Part 19

But this jape, and others, were part of a serious and deliberate policy. From the beginning we had a plan and hoped to have a public. In the words of our first (1923) catalogue, we intended to make books "for those among collectors who also use books for reading." We intended to choose our books to suit our tastes, not the imputed taste of a hypothetical public.

Not that we felt ego-centric and exclusive about it, like the Californian millionaire who, I am told, caused a Shakespeare to be printed to suit his own taste and his own library--an edition of one copy. We have made now over a hundred editions to suit our own personal requirements--the author we wanted, the text we wanted, the format we wanted, the decorations we wanted. And if there had been no other profit from the Press, this shelf of my library would have seemed in itself a sufficient recompense for my share of the work. But fortunately, many other people also wanted these books. For our taste proved to be a normal contemporary taste. We did not create the vogue for Donne, for instance--we were ourselves part of that general tendency which has in these days found him afresh.

My previous experience in printing had shown me quite clearly that, in order to avoid monotony and to produce desirable editions at a reasonable cost, one must intelligently exploit the best mechanical equipment and the highest technical skill available. Today there is more fine typographical material to be had than even the largest printing house in the country could possess; and the various commercial presses have developed technical skill and variety along various lines. There was therefore no good reason, we thought, for a new "private press" in the old style, arrogantly self-contained, and with but one type and obsolete "hand" machinery.

Our stock-in-trade has been the theory that mechanical means could be made to serve fine ends; that the machine in printing was a controllable tool. Therefore we set out to be mobilisers of other people's resources; to be designers, specifiers, rather than manufacturers; architects of books rather than builders.

The propriety of our use of the word "Press" was called in question by Arnold Bennett and others. Pedantically it may be wrong; by the spirit it is nearly right. There is no exact word for our function, which was new. Nor for my own part in that function. When I have wanted to "sign" a book, at first I wrote "Typography by." But typography is only a quarter of my battle, and that phrase puts undue emphasis on one department, one only, of a job the essence of which is that it is manifold. A number of books I signed F. M. _Finx_. But "finxit" means "fashioned," and so "made," rather than "designed." I also used the phrase "under the care of," but this is vague and inaccurate, suggesting merely the oversight of someone else's designs. Perhaps "This book was planned by" is the least inaccurate formula, though this again leaves out the whole business of overseeing. Overseeing is no purely typographical matter. It means the planning and coordinating of the whole book--text, editor, and artist, as well as paper-maker, printer and binder. In fact, it involves an editorial as well as a typographical attitude.

Foulk Grevill writing of the posthumous edition of Sidney's _Arcadia_ said "This requyres the care of his friends, not to amend (for I think that falls within the reach of no man living) but only to see to the paper, and other common errors of mercenary printing." My own interest and ambition in founding the Nonesuch was to see to the paper and other common errors of mercenary printing; but D. G. and V. M. aspired to tackle the question of amendments as well. From our fourth book onwards that policy has governed all our major publications. When, as sometimes happens, a text needs no more editing: when it is adequately and accurately "established," there is still the quasi-editorial function of the illustrator. He may, he should, become in his designs more than a decorator; he should, I believe, become a significant _commentator_. "Kauffer on Burton" is, for example, how I would describe the drawings for our edition of _The Anatomy_.

Our books were published in "limited editions" because we had to rope in the collector as well as the reader and student. We have found that it was necessary to impose another sort of limit on our output--a limit to the number of titles we could conveniently and properly publish in a given time. We came to the conclusion that eight books a year was about as much as we could manage if every detail was to be our personal concern and if all were to be freshly designed. The making of our books in a great variety of styles was an early principle, firmly held to. I did not want people to be able to say at the first sight of our books, "Oh yes, that must be a Nonesuch book." I wanted them to say, "That's not a bad looking book," and then to find that it was ours. My calculation--it was a calculation, not a programme--proved surprisingly right. Our first hundred books have taken us twelve years to make.

Our friends have been our editors; and our editors have been our friends. We have had the most valuable suggestions for books, and the most valuable criticism of details of production even, from them. I have seldom "passed" a binding, for example, without asking Geoffrey Keynes's opinion of it. His well-wishing has been of extraordinary value to us, apart from the many editions which he has himself admirably edited for the Nonesuch. It was he who introduced us to those other excellent editors of our texts, John Hayward and John Sparrow--the former a keen critic and helpful adviser. E. McKnight Kauffer, Stephen Gooden and T. L. Poulton have also done for us much more than illustrate a number of our books.

E. McKnight Kauffer (who drew us from the life for the last of his illustrations to _The Anatomy of Melancholy_) at one time had office-room with us. The hours I spent in discussing aesthetics with him were stimulating--over-stimulating, we found, when there was work to do. So, in the end, we nailed up a list of "red-herring words" ("functional," "the Artist" and so forth) which were not to be used during office hours on pain of a fine of sixpence for each use. But there was no sixpenny escape from George Moore. While _Ulick and Soracha_ was at the printers, he came almost daily, hung up his square bowler hat and settled down to read aloud to us the revisions he had made in his last batch of proofs. Each time it was an entirely new text. The first version was almost illiterate. The second grammatical but undistinguished. The third a transfiguration. It was fascinating to see the process of his composition at close quarters: and our feelings were undisturbed by anxieties about the printer's bill, for he had proposed at the outset that he should pay for his own corrections. They exceeded the original cost of the setting. In any event, who am I to be critical? For one book I had 37 different varieties of title-page set up. My friend William Maxwell, who printed this book, said that he did not mind "losing" (printers are like farmers) on the text of a Nonesuch book because he always made up his loss on the title-page....

In 1925 we moved from our cellar to Great James Street and we decided (with some misgivings) to incorporate the firm. It seemed better to our auditors although we had suspicions that our subscribers might be discouraged from collecting when they saw first the formula "Ltd." on our letter-paper. We did them an injustice. The partners became directors and shareholders. Vera Meynell bought a little book entitled "The Secretary and His Directors" and, impressed by the legal penalties that hedge about these offices, occasionally wound up one of our long triangular discussions by taking down the minutes book and saying: "Well, I suppose that this might as well have been a board meeting." Once a year, for the benefit of Somerset House we (the directors) presented to ourselves (the shareholders) with all due formalities, a report on the year's accounts and progress. Otherwise it made no difference.

Even the "mundial bad-time" (to quote the phrase of an Indian friend) of 1930 did not seem to affect us or our customers much. But the second year of the great depression brought onto the market many hoarded copies of our books from the pickle-shelves of profiteers and deflated some of their more astronomical prices. Our survival-value (as luxury trades go) is perhaps due to the fact that even in boom-time we tried to be honest traders, not using our success with collectors to put prices as high as the traffic would bear, but giving a constant ratio of good value in the sheer materials of book-making, so that our paper, printing, binding were as good as any to be had at the price.

No book-producing of our kind can subsist without sales in America. It was our good fortune to ally ourselves in 1927 with Random House of New York. No collaboration could be more satisfactory from a technical or a personal point of view. It survived the get-rich-quick temptations of 1929; it has survived the difficulties of the depression. New blood and money entered the Press two years ago when Cecil Harmsworth, Desmond Harmsworth and Eric Harmsworth joined our board. But they belong to our Second Century, not to our first.

We have avoided antagonisms, even avoided competition. My friend Osbert Sitwell suggested that we should publish a satire on Noel Coward; Coward that we should publish his satire on the Sitwells. To both we said "no." How pleasant it would have been to issue them together in a single book! When I found that Peter Davies and the Nonesuch were both planning to reissue Cobbett's _Rural Rides_, we met and tossed for it. He won; and our editorial work was made over to him.

Of all Nonesuch books that by which I should best like the venture to be judged is our Shakespeare, edited by Herbert Farjeon. It brought us, among other things, a characteristic contact with T. E. Lawrence. Lawrence had written a letter of fervent praise of the Shakespeare to David Garnett; and I sought permission to use it. David Garnett was himself our ambassador. Lawrence appealed to the group of friends with whom he happened to be. "I don't want my letter to be reprinted. I hate the advertising of my name and opinions," he protested. To his obvious chagrin (for Lawrence had a passion for publicity as great as his passion against it) his friends supported his view. "After all," said they "you are not a Shakespeare expert." That decided Lawrence. "I think it is my duty to give permission," he said. This was his letter:

"We turn over to the Nonesuch Shakespeare. There you have created a most marvellous pleasure. I have handled it ever so many times, and read THE TEMPEST right through. It satisfies. It is final, like the Kelmscot Chaucer or the Ashendene Virgil. And it is a book which charms one to read slowly, an art which is almost gone from us in these times. Every word which Shakespeare uses stands out glowing. A really great edition. The tact and grace of your editor have been surpassing. I think I like the size and shape and binding almost as much as the text. The paper, too, is just right. Altogether a triumph. One of the best things is that it can be done again. Nobody will ever dare to produce the old type of edition now, while your text stands there to reproach them. It means a permanent improvement in Shakespeares."

"There they are, my fifty men and women." They must speak for themselves, and I have almost silenced them with my chatter. For their successors I can say only this: that it remains the ambition of the Press to make a worthy edition, textually and typographically, of every major English writer who has not already been appropriately served. It will make these books for money, and has no shame in that. We are not "Gentlemen Farmers" but workers at our trade. But we are enthusiasts also, even in our middle years; and still propagandists. Every well-designed book or advertisement or prospectus is the begetter of others; and good printing is one of the graces of life even where life is ungracious.

In a letter from Vienna in 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes of Prince Eugene's library that it is "though not very ample, well chosen; but as the Prince would admit into it no editions but what are beautiful and pleasing to the eye and there are nevertheless numbers of excellent books that are but indifferently printed, this finikin and foppish taste makes many disagreeable chasms in this collection!"

I should like to make Prince Eugene patron saint of the Nonesuch. And dear Lady Mary as well; for it remains the object of the Nonesuch Press to meet tastes finikin and foppish like his, studious like hers.

COMPOSED IN POLIPHILUS AND BLADO TYPES

FOOTNOTES:

[34] When we published the Compendious _William Morris_ I sent copies to G. L., to Ramsay MacDonald and to Mr. Baldwin--the last a stranger to me. Their replies make almost a résumé of their political characters. G. L. saw in the social essays a conscience-pricking reproach about things left long undone. J. R. M. saw in them a cause for self-congratulation. Mr. Baldwin did not answer for nearly two years: the book had been mislaid. But when he did answer he covered two pages with his close hand-writing to apologise and explain. The Perfect Gentleman!

_Printing for Love_

From _Cockalorum_: A Bibliography of the Golden Cockerel Press, June 1943-December 1948. (An address to the Art Society, University of the South West of England in Exeter, June, 1947.) Copyright 1950 by the Golden Cockerel Press. Reprinted by permission of author and publisher.