492 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/492 | The Author, Vol. 14 Issue 07 (April 1904) | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=%3Cem%3EThe+Author%3C%2Fem%3E%2C+Vol.+14+Issue+07+%28April+1904%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 14 Issue 07 (April 1904)</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Publication">Publication</a> | 1904-04-01-The-Author-14-7 | | | | | 169–196 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=14">14</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1904-04-01">1904-04-01</a> | | | | | | | 7 | | | 19040401 | Che Huthbor.<br />
<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
<br />
Monthly.)<br />
<br />
FOUNDED BY SIR WALTER BESANT.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Vou. XITV.—No. 7<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
TELEPHONE NUMBER :<br />
374 VICTORIA.<br />
<br />
TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS :<br />
AUTORIDAD, LONDON.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
—————_+——¢<br />
<br />
NOTICES.<br />
<br />
Boe<br />
OR the opinions expressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as expressing the opinion<br />
of the Committee unless such is especially stated<br />
to be the case.<br />
<br />
Tue Editor begs to inform members of the<br />
Authors’ Society and other readers of The Author<br />
that the cases which are from time to time quoted<br />
in The Author are cases that have come before the<br />
notice or to the knowledge of the Secretary of the<br />
Society, and that those members of the Society<br />
who desire to have the names of the publishers<br />
concerned can obtain them on application.<br />
<br />
es<br />
List of Members.<br />
<br />
Tue List of Members of the Society of Authors<br />
published October, 1902, at the price of 6d., and<br />
the elections from October, 1902, to July, 1903, as<br />
a supplemental list, at the price of 2d., can now be<br />
obtained at the offices of the Society.<br />
<br />
They will be sold to members or associates of<br />
the Society only.<br />
<br />
os<br />
<br />
The Pension Fund of the Society.<br />
<br />
Tue Trustees of the Pension Fund met at the<br />
Society’s Offices on the 19th of February, and<br />
having gone carefully into the accounts of the<br />
fund, decided to purchase £250 London and North<br />
Western 3% Debenture Stock. Accordingly, the<br />
<br />
investments of the Pension Fund at present<br />
<br />
: os XIV.<br />
<br />
Aprit ist, 1904.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[PRicE SIXPENCE.<br />
<br />
standing in the names of the Trustees are as<br />
<br />
follows.<br />
This is a statement of the actual stock; the<br />
<br />
money value can be easily worked out at the current<br />
price of the market :—<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Wonsolg2t £1000 0 0<br />
Weocal oaus ©... 500 0 0<br />
Victorian Government 8 % Consoli-<br />
dated Inscribed Stock ............... 291 19 11<br />
War loan <0... 201 9 8<br />
London and North Western 3 °% Deben-<br />
MUTE SOCK 250 0 O<br />
Oba eS 2243 9 2<br />
Subscriptions from October, 1903.<br />
£s.d.<br />
Nov. 13, Longe, Miss Julia. ; - 0.900<br />
Dec. 16, Trevor, Capt. Philip 0. 5 0<br />
1904.<br />
Jan. 6, Hills, Mrs. C. H 075 0<br />
Jan. 6, Crommelin, Miss 010 0<br />
Jan. 8, Stevenson, Mrs. M. E. 0 5 0<br />
Jan. 16, Kilmarnock, The Lord . 010 0<br />
Feb. 5, Portman, Lionel . : ~ 1 0.0<br />
Feb. 11, Shipley, Miss Mary ‘ ~ 0 5 0<br />
Diiring, Mrs. . ; - 0 5 0<br />
Francis Claude de la Roche . 0.50.0<br />
Donations from October, 1903.<br />
Oct. 27, Sturgis, Julian : .50 0 0<br />
Noy. 2, Stanton, V. H. : : - dO 0<br />
Nov. 18, Benecke, Miss Ida. : . 1:0 0<br />
Noy. 23, Harraden, Miss Beatrice 5 0 0<br />
Dec. Miniken, Miss Bertha M. M.. 0 5 0O<br />
1904.<br />
Jan. 4, Moncrieff, A. R. Hope . . oo 0 0<br />
Jan. 4, Middlemas, Miss Jean . ~ 0 10 20<br />
Jan. 4, Witherby, The Rev. C. . 0 5 0<br />
Jan. 6, Key, The Rev. S. Whittell 0. 5.0<br />
Jan. 14, Bennett, Rev. W. K.,D.D. . 015 0<br />
Jan. 2, Roe, Mrs. Harcourt : , 010 6<br />
Feb. 11, Delaire, Miss Jeanne . . 0 10 0<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
FROM THE COMMITTEE.<br />
<br />
——<br />
<br />
HE March meeting of the Committee was<br />
held at the offices of the Society on Monday,<br />
March 7th.<br />
<br />
Twenty-six members and associates were elected,<br />
making the total number of elections for the current<br />
year 78. ‘There is no sign that the steady increase<br />
in the Society’s numbers is falling off. The number<br />
of fresh members who have joined during the past<br />
three months of the current year is in excess of the<br />
number for the same period during the past three<br />
years.<br />
<br />
; ‘A letter from the Secretary of the United States<br />
Copyright Association was submitted to the Com-<br />
mittee, The Secretary of the Association desires<br />
a report from our Society on the disadvantages of<br />
the present United States Copyright law, but in<br />
his letter excludes the question of printing in the<br />
United States which under the present law<br />
is essential. His Association consider that no<br />
alteration could be made in that direction unless<br />
there was a change in the Tariff Policy of the<br />
country. The Managing Committee of the Society<br />
<br />
have decided to call together the Sub-Committee<br />
on Copyright, and, taking up the Secretary’s sug-<br />
<br />
gestion, will send a full report on the present<br />
aspects of the law, in answer to the courteous<br />
request of the Association.<br />
<br />
The Sub-Committee which was appointed to con-<br />
sider some points in the editorship of Zhe Author<br />
laid their report before the Managing Committee,<br />
who gave their general approval to the proposed<br />
alterations. Members will, in the fulness of time,<br />
see the slight alterations and modifications that<br />
have been suggested by the Sub-Committee.<br />
<br />
The Chairman and Secretary gave a full report<br />
of the action that had been taken to deal with the<br />
infringement of Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s ‘“‘ Barrack<br />
Room Ballads.” The Committee assented to the<br />
course.<br />
<br />
On the receipt of a letter from the Clerk of the<br />
London County Council, the question of a site for<br />
the replica of the Besant Memorial was further<br />
considered. The Committee decided to adhere<br />
to their former proposal that the bronze should be<br />
placed, if possible, on the Embankment.<br />
<br />
One or two other matters of no great importance<br />
were discussed, but no cases for legal action came<br />
forward for the consideration of the Committee,<br />
although, during the past month, the Chairman<br />
has sanctioned three County Court actions.<br />
<br />
es<br />
<br />
Cases.<br />
During the past month thirteen cases have been<br />
in the hands of the Secretary.<br />
Five of these were for the payment of money<br />
<br />
for published contributions, one for money and<br />
<br />
accounts, three for accounts, and three for the<br />
<br />
cancellation of agreements. From the first class<br />
three have been settled and the money paid. The<br />
case for money and accounts has been placed in<br />
the hands of the Society’s solicitors, as it was<br />
impossible for the Secretary to obtain any satis-<br />
factory reply to his communications. In the<br />
next class one publisher has promised to forward<br />
the statement in a few days; one has complied with<br />
the Secretary’s request, and in the remaining case<br />
the letter of demand has only just been written.<br />
<br />
There are three cases for cancellation of agree-<br />
ments. These not unfrequently arise under the<br />
following circumstances. ‘The publishers under an<br />
agreement to publish bring out books, and when<br />
there is no longer a demand for the work sell off<br />
the stock as “remainders.” The book may then<br />
be off the market for some years ; but the agree-<br />
ment for publication still exists between author and<br />
publisher, though there is no probability of its<br />
being of any monetary value to the publisher in<br />
future. The author, for sentimental reasons, very<br />
often desires the agreement cancelled so that he<br />
may regain all the rights in his property. It is<br />
extraordinary the difference that a publisher will<br />
place on the value of an agreement of this kind<br />
when he is buying, from when he is trying to sell.<br />
Sometimes it happens that the publisher offers the<br />
remainder of the book and the cancellation of the<br />
agreement to the author as a matter of courtesy at<br />
a reasonably low price, but if before the publisher<br />
has made the offer, it appears that the author is —<br />
desirous of purchasing, then the price is generally<br />
twice as large. Again, if the right to publish a —<br />
book which has been off the market under these<br />
conditions, is offered to a publisher, he will usually<br />
state that it is not worth his while to give anything<br />
for the licence, but if the author desires to purchase<br />
the rights from the publisher under the agreement,<br />
the price asked is exceedingly high. The publisher<br />
prefers to sit like the dog in the manger.<br />
<br />
This, however, is not always the case, as it<br />
occasionally happens that the publisher will make<br />
every effort to assist an author, and will give him<br />
every facility for recovering his rights.<br />
<br />
One of the County Court cases sanctioned by —<br />
the Chairman has been satisfactorily concluded.<br />
<br />
oe<br />
<br />
March Elections.<br />
Barrett-Hamilton, Capt. Kilmanock House, a<br />
G. E. ’ Arthurstown, Water- _<br />
ford, Ireland.<br />
Rangoon, Burma.<br />
The Hollies, Egham, —<br />
Surrey. :<br />
<br />
Basevi, Capt. W. H. F. .<br />
Budgen, Miss<br />
<br />
. .<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
127, Beverley Road,<br />
Hull.<br />
<br />
110, Musters Road,<br />
West Bridgford,<br />
Notts.<br />
<br />
Crum, W. E., Secretary of 33, Manchester Street,<br />
the Text and Transla- W.<br />
tion Society,<br />
<br />
Elliott-Drake, Lady<br />
<br />
Cohen, E. E. (Ellic Owen,<br />
Saville Street)<br />
Cooke, W. Bourne .<br />
<br />
Nutwell Court, Lymp-<br />
stone, Devon.<br />
<br />
Evans, T. Howell . . 31, Bridge Avenue<br />
Mansions, Hammer-<br />
smith, W.<br />
<br />
c/o Capt. Ivey, 45,<br />
<br />
Fergusen, Dugalf .<br />
Cassland Road, 8.<br />
<br />
Hackney<br />
Francis Claude de la _ 6, Glebe Place, Chelsea,<br />
Roche S.W.<br />
<br />
Gerrard, P. N. : Greenage, Sidney<br />
Parade, Dublin.<br />
<br />
9, Trafalgar Buildings,<br />
Charing Cross, W.C.<br />
<br />
18, Essendine Road,<br />
Elgin Avenue, W.<br />
<br />
41, South Grove, High-<br />
gate.<br />
<br />
16, Carlisle Mansions,<br />
Carlisle Place, 8.W.<br />
<br />
13, Marlswick Terrace,<br />
St. Leonards-on-Sea.<br />
<br />
Inner Temple, E.C.<br />
<br />
11, Neville Court,<br />
Abbey Road, N.W.<br />
<br />
134, Abbey Foregate,<br />
Shrewsbury.<br />
<br />
Woodbridge, Suffolk.<br />
<br />
Wood Dalling, Nor-<br />
wich.<br />
<br />
Manor House, Totnes.<br />
<br />
Glen-Walker, Miss T. B.<br />
Macdonald, William ;<br />
Marriott, Mrs.<br />
<br />
Ransome, Stafford .<br />
Redpath, Miss Lucy<br />
<br />
Ryan, Hugh S. K. . .<br />
Shaw, Frederick G. :<br />
<br />
Stanway, Miss Kate<br />
<br />
Thonger, Charles . :<br />
Vicars, G. Rayleigh :<br />
<br />
Young, Miss F. E. .<br />
<br />
Four members do not desire the publication of<br />
their names or addresses.<br />
<br />
————_1 <> _——<br />
<br />
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY MEMBERS OF<br />
THE SOCIETY.<br />
<br />
—-——+ —_<br />
<br />
(In the following list we do not propose to give more<br />
than the titles, prices, publishers, etc., of the books<br />
enumerated with, in special cases, such particulars as may<br />
serve to explain the scope and purpose of the work.<br />
Members are requested to forward information which will<br />
enable the Editor to supply such particulars.)<br />
<br />
ART anp ARCHITECTURE.<br />
<br />
Pewter Puate. A Historical and Descriptive Hand-<br />
<br />
114 X 7}, xxi. + 299 pp.<br />
<br />
book. By H.J. L.J. MAss&.<br />
Bell, 21s, n.<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
171<br />
<br />
GREAT MAsTERS SERIES. Parts VIII. and IX. With<br />
Descriptive Text by Str MARTIN ConwAy. Heinemann.<br />
5s. net each part.<br />
<br />
FREDERIC LEIGHTON.<br />
illustrations (Little Books on Art).<br />
Methuen. 2s. 6d. n.<br />
<br />
BIOGRAPHY.<br />
<br />
Brownina. By HE. DoWDEN.<br />
8 x 54, xvii. + 404 pp.<br />
<br />
By ALICE CORKRAN. With 38<br />
6 X 44, 221 pp.<br />
<br />
ROBERT<br />
Biographies.)<br />
<br />
(The Temple<br />
Dent. 4s. 6d. n.<br />
<br />
DRAMA.<br />
<br />
A QueeEN’s Romance. A Version of Victor Hugo’s<br />
“ Ruy Blas.’? Written for Lewis Waller by J. DAVIDSON.<br />
73 x 54, 111 pp. Grant Richards. 3s. 6d. n.<br />
<br />
BY ORDER OF THE Czar. A Drama in Five Acts. By<br />
JoseEepH Harron. 7% X54, 172 pp. Hutchinson.<br />
<br />
2s. 6d.<br />
GouF PLAYS AND RECITATIONS. By R. ANDRE. 7 X 43,<br />
127 pp. Everett. 1s. 6d. n.<br />
EDUCATIONAL.<br />
<br />
“THe Times’? COMPETITION. Answers of the first prize<br />
winner. 83 x 53. Published by L. ASHE, 17, Newburgh<br />
Road, Acton, W.<br />
<br />
FICTION.<br />
<br />
THE MAN FROM DOWNING Strent. By W. Le QUEUX.<br />
73 X 5, 322 pp. Hurst and Blackett. 6s.<br />
<br />
OLD SHROPSHIRE Lire. By LADY CATHERINE MILNES<br />
GASKELL. 73 X 54, 308 pp. Lane. 6s.<br />
<br />
Room Five. By HamintoN DrumMonp. Illustrations<br />
by Cyrus Cones. 73 X 54,312 pp. Ward, Lock. 6s.<br />
A Krne’s Desrre. By Mrs. AYLMER GOWING. 7} X 5,<br />
<br />
320 pp. J. Long. 6s.<br />
<br />
THE TRIUMPH OF Mrs. Sv. GeorGE. By Percy WHITE.<br />
74 X 5,327 pp. Nash. 6s.<br />
<br />
THE Frence WIFE. By KATHARINE TYNAN.<br />
309 pp. White. 6s.<br />
<br />
Strong Mac. By 8. R. CROCKETT.<br />
Ward, Lock. 6s.<br />
<br />
FACING THE Fururs, or The Parting of the Ways. By<br />
RoBert THYNNE. 72 x 51, 254 pp. TI. Fisher<br />
Unwin. 6s.<br />
<br />
THE BINDWEED.—By NELuiE K. BLISSETT. 73x 5, 330pp.<br />
Constable. 6s.<br />
<br />
Tue Evtwoops.—By C. 8. WELLES, M.D.<br />
Simpkin Marshall. 6s.<br />
<br />
Tue ONE Brrore.—By Barry PAIN.<br />
7&x5, 231 pp. Grant Richards. 1s. n.<br />
<br />
wa<br />
(= X 9,<br />
<br />
8 xX 51, 406 pp.<br />
<br />
8 x 54, 346 pp.<br />
<br />
(New Edition.)<br />
<br />
HISTORY.<br />
FouNDATIONS OF MopERN EvRoPE.—Twelve Lectures<br />
<br />
Delivered in the University of London by EMI REICH.<br />
81x51, 262 pp. Bell. 5s. n.<br />
<br />
LAW.<br />
<br />
THE CONTRACT OF AFFREIGHTMENT AS EXPRESSED IN<br />
GHARTERPARTIES AND BILLS oF LADING.—By T. E.<br />
Scrutron, K.C.,and F. D, MackINNon. Fifth edition,<br />
by T. E. Serutton. 846,430 pp. Clowes. 18s.<br />
<br />
LITERARY.<br />
<br />
THe ENGLISH DIALECT Dicrionary.—Kdited by JosEPH<br />
Wricut, Professor of Comparative Philology in the<br />
University of Oxford. Parts XIX. and XX., K—Sharp.<br />
Parts XXI.-XXIII., Sharpen—Syzzie (completing<br />
Volume V.). 129%, 896 pp. Frowde. 15s. n. and<br />
30s. n. each part.<br />
<br />
<br />
172 THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
NATURAL HISTORY.<br />
THs TWENTIETH CENTURY Doa.—(Non-Sporting.) By<br />
H.Compron. Vol. I. 84x 5$, 350 pp. Grant Richards,<br />
7s. 6d. D.<br />
REPRINTS. ‘<br />
<br />
we WoRKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB.—Ed. by<br />
E.V. Lucas. Vol. IV. Dramatic Specimens and the<br />
Garrick Plays. 9x6, xviii. +643 pp. Methuen, 7s. 6d,<br />
<br />
CoRIDON’S SONG, and Other Verses from Various Sources.<br />
—(Ilustrated Pocket Classics.) With Introduction by<br />
Austin Dopson. 7X44, xxxi,+163 pp. Macmillan.<br />
28. 1.<br />
<br />
SOCIOLOGY.<br />
<br />
THE COMMON SENSE OF MUNICIPAL TRADING.—By<br />
BERNARD SHAW. 74X5,120pp. Constable. 2s. 6d.<br />
<br />
TOPOGRAPHY.<br />
<br />
Juniper Hatui.—A Rendezvous of certain Illustrious<br />
Personages during the French Revolution, including<br />
Alexandre D’Arblay and Fanny Burney. By CONSTANCE<br />
Hrip. Illustrations by ELLEN G. HILL, 8]x6,<br />
275 pp. Lane. 21s. n.<br />
<br />
THEOLOGY.<br />
<br />
Tue COVENANT COMMONLY CALLED THE OLD TESTA-<br />
MENT: Translated from THE SEPTUAGINT.—By C.<br />
THOMPSON. A New Edition by S.F.PELLs. ‘Two Vols.<br />
[Not paged.] 12s.n. HADES, the * Grave ’ in “ Hades,’’<br />
or the “ Catacombs ’’ of the Bible and of Egypt. 190 pp.<br />
82x53. Skeflington. 5s. n. :<br />
<br />
LoyALTY TO THE PRAYER-Book (Pamphlet).—By PERcY<br />
DEARMER, M.A., Vicar of St. Mary’s, Primrose-hill.<br />
Mowbray. 2d.<br />
<br />
TRAVEL.<br />
<br />
ADVENTURES ON THE Roor of THE WoRLD.—By Mrs:<br />
AUBREY LE BLOND (Mrs. Main). 9X6, xvi. +333 pp-<br />
Unwin. 10s. 6d. n.<br />
<br />
THE Japs AT HomE.—By DOUGLAS SLADEN.<br />
Edition.) 84X54, 220 pp. Newnes. 6d.<br />
<br />
(Cheap<br />
<br />
——_—__+—_+____—-<br />
<br />
LITERARY AND DRAMATIC NOTES.<br />
<br />
—<br />
<br />
NEW novel by Mrs. Gertrude Atherton will<br />
<br />
be published shortly, by Messrs. Macmillan.<br />
<br />
Its title is “ The Rulers of Kings.” It isan<br />
<br />
historical romance in which real and imaginary<br />
<br />
personages figure. Among these real people are<br />
<br />
the Emperors of Germany and Austria. ‘The action<br />
<br />
centres round the Hungarian crisis. The heroine<br />
<br />
isan imaginary daughter of the Austrian Emperor.<br />
<br />
The hero is a brainy, ambitious American, who<br />
has inherited many millions.<br />
<br />
The same firm is to publish “ Fishing Holidays,”<br />
by Mr. Stephen Gwynn. In this volume the author<br />
relates his experiences when angling for trout and<br />
salmon from Donegal to Kerry. He also describes<br />
the scenery and people about the various lakes and<br />
rivers. ‘There are, too, a couple of papers on sea-<br />
<br />
fishing, and there is an essay on Izaak Walton’s<br />
recently discovered fishing bag.<br />
<br />
“Helen Mathers” has written a long novel<br />
entitled “The Ferryman.” It is to be published<br />
this autumn by Messrs. Methuen. She is now<br />
engaged on a serial story to be called “The<br />
Spitfire.” She is also producing “ Comin’ Thro’<br />
the Rye,” in paper cover, 1s., and in cloth at 2s. ;<br />
and shortly afterwards a volume of essays, entitled<br />
“Side Shows,” is to be issued at 1s. and 2s.,<br />
respectively. ‘‘ Bam Wildfire” and “ Dimples”<br />
are also to be put into cloth covers at 2s.<br />
<br />
Mr. R. F. Gould’s “ Concise History of Free-<br />
masonry” is just out. The publishers are Messrs.<br />
Gale and Polden, London and Aldershot, and the<br />
Macoy Publishing Company, New York.<br />
<br />
Mr. Blundell Burton’s new story, “A Dead<br />
Reckoning,” will be published at once by F. V.<br />
White & Co., Ltd. It will belong to the class of<br />
‘* Novels of To-day,” which the author has of late<br />
alternated with his romances, and will deal with the<br />
misery of a woman of good position, who is suffer-<br />
ing for amistake made in her girlhood.<br />
<br />
Messrs. Chatto & Windus announce a new novel<br />
by Mrs. F'. E. Penny, the authoress of “ A Mixed<br />
Marriage” and other Indian stories. It is called<br />
“The Sanyasi.” It deals with phases of Anglo-<br />
Indian and native life in the south of India, not<br />
hitherto dealt with in fiction.<br />
<br />
“‘Rita’s’? new book is entitled ‘“‘ The Masquer-<br />
aders.” It will be published early in the spring by<br />
Messrs. Hutchinson. ‘“ Rita’s” book on “ The<br />
Sin and Scandal of the Smart Set” has gone into a<br />
fourth edition. This authoress has a_ serial<br />
running in Chic. Itis called “ The Silent Woman.”<br />
<br />
Mr. M. H. Spielmann’s ‘The Magazine of Art ”<br />
for March contains, anong other articles, some<br />
recollections of Jean Léon Géréme by the Editor.<br />
“How to Draw in Pen and Ink”—a few hints to<br />
special artists written and illustrated by Harry<br />
Furniss, and Part I. of a “Symposium on L’Art<br />
Nouveau: What it is and what is thought of it.”<br />
<br />
The Magazine of Art volume for 1903 is now<br />
ready. Its priceis £1 ls.<br />
<br />
Among the novels most in demand during the<br />
past few weeks we note Mr. Max Pemberton’s “Red<br />
Morn”; Mr. Eden Phillpott’s “American<br />
Prisoner”; Mr. Halliwell Sutcliffe’s ‘‘ Through<br />
Sorrow’s Gates”; Mr. Frankfort Moore’s ‘ Ship-<br />
mates in Sunshine”; Mr. F. M. Crawford’s “ Heart<br />
of Rome”; and Mr. H. Rider Haggard’s “ Stella<br />
Fregelius.”<br />
<br />
Mr. Arthur Sykes has just published “Mr.<br />
Punch’s Museum ; and other Matters.” Bradbury,<br />
Agnew& Co. are the publishers. Its price is 3. 6d.<br />
Mr, Sykes is the author of “A Book of Words”<br />
(verses and sketches from Punch, etc.),and “ Without<br />
Permission ” (from Punch, etc). :<br />
<br />
<br />
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ae<br />
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ed Daa AB<br />
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THER AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
Shelley's “ Adonais,” edited with introduction and<br />
notes by Mr. William Michael Rossetti, hasrecently<br />
been issued by the Clarendon Press. It is a new<br />
edition, revised with the assistance of A. O.<br />
Prickard, M.A., Fellow of New College, Oxford.<br />
<br />
‘The Padre” is the title of a novel by Rose<br />
Harrison, authoress of “ Esther Alington.” It<br />
is an illustrated story, published by Richard R.<br />
James.<br />
<br />
“On the Wings of the Wind” is the title of<br />
Allan Raine’s new novel. Messrs. Hutchinson and<br />
Oo. are the publishers.<br />
<br />
Professor Flinders Petrie’s new book, ‘‘ Methods<br />
and Aims in Archeology,” is intended primarily<br />
for working archeologists, and the whole field of<br />
archeological labour is covered by the Professor in<br />
this volume of some two hundred pages. He<br />
deals with such points as the management of<br />
labourers and arrangement of work, recording in<br />
the field, and the copying, photographing, pre-<br />
servation, and packing of objects. There are<br />
illustrations reproduced from photographs.<br />
<br />
The monument and window that is to be placed<br />
in Exeter Cathedral as a memorial to R. D.<br />
Blackmore, will be unveiled on April 26th. Mr.<br />
Eden Philpotts is to speak the eulogy of the famous<br />
Devonshire author, and in the May issue of 7'he<br />
Fortnightly Review will appear a lengthy article on<br />
“R. D. Blackmore and his work,” by Mr: James<br />
Baker, who has acted as Chairman of the<br />
Blackmore Memorial Committee.<br />
<br />
The pamphlet “ National Education to National<br />
Advancement,” that will shortly be published by<br />
Simpkin, Marshall and Co., is the development of<br />
an article written for The Times by Mr. James<br />
Baker, F.R.G.S., and embodies several suggestions<br />
not only for developing technical and agricultural<br />
work in the counties, but also for utilising the<br />
love of drill innate in all boys. The writer touches<br />
also upon the work in girls schools.<br />
<br />
Mr. Ricwarp Bacor’s new novel entitled<br />
“* Love’s Proxy” will be published on the 27th of<br />
this month, by Mr. Edward Arnold in England and<br />
Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., in the United<br />
States of America.<br />
<br />
Tue next (the twenty-sixth) Congress of the<br />
International Literary and Artistic Association<br />
will take place at Marseilles towards the end of<br />
September, 1904.<br />
<br />
Temple Bar for March contains a complete story<br />
by Miss M. L. Pendered.<br />
<br />
Miss Montgomery Campbell’s article on the<br />
“Armour of Schloss Ambras’” began in the February<br />
number of Zhe Connoisseur, and was concluded in<br />
the March number.<br />
<br />
A cheap edition of Mr. Barry Pain’s “ The One<br />
Before,” has been issued by Mr. Grant Richards.<br />
<br />
The same publisher has added Mr. Theodore<br />
<br />
178<br />
<br />
Watts - Dunton’s “Aylwin,” to the “ World’s<br />
Classics ” series.<br />
<br />
Mr. Richard Whiteings “ Yelloy Van” is now<br />
in a sixth edition.<br />
<br />
ee<br />
<br />
PARIS NOTES.<br />
<br />
—1—~<— +<br />
<br />
N the volume entitled “ Notes et Souvenirs de<br />
M. Thiers (1870—1873),” his sister-in-law,<br />
Mlle. Dosne, gives to the worldsome extremely<br />
<br />
interesting details which will be invaluable to<br />
future historians. It appears that M. Thiers did<br />
not write any Memoirs, but he was in the habit of<br />
jotting down notes about his more important<br />
undertakings. Mlle. Dosne had not intended to<br />
publish this volume at present, but on account of<br />
certain misrepresentations with regard to her<br />
brother-in-law’s actions she deemed it better to<br />
refute the statements by giving to the public the<br />
exact facts as written down by M. Thiers. The<br />
first part of the volume is taken up with an account<br />
of his diplomatic voyage in September, 1870.<br />
M. Thiers went first to England on the 12th<br />
September, but he has left no notes about his visit<br />
there. M. Jules Favre published an account of<br />
this mission to London in his Gowvernement de la<br />
Défense Nationale.<br />
<br />
M. Thiers begins with an account of his journey<br />
to Russia, leaving London on the 18th of Septem-<br />
ber. From St. Petersburg he goes to Vienna, and<br />
then to Florence, before returning to Paris.<br />
<br />
The second chapter of the book is taken up with<br />
the account of the interviews between M. Thiers<br />
and Bismarck to discuss the terms for an armistice,<br />
in October, 1870. The third chapter treats of the<br />
preliminaries for peace in 1871. The notes are<br />
very brief, but one can read between the lines all<br />
that it cost a man like Thiers to hold his own and<br />
to fight for his beloved country with the Iron<br />
Chancellor. The remaining part of the volume is<br />
composed of notes written by M. Thiers from the<br />
time he was elected President of the French<br />
Republic in February, 1871, until May, 1873,<br />
when he resigned office.<br />
<br />
In these pages we read of the great difficulties<br />
in the way of re-establishing order after so terrible<br />
a war, of reorganizing the army, and of paying off<br />
the enormous ransom for the territory.<br />
<br />
M. Thiers also explains his plans for the<br />
government of his country, and tells how he had<br />
hoped with the support of members of all parties<br />
to organize a Government strong enough to pre-<br />
serve France from the excesses of democracy.<br />
Much that has seemed complicated and incompre-<br />
hensible in the history of France during the three<br />
174<br />
<br />
years which followed the war of 1870 becomes<br />
clear when one has read the details noted down by<br />
the man who was in a position to know more<br />
about the workings of the political machinery than<br />
anyone else.<br />
<br />
There is also an appendix to the volume, giving<br />
the exact text of various documents quoted or<br />
bearing on the subjects treated.<br />
<br />
Among the new novels is “Le Chemin de la<br />
Gloire,” by Georges Ohnet. It is the story of a<br />
young musical composer, who, after his first great<br />
success, is lionized to such a degree that he drifts<br />
into society and neglects his art. The inevitable<br />
wealthy American girl swoops down on him and<br />
decides to marry him. He escapes to Venice, but<br />
with a yacht and plenty of money at command the<br />
American woman is not baffled. She and her<br />
family call upon him, invite him for a cruise with<br />
them, and before he realizes all that is happening,<br />
he has proved himself faithless to the actress<br />
whom he really loves, and for whom he has written<br />
his opera, and has married the brilliant heiress from<br />
the New World. As time goes on the musician<br />
discovers that he has made a huge mistake. The<br />
<br />
atmosphere of his new home stifles him, and the<br />
ractical ideas of his charming wife make him<br />
<br />
shudder. Considering the circumstances the<br />
dénouement is the only one possible. There is more<br />
psychology in this novel than in most of those by<br />
the same author. The characters are delicately<br />
drawn and are very true to life, without a touch<br />
of exaggeration.<br />
<br />
“Le Secrétaire de Madame la Duchesse,” by<br />
Léon de Tinseau, is a charming story, and one<br />
which would certainly be appreciated in England,<br />
as it has the indispensable “happy énding.”<br />
Philippe Hurault obtains a post as secretary to the<br />
Duchess of Clerval and leaves his mother and<br />
Jiancée in order to make his fortune at the Clerval<br />
Chateau. He is soon a great favourite in his new<br />
home and is treated almost like one of the family.<br />
The plot is a very slight one, and the chief interest<br />
of the story is the psychological study of Philippe.<br />
He finds himself in an entirely new world, and when<br />
the chateau is filled with a large house-party he<br />
soon falls a victim to the fascinations of a certain<br />
society woman, who imagines that she has lost her<br />
heart to the handsome secretary. All the characters<br />
are well drawn, but unfortunately the story is told<br />
by means of letters from the various persons, and<br />
these letters scarcely vary enough in style to be<br />
convincing. In spite of this the novel is very<br />
readable and thoroughly interesting.<br />
<br />
“L’Empire de la Méditerranée,” by M. René<br />
Pinon, treats of “ l'état politique et social du Maroc,<br />
la question marocaine, l’affaire de Figuig, la con-<br />
quéte du Touat, la Tripolitaine, Bizerte, Malte,<br />
Gibraltar.” There is also an important article on<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
‘“‘1’Entente Franco-Italienne.” It isan invaluable<br />
book for politicians and historians.<br />
<br />
Among the new books are ‘‘ Un petit coin du<br />
monde,” by Jules Perrin; “La Commune,” by<br />
Paul and Victor Margueritte; “Le Droit des<br />
Vierges,” by M. Paul Hyacinthe Loyson; “La<br />
Politique protectioniste en Angleterre,’ by G.<br />
Blondel ; ‘‘ Le Pére Didon,” by Stanislas Reynaud ;<br />
“La Politique Franco-Anglaise et L’Arbitrage<br />
International,” by M. Gabriel Louis Jarais, with<br />
preface by M. G. Hanotaux ; “La Guerre Com-<br />
merciale,” by M. Maurice Schwob ; “ L’Apprentie,”’<br />
by M. Gustave Geffroy ; “ Le Docteur Haramburg,”<br />
by J. H. Rosny; and “ Au Japon,” by M. de<br />
Guerville.<br />
<br />
In the Nouvelle Revue there is a curious article<br />
by Jules Bois on “Les Professeurs de Volonté.”<br />
It is in reality a chapter taken from “ Le Miracle<br />
Moderne,” a book which is to be published shortly.<br />
In this article M. Jules Bois speaks of Dr. Lié-<br />
beault, who died recently at Nancy. He had made<br />
a special study of hypnotism and was the first<br />
doctor to apply it professionally. It appears that<br />
when Dr. Liébeault had made a sufficient income<br />
to enable him to retire, he gave his time to the<br />
study of this subject and treated his patients<br />
gratuitously. M. Jules Bois maintains that his<br />
name should be honoured as the pioneer of medical<br />
hypnotism, and that it should be remembered that<br />
Dr. Liébeault preceded Dr. Charcot.<br />
<br />
In the second March number of La Grande<br />
Revue, M. Gaston Deschamps gives his experiences<br />
in America under the title of “Au Seuil du Nou-<br />
veau Monde.” ‘There is also an interesting article<br />
by M. E. Sémenoff ; “Le Role mondial du Japon<br />
prédit par un Grand Ecrivain Russe.”<br />
<br />
M. Frantz Funck Brentano writes “ L’Aigle<br />
et l’Aiglon.” M. Calmettes gives some details<br />
about hand-made laces, “ Dentelles et Dentelliéres,”<br />
and M. Romme an article on “Les Idées de M.<br />
Behring.”<br />
<br />
In the second March number of the Revue de<br />
Paris there is an instructive article by Colonel de<br />
Grandprey on ‘Les Armées de la Chine,” and<br />
another one by M. Contenson on “ L’Evolution de<br />
la Propriété rurale.”<br />
<br />
In the Revue des Deua Mondes there is a rather<br />
sensational article entitled “ Les Derniers Jours<br />
de Léon XIII. et le Conclave de 1903 par un<br />
Témoin.”<br />
<br />
M. Gaston Cadoux writes on “L’EKclairage<br />
Paris, Londres et Berlin” and M. Pierre Leroy-<br />
Beaulieu “Le Japon et ses Ressources dans la<br />
Guerre Actuelle.” There is also an article on<br />
“T/Exposition des Primitifs Francais,” by M.<br />
Bouchot.<br />
<br />
The bold venture of M. Blés to establish in<br />
Paris a critical review in English and French<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 175<br />
<br />
appears to have supplied a need. One of the most<br />
important French papers announces that “la nou-<br />
yelle revue Franco-Anglaise, Zhe Weekly Critical<br />
Review, a pris définitivement rang parmi les publi-<br />
cations artistiques les plus estimées.”<br />
<br />
Members of the Bacon Society might be inte-<br />
rested in an article which appeared in the Revwe<br />
des Iilées No.1. It is by M. Remy de Gourmont,<br />
and is entitled “Francois Bacon et Joseph de<br />
Maistre.”<br />
<br />
In speaking of the “ Examen de la Philosophie<br />
de Bacon” by de Maistre, M. de Gourmont tells us<br />
that “le cerveau de Joseph de Maistre est une<br />
forge qui, au lieu de dévorer les statues de bronze<br />
qu’on y jette, les rend intactes et plus belles,<br />
purifies de toutes souillures, de toutes tares, de<br />
toutes rugosités.” In the same number there is<br />
an article on Herbert Spencer.<br />
<br />
Several of the plays this season are having long<br />
runs.<br />
<br />
Madame Sarah Bernhardt has scored an immense<br />
success with “ La Sorciére.” She plays her réle to<br />
perfection, and in one or two instances there are<br />
touches of pathos which are unsurpassed in any<br />
pieces she has ever put on the stage.<br />
<br />
“Le Retour de Jérusalem” is another of the<br />
plays which has been given more than a hundred<br />
times.<br />
<br />
“La Dette,’ by MM. Gavault and Georges<br />
Berr, has been bought for Italy and Germany.<br />
Miss Marbury has also bought it for America.<br />
<br />
M. Porel has lost his case against Madame<br />
Réjane. He had applied to the Court for an<br />
injunction forbidding her to play “La Mon-<br />
tansier” at the theatre to which she has emigrated,<br />
on the plea that this piece was accepted for the<br />
Vaudeville theatre. M. Porel maintained that his<br />
wife could not appear in this play without his<br />
consent. The Court has decided against him, and<br />
Madame Reéjane is triumphant.<br />
<br />
Miss Lindsay, who made her début some little<br />
time ago at the Paris Opéra with such success, has<br />
now been entrusted with the ré/e of Juliette.<br />
<br />
M. Bour has discovered another play, ‘“ Les<br />
Pantins,” in which he appears to be having as<br />
much success as in the famous “ Alleluia,” which<br />
made his name. This new piece treats of an<br />
unsuccessful comedian and his poverty and domestic<br />
troubles. In the last act, while his child is dying<br />
in one room, the wretched man is endeavouring to<br />
learn his new réle. His troubles are, however, too<br />
much for him, and he loses his reason. It is in<br />
this scene that M. Bour is at his best.<br />
<br />
A scheme is now being discussed by a group of<br />
authors who prefer editing and publishing their<br />
books themselves. It is proposed to found a<br />
Librairie Associée des Gens de Lettres as a depdt<br />
for volumes on sale. There are to he only twenty-<br />
<br />
five members, and each member is to pay a sum of<br />
400 francs for the first year to the company.<br />
Every member will then have the right to place<br />
two works in the depot, the number of copies not<br />
to be limited. The profits of other books sold by<br />
the company are to be shared by the members. The<br />
other books would be those placed with the com-<br />
pany by non-members. A committee meeting is to<br />
be held shortly in order to discuss the subject.<br />
<br />
ALys HALLARD.<br />
<br />
a a a rs<br />
<br />
UNITED STATES NOTES.<br />
<br />
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<br />
| AM inclined to consider as the most important<br />
event that has taken place duving the present<br />
year in the American literary world the<br />
publication of Professor N. 8. Shaler’s dramatic<br />
romance “Elizabeth of England.” Even if it<br />
amounts to no more than a considerable tour de<br />
force it shows, at least, that poetry is alive on this<br />
<br />
‘side the Atlantic.<br />
<br />
The professor is a geologist ; and he set out to<br />
show the world that whatever may have happened<br />
to Darwin, there is no reason in the nature of<br />
things why devotion to science should kill the<br />
literary sense. I believe that it is agreed by those<br />
who have read this rather amazing work that it is<br />
a successful demonstration of this contention.<br />
<br />
The “dramatic romance,” which is issued by<br />
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., is then to be regarded<br />
rather in the light of an experiment than considered<br />
on too severely critical grounds. It is divided into<br />
five parts, named respectively “The Coronation,”<br />
“The Rival Queens,” “Armada Days,” “ The<br />
Death of Essex,” and “The Passing of the<br />
Queen.” The greatly daring romancist not only<br />
deals forcefully with these themes in some fifteen<br />
thousand lines of blank verse, but makes the<br />
Virgin Queen discourse with Shakespeare and<br />
bandy philosophy with Bacon.<br />
<br />
A spring book which is sure of a wide circulation<br />
is Francis E. Leupp’s “'The Man Roosevelt.” The<br />
author has known the president for more than<br />
twenty years, both as private individual and public<br />
man, and has been in a position to record things<br />
yet unknown to history.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile the New York Critic has been<br />
exploiting Mr. Roosevelt for its own purposes.<br />
It has induced him to contribute to its columns<br />
an article upon the Republican party ; and it<br />
offers sets of his works at a considerable reduc-<br />
tion as a bait to catch subscribers. This is great<br />
honour for a literary President.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the “ Review” has to bewail<br />
the loss of a prospective contributor in the person of<br />
176<br />
<br />
Mr. Jack London, who has gone to the Far<br />
East as a war correspondent. The author of<br />
“The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come,” has<br />
also gone out to write articles for Seribner’s<br />
Magazine.<br />
<br />
Before commenting further on books and literary<br />
happenings of the present year, I ought to repair<br />
an omission from my last notes. I should have<br />
included in my references to biographical publica-<br />
tions the very readable “ Reminiscences of an<br />
Astronomer”? which Professor Newcomb gave to<br />
the world last autumn. The book has a double<br />
yalue—it is both scientific and human; and it<br />
should by no means be overlooked.<br />
<br />
The fine reprint of Father Hennepin’s “ New<br />
Discovery of a Vast Country in America,” which<br />
has been so ably edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites,<br />
makes a strong appeal to everyone interested in<br />
early American history. The editor holds the<br />
vivacious Franciscan himself responsible for the<br />
borrowings from other sources with which his work<br />
was enriched, and does not allow the plea that a<br />
publisher hath done this.<br />
<br />
A much discussed recent publication is Senator<br />
Beyeridge’s book upon Asiatic Russia. In spite<br />
of the Slavophile proclivities of its author and its<br />
very decided deficiencies as a piece of writing,<br />
“The Russian Advance” deserves serious consider-<br />
<br />
ation on account of the large quantity of informa-<br />
tion, collected at first-hand, which it contains, and<br />
the real grasp of the subject which it shows.<br />
There is a chapter upon Japan.<br />
<br />
Sculpture has been the department of art in<br />
<br />
which Americans have chiefly excelled. It is,<br />
therefore, highly satisfactory that American<br />
sculpture should have found so competent a<br />
historian as Mr. Lorado Taft, and so critical an<br />
admirer as Mr. Charles H. Caffin. The treatises<br />
of the two authors supplement each other, and<br />
together cover the whole field.<br />
<br />
“ The History of American Art” by Sadakichi (?)<br />
Hartmann, on the contrary, excels neither in<br />
critical discernment nor chasteness of diction.<br />
<br />
Rather off the lines of conventional biography is<br />
Mrs. Talbot’s life of her father, General Samuel<br />
Chapman Armstrong. Armstrong did brilliant<br />
work for the North at Gettysburg, but his title to<br />
fame is the great educational work which he carried<br />
on after the war at Hampton, where he trained<br />
Indians side by side with his negroes.<br />
<br />
The “Life and Letters of Margaret Preston,”<br />
edited by her step-daughter, is also rather a<br />
remarkable work. It gives a picture of the<br />
women of the South during the Civil War, from<br />
the pen of one who, though the wife of one of<br />
Jackson’s staff, was the daughter of an abolitionist<br />
and had come from the North. A writer of<br />
stirring war songs, Mrs. Preston numbered among<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
her correspondents Longfellow, Whittier, and Jean<br />
Ingelow.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the most notable novel that I should<br />
mention here is Philip Payne’s political study,<br />
«The Mills of Man,” which shows considerable<br />
skill in characterisation and no slight constructive<br />
power. Chicago is the scene of action and a<br />
millionaire uncle plays a dominant part in it.<br />
<br />
Another story to be read is Mary Findlater’s<br />
«The Rose of Joy,” a nicely balanced study of<br />
incompatible temperaments and many happily hit-<br />
off minor characters.<br />
<br />
Bridge is supplanting fictions in some circles, and<br />
its players have to be catered for. One publishing<br />
house alone advertises three books upon the game,<br />
one of which, “Sixty Bridge Hands,” purports to be<br />
exhaustive! However, there is still for the elect<br />
Messrs. Scribner’s manual, ‘ Elwell on Advanced<br />
Bridge.”<br />
<br />
By the way, the last-named firm has been incor-<br />
porated. Among spring announcements of theirs<br />
are new novels by Thomas Nelson Page and Mrs.<br />
Wharton, and a tale with the strange title of<br />
“Peace and the Vices.”<br />
<br />
The Lothrop Company found it advisable to<br />
make an assignment in February, but their affairs<br />
are well in hand and they have plenty of prospective<br />
business.<br />
<br />
The Madison Book Company have become<br />
Reilly and Britton, incorporated.<br />
<br />
From April 1st juvenile books are to be classed<br />
with fiction and sold at net prices. Some dis-<br />
cussion has been going on as to the working of the<br />
net system, it being maintained in some quarters<br />
that the publishers are not working it fairly. The<br />
excessive output of fiction has also been debated.<br />
That there is a superfluity is actually admitted by<br />
a few houses, who confess that the staple of their<br />
business is really literature of a solider type ; but<br />
even these are sanguine that there is a real advance<br />
in the standard demanded by readers of every class<br />
of publication.<br />
<br />
A copyright treaty between the United States<br />
and China was signed in the autumn of last year,<br />
ratifications were exchanged on January 13, 1904.<br />
<br />
Mark Twain and Mr. Marion Crawford are each<br />
writing new novels, and Mr. Lorimer is losing no<br />
time in following up the success of the Letters<br />
of his Self-made Merchant.<br />
<br />
The chief names in my obituary list are those of<br />
George Francis Train, a prolific author who had<br />
tried numerous other trades before he took tohis pen ;<br />
Professor Von Holst, of Chicago, a Russian refugee,<br />
who wrote monographs on the constitutional history<br />
and law of his adopted country, besides lives of<br />
Calhoun and John Brown; and Parke Godwin,<br />
the son-in-law and biographer of Bryant. His last<br />
work was a study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. ,,\"*<br />
<br />
woe<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
LITERARY, DRAMATIC, AND MUSICAL<br />
PROPERTY.<br />
<br />
ee<br />
Sweden and the Berne Convention.<br />
From tHe “Svenska Daq@BLaD.”<br />
<br />
Tur Swedish Parliament has again lying before<br />
it the question of certain alterations in the national<br />
laws concerning copyrights, since those now in<br />
force prevent Sweden’s adhesion to the inter-<br />
national agreements which are to a certain extent<br />
already in force in the country, or, more plainly, her<br />
adhesion to the union known as the Berne Conven-<br />
tion. The subject has been so frequently discussed<br />
in these columns that we may on this occasion<br />
limit ourselves to a few remarks, which we are<br />
urged to make by the fact that the business stands<br />
to-day on the list for discussion.<br />
<br />
It is His Majesty the King who now suggests, in<br />
terms of a proposal which has been already<br />
described, an alteration of sections 3 and 14 of<br />
the law regarding literary copyright. The altera-<br />
tion of the former of the above-mentioned sections<br />
would have the result that the present protection<br />
of works from translation, which is of two years’<br />
duration, would be extended to ten years ; whilst it<br />
is proposed to give the latter section such a form<br />
that the author’s or translator’s rights in transla-<br />
tions, adaptations, etc., should have a duration of<br />
the author’s life and thirty years afterwards,<br />
instead of extending only to the authov’s life and<br />
five years afterwards, as now.<br />
<br />
The former modification would remove the<br />
difficulty of Sweden’s joining the Berne Conven-<br />
tion on the terms of the original text, and is,<br />
therefore, the one concerning which opinions are<br />
most likely to be divided.<br />
<br />
The legal committee has moved the Royal pro-<br />
posal, and further, on the ground of motions made<br />
by Messrs. Hammarlund and Luidhagen, has<br />
invited the Parliament to request that His Majesty,<br />
going far beyond a mere declaration of Sweden’s<br />
adhesion to the International Union for the<br />
Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, founded<br />
by the Berne Convention, and also entering into<br />
other agreements with foreign powers involving<br />
reciprocal protection for literary and artistic<br />
property, should at the same time make such<br />
limitations that the aforesaid adhesion or agree-<br />
ments should not restrict Swedish citizens from<br />
acquiring legal rights, nor place any legal restric-<br />
tion upon the continuance of their right to obtain<br />
for their purposes the use of stereotypes, clichés,<br />
lithographic stones, and plates of all other kinds,<br />
as well as other means of reproduction which may<br />
be lawfully used.<br />
<br />
In the meanwhile Messrs. Walderstrém and ().<br />
Olsson, of the legal committee, have expressed<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
177<br />
<br />
reservations opposed to this, and have submitted a<br />
protest against the Royal proposal.<br />
<br />
As everyone who takes any interest in these<br />
questions may easily observe the objections to<br />
joining the Convention, objections grounded on<br />
purely interested motives (which are still the<br />
fashion with some few people in Sweden), have to<br />
a great extent given way before a continually<br />
clearer and clearer perception, that we have really<br />
in the first place to deal with a question of the<br />
probity or improbity of the nature of the labour<br />
which the author’s production represents. Were<br />
both the publishing firms and the publishers’<br />
societies fully assured of legal difficulties about to<br />
arise for the publishers and journals of Sweden in<br />
consequence of adhesion to the Berne Convention,<br />
still adhesion to it would be suggested by a certain<br />
sense of national shame, that after both Norway<br />
and Denmark had shown themselves ready to regu-<br />
late a legal protection of literary rights in their<br />
dominions, still Sweden should remain without<br />
any corresponding enactments, and tolerate instead<br />
what is as good as an unlimited piracy.<br />
<br />
But we look in vain for a trace of any such<br />
shame in the reservationists. The only reason, in<br />
the view of the reservationists, prompting adhesion<br />
to the Berne Convention is ‘‘ an extremely dubious,<br />
and at the best comparatively insignificant economic<br />
advantage to be gained by a trivial number of<br />
authors”; after which it is no wonder to find that<br />
“the right of free translation” is preferable. In<br />
the meantime it is to be hoped that the Parliament<br />
will show itself to be more amenable to points of<br />
honour, which amongst those principally interested<br />
has shown itself to possess sufficient authority to<br />
overcome no inconsiderable hesitation based upon<br />
their own interests.<br />
<br />
As regards authors, both motions conduce to the<br />
same results. The reservationists have certainly<br />
aimed at causing the majority of authors to find it<br />
to their interest that the present state of things<br />
should continue ; but the result is that anyone who<br />
has been expecting anything from Parliament will<br />
have reason to rely rather upon the assistance of<br />
the Swedish Society of Authors than upon the<br />
reservationists.<br />
<br />
See<br />
<br />
Literary Competitions.<br />
<br />
DRAWING Room Puay. £10 PRIZE.<br />
<br />
Ar a concert or an evening party at home a short Play<br />
forms an agreeable variation from the usual programme,<br />
The great difficulty, however, is to get a piece within the<br />
capabilities of ordinary amateur performers, not too long,<br />
that does not require anything in the way of scenery and<br />
stage effects.<br />
<br />
By way of supplying this “felt want” we offer a Prize<br />
of £10 for the best Original Short Play suited to the<br />
following requirements, The length, including dialogue,<br />
178<br />
<br />
stage directions, etc., should not exceed 5,000 words. The<br />
characters must not exceed six in number. The scenery<br />
and stage effects must be such as can easily be provided in<br />
a drawing room or small hall.<br />
<br />
The dialogue must be simple and natural, and both it<br />
and the scenes and incidents must be in accordance with<br />
the strictest good taste. ;<br />
<br />
Simple stage directions should be given, and the dresses<br />
to be worn by the various characters should be described<br />
in cases where something different from ordinary costume<br />
is required.<br />
<br />
What is wanted is something after the style of a “curtain<br />
raiser” —a piece embodying an incident rather than an<br />
elaborate story.<br />
<br />
The terms of the competition set forth above<br />
have been taken from a North Country paper. It<br />
has from time to time been the duty of 7’he Author<br />
to point out the difficulties that may arise to those<br />
who enter these competitions owing to the want of<br />
finality in the terms propounded.<br />
<br />
We have no reason to raise objection to this<br />
method of obtaining copy to a certain extent—no<br />
doubt, it acts as a stimulus to young writers—<br />
but it is especially needful to bear in mind that<br />
on many occasions the contracts are indefinite in<br />
terms, and this lack of clear legal draftsmanship<br />
may possibly lead to disputes and confusion when<br />
the prize is awarded.<br />
<br />
The paper from which the cutting is taken offers<br />
a prize of £10 for the best original play written<br />
according to the published requirements.<br />
<br />
What does the proprietor desire to purchase ?<br />
Does he desire to purchase anything? Does he<br />
simply wish to crown the author who wins the<br />
prize with a £10 note, or does he desire to obtain<br />
the copyright, or the performing right, or both,<br />
or does he merely desire to have the right to print<br />
the play in his own paper? It is impossible to<br />
determine from the wording of the notice what is<br />
in the proprietor’s mind. It is equally impossible<br />
to determine what is in the mind of the competitors<br />
when they forward their deathless works.<br />
<br />
If a prize is given at a cattle show for the finest<br />
animal of a certain breed, the authorities who have<br />
promoted the show do not claim the animal as<br />
their own. They do not even claim the use of it.<br />
<br />
It may be, however, as we have suggested,<br />
that the proprietor merely desires to give the<br />
winner of the competition the sum of £10, but<br />
from our knowledge of these competitions, as a<br />
general rule, more than this is required. Some-<br />
times it is simply desired to print the prize<br />
competition in the paper. Sometimes, as sug-<br />
gested, for the proprietor to obtain the whole<br />
copyright. These matters should be clearly set<br />
out. If they are not clearly set out, competitors<br />
should be warned not to send in their MSS. until<br />
they have obtained a definite form of contract.<br />
<br />
We understand that one competitor who wrote<br />
to the proprietor was assured that he did not<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
claim the copyright. This is so far satisfactory,<br />
but still, what did he want to claim ?<br />
<br />
This special offer may be, and no doubt is, bond<br />
fide in purpose. It has been quoted in order<br />
that the attention of members of the Society might<br />
be called to the difficulties and snares that are<br />
constantly recurring.<br />
<br />
0<br />
<br />
LEGAL NOTES.<br />
Sees<br />
_Authors’ Royalties and the Sale of Remainders. :<br />
<br />
HE action of Farmer v. Grant Richards, tried<br />
by Judge Woodfall at the Westminster<br />
County Court on February 26th, involved<br />
<br />
questions of law and fact of considerable interest<br />
to authors, and the history of the case showed<br />
that other questions of a similar character might<br />
have been dealt with in connection with it, as to<br />
which His Honour was not called upon to give a<br />
decision. The plaintiff, an author, sued the defen-<br />
dant, a publisher, for royalties under an agreement<br />
for the publishing of a book. The publisher had<br />
agreed to pay a royalty upon copies of the book<br />
sold, and the retail price was stated. There was<br />
no provision for any sale at any other price by the<br />
publisher than such trade price as this might imply.<br />
The publisher had, however, sold off a large number<br />
of copies asa “‘ remainder.” The author claimed his<br />
full royalty upon each copy so sold. The publisher<br />
offered a percentage, but denied, apparently, that<br />
even this was due. Evidence was given by the<br />
defendant and another publisher with a view to<br />
establishing that the latter was justified by custom<br />
in acting as he did in all particulars, that the<br />
agreement as to a royalty did not apply to copies<br />
sold as a “remainder,” and that either little or<br />
nothing was due to the author upon such a sale.<br />
The judge did not decide the questions of fact as to<br />
the custom, which obviously should not be decided<br />
by any tribunal without ample evidence establish-<br />
ing a custom known and recognised by authors<br />
and publishers alike. As to this he said in his<br />
judgment :—<br />
<br />
“JI should be very sorry if it were necessary for me to<br />
determine this alleged custom in the publishing trade on<br />
the evidence which is before me, because to me it is a<br />
custom fraught with such extremely important conse-<br />
quences both to the publishing trade and to authors, that<br />
if I had to determine this case upon the alleged custom of<br />
remainders, I should feel it was determining it upon wholly<br />
insufficient evidence, but I do not think it is necessary to<br />
determine it.”<br />
<br />
His Honour continued :—<br />
<br />
“The plaintiff's claim is for royalties in respect of 786<br />
copies. Therefore what I have to do is to look at the<br />
agreement whereby the defendant agreed to pay him<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
royalties, and then to see whether the sale of these 786<br />
copies comes within the four corners of that agreement.<br />
_. . It is impossible to come to any other conclusion than<br />
this, that the royalty was to be paid upon copies which were<br />
sold at 10s. 6d. and to say that the parties have agreed<br />
that royalty should be paid in respect of the copies sold<br />
under the circumstances under which these 786 copies were<br />
sold seems to me a perfectly untenable contention. It may<br />
very well be that the plaintiff has an action against the<br />
defendant for damages. but I am quite confident that he<br />
has no ground whatever to claim royalties in respect of<br />
these 786 copies . . . on the construction of the agree-<br />
ment made between them as to royalties, Isay the plaintiff<br />
is not entitled to royalties.”<br />
<br />
In a discussion which followed judgment, His<br />
Honour said,<br />
<br />
“JT tell you candidly your action should be one for<br />
damages for selling these books in breach of an agreement.”<br />
<br />
Judgment was given for the defendant with<br />
costs, and in the subsequent discussion referred to,<br />
doubt was expressed as to how far an appeal would<br />
lie against the decision. It was one apparently of<br />
mixed fact and law, but as it mainly turned upon<br />
the correct construction to be put upon the agree-<br />
ment between the parties, there can be little doubt<br />
that the Divisional Court would have had jurisdic-<br />
tion to hear an appeal had one been brought. I<br />
am informed that none is to be attempted, which<br />
is a matter for regret, as although the defendant<br />
may not have contemplated paying royalties on the<br />
“ yemainder,” it would have been interesting to<br />
see whether a Divisional Court would have held<br />
that he nevertheless bound himself by the terms<br />
of his agreement to do so. The sale of the<br />
“remainder” of the copies of a book after its<br />
general sale is believed to be over is not an un-<br />
common incident of publishing, and in consequence<br />
of this it is not unusual to find a clause regulating<br />
the conditions of such sale in an agreement. When<br />
this has been omitted the publisher, if he desires<br />
to sell, usually negotiates with the author before<br />
doing so. At all events, it is open for him to do<br />
so, and if he does this the author has the oppor-<br />
tunity of discussing whether the necessity for such<br />
sale has arisen. If the publisher does not so nego-<br />
tiate, but sells instead, presumably for his own<br />
benefit, is he not bound by any form of words in<br />
which he has promised to pay a royalty to the author<br />
upon copies of the author's work sold by him ?<br />
This is the question which His Honour Judge<br />
Woodfall appears to have decided against the<br />
author and in favour of the publisher, and whether<br />
it is assumed that his decision is correct, or not,<br />
it is one which other Judges may give in similar<br />
circumstances, and against the possibility of which<br />
authors in their own interests can protect them-<br />
selves. In other words, the questions whether the<br />
author is to receive his royalty upon remainders as<br />
upon other copies of the book, or whether he is to<br />
be paid at some other rate in respect of them, and<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
179<br />
<br />
if so at what rate, or whether he is not to be paid<br />
for remainders at all, are matters for which every<br />
publishing agreement should specifically provide.<br />
There can be no reason why it should not do so,<br />
and the introduction of a clause dealing definitely<br />
with the matter, or even the attempt to introduce<br />
one, will call the attention of both parties to it.<br />
Should such a clause be discussed, the author<br />
would be very likely to protest against a stipula-<br />
tion that upon copies sold as a “remainder” he<br />
was to receive nothing. As to this there was<br />
evidence at the hearing of Marmer v. Grant Richards,<br />
given by Mr.Grant Richards himself, that he allowed.<br />
5 per cent. upon such sales, so that he presumably<br />
would not object to inserting a condition to<br />
that effect in his agreements. Mr. Heinemann,<br />
however, gave evidence that his own custom was<br />
to allow the author nothing upon such occasions.<br />
He is therefore an instance of a publisher, who, if<br />
asked to insert such a condition, would decline to<br />
do so, and if sued for even 5 per cent. upon the<br />
product of a remainder would dispute the claim, and<br />
it is hardly necessary to point out that an action in<br />
such a case, with conflicting evidence as to trade<br />
custom would be, whatever its issue, unproductive<br />
of any substantial benefit to either party. On the<br />
other hand, if the author endeavoured to get<br />
inserted into his agreement a covenant to pay the<br />
full rovalty on all surplus copies sold, he would in<br />
my opinion, be extremely likely to meet with<br />
refusal. In any case, however, the matter would<br />
be arranged beforehand, and an opportunity for<br />
future litigation would be avoided. Anagreement<br />
with regard to the sale of remainders should define<br />
the circumstances in which they are to be sold,<br />
whether at the end of a given time or other-<br />
wise, and it must be pointed out that with some<br />
books not expected to have an ephemeral sale<br />
only, it may be important to guard against any<br />
such sale taking place at all. It also seems fair<br />
that an author should stipulate for notice of<br />
such a sale being given to him, because he may<br />
like to buy in his own books so as to deal with<br />
them afterwards himself. The publisher can hardly<br />
refuse such a condition, as it is to his own<br />
interest that the price should be enhanced as it<br />
might be in such circumstances. The proviso<br />
that the author should have the option of buying<br />
at a fixed price is also possible. All these con-<br />
ditions pre-suppose to some extent that the pub-<br />
lisher is an honest man who will push the sale<br />
while it is possible to do so, but the price of a<br />
remainder is not likely to tempt the dishonest to<br />
neglect to sell at the full rate as long as it is<br />
possible to do so, even at some cost in advertising,<br />
and a publisher not carrying out his contract lays<br />
himself open to an action like any other man. Tt<br />
will be observed that the Judge at the Westminster<br />
<br />
<br />
180<br />
<br />
County Court repeatedly pointed out the other<br />
form in which Mr. Farmer’s case might have been<br />
presented. He meant that had the action been<br />
brought for damages sustained by the plaintiff<br />
through a breach of his agreement, and had it been<br />
proved that the agreement was so broken, the<br />
plaintiff would have been entitled to compensation<br />
in the form of damages, although he was not<br />
entitled to it in the form of royalties. In such<br />
an action it would have been necessary to prove<br />
that the agreement was not carried out by the<br />
publisher, and that the sale of the remainder<br />
was in violation of it. Any action fought out<br />
upon facts calculated to test the relative rights<br />
of publishers and author, to determine, what is<br />
reasonable fulfilment of the duty of a publisher<br />
bound by an agreement not specific upon every<br />
point, is no doubt of interest to writers and pub-<br />
lishers alike. It is, however, better to provide as<br />
far as possible for the usual risks and contingencies<br />
of book publishing beforehand. In order to do this<br />
some knowledge of those risks is necessary, and it<br />
is, I believe, in order to provide that knowledge<br />
that the Society of Authors offers its advice and the<br />
fruits of its experience to its members.<br />
<br />
i. A. ARMSTRONG.<br />
<br />
+<br />
<br />
Il.<br />
<br />
What Constitutes Acceptance?<br />
<br />
Art the City of London Court on March Ist,<br />
the writer of an article, sent unsolicited to<br />
the Sportsman, sued for payment, on the ground<br />
that it had been accepted for publication. His<br />
evidence with regard to this appears to have<br />
been that he was told by the editor, or by some<br />
one representing him, that the article was “‘ reserved<br />
for use.” This does not seem to have been dis-<br />
puted, but whether it was or not, Judge Lumley<br />
Smith held that the words “reserved for use” did<br />
not necessarily mean that the article was accepted,<br />
and he gave judgment for the defendants. This<br />
decision, that the defendant did not accept, or in<br />
other words, did not agree to print and publish the<br />
article, is one of fact, and therefore, presumably,<br />
there will be no appeal in the case. As a decision<br />
of fact, upon the story as it was reported in the<br />
Daily Chronicle of March 2nd, it is open to<br />
criticism. “‘ Reserved for consideration” is a<br />
phrase which might have been used, which would<br />
have been perfectly understood, and which would<br />
have given the author an opportunity for saying<br />
that he desired a more definite decision at once,<br />
had he been inclined to take such a course.<br />
“Reserved for use’? would to most persons have<br />
a different meaning. An Editor “uses” an article<br />
when he publishes it, and “reserved for publica-<br />
<br />
THB AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
tion” could hardly mean less than that the<br />
editor intended to publish the article and promised<br />
to do so, although the word “reserved” might<br />
imply that the publication would not be immediate,<br />
but would take place within a reasonable time at<br />
the editor’s convenience. Ifthe judge was really<br />
satisfied that the words “reserved for use” were<br />
either spoken or written by the editor or by some<br />
one having a right to make a contract on behalf of<br />
the paper, it seems a little difficult to account for<br />
the interpretation which he put upon a tolerably<br />
clear and not uncommon English phrase. He<br />
seems, however, to some extent to have been<br />
influenced by recollection of a past decision of his<br />
own which he appears to have regretted, and<br />
which he hinted he would not now repeat in<br />
similar circumstances. In giving judgment he<br />
alluded to a similar case in which he gave a verdict<br />
for the plaintiff, but in which the article appeared<br />
in print, and he added, according to the report in<br />
the Daily Chronicle, that he had since been “ told by<br />
literary men that many contributions were so<br />
illegible that they- had to be set up in print to see<br />
if they were worth using.” The past decision to<br />
which Judge Lumley Smith referred was evidently<br />
that in Jlacdonald v. The National Review, tried<br />
by him when judge of the Westminster County<br />
Court in 1893, of which a full account is to be<br />
found in The Author for June of that year. Many<br />
will remember it, because it excited a good deal of<br />
criticism at the time, and the Society of Authors<br />
was commended by some and blamed by the<br />
Saturday Review and others for the part which<br />
it took in obtaining the decision given. The ques-<br />
tion at issue, put in its shortest form, was whether<br />
the sending of a proof of an unsolicited article to<br />
the author constituted acceptance by the editor<br />
and bound him to pay for the article. In dac-<br />
donald v. The National Review delay on the part<br />
of the editor in publishing the article had caused<br />
remonstrance by the author, and the editor had<br />
claimed the right to return the article in conse-<br />
quence. The decision of the judge that the<br />
sending of the proof constituted acceptance of the<br />
article, commended itself to most authors, and<br />
was not dissented from by all editors, and if<br />
Judge Lumley Smith has altered his opinion for<br />
the reason quoted above he has done so upon<br />
grounds which scarcely seem to be adequate. It<br />
was pointed out in Zhe Author of June, 1893,<br />
p- 15, that “if the proof does not mean acceptance<br />
it would cost the editor nothing more than a<br />
printed slip to say so.” A printed slip equally<br />
would inform the author that the editor finding<br />
his article illegible in manuscript had had it set<br />
up in order to see whether it was readable in print.<br />
It is not necessary to discuss whether any such<br />
practice on the part of editors, accompanied by<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
the sending of proofs to the authors, exists to an<br />
appreciable extent.<br />
<br />
The point upon which emphasis is laid, is that<br />
if such a thing is done, the author can and should<br />
be informed of the editor’s intention, and all cause<br />
for future misunderstanding thereby removed.<br />
The object in sending a proof upon such an<br />
oceasion would be to make sure that the printer<br />
had been able to decipher the article, before the<br />
editor had the trouble of reading it, not the<br />
correction of the article as a preliminary to publi-<br />
cation.<br />
<br />
It is hardly unreasonable, however, to suggest<br />
that a proof is usually sent to an author that he<br />
may correct it for publication. The corrections<br />
which he makes, whether they may alter the article<br />
(perhaps so as to bring it up to date), or may<br />
simply set right printers’ errors, are scarcely<br />
needed in order to aid the editor in forming an<br />
opinion upon its merits. They are, beyond dispute,<br />
desirable if it is going to be published, and it is<br />
because it is going to be published, and at the<br />
time when it is going to be published, that the<br />
editor in most cases sends the proof to the author.<br />
It may be very convenient for an editor to read an<br />
article in print, to reserve it without binding<br />
himself to use it, to have it as corrected by the<br />
author ready to hand in case it may be needed in<br />
an emergency, but the author has a right to<br />
understand and to assent to or dissent from such a<br />
course of business. Equally the editor who should<br />
intimate to the author that he was retaining an<br />
article without definitely accepting it, would be<br />
entitled to a prompt acceptance or refusal of his<br />
conditions.<br />
<br />
—_—_____—_e—<—e-—_——<br />
<br />
AUTHORS’ AGENTS.<br />
<br />
1<br />
<br />
rWVHE methods of the Author’s Agent are of<br />
[ growing importance to all those who live<br />
by the production of literary property.<br />
<br />
There are many who consider that they have<br />
only to put their work into the hands of an agent<br />
in order to obtain a literary success, or at any rate,<br />
a large increase in their incomes. These, after the<br />
lapse of a year, often give up the employment of<br />
an agent as they find no increased benefit from his<br />
assistance. There are many, again—especially<br />
those whose incomes from their literary works run<br />
to four figures—who derive no small benefit from<br />
an agent’s help. For these the agent works with<br />
untiring zeal, as the work is not difficult to place,<br />
and the returns are large. ‘There are those, again,<br />
<br />
who are hopelessly unbusinesslike. For these an<br />
agent is essential whether the author’s returns are<br />
large or not.<br />
<br />
To the beginner, as a rule, the agent is of very<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
181<br />
<br />
little use. The author’s marketable output is so<br />
small that it does not pay the agent to make any<br />
considerable effort. ‘To the author who is aiso a<br />
man of business, unless he can make an arrange-<br />
ment at a considerably lower figure than the usual<br />
10 per cent., the agent is again of very little use.<br />
<br />
The only people, therefore, to whom an agent<br />
is really essential are those writers with a medium<br />
or large output, who lack business capacity, and,<br />
in some cases, those writers with a large output<br />
who hold a reasonable contract ; but a reasonable<br />
contract is certainly not 10 per cent. on all income<br />
continuing while the copyright lasts. The figure<br />
of remuneration should be determined by arranging<br />
either for a lower percentage or 10 per cent. up to<br />
a fixed sum.<br />
<br />
The business of a literary agent is not run on<br />
philanthropic lines any more than that of a pub-<br />
lisher, and it is necessary therefore, and natural,<br />
for him to give more detailed attention and greater<br />
care to those who bring him in a large income,<br />
than to those whose output is small. But there<br />
are one or two important questions which call for<br />
remark, and one or two dangers to be avoided<br />
which, arising out of the employment of the<br />
middleman, fall outside the agent’s legitimate<br />
work.<br />
<br />
In many cases an editor, in order to avoid<br />
trouble, goes to an agent and says that he wants<br />
a story by a certain author for which he will pay<br />
a certain price. The agent, who has not the<br />
name of the author on his books, finds out his<br />
address and writes to him. ‘The author consents<br />
to the contract and the agent takes 10 per cent.<br />
from him, Surely, on this occasion, the agent is<br />
acting, not for the author, but for the editor, from<br />
whom his commission should come? The author<br />
is, no doubt, to blame, and could dispute the<br />
charge if he was fully cognisant of his legal posi-<br />
tion, but unfortunately he yields himself an easy<br />
prey to the persistent agent.<br />
<br />
Again, agents have been known to go round to<br />
editors and offer to obtain stories for them from<br />
authors whose names are not on their books—<br />
again with a beneficial result to the agent out of<br />
the author’s pocket. But it is the wrong person<br />
who pays. Some literary agents indeed clearly<br />
state that they are acting for publishers and<br />
editors. If this is the case they have no right to<br />
charge the author commission on work placed with<br />
one of the editors or publishers for whom they are<br />
acting. The point is becoming one of great, and<br />
grave importance, as there are signs that agents<br />
do not always keep the welfare of the author before<br />
them, but are inclined to play the publisher’s hand<br />
rather than the author's.<br />
<br />
The facts must be plainly stated, and some<br />
clear understanding must be arrived at. An agent<br />
<br />
<br />
182<br />
<br />
cannot act for both parties in a financial bargain.<br />
If he attempts to hold such an anomalous position, it<br />
is clear that one party must suffer. As a rule the<br />
sufferer is the author, who is much less capable of<br />
solving these financial difficulties than the editor<br />
or publisher. But in whatever way the bargain<br />
goes, the agent must be tarnished. This is no<br />
imaginary case, and matters are getting more<br />
serious as the competition amongst agents Increases.<br />
<br />
The second point arises where an agent purchases<br />
and sells literary work acting as principal. The<br />
commencement of this dangerous practice is in<br />
this wise. An agent is employed by an author<br />
whose works have more literary merit than public<br />
approval, and enters into a contract with a pub-<br />
lisher or editor on his behalf, under which payment<br />
is to be made at certain future dates. The author<br />
feels the grip of poverty. The agent, with com-<br />
mendable charity, provides the money at con-<br />
siderably more than the bank rate of interest.<br />
This method is then carried a step further, and<br />
the agent actually purchases copy outright, merely,<br />
of course, to oblige the author, and, waiting<br />
his opportunity, sells again to the publisher or<br />
editor at a figure which amply covers all risks, and<br />
is much more profitable than dealing at 10 per<br />
cent. Eventually he finds it better policy to<br />
interest himself in the rising author on this basis,<br />
<br />
and neglects the business of those who still desire<br />
to employ him as a bond fide agent on commission<br />
<br />
terms. Although the author acquiesces in the<br />
arrangement, he does so to the danger of his fellow<br />
craftsmen ; for this mixture of principal and agent<br />
is no less dangerous than the other practices referred<br />
to, and brings discredit on the middleman.<br />
<br />
There is a further point to be considered. An<br />
agent obtains an introduction for an author to an<br />
editor. Is the author bound to pay commission<br />
on any future work placed with the same editor ?<br />
Some agents claim that this is the case so long as<br />
the author is still employing them, even though<br />
the employment may be in other matters. Some<br />
go so far as to claim it even when the agency<br />
contract is at an end. There is, of course, the<br />
agent’s point of view—that it would be possible to<br />
find markets for an author, and it would be possible<br />
for the author to determine his arrangement with<br />
the agent as soon as he found that his markets were<br />
sufficiently numerous.<br />
<br />
But what is tobe said of the agent who, while<br />
continuing to carry on his business, abuses his<br />
employers in no measured terms, and is particular<br />
to remark that they must be kept out of the toils<br />
of the Authors’ Society.<br />
<br />
Tf he thinks so badly of his employers, he is no<br />
doubt anxious to avoid the toils of the Society for<br />
his contracts as well as his authors. By such a<br />
proclamation he, at any rate, throws his cards on<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
the table. If he is overcome with this feeling<br />
would it not have been wiser—to carry the simile<br />
further—that he held up his hand to the bitter<br />
end. This is positive aggression, but the negative<br />
pole is more difficult to deal with. In this case<br />
an agent, when an author comes to him, does not<br />
tell him to avoid the Society, but takes good care<br />
not to refer to it at all. When the author gets<br />
into legal difficulties, whether rising from the<br />
fault of his guide or from other reasons, instead of<br />
giving encouragement to his becoming one of the<br />
body of his fellow workers where he would get his<br />
legal difficulties set right free of cost, he takes<br />
him off to his own solicitor and avoids in this way<br />
“the toils of the Society.” But the unfortunate<br />
author has to meet the lawyer’s bill.<br />
<br />
In any case, there appears to be only one<br />
reason why an agent should not work in harmony<br />
with the Society, and also be an ardent supporter of<br />
it, and that is, that he does not care for a too<br />
careful inspection of his contracts and of his<br />
methods of dealing with the literary property of<br />
those who employ him.<br />
<br />
From the cases quoted above, it is quite clear<br />
that, on many occasions, there is very good reason,<br />
from the agent’s point of view, why the Authors’<br />
Society should not be brought into consultation ;<br />
but other reasons arise why it is necessary that the<br />
author should keep a watchful eye over the<br />
negotiations, even when the agent is engaged in<br />
his legitimate business.<br />
<br />
To begin with, literary agents are not as a rule<br />
lawyers, and, therefore, are hardly competent to<br />
draw up a legal document or to advise the author<br />
on signing the same.<br />
<br />
This point has become apparent on reviewing a<br />
series of contracts which have been brought to<br />
the Society’s offices, unfortunately after signature<br />
and after accepting the agent’s advice.<br />
<br />
An agent has allowed an author to enter into<br />
half-profit agreements, and royalty agreements<br />
with exceedingly low royalties, and to bind him-<br />
self to the publisher for the next two books on the<br />
same terms.<br />
<br />
That the agent should pass an agreement for<br />
half profits and for low royalties might perhaps<br />
be excusable under exceptional circumstances,<br />
but that an agent should pass the two-book clause<br />
is absolutely and entirely inexcusable. Such<br />
action shows either a complete disregard of the<br />
author’s interest or an absolute ignorance of the _<br />
agent’s own business, unless, absit omen, there are<br />
other and deeper reasons for the step.<br />
<br />
This rule must be laid down as absolute : Wo<br />
author should, in any circumstances, bind himself to<br />
a publisher for more than one book.<br />
<br />
Do not sign agreements containing the above<br />
condition, not even though the agent may stand<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
over you pen in hand and demand your signature,<br />
stating that he can do no more for you if you<br />
refuse to sign.<br />
<br />
Again, agreements made through an agent are<br />
frequently brought forward, which assign transla-<br />
tion rights, Continental rights, American rights,<br />
and even dramatic rights, to the publisher, and the<br />
author has to allow the publisher 50 per cent. if he<br />
succeeds in selling or getting rid of them.<br />
<br />
Now, it is not the publisher’s business but the<br />
agent’s to sell these rights. This has repeatedly<br />
been explained. In any case, the publisher is not<br />
entitled to 50 per cent. of the returns.<br />
<br />
Again, it is possible that such a case as the<br />
following might occur :<br />
<br />
An agent is exceedingly busy with the works<br />
of many authors. It is important that he should<br />
get some of them settled and off his hands at the<br />
earliest opportunity.<br />
<br />
Therefore, in a moment of carelessness he<br />
advises an author to accept such terms as will<br />
not be satisfactory in their result.<br />
<br />
This case, like the former, points to the fact<br />
that the author cannot be too careful about what<br />
agreement he enters into, whether such agree-<br />
ment is put before him directly by the publisher<br />
or by the publisher through his (the author’s)<br />
own agent.<br />
<br />
The mere question of the financial terms of an<br />
agreement is by no means the only one which<br />
should be looked into. Jn some cases the control<br />
of the property is even of more importance to the<br />
author than the financial question.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, therefore, it is evident that agents<br />
are not only in many cases incompetent to act as<br />
legal advisers, but that often they are wanting in<br />
a knowledge of their business as the confidential<br />
assistants of authors.<br />
<br />
Tf authors have any doubt about the document<br />
laid before them they should certainly consult<br />
the Society, even though the agent may see objec-<br />
tions, as he surely will, to their adopting this<br />
course.<br />
<br />
In this paper has been set forth the many<br />
difficulties and dangers that surround an author in<br />
his dealings with the literary agent, and the<br />
subject has been treated in full detail. It must<br />
not be thought, however, that there is no brighter<br />
side to the relations. Although the number of<br />
authors’ agents is increasing, they are still a small<br />
body. There are those who do not take up the<br />
work of a great many authors, but limit them-<br />
selves strictly to work which they can do thoroughly<br />
and satisfactorily. Accordingly those for whom<br />
they deal have to report nothing but pleasant<br />
intercourse and satisfactory negotiations. There<br />
<br />
are those again, whose work on behalf of a great<br />
many authors is painstaking and reliable, and<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
183<br />
<br />
the authors reap the benefit by an increased<br />
income and a larger market. The real per-<br />
fection of literary agency, however, is still to be<br />
desired. Perhaps the ideal literary agent would<br />
be one who for a fixed sum per annum, worked<br />
for a fair number of authors. Considerable work<br />
on this basis would be of the greatest benefit to<br />
those who employed him, and the least expense to<br />
the agent, as it would hardly be necessary for him<br />
under these circumstances to rent an office or<br />
employ a large staff of clerks.<br />
<br />
Again it must be stated that the matter is of<br />
serious import, and that authors should give careful<br />
consideration to the difficulties of their position.<br />
<br />
GH YF.<br />
<br />
+ —o+—____——-<br />
<br />
THE MARCH MAGAZINE CONTENTS.<br />
<br />
——+-—<—<br />
LITERARY, DRAMATIC, AND MUSICAL.<br />
<br />
BLACKWOOD’s MAGAZINE.<br />
<br />
The Future of Public Taste in Literature : “ Musing<br />
Without Method.”’<br />
CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.<br />
<br />
Recollections of Renan. By Emily Crawford.<br />
Studies in Literary Psychology :—111. Carlyle and the<br />
Present Tense. By Vernon Lee.<br />
CORNHILL MAGAZINE.<br />
<br />
Herbert Spencer. By Hector Macpherson.<br />
<br />
LONGMAN’S MAGAZINE.<br />
<br />
“ A Defence of Play Reading.’’ By W. E. Hicks.<br />
<br />
MACMILLAN’S MAGAZINE,<br />
Matthew Arnold as a Popular Poet. By W. A. Sibbald.<br />
<br />
TEMPLE BAR.<br />
<br />
Heine and Sir Walter Scott. By James H. Henderson.<br />
<br />
THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.<br />
<br />
Growing Distaste for the Higher Kinds of Poetry. By<br />
Alfred Austin.<br />
<br />
Collected Poems of Christina Rossetti.<br />
Hueffer.<br />
<br />
By Ford Madox<br />
<br />
THE MONTHLY REVIEW.<br />
Ainger Canon : A personal impression.<br />
Two Unpublished Poems by Crabbe.<br />
Hudson.<br />
<br />
By Edith Sichel.<br />
Edited by R.<br />
<br />
THE NATIONAL REVIEW.<br />
Is Fiction Deteriorating? By Miss Jane H. Findlater.<br />
Barly Recollections of Mr. Lecky. By A College Friend.<br />
Tue NINETEENTH CENTURY REVIEW,<br />
The Reorganization of the British Drama by the State.<br />
By Henry Arthur Jones.<br />
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.<br />
<br />
Mr. Creevy and his Contemporaries.<br />
The Homeric Question ?<br />
The Abbé Loisy.<br />
<br />
<br />
184<br />
<br />
WARNINGS TO THE PRODUCERS<br />
OF BOOKS.<br />
<br />
—1_—>—<br />
<br />
ERE are a few standing rules to be observed in an<br />
agreement. ‘There are four methods of dealing<br />
with literary property :—<br />
<br />
I, Selling it Outright.<br />
<br />
This is sometimes satisfactory, if a proper price can be<br />
obtained. But the transaction should be managed by a<br />
competent agent, or with the advice of the Secretary of<br />
the Society.<br />
<br />
Il. A Profit-Sharing Agreement (a bad form of<br />
agreement),<br />
<br />
In this case the following rules should be attended to:<br />
<br />
C1.) Not to sign any agreement in which the cost of pro-<br />
duction forms a part without the strictest investigation,<br />
<br />
(2.) Not to give the publisher the power of putting the<br />
profits into his own pocket by charging for advertisements<br />
in his own organs, or by charging exchange advertise-<br />
ments. Therefore keep control of the advertisements,<br />
<br />
(3.) Not to allow a special charge for ‘‘ office expenses,”<br />
unless the same allowance is made to the author.<br />
<br />
(4.) Not to give up American, Colonial, or Continental<br />
rights.<br />
<br />
(5.) Not to give up serial or translation rights.<br />
<br />
(6.) Not to bind yourself for future work to any publisher.<br />
As well bind yourself for the future to any one solicitor or<br />
doctor !<br />
<br />
III. The Royalty System.<br />
<br />
This is perhaps, with certain limitations, the best form<br />
of agreement. It is above all things necessary to know<br />
what the proposed royalty means to both sides. It is now<br />
possible for an author to ascertain approximately the<br />
truth. From time to time very important figures connected<br />
with royalties are published in Zhe Author.<br />
<br />
IY. A Commission Agreement.<br />
<br />
The main points are :—<br />
<br />
(1.) Be careful to obtain a fair cost of production.<br />
<br />
(2.) Keep control of the advertisements.<br />
<br />
(3.) Keep control of the sale price of the book.<br />
<br />
General.<br />
<br />
All other forms of agreement are combinations of the four<br />
above mentioned.<br />
<br />
Such combinations are generally disastrous to the author.<br />
<br />
Never sign any agreement without competent advice from<br />
the Secretary of the Society.<br />
<br />
Stamp all agreements with the Inland Revenue stamp.<br />
<br />
Avoid agreements by letter if possible.<br />
<br />
The main points which the Society has always demanded<br />
from the outset are :—<br />
<br />
C1.) That both sides shall know what an agreement<br />
means.<br />
<br />
(2.) The inspection of those account books which belong<br />
tothe author. We are advised that this is a right, in the<br />
nature of a common law right, which cannot be denied or<br />
withheld.<br />
<br />
(3.) Always avoid a transfer of copyright.<br />
<br />
gg<br />
<br />
WARNINGS TO DRAMATIC AUTHORS.<br />
age<br />
N “Seer sign an agreement without submitting it to the<br />
a Secretary of the Society of Authors or some com-<br />
petent legal authority.<br />
2. [t is well to be extremely careful in negotiating for<br />
<br />
the production of a play with anyone except an established<br />
manager.<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
3. There are three forms of dramatic contract for plays<br />
in three or more acts :—<br />
<br />
(a.) Sale outright of the performing right. This<br />
is unsatisfactory. An author who enters into<br />
such a contract should stipulate in the contract<br />
for production of the piece by a certain date<br />
and for proper publication of his name on the<br />
play-bills,<br />
<br />
(4.) Sale of performing right or of a licence to<br />
perform on the basis of percentages on<br />
gross receipts. Percentages vary between 5<br />
and 15 per cent. An author should obtain a<br />
percentage on the sliding scale of gruss receipts<br />
in preference to the American system. Should<br />
obtain a sum in advance of percentages. <A fixed<br />
date on or before which the play should be<br />
performed,<br />
<br />
(c.) Sale of performing right or of a licence to<br />
perform on the basis of royalties (i.c., fixed<br />
nightly fees). This method should be always<br />
avoided except in cases where the fees are<br />
likely to be small or difficult to collect. The<br />
other safeguards set out under heading (0.) apply<br />
also in this case.<br />
<br />
4. Plays in one act are often sold outright, but it is<br />
better to obtain a small nightly fee if possible, and a sum<br />
paid in advance of such fees in any event. It is extremely<br />
important that the amateur rights of one-act plays should<br />
be reserved.<br />
<br />
5. Authors should remember that performing rights can<br />
be limited, and are usually limited, by town, country, and<br />
time. This is most important.<br />
<br />
6. Authors should not assign performing rights, but<br />
should grant a licence to perform. The legal distinction is<br />
of great importance.<br />
<br />
7. Authors should remember that performing rights in a<br />
play are distinct from literary copyright. A manager<br />
holding the performing right or licence to perform cannot<br />
print the book of the words.<br />
<br />
8. Never forget that United States rights may be exceed-<br />
ingly valuable. ‘lhey should never be included in English<br />
agreements without the author obtaining a substantial<br />
consideration.<br />
<br />
9. Agreements for collaboration should be carefully<br />
drawn and executed before collaboration is commenced.<br />
<br />
10. An author should remember that production of a play<br />
is highly speculative : that he runs a very great risk of<br />
delay and a breakdown in the fulfilment of his contract.<br />
He should therefore guard himself all the more carefully in<br />
the beginning.<br />
<br />
11. An author must remember that the dramatic market<br />
is exceedingly limited, and that for a novice the first object<br />
is to obtain adequate publication.<br />
<br />
As these warnings must necessarily be incomplete, on<br />
account of the wide range of the subject of dramatic con-<br />
tracts, those authors desirous of further information<br />
are referred to the Secretary of the Society.<br />
<br />
ae 6<br />
<br />
WARNINGS TO MUSICAL COMPOSERS.<br />
eee,<br />
<br />
ITTLE can be added to the warnings given for the<br />
assistance of producers of books and dramatic<br />
authors. It must, however, be pointed out that, as<br />
<br />
a rule, the musical publisher demands from the musical<br />
composer a transfer of fuller rights and less liberal finan-<br />
cial terms than those obtained for literary and dramatic<br />
property. The musical composer has very often the two<br />
rights to deal with—performing right and copyright. He<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
should be especially careful therefore when entering into<br />
an agreement, and should take into particular consideration<br />
the warnings stated above.<br />
<br />
—_—___—_—_1+—>—_+_—_<br />
<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
<br />
—— ><br />
<br />
i VERY member has a right toask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
<br />
business or the administration of his property. The<br />
<br />
Secretary of the Society is a solicitor, but if there is any<br />
<br />
special reason the Secretary will refer the case to the<br />
<br />
Solicitors of the Society. Further, the Committee, if they<br />
<br />
deem it desirable, will obtain counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
<br />
without any cost to the member.<br />
<br />
2. Remember that questions connected with copyright<br />
and publishers’ agreements do not fall within the experi-<br />
ence of ordinarysolicitors. Therefore, do not seruple to use<br />
the Society.<br />
<br />
3. Send to the Office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts, with a copy of the book represented. The<br />
Secretary will always be glad to have any agreements, new<br />
or old, for inspection and note. The information thus<br />
obtained may prove invaluable.<br />
<br />
4. Before signing any agreement whatever, send<br />
the document to the Society for examination.<br />
<br />
5. Remember always that in belonging to the Society<br />
you are fighting the battles of other writers, even if you<br />
are reaping no benefit to yourself, and that you are<br />
advancing the best interests of your calling in promoting<br />
the independence of the writer, the dramatist, the composer.<br />
<br />
6. The Committee have now arranged for the reception<br />
of members’ agreements and their preservation in a fire-<br />
proof safe. The agreements will, of course, be regarded as<br />
confidential documents to be read only by the Secretary,<br />
who will keep the key of the safe. The Society now offers :<br />
—(1) To read and advise upon agreements and to give<br />
advice concerning publishers. (2) ‘To stamp agreements<br />
in readiness for a possible action upon them. (3) To keep<br />
<br />
agreements. (4) To enforce payments due according to<br />
agreements. Fuller particulars of the Society’s work<br />
<br />
can be obtained in the Prospectus.<br />
<br />
7. No contract should be entered into with a literary<br />
agent without the advice of the Secretary of the Society.<br />
Members are strongly advised not to accept without careful<br />
consideration the contracts with publishers submitted to<br />
them by literary agents, and are recommended to submit<br />
them for interpretation and explanation to the Secretary<br />
of the Society.<br />
<br />
8. Many agents neglect to stamp agreements This<br />
must be done within fourteen days of first execution. The<br />
Secretary will undertake it on behalf of members.<br />
<br />
9, Some agents endeavour to prevent authors from<br />
referring matters to the Secretary of the Society ; so<br />
do some publishers. Members can make their own<br />
deductions and act accordingly.<br />
<br />
10. The subscription to the Society is £1 1s. per<br />
annum, or £10 10s for life membership.<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
THE READING BRANCH.<br />
<br />
= ——+ -<br />
<br />
EMBERS will greatly assist the Society in this<br />
3b branch of its work by informing young writers<br />
<br />
of its existence. Their MSS. can be read and<br />
treated as a composition is treated by a coach. The term<br />
MSS. includes not only works of fiction, but poetry<br />
and dramatic works, and when it is possible, under<br />
special arrangement, technical and scientific works. The<br />
Readers are writers of competence and experience. The<br />
fee is one guinea,<br />
<br />
o> e<br />
<br />
NOTICES.<br />
<br />
7<br />
<br />
HE Editor of Zhe Author begs to remind members of<br />
<br />
the Society that, although the paper is sent to them<br />
<br />
free of charge, the cost of producing it would be a<br />
<br />
very heavy charge on the resources of the Society if a great<br />
<br />
many members did not forward to the Secretary the modest<br />
5s. 6d. subscription for the year.<br />
<br />
Communications for Zhe Author should be addressed to<br />
the Offices of the Society, 39, Old Queen Street, Storey’s<br />
Gate, 8.W., and should reach the Editor not later than<br />
the 21st of each month.<br />
<br />
All persons engaged in literary work of any kind,<br />
whether members of the Society or not, are invited to<br />
communicate to the Editor any points connected with their<br />
work which it would be advisable in the general interest to<br />
publish.<br />
<br />
ope<br />
<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the<br />
Editor on all subjects connected with literature, but on<br />
no other subjects whatever. Every effort will be made to<br />
return articles which cannot be accepted.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
1<br />
<br />
The Secretary of the Society begs to give notice<br />
that all remittances are acknowledged by return of post,<br />
and he requests members who do not receive an<br />
answer to important communications within two days to<br />
write to him without delay. All remittances should be<br />
crossed Union Bank of London, Chancery Lane, or be sent<br />
by registered letter only.<br />
<br />
<><br />
<br />
THE LEGAL AND GENERAL LIFE<br />
ASSURANCE SOCIETY.<br />
<br />
1<br />
<br />
N offer has been made of a special scheme of<br />
Endowment and Whole Life Assurance,<br />
admitting of a material reduction off the<br />
<br />
ordinary premiums to members of the Society.<br />
Full information can be obtained from J. P. Blake,<br />
Legal and General Insurance Society (City Branch),<br />
158, Leadenhall Street, H.C.<br />
THE AUTHOR:<br />
<br />
AUTHORITIES.<br />
<br />
—<br />
<br />
INCE the article translated from the Swedish<br />
paper came to the office special information<br />
has been received that the law has been<br />
<br />
passed under which Sweden will become a member<br />
of the Berne Convention. The Bill was passed in<br />
the First Chamber without the least opposition and in<br />
the Second Chamber by an overwhelming majority.<br />
This is satisfactory news, as the steady influx of<br />
members to the Convention makes the isolated<br />
case of those outside itstill more conspicuous. It is<br />
hoped that at no distant date Austria and Hungary<br />
will come in, and that when Russia has settledits war<br />
with Japan and its Domestic Copyright, it will also<br />
join the ranks of civilised European society ; then<br />
the United States will be the only country of any<br />
importance outside the pale.<br />
<br />
It is interesting to note that Sweden, like all<br />
other nations that have legislated recently in copy-<br />
right matters, has increased and confirmed the right<br />
of property to the originator, and thus follows the<br />
tendency of modern ideals. The reference to the<br />
Swedish Authors’ Society has a goodring about it.<br />
<br />
BorH the Authors’ Society and the National Union of<br />
Teachers ought to be interested in a controversy which is<br />
just now disturbing educational circles in New York. The<br />
City Comptroller, Mr. Grout, is about to introduce a Bill<br />
providing that no school officer shall receive for his own<br />
use any income or royalties arising out of his authorship of,<br />
or interest in, books used in the city’s schools, but shall pay<br />
any such profits into the City Treasury. The person at<br />
whom this proposed legislation is particularly aimed is Dr.<br />
Maxwell, Superintendent of Schools, who is alleged to be<br />
drawing 20,000 dols. annually in royalties from text-books<br />
of which he is the author.<br />
<br />
This cutting, taken from the Westminster Gazette,<br />
will, doubtless, interest all those members of the<br />
Society who publish educational works.<br />
<br />
The subject is one which could be argued on<br />
both sides with some effect, but if we take it for<br />
granted that the educators of the younger genera-<br />
tion are men of probity, there seem to be no<br />
persons more capable of knowing what should be<br />
taught, how it should be taught, and the form<br />
in which it should be represented to the pupils.<br />
Under these circumstances, it is scarcely fair<br />
that the teachers should be debarred from the<br />
profit arising from the result of their labours,<br />
and a policy of this kind might tend to bring<br />
upon the market an inferior article. It is<br />
unlikely that the greatest educators would devote<br />
themselves to the writing of books by which their<br />
educational methods might become known, if they<br />
were not likely to receive some reward.<br />
<br />
It will be interesting to see whether the Billever<br />
becomes law.<br />
<br />
Tur Saturday Review has published a series of<br />
letters on the question of “ tags.” The corre-<br />
spondents have put forward many which they<br />
consider should be removed from the English<br />
language, and one correspondent has gone so far<br />
as to say that when a person is given to the use of<br />
these “tags” in his writings, he, at any rate, shows<br />
he has ceased to think. Surely, this deduction is<br />
quite wrong. Many “tags ” are the crystallisation<br />
of a thought or of an idea in its most shapely form,<br />
and are therefore, in some cases, artistic works of<br />
a very high order. Because a work of high art is<br />
constantly reproduced, and is seen everywhere, it<br />
does not therefore lose its artistic merit. Besides,<br />
the user may have given the matter his most<br />
earnest consideration, and, after having tried every<br />
turn of phrase that a genius could invent, may<br />
have come to the conclusion that the method of<br />
expressing his idea most clearly and lucidly is<br />
through the means of a “tag,” which may have<br />
been crystallised previously by some other genius.<br />
<br />
It does not necessarily follow that all “tags”<br />
are works of high art, but let us not remove them<br />
from the English language merely because they are<br />
in common use. Olearness of expression is more<br />
desirable than literary pyrotechnics.<br />
<br />
«“ TAGS.’’—SATURDAY REVIEW.<br />
<br />
Advancing by leaps and bounds.<br />
<br />
Conspicuous by his absence.<br />
<br />
More honoured in the breach than the observance.<br />
<br />
What the soldier said is not evidence.<br />
<br />
“ Which,’’ as Euclid would say, “ is absurd.”’<br />
<br />
Like Mrs. Harris, “I don’t believe there’s no sich a<br />
person.”<br />
<br />
It is always the unexpected that happens.<br />
<br />
A mad world, my Masters.<br />
<br />
"Tis true, ‘tis pity ; and pity ‘tis, ’tis true.<br />
<br />
There is much virtue in an “if.”<br />
<br />
Se non e vero e ben trovato.<br />
<br />
Like Topsy, “I spect I grow’d.”’<br />
<br />
Like the late Lord Beaconsfield on a famous occasion<br />
“On the side of the Angels.”’<br />
<br />
Like Brer Rabbit, ‘To lie low and say nuffin.”<br />
<br />
Like Oliver Twist, “To ask for more.”’<br />
<br />
Like Sam Weller’s knowledge of London, “ Extensive<br />
and peculiar.”’<br />
<br />
Like Napoleon, “ A believer in big battalions.”’<br />
<br />
Pyrrhic Victory.<br />
<br />
Parthian dart.<br />
<br />
Homeric laughter.<br />
<br />
Sturm und Drang.<br />
<br />
Intelligent anticipation of events.<br />
<br />
Masterly inactivity. :<br />
<br />
Splendid isolation.<br />
<br />
Unctuous rectitude.<br />
<br />
Mute inglorious Milton.<br />
<br />
The sword of Damocles.<br />
<br />
The thin end of the wedge.<br />
<br />
The long arm cf coincidence.<br />
<br />
The soul of goodness in things evil.<br />
<br />
Hobson's choice.<br />
<br />
Frankenstein's monster.<br />
<br />
Macaulay's schoolboy.<br />
<br />
Lord Burleigh’s nod.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
RRA<br />
<br />
Sir Boyle Roche’s bird.<br />
Mahommed’s coffin.<br />
Davy Jones’ locker.<br />
“ Waiting,’ as Mr. Micawber says, “for something to<br />
turn up.”’<br />
Mr. Punch’s advice to those about to marry—‘ Don’t.”’<br />
The pen is mightier than the sword.<br />
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.<br />
The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of<br />
Eton.<br />
This gives us pause.<br />
Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall look upon his<br />
like again.<br />
Cesar’s wife.<br />
Facilis descensus Averni, etc.<br />
Tempora mutantur, etc.<br />
Coelum non animum, etc.<br />
Sunt lachryme rerum, etc.<br />
Dum Fluvii currunt, etc.<br />
Exegi monumentum, etc.<br />
Sic vos non vobis, etc.<br />
Non tali auxilio, nec, etc.<br />
Suaviter in modo, etc.<br />
Penny wise and pound foolish.<br />
Qui s’excuse s’accuse.<br />
Not wisely but too well.<br />
<br />
THE members of the Society will, we are sure,<br />
join with us in thanking our President for the<br />
note he contributes in memory of his late friend,<br />
Sir Leslie Stephen, and in congratulating him on<br />
the improvement in his health, which has made it<br />
possible for him to resume his pen.<br />
<br />
The article by the Chairman of the Committee,<br />
which follows, was printed before Mr. Meredith’s<br />
note was received, and we publish it as it stands,<br />
although the last paragraph might have been<br />
omitted had Mr. Meredith’s tribute to “The<br />
Tramps” been before Mr. Freshfield.<br />
<br />
—_—____—_e——_e—__<br />
<br />
SIR LESLIE STEPHEN, K.C.B.<br />
<br />
Se<br />
I<br />
<br />
HEN that noble body of scholarly and cheer-<br />
ful pedestrians, the Sunday Tramps, were<br />
on the march, with Leslie Stephen to lead<br />
<br />
them, there was conversation which would have<br />
made the presence of a shorthand writer a bene-<br />
faction to the country. A pause to it came at the<br />
examination of the leader’s watch and Ordnance<br />
map under the western sun, and word was given for<br />
the strike across country to catch the tail of a train<br />
offering dinner in London, at the cost of a run<br />
through hedges, over ditches and fallows, past pro-<br />
clamations against trespassers, under suspicion of<br />
being taken for more serious depredators in flight.<br />
The chief of the Tramps had a wonderfully calcu-<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 187<br />
<br />
lating eye in the observation of distances and the<br />
nature of the land, as he proved by his discovery<br />
of untried passes in the higher Alps, and he had<br />
no mercy for pursy followers. I have often said of<br />
this life-long student and philosophical head, that<br />
he had in him the making of a great military<br />
captain. He would not have been opposed to the<br />
profession of arms if he had been captured early<br />
for the Service, notwithstanding his abomination<br />
of bloodshed. He had a high, calm courage, was<br />
unperturbed in a dubious position, and would con-<br />
fidently take the way out of it which he conceived<br />
to be the better. We have not to deplore that he<br />
was diverted from the ways of a soldier, though<br />
England, as the country has been learning of late,<br />
cannot boast of many in uniform who have capacity<br />
for leadership. His work in literature will be<br />
reviewed by his lieutenant of Tramps, one of the<br />
ablest of our writers. The memory of it remains<br />
with us, as being the profoundest and the most<br />
sober criticism we have had in our time. The<br />
only sting in it was an inoffensive humorous<br />
irony that now and then stole out for a roll over,<br />
like a furry cub, or the occasional ripple on a lake<br />
in grey weather. We have nothing left that is<br />
like it.<br />
<br />
One might easily fall into the pit of panegyric<br />
by an enumeration of his qualities, personal and<br />
literary. It would be out of harmony with the<br />
temper and characteristics of a mind so equable.<br />
He, the equable, whether in condemnation or<br />
eulogy. Our loss of such a man is great, for<br />
work was in his brain, and the hand was active<br />
till close upon the time when his breathing ceased.<br />
The loss to his friends can be replaced only by an<br />
imagination that conjures him up beside them.<br />
That will be no task to those who have known<br />
him well enough to see his view of things as they<br />
are and revive his expression of it. With them<br />
he will live despite the word farewell.<br />
<br />
GEORGE MEREDITH.<br />
<br />
—-—<>—-+——<br />
<br />
IT.<br />
<br />
In Sir Leslie Stephen, who died on the 22nd<br />
of February in his seventy-second year, the world<br />
of letters has lost one of its most prominent<br />
figures, and English criticism its acknowledged<br />
head. Poets, according to an obiter dictum of<br />
Tennyson, must be estimated by the quantity<br />
as well as the quality of their work. If the same<br />
standard may be applied to critics Stephen is likely<br />
to hold a very high place in the judgment of<br />
posterity. At the beginning of his literary career<br />
he was content to do hack-work; he even translated<br />
a mediocre German work on the Alps. But he<br />
never gave the public anything but his best. A<br />
<br />
<br />
188<br />
<br />
more conscientious literary craftsman never lived.<br />
Though he had little sympathy with Dryasdusts,<br />
he was indefatigable in research. When his own<br />
shelves failed him for a reference he—as he once<br />
told me—went first to the Atheneeum, then to the<br />
London Library, and finally, not without a groan,<br />
made a pilgrimage to the British Museum. It<br />
would be difficult to point out a single piece of<br />
indifferent or hasty workmanship in the list of his<br />
published volumes. That list, from the “ Play-<br />
ground of Europe” (1871) to his last volume,<br />
“ English Literature and Society in the Highteenth<br />
Century,” is an astonishingly long and varied one ;<br />
yet it represents only a portion of his labours. We<br />
have also to take into account his long connection<br />
with journalism—particularly with the Saturday<br />
Review in its golden days, and the Yall Mali<br />
Gazette, and in later years his many articles in the<br />
National Review and the Dictionary of National<br />
Biography, and further to remember that, while its<br />
editor, he was engaged in a task that most men<br />
would have found altogether engrossing. If the<br />
original idea of this gigantic undertaking came<br />
from its publisher, Mr. George Murray Smith, it<br />
owed to Stephen its scope, its proportions and its<br />
success. He collected and ruled a staff of capable<br />
contributors, he set them models in the admirable<br />
articles he wrote himself, he trained a successor<br />
to follow him in the task when his own health<br />
broke down. His wide knowledge and sympathy,<br />
and his discriminating fairness to all who came<br />
under his ken made him an ideal editor for sucha work.<br />
<br />
Stephen’s literary talent was late in development.<br />
His first book, and that a book of travel (though it<br />
opens with a brilliant review of Alpine literature)<br />
was published when he was thirty-nine. For at least<br />
fourteen years he led the life of an athletic Don<br />
at Cambridge, running countless miles beside his<br />
College boat, and performing strange feats of<br />
pedestrianism—which culminated in his walking<br />
to London, fifty miles in twelve hours, to attend<br />
an Alpine Club dinner. Of this period in his<br />
career a record exists in the little volume of<br />
“Sketches from Cambridge by a Don,” first<br />
published in the Pall Mall Gazette.<br />
<br />
Stephen was by nature a critic both in literature<br />
and philosophy. But he approached criticism from<br />
its human side, through biography. He investigated<br />
systems through their teachers. It is characteristic<br />
that when he wishes to defend the eighteenth cen-<br />
tury, and put its case against the nineteenth, he<br />
evokes the ghost of Gibbon as his spokesman.<br />
The passage is brilliant, and might give cause for<br />
profitable reflection to popular politicians of the<br />
twentieth century.<br />
<br />
As an historian and essayist the philosophy and<br />
thought of the century of utilitarianism and<br />
common sense were congenial to him, and supplied<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
the subject of his chief works. But his many<br />
volumes of collected essays furnish proof of the<br />
width and variety of his literary sympathies.<br />
<br />
In “An Agnostic’s Apology” Stephen defined<br />
his attitude towards religious beliefs. He held<br />
that ‘there lives more faith in honest doubt<br />
than (not in half but) in all the Oreeds.” He<br />
considered them blind guesses in a region beyond<br />
human knowledge, and consequently unsound bases<br />
for any rule of life. He had a distrust of senti-<br />
mentalism, which he defines somewhere as “emotion<br />
for its own sake,” and a rooted dislike for all kinds<br />
of makebelief, above all for makebeliefs about the<br />
place of man in the Universe. He held that we<br />
ought to be able to do our duty to our fellows<br />
without the support of theological speculations.<br />
The main tendency of Stephen’s philosophical<br />
writings was, therefore, negative or destructive.<br />
But in the two volumes of his Addresses to the<br />
Ethical Society, he sets himself to work as a con-<br />
structive agent. He labours to show how humanity<br />
may grow in wisdom and happiness without seeking<br />
for a sanction for conduct in regions beyond its<br />
scope. He could not enter into the feelings of<br />
those, the majority of mankind, who find an<br />
irresistible attraction in any speculation that pre-<br />
tends to fill up the void beyond our view—and are<br />
therefore, as he put it, apt to conceal ignorance by<br />
dogma.<br />
<br />
In his literary criticisms, as in his ethical<br />
writing, Stephen’s first aim was to see things as<br />
they are. He distrusted enthusiasm, even his<br />
own. He thought it a quality out of place in a<br />
judge on the literary Bench. If he deviated in<br />
this direction he generally qualified the lapse by<br />
a quick touch of humour. At times he seems<br />
almost too just: the reader would welcome a few<br />
more expressions of personal feeling, or even pre-<br />
judice. The atmosphere, like that of a mountain<br />
top, is too clear and devoid of colour for the xsthetic<br />
mind. Stephen had not, it must be added, a<br />
creative intellect. He does not warm and kindle<br />
his readers with those illuminating flashes which<br />
one genius may throw on another when genius<br />
takes to criticism. He was himself very acutely<br />
alive to this fact, which he has alluded to in<br />
print with exaggerated self-depreciation.<br />
<br />
Stephen appeared to the public as a man of<br />
somewhat austere mind and presence. But beneath<br />
this cold exterior, constantly coming to the surface<br />
in his life and not infrequently in his writing, was<br />
a highly sensitive and emotional nature. He was<br />
through life a lover of poetry. He tells us in one<br />
of his recently published autobiographical chapters<br />
how as an undergraduate he rejoiced to catch some<br />
Freshman and recite to him Tennyson’s early<br />
poems ; and in the preface to his first book he<br />
alludes to his dislike to the retouches made in<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
‘<br />
lL<br />
i<br />
<br />
them by their author. Through life he appreciated<br />
his contemporaries, and his old friends have often<br />
heard him recite poems of Browning and Fitz-<br />
gerald, Swinburne and Meredith. In an after-<br />
dinner speech on the day the news of the death<br />
of Stevenson, whom he had introduced to The<br />
Cornhill, reached England, he declaimed with<br />
singular effect half of “A Grammarian’s Funeral.”<br />
In his essay on Matthew Arnold he describes his<br />
test for poetry : “ I believe in poetry which learns<br />
itself by heart. There are poems which dominate<br />
and haunt one; which once admitted sting and<br />
cling to one; the tune of which comes up and<br />
runs in one’s head at odd moments ; and which<br />
suddenly revive after years of forgetfulness as<br />
vigorous and lively as ever.” And yet a critic in<br />
the Atheneum has had the courage to assert that<br />
“Stephen did not really care for poetry any more<br />
than Jeffrey, and consequently was not fully quali-<br />
fied to criticise it.” ‘Chis writer might have done<br />
well to peruse the account of Jeffrey’s “ amazingly<br />
systematic and comprehensive blundering ” in<br />
poetical criticism given in the chapter on The<br />
First Edinburgh Reviewers in “ Hours in a Library :<br />
(third series).<br />
<br />
Stephen was happy not only in his profession,<br />
but also in a hobby which satisfied all his require-<br />
ments, physical and intellectual, mountaineering.<br />
His love of mountains was, as he has himself<br />
explained, complex. Climbing was to him primarily<br />
a sport, undertaken for the sake of adventure and<br />
enjoyment, a recreation in which he could give<br />
<br />
lay to the muscular energy of the primitive man<br />
<br />
and the holiday humours of the genial Don, who<br />
in Stephen underlay the critic and the philosopher.<br />
But he found the scenery of the High Alps<br />
sympathetic to his intellect, and that in more<br />
ways than one. “ Its charm,” he writes, “ lies in<br />
its vigorous originality.” And again: “The<br />
mountains represent the indomitable force of nature<br />
to which we are forced to adapt ourselves ; they<br />
speak to man of his littleness and his ephemeral<br />
nature, and therefore they should suggest that<br />
sense of awestruck humility which best befits such<br />
petty creatures as ourselves.” The Alps were for<br />
Stephen a playground, bnt they were also a<br />
cathedral. “If I were to invent a new idolatry,”<br />
he says, “I should prostrate myself not before<br />
beast, or ocean, or sun, but before one of these<br />
gigantic masses to which, in spite of all reason, it<br />
is impossible not to attribute some shadowy per-<br />
sonality. Their voice is mystic, and has found<br />
discordant interpreters; but to me at least it<br />
speaks in tones at once more tender and more awe-<br />
inspiring than that of any mortal teacher. The<br />
loftiest and sweetest strains of Milton or Words-<br />
worth may be more articulate, but do not lay so<br />
forcible a grasp on my imagination.”<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
189<br />
<br />
Yet to give the scale and point the moral he<br />
drew from the High Places of the Earth, Stephen<br />
required—if not an inn at least some trace of<br />
pastoral life, ‘‘a weather-stained chalet” in the fore-<br />
ground. “Scenery,” he says, “even the wildest<br />
that is really enjoyable, derives half its charm from<br />
the occult sense of the human life and social forms<br />
moulded upon it. ‘he Alps would be unbearably<br />
stern but for the picturesque society preserved<br />
among their folds.” Yet surely in the recesses of<br />
remoter ranges where no trace of man’s presence<br />
is visible there is a sublimity like that of the<br />
starry heavens which would have appealed to his<br />
mind. Stephen, I suspect, since such scenery<br />
never came within his reach, invented a reason<br />
why he might not have cared for it.<br />
<br />
With such tastes Stephen naturally became one<br />
of the most ardent of the early members of the<br />
Alpine Club, its third President, and for two years<br />
the Editor of its Journal. In this capacity, and<br />
still more in “The Playground of Europe,” pub-<br />
lished in 1871, which he revised and added to in<br />
1894, he set the note which has been followed ever<br />
since in Alpine literature. He showed that “a<br />
sense of humour is not incompatible with imagina-<br />
tive sensibility.” He pictured the splendours of<br />
the snows, or the unearthly grandeur of a sunset<br />
seen from the summit of Mont Blanc in pages<br />
which combine accuracy of observation with<br />
enthusiastic appreciation and sentiment. At a<br />
later date he became one of the discoverers of that<br />
enchanting Dreamland, the Alps in Winter. The<br />
chapter which bears that title is the most emotional<br />
and eloquent he ever wrote. Some of its descrip-<br />
tive passages have hardly been surpassed by any<br />
lover of mountains, even by Ruskin.<br />
<br />
Stephen did more than describe scenery. He<br />
communicated to the world the keen spirit of<br />
enjoyment of his comrades, amongst whom he<br />
gained many lifelong friends. He made light of<br />
his own feats in order to give the credit to his<br />
guides, who returned the compliment by regarding<br />
him as a hero. The fame of “Herr Stephen”<br />
will long be associated in the Vale of Meiringen<br />
with that of Melchior Anderegg. He maintained<br />
with much vivacity that no excuse was needed for<br />
climbing ; he declined, he said, to carry scientific<br />
instruments in order to ascertain how far amateur<br />
measurements might differ from those of profes-<br />
sional surveyors. The frequent speeches he made<br />
during thirty years at the annual dinners of the<br />
Club became celebrated. Their heartiness, their<br />
sudden and unexpected transitions from sentiment<br />
to humour never failed to delight the listeners.<br />
Given a sympathetic audience Stephen was one of<br />
the best after-dinner speakers of his time.<br />
<br />
Stephen’s love of pedestrianism was not limited<br />
to its higher branch—mountaineering. He founded<br />
<br />
<br />
190 TAB AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
and for many years led on alternate Sundays<br />
a band of philosophers, authors and lawyers “ over<br />
hill over dale,” and I fear occasionally “over park<br />
over pale,” within the 30-mile radius from Charing<br />
Cross. We had now and then a judge in the<br />
company, and rumour ran that Stephen had once<br />
personally conducted a future bishop. Stephen’s<br />
frame was adapted for speed, and when a train had<br />
to be caught he strode ahead, as a more portly<br />
editor described him, “like a pair of compasses.”<br />
These walks and talks would on high days end<br />
in a lunch or a dinner at Mr. Darwin’s or Mr.<br />
Meredith’s, for the “Company of Tramps” had<br />
distinguished honorary members.<br />
<br />
With little taste for general society, Stephen,<br />
until deafness cut him off from most social pleasures,<br />
was fond of congenial company, and played a<br />
stimulating part in it. He had a singular power<br />
of attracting the affection of his numerous friends,<br />
whose frequent” visits he was happily able to enjoy<br />
to the last. -<br />
<br />
“ Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit.”<br />
D. W. F.<br />
<br />
THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING FOR<br />
1904.<br />
<br />
+<br />
<br />
HE annual General Meeting of the Society<br />
a was held in the rooms of the Medical and<br />
Chirurgical Society, in Hanover Square,<br />
on March 16th, Mr. Douglas Freshfield, Chairman<br />
of the Committee of Management, in the chair.<br />
The Secretary, Mr. G. H. Thring, having read<br />
the agenda, the Chairman proceeded to put<br />
forward the report for consideration and discus-<br />
sion. This had been duly forwarded to all sub-<br />
scribing members, and in conformity with the<br />
usage of the Society was not read at the meeting.<br />
In commenting upon the more salient features of<br />
the Society’s history during 1903, Mr. Freshfield<br />
first dwelt upon the long list of distinguished<br />
members lost to the Society or literatare through<br />
death, making special reference to the names of<br />
Sir Joshua Fitch, Colonel Henderson, Mr. W. E. H.<br />
Lecky, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. J. McNeill<br />
Whistler, as well as to the more recent death<br />
during the present year of Sir Leslie Stephen. In<br />
calling attention to passages in the report relating<br />
to the proper functions of the Society, he ohserved<br />
that it was not an Academy of Letters, and that a<br />
suggestion made that the Society should urge the<br />
burial of Mr. Herbert Spencer in Westminster<br />
Abbey seemed to seek to impose upon it duties<br />
hardly within its province. In the same category<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
were other suggestions that the Society shouid<br />
undertake at its own cost any litigation any mem.<br />
ber might desire to enter‘upon, or that it should<br />
act asa literary agent for its members. With regard<br />
to this latter proposal it was pointed out that any<br />
such commercial enterprise would be inconsistent<br />
with the conditions under which the Society was<br />
registered, and would provoke the interference of the<br />
Board of Trade. Having proceeded to comment<br />
upon the legal proceedings instituted and carried on<br />
by the Society during the past year, Mr. Freshfield<br />
explained the circumstances in which the Society<br />
had incurred a liability for heavy costs in the ease<br />
of Aflalo v. Lawrence and Bullen. It had asserted<br />
an important principle on behalf of a member with<br />
success in the Court of First Instance. Against the<br />
decision there obtained appeal had been lodged, and<br />
as respondent it had won a second time in the Court<br />
of Appeal. The defendant, unsnecessfal in two<br />
courts, had appealed further, as he had a perfect<br />
right to do, and the Society had had no choice but<br />
to defend its position, and the two judgments<br />
already obtained, in the House of Lords. ‘That it<br />
had done so without success was unfortunate ; they<br />
might not as members of the Society agree with<br />
the decision, but they must submit to it. The<br />
moral was that an author in selling his work for<br />
use in a magazine or encyclopedia, if he did<br />
not wish at the same time to part with his copy-<br />
right, must say so in plain terms. Mr. Freshfield<br />
also referred to the street piracy of literary works,<br />
upon methods similar to those adopted in’ the case<br />
of music, to which he said the Society was giving<br />
attention, and making efforts to check the proceed-<br />
ings of the pirates. He concluded his speech by<br />
an allusion to the unveiling of the memorial to<br />
Sir Walter Besant in the Crypt of St. Paul’s<br />
Cathedral, and to the proposal that a replica of the<br />
memorial should be placed upon the Thames<br />
Embankment, the arrangements for which would,<br />
he hoped, be shortly concluded with the County<br />
Council, which had met the Society in the matter<br />
in a very sympathetic spirit.<br />
<br />
When the Chairman had concluded his speech,<br />
Mr. Basil Field rose and expressed a desire to<br />
make it clear to the Society that the item of<br />
£908 8s. 6d. included in the balance sheet as a<br />
liability to Messrs. Field, Roscoe and Co., the<br />
Society’s solicitors, included a large sum paid to<br />
Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen after their successful<br />
appeal to the House of Lords, in respect of costs<br />
in the House of Lords, the Court of Appeal, and<br />
the Chancery Division.<br />
<br />
Sir William Charley, K.C., congratulated the<br />
Society on its successful conduct of its litigation<br />
generally, and the Secretary for the part played by<br />
him therein, and paid a tribute to the memory of<br />
Sir Walter Besant.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
Mr. Hume Nisbet then rose and put a series of<br />
questions to the Chairman, of which he had given<br />
notice to the Secretary in writing on the day<br />
preceding the meeting.<br />
<br />
The questions with the answers made to them<br />
were as follows :—<br />
<br />
Question I.—Is the Authors’ Society a Company<br />
as well as a Society ? Answer.—Yes.<br />
<br />
Question II.—Who are the shareholders? ‘.e.,<br />
Is there a printed list to be had? Answer.—The<br />
Shareholders are the Council. The lists of the<br />
Council in the Report and elsewhere are printed<br />
lists of the shareholders.<br />
<br />
Question II.—Do they, the shareholders, receive<br />
any profits on their shares? Answer.—They do<br />
not, and are prohibited from doing so by the<br />
memorandum of association of the Company.*<br />
<br />
Question IV.—What salary does the Secretary<br />
for Society and Club draw? Also, what salaries<br />
or emoluments does he get for his numerous other<br />
duties, such as acting Manager and “'reasurer for<br />
Society and Club, Solicitor, etc.? His salary as<br />
Editor is alone printed in the present Report of<br />
the Committee of Management for 1903. Answer.<br />
—The Society has nothing to do with any club.<br />
The salary of the Secretary of the Society is £360<br />
a year, which covers his services as solicitor. He<br />
receives £50 for editing Zhe Author. He has<br />
no other emoluments from the Society. There is<br />
no Acting Manager, and the Secretary is not the<br />
Treasurer.<br />
<br />
Question V.—Are these numerous duties not too<br />
heavy for one ordinary man to fulfil properly ?<br />
Answer.—The Committee have no reason to con-<br />
sider that Mr. Thring is not performing his duties<br />
to the satisfaction of the members of the Society<br />
as well as to their own.<br />
<br />
Question VI.—Have the same Committee of<br />
Management not sat long enough? ie. for the<br />
good of the Society, ought they not, along with<br />
the Council, to resign without submitting their<br />
names for re-election, if the Society is for the<br />
benefit of authors, and not a company for the<br />
benefit of shareholders ? Answer.—The election<br />
of members to fill vacancies on the Committee<br />
is placed in the hands of the Committee by<br />
the articles of association. In order to avoid<br />
the difficulties attending the alteration of the<br />
articles of association of a company and at the<br />
same time to enable members of the Society to<br />
have a voice in the matter, should any desire to do<br />
so, a circular was upon a recent occasion addressed<br />
to the members by the Committee, asking them<br />
to submit the names of candidates. No suggestion<br />
was received in reply to this. The Chairman<br />
on behalf of the Council further repudiated and<br />
condemned the suggestion put forward in the<br />
<br />
191<br />
<br />
question that the Society was being carried on as<br />
a company for the benefit of shareholders.*<br />
<br />
In a discussion which followed Mr. Hume Nisbet<br />
did not press any specific charge against either the<br />
Committee of Management or the Secretary, although<br />
he expressed dissatisfaction with their conduct of<br />
the affairs of the Society. Nor did he meet with<br />
any support from those members present who<br />
addressed the meeting upon the subject of the<br />
questions asked. These included Mr. Edward Rose,<br />
Major Arthur Haggard, Mr. Charles Garvice, Mr.<br />
Francis Gribble and others. Mr. E. Rose called<br />
attention to the actual composition of the Com-<br />
mittee of Management and to the changes which in<br />
fact had taken place in it, and pointed out that the<br />
changes were frequent for such a body. Other<br />
speakers expressed themselves as thoroughly satis-<br />
fied with the efficiency of the Secretary and with<br />
the assistance which he afforded to members in<br />
the matters upon which they consulted him.<br />
<br />
Mr. Francis Gribble protested against the Society<br />
having such questions as those raised by Mr. Hume<br />
Nisbet sprung upon it at a general meeting without<br />
previous notice of them being included in the<br />
agenda, and concluded by moving a vote of confi-<br />
dence in the Committee of Management and the<br />
Secretary, which was carried by an overwhelming<br />
majority. A large majority also assented to a<br />
resolution moved in a second speech by Major<br />
Arthur Haggard to the effect that the Committee<br />
should be requested to consider the expediency of<br />
raising the salary of the Secretary whenever the funds<br />
of the Society permitted such a step to be taken.<br />
<br />
With regard to the two matters which composed<br />
the agenda for the meeting, the accounts and report<br />
of the Committee of Management were approved,<br />
and Mr. M. H. Spielmann, who had in due order<br />
resigned his position as a member of the Pension<br />
Fund Committee, was re-elected, no other candidate<br />
being proposed. A vote of thanks to the Chairman<br />
for his conduct of the meeting and of the affairs of<br />
the Society as Chairman of the Committee of<br />
Management was duly proposed and seconded, and<br />
was carried by acclamation.<br />
<br />
Those present included, besides those already<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
* Norre.—the Society of Authors is registered as a com-<br />
pany with limited liability under the Companies Acts, but<br />
is one of those associations which are permitted by the<br />
Board of Trade to dispense with the word “ Limited” after<br />
their names under the 23rd section of the Act of 1867, and<br />
to enjoy other privileges. These are classed together as<br />
“ Agsociations not for Profit,” and it has to be shown that<br />
they are formed for the purpose of promoting commerce,<br />
art, science, religion, charity, or some other useful object,<br />
that it is their intention to apply their profits, if any, to<br />
promoting their object, and to prohibit the payment of any<br />
dividend to their shareholders. The licence of the Board<br />
of Trade is granted subject to conditions and regulations<br />
which have to be inserted in the memorandum and articles<br />
of association.<br />
192<br />
<br />
mentioned: E. A. Armstrong, A. W. a Beckett,<br />
The Rev. F. W. Bamford, Mackenzie Bell,<br />
Lewis Benjamin, Herbert Bentwich, Sir William<br />
Charley, K.C., Miss E. E. Charlton, Miss Ellen<br />
Collett, Miss E. J. Curtis, Miss Violet Defries,<br />
Austin Dobson, Miss C. O’Conor-Eccles, A. Hope<br />
Hawkins, Mrs. Heron Maxwell, Miss E. M. Hine,<br />
Eyre Hussey, The Rev. 8. Whittell Key, Mrs.<br />
Knight, Mrs. Lechmere, J. M. Lely, Robert<br />
Machray, Miss Jean Middlemass, Mrs. Neila Parker,<br />
Miss Olive Katherine Parr, M. O. Portman, Hesketh<br />
Prichard, Mrs. Romanes, J. M. Sloan, Francis<br />
Storr, Albert A. Strong, Miss L. E. Tiddeman,<br />
Perey White, Miss Aphra Wilson, and others.<br />
<br />
+— ><br />
<br />
THE ANNUAL DINNER.<br />
aes<br />
<br />
HE Annual Dinner of the Society of Authors<br />
will take place at the Hotel Cecil, on<br />
Wednesday, April 20th, at 7.30. Mr.<br />
<br />
Douglas Freshfield will take the chair.<br />
<br />
Notices have already been sent out to the mem-<br />
bers and associates of the Society.<br />
<br />
The following ladies and gentlemen have kindly<br />
allowed their names to stand as stewards —<br />
<br />
President, Mr. George Meredith,<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
Humphreys, Mrs. Des-<br />
mond (“ Rita’),<br />
Hunt, The Rey. G. Bon-<br />
avia.<br />
Hunt, Miss Violet,<br />
Hyne, C. J. Cutcliffe.<br />
Jones, Henry Arthur,<br />
Keltie, J. Scott, LL.D.<br />
Kennard, Mrs, Edward.<br />
Lee, Sidney.<br />
Leighton, Mrs. Connor,<br />
Lely, J. M.<br />
Lennox, Lady William.<br />
‘‘ Maarten Maartens.”<br />
Marsh, Richard.<br />
McCarthy, Justin.<br />
Middlemass, Miss Jean.<br />
Norman, Henry, M.P.<br />
Norris, W. E.<br />
Oppenheim, E. P.<br />
Pain, Barry. ,<br />
Parker, Louis N.<br />
Pinero, A. W.<br />
Plunkett, The<br />
Hon. Horace.<br />
Pollock, Sir Frederick,<br />
Bart, LL.D.<br />
<br />
Right<br />
<br />
Prothero, G. W,<br />
Pryce, Richard.<br />
Reich, Emil.<br />
<br />
Serutton, Prof. T. E.<br />
Seaman, Owen.<br />
<br />
Senior, William.<br />
<br />
Shaw, G. Bernard.<br />
Sidgwick, Prof. Alfred,<br />
Spielmann, M. H.<br />
Spiers, Victor.<br />
<br />
Sprigge, 8. Squire.<br />
Stanford, Sir Charles<br />
Villiers, Mus. Doe.<br />
<br />
Street, G. S.<br />
Thompson, Sir Henry,<br />
F.R.S.<br />
Todhunter, John.<br />
Underdown, E. M., K.C.<br />
Underdown, Miss E.<br />
Upward, Allen.<br />
Wain, Louis.<br />
Watts-Dunton,<br />
dore.<br />
Wells, H. G.<br />
White, Percy.<br />
Whiteing, Richard.<br />
Zangwill, Israel.<br />
<br />
Theo-<br />
<br />
—>—+—_____<br />
<br />
2’ Beckett, A. W.<br />
<br />
Aflalo, F. G,<br />
<br />
Archer, William.<br />
<br />
Atherton, Mrs. Ger-<br />
trude.<br />
<br />
Ball, Sir Robert, F.R.S.<br />
<br />
Bateman, Robert.<br />
<br />
Beddard, F.E., F.R.S.<br />
<br />
Bell, Mackenzie.<br />
<br />
Belloc-Lowndes, Mrs.<br />
<br />
Benson, A. C.<br />
<br />
Bergne, Sir<br />
K.C.B.<br />
<br />
Besant, W. H., LL.D.<br />
<br />
Browning, Oscar.<br />
<br />
Bryce, The Right. Hon.<br />
James, M.P., D.C.L.<br />
<br />
Bullen, F. T.<br />
<br />
Burnand, Sir Frank,<br />
<br />
Campbell, Lady Colin.<br />
<br />
Capes, Bernard.<br />
<br />
Carey, Miss Rosa N,<br />
<br />
Cholmondeley, Miss<br />
<br />
& Mary.<br />
<br />
Church, Prof. A. H,<br />
<br />
Clemens, S. L.<br />
<br />
Clodd, Edward,<br />
<br />
Collier, The Hon. John.<br />
<br />
Colquhoun, A. R.<br />
<br />
Henry,<br />
<br />
Conway, Sir W. Martin.<br />
<br />
Cookson, Col. Fife.<br />
<br />
Corelli, Miss Marie,<br />
<br />
Davidson, John.<br />
<br />
Doudney, Mrs. Sarah.<br />
<br />
Douglas, Sir George,<br />
<br />
art.<br />
<br />
Dowden, Prof. Edward,<br />
<br />
Esmond, H. Y.<br />
<br />
Foster, Sir Michael,<br />
K.C.B.<br />
<br />
Garnett, Richard, 0.B.<br />
<br />
Gilbert, W. 8.<br />
<br />
Gollancz, Israel.<br />
<br />
Grand, Madame Sarah.<br />
<br />
Graves, Alfred P.<br />
<br />
Gribble, Francis.<br />
<br />
Grundy, Sydney,<br />
<br />
Haggard, Major Arthur.<br />
<br />
Harraden, Miss Beatrice.<br />
<br />
Hart, Major-General Sir<br />
Reginald,<br />
<br />
Hassal, John, R. I,<br />
<br />
Hatton, Joseph,<br />
<br />
Hawkins, Anthony<br />
Hope.<br />
<br />
Hinkson, Mrs.Katherine<br />
Tynan,<br />
<br />
Hocking, Rey, Silas K.<br />
<br />
WHAT’S IN A NAME?<br />
<br />
—— ><br />
<br />
HERE is a great deal in a name, especially if<br />
it is the title of a book. I fancy someone<br />
once said, “A rose by any other name<br />
<br />
would smell as sweet.” But a book by any other<br />
name might not sell as well.<br />
<br />
“The title is an important and radical part of a<br />
book,” as Miss Frances Peard has lately remarked<br />
in the Spectator. I remember reading her interest-<br />
ing novel, “An Interloper,’ when it came out<br />
some years ago. We hear from Miss Peard that<br />
two novels called “ An Interloper” now exist, and<br />
most of us have read Mrs. Jacob’s most recent and<br />
clever novel, “ Zhe Interloper.”” That makes three<br />
novels of (virtually) the same name. Miss Peard’s<br />
was, I understand, the first of the three ; but<br />
which happened to be published first is not to the<br />
point—I mean the point I want to make. The<br />
point is: First, is there a possibility of safe-<br />
guarding a title? Secondly, how can one make<br />
sure that one is not inadvertently guilty of using<br />
a title already taken ? i.<br />
<br />
It must be as annoying to Mrs. Jacob as it is to<br />
Miss Peard that they are now both pledged to the<br />
same title. a<br />
<br />
It has always been a matter of great difficulty<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
to me to discover whether a title has already been<br />
used.<br />
<br />
“ Red Pottage”’ was my fourth book, but it was<br />
the first (if I omit a small story) which was<br />
published with its original name.<br />
<br />
«Diana Tempest” had, as it seemed to me, an<br />
admirable title, but when the book was actually in<br />
proof it was discovered that a serial of that name<br />
was running in a small local newspaper. I was<br />
obliged to give up my title, and Mr. Bentley (who<br />
had spared no pains to discover whether the title<br />
had been used, and had come to the conclusion it<br />
had not) was at the expense of the correction of<br />
many sheets. The feeble name, “ Diana Tempest,”<br />
was only taken for lack of a better one, because<br />
the Press was waiting.<br />
<br />
Yet no book having the title I so reluctantly<br />
gave up has since been published, as far as I can<br />
make out, and I have watched carefully.<br />
<br />
On another occasion I had to relinquish a title.<br />
This time there was no doubt about it. It had<br />
been used. Nevertheless, several years later, the<br />
same title, word for word, was taken by one of<br />
our most distinguished novelists, and used with<br />
éclat.<br />
<br />
Surely a title should be copyright, or an author<br />
should be able to pay a fee to make it so.<br />
<br />
Would it be possible to institute a register of the<br />
titles of books, to which all new titles coald be<br />
added without delay, if the author wished to<br />
safeguard them.<br />
<br />
The author would thus, at least, know whether<br />
he has a right to the title he wishes to use by<br />
consulting this register.<br />
<br />
A moderate fee for the registration of a title,<br />
and a smaller fee to consult the list, would be<br />
gladly paid, I imagine, by anyone whose thorny<br />
lot it is to write books.<br />
<br />
Is such a recognised register quite impossible ?<br />
<br />
Also, would it be possible to register (as it were<br />
to bespeak) a title in advance ?<br />
<br />
It is an awful thing for an expansive and con-<br />
fiding nature to go about for three years with a<br />
title bottled up inside it. The first use (or rather<br />
mis-use) I should personally make of this register<br />
would be to feverishly inscribe thereon—as my own<br />
property—about twelve “taking” titles for my<br />
next book. I would not mind paying a guinea<br />
each, just to keep the wolves (I mean my brother<br />
novelists) from the door.<br />
<br />
Of course I should be sat upon at once by the<br />
gods who created the Register, who would no<br />
doubt make some tiresome rule in order to coerce<br />
me. Perhaps on the whole it would be fairer if we<br />
<br />
were only allowed to bespeak one title, and that<br />
only for a certain number of years.<br />
<br />
Can anything be done ?<br />
<br />
: Mary CHOLMONDELEY.<br />
<br />
193<br />
<br />
A PLEA FOR ENGLISH.<br />
oo<br />
<br />
HAVE read the remarks in “A Plea for<br />
Pedantry” in the March number of The<br />
Author with much interest. But there are<br />
<br />
two statements made there on which I should<br />
like to comment. One of these recommends the<br />
study of the Latin grammar because “it inculcates<br />
the difference between nominatives, datives, and<br />
accusatives.” This is no doubt useful advice, but<br />
it is not the most excellent way. If any one really<br />
wishes to learn such points of grammar with a view<br />
to writing English, and not Latin, it would be far<br />
safer to study Dr. Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer, and<br />
to learn the use of such cases by reading some of<br />
<br />
_ the works of our greatest master of Old English<br />
<br />
prose, whose name was Ailfric.<br />
<br />
Another method is to study the metre of Chaucer.<br />
Any one who will be at the trouble of ascertaining<br />
how the final e, which is of such value for the<br />
scansion of his lines, invariably depends upon con-<br />
siderations of etymology and grammar, will learn<br />
more about English grammar in two or three weeks<br />
than he will by studying Latin grammar for two<br />
or three years. Why writers usually neglect such<br />
obvious precautions is indeed a mystery. Perhaps<br />
it is due to the old prejudice which was certainly in<br />
vogue when I was myself at school. It was then<br />
generally believed that English grammar is the<br />
same thing as Latin grammar—which it is not—<br />
and that the study of Old English is one that is<br />
only fit for antiquaries and other harmless drudges.<br />
I fear that the same idea is still common, and that<br />
the serious study of English is still too much<br />
despised.<br />
<br />
The other statement is one to which I demur<br />
altogether, viz., that “grammar is really a branch<br />
of logic.” Strictly speaking, this can be defended ;<br />
but it is apt to be misleading. Grammar is only<br />
founded upon logic in the main ; but in details<br />
every language varies from logic according to its<br />
own idiosyncrasies ; else there would be no idioms.<br />
In Greek, the use of a neuter plural with a verb in<br />
the singular is strictly grammatical, though it<br />
utterly contradicts logic ; and the same may be<br />
said of the use of the double negative. Latin<br />
grammar and English grammar differ widely ;<br />
where Latin says “ Balbus eedificat murum,”<br />
English says “Balbus is building (rather than<br />
builds) a wall.” ‘Turn the dog out” is perfectly<br />
good English ; but ‘verte canem ex ” has rightly<br />
been considered as canine Latin. I hold that<br />
nothing is more illogical than to judge of the<br />
usages of one language by the standard of another.<br />
By all means learn Latin and Greek and French<br />
and German ; but do not imagine that these alone<br />
will teach you native English idioms.<br />
<br />
Water W. SKEAT.<br />
194<br />
<br />
UNITED STATES PUBLISHERS’<br />
ASSOCIATION.<br />
<br />
—1-—~ +<br />
<br />
Points for Consideration.<br />
<br />
HE Publishers’ Association in the United<br />
States is a very active body.<br />
<br />
The efforts which it put forward in order to bring<br />
about the passing of the Copyright Act are known<br />
to all members of the Society. Mr. George Haven<br />
Putnam has taken upon himself the mantle of his<br />
father, in dealing with these matters. It was<br />
mainly through his instrumentality that Germany<br />
was persuaded to continue its Copyright Treaty<br />
and await the result of the efforts of the United<br />
States publishers to amend the law which dealt<br />
with the output of books in foreign languages.<br />
<br />
All these things are matters of record.<br />
<br />
We await further developments of the United<br />
States Publishers’ Union towards free and fuir<br />
trading in other quarters.<br />
<br />
But it is not alone in questions of copyright that<br />
the activity of the Association is in evidence. It<br />
has made a great effort to benefit the lot of the<br />
bookseller by producing net books, and has carried<br />
on expensive litigation—not always, it is feared,<br />
with success—in order to confirm those rules of<br />
the Association which the majority of booksellers<br />
and publishers consider best for the trade.<br />
<br />
It seems clear, if it is possible to arrive at a just<br />
decision from the support that is given it, that the<br />
net system in the main works satisfactorily.<br />
<br />
“ Fiction,” however, and “ Juveniles” have not<br />
as yet been included in this system either in England<br />
or the United States,”<br />
<br />
The Publishers’ Weekly (United States) writes as<br />
follows on the subject :—<br />
<br />
“The recent action of the American Publishers’ Associa-<br />
tion shows that the majority of the trade is not yet ready<br />
for the inclusion of fiction in the net system, though we<br />
believe that a step forward in this direction is only a<br />
matter of time after the net system shall have been<br />
thoroughly established. We cannot repeat too often that<br />
it is a matter for congratulation that, despite the attacks<br />
on the net system, so much progress has been made with so<br />
few drawbacks in the short Space of two years, whereas<br />
in other countries twice and thrice this time has been<br />
required to affect as much betterment in trade methods.<br />
It is, on the whole, wise in such matters to go slowly ; and<br />
although there will doubtless be dissatisfaction here and<br />
there that the Publishers’ Association is not ready for<br />
another forward step, yet it must be admitted by the<br />
advocates of that step that there are many reasons for<br />
holding back. One of these is the geographical extent of<br />
this country, which makes carriage from the publishing<br />
centres to the extreme parts of the country a costly expense<br />
which must be paid for out of the margin of profit—the<br />
result of which is that prices on fiction are fairly held in<br />
part of the country, and that a reduction of price conse-<br />
quent on the application of the net system would work<br />
hardships. This, of course, is an objection to the whole<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
net system, and the present situation is really a compromise<br />
between the new net system and the old “ go-as-you-please ”<br />
and demoralising method. A decided advance, however,<br />
was made in limiting the discount on fiction, so that<br />
fiction cannot be sold at absolutely cut-throat prices as<br />
bait or advertisement for other lines of goods.<br />
<br />
“The movement to include ‘juveniles’ as fiction is<br />
perhaps so strong that it cannot be stayed. We regret<br />
this fact for the two reasons that it will be extremely<br />
difficult to define the limits of ‘juveniles, and that the<br />
change is a step backward instead of a change forward.<br />
There is considerable pressure, however, from housés which<br />
deal largely in ‘juveniles,’ and only protests from the retail<br />
trade to such houses, between the present time and the<br />
next meeting of the Association, can avert a change. It is<br />
important that the real feeling of the retail trade, pro and<br />
con, should thus be communicated either directly to the<br />
interested houses or to the columns of The Publishers?<br />
Weekly, which invites communications on this subject.”’ *<br />
<br />
Again the Association is interesting itself in<br />
postal reform.<br />
<br />
A favourable vote was passed on the following<br />
resolution :—<br />
<br />
“That the American Publishers’ Association instruct its<br />
Postal Committee to inquire into the efforts of the Postal<br />
Congress League to secure postal advancement, and into<br />
its endeavours to secure a parcel post and to secure postal<br />
rates not inimical to the interests of publishers and book-<br />
sellers, and if said Committee shall approve of such work,<br />
such Committee to report to the Board of Directors for any<br />
further action.”<br />
<br />
Now all these points are directly and indirectly<br />
<br />
important to British authors. They are methods<br />
of dealing with authors’ property. Accordingly,<br />
they should be carefully considered and not<br />
thoughtlessly set aside.<br />
<br />
With regard to the United States copyright,<br />
there is nothing to be said that has not been said<br />
hundreds of times and in a hundred places already.<br />
“Everything comes to him who waits.” If the<br />
Authors’ Society endures to the end it will no<br />
doubt see the perfect copyright law not only the<br />
other side of the water, but in the British Empire<br />
also.<br />
<br />
The question of net prices and the booksellers’<br />
trade was dealt with, as far as British Trade was<br />
concerned from the author’s standpoint, in two<br />
articles in the issues of The Author for J anuary and<br />
March, 1903. To these members are referred.<br />
<br />
So far it has been impossible to obtain definite<br />
information from the United States concerning the<br />
sales of books. When they come to hand they<br />
will be recorded.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
* Since the above was written, the Association have<br />
decided that on and after April Ist juvenile books may be<br />
published at a net price or on the same basis as fiction, at<br />
the option of the individual publishers.<br />
<br />
+ $e»<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 195<br />
<br />
FRIENDS IN NEED.<br />
<br />
———<br />
<br />
HAVE four boards and four pegs. The boards<br />
are about a foot and a-half each in length<br />
and, together, an inch or more in thickness.<br />
<br />
So, it will be seen, they will pack into a very small<br />
compass in a portmanteau. They are really the<br />
two sides and the two shelves, with the fastenings,<br />
of a small bookcase ; the four pegs bind shelves<br />
and sides in a firm grip, making them ready to<br />
receive books.<br />
<br />
Now for the books! Within the space the case<br />
allows I have fifty-four volumes. ‘These comprise<br />
the best of the works of Shakespeare, Bacon,<br />
Milton, Dryden, Sir Thomas More, Addison, Pope,<br />
Byron, Shelley, Keats, Carlyle, Sir Humphrey<br />
Davy, Boccaccio, Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, and<br />
sixteen other famous authors. Now for the cost<br />
of the whole. The bookcase T bought for one<br />
shilling and_threepence; the books (with the<br />
exception of Milton’s poems, which once belonged<br />
to my father ; a pocket edition, bearing date 1818)<br />
were purchased for ten shillings and sixpence !<br />
<br />
For this small sum I can enjoy the labours of<br />
many writers ; never be without companionship,<br />
and that the wisest and best.<br />
<br />
But, you may ask, why not have higher priced<br />
editions, placed on permanent shelves in the study ?<br />
T answer, because this portable library of mine can<br />
be taken, when the glorious spring-time comes,<br />
into the country districts where, perhaps, only the<br />
inhabitants will be found tedious :<br />
<br />
“Why, Nature, waste thy wonders on such men.”’<br />
<br />
There in the quietude of the evening, when the<br />
sitting-room of the village inn might seem a trifle<br />
uninteresting, my dainty volumes can “ teach me<br />
what is good,” can, as is 80 beautifully expressed in<br />
the well-known lines,<br />
<br />
“ Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,<br />
From every low pursuit ; and feed my soul<br />
With knowledge, conscious peace and virtue pure,<br />
Sacred, substantial, never failing bliss.”’<br />
<br />
J. Harris BRIGHOUSE.<br />
<br />
—— oO<br />
<br />
« JOURNALESE.” (THE NEW BAD<br />
LANGUAGE.)<br />
<br />
og<br />
We an ancient language dies<br />
Some new one will arise,<br />
Hence no one feels surprise<br />
At “ Journalese.”<br />
With the time we must keep pace (?)<br />
So the Anglo-Saxon race -<br />
Has decided to embrace<br />
« Journalese.”<br />
<br />
The “split infinitive ”<br />
<br />
Is a voice you must forgive<br />
<br />
When the folk with whom you live<br />
Talk “ Journalese.”<br />
<br />
If they say you're “different to<br />
<br />
Other writers ””—that can do<br />
<br />
Very little harm to you—<br />
It’s “‘ Journalese.”<br />
<br />
If “ Parliament” you think<br />
Needs a plural verb, they'll wink<br />
At an error, writ in ink—<br />
<br />
(It’s “ Journalese.”’)<br />
You never need to mind<br />
That your style should be refined<br />
When you cater for the kind<br />
<br />
“ Journalese.”<br />
<br />
If a “dictionary word”<br />
You should scoff at (as absurd)<br />
Such as “laughable ”—it’s heard<br />
In “ Journalese.”<br />
You can’t “laugh” a thing, you know,<br />
But you have to let it go,<br />
Because folk love it so<br />
In “ Journalese.”<br />
<br />
Your adverbs you may “chuck<br />
<br />
All around” and trust to luck<br />
<br />
‘As to where they may “ get stuck ”<br />
In “ Journalese.”<br />
<br />
And superlatives you pile<br />
<br />
Till you make the angels smile<br />
<br />
For they call that “ trenchant style”<br />
In “ Journalese.”<br />
<br />
All the charms of this new speech<br />
If I sang, the song would reach<br />
From Shanghai to Brighton Beach.<br />
For “ Journalese ”<br />
Borrows slang from every tongue<br />
With which man has prosed or sung ;<br />
It began when Earth was young<br />
Did “ Journalese.”<br />
<br />
BE. Urwick.<br />
<br />
a<br />
<br />
CORRESPONDENCE.<br />
<br />
—<br />
A PLEA FOR PEDANTRY.<br />
I<br />
<br />
Sir,—If the Society of Authors could persuade<br />
that “ puri sermonis amator,” the Pall Mall Gazette,<br />
to cease from splitting infinitives, ‘‘ to further queer<br />
the pitch,” and from using “ momentoes” for<br />
<br />
“« mementoes,” and “to while away the time ” for<br />
“to wile away the time,” I should rejoice greatly.<br />
Your obedient servant,<br />
Freperick WILLIAM ROLFE.<br />
196<br />
o<br />
<br />
Sir,—I wish that Miss Black had given a few more<br />
specimens of how English is, and ought nof, to be<br />
written in her “ Plea for Pedantry ” in The Author<br />
for March. Even Miss Masson, in the February<br />
number, did not mention that—may I say ?—<br />
terrible compound “ Whatever do you mean?”<br />
““ Whyever did you say that?” It is to be found<br />
in the works of some of the sbest of our modern<br />
novelists. In Ireland shall and will puzzle the<br />
native, but “sofar,” “idear,” “« Mariar,” etc, are<br />
not heard, and, as a rule, Irish clergymen did not<br />
pray God to bless “ Victoria—rour Queen.”<br />
<br />
And again, there is the pitfall of the adverb<br />
squeezed in between two parts of a verb, as, for<br />
instance, “The boy is unquestionably lazy,” “The<br />
girl is distinctly satisfied with herself,” “ He stoutly<br />
refused,” “ He strenuously opposed,” and so on.<br />
<br />
For Miss Black’s collection of sentences which<br />
are topsy-turvy, I give the following. They were<br />
copied by me from newspapers.<br />
<br />
“On the 10th inst., at Dash Road, N., John James Fowler<br />
in the sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection, in<br />
the house of his mother-in-law,”’<br />
<br />
“To be sold, a grand piano, the property of a lady with<br />
carved legs.’’<br />
<br />
** Lost, a cameo Brooch, containing Venus and Adonis on<br />
the Edgeware Road.”’<br />
<br />
Miss Black would have been kind if, for the<br />
benefit of the less well instructed, she had ex-<br />
plained, exactly, how the sentence beginning<br />
* Those whom” should run. I should have written<br />
“ Those who had been destined by Providence to be<br />
the chief ornaments—.” But I am not an expert,<br />
therefore I do not dogmatise. | hope that the<br />
Pleas for Pedantry will be continued in The<br />
Author.<br />
<br />
A MEMBER oF THE Socrery.<br />
<br />
— 1<br />
<br />
Boox Disrrigurion,<br />
<br />
Sin,—It seems to me high time that authors<br />
and publishers should form a mutually defensive<br />
alliance against the encroaching power of the<br />
great book distributors. I have good reason<br />
to be convinced that unless Messrs. Simpkin,<br />
Marshall & Co., Smith & Co., and Mudie choose<br />
to take up a book, that book might as well remain<br />
in MS., for not all the reviewing and advertising in<br />
the world will sell it against their inclination !<br />
They are able to dump down upon the country<br />
whatever books they like and withhold any that,<br />
for some reason or other, they do not care to<br />
supply. Anybody who lives in the provinces will<br />
Support me in the assertion that it is almost<br />
impossible to obtain the books one wants to read,<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
if those books happen to be by unpopular writers<br />
or of a type not palatable to the general taste. J<br />
have been trying hard for more than a year to get<br />
a book I saw favourably reviewed in December,<br />
1902, but three provincial libraries have not been<br />
able to procure it !<br />
<br />
And not only are we helpless at the libraries,<br />
but the buying of books is made difficult for us,<br />
A friend who ordered my last novel from a book-<br />
seller at Christmas was shown a letter (I presume<br />
from the almighty middleman) stating that the<br />
first edition was exhausted, which was a deliberate<br />
lie ; and the manager of a country bookstall, who<br />
also ordered it, was told that there was some diffi-<br />
culty with the publishers, another equally false<br />
statement. I havea serial coming outina magazine<br />
that is not very well known, and several of my<br />
friends have tried to get it. But no bookseller<br />
seems able to achieve this feat. The agents simply<br />
declare that such a magazine does not exist !<br />
<br />
It will be asked, why do not booksellers write<br />
straight to publishers for the works published by<br />
them? ‘To that I can make no reply, except that,<br />
as a rule, they will not. I suppose it is a question<br />
of postage.<br />
<br />
The agents will say that they supply whatever is<br />
demanded, which means, whatever is popular. But<br />
there is an increasing demand for better books than<br />
those we find in our country libraries. Even the<br />
Philistine is dissatisfied with the rubbish foisted<br />
upon him, and everywhere we hear the complaint,<br />
“ { can’t get anything fit to read.”<br />
<br />
Are publishers content to let this go on, to<br />
remain helpless in the hands of these autocrats<br />
who govern the market? If they are, I suppose<br />
we authors can do nothing. I am hoping that two<br />
new enterprising libraries, recently established,<br />
may help to break up the ring ; but who knows ?<br />
They may follow the old lead.<br />
<br />
Yours truly,<br />
A PROTESTANT.<br />
Se<br />
<br />
Epitine,<br />
<br />
Sir,—I presume Mr. Pretor’s letter on “The<br />
New Departure in Editing,” in the March Author,<br />
<br />
is intended to be sarcastic. Those Editor’s com-<br />
ments of Pearson’s Magazine seem to me simply<br />
impertinent. Surely no self-respecting writer would<br />
send a second story to an editor who had presumed<br />
to label his work “feeble in plot” or “ weak in<br />
style.” :<br />
When one reads the stuff that finds its way into.<br />
the illustrated magazines, one certainly does not.<br />
yearn for the counsel and criticism of their editors !<br />
Yours truly, | https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/492/1904-04-01-The-Author-14-7.pdf | publications, The Author |