Gail Hamilton

“ As to the harm that may accrue to an author from adopting the course which he counts wise, it seems to me entirely insignificant. Nobody expects to go through the world intact, but we all expect to do that which presents itself to be done. If a writer has life in himself he will not easily die. If he has not life in himself the sooner he dies the better. ”

“ If there are no facts to be hushed up, a legal investigation will do no harm; if there are facts to be hushed up, a legal investigation is necessary. We look at the law as at best a clumsy roundabout way of arriving at just conclusions—a method full of ingenious devices to entangle and confuse witnesses and make the worse appear the better reason. We take the informal arbitration as a short cut to the desired goal. ”

“ The public will at least believe that, though a once redoubtable author, like Giant Pope in the Pilgrim's Progress, by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger days, be grown crazy and stiff in his joints, he can at least sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at publishers as they go by, and biting his nails, because he cannot come at them! ”

“ I will enjoy money as I go along,—not in so reckless a way as to involve the necessity of one day imposing a burden upon others. And of all enjoyment, I know of none so delightful and inexhaustible, and I may say so marvelous, as to see the amount of relief, the quantity of sunshine and help, put into another's life by the judicious bestowal of even a very little money. ”

“ While I am in a spasm of comparative serenity, I will declare and affirm that you are and always have been one of the kindest, brightest, and most agreeable of men; that you never said to me a word of compliment, or silliness, or impatience, or anything that wounded me,—and Heaven knows you have said bad things enough,—and this you may cut out, and show to men and angels when we come to blows. ”

“ A private reference takes a short cut, but it has no inherent power to carry you far from your starting-point. Arbitration has the advantage in respect of privacy, and that is an advantage not to be overestimated. Still, if there is anything to choose when both are intolerable, it seems rather worse to speak yourself before five men, than to have some one else to speak for you before five hundred. It matters not how wise, how impartial, referees may be, their jurisdiction is necessarily limited, and they cannot go beyond it to compel, or extort, or present. ”

“ I don't believe it is honest to take money twice for the same piece of work.” “But do,” replied the publisher; “we insist upon it as our right;” and insist he did, till the author coyly yielded. History is silent from this point, but the imagination fondly stoops to trace the scene. Undoubtedly this prince of publishers, like Mr. Pecksniff when blessing Martin Chuzzlewit for hating him, “waved his right hand with much solemnity.... There was emotion in his manner, but his step was firm. Subject to human weaknesses, he was upheld by conscience.” ”

“ You avoid a lawsuit because of the publicity and multiplicity and infelicity of lawyers, witnesses, judge, and jury. You adopt a reference because it dispenses with all these and goes straight at the heart of things. But you find by experience that unless your opponent wishes it you may not get at the heart of things at all. In a lawsuit you can enforce measures; in a reference you are dependent upon courtesy. Your opponent presents only that which is good in his own eyes. He produces what he chooses; he withholds what he chooses. ”

“ It is the same with women as with men, for in literature as in the gospel, there is neither male nor female. When a woman does any work for which she receives money she becomes so far a man, and passes immediately and inevitably under the yoke of trade. She has no right to demand a favorable judgment of her work because she is a woman, nor has she the least right to require that chivalry shall come in to help fix or secure her compensation. Trade laws know no more of gallantry than trade winds—and it is well they do not. ”

“ The elder John Murray, one of the most honorable and generous of publishers, used to say, that an author who thoroughly understood all the intricacies and expenses of issuing a book from the press, and properly launching it into the hands of the public, was as rare a prize to find as a phœnix or a unicorn. ”

“ The firm of Hunt, Parry, & Co., now almost as familiar to the public under the new name as under the old colors with which it sailed so long, has been a bulwark and a rallying point for our literature, on which book buyers as well as book writers depended for many years. It has always been active, but never so active as now. ”

“ All three of the books are sold at the same retail price,—two dollars. And on all three I was allowed but seven and a half per cent. That is, while all goes smoothly, a thinness of one hundred and fifty-one pages is of no account. It neither makes the price of a book less to the buyer, nor the pay of a book greater to the author. But when ripples begin to rise, a thinness of ninety-eight pages makes the buyer's price less by fifty cents, and the author's pay greater by one-fourth. Thinness, thou art a jewel! ”

“ Which is all very true, doubtless, yet the prejudiced observer, seeing how much is said about the great liberality of this firm, can but marvel that they should have been willing to miss so brilliant an opportunity of contrasting their own liberality with the niggardliness of those sordid book-men who publish, not for glory and high emprise, but simply to make money. ”

“ I am not at work on anything for the ‘Adriatic.’ You would not print my papers, and you would not answer my letters. So Satan subsidized my idle hands, and I thought I would make a book. So I made a book. It is not about the war, nor the times, nor anything sensible. It is not a novel, nor a history, nor a poem, nor a criticism, nor a volume of sermons. Somehow it does not look like a book, nor sound like a book, nor act like a book, but it is a book. ”

“ It is a very pretty thing to be a poet-publisher—in the newspapers, but if the poet's imagination happens to get loose among the publisher's facts, it makes sad work, and it is not merry work when the publisher crops out in the poet's verses.
What then remains? It has been proposed that authors combine and form a publishing-house by themselves, publishing their own books and receiving their own profits. ”

“ Why did you wish me to be having seven or eight per cent. when other people16 are getting ten? If it was because I was not worth more, you need not be afraid to say so. I can bear a great deal of rugged truth. But why am I not worth more, when there is not a paper of any standing in the country, to put it rather strongly, that has not applied to me to become a contributor, offering me my own terms? Does not that show that I have at least a commercial value? Writing books seems a more dignified thing than writing newspapers, but in point of money there is no comparison to be made. ”

“ Of course a good reputation is, or ought to be, the sign of a good character; but a thing which is wrong is wrong, whatever be the reputation of him who does it. A charge of wrong is to be met by denial. It is not to dazzled out of sight in a general brilliancy. When the course of our true love ceased to run smooth, I supposed my pebble was the only obstacle which my publishers' rivulet had ever known, and I was dismayed accordingly. ”

“ But the monumenteers suffer in silence or speak with a bated breath that cannot be heard outside their own circle, while the flourishing firm keeps up such a continuous tooting with its rams' horns as would have flung flat the walls of Jericho had they been twice as stout as they were. Undoubtedly it is not wise always to make an outcry over your follies or misfortunes. Neither is it wise always to go through the world with a chip on your shoulder, challenging people to fillip it off. ”

“ What I wish decided is, not future percentage merely, but past percentage; whether my claim for ten per cent. on all past sales is or is not founded in or on equity. If you are present, they must make some reply. If they assent, the Troja may be comprehended in a nuce. If they refuse, we will consider as to the next thing to be done—but find that out first. If you don't understand this, just say over the multiplication-table two or three times, and it will clear you up like an egg-shell. ”

“ We are not very large buyers of our own books and do not always know when the price is raised. Surely we cannot be expected to sit inflexibly upon our property, like Miss Betsy Trotwood, watching the rates of sale. It was a considerable time after L.'s story-book advanced in price before its author discovered it; as soon as she did, she made a note of it, and after a little trouble succeeded in having her contract fulfilled. But any time between the change and her discovery of it, her account might have been alleged as proof of a verbal agreement which did not exist. ”

“ Nothing is indispensable but a mind at peace with itself. It is pleasant to celebrate the glory of those you love, but better trudge comfortably across country on foot and alone, with all your worldly goods knotted up in a yellow bandana than ride unwillingly behind anybody's triumphal car.
So then, while it is undoubtedly best as a general thing for an author to live at peace with publishers,285 and sinners, there is also no reason why he should not make war if it is borne in upon him to do so. ”

“ But though I admit and lament that authors are unpractical and unbusiness-like to the last degree, I must affirm that they have less inducement to be business-like and less opportunity to be practical than any other class of persons. Suppose a writer sets out with the determination to be prudent and sagacious, where shall he begin? If a farmer has a bushel of potatoes to sell, he knows, or can learn in a moment, precisely their market value. The Early Rose has its price, and the Jackson White has its price ”

“ It chronicles an age of barbarism, when author and publisher were natural enemies, and relieved the monotony of their lives by petty skirmishing or pitched battles with each other. This age, happily for us, has passed away, and exists only in tradition. ”

“ There is nothing but supply and demand; nothing but buy and sell. To him who understands it, and guides himself by it, it is a chariot of state bearing him on to fame and fortune. To him who does not comprehend it and flings himself against it, it is a car of Juggernaut, crushing him beneath its wheels, without passion, but without pity. ”

“ I deny that the increased cost of doing business should be reckoned solely on the side of the publisher as the justification of his receipts and profits, while the author should be held down to the same fixed sum. The same causes that increased the cost of doing business to Messrs. Brummell & Hunt as publishers, increased in quite as large a ratio the cost of my doing business as an author. Every conceivable form of expenditure to which I was subjected was all the time increasing, and I was as much in need of a pro rata increase of receipts from my books as the publishers could be. ”

“ Their wonderful march to their eminent and leading position as publishers has given an excellent example to the country in refining and solidifying the common rules of business in their own field, and elevating and dignifying a branch of trade than which not one is clothed with nobler and purer associations. From this house, also, go forth a quarterly, two monthlies, and a weekly magazine, any one of which would add lustre to the repute of the publishers. None but sound and sweet literature comes from hence. ”

“ Even if successful in regard to the particular sum he claims, it is at a cost of time and trouble altogether disproportionate to it. He plays an unequal game at best, because the publisher's business goes on serenely, during all the difficulty, while the author's must be at a stand-still. The very instrument that he uses in defending his works is the instrument which he ought to be using in producing them. Even as a pecuniary transaction it is far more profitable to sow seed for future harvests than to spend strength in trying to secure the gleanings of last year's growths. ”

“ Hunt was always urgent for me to make books. The last two books were published in book form at his suggestion. My first notion was to publish them as magazine articles. The same was the case with “Old Miasmas.” They grew into books, and I have just found an old letter in which Mr. Hunt says, “Come out with a bang. The book's the thing in which you will catch the conscience of the public.” And again, “A volume by all means.” Nothing could be more encouraging, and stimulating, and agreeable than his tone and bearing. ”