubt I did. It simply proves my contention that philosophers too frequently exercise their prerogative of concealing themselves behind meaningless expressions.”

Two of Professor James’ typographic hobbies were paper labels and as few words as possible on the title page. In the matter of supplying scant copy for the title, he won my eternal gratitude, for many a book, otherwise typographically attractive, is ruined by overloading the title with too much matter. This is the first page that catches the eye, and its relation to the book is the same as the door of a house. Only recently I opened a volume to a beautiful title page. The type was perfectly arranged in proportion and margin, the decoration was charming and in complete harmony with the type. It was set by an artist-printer and did him credit; but turning a few more pages I found myself face to face with a red-blooded story of western life, when the title had prepared me for something as delicate as Milton’s _L’Allegro_. A renaissance door on a New England farmhouse would have been equally appropriate!

I commend to those who love books the fascinating study of title pages. I entered upon it from curiosity, and quickly found in it an abiding hobby. The early manuscripts and first printed volumes possessed no title pages, due probably to the fact that the handmade paper and parchment were so costly that the saving of a seemingly unnecessary page was a consideration. The _incipit_ at the top of the first page, reading “Here beginneth” and then adding the name of the author and the subject, answered every purpose; and on the last page the _explicit_ marked the conclusion of the work, and offered the printer an excellent opportunity to record his name and the date of the printing. Most of the early printers were modest in recording their achievements, but in the famous volume _De Veritate Catholicæ Fidei_ the printer says of himself:

_This new edition was furnished us to print in Venice by Nicolas
Jenson of France.... Kind toward all, beneficent, generous,
truthful and steadfast in the beauty, dignity, and accuracy
of his printing, let me (with the indulgence of all) name him
the first in the whole world; first likewise in his marvelous
speed. He exists in this, our time, as a special gift from
Heaven to men. June thirteen, in the year of Redemption 1489.
Farewell_

* * * * *

Bibliographers contend that the first title page was used in a book printed by Arnold Ther Hoernen of Cologne in 1470. In this volume an extra leaf is employed containing simply an introduction at the top. It has always seemed to me that this leaf is more likely to have been added by the printer to correct a careless omission of the introduction on his first page of text. Occasionally, in the humanistic manuscript volumes in the Laurenziana Library, at Florence, there occurs a “mirror” title (see _opp. page_), which consists of an illuminated page made up of a large circle in the center containing the name of the book, sometimes surrounded by smaller circles, in which are recorded the titles of the various sections. This seems far more likely to have been suggestive of what came to be the formal title page.

From Augustinus: _Opera_, 1485.

Laurenziana Library, Florence]

By the end of the fifteenth century the title page was in universal use, and printers showed great ingenuity in arranging the type in the form of wine cups, drinking glasses, funnels, inverted cones, and half-diamonds. During the sixteenth century great artists like Dürer, Holbein, Rubens, and Mantegna executed superbly engraved titles entirely out of keeping with the poor typography of the books themselves. In many of the volumes the title page served the double purpose of title and full-page illustration (see _pages_ 228 and 241). What splendid examples would have resulted if the age of engraved titles had coincided with the high-water mark in the art of printing!

As the art of printing declined, the engraved title was discarded, and the printer of the seventeenth century seemed to feel it incumbent upon him to cover the entire page with type. If you recall the early examples of American Colonial printing, which were based upon the English models of the time, you will gain an excellent idea of the grotesque tendency of that period. The Elzevirs were the only ones who retained the engraved title (_page_ 241). The Baskerville volumes (_page_ 247), in the middle of the eighteenth century, showed a return to good taste and harmonious co-ordination with the text; but there was no beauty in the title until Didot in Paris and Bodoni in Parma, Italy, introduced the so-called “modern” face, which is peculiarly well adapted to display (_page_ 253). William Morris, in the late nineteenth century, successfully combined decoration with type,--over-decorated, in the minds of many, but in perfect keeping with the type pages of the volumes themselves. Cobden-Sanderson, at the Doves Press, returned to the extreme in simplicity and good taste (_page_ 265), excelling all other printers in securing from the blank space on the leaf the fullest possible value. One of Cobden-Sanderson’s classic remarks is, “I always give greater attention, in the typography of a book, to what I leave out than to what I put in.”

* * * * *

The name of William Morris today may be more familiar to booklovers than that of Cobden-Sanderson, but I venture to predict that within a single decade the latter’s work as printer and binder at the Doves Press at Hammersmith, London, will prove to have been a more determining factor in printing as an art than that of William Morris at the Kelmscott Press, and that the general verdict will be that Cobden-Sanderson carried out the splendid principles laid down by Morris more consistently than did that great artist-craftsman himself.

From Etching by Alphonse Legros, 1893]