John Cassell

“ A big house with eight acres of ground was bought at Little Common, near Bexhill, and became the seaside home of the sick slum children of London—always full of pathetic patients who see beauty at Bexhill for the first time and learn what freedom and wide spaces mean, who suck health and strength out of a new life in lovely surroundings, well fed and housed, equipped with every appliance of play that is dear to a child's heart. ”

“ We commenced our issue last year avowedly as an evening journal; we claim now the distinction of having changed the fashion of evening newspapers. When this journal appeared, the morning journals had, it may be said, the day to themselves. No evening paper had more than an insignificant circulation. In these days it has long been little less than absurd that the people of this great country should have no new medium of information as to the news of the world from the midnight hour when what are called morning papers are made up. ”

“ Someone present remarked: "Cassell was only a carpenter, I think?" "Only a carpenter!" cried the old man. "Tell me, lad, who is there need be ashamed of being a carpenter, or a carpenters son?"
Cassell became, in April, 1837, a recognized agent of the newly formed National Temperance Society. In its interests he travelled all over England. To carry out the arduous programme of this ardent society a man wanted skill as a speaker, ingenuity as an organizer, but, above all, courage and tireless endurance. Cassell possessed all these qualities, and he succeeded. ”

“ Henley's healthy, if sometimes misapplied, confidence in the myriad suggestions of life gives him his charm. He is made to sing along the highways, not to sit down and write. If he took himself more seriously his work would become trivial."
It is tempting, by way of rejoinder to Wilde, to recall an almost unknown letter Henley wrote to a friend: "I have never babbled the Art for Art's sake babble. If I have, I'll eat the passage publicly. What I've said is, the better the writer the better the poet; that, in fact, good writing's better than bad." ”

“ But of all the vicious machines—truly printers' devils—ever created, the caster, or body, of the monotype is one. It looks in a perpetual state of sustained spitefulness as, at lightning speed and with a noise that sounds like malice unrestrained, the centre of the machine darts hissingly here and there, conveying the mould to receive the modicum of molten metal necessary to make the required letter. Unlike the linotype, the monotype delivers its type in separate letters—hence the name. ”

“ The "Popular Educator" was pure Cassell. It was the crown and culmination of John Cassell's experience and judgment of the needs of those to whom general education had been denied. To any man who wished to supply those needs, so far as he could by private study, Cassell meant to offer the material and the machinery. The "Popular Educator" was "a school, an academy, and a university" all in one, as the Dublin University Magazine said. ”

“ A boy of lively spirit and curious mind, he loathed the dreary prospect of life as a factory hand. He detested the monotonous work, hated the dull confinement of the mill, was oppressed by the sordid conditions of the mean streets about him. By the age of sixteen he had abandoned it all and set out on a desultory search for more pleasant employment.
By accident he became a carpenter. His Odyssey in the streets of Manchester brought him to a carpenter's shop, where he stood watching the men make the plain deal tables used in artisans' kitchens. ”

“ Before the first number of the Woman's World was actually published, the author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," died, and one of the Notes was devoted to her and her work. "Mrs. Craik," Wilde wrote, "was one of the finest of our women writers, and though her art had always what Keats called 'a palpable intention upon one,' still its imaginative qualities were of no mean order. There is hardly one of her books which has not some distinction of style: there is certainly not one of them that does not show love of all that is good and beautiful in life. ”

“ When John Williams passed away Sir Wemyss Reid advertised for a successor, and found one in the late Arthur John Butler, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, a ripe scholar and an expert in education. Brilliant as were his gifts, Butler, like Willis Clark, was out of his proper place as chief editor of a publishing house mainly concerned with popular literature. After less than three years' service he withdrew, and presently found a more congenial sphere in the Record Office. He left behind him none but pleasant memories; a more loyal or more agreeable colleague there never was. ”

“ The surprisingly rapid progress of the North and North-West, the appearance of well-doing on every hand, and the moral and intellectual advancement of the people, keeping pace with their material prosperity, the numerous and costly places of public worship erected and sustained by voluntary effort, the national educational machinery by which the poorest child may obtain an equal education with the richest—these and many other characteristics of American civilization could not be regarded with any other feelings than those of very high gratification. ”

“ Just on the left, where to-day the publishing department dispenses literature to the trade, and in the basement, where now is the paper store, the first lot of printing machinery was located—twenty-three machines, which were then considered to be the very acme of progress, the high-water mark of perfection. Dear old things, rumbling away at a most sedate speed—it was marvellous then; it is almost laughable now that that type of machinery has long been obsolete.
In those not forgotten but happily superseded days there were seventeen machines constantly running in No. 1 building. ”

“ But in the pre-process days the House sent two men to the other side of the world to make drawings for "Picturesque Australasia," while to illustrate "The Picturesque Mediterranean" a staff of the best landscape painters, which included John MacWhirter, Sir Alfred East, Charles W. Wyllie, and W. H. J. Boot, was commissioned to make drawings of scenes in the midland sea. To-day, it is to be feared, the extra charm which drawing gives to an illustration is little appreciated, and scarcely anyone thinks of having a sketch made of any natural object or subject which can be rendered by photography. ”

“ It is not easy now to get the angle of the mid-nineteenth century and to realize that, in the eyes of the people who most strongly approved of Cassell's formally educational work, fiction was dangerous stuff for the "lower classes." Cassell, to his great credit, broke clear from this point of view. Arguing from universal experience the immortal need of romance, he saw that if they could not get decent fiction the awakening masses would buy bad fiction in a market always well supplied. ”

“ When the stream of emigration first set in a large number of the most capable printers in England went to the States, carrying with them the best English traditions. These were the men who established the reputation of the States for good printing. They were backed by the inventive genius of America in the production of machinery. Mr. Bale went up and down the States until he found at Chicago a machine which, though not quite ready for the market, appeared to possess all the requisites for accurate registration. The best printing establishments in the States were already lodging orders for it. ”

“ In Toronto he was entertained by the Empire Club, spoke on the Canadian position in literature, and enunciated the theory that the character of a community could generally be judged by its newspapers. With the discriminating eye of an old newspaper man, he pointed out the high quality of the Press in Toronto, and, taking a larger view over the field, predicted a great literary future for the country. "You have the men, the material, the atmosphere for great history and great fiction." ”

“ But it is more than time to refer to the famous series of works by Richard and Cherry Kearton, who have achieved widespread fame by their nature studies of birds and beasts. Their books on bird-life are full of intimate observations of the habits of the feathered world, while the photographs are of the highest quality. Bird-life, as a study, was the "first love" of Richard Kearton, and he has never forgotten the fascination of winged life. In a communication he has been good enough to make he has recorded the beginning of his connexion with the House. ”

“ There seems to be no doubt, therefore, that the title "Treasure Island" was Mr. Henderson's choice, but it does not follow, of course, that it was his invention.
How Stevenson came to write "Treasure Island" he has himself related. In a letter to Henley, written in August, 1881, he says: "I am now on another lay for the moment, purely owing to Lloyd, [1] this one; now see here, 'The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island: A Story for Boys.' If this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day." ”

“ Dickens has only influenced journalism; Thackeray's delightful superficial philosophy, superb narrative power and clever social satire have formed no schools, nor has Trollope left any direct successors behind him, a fact which is not to be regretted however, as, admirable as Trollope undoubtedly is for rainy afternoons and tedious railway journeys, from the point of view of literature he is merely the perpetual curate of Pudlington Parva. ”

“ Of course artists were not always easy to please. For instance, when a proof of an engraving of one of William Linton's landscapes was, as a matter of courtesy, sent to him to ascertain whether he was satisfied with it, he testily replied that he had never painted such a subject. It was only after considerable toil that the history of the picture was traced and Linton, then a very old man, could be convinced that he had forgotten his legitimate offspring. Once satisfied about the pedigree of the picture, he warmly praised the reproduction. ”

“ Probably nobody could read the Working Man's Friend nowadays. It was in the sombre, heavy style of the era of night schools and mechanics' institutes. But it played its part in assisting the self-education of the masses for two or three years before it gave way to better and brighter stuff from the same Press.
Already, in the early days of the Working Man's Friend, Cassell had begun to arouse public curiosity and to acquire popular fame. This was manifested on a great occasion in 1851—that of the triumphal progress of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian exile, through the streets of London. ”

“ Cassell was a living paradox. He surpassed probability, defied heredity, rose superior to environment. A poor boy without material resources, he came to deal in extensive enterprises and control what were, in his day, large capitals. Uneducated himself, he did more than most men of his time to promote the higher education of the English masses. The son of a publican, he was an ardent teetotaller and a powerful advocate of temperance reform. A mechanic by training, he devoted his life to purely intellectual labour. Hardly anything John Cassell did was what he might have been expected to do. ”

“ His wife and daughter accompanied him on what proved to be a most interesting journey through the United States and Canada, fruitful not only of business but of much sagacious reflection and comparison.
New York had grown enormously in the five years since Cassell last saw it. But the great city did not impress him favourably. The municipal spirit, which even then was strong in England, seemed to have a frail existence in America, and the public amenities of an English town were nearly all absent. "The state of the streets," he said, "was so bad as to surpass ordinary powers of description. ”

“ Only a constitutional optimist could have faced such a life cheerfully. In truth, Hamer was the most hopeful man in the world—about everything except the efforts of rival publishers. According to Mr. Max Pemberton, he prophesied the failure of every new venture that did not owe its origin to Cassell's, and, "had I believed him, my friends Lord Northcliffe, Sir George Newnes, and Sir Arthur Pearson would have all been found in the Bankruptcy Court in a very brief period from their first ventures." ”