Part 18

Private presses have multiplied greatly in the last thirty years, and some of them have done fine work. But the influence which they are exercising on the commercial printing of the present day is not in any way comparable to that which the Kelmscott and Doves books exercised a generation ago. There is no virtue in a book being printed in a small edition or in a private house, and no virtue in producing endless specimens of printing rather than books. Mr. Meynell and the Nonesuch Press (whose achievements I should admire much more joyously if it had not been called a "press") have shown what a diversity of interesting work can be obtained from commercial printers by a man who has good taste and knows how to get what he wants. When fine work can be obtained in this way private presses seem of little use save as an amusement to their owners. But no one is as yet making full use of the revolution (a much greater revolution than that inaugurated by the Aldine italics) which the "Monotype" machine has effected in modern printing just at the moment when (owing to the economic conditions, compositors having at last secured a fair wage) it was most needed. Thanks to the wonderful facility with which small types can now be cut and the greater quickness of machine-setting there is now only one obstacle to a new triumph of the Small Book Beautiful; and that is the obsession of the paymaster, the Customer, that it is unreasonable to expect him to pay anything approaching the same price for compact books in small clear type with no needless expanse of blank paper around the type page, as for the same number of words printed in larger type and with much more blank paper. The obsession is fostered by the fact that the reprints of popular books which have passed out of copyright and which often are produced in very pretty forms, are sold in large quantities at small prices, because no author has to make a livelihood out of them. But if a book does not appeal to a large public and yet has to earn money for its author it cannot be sold at a low price, and it is childish for the customer to insist that this fact should be concealed from him by books being made needlessly large in order that he may persuade himself that he is still getting plenty for his money. Publishers and Printers and Authors should unite to educate their paymaster the Customer on this point, and it is much to their interest to do so, for the book space which is now occupied by a couple of hundred volumes might easily hold two or three times as many if all books were printed with pleasant compactness. If an Amateur would arise who would help to train Customers to pay high prices for beautiful compact books he would be doing good service. At present most of the finely printed books are needlessly and inconveniently large.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] The story of Bible-printing in England runs on very much the same lines. As soon as it was decided that English Bibles were to be placed in all churches, the printers were chosen, the price was fixed and every Parish was ordered to supply itself with a copy. From that day to this, with only a very partial exception for a few years under Queen Elizabeth, the printing of the plain text of the Bible has been a monopoly in England. Since the seventeenth century it has been kept absolutely in the hands of the King's Printers and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. From about 1770 onwards various provincial printers tried to circumvent this monopoly by printing Bibles with only a nominal amount of commentary, but hardly any of them found it worth while to issue a second edition. The monopolists knew that to maintain their rights in the nineteenth century, which made unrestricted competition into a fetish, they must give good value to buyers, ensure good workmanship, and give their workmen no ground for complaint. They have fulfilled all three conditions, and as a result we still have a Bible Trust in England, which is a Trust in the true meaning of the word, because it is worked in the interest of everyone concerned.

SOME COLLECTORS READ

This essay appeared originally in _The Colophon_, Part IV, 1930. It was revised and retitled The Personal Element for inclusion in _The Nonesuch Century_, 1936, from which it is here reprinted.

It wouldn't be easy to imagine an idea, a policy and a business more "personal" than our Nonesuch has been. This is my excuse for the personal (worse, the first-personal) character of these ensuing notes.

Nonesuch was started by three of us in the close quarters of a basement room (two of the three became husband and wife); at our busiest and most successful we have never had an office staff of more than three, usually our friends as well as our associates; we later lived above and in our office; we have been responsible ourselves not only for every decision of policy of what to publish and not to publish but also for every piece of printing, of make-up, of advertising; for jackets, catalogues, specimen pages and a vast deal of miscellaneous editing. And, more than anything else, it is our own taste which has determined our choice of books and choice of styles. In short everything (except typing and account-adding in later days) has been done by Vera Meynell or David Garnett or me.

When I set myself to the making of these notes I thought I should only have to remember, not to reconstruct. I had by heart all that was worth knowing about the beginnings of the Nonesuch in itself. But for its remoter beginnings in myself I found that I had in fact to go back to my childhood.

What induced this revision of my opinion was a phrase (quoted in my brother Everard's "Life" of Francis Thompson) from a letter of my mother's. "Please return" she had written to Thompson, "the revise proofs sixteen pages at a time."

First of all (said I to myself) I am the son of a mother who was not only a poet but who knew also that page proofs have to be dealt with in units of sixteen. Yes, and that was only a trifle of the family's knowledge. I have often seen my mother unflinchingly cut a treasurable phrase in one of her essays so that it should end to the line or paragraph of the printer's prescription; and correct a proof so that a word deleted here would be promptly balanced by an added word there to save the over-running of the corrected lines. Where did she learn this tenderness towards my craft? But from my father, of course.

And then I realised that, if he likes it or not, the Nonesuch Press is really my father's grand-son. In establishing it I was doing no more than reverting to type.

There was of course the literary background, the great names and exciting personalities of the writers who were my parents' friends. There was George Meredith whose limping descent of the staircase I can just, and whose yearly tip of a pound at Christmas I can very easily, remember. There was the silver teapot which I never carried to be replenished without remembering my father's solemn sanctification of it: "Robert Browning has taken his tea from this." There was W. B. Yeats standing owl-like at the door blinking to discover my mother through the smoke emitted from the Egyptian cigarettes which I had lately been sent at top speed to buy, my father sometimes going twice through his pockets before he assembled the necessary tenpence halfpenny. (Tenpence halfpenny was also the price of a box of soldiers, and once I thought of buying soldiers instead of cigarettes and running away from home.) There was Francis Thompson, "The Poet" as we children always called him, fragile, mannered, and complaining of the weather or of the quality of our food. Much later I remember Jack Squire discussing the plans for the first _London Mercury_; and Hilaire Belloc brought by Wilfrid Blunt because of my father's "discovery" of his first writing in the _Morning Post_. I don't remember Stevenson or Patmore; but framed holographs of _In the Highlands_ and _The Toys_ were set between the gold Japanese embroideries which surrounded the sitting room. This literary "atmosphere" was more continuously and intensively itself than anything I know today--even in psycho-analytic or Communist circles. "Does he write? Then do bring him." "Is he a Thompsonian? Of course he must come."

Every Sunday afternoon and evening my parents were "at home." There was endless poetry-reading, endless "literary talk" by my mother's devoted admirers. No, not endless. There were two signals for their departure. The first gong, so to speak, was the arrival of the hot blackcurrant jam drink. The second was my father unbuttoning, almost unostentatiously, the top button of his boots.

But all this was literature, not letters, and letters was after all the chief occupation of the house. A literary hot-house should have produced in me, very nearly did produce, an over-sensitive literary plant. And sure enough I wrote poetry, with three of my sisters and one of my brothers. (George Moore in one of the "Hail and Farewell" volumes has a disconcerting fancy of the young Meynells assembling for their verse-writing hour once a week.) But letters made me into a printer.

In a play about Francis Thompson which was lately produced my father had necessarily to be represented. He objected to his portrayal under his own name, and he was therefore made to appear as John Oldcastle, his writing-name before I was born. In one scene he was shown sitting in the office of the paper which he edited, _Merry England_. He struck the bell twice for his sub-editor, once for his office boy, three times for his secretary. There was indeed such a magazine. But there was never an office, never a secretary, never a sub-editor, never an office boy. The whole work was done by my mother and father and amateur helpers on and about the library table. If I was allowed in the room on press-days the bargain was that I was to sit under the table. Mostly this was fun. I learned a lot about the leg-fidgets of writers. And "under the table" became my own kingdom, from which I could at the age of seven declaim without embarrassment Gray's "Elegy" to the Sunday night supper guests. But one memory survives which still carries horror with it--the memory of my mother suddenly going down on her knees, down to my level, and burying her face in her hands. She had just been told, in the midst of proof-correcting, of the death of Coventry Patmore.

"The Poet" was one of the helpers--a feared helper. He would wish to engage all the rest in argument as to the desirability of this or that paragraph. On one occasion, J. L. Garvin, who could disturb by his brilliant relevance almost as much as Thompson by his dull irrelevance, made an unexpected call. Proofs were already overdue. By a masterly manoeuvre "the poet" was sent to entertain him. Garvin, the liveliest talker of our day, was overwhelmed by Thompson's discussion of the relative merits of Lyons and A.B.C. tea shops. He sat mumchance an afternoon through. Thompson reported: "Never have I known Garvin so brilliant."

_Merry England_ was a monthly, but its crises were not less acute for that. You can put off so easily until too late what has to be done only once a month. But _The Weekly Register_, which was also my father's property, and which was written almost wholly by himself and my mother, was a weekly. The correction of proofs was a diurnal occupation with Thursdays as the grand climax. It was printed by the Westminster Press; and here, too, my father was the begetter of my trade. For he was part-owner of the Westminster Press and helped to establish with it a style of typography and a care for detail in printing which were far ahead of the run of commercial presses.

When he was over fifty my father added the last segment to the circle. Magazine proprietor, editor, writer, printer, he now became book publisher, as managing director of Burn & Oates. He transferred from John Lane Francis Thompson's books and my mother's, and he gave me my first job. He gave me also my first lesson in detail. _The Collected Works of Francis Thompson_ were issued by Burns & Oates a few months after I had joined the firm, and I was allowed to have a hand in designing the edition. When it was printed my father discovered that several commas had broken away from the ends of lines and that a number of the kerns or top loops of the letter "f" had been broken. Day after day piles of the imperfect volumes were massed in his flat, which was immediately above the office. We had a sort of fire-bucket drill. One of my sisters would find the page, my father would dab in the comma, I would do the blotting and another sister would restack the books. Some scores of thousands of pen corrections were thus made. I don't think my father would have trusted any one of us to do the actual pen work. He leant back, he quizzed, he admired after every stroke.

In 1913, pursuing a common typographical errand, I chanced to meet Stanley Morison, who had just emerged from a bank and was anxious to concern himself with book-production, and he joined forces with me at Burns & Oates. A year later as a personal venture I purchased a hand press, which I kept in my dining room; and my next step was to persuade the delegates of the Oxford University Press to let me use some of their seventeenth century Fell types. They were very obliging, and they let me have what I wanted, charged me for it as if it were sold, but very properly kept the legal title to it, so that if I were to misuse this cherished type they could at any time call upon me to surrender it. I still have these Fell types in my possession. "The Romney Street Press," since I lived in that street, was my new "style," and I issued a prospectus, which I regard now with mixed feelings of shame and admiration at my audacity; for if ever there was a gold-brick prospectus this was one! Here it is:

"The Romney Street Press at 67 Romney Street, Westminster, has been set up for the better and unaffected production of Books, & Pamphlets, & single sheets of poetry. The type of the Press (used for this prospectus) is the finest of the series imported from Holland in about 1660 by Bishop Fell for the Oxford University Press, by whose courtesy it is now used. The editions of the Romney Street Press will be limited to a maximum of fifty copies. The preliminary costs of equipment amount to £40, & Francis Meynell, the Director of the Press, invites subscriptions to cover this amount. Subscribers will have first call upon the publications of the Press at cost price, upon the amount of their subscription. The first publications will be Seven Poems by Alice Meynell, written since the issue of the Collected Poems. There will follow Mary Cary, the meditations, occasional poems and spiritual diary of the wife of a Cromwellian captain, now first published, from her MS. note-book; & Love in Dian's Lap, by Francis Thompson. But the process of production will be slow. Suggestions for other books, particularly of 17th century reference, will be welcome. APRIL 1915."

I may say at once that the only two books which I issued (_Ten Poems by Alice Meynell_, and _The Diary of Mary Cary_) were, with a good deal of difficulty, disposed of--yes, the whole of the fifty copies; but there were no general subscriptions to the Press, not one, and the cost of equipment, forty pounds, bore heavily upon me. Perhaps because of this, perhaps because my dining room was my workshop, and printer's ink was apt to get into the soup, I discontinued the venture--which in any case (since I had no technical assistance and very little competence myself) was decidedly irksome.

Meantime decisive things had happened to me. I had met George Lansbury, inspiration of my politics, and I had met Bruce Rogers, inspiration of all eager typographers. For the next five years I worked in close association with George Lansbury. (I suppose that he has lately become one of the most generally loved men in England. To anyone who has known him in times of deep stress as intimately as I have that cannot be surprising. There is no qualification in my admiration and affection.[34]) In him I found a most ready support for my "propaganda" view of good printing and good craftsmanship of any kind. Lansbury secured the financial support which made it possible for me to start the Pelican Press. I think the Pelican was a pioneer in the policy of having very few types but all of them of good design. We set advertisements for commerce, which was in those days something of an innovation; and we printed political pamphlets in the Minority Labour interest. These pamphlets are odd to look at now. The slogan of "fitness for purpose" had not yet informed us. A report of the great meetings which we held at the Albert Hall after the first Russian revolution was designed with the mannered elegance which would have suited better an essay by Walter Pater. And I remember myself writing a double-page political manifesto for the _Weekly Herald_, calling upon the proletariat to rise and end the war, which was set in Cloister Old Face with a seventeenth century flower border and sixteenth century initials.... I set up with elegance what must be the rarest of Siegfried Sassoon first editions. I myself have no copy. Bertrand Russell brought him to see me when Sassoon had decided to refuse to go back to the war, and I made into a leaflet his letter of explanation to his Commanding Officer. I am now astonished at what we published without prosecution. Now it would be "seditious propaganda." I can only put it down to the innocent elegance of typography!

Soon after the war I began making proposals from the Pelican Press to various publishers. Would they allow me to print for them this that and the other book in a "really nice" edition? I pointed out that if they were in fact wrecked upon the conventional desert island and wished to take with them the conventional choice of two books, Shakespeare and the Bible, they would not find a current edition of either fit for a tasteful shipwreck. But my arguments were fruitless--except of a plan for myself. Why shouldn't I do what I wanted them to do? Why wait on them? So I began to hanker after the as yet unnamed, unmanned and unfinanced Nonesuch Press. The next step was to bind David Garnett and Vera Mendel to the adventure.

David Garnett's family history, like my own, is full of literature. He is the son of two writers and the grandson of a third. He too, after a brief excursion into the Natural Sciences, reverted to type, opened a book-shop (with Francis Birrell), wrote his first novel and, in the same year, lent both the cellar of his book-shop and the assistance of his critical and book-learned mind to our new venture. He too "liked" books. He could, I mean, enjoy the feel of a book, its weight, shape, edges, the synthesis of sensitive things which is represented by that most insensitive word "format."

Vera Mendel was the useful necessary incubator for our schemes. She provided our small capital and she did the routine work. She was also our fearless critic-in-chief. The things she stopped us doing! She, too, developed in me the sense which David Garnett already shared with her--the sense of responsibility about texts. And she put sobriety whenever she could into my lush "blurbs." Her flexibility of mind made our work, too, flexible. She translated Toller's first play, which was among our earliest books; and shared with me the editing of _The Week-End Book_. For the first eighteen months, while I was working full time at the Pelican Press and David Garnett at his book-shop, and before we felt justified in employing as much as an office girl, she did everything, from editing to stamp-licking, that I could not steal time to do.

This about ourselves. Whence our corporate name? We began by looking not for a name, but for a device; and we found in a tapestry surviving from Nonesuch Palace the elements which Stephen Gooden made into our first "mark." In adapting the device, we took also the name; and I silenced an early objection that it was too boastful by pointing out that Nonesuch means "nonpareil" and so had an esoteric meaning. For nonpareil is the name of a very small and very humble size of type. Nonesuch was chosen, then, in a spirit of mixed hope and humility. Ralph Hodgson, the poet, who was interested in my enterprise, was most anxious that I should call it the Pound Press. (He had lately seen and admired my father's seventeenth-century farmhouse, which has in front of it a delightful yard or "pound.") Every book, he urged, warming to his subject, should weigh a pound and cost a pound! After some intensive correspondence his enthusiasm was routed, and the Nonesuch Press came into being.

So there we were, in 1923, in our cellar under Birrell & Garnett's book-shop, book-enthusiasts, amateurs in the literal, though not, I hope, the derogatory sense of the word, tackling the donkey work of book production and the mule work of book distribution.

For nearly two years we continued in the half light of our limited premises, producing illuminating works in limited editions, and varying the daily task with such occasional diversions as "invoice bees"--parties to which our friends were bidden in order to help us between drinks with the task of writing our invoices, "statements," et caetera.

It is scarcely worth recording the vicissitudes of those underground activities. Only when we tried to stop an ever-rising tide of Congreves--which, as with breaking back I eagerly unloaded the volumes from the lorries, narrowly escaping immuring V. M. in that unhistoric cellar for good--only then did we wonder whether, for purposes of self-preservation, the Press might not have to expand. (Indeed, one wall did bulge alarmingly.) Happily, part of the edition of Congreve got lost in Devonshire.... The lorries which were carrying the bound books from the printers at Plymouth broke down before we did.

I myself travelled the first books, being received with varying degrees of courtesy by the book-sellers. Of those who were civil some were encouraging, some politely discouraging. When, very soon, we were obliged to "ration" orders, these were rewarded and persuaded, and the discourteous received no more than their small deserts.

We meant to have fun with our business and fun we have had. Even when it had outgrown its puppyhood we continued to button-hole our customers and sell them not only our goods but our tastes and our views. Let me anticipate for a moment and quote a sample from the opening paragraph of our 1929 catalogue.

"In these days of literary censorship exercised by Sir Archibald Bodkin (of Savidge case fame), Sir William Joynson-Hicks and a Detective-Inspector of Scotland Yard, no publisher can be positive in his announcement that he will issue such and such a book. Chaucer? Fie, his language is coarse. Plato? The less said about Socrates and his young friends, _if_ you please, the better. Shakespeare? He will perhaps pass unchallenged, for Lamb's Tales doubtless exhausted the censors' interest in this prurient author. Farquhar, Don Quixote even--these too may corrupt the corrupt, which is the current legal test of obscenity. With a propitiatory bow to Sir Archibald and to the potent and anonymous Detective-Inspector (the unlamented Home Secretary gets no more than a distant nod), we therefore give to this list of announcements the precautionary title, 'Bodkin Permitting.'"