Chapter 16

Some little traffic in books, or rather pamphlets, goes on now in rural places through the medium of pedlars. There are not so many pedlars as was once the case, and those that remain are not men of such substance as their predecessors who travelled on foot with jewellery, laces, watches, and similar articles. The packmen who walk round the villages for tradesmen are a different class altogether: the pedlar does not confine himself to one district, and he sells for his own profit. In addition to the pins and ribbons, Birmingham jewellery, dream-books, and penny ballads, the pedlar now produces a bundle of small books, which are practically pamphlets, though in more convenient form than the ancient quartos. They are a miscellaneous lot, from fifty to one hundred and fifty pages; little monographs on one subject, tales, and especially such narratives as are drawn up and printed after a great calamity like the loss of the _Atalanta_. It is a curious fact that country people are much attracted to the sea, and the story of a shipwreck known to be true easily tempts the sixpences from their pockets. Dream-books and ballads sell as they always did sell, but for the rest the pedlar's bundle has nothing in it, as a rule, more pernicious than may be purchased at any little shop. Romantic novelettes, reprints of popular and really clever stories, numbers of semi-religious essays and so on--some only stitched and without a wrapper--make up the show he spreads open before the cottage door or the servants at the farmhouse. Often the gipsy women, whose vans go slowly along the main roads while they make expeditions to the isolated houses in the fields, bring with them very similar bundles of publications. The sale of books has thus partly supplanted that of clothes-pegs and trumpery finery. Neither pedlars nor gipsies would carry such articles as books unless there was a demand for them, and they thereby demonstrate the growth of the disposition to read.

There are no other persons engaged in circulating books in the actual country than these. In the windows of petty shops in villages it is common to see a local newspaper displayed as a sign that it is sold there; and once now and then, but not often, a few children's story-books, rather dingy, may be found. But the keepers of such shops are not awake to the new condition of things; very likely they cannot read themselves, and it does not occur to them that the people now growing up may have different feelings to those that were general in their own young days. In this inability to observe the change they are not alone. If it was explained to them, again, they would not know how to set about getting in a suitable stock; they would not know what to choose nor where to buy cheaply. Somebody would have to do it all for them. Practically, therefore, in the actual country there are no other traders distributing cheap books than pedlars and gipsy women. Coming in thence to those larger villages which possess a market and are called towns--often only one long street--there is generally a sort of curiosity shop, kept perhaps by a cobbler, a carver and gilder, or brazier, where odds and ends, as old guns and pistols, renovated umbrellas, a stray portmanteau, rusty fenders, and so forth, are for sale. Inside the window are a few old books, with the brown and faded gilt covers so common in days gone by, and on market days these are put outside on the window-sill, or perhaps a plank on trestles forming a bookstall. The stray customers have hardly any connection with the growing taste for reading, being people a little outside the general run--gentlemen with archaeological or controversial tendencies, who never pass a dingy cover without going as far as the title-page--visitors, perhaps, at houses in the neighbourhood wandering round to look at an ancient gateway or sun-dial left from monastic days. Villagers beginning to read do not care for this class of work; like children, they look for something more amusing, and want something to wonder at for their money.

At the post-office there is often an assortment of cheap stationery on sale, for where one cottager wrote a letter a few years ago ten write them now. But the shopkeeper--most likely a grocer or storekeeper of some kind--knows nothing of books, and will tell you, if you ask him, that he never sells any or has any orders. How should he sell any, pray, when he does not put the right sort into his window? He does not think people read: he is occupied with moist sugar. So that in these places literature is at a standstill. Proceeding onwards to the larger market town, which really is a town, perhaps a county town, or at least with a railway station, here one or two stationers may be found. One has a fair trade almost entirely with the middle-class people of the town; farmers when they drive in call for stationery, or for books if there is a circulating library, as there usually is. The villagers do not come to this shop; they feel that it is a little above them, and they are shy of asking for three pennyworth of writing-paper and envelopes. If they look in at the window in passing they see many well-bound books from 5s. to 10s., some of the more reputable novels, and educational manuals. The first they cannot afford; for the second they have not yet acquired the taste; the last repel them. This bookseller, though of course quite of a different stamp, and a man of business, would probably also declare that the villagers do not read. They do not come to him, and he is too busy to sit down and think about it. The other stationer's is a more humble establishment, where they sell cheap toys, Berlin wool, the weekly London papers with tales in them, and so on. The villagers who get as far as this more central town call here for their cheap stationery, their weekly London novelette, or tin trumpets for the children. But here, again, they do not order books, and rarely buy those displayed, for exactly the same reason as in the lesser village towns. The shopkeeper does not understand what they want, and they cannot tell him. They would know if they saw it; but till they see it they do not know themselves. There is no medium between the villager who wants to read and the books he would like. There is no machinery between the villager who wants to read and the London publisher. The villager is in utter ignorance of the books in the publisher's warehouse in London.

The villager who has just begun to read is in a position almost incomprehensible to a Londoner. The latter has seen books, books, books from boyhood always around him. He cannot walk down a street, enter an omnibus, go on a platform without having books thrust under his eyes. Advertisements a yard high glare at him from every hoarding, railway arch, and end-house facing a thoroughfare. In tunnels underground, on the very roofs above, book advertisements press upon his notice. It is impossible to avoid seeing them, even if he would. Books are everywhere--at home, at the reading-room, on the way to business; and on his return it is books, books, books. He buys a weekly paper, and book advertisements, book reviews, occupy a large part of it. Buy what sort of print he will--and he is always buying some sort from mere habit--books are pushed on him. If he is at all a student, or takes an interest--and what educated Londoner does not?--in some political, scientific, or other question, he is constantly on the watch for publications bearing upon it. He subscribes to or sees a copy of one or other of the purely literary papers devoted to the examination of books, and has not the slightest difficulty in finding what he wants; the reviews tell him precisely the thing he requires to know, whether the volume will suit him or not. The reading Londoner is thus in constant contact with the publisher, as much as if the publisher spoke to him across the breakfast table.

But the villager has never heard the publisher's name; the villager never sees a literary review; he has never heard, or, if so, so casually as not to remember, the name of any literary paper describing books. When he gets hold of a London paper, the parts which attract him are certainly not the advertisements; if he sees a book advertised there, it is by chance. Besides which, the advertisements in London papers are, from necessity of cost, only useful to those who frequently purchase books or have some reason for keeping an eye on those that appear. There are thousands of books on publishers' shelves which have been advertised, of course, but are not now ever put in the papers. So that when the villager gets a London paper, as he does now much more frequently, the advertisements, if he sees them, are not designed for his eye and do not attract him. He never sees a gaudy poster stuck on the side of the barn; there are no glazed frames with advertisements in the sheds or hung on the trees; the ricks are not covered, like the walls of the London railway stations, with book advertisements, nor are they conspicuous on the waggons as they are on the omnibuses. When he walks down the village there are no broad windows piled with books higher than his head--books with the backs towards him, books with the ornamented cover towards him, books temptingly open at an illustration: nothing of the sort. There is not a book to be seen. Some few books are advertised in the local press and receive notices--only a few, and these generally of a class too expensive for him. Books of real value are usually dear when first published. If he goes to a stationer's, as already pointed out, for a few sheets of writing paper and a packet of envelopes, he sees nothing displayed there to tempt him. Lastly, he hears no talking about books. Perhaps the most effective of all advertisements in selling a book is conversation. If people hear other people continually alluding to, or quoting, or arguing about a book, they say, "We must have it;" and they do have it. Conversation is the very life of literature. Now, the villager never hears anybody talk about a book.

III

THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING

The villager could not even write down what he would like to read, not yet having reached the stage when the mind turns inwards to analyse itself. If you unexpectedly put a boy with a taste for reading in a large library and leave him to himself, he is at a loss which way to turn or what to take from the shelves. He proceeds by experiment, looking at cover after cover, half pulling out one, turning over a few leaves of another, peeping into this, and so on, till something seizes his imagination, when he will sit down on the steps at once instead of walking across the room to the luxurious easy-chair. The world of books is to the villager far more unknown than to the boy in the library, who has the books before him, while the villager looks into vacancy. What the villager would like can only be gathered from a variety of little indications which hint at the unconscious wishes of his mind.

First, the idea that he would require something easy and simple like a horn-book or primer must be dismissed. Villagers are not so simple by any means. Nor do they need something written in the plainest language, specially chosen, as words of one syllable are for children. What is designed for the village must not be written down to it. The village will reject rice and corn-flour--it will only accept strong meat. The subject must be strong, the manner strong, and the language powerful. Like the highest and most cultured minds--for extremes meet--the intelligence of the villagers naturally approves the best literature. Those authors whose works have a world-wide reputation (though totally unknown by name in hamlets sixty miles from London) would be the most popular. Their antiquity matters nothing; they would be new in the hamlet. When a gentleman furnishes a library he chooses representative authors--what are called library-books--first, forming a solid groundwork to the collection. These are the very volumes the country would like.

Every one when first exploring the world of books, and through them the larger world of reality, is attracted by travels and voyages. These are peculiarly interesting to country people, to whom the idea of exploration is natural. Reading such a book is like coming to a hill and seeing a fresh landscape spread out before them. There are no museums in the villages to familiarise them with the details of life in distant parts of the earth, so that every page as it is turned over brings something new. They understand the hardships of existence, hard food, exposure, the struggle with the storm, and can enter into the anxieties and privations of the earlier voyagers searching out the coast of America. They would rather read these than the most exciting novels. If they could get geography, without degrees of longitude, geography, or rather ethnography, which deals with the ways of the inhabitants, they would be delighted. All such facts being previously unknown come with the novelty of fiction. Sport, where it battles with the tigers of India, the lions of Africa, or the buffalo in America--with large game--is sure to be read with interest. There does not appear to be much demand for history, other than descriptions of great battles, not for history in the modern sense. A good account of a battle, of the actual fighting without the political movements that led to it, is eagerly read. Almost perhaps more than all these the wonders of science draw country readers. If a little book containing an intelligible and non-technical description of the electric railway were offered in the villages, it would be certain to sell. But it must not be educational in tone, because they dislike to feel that they are being taught, and they are repelled by books which profess to show the reader how to do this or that. Technical books are unsuitable; and as for the goody-goody, it is out of the question. Most of the reading-rooms started in villages by well-meaning persons have failed from the introduction of goody-goody.

These are the principal subjects which the villager would select or avoid had he the opportunity to make a choice. As it is, he has to take what chance brings him, and often to be content with nothing, because he does not know what to ask for. If any one ever takes up the task of supplying the country with the sound and thoroughly first-class literature for which it is now ready, he will at least have the certain knowledge that he is engaged in a most worthy propaganda--with the likelihood of a large pecuniary reward. Such profits must of necessity be slow in the beginning, as they are in all new businesses, but they would also be slow in working off. It is a peculiarity of the country to be loyal. If country people believe in a bank, for instance--and they always believe in the first bank that comes among them--they continue to believe, and no effort whatever is necessary to keep the connection. It will be generations in dying out. So with a newspaper, so with an auctioneer--with everything. That which comes first is looked on with suspicion and distrust for a time, people are chary of having anything to do with it; but by-and-by they deal, and, having once dealt, always deal. They remain loyal; competition is of no use, the old name is the one believed in. Whoever acquires a name for the supply of the literature the country wants will retain that name for three-quarters of a century, and with a minimum of labour. At the same time the extent of country is so large that there is certainly room for several without clashing.

In working out a scheme for such a supply, it may be taken for granted that books intended for the villages must be cheap. When we consider the low prices at which reprinted books, the copyrights of which have expired, are now often met with, there really seems no difficulty in this. Sixpence, a shilling, eighteenpence; nothing must be more than two shillings, and a shilling should be the general maximum. For a shilling how many clever little books are on sale on London bookstalls! If so, why should not other books adapted to the villager's wishes be on sale at a similar price in the country? Something might, perhaps, be learned in this direction from the American practice. Books in America are often sold for a few cents; good-sized books too. Thousands of books are sold in France at a franc--twopence less than the maximum of a shilling. The paper is poor, the printing nothing to boast of, the binding merely paper, but the text is there. All the villager wants is the text. Binding, the face of the printing, the quality of the paper--to these outside accidents he is perfectly indifferent. If the text only is the object, a book can be produced cheaply. On first thoughts, it appeared that much might be effected in the way of reprinting extracts from the best authors, little handbooks which could be sold at a few pence. Something, indeed, might be done in this way. But upon the whole I think that as a general rule extracts are a mistake. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as an extract. You cannot supply the preceding part nor the following with success. The extract itself loses its force and brilliance because the mind has not been prepared to perceive it by the gradual approach the author designed. It is like a face cut out of a large picture. The face may be pretty, but the meaning is lost. Such fragments of Shakspeare, for instance, as one sometimes still meets with reprinted in this way strike the mind like a fragment of rock hurled at one's head. They stun with rugged grandeur. As a rule, extracts, then, are a mistake--not as a rigid rule, but as a general principle. It would be better for the village reader to have a few books complete as to text, no matter how poorly printed, or how coarsely got up, than numerous partial reprints which lead the thoughts nowhere.

There must be no censorship, nothing kept back. The weakness and narrowness of mind which still exists--curious relic of the past--among some otherwise worthy classes who persist in thinking no one must read what they dislike, must not be permitted to domineer the village bookstall. There must be absolute freedom, or the villager will turn away. His mind, though open to receive, is robust like his body, and will not accept shackles. The propaganda should be of the best productions of the highest intellects, independent of creed and party. A practical difficulty arises from the copyrights; you cannot reprint a book of which the copyright still exists without injury to the original publisher and the author. But there are many hundred books of the very best order of which the copyright has expired, and which can be reprinted without injury to any one. Then there are the books which it may be presumed would be compiled on purpose for the object in view when once the scheme was in working order. Thirdly, it is probable that many living authors when about publishing a volume would not object to an arrangement for a production in cheap form after a reasonable time. So that there is no such difficulty here but that it might be overcome.

IV

PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION

When you have got your village library ready, how is it to be sold? How is it to be distributed and placed in the hands of the people? How are these people to be got at? They are scattered far apart, and not within sound of trumpet. Travellers, indeed, could be sent round, but travellers cost money. There is the horse and the man to attend to it, turnpikes, repairs, hotels--all the various expenses so well known in business. Each traveller could only call on a certain number of cottages and country houses per day, comparatively a small number, for they are often at long distances from each other; possibly he might find the garden gate locked and the people in the field. At the best after a long day's work he would only have sold a few dozen cheap books, and his inn bill would cover the profit upon them. Reduced thus to the rigid test of figures, the chance of success vanishes. But so, too, does the chance of success in any enterprise if looked at in this fashion. It must be borne in mind that the few copies of a cheap book sold in a day by a single traveller would not represent the ultimate possible return. The traveller prepares the ground which may yield a hundredfold afterwards. He awakens the demand and shows how it can be supplied. He teaches the villager what he wants, and how to get it. He lays the foundation of business in the future. The few pence he actually receives are the forerunners of pounds. Nothing can be accomplished without preliminary outlay. But conceding that the regulation traveller is a costly instrument, and putting that method upon one side for the present, there are other means available. There is the post.

The post is a far more powerful disseminator in the country than in town. A townsman picks up twenty letters, snatches the envelopes open, and casts them aside. The letters delivered in the country have marvellously multiplied, but still country people do not treat letters offhand. The arrival of a letter or two is still an event; it is read twice or three times, put in the pocket, and looked at again. Suburban residents receive circulars by every other post of every kind and description, and cast them contemptuously aside. In the country the delivery of a circular is not so treated. It is certain to be read. Nothing may come of it, but it is certain to be looked over, and more than once. It will be left on the table, or be folded up and put on the mantelpiece: it will not be destroyed. Country people have not yet got into the habit which may be called slur-reading. They really read. The circulars at present delivered in the country are counted by ones and twos where suburban residents get scores and fifties. Almost the only firms who have found out the value of circulars in the country are the great drapery establishments, and their enterprise is richly rewarded. The volume of business thus transacted and brought to the London house by the circular is enormous. There are very few farmhouses in the country which do not contribute orders once or twice a year. Very many families get all their materials in this way, far cheaper, better, and more novel than those on sale in the country towns. Here, then, is a powerful lever ready to the hand of the publisher. Every circular sent to a country house will be read--not slurred--and will ultimately yield a return. Cottagers never receive a circular at all. If a circular came to a cottage by post it would be read and re-read, folded up neatly, and preserved. After a time--for an advertisement is exactly like seed sown in the ground--something would be done. Some incident would happen, and it would be remembered that there was something about it in the circular--some book that dealt with the subject. There is business directly. The same post that brought the original circular, distributing knowledge of books, can bring the book itself. Those who understand the importance attached by country people, and especially by cottagers, to anything that comes by post, will see the use of the circular, which must be regarded as the most effective means of reaching the rural population.