IN QUEST OF THE PERFECT BOOK

A book is a portion of the eternal mind caught in its progress through the world stamped in an instant, and preserved for eternity.

—Lord Houghton (1809–1885)

QUEEN MARY’S PSALTER, English, 14th Century

The Last Judgement

(Brit. Mus. Royal MS. 2B vii, 11 × 7 inches)

IN QUEST OF THE PERFECT BOOK

REMINISCENCES

& REFLECTIONS

OF A BOOKMAN

WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT

PUBLISHED · MCMXXVI · BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY

Copyright, 1926, by Little, Brown

and Company · All rights reserved

·.·

Printed in the United States of America

Published September, 1926

·.·

Reprinted October, 1926

Reprinted November, 1926

THE AUTHOR is indebted to the Atlantic Monthly for permission to reprint as the first chapter of this volume an essay which originally appeared in that magazine; to the Christian Science Monitor for permission to use, in quite different form, certain material which has been drawn upon in literary editorials written by him for its columns; to Alban Dobson, Esq., G. Bernard Shaw, Esq., Henry James, Esq., Mrs. Anne Cobden-Sanderson, and others, for permission to print personal letters and photographs.

To ITALY

That great Country whose Master-Spirits

in Art, Typography, and Literature

have contributed most toward

THE PERFECT BOOK

this Volume is Dedicated

FOREWORD TO THE THIRD EDITION

Years ago, I prepared what seemed to me a splendid Foreword to my first novel, and was much chagrined when I was urged to leave it out. At the time, the comment that came with the advice seemed a bit brutal: “A Foreword is an admission on the part of an author that he has failed to tell his story, or is an insult to the intelligence of his readers.” Since then my own feelings have come in such complete accord that the request of my publishers for a Foreword to this Third Edition comes as a surprise. But, after all, this is not my story, but the story of the Book, so, as recorder, I must recognize my responsibility. I have claimed that this story was Romance, but since writing it, Romance has allied itself to Drama, for the Gutenberg Bible, a copy of which sold in February for a record price of $120,000, in September achieved the stupendous value of $305,000! Surely the Book has come into its own!

After devoting a lifetime to printing as an art, I have naturally been gratified to discover that so large and friendly an army of readers exists to whom books mean something more than paper and type and binders’ boards. To many of my readers, the ideas advanced in this volume apparently have been novel, but appealing: “I have been over the books in my library,” writes one, “and find many that now take on new significance.” Another says, “I feel that I have missed much, all these years, in not knowing how fascinating the story of the Book itself really is.” Then there are those who are good enough to say that the story of my adventures has helped to place the art of printing where it rightfully belongs.

Some of my reviewers and some correspondents seem seriously to think that I believe the Quest to be ended. Think of the tragedy of having so alluring an adventure become an accomplished fact,—even granting that it were possible! Where is the Perfect Book to be found? In the words of the author or in the heart of the reader? In the design of a type or in the skill of the typographer or the binder? In the charm of the paper or in the beauty of the illumination or illustration? It must, of course, be in the harmonious combination of all of these, but the words of an author which find a place in one reader’s heart fail to interest another; the design of a type that is appropriate to one book is not equally expressive in all.

The word perfection has no place in our language except as an incentive. To search for it is an absorbing adventure, for it quickens our senses to perceive much that would otherwise be lost. If perfection could become commonplace, the Quest would end,—and God pity the world! Until then each of us will define the Perfect Book in his own words, each of us will seek it in his own way.

A writer may be born who combines the wisdom of Solomon, the power of analysis of Henry James, the understanding of Plato, the philosophy of Emerson, and the style of Montaigne. This manuscript may be transformed into a book by a printer who can look beyond his cases of type, and interpret what Aldus, and Jenson, and Etienne, and Plantin saw, with the artistic temperament of William Morris and the restraint of Cobden-Sanderson. There may be a binding that represents the apotheosis of Italian, French, and English elegance. A reader may be developed through the evolution of the ages competent to appreciate the contents and the physical format of such a volume, “for what we really seek is a comparison of experiences.”

Until then the Quest will continue, going constantly onward and upward. Its lure will keep us from slipping back upon false satisfaction and a placid but—shall I say?—a dangerous contemplation of the humanistic idyll.

William Dana Orcutt

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I

In Quest of the Perfect Book

I

IN QUEST OF THE PERFECT BOOK

“Here is a fine volume,” a friend remarked, handing me a copy of The Ideal Book, written and printed by Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press.

“It is,” I assented readily, turning the leaves, and enjoying the composite beauty of the careful typography, and the perfect impression upon the soft, handmade paper with the satisfaction one always feels when face to face with a work of art. “Have you read it?”

“Why—no,” he answered. “I picked it up in London, and they told me it was a rare volume. You don’t necessarily read rare books, do you?”

My friend is a cultivated man, and his attitude toward his latest acquisition irritated me; yet after thirty years of similar disappointments I should not have been surprised. How few, even among those interested in books, recognize the fine, artistic touches that constitute the difference between the commonplace and the distinguished! The volume under discussion was written by an authority foremost in the art of bookmaking; its producer was one of the few great master-printers and binders in the history of the world; yet the only significance it possessed to its owner was the fact that some one in whom he had confidence had told him it was rare! Being rare, he coveted the treasure, and acquired it with no greater understanding than if it had been a piece of Chinese jade.

“What makes you think this is a fine book?” I inquired, deliberately changing the approach.

He laughed consciously. “It cost me nine guineas—and I like the looks of it.”

Restraint was required not to say something that might have affected our friendship unpleasantly, and friendship is a precious thing.

“Do something for me,” I asked quietly. “That is a short book. Read it through, even though it is rare, and then let us continue this conversation we have just begun.”

A few days later he invited me to dine with him at his club. “I asked you here,” he said, “because I don’t want any one, even my family, to hear what I am going to admit to you. I have read that book, and I’d rather not know what you thought of my consummate ignorance of what really enters into the building of a well-made volume—the choice of type, the use of decoration, the arrangement of margins. Why, bookmaking is an art! Perhaps I should have known that, but I never stopped to think about it.”

One does have to stop and think about a well-made book in order to comprehend the difference between printing that is merely printing and that which is based upon art in its broadest sense and upon centuries of precedent. It does require more than a gleam of intelligence to grasp the idea that the basis of every volume ought to be the thought expressed by the writer; that the type, the illustrations, the decorations, the paper, the binding, simply combine to form the vehicle to convey that expression to the reader. When, however, this fact is once absorbed, one cannot fail to understand that if these various parts, which compositely comprise the whole, fail to harmonize with the subject and with each other, then the vehicle does not perform its full and proper function.

I wondered afterward if I had not been a bit too superior in my attitude toward my friend. As a matter of fact, printing as an art has returned to its own only within the last quarter-century. Looking back to 1891, when I began to serve my apprenticeship under John Wilson at the old University Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the broadness of the profession that I was adopting as my life’s work had not as yet unfolded its unlimited possibilities. At that time the three great American printers were John Wilson, Theodore L. De Vinne, and Henry O. Houghton. The volumes produced under their supervision were perfect examples of the best bookmaking of the period, yet no one of these three men looked upon printing as an art. It was William Morris who in modern times first joined these two words together by the publication of his magnificent Kelmscott volumes. Such type, such decorations, such presswork, such sheer, composite beauty!

This was in 1895. Morris, in one leap, became the most famous printer in the world. Every one tried to produce similar volumes, and the resulting productions, made without appreciating the significance of decoration combined with type, were about as bad as they could be. I doubt if, at the present moment, there exists a single one of these sham Kelmscotts made in America that the printer or the publisher cares to have recalled to him.

When the first flair of Morris’ popularity passed away, and his volumes were judged on the basis of real bookmaking, they were classified as marvelously beautiful objets d’art rather than books—composites of Burne-Jones, the designer, and William Morris, the decorator-printer, co-workers in sister arts; but from the very beginning Morris’ innovations showed the world that printing still belonged among the fine arts. The Kelmscott books awoke in me an overwhelming desire to put myself into the volumes I produced. I realized that no man can give of himself beyond what he possesses, and that to make my ambition worth accomplishing I must absorb and make a part of myself the beauty of the ancient manuscripts and the early printed books. This led me to take up an exhaustive study of the history of printing.

JOHN GUTENBERG, c. 1400–1468

From Engraving by Alphonse Descaves

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

Until then Gutenberg’s name, in my mind, had been preëminent. As I proceeded, however, I came to know that he was not really the “inventor” of printing, as I had always thought him to be; that he was the one who first foresaw the wonderful power of movable types as a material expression of the thought of man, rather than the creator of anything previously unknown. I discovered that the Greeks and the Romans had printed from stamps centuries earlier, and that the Chinese and the Koreans had cut individual characters in metal.

I well remember the thrill I experienced when I first realized—and at the time thought my discovery was original!—that, had the Chinese or the Saracens possessed Gutenberg’s wit to join these letters together into words, the art of printing must have found its way to Constantinople, which would have thus become the center of culture and learning in the fifteenth century.

From this point on, my quest seemed a part of an Arabian Nights’ tale. Cautiously opening a door, I would find myself in a room containing treasures of absorbing interest. From this room there were doors leading in different directions into other rooms even more richly filled; and thus onward, with seemingly no end, to the fascinating rewards that came through effort and perseverance.

Germany, although it had produced Gutenberg, was not sufficiently developed as a nation to make his work complete. The open door led me away from Germany into Italy, where literary zeal was at its height. The life and customs of the Italian people of the fifteenth century were spread out before me. In my imagination I could see the velvet-gowned agents of the wealthy patrons of the arts searching out old manuscripts and giving commissions to the scribes to prepare hand-lettered copies for their masters’ libraries. I could mingle with the masses and discover how eager they were to learn the truth in the matter of religion, and the cause and the remedies of moral and material evils by which they felt themselves oppressed. I could share with them their expectant enthusiasm and confidence that the advent of the printing press would afford opportunity to study description and argument where previously they had merely gazed at pictorial design. I could sense the desire of the people for books, not to place in cabinets, but to read in order to know; and I could understand why workmen who had served apprenticeships in Germany so quickly sought out Italy, the country where princes would naturally become patrons of the new art, where manuscripts were ready for copy, and where a public existed eager to purchase their products.

While striving to sense the significance of the conflicting elements I felt around me, I found much of interest in watching the scribes fulfilling their commissions to prepare copies of original manuscripts, becoming familiar for the first time with the primitive methods of book manufacture and distribution. A monastery possessed an original manuscript of value. In its scriptorium (the writing office) one might find perhaps twenty or thirty monks seated at desks, each with a sheet of parchment spread out before him, upon which he inscribed the words that came to him in the droning, singsong voice of the reader selected for the duty because of his familiarity with the subject matter of the volume. The number of desks the scriptorium could accommodate determined the size of this early “edition.”

When these copies were completed, exchanges were made with other monasteries that possessed other original manuscripts, of which copies had been made in a similar manner. I was even more interested in the work of the secular scribes, usually executed at their homes, for it was to these men that the commissions were given for the beautiful humanistic volumes. As they had taken up the art of hand lettering from choice or natural aptitude instead of as a part of monastic routine, they were greater artists and produced volumes of surpassing beauty. A still greater interest in studying this art of hand lettering lay in the knowledge that it soon must become a lost art, for no one could doubt that the printing press had come to stay.

Then, turning to the office of Aldus, I pause for a moment to read the legend placed conspicuously over the door:

Whoever thou art, thou art earnestly requested by Aldus to state thy business briefly and to take thy departure promptly. In this way thou mayest be of service even as was Hercules to the weary Atlas, for this is a place of work for all who may enter

ALDUS MANUTIUS, 1450–1515

From Engraving at the British Museum

But inside the printing office I find Aldus and his associates talking of other things than the books in process of manufacture. They are discussing the sudden change of attitude on the part of the wealthy patrons of the arts who, after welcoming the invention of printing, soon became alarmed by the enthusiasm of the people, and promptly reversed their position. No wonder that Aldus should be concerned as to the outcome! The patrons of the arts represented the culture and wealth and political power of Italy, and they now discovered in the new invention an actual menace. To them the magnificent illuminated volumes of the fifteenth century were not merely examples of decoration, but they represented the tribute that this cultured class paid to the thought conveyed, through the medium of the written page, from the author to the world. This jewel of thought they considered more valuable than any costly gem. They perpetuated it by having it written out on parchment by the most accomplished scribes; they enriched it by illuminated embellishments executed by the most famous artists; they protected it with bindings in which they actually inlaid gold and silver and jewels. To have this thought cheapened by reproduction through the commonplace medium of mechanical printing wounded their æsthetic sense. It was an expression of real love of the book that prompted Bisticci, the agent of so powerful a patron as the Duke of Urbino, to write of the Duke’s splendid collection in the latter part of the fifteenth century:

In that library the books are all beautiful in a superlative degree, and all written by the pen. There is not a single one of them printed, for it would have been a shame to have one of that sort.

Aldus is not alarmed by the solicitude of the patrons for the beauty of the book. He has always known that in order to exist at all the printed book must compete with the written volume; and he has demonstrated that, by supplying to the accomplished illuminators sheets carefully printed on parchment, he can produce volumes of exquisite beauty, of which no collector need be ashamed. Aldus knows that there are other reasons behind the change of front on the part of the patrons. Libraries made up of priceless manuscript volumes are symbols of wealth, and through wealth comes power. With the multiplication of printed books this prestige will be lessened, as the masses will be enabled to possess the same gems of thought in less extravagant and expensive form. If, moreover, the people are enabled to read, criticism, the sole property of the scholars, will come into their hands, and when they once learn self-reliance from their new intellectual development they are certain to attack dogma and political oppression, even at the risk of martyrdom. The princes and patrons of Italy are intelligent enough to know that their self-centered political power is doomed if the new art of printing secures a firm foothold.

What a relief to such a man as Aldus when it became fully demonstrated that the desire on the part of the people to secure books in order to learn was too great to be overcome by official mandate or insidious propaganda! With what silent satisfaction did he settle back to continue his splendid work! The patrons, in order to show what a poor thing the printed book really was, gave orders to the scribes and the illuminators to prepare volumes for them in such quantities that the art of hand lettering received a powerful impetus, as a result of which the hand letters themselves attained their highest point of perfection. This final struggle on the part of the wealthy overlords resulted only in redoubling the efforts of the artist master-printers to match the beauty of the written volumes with the products from their presses.

These Arabian Nights’ experiences occupied me from 1895, when Morris demonstrated the unlimited possibilities of printing as an art, until 1901, when I first visited Italy and gave myself an opportunity to become personally acquainted with the historical landmarks of printing, which previously I had known only from study. In Florence it was my great good fortune to become intimately acquainted with the late Doctor Guido Biagi, at that time librarian of the Laurenziana and the Riccardi libraries, and the custodian of the Medici, the Michelangelo, and the da Vinci archives. I like to think of him as I first saw him then, sitting on a bench in front of one of the carved plutei designed by Michelangelo, in the wonderful Sala di Michelangiolo in the Laurenziana Library, studying a beautifully illuminated volume resting before him, which was fastened to the desk by one of the famous old chains. He greeted me with an old-school courtesy. When he discovered my genuine interest in the books he loved, and realized that I came as a student eager to listen to the master’s word, his face lighted up and we were at once friends.

Dott. Comm. GUIDO BIAGI

Seated at one of the plutei in the

Laurenziana Library, Florence (1906)

In the quarter of a century which passed from this meeting until his death we were fellow-students, and during that period I never succeeded in exhausting the vast store of knowledge he possessed, even though he gave of it with the freest generosity. From him I learned for the first time of the far-reaching influence of the humanistic movement upon everything that had to do with the litteræ humaniores, and this new knowledge enabled me to crystallize much that previously had been fugitive. “The humanist,” Doctor Biagi explained to me, “whether ancient or modern, is one who holds himself open to receive Truth, unprejudiced as to its source, and—what is more important—after having received Truth realizes his obligation to the world to give it out again, made richer by his personal interpretation.”

This humanistic movement was the forerunner and the essence of the Renaissance, being in reality a revolt against the barrenness of mediævalism. Until then ignorance, superstition, and tradition had confined intellectual life on all sides, but the little band of humanists, headed by Petrarch, put forth a claim for the mental freedom of man and for the full development of his being. As a part of this claim they demanded the recognition of the rich humanities of Greece and Rome, which were proscribed by the Church. If this claim had been postponed another fifty years, the actual manuscripts of many of the present standard classics would have been lost to the world.

The significance of the humanistic movement in its bearing upon the Quest of the Perfect Book is that the invention of printing fitted exactly into the Petrarchian scheme by making it possible for the people to secure volumes that previously, in their manuscript form, could be owned only by the wealthy patrons. This was the point at which Doctor Biagi’s revelation and my previous study met. The Laurenziana Library contains more copies of the so-called humanistic manuscripts, produced in response to the final efforts on the part of patrons to thwart the increasing popularity of the new art of printing, than any other single library. Doctor Biagi proudly showed me some of these treasures, notably Antonio Sinibaldi’s Virgil. The contrast between the hand lettering in these volumes and the best I had ever seen before was startling. Here was a hand letter, developed under the most romantic and dramatic conditions, which represented the apotheosis of the art. The thought flashed through my mind that all the types in existence up to this point had been based upon previous hand lettering less beautiful and not so perfect in execution.

“Why is it,” I demanded excitedly, “that no type has ever been designed based upon this hand lettering at its highest point of perfection?”

HAND-WRITTEN HUMANISTIC CHARACTERS

From Sinibaldi’s Virgil, 1485

Laurenziana Library, Florence (12 × 8 inches)

Doctor Biagi looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “This, my friend,” he answered, smiling, “is your opportunity.”

At this point began one of the most fascinating and absorbing adventures in which any one interested in books could possibly engage. At some time, I suppose, in the life of every typographer comes the ambition to design a special type, so it was natural that the idea contained in Doctor Biagi’s remark should suggest possibilities which filled me with enthusiasm. I was familiar with the history of the best special faces, and had learned how difficult each ambitious designer had found the task of translating drawings into so rigid a medium as metal; so I reverted soberly and with deep respect to the subject of type design from the beginning.

In studying the early fonts of type, I found them exact counterfeits of the best existing forms of hand lettering at that time employed by the scribes. The first Italic font cut by Aldus, for instance, is said to be based upon the thin, inclined handwriting of Petrarch. The contrast between these slavish copies of hand-lettered models and the mechanical precision of characters turned out by modern type founders made a deep impression. Of the two I preferred the freedom of the earliest types, but appreciated how ill adapted these models were to the requirements of typography. A hand-lettered page, even with the inevitable irregularities, is pleasing because the scribe makes a slight variation in forming the various characters. When, however, an imperfect letter is cut in metal, and repeated many times upon the same page, the irregularity forces itself unpleasantly upon the eye. Nicolas Jenson was the first to realize this, and in his famous Roman type he made an exact interpretation of what the scribe intended to accomplish in each of the letters, instead of copying any single hand letter, or making a composite of many hand designs of the same character. For this reason the Jenson type has not only served as the basis of the best standard Roman fonts down to the present time, but has also proved the inspiration for later designs of distinctive type faces, such as William Morris’ Golden type, and Emery Walker’s Doves type.

Specimen Page of proposed Edition of Dante. To be

printed by Bertieri, of Milan, in Humanistic Type (8¼ × 6)

William Morris’ experience is an excellent illustration of the difficulties a designer experiences. He has left a record of how he studied the Jenson type with great care, enlarging it by photography, and redrawing it over and over again before he began designing his own letter. When he actually produced his Golden type the design was far too much inclined to the Gothic to resemble the model he selected. His Troy and Chaucer types that followed showed the strong effect of the German influence that the types of Schoeffer, Mentelin, and Gunther Zainer made upon him. The Doves type is based flatly upon the Jenson model; yet it is an absolutely original face, retaining all the charm of the model, to which is added the artistic genius of the designer. Each receives its personality from the understanding and interpretation of the creator ([pages 22], [23]).

Jenson’s Roman Type.

From Cicero: Rhetorica, Venice, 1470 (Exact size)

Emery Walker’s Doves Type.

From Paradise Regained, London, 1905 (Exact size)

From this I came to realize that it is no more necessary for a type designer to express his individuality by adding or subtracting from his model than for a portrait painter to change the features of his subject because some other artist has previously painted it. Wordsworth once said that the true portrait of a man shows him, not as he looks at any one moment of his life, but as he really looks all the time. This is equally true of a hand letter, and explains the vast differences in the cut of the same type face by various foundries and for the typesetting machines. All this convinced me that, if I were to make the humanistic letters the model for my new type, I must follow the example of Emery Walker rather than that of William Morris.

During the days spent in the small, cell-like alcove which had been turned over for my use in the Laurenziana Library, I came so wholly under the influence of the peculiar atmosphere of antiquity that I felt myself under an obsession of which I have not been conscious before or since. My enthusiasm was abnormal, my efforts tireless. The world outside seemed very far away, the past seemed very near, and I was indifferent to everything except the task before me. This curious experience was perhaps an explanation of how the monks had been able to apply themselves so unceasingly to their prodigious labors, which seem beyond the bounds of human endurance.

My work at first was confined to a study of the humanistic volumes in the Laurenziana Library, and the selection of the best examples to be taken as final models for the various letters. From photographed reproductions of selected manuscript pages, I took out fifty examples of each letter. Of these fifty, perhaps a half-dozen would be almost identical, and from these I learned the exact design the scribe endeavored to repeat. I also decided to introduce the innovation of having several characters for certain letters that repeated most frequently, in order to preserve the individuality of the hand lettering, and still keep my design within the rigid limitations of type. Of the letter e, for instance, eight different designs were finally selected; there were five a’s, two m’s, and so on (see illustration at [page 32]).

After becoming familiar with the individual letters as shown in the Laurenziana humanistic volumes, I went on to Milan and the Ambrosiana Library, with a letter from Doctor Biagi addressed to the librarian, Monsignor Ceriani, explaining the work upon which I was engaged, and seeking his co-operation. It would be impossible to estimate Ceriani’s age at that time, but he was very old. He was above middle height, his frame was slight, his eyes penetrating and burning with a fire that showed at a glance how affected he was by the influence to which I have already referred. His skin resembled in color and texture the very parchment of the volumes he handled with such affection, and in his religious habit he seemed the embodiment of ancient learning.

After expressing his deep interest in my undertaking, he turned to a publication upon which he himself was engaged, the reproduction in facsimile of the earliest known manuscript of Homer’s Iliad. The actual work on this, he explained, was being carried on by his assistant, a younger priest whom he desired to have me meet. His own contribution to the work was an introduction, upon which he was then engaged, and which, he said, was to be his swan song, the final message from his soul to the world.

“This, I suppose, is to be in Italian?” I inquired.

He looked at me reproachfully. “No, my son,” he answered, with deep impressiveness; “I am writing my introduction in Latin, which, though called a dead language, will be living long after the present living languages are dead.”

Ceriani placed at my disposal the humanistic volumes in the Ambrosiana, and introduced me to his assistant, whose co-operation was of the utmost value in my work. I was particularly struck by the personality of this younger priest. He was in close touch with affairs outside the Church, and asked searching questions regarding conditions in America. He spoke several languages with the same facility with which he spoke his own Italian. His knowledge of books and of bookmaking, past and present, surprised me. All in all, I found him one of the most charming men I have ever met. His name was Achille Ratti, and when he became Bishop of Milan in 1921, and was elevated to the College of Cardinals two months later, I realized how far that wonderful personality was taking him. One could scarcely have foreseen, however, that in less than a year from this time he would become Pope Pius XI.

When, after my drawings were completed, I returned to America, I took up the matter of the type design with Charles Eliot Norton, my old art professor at Harvard, then emeritus. Professor Norton was genuinely interested in the whole undertaking, and as the proofs of the various punches later came into my hands he became more and more enthusiastic.

I had arranged to use this type in a series of volumes to be published in London by John Murray, and in America by Little, Brown and Company. An important question arose as to what should be the first title, and after careful consideration I decided that as Petrarch was the father of humanism his Trionfi would obviously be an ideal selection. The volume was to be printed in English rather than in the original Italian, and I settled upon Henry Boyd’s translation as the most distinguished.

Upon investigation it developed that the original edition of this book was long out of print and copies were exceedingly rare. The only one I could locate was in the Petrarch collection of the late Willard Fiske. I entered into correspondence with him, and he invited me to be his guest at his villa in Florence. With the type completed, and with proofs in my possession, I undertook my second humanistic Odyssey, making Florence my first objective. Professor Fiske welcomed me cordially, and in him I found a most sympathetic personality, eager to contribute in every way to the success of the undertaking. He placed the volume of Boyd’s translation in my hands, and asked that I take it with me for use until my edition was completed.

“This book is unique, and so precious that you certainly could not permit it to go out of your possession,” I protested.

His answer was characteristic. “Your love of books,” he said, “is such that this volume is as safe in your hands as it is in mine. Take it from me, and return it when it has served its purpose.”

Then came the matter of illustrations. In London I had a conference with Sir Sidney Colvin, then Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. Colvin had been made familiar with the undertaking by John Murray, who had shown him and Alfred W. Pollard some of the earliest proofs of the punches that I had sent to England. After a careful examination of these, both men suggested to Mr. Murray that his American friend was playing a joke upon him, declaring that the proofs were hand-lettered and not taken from metal originals!

“There is a fate about this,” Colvin said, after I had explained my mission. “We have here in the Museum six original drawings of Petrarch’s Triumphs, attributed by some to Fra Filippo Lippi and certainly belonging to his school, which have never been reproduced. They are exactly the right size for the format which you have determined upon, and if you can have the reproductions made here at the Museum the drawings are at your disposal.”

I made arrangements with Emery Walker, the designer of the Doves type and justly famous as an engraver, to etch these plates on steel, and the reproductions of the originals were extraordinarily exact. Those Walker made for the parchment edition looked as if drawn on ivory.

Parchment was required for the specially illuminated copies which were to form a feature of the edition, and before leaving America I had been told that the Roman grade was the best. I naturally assumed that I should find this in Rome, but my research developed the fact that Roman parchment is prepared in Florence. Following this lead, I examined the skins sold by Florentine dealers, but Doctor Biagi assured me that the best grade was not Roman but Florentine, and that Florentine parchment is produced in Issoudun, France. It seemed a far cry to seek out Italian skins in France, but to Issoudun I went. In the meantime I learned that there was a still better grade prepared in Brentford, England—this, in fact, being where William Morris procured the parchment for his Kelmscott publications.

At Brentford I secured my skins; and here I learned something that interested me exceedingly. Owing to the oil which remains in the parchment after it has been prepared for use, the difficulty in printing is almost as great as if on glass. To obviate this, the concern at Brentford, in preparing parchment for the Kelmscott volumes, filled in the pores of the skins with chalk, producing an artificial surface. The process of time must operate adversely upon this extraneous substance, and the question naturally arises as to whether eventually, in the Kelmscott parchment volumes, the chalk surface will flake off in spots, producing blemishes which can never be repaired.

For my own purposes I purchased the skins without the artificial surface, and overcame the difficulty in printing by a treatment of the ink which, after much experiment, enabled me to secure as fine results upon the parchment as if printing upon handmade paper.

The volumes were to be printed in the two humanistic colors, black and blue. In the original manuscript volumes this blue is a most unusual shade, the hand letterer having prepared his own ink by grinding lapis lazuli, in which there is no red. By artificial light the lines written in blue can scarcely be distinguished from the black. To reproduce the same effect in the printed volume I secured in Florence a limited quantity of lapis lazuli, and by special arrangement with the Italian Government had it crushed into powder at the Royal mint. This powder I took home to America, and arranged with a leading manufacturer to produce what I believe to be the first printing ink mixed exactly as the scribes of the fifteenth century used to prepare their pigments.

The months required to produce the Triumphs represented a period alternating in anxiety and satisfaction. The greatest difficulty came in pressing upon the typesetter the fact that the various characters of these letters could not be used with mathematical precision, but that the change should come only when he felt his hand would naturally alter the design if he were writing the line instead of setting the type. The experiments required to perfect an ink that should successfully print on the oily parchment were not completed without disappointments and misgivings; the scrupulous care required in reading proofs and perfecting the spacing, was laborious and monotonous; the scrutinizing of the sheets as they came from the press was made happier when the success of the lapis lazuli ink was assured.

A Page from an Autograph Letter from Charles Eliot Norton

The rewards came when Professor Norton gave the volume his unqualified approval—“so interesting and original in its typography and in its illustrations, so admirable in its presswork, its paper, its binding, and its minor accessories, … a noble and exemplary work of the printers’ art”; when George W. Jones, England’s artist-printer, pronounced the Humanistic type “the most beautiful face in the world,” and promised to use it in what he hopes to be his masterpiece, an edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; when the jury appointed by the Italian Government to select “the most beautiful and most appropriate type face to perpetuate the divine Dante” chose the Humanistic type, and placed the important commission of producing the definitive edition of the great poet, to commemorate his sexcentenary, in the hands of that splendid printer, Bertieri, at Milan. Such rewards are not compliments, but justification. Such beauty as the Humanistic type possesses lies in the artistic ability and the marvelous skill in execution of the scribes. My part was simply seizing the development of a period apparently overlooked, and undertaking the laborious task of translating a beautiful thing from one medium to another.

PETRARCH’S TRIUMPHS

Illuminated Page (10 × 6 inches)

Set in Humanistic Type designed by the Author

The Quest of the Perfect Book must necessarily lead the seeker into far varying roads, the greatest rewards being found in straying from the main street into the fascinating bypaths. My quest has resulted in giving me greater appreciation of the accomplishments of those who successfully withstood opposition and persecution in order to make the printed book a living vehicle to convey the gems of thought from great minds to the masses, never forgetful of the value of beauty in its outward aspect. I believe it possible today to perpetuate the basic principles of the early artist master-printers by applying beauty to low-cost books as well as to limited editions de luxe. The story of the printed book itself is greater than that contained between the covers of any single volume, for without it the history of the world would show the masses still plodding on, swathed in theological and encyclopædic bonds, while the few would still be jealously hoarding their limited knowledge

CHAPTER II

The Kingdom of Books

II

THE KINGDOM OF BOOKS

A paraphrase of, “Would that mine adversary had written a book,” might well be, “Would that mine enemy had printed a book”; for the building of books has always yielded smaller financial returns for the given amount of labor and ability than is offered in any other line of intelligent human effort.

“Are all the workmen in your establishment blank fools?” an irate publisher demanded of a printer after a particularly aggravating error.

“If they were not,” was the patient rejoinder, “they would not be engaged in making books!”

There is an intangible lure that keeps all those associated with the book under subjection. There is a mysterious fascination in being a party to the perpetuation of a human thought that yields something in addition to pecuniary returns. To the author, the inestimable gratification of conveying a message to the world makes him forget the tedious hours of application required before that message can be adequately expressed. To the publisher, the satisfaction of offering the opportunity for occasional genius to come into its own more than balances the frequent disappointments. To the book architect, the privilege of supplying the vehicle for thought, and of creating the physical form of its expression, yields returns not altogether measurable in coin of the realm.

In 1891, during my apprenticeship at the old University Press, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Wilson, its famous head, permitted me to sit in at a conference with Eugene Field and his friend and admirer, Francis Wilson, the actor, booklover, and collector. The subject under discussion was the manufacture of a volume of Field’s poems, then called A New Book of Verses, which later became famous under the title of Second Book of Verse.

Field’s personal appearance made a deep impression that first time I saw him. I was then an undergraduate at Harvard, and this was a live author at close range! He entered the office with a peculiar, ambling walk; his clothes were ill-fitting, accentuating his long legs and arms; his hands were delicate, with tapering fingers, like a woman’s; his face was pallid; his eyes blue, with a curiously child-like expression. I remember my feeling of respect, tinged somewhat with awe, as I saw the pages of manuscript spread out upon the table, and listened eagerly to the three-cornered conversation.

Autograph Page of Eugene Field Manuscript

From Second Book of Verse, New York, 1892

In considering the manufacture of his book, Eugene Field had clearly defined ideas of the typographical effect he wished to gain; John Wilson possessed the technical knowledge that enabled him to translate those ideas into terms of type. The examination of the various faces of type, the consideration of the proportions of the page, the selection of the paper, the plan for the design of the cover and the binding,—all came into the discussion.

As I listened, I was conscious of receiving new impressions which gave me a fuller but still incomplete understanding. Until that moment I had found little of interest in the adventure of making books. Now came a realization that the building of a book, like the designing of a house, offered opportunity for creative work. This possibility removed the disturbing doubts, and I undertook to discover for myself how that creative element could be crystallized.

Years later came an unexpected echo to the Field episode. After the publication of the Second Book of Verse, the manuscript was returned to Field, who had it bound in half leather and placed it in his library. Upon his death many of his books went by bequest to his life-long friend, Horace Fletcher, the genial philosopher and famous apostle of dietetics. When Fletcher died, he bequeathed Field’s personal volumes to me. By this curious chain of circumstances, thirty-three years after I had seen the manuscript spread out upon the table at the University Press, it came into my possession, bearing the identical memoranda of instruction made upon it by John Wilson, whose large, flowing hand contrasted sharply with the small, copper-plate characters of the author’s handwriting.

Autograph Verse in Eugene Field’s Own Copy of Trumpet and Drum

The present generation of booklovers would think themselves transported back ages rather than decades were they to glance into a great book-printing office of thirty-five years ago. The old University Press at that time acknowledged competition only from the Riverside and the De Vinne Presses, and conditions that obtained there were typical of the times. The business office was called the “counting-room”; the bookkeeper and the head-clerk were perched up on stools at high, sloping desks, and wore long, linen dusters and black skull caps. John Wilson sat at a low table desk, and his partner, who was the financial executive, was the proud possessor of the only roll-top desk in the establishment. Near him, perhaps because of its value as a novelty and thus entitled to the same super-care as the cash, was installed the telephone. Most of the letters were written by Mr. Wilson in his own hand. One of my first responsibilities was to copy these letters on the wetted tissue pages of the copy-book with the turn-screw press.

JOHN WILSON IN 1891

Master-Printer

There was no particular system in effect, and scientific management was unknown. Mr. Wilson used to make out his orders on fragments of paper,—whatever came to hand. When the telephone was first installed he refused to use it, as he considered this method of conducting business as “sloppy” and even discourteous. To employ a stenographer would have been an evidence of a lazy disposition, and a dictated letter was an offence against dignity and decorum.

A week’s work at that time consisted of fifty-nine hours instead of the present forty-eight. Hand composition and electrotyping were figured together as one process and charged at from 80 cents to $1 per thousand ems. Changes required in the type by authors cost 50 cents an hour. An author could afford in those days to rewrite his book after it was in type, but today, with alterations costing five times as much, it is a different proposition!

The wages were as ridiculously low as the prices charged to customers. The girls in the composing room made from $9 to $12 a week, and those receiving the maximum considered themselves potential Hetty Greens. Today, receiving $40 to $45 a week, they find difficulty in making both ends meet. The make-up man, with the “fat” he received in addition to his wage of $16, actually earned about $20 a week, as against $50 to $60 a week now. The foreman of the composing room, with more than two hundred employees under him, received a weekly return of $23, as against $75 to $100 now.

Typesetting, thirty-five years ago, was almost entirely by hand, as this was before the day of the linotype and the monotype. Thorne typesetting machines, which then seemed marvels of mechanical ingenuity, failed to prove economical because they required two operatives and so easily got out of order. The composing room itself was laid out with its main avenues and side streets like a well-ordered town, divisions being marked by the frames bearing the cases of type in various faces and sizes. The correcting stones ran down the center.

The foreman of the composing room was the king of his domain and a power unto himself. Each side street was an “alley,” in which from four to eight typesetters worked, back to back. These were sometimes boys or men, but usually girls or women. The “crew” in each alley was in charge of an experienced typesetter. It was he who received from the foreman the manuscript to be put into type; who distributed the copy, a few pages at a time to each of his subordinates; who supervised the work, and arranged for the galleys to be collated in their proper order for proofing; and who was generally responsible for the product of his alley. As was characteristic of the times in well-conducted industrial plants, the workers in this department, as in the others, were simply a large family presided over by the foreman, who interpreted the instructions from the management; and by the heads of the crews, who carried out the detailed instructions of the foreman.

There was a pride in workmanship that is mostly lacking in manufacturing plants today, due largely to the introduction of labor-saving machinery, and again to the introduction of efficiency methods. Both were inevitable, but the price paid for the gain in production was high. I am old-fashioned enough to hope that modern ideas of efficiency will never be applied in the printing industry to the extent of robbing the workman of his individuality. Books are such personal things! I am in full sympathy with that efficiency which cuts out duplication of effort. I believe in studying methods of performing each operation to discover which one is the most economical in time and effort. I realize that in great manufacturing plants, where machines have replaced so largely the work of the human hand, it is obviously necessary for workmen to spend their days manufacturing only a part of the complete article; but when the organization of any business goes so far as to substitute numbers for names I feel that something has been destroyed, and that in taking away his individuality from the workman the work suffers the same loss.

I have even asked myself whether the greatest underlying cause of strikes and labor disturbances during the past ten years has not been the unrest that has come to the workman because he can no longer take actual pride in the product of his hand. Years ago, after the death of one of my oldest employees, I called upon his widow, and in the simple “parlor” of the house where he had lived, prominently placed on a marble-top table as the chief ornament in the room, lay a copy of Wentworth’s “Geometry.” When I picked it up the widow said proudly, “Jim set every page of that book with his own hands.” It was a priceless heirloom in which the workman’s family took continued and justifiable pride.

The old University Press family was not only happy but loyal. When the business found itself in financial difficulties, owing to outside speculations by Mr. Wilson’s partner, the workmen brought their bankbooks, with deposits amounting to over twenty thousand dollars, and laid them on Mr. Wilson’s desk, asking him to use these funds in whatever way he chose. The sum involved was infinitesimal compared to the necessities, but the proffer was a human gesture not calculable in financial digits.

Proofreading was an art in the eighteen-nineties instead of an annoying necessity, as it now seems to be considered. The chief readers were highly educated men and women, some having been clergymen or schoolteachers. One proofreader at the University Press at that time could read fourteen languages, and all the readers were competent to discuss with the authors points that came up in the proof. The proof was read, not only to discover typographical errors, but also to query dates, quotations, and even statements of fact. Well-known authors were constantly running in and out of the Press, frequently going directly to the proofreaders, and sometimes even to the compositors themselves, without coming in touch with the counting-room. Mr. Wilson looked upon the authors and publishers as members of his big family, and “No Admittance” signs were conspicuous by their absence.

The modern practice of proofreading cannot produce as perfect volumes as resulted from the deliberate, painstaking, and time-consuming consideration which the old-time proofreaders gave to every book passing through their hands. Today the proof is read once, and then revised and sent out to the author. When made up into page form and sent to foundry it is again revised, but not re-read. No proof used to go out from a first-class printing office without a first and a second reading by copy. It was then read a third time by a careful foundry reader before being made into plates. Unfortunately, with labor at its present cost, no publisher could produce a volume at a price that the public would pay, if the old-time care were devoted to its manufacture.

Time was when a reputation for careful proofreading was an asset to a Press. One day the office boy came to my private office and said that there was a man downstairs who insisted upon seeing me personally, but who declined to give his name. From the expression on the boy’s face I concluded that the visitor must be a somewhat unique character, and I was not disappointed.

As he came into my office he had every aspect of having stepped off the vaudeville stage. He had on the loose garments of a farmer, with the broad hat that is donned only on state occasions. He wore leather boots over which were rubbers, and carried a huge, green umbrella.

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 50a, 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

CHAPTER III

Friends through Type

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.

A Page of Horace Fletcher Manuscript

“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.”

GIAMBATTISTA BODONI, 1740–1813

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!

The Bodoni Letter (bottom) compared with the Didot Letter (top)

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.”

HORACE FLETCHER IN 1915

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.

A Page from an Autograph Letter from Henry James to Horace Fletcher

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.