UC-NRLF ' READIANA BIBLE CHARACTERS CHARLES RBADE'S NOVELS New Collected LIBRARY EDITION, complete in Seventeen Volumes, set in long- primer type, printed on laid paper^ and elegantly bound in cloth, price 33. 6d each. The volumes are appearing in the following order : 1. Peg Woffington; and Christie Johnstone. 2. Hard Cash. 3. The Cloister and the Hearth. With a Preface by Sir WALTER BESANT. 4. ' It is Never Too Late to Mend.' 5. The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth ; and Singleheart and Doubleface. 6. The Autobiography of a Thief ; Jack of all Trades ; A Hero and a Martyr; and The Wan- dering Heir. 7. Love Me Little, Love Me Long. 8. The Double Marriage. 9. Griffith Gaunt. 10. Foul Play. 11. Put Yourself in His Place. 12. A Terrible Temptation. 13. A Simpleton. 14. A Woman -Hater. 15. The Jilt, and other Stories; and Good Stories of Man and Other Animals. 16. A Perilous Secret. 17. Readiana; and Bible Charac- ters. POPULAR EDITION, post 3vo, illustrated boards, 25. each. Peg Woffington. Christie Johnstone. 'It is Never Too Late to Mend.' The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth. The Autobiography of a Thief; Jack of all Trades ; and James Lambert. Love Me Little, Love Me Long. The Double Marriage. The Cloister and the Hearth. Hard Cash. Griffith Gaunt. Foul Play. Put Yourself in His Place. A Terrible Temptation. A Simpleton. The Wandering Heir. A Woman -Hater. Singleheart and Doubleface. Good Stories of Man and Other Animals. The Jilt, and other Stories. A Perilous Secret. Readiana. CHEAP EDITIONS. Medium 8vo, 6d. each ; cloth, is. each. It is Never Too Late to Mend.' | The Cloister and the Hearth. Peg Woffington; and Christie Johnstone. 'It is Never Too Late to Mend' and The Cloister and the Hearth, in One Vol., medium 8vo, cloth, zs. Christie Johnstone. With Frontispiece. Choicely printed in Elzevir style. Fcap. 8vo, half-Roxburghe, 23. 6d. Peg Woffington. Choicely printed in Elzevir style. Fcap. 8vo, half-Roxburghe, 2S. 6d. The Cloister and the Hearth. In Four Vols., post 8vo, with an Introduction by Sir WALTER BESANT, and a Frontispiece to each vol., 145. the set ; and the ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY EDITION, with Illustrations on every page, Two Vols., crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 425. net. Bible Characters. Fcap. 8vo, leatherette, is. Selections from the Works of Charles Reade. With an Introduction by Mrs. ALEX. IRELAND. Crown 8vo, buckram, with Portrait, 6s. ; CHEAP EDITION, post 8vo, cloth limp, 25. 6d. LONDON : CHATTO & WINDUS. CHARLES READIANA COMMENTS ON CURRENT EVENTS BIBLE CHARACTERS LIBRARY EDITION "' "''LONDON- CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1896 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. At the Ballantyne Press PREFACE MANY people think they can discern a novelist's real opinions in his works, and, of course, when he speaks in his own person, they can. But surely the dialogue of fictitious characters must be an unsafe guide to an author's real mind; for it is the writer's business to make his characters deliver their convic- tions, not his, and as eloquently as possible. My good friend, Mr. Chatto, has thought it worth while to ransack the files for my personal convictions on various subjects and to publish them. In this he has consulted friendship rather than interest. However, honest and lasting convictions are worth something, and this volume contains nothing else. I find I have gone a little beyond the mark in calling the execution of Murdoch illegal. It is not pnmdfade illegal to hang a man who kills an officer in the discharge of his duty, but in this country law goes by precedent ; Murdoch garroted the gaoler, not with the intention of killing him, but of escaping whilst the gaoler was disabled for a time. The desire for liberty is as natural and overpowering as hunger, and the prisoner acted upon it with no murderous intention whatever. He never left the neighbourhood, sure proof he did not know he had killed the gaoler, and he went into tears when he heard the old man was dead. The people who at that date misgoverned this nation had tempted Murdoch to the act by leaving Hastings Gaol inefficiently guarded. When they hung the youth they had tempted, hung him to hide their own fault, the spectators of the execution were fewer than ever assembled to see a hanging before or since, and the only cry that came from this handful of spectators was, " Murder ! Murder ! ! " Just three months after this butchery, 869727 PREFACE an escaped prisoner was brought before a judge : the judge was invited by the crown to inflict condign punishment ; he treated the proposal with contempt. "The prisoner/' said he, "yielded to the natural and imperious desire of liberty. It was his business to escape, and it was the gaoler's business not to let him." In two other matters I said too little. Colonel Baker's sentence was beyond all precedent, and the verdict hardly justified. In a court that defies the Divine law, and the laws of civilised Europe, by closing the mouth of the accused, every admission made by the prosecutor ought to have double weight. When a young lady orders a gallant colonel to hold her whilst she projects from a railway carriage, he is her ally in a gymnastic, not an assailant she really fears, or has grave reason to fear. Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi. The other example in which I have written below the mark, is the verdict of wilful murder against Louis Staunton, Mrs. Patrick Staunton, and Alice Rhodes : a verdict bloodthirsty yet ridiculous, a verdict obtained by transparent perjury in the witness-box, and prejudice, sophistry, and bad law upon the bench. But this latter shortcoming I hope to repair, with God's help, before the two victims of perjury, sophistry, false fact, and rotten law are slaughtered in the bloodless but effectual shambles, where the one real criminal has already perished. CHARLES READE. October 1882. VJ CONTENTS READIANA PAGE A BRAVE WOMAN ....... 3 A BAD FALL ..... .7 PERSEVERANCE .... . . IO A DRAMATIC MUSICIAN . . . . . -I? DEATH OF WINWOOD READE . . . . -21 CREMONA FIDDLES ....... 23 THE STORY OF THE BOAT RACE OF 1872 53 BUILDERS' BLUNDERS .... -58 WHO is HE? . . . . . . . .69 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES . . . 71 OUR DARK PLACES .98 THE RIGHTS AND THE WRONGS OF AUTHORS . -Ill LETTER TO MR. J. R. LOWELL ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 206 VICARIA ......... 213 HANG IN HASTE, REPENT AT LEISURE . . . 2l6 THE LEGAL VOCABULARY ...... 238 COLONEL BAKER'S SENTENCE ..... 244 PROTEST AGAINST THE MURDER AT LEWES GAOL . 248 STARVATION REFUSING PLENTY . . . .250 OUTRAGES ON THE JEWS IN RUSSIA . . . -253 PRIVATE BILLS AND PUBLIC WRONGS . . . -257 vii CONTENTS PAQR "A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION" 260 A SUPPRESSED LETTER . .... 276 "FOUL PLAY" ....... 280 THE SHAM SAMPLE SWINDLE 283 "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND " . . . 294 THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW" AND THE "SATURDAY REVIEW" ... . 295 THE PRURIENT PRUDE . . . 296 SECOND-HAND LIBEL ...... 302 "FACTS MUST BE FACED" ..... 304 DIALOGUE BETWEEN A JUDGE AND A GAOLER . . 309 NOTE TO A SICK FRIEND ...... 312 BIBLE CHARACTERS I. A LITERARY MARVEL . . . . '315 II. AIDS TO FAITH ...... 318 III. NEHEMIAK 323 iv. NEHEMIAH'S WORK ...... 330 v. JONAH ........ 338 VI. DAVID ........ 348 VII. PAUL'S PERSEVERANCE ..... 350 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION . . . . . -356 MONUMENTAL EVIDENCE AND DOCUMENTAL . . -359 READIANA RE A D I A N A A BRAVE WOMAN THE public itches to hear what people of rank and repu- tation do and say, however trivial. We defer to this taste : and that gives us a right to gratify our own now and then, by presenting what may be called the reverse picture, the re- markable acts, or sufferings, or qualities, of persons unknown to society, because society is a clique ; and to fame, because fame is partial. In this spirit we shall tell our readers a few facts about a person we are not likely to misjudge, for we do not know her even by sight. 31st of August, 1878, a train left Margate for London by the Chatham and Dover line. At Sittingbourne the points- man turned the points the wrong way, and the train dashed into a shunted train at full speed. The engine, tender, and leading carriages were crushed together and piled over one another. The nearest passengers were chatting merrily one moment, and dead, dying, or mutilated, the next. Nearest the engine was a third-class carriage, and in its farthest compartment sat a Mrs. Freeland, who in her youth had led an adventurous life in the colonies, but now in middle age had returned to mother England for peace and quiet. She felt a crash and heard a hissing, and for one moment saw the tender bursting through the compartments towards her; then she was hurled down upon her face, with some awful weight upon her, and wedged immovable in a debris of fractured iron, splintered wood, shattered glass, and muti- lated bodies. In a few minutes people ran to help, but in that ex- cited state which sometimes aggravates these dire calamities. First they were for dragging her out by force ; but she was 3 READIANA self-possessed, and said : " Pray, be calm and don't attempt it ; I am fast by the legs, and a great weight on my back." Then they were, for breaking; into the carriage from above; but she; daHed to. 'therri, ."Please don't do that the roof is broken, ancj you don't know, what you may bring down upon us-": ', /; '..' { ; ; ; /;, Thus advised by' the person' most Hkely to lose her head one would think, they effected an entrance at the sides. They removed from her back an iron wheel and a dead body, and they sawed round her jammed and lacerated limbs, and at last with difficulty carried out a lady, with her boots torn and filled with blood, her clothes in ribbons, her face pouring blood, her back apparently broken, and her right leg furrowed all down to the very foot with a gaping wound, that laid bare the sinews ; besides numberless contusions and smaller injuries. They laid her on a mat upon the platform, and there she remained, refusing many offers of brandy, and waiting for a surgeon. None came for a long time; and benevolent Nature, so- called, sent a heavy rain. At last, in three quarters of an hour, surgeons arrived, and one of them removed her on her mat into a shed, that let in only part of the rain. He found her spine injured, took a double handful of splinters, wood, and glass, out of her head and face, and then examined her leg. He looked aghast at the awful furrow. The sufferer said, quietly, " I should like a stitch or two put into that." The surgeon looked at her in amazement, "Can you bear it ? " She said : " I think so." He said she had better fortify herself with a little brandy. She objected to that as useless. But he insisted, and the awful furrow was stitched up with silk. This done he told her she had better be moved to the Infirmary at Chatham. "Army surgeons?" said she. "No, thank you. I shall go to a London hospital." Being immovable in this resolution, she had to wait three hours for a train. At last she was sent up to London, lying upon a mat on the floor of a carriage, hashed, as we have described, and soaked with rain. From the London station she was conveyed on a stretcher to St. George's Hospital. There they dis- covered many grave injuries, admired her for her courage and wisdom in having had her wounded leg sewn up at once, but told her with regret that to be effectual it must be secured with silver points, and that without delay. 4 A BRAVE WOMAN "Very well/' said she patiently; "but give me chloro- form, for I am worn out." The surgeon said : " If you could endure it without chloro- form it would be better." He saw she had the courage of ten men. "Well/' said she, "let me have somebody's hand to hold, and I will try to bear it." A sympathising young surgeon gave this brave woman his hand : and she bore to have the silk threads removed, and thirty little silver skewers passed and repassed through her quivering flesh, sixty wounds to patch up one. It afterwards transpired that the good surgeon was only reserving chloro- form for the amputation he thought must follow, having little hope of saving such a leg. Whatever charity and science united in our hospitals, though disunited in those dark hells where God's innocent creatures are cut up alive out of curiosity could do, was done for her at St. George's Hospital ; the wounded leg was saved, and in three weeks the patient was carried home. But the deeper injuries seemed to get worse. She lay six months on her back, and after that was lame and broken and aching from head to foot for nearly a year. As soon as she could crawl about she busied herself in relieving the sick and the poor, according to her means. Fifteen months after the railway accident, a new and mys- terious injury began to show itself; severe internal pains, accompanied with wasting, which was quite a new feature in the case. This brought her to death's door after all. But, when faint hopes were entertained of her recovery, the malady declared itself, an abscess in the intestines. It broke, and left the sufferer prostrate, but out of danger. Unfortunately, in about a month another formed, and laid her low again, until it gave way like its predecessor. And that has now been her life for months ; constantly growing these agonising things, of which a single one is generally fatal. In one of her short intervals of peace a friend of hers, Major Mercier, represented to her the merits and the diffi- culties of a certain hospital for diseases of the skin. Instantly this brave woman sets to work and lives for other afflicted persons. She fights the good fight, talks, writes, persuades, insists, obtains the public support of five duchesses, five marchionesses, thirty-two countesses, and a hundred ladies of rank, and also of many celebrated characters ; obtains sub- 5 READIANA scriptions, organises a grand bazaar, &c., for this worthy object. Now, as a general rule, permanent invalids fall into ego- tism ; but here is a lady, not only an invalid, but a sufferer, and indeed knocked down by suffering half her time; yet with undaunted heart, and charitable, unselfish soul, she struggles and works for others, whose maladies are after all much lighter than her own. Ought so much misfortune and merit to receive no public notice ? Ought so rare an union of male fortitude and womanly pity to suffer and relieve without a word of praise ? Why to us, who judge by things, not names, this seems some heroic figure strayed out of Antiquity into an age of little men and women, who howl at the scratch of a pen. Such a character deserves to be sung by some Christian poet ; but as poetasters are many and poets are few, Mrs. Rosa Freeland, brave, suffering, and charitable, is chronicled in the prose of " Fact." A BAD FALL To THE EDITOR OF "FACT" SIR, I sometimes get provoked with the British workman and say so. He comes into my house to do a day's work, and goes out again to fetch the tool he knew he should want, and does not come back till after breakfast. Then I think I have got him. But no ; he sharpens his tools and goes out for a whet. Even when he is at work he is always going into the kitchen for hot water, or a hot coal, or the loan of a pair of tongs, or some other blind. My maids, who, before he came, were all industry and mock modesty, throw both these virtues out of window, and are after him on the roof, when he is not after them in the kitchen. They lose their heads entirely, and are not worth their salt, far less their wages, till he is gone, and that is always a terribly long time, considering how little he has to do. For these reasons, and because whenever he has been out on my roof, the rain comes in next heavy shower, I have permitted myself to call him in print " the curse of families." Then he strikes, and combines, and speechifies, and calls the capital, that feeds him, his enemy ; and sometimes fights with the capital of a thousand against the capital of a single master, and overpowers it, yet calls that a fight of labour against capital. Then he demands short time, which gene- rally means more time to drink in, and higher wages, which often means more money to drink with. Thereupon I lose my temper, rush into print, and call the British workman the British talk-man, and the British drink-man. But it must be owned all this is rather narrow and shallow. " Where there's a multitude there's a mixture," and a private gentleman in my position does not really know the mass of the workmen, and their invaluable qualities. One thing is notorious that in their bargains with capital they are very lenient in one respect, they charge very little 7 READIANA for their lives ; yet they shorten them in many trades, and lose them right away in some. Even I, who have been hard on them in some things, have already pointed out that instead of labour and capital the trades ought to speechify on life, labour, and capital ; and dwell more upon their risks, as a fit subject of remuneration, than their professed advocates have done. Is it not a sad thing to reflect, when you see the scaffolding prepared for some great building to be erected either for pious or mundane purposes, that out of those employed in erecting it some are sure to be killed ! All this prolixity is to usher in a simple fact, which interests me more than the petty proceedings of exalted personages, and their " migrations from the blue bed to the brown ; " and some of your readers are sure to be of my mind. The Princess's Theatre, Oxford Street, is being recon- structed. The walls, far more substantial than they build now-a-days, are to stand, but the old interior is demolished, and the roof heightened. Sullivan, a young carpenter, was at work with his fellows on a stage properly secured. They wanted some ropes that lay on another stage, and sent him for them. Between the stages was a plank, which he naturally thought had been laid to walk on. He stepped on it it was only a half-inch board. It snapped under his weight like a carrot, and he fell through in a moment. He caught at a projection, but merely tore his fingers, and descended into space with fearful velocity. The height was fifty feet measured. The thing he fell on was a hard board, lying on hard ground. Those who saw him fall, and heard his one cry of horror, had no hope of taking up anything from the ground below but a battered corpse with broken back, fractured skull, and shattered ribs. Thirty-five feet below the place he fell from, a strong bolt, about an inch in diameter and four feet long, protruded from the wall almost at right angles, but with a slight declension downwards. The outer end of this protruding iron just caught Sullivan by the seat, ripped up his clothes, and tore his back, and partly broke his fall. Nevertheless, such was its violence that he bounded up from the board he eventually fell upon, and was found all of a heap in a hollow place close by, senser less, and almost pulseless. 8 A BAD FALL He was taken to the Middlesex Hospital. There he came to his senses and his trouble. His pulse was soon over 100. His temperature 108 a very alarming feature. This, how- ever, has subsided, and they have got his pulse to 98, but he cannot eat ; his eyes cannot bear the light. There are one or more severe wounds upon his back parts, and much reason to fear injury to the spinal column. He is in danger ; and, if he survives, which I think very possible, it is to be feared he will never be able to walk and work again. These, sir, are the dire realities of life ; and very fit to be admitted into your graver columns. Here is a sad fact and a curious fact. Sullivan was a handsome young fellow, just beginning the world. In a moment there he lies a cripple and a wreck, and that is a sad thing for any feeling heart to think of. The bolt which saved him from immediate death is a curious fact. It is still to be seen dangling from the wall as it did, when it ripped up the workman's clothes, furrowed his back, and broke his fall. Will it prove his friend or his enemy, that piece of iron ? The enemy of his body if it makes him a cripple instead of a corpse ; but the friend of his soul if he reads his own story right : wherefore I hope some servant of God will go to his bedside with the true balm of Gilead. I am, sir, yours faithfully, CHARLES READE. Jvly, 1880. PERSEVERANCE ON a certain day in the year 1819, Mr. Chitty, an attorney in Shaftesbury, was leaving his office for the day, when he was met at the door by a respectable woman and a chubby-faced boy with a bright eye. He knew the woman slightly a widow that kept a small stationer's shop in the town. She opened her business at once. " Oh, Mr. Chitty, I have brought you my Robert ; he gives me no peace ; his heart is so set on being in a lawyer's office. But there, I have not got the money to apprentice him. Only we thought perhaps you could find some place or other for him, if it was ever so small." Then she broke off and looked appealingly, and the boy's cheeks and eyes were fired with expectation. Most country towns at that time possessed two solicitors, who might be called types ; the old-established man, whose firm for generations had done the pacific and lucrative business wills, settlements, partnerships, mortgages, &c. and the sharp practitioner, who was the abler of the two at litigation, and had to shake the plum tree instead of sitting under it and opening his mouth for the windfalls. Mr. Chitty was No. 2. But these sharp practitioners are often very good-natured ; and so, looking at the pleading widow and the beaming boy, he felt disposed to oblige them, and rather sorry he could not. He said his was a small office, and he had no clerk's place vacant ; " and, indeed, if I had, he is too young ; why, he is a mere child ! " "I am twelve next so-and-so," said the boy, giving the month and the day. " You don't look it, then," said Mr. Chitty incredulously. " Indeed, but he is, sir," said the widow ; " he never looked his age, and writes a beautiful hand." " But I tell you I have no vacancy," said Mr. Chitty, turn- ing dogged. 10 PERSEVERANCE " Well, thank you, sir, all the same," said the widow, with the patience of her sex. " Come, Robert, we mustn't detain the gentleman." So they turned away with disappointment marked on their faces, the boy's especially. Then Mr. Chitty said in a hesitating way : " To be sure, there is a vacancy, but it is not the sort of thing for you." " What is it, sir, if you please ? " asked the widow. " Well, we want an office boy." " An office boy ! What do you say, Robert ? I suppose it is a beginning, sir. What will he have to do ? " "Why, sweep the office, run errands, carry papers and that is not what he is after. Look at him he has got that eye of his fixed on a counsellor's wig, you may depend ; and sweeping a country attorney's office is not the stepping-stone to that." He added warily, " at least, there is no precedent reported." " La ! sir," said the widow, " he only wants to turn an honest penny, and be among law-papers." " Ay, ay, to write 'em and sell 'em, but not to dust 'em ! " " For that matter, sir, I believe he'd rather be the dust itself in your office than bide at home with me." Here she turned angry with her offspring for half a moment. "And so I would," said young master stoutly, endorsing his mother's hyperbole very boldly, though his own mind was not of that kind which originates metaphors, similes, and engines of inaccuracy in general. " Then I say no more," observed Mr. Chitty ; " only mind, it is half-a-crown a week that is all." The terms were accepted, and Master Robert entered on his humble duties. He was steady, persevering, and pushing; in less than two years he got promoted to be a copying clerk. From this in due course he became a superior clerk. He studied, pushed and persevered, till at last he became a fair practical lawyer, and Mr. Chitty's head clerk. And so much for Perseverance. He remained some years in this position, trusted by his employer and respected too ; for besides his special gifts as a law clerk, he was strict in morals, and religious without parade. In those days country attorneys could not fly to the metro- polis and back to dinner. They relied much on London attorneys, their agents. Lawyer Chitty's agent was Mr. Bishop, a judge's clerk; but in those days a judge's clerk 11 READIANA had an insufficient stipend, and was allowed to eke it out by private practice. Mr. Bishop was agent to several country attorneys. Well, Chitty had a heavy case coming on at the assizes, and asked Bishop to come down for once in a way and help him in person. Bishop did so, and in working the case was delighted with Chitty's managing clerk. Before leaving, he said he sadly wanted a managing clerk he could rely on. Would Mr. Chitty oblige him and part with this young man ? Chitty made rather a wry face, and said that young man was a pearl. te I don't know what I shall do without him ; why, he is my alter ego." However, he ended by saying generously that he would not stand in the young man's way. Then they had the clerk in and put the question to him. " Sir," said he, " it is the ambition of my heart to go to London." Twenty-four hours after that, our humble hero was in- stalled in Mr. Bishop's office, directing a large business in town and country. He filled that situation for many years, and got to be well known in the legal profession. A brother of mine, who for years was one of a firm of solicitors in Lin- coln's Inn Fields, remembers him well at this period ; and to have met him sometimes in his own chambers and some- times in Judge's Chambers ; my brother says he could not help noticing him, for he bristled with intelligence, and knew a deal of law, though he looked a boy. The best of the joke is that this clerk afterwards turned out to be four years older than that solicitor who took him for a boy. He was now amongst books as well as lawyers, and studied closely the principles of law whilst the practice was sharpen- ing him. He was much in the courts, and every case there cited in argument or judgment he hunted out in the books, and digested it, together with its application in practice by the living judge, who had quoted, received, or evaded it. He was a Baptist, and lodged with a Baptist minister and his two daughters. He fell in love with one of them, pro- posed to her, and was accepted. The couple were married without pomp, and after the ceremony the good minister took them aside, and said, " I have only 200 in the world ; I have saved it a little at a time, for my two daughters. Here is your share, my children." Then he gave his daughter 100, and she handed it to the bridegroom on the spot. 12 PERSEVERANCE The good minister smiled approval, and they sat down to what fine folk call breakfast, but they called dinner, and it was. After dinner and the usual ceremonies, the bridegroom rose and surprised them a little. He said, "I am very sorry to leave you, but I have a particular business to attend to ; it will take me just one hour." Of course there was a look or two interchanged, especially by every female there present; but the confidence in him was too great to be disturbed ; and this was his first eccen- tricity. He left them, went to Gray's Inn, put down his name as a student for the Bar ; paid away his wife's dowry in the fees, and returned within the hour. Next day the married clerk was at the office as usual, and entered on a twofold life. He worked as a clerk till five, dined in the Hall of Gray's Inn as a sucking barrister ; and studied hard at night. This was followed by a still stronger example of duplicate existence, and one without a parallel in my reading and experience he became a writer, and pro- duced a master-piece, which, as regarded the practice of our courts, became at once the manual of attorneys, counsel, and judges. The author, though his book was entitled "practice," showed some qualities of a jurist, and corrected soberly but firmly unscientific legislature and judicial blunders. So here was a student of Gray's Inn, supposed to be picking up in that Inn a small smattering of law, yet, to diversify his crude studies, instructing mature counsel and correcting the judges themselves, at whose chambers he attended daily, cap in hand, as an attorney's clerk. There's an intellectual hotch- potch for you ! All this did not in his Inn qualify him to be a barrister; but years and dinners did. After some weary years he took the oaths at Westminster, and vacated by that act his place in Bishop's office, and was a pauper for an afternoon. But work, that has been long and tediously prepared, can be executed quickly ; and adverse circumstances, when Perse- verance conquers them, turn round and become allies. The ex-clerk and young barrister had ploughed and sowed with such pains and labour, that he reaped with comparative ease. Half the managing clerks in London knew him and believed in him. They had the ear of their employers, and brought him pleadings to draw and motions to make. His 13 READIANA book, too, brought him clients ; and he was soon in full career as a junior counsel and special pleader. Senior counsel too found that they could rely upon his zeal, accuracy, and learning. They began to request that he might be retained with them in difficult cases, and he became first junior counsel at the bar ; and so much for Perseverance. Time rolled its ceaseless course, and a silk gown was at his disposal. Now, a popular junior counsel cannot always afford to take silk, as they call it. Indeed, if he is learned, but not eloquent, he may ruin himself by the change. But the re- markable man, whose career I am epitomising, did not hesitate ; he still pushed onward, and so one morning the Lord Chancellor sat for an hour in the Queen's Bench, and Mr. Robert Lush was appointed one of Her Majesty's Counsel learned in the Law, and then and there, by the Chancellor's invitation, stepped out from among the juniors and took his seat within the Bar. So much for Perseverance. From this point the outline of his career is known to every- body. He was appointed in 1865 one of the Judges of the Queen's Bench, and, after sitting in that Court some years, was promoted to be a Lord Justice of Appeal. A few days ago he died, lamented and revered by the legal profession, which is very critical, and does not bestow its respect lightly. I knew him only as Queen's Counsel. I had him against me once, but oftener for me, because my brother thought him even then the best lawyer and the most zealous at the Bar, and always retained him if he could. During the period I knew him personally Mr. Lush had still a plump, unwrinkled face, and a singularly bright eye. His voice was full, mellow, and penetrating ; it filled the Court without apparent effort, and accorded well with his style of eloquence, which was what Cicero calls the temperatum genus loquendi. Reasoning carried to perfection is one of the fine arts ; an argument by Lush enchained the ear and charmed the under- standing. He began at the beginning, and each succeeding topic was articulated and disposed of, and succeeded by its right successor, in language so fit and order so lucid, that he rooted and grew conviction in the mind. Tantum series neocuraque pollent. I never heard him at Nisi Prius, but should think he could do nothing ill, yet would be greater at convincing judges than at persuading juries right or wrong ; for at this pastime he would have to escape from the force of his own under- 14 PERSEVERANCE standing ; whereas I have known counsel blatant and admired, whom Nature and flippant fluency had secured against that difficulty. He was affable to clients, and I had more than one con- versation with him, very interesting to me. But to intrude these would be egotistical, and disturb the just proportions of this short notice. I hope some lawyer, who knew him well as counsel and judge, will give us his distinctive features, if it is only to correct those vague and colourless notices of him that have appeared. This is due to the legal profession. But, after all, his early career interests a much wider circle. We cannot all be judges ; but we can all do great things by the perseverance which, from an office boy, made this man a clerk, a counsel, and a judge. Do but measure the difficulties he overcame in his business with the difficulties of rising in any art, pro- fession, or honourable walk ; and down with despondency's whine, and the groans of self-deceiving laziness. You who have youth and health, never you quail " At those twin gaolers of the daring heart, Low birth and iron fortune." See what becomes of those two bugbears when the stout champion SINGLE-HEART and the giant PERSEVERANCE take them by the throat. Why the very year those chilling lines were first given to the public by Bulwer and Macready, Robert Lush paid his wife's dowry away to Gray's Inn in fees, and never whined nor doubted nor looked right nor left, but went straight on and prevailed. Genius and talent may have their bounds but to the power of single-hearted perseverance there is no known limit. Non omnis moriuus est; the departed judge still teaches from his tomb; his dicta will outlive him in our English Courts ; his gesta are for mankind. Such an instance of single-heartedness, perseverance, and proportionate success in spite of odds is not for one narrow island but the globe ; an old man sends it to the young in both hemispheres with this comment : If difficulties lie in the way, never shirk them, but think of Robert Lush, and trample on them. If impossibilities encounter you up hearts and at 'em. 15 READIANA One thing more to those who would copy Robert Lush in all essentials. Though impregnated from infancy with an honourable ambition, he remembered his Creator in the days of his youth ; nor did he forget Him, when the world poured its honours on him, and those insidious temptations of pros- perity, which have hurt the soul far oftener than " low birth and iron fortune." He flourished in a sceptical age ; yet he lived, and died, fearing God. A DRAMATIC MUSICIAN To THE EDITOR OF THE "ERA." SIR, There died the other day in London a musician, who used to compose, or set, good music to orchestral instruments, and play it in the Theatre with spirit and taste, and to watch the stage with one eye and the orchestra with another, and so accompany with vigilant delicacy a mixed scene of action and dialogue ; to do which the music must be full when the actor works in silence, but subdued promptly as often as the actor speaks. Thus it enhances the action without drowning a spoken line. These are varied gifts, none of them common, and music is a popular art. One would think, then, that such a composer and artist would make his fortune now-a-days. Not so. Mr. Edwin Ellis lived sober, laborious, prudent, respected, and died poor. He was provident and insured his life ; he had a family and so small an income that he could not keep up the insurance. He has left a wife and nine children utterly destitute, and he could not possibly help it. The kindest- hearted Profession in the world though burdened with many charitable claims will do what it can for them; but I do think the whole weight ought not to fall upon actors and musicians. The man was a better servant of the pliblic than people are aware, and therefore I ask leave to say a few words to the public and to the Press over his ill-remunerated art, and his untimely grave. Surely the prizes of the Theatre are dealt too unevenly, when such a man for his compositions and his performance receives not half the salary of many a third-class performer on the stage, works his heart out, never wastes a shilling, and dies without one. No individual is to blame; but the system seems indiscrimi- nating and unjust, and arises from a special kind of ignorance, which is very general, but I think and hope is curable. 17 B READIANA Dramatic effects are singularly complex, and they cannot really be understood unless they are decomposed. But it is rare to find, out of the Theatre, a mind accustomed to decom- pose them. The writer is constantly blamed for the actor's misinterpretation, and the actor for the writer's feebleness. Indeed, the general inability to decompose and so discriminate goes so far as this You hear an author gravely accused by a dozen commentators of writing a new play four hours long. Of those four hours the stage-carpenter occupied one hour and thirty minutes. Yet they ascribe that mechanic's delay to the lines and delivery, when all the time it was the car- penter, who had not rehearsed his part, and therefore kept the author and the actors waiting just as long as he did the audience. Where the habit of decomposing effects is so entirely absent, it follows, as a matter of course, that the subtle sub- sidiary art of the able leader is not distinguished, and goes for nothing in the public estimate of a play. I suppose two million people have seen Shaun the Post escape from his prison by mounting the ivied tower, and have panted at the view. Of those two million how many are aware that they saw with the ear as well as the eye, and that much of their emotion was caused by a mighty melody, such as effeminate Italy never produced and never will till she breeds more men and less monks being played all the time on the great principle of climax, swelling higher and higher, as the hero of the scene mounted and surmounted ? Not six in the two million spectators, I believe. Mr. Ellis has lifted scenes and situations for me and other writers scores of times, and his share of the effect never been publicly noticed. When he had a powerful action or impassioned dialogue to illustrate he did not habitually run to the poor resource of a " hurry " or a nonsense " tremolo," but loved to find an appropriate melody, or a rational sequence of chords, or a motived strain, that raised the scene or enforced the dialogue. As to his other qualities, it was said of Caesar that he was a general who used not to say to his soldiers " go " but " come," and that is how Mr. Ellis led an orchestra. He showed them how to play with spirit by doing it himself. He was none of your sham leaders with a baton, but a real leader with a violin, that set his band on fire. A little while before he died he tried change of air, by the kind permission of Messrs. Gatti, and he helped me down at Liverpool. He entered a small orchestra of good musicians that had become languid. He 18 A DRAMATIC MUSICIAN waked them up directly, and they played such fine music and so finely that the entr'acte music became at once a feature of the entertainment. A large theatre used to ring nightly with the performance of fifteen musicians only ; and the Lancashire lads, who know what is good, used to applaud so loudly and persistently that Mr. Ellis had to rise nightly in the orchestra and bow to them before the curtain could be raised. Then I repeat that there must be something wrong in the scale of remuneration, when such a man works for many years and dies in need, without improvidence. In all other pro- fessions there are low rewards and high rewards. On what false principles does such a man as Ellis receive the same pittance as a mediocre leader, who doses a play with tremolo, and " hurries," and plays you dead with polkas between the acts, and, though playing to a British audience, rarely plays a British melody but to destroy it by wrong time, wrong rhythm, coarse and slovenly misinterpretation, ploughing immortal airs, not playing them ? I respectfully invite the Press over this sad grave, to look into these matters to adopt the habit of decomposing all the complex effects of a theatre ; to ignore nobody, neither artist nor mechanic, who affects the public ; to time the carpenters' delays on a first night and report them to a second ; to time the author's lines, and report their time to a minute ; to criticise as an essential part of the performance the music, appropriate or inappropriate, intelligent or brainless, that accompanies the lines and action ; and not even to ignore the quality and execution of the entr'acte music. A thousand people have to listen to it three-quarters of an hour, and those thousand people ought not to be swindled out of a part of their money by the misinterpretation of Italian overtures, or by the everlasting performance of polkas and waltzes. These last are good musical accompaniments to the foot, but to seated victims they are not music, but mere rhythmical thumps. There is no excuse for this eternal trash, since the stores of good music are infinite. If the Press will deign to take a hint from me, and so set themselves to decompose and discriminate, plays will soon be played quicker on a first night, and accomplished artists like Edwin Ellis will not work hard, live soberly, and die poor. Meantime, I do not hesitate to ask the public to repair in some degree the injustice of fortune. Millions of people have passed happy evenings at the Adelphi Theatre. Thousands 19 READIANA have heard Mr. Ellis accompany The Wandering Heir and between the acts play his "Songs without Music" at the Queen's. I ask them to believe me that this deserving and unfortunate musician caused much of their enjoyment though they were not conscious of it at the time. Those spectators, and all who favour me with their confidence in matters of charity, I respectfully invite to aid the Theatrical and Musical Professions in the effort they are now making to save from dire destitution the widow and children of that accomplished artist and worthy man. I am, sir, yours respectfully, CHARLES READE. 20 DEATH OF WINWOOD READE FROM THE "DAILY TELEGRAPH," APRIL 26, 1876. WE regret to announce the death of Mr. Winwood Reade, well-known as an African traveller and correspondent, and by many works of indubitable power. This remarkable man closed, on Saturday last, April 24, a laborious career, cheered with few of Fortune's smiles. As a youth he had shown a singular taste for natural science. This, however, was inter- rupted for some years by University studies, and afterwards by an honest but unavailing attempt to master the art of Fiction, before possessing sufficient experience of life. He produced, however, two or three novels containing some good and racy scenes, unskilfully connected, and one (" See-Saw") which is a well-constructed tale. He also published an archaeological volume, entitled "The Vale of Isis." The theories of M. Du Chaillu as to the power and aggressive character of the gorilla inflamed Mr. Reade's curiosity and awakened his dormant genius. He raised money upon his inheritance, and set out for Africa fully equipped. He hunted the gorilla persistently, and found him an exceedingly timorous animal, inaccessible to European sportsmen in the thick jungles which he inhabits. Mr. Reade then pushed his researches another way. On his return he published " Savage Africa," a remarkable book, both in matter and style. After some years, devoted to general science and anony- mous literature, he revisited that Continent "whose fatal fascinations," as he himself wrote, "no one having seen and suffered, can resist/' and this time penetrated deep into the interior. In this expedition he faced many dangers quite alone, was often stricken down with fever, and sometimes in danger of his life from violence, and once was taken prisoner by cannibals. His quiet fortitude and indomitable will carried a naturally feeble body through it all, and he came home weak, but apparently uninjured in constitution. He 21 READIANA now published two volumes in quick succession "The Martyrdom of Man/' and the " African Sketchbook " both of which have met with warm admiration and severe censure. Mr. Reade was now, nevertheless, generally recognised by men of science, and particularly by Dr. Darwin and his school. In November 1873 he became the Times Correspondent in the Ashantee war, and, as usual, did not spare himself. From this, his third African expedition, he returned a broken man. The mind had been too strong for the body, and he was obliged to halt on the way home. Early in this present year, disease, both of the heart and lungs, declared itself, and he wasted away slowly but inevitably. He wrote his last work, "The Outcast," with the hand of death upon him. Two zealous friends carried him out to Wimbledon, and there, for a day or two, the air seemed to revive him ; but on Friday night he began to sink, and on Saturday afternoon died, in the arms of his beloved uncle, Mr. Charles Reade. The writer thus cut off in his prime entered life with excel- lent prospects ; he was heir to considerable estates, and gifted with genius. But he did not live long enough to inherit the one or to mature the other. His whole public career embraced but fifteen years ; yet in another fifteen he would probably have won a great name, and cured himself, as many thinking men have done, of certain obnoxious opinions, which laid him open to reasonable censure, and also to some bitter person- alities that were cut of place, since truth can surely prevail without either burning or abusing men whose convictions are erroneous but honest. He felt these acrimonious comments, but bore them with the same quiet fortitude by help of which he had endured his sufferings in Africa, and now awaited the sure approach of an untimely death at home. Mr. Reade surpasses most of the travellers of his day in one great quality of a writer style. His English, founded on historical models, has the pomp and march of words, is often racy, often pic- turesque, and habitually powerful yet sober; ample yet not turgid. He died in his 37th year. 22 CREMONA FIDDLES FROM THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE." FIRST LETTER August 19th, 1872. UNDER this heading, for want of a better, let me sing the four-stringed instruments, that were made in Italy from about 1560 to 1760, and varnished with high-coloured yet trans- parent varnishes, the secret of which, known to numberless families in 1745, had vanished off the earth by 1760, and has now for fifty years baffled the laborious researches of violin makers, amateurs, and chemists. That lost art I will endea- vour to restore to the world through the medium of your paper. But let me begin with other points of connoisseur- ship, illustrating them as far as possible by the specimens on show at the South Kensington Museum. The modern orchestra uses four-stringed instruments, played with the bow; the smallest is the king; its con- struction is a marvel of art ; and, as we are too apt to under- rate familiar miracles, let me analyse this wooden paragon, by way of showing what great architects in wood those Italians were, who invented this instrument and its fellows at Brescia and Bologna. The violin itself, apart from its mere acces- sories, consists of a scroll or head, weighing an ounce or two, a slim neck, a thin back, that ought to be made of Swiss sycamore, a thin belly of Swiss deal, and sides of Swiss sycamore no thicker than a sixpence. This little wooden shell delivers an amount of sound that is simply monstrous ; but, to do that, it must submit to a strain, of which the public has 110 conception. Let us suppose two Claimants to take opposite ends of a violin-string, and to pull against each other with all their weight ; the tension of the string so produced would not equal the tension which is created by the screw in 23 READIANA raising that string to concert pitch. Consider, then, that not one but four strings tug night and day, like a team of demons, at the wafer-like sides of this wooden shell. Why does it not collapse ? Well, it would collapse with a crash, long before the strings reached concert pitch, if the violin was not a wonder inside as. well as out. The problem was to withstand that severe pressure without crippling the vast vibration by solidity. The inventors approached the difficulty thus : they inserted six blocks of lime, or some light wood ; one of these blocks at the lower end of the violin, one at the upper, and one at each corner the corner blocks very small and tri- angular ; the top and bottom blocks much larger, and shaped like a capital D, the straight line of the block lying close to the sides, and the curved line outwards. Then they slightly connected all the blocks by two sets of linings ; these linings are not above a quarter of an inch deep, I suppose, and no thicker than an old penny piece, but they connect those six blocks and help to distribute the resistance. Even so the shell would succumb in time ; but now the inventor killed two birds with one stone ; he cunningly diverted a portion of the pressure by the very means that were necessary to the sound. He placed the bridge on the belly of the violin, and that raised the strings out of the direct line of tension, and relieved the lateral pressure at the expense of the belly. But as the belly is a weak arch, it must now be strengthened in its turn. Accordingly, a bass-bar was glued horizontally to the belly under one foot of the bridge. This bass-bar is a very small piece of deal, about the length and half the size of an old-fashioned lead pencil, but, the ends being tapered off, it is glued on to the belly, with a spring in it, and supports the belly magically. As a proof how nicely all these things were balanced, the bass-bar of Gasparo da Salo, the Amati, and Stradiuarius, being a little shorter and shallower than a modern bass-bar, did admirably for their day, yet will not do now. Our raised concert pitch has clapped on more tension, and straightway you must remove the bass-bar even of Stradiuarius, and substitute one a little longer and deeper, or your Cremona sounds like a strung frying-pan. Remove now from the violin, which for two centuries has endured this strain, the finger-board, tail-piece, tail-pin and screws since these are the instruments or vehicles of tension, not materials of resistance and weigh the violin itself. It weighs, I suppose, about twenty ounces ; and it has fought 24 CREMONA FIDDLES hundredweights of pressure for centuries. A marvel of con- struction, it is also a marvel of sound ; it is audible farther off than the gigantic pianoforte, and its tones in a master's hand go to the heart of man. It can be prostituted to the performance of difficulties, and often is ; but that is not its fault. Genius can make your very heart dance with it, or your eyes to fill ; and Niel Gow, who was no romancer, but only a deeper critic than his fellows, when being asked what was the true test of a player, replied, ' ' A MON is A PLAYER WHEN HE CAN GAR HIMSEI/ GREET Wl' HIS FIDDLE." Asking forgiveness for this preamble, I proceed to inquire what country invented these four-stringed and four-cornered instruments ? I understand that France and Germany have of late raised some pretensions. Connoisseurship and etymology are both against them. Etymology suffices. The French terms are all derived from the Italian, and that disposes of France. I will go into German pretensions critically, if any one will show me as old and specific a German word as viola and violino, and the music composed for those German instruments. " Fiddle " is of vast antiquity ; but pear-shaped, till Italy invented the four corners, on which sound as w r ell as beauty depends. THE ORDER OF INVENTION. Etymology decides with un- erring voice that the violoncello was invented after the violono or double-bass, and connoisseurship proves by two distinct methods that it was invented after the violin. 1st, the critical method : it is called after the violon, yet is made on the plan of the violin, with arched back and long inner bought. 2nd, the historical method : a violoncello made by the inventors of the violin is incomparably rare, and this instrument is disproportionately rare even up to the year I6l0. Violino being a derivative of viola would seem to indicate that the violin followed the tenor ; but this taken alone is dangerous ; for viola is not only a specific term for the tenor, but a generic name that was in Italy a hundred years before a tenor with four strings was made. To go then to connoisseurship I find that I have fallen in with as many tenors as violins by Gasparo da Salo, who worked from about 1555 to 1600, and not quite so many by Gio Paolo Maggini, who began a few years later. The violin being the king of all these instruments, I think there would not be so many tenors made as violins, when once the violin had been invented. Moreover, between the above dates came Corelli, a composer 25 READIANA and violinist. He would naturally create a crop of violins. Finding the tenors and violins of Gasparo da Salo about equal in number, I am driven to the conclusion that the tenor had an unfair start in other words, was invented first. I add to this that true four-stringed tenors by Gasparo da Salo exist, though very rare, made with only two corners, which is a more primitive form than any violin by the same maker appears in. For this and some other reasons, I have little doubt the viola preceded the violin by a very few years. What puzzles me more is to time the violon, or, as we childishly call it (after its known descendant), the double- bass. If I was so presumptuous as to trust to my eye alone, I should say it was the first of them all. It is an instrument which does not seem to mix with these four-stringed upstarts, but to belong to a much older family viz., the viole d'amore, da gamba, &c. In the first place it has not four strings ; secondly, it has not an arched back, but a flat back, with a peculiar shoulder, copied from the viola da gamba ; thirdly, the space between the upper and lower corners in the early specimens is ludicrously short. And it is hard to believe that an eye, which had observed the graceful proportions of the tenor and violin, could be guilty of such a wretched little inner-bought as you find in a double-bass of Brescia. Per contra, it must be admitted, first, that the sound-hole of a Brescian double-bass seems copied from the four-stringed tribe, and not at all from the elder family ; secondly, that the violin and tenor are instruments of melody or harmony, but the violon of harmony only. This is dead against its being invented until after the instruments to which it is subsidiary. Man invents only to supply a want. Thus, then, it is. First, the large tenor, played between the knees ; then the violin, played under the chin ; then (if not the first of them all) the small double-bass ; then, years after the violin, the violon- cello ; then the full sized double-bass ; then, longo intervallo, the small tenor, played under the chin. However, I do not advance these conclusions as infallible. The highest evidence on some of these points must surely lie in manuscript music of the sixteenth century, much of which is preserved in the libraries of Italy; and if Mr. Hatton or any musician learned in the history of his art will tell me for what stringed instruments the immediate predecessors of Corelli, and Corelli at his commencement, marked their compositions, I shall receive the communication with gratitude and respect. I need hardly say that nothing 26 CREMONA FIDDLES but the MS. or the editio princeps is evidence in so nice a matter. The first known maker of the true tenor, and probably of the violin, was Gasparo da Salo. The student who has read the valuable work put forth by Monsieur Fetis and Monsieur Vuillaume might imagine that I am contradicting them here ; for they quote as " luthiers " antecedent to Gasparo da Salo Kerlino, Duiffoprugcar, Linarolli, Dardelli, and others. These men, I grant you, worked long before Gasparo da Salo ; I even offer an independent proof, and a very simple one. I find that their genuine tickets are in Gothic letters, whereas those of Gasparo da Salo are in Roman type ; but I know the works of those makers, and they did not make tenors nor violins. They made instruments of the older family, viole d'amore, da gamba, &c. Their true tickets are all black-letter tickets, and not one such ticket exists in any old violin, nor in a single genuine tenor. The fact is that the tenor is an instrument of unfixed dimensions, and can easily be recon- structed out of different viole made in an earlier age. There are innumerable examples of this, and happily the exhibition furnishes two. There are two curious instruments strung as tenors, Nos. 114 and 134 in the catalogue: one is given to Joan Carlino, and the year 1452; the other to Linaro, and 1563. These two instruments were both made by one man, Ventura Linarolli, of Venice (misspelt by M. Fetis, Venturi), about the year 1520. Look at the enormous breadth between the sound-holes ; that shows they were made to carry six or seven strings. Now look at the scrolls ; both of them new, because the old scrolls were primitive things with six or seven screws ; it is only by such reconstruction that a tenor or violin can be set up as anterior to Gasparo da Salo. No. 114 is, however, a real gem of antiquity; the wood and varnish exquisite, and far fresher than nine Amatis out of ten. It is well worthy the special attention of collectors. It was played upon the knee. There are in the collection two instruments by Gasparo da Salo worth especial notice ; a tenor, No. 142, and a violono, or primitive double-bass, 199' The tenor is one of his later make, yet has a grand primitive character. Observe, in par- ticular, the scroll all round, and the amazing inequality between the bass sound-hole and the purfling of the belly ; this instrument and the grand tenor assigned to Maggini, and lent by Madame Risler, offer a point of connoisseurship worthy the student's attention. The back of each instrument 27 READIANA looks full a century younger than the belly. But this is illusory. The simple fact is that the tenors of that day, when not in use, were not nursed in cases, but hung up on a nail, belly outwards. Thus the belly caught the sun of Italy, the dust, &c., and its varnish was often withered to a mere resin, while the back and sides escaped. This is the key to that little mystery. Observe the scroll of the violono 199! How primitive it is all round : at the back a flat cut, in front a single flute, copied from its true parent, the viola da gamba. This scroll, taken in conjunction with the size and other points, marks an instrument considerably anterior to No. 200, As to the other double-basses in the same case, they are assigned by their owners to Gasparo da Salo, because they are double purfled and look older than Cremonese violins; but these indicia are valueless ; all Cremona and Milan double-purfled the violon as often as not ; and the constant exposure to air and dust gives the violono a colour of anti- quity that is delusive. In no one part of the business is knowledge of work so necessary. The violoni 20123, are all fine Italian instruments. The small violon, 202, that stands by the side of the Gasparo da Salo, 199* has the purfling of Andreas Amatus ; the early sound-hole of Andreas Amatus ; the exquisite corners and finish of Andreas Amatus; the finely cut scroll of Andreas Amatus; at the back of scroll the neat shell and square shoulder of Andreas Amatus ; and the back, instead of being made of any rubbish that came to hand, after the manner of Brescia, is of true fiddle wood, cut the bastard way of the grain, which was the taste of the Amati ; and, finally, it is varnished with the best varnish of the Amati. Under these circumstances, I hope I shall not offend the owner by refusing it the inferior name of Gasparo da Salo. It is one of the brightest gems of the collection, and not easily to be matched in Europe. SECOND LETTER August 24A, 1872. Gio PAOLO MAGGINI is represented at the Kensington Museum by an excellent violin, No. Ill, very fine in workmanship and varnish, but as to the model a trifle too much hollowed at the sides, and so a little inferior to some of his violins, and to the violin No. 70, the model of which, like many of the Brescian 28 CREMONA FIDDLES school, is simple and perfect. (Model as applied to a violin, is a term quite distinct from outline.) In No. 70 both belly and back are modelled with the simplicity of genius, by even gradation, from the centre, which is the highest part, clown to all the borders of the instrument. The world has come back to this primitive model after trying a score, and prejudice gives the whole credit to Joseph Guarnerius, of Cremona. As to the date of No. 70, the neatness and, above all, the slimness of the sound-hole, mark, I think, a period slightly posterior to Gasparo da Salo. This slim sound-hole is an advance, not a retrogression. The gaping sound-holes of Gasparo da Salo and Maggini were their one great error. They were not only ugly ; they lessened the ring by allowing the. vibration to escape from the cavity too quickly. No. 60, assigned to Duiffoprugcar and a fabulous antiquity, was made by some 'prentice hand in the seventeenth century ; but No. 70 would adorn any collection, being an old masterpiece of Brescia or Bologna. THE SCHOOL OF CREMONA. Andreas Amatus was more than thirty years old, and an accomplished maker of the older viole, when the violin was invented in Brescia or Bologna. He does not appear to have troubled his head with the new instrument for some years; one proof more that new they were. They would not at first materially influence his established trade ; the old and new family ran side by side. Indeed it took the violin tribe two centuries to drive out the viola da gamba. However, in due course, Andreas Amatus set to work on violins. He learned from the Brescian school the only things they could teach a workman so superior viz., the four corners and the sound-hole. This Brescian sound- hole stuck to him all his days ; but what he had learned in his original art remained by him too. The collection contains three specimens of his handiwork : Violin 202, Mrs. Jay's violin with the modern head erroneously assigned to Antonius and Hieronymus; and violoncello No. 183. There are also traces of his hand in the fine tenor 139- In the three instruments just named the purfling is composed in just proportions, so that the white comes out with vigour; it is then inlaid with great neatness. The violoncello is the gem. Its outline is grace itself: the four exquisite curves coincide in one pure and serpentine design. This bass is a violin souffle ; were it shown at a distance it would take the appear- ance of a most elegant violin ; the best basses of Stradiuarius alone will stand this test. (Apply it to the Venetian master- 29 READIANA piece in the same case.) The scroll is perfect in design and chiselled as by a sculptor; the purfling is quite as fine as Stradiuarius : it is violin purfling, yet this seems to add elegance without meanness. It is a masterpiece of Cremona, all but the hideous sound-hole, that alone connects this master with the Brescian school. His sons Antonius and Hieronymus soon cured themselves of that grotesque sound-hole, and created a great school. They chose better wood and made richer varnish, and did many beautiful things. Nevertheless, they infected Italian fiddle-making with a fatal error. They were the first SCOOPERS. Having improved on Brescia in outline and details, they as- sumed too hastily that they could improve on her model. So they scooped out the wood about the sound-holes and all round, weakening the connection of the centre with the sides of the belly, and checking the fulness of the vibration. The German school carried this vice much further, but the Amati went too far, and inoculated a hundred fine makers with a wrong idea. It took Stradiuarius himself fifty-six years to get entirely clear of it. The brothers Amati are represented in this collection, first by several tenors that once were noble things, but have been cut on the old system, which was downright wicked. It is cutting in the statutory sense, viz., cutting and maiming. These ruthless men just sawed a crescent off the top, and another off the bottom, and the result is a thing with the inner bought of a giant and the upper and lower bought of a dwarf. If one of these noble instruments survives in England uncut, I implore the owner to spare it ; to play on a 5 tenor, with the Amati set before him to look at while he plays. Luckily the scrolls remain to us ; and let me draw attention to the scroll of 136. Look at the back of this scroll, and see how it is chiselled the centre line in relief, how sharp, dis- tinct, and fine; this line is obtained by chiselling out the wood on both sides with a single tool, which fiddle-makers call a gauge, and there is nothing but the eye to guide the hand. There are two excellent violins of this make in the collec- tion Mrs. Jay's, and the violin of Mr. C. J. Read, No. 75. This latter is the large pattern of those makers, and is more elegant than what is technically called the grand Amati, but not so striking. To appreciate the merit and the defect of this instrument, compare it candidly with the noble Stradiua- rius Amatise that hangs by its side, numbered 82. Take a 30 CREMONA FIDDLES back view first. In outline they are much alike. In the details of work the Amati is rather superior ; the border of the Stradiuarius is more exquisite; but the Amati scroll is better pointed and gauged more cleanly, the purfling better composed for effect, and the way that purfling is let in, espe- cially at the corners, is incomparable. On the front view you find the Amati violin is scooped out here and there, a defect the Stradiuarius has avoided. I prefer the Stradiuarius sound- hole per se ; but, if you look at the curves of these two violins, you will observe that the Amati sound -holes are in strict harmony with the curves ; and the whole thing the product of one original mind that saw its way. Nicholas Amatus, the son of Hieronymus, owes his distinct reputation to a single form called by connoisseurs the Grand Amati. This is a very large violin, with extravagantly long corners, extremely fine in all the details. I do not think it was much admired at the time. At all events, he made but few, and his copyists, with the exception of Francesco Rugger, rarely selected that form to imitate. But now-a-days these violins are almost worshipped, and, as the collection is in- complete without one, I hope some gentleman will kindly send one in before it closes. There is also wanting an Amati bass, and, if the purchaser of Mr. Gillott's should feel dis- posed to supply that gap, it would be a very kind act. The Rugger family is numerous ; it is represented by one violin (147). Leaving the makers of the Guarnerius family five in number till the last, we come to Antonius Stradiuarius. This unrivalled workman and extraordinary man was born in 1644, and died in December, 1737. There is nothing signed with his name before 1 667. He was learning his business thoroughly. From that date till 1736 he worked incessantly, often varying his style, and always improving, till he came to his climax, represented in this collection by the violins 83 and 87, and the violoncello 188. He began with rather a small, short-cornered violin, which is an imitation of the small Amati, but very superior. He went on, and imitated the large Amati, but softened down the corners. For thirty years from 1 672 to 1 703 he poured forth violins of this pattern ; there are several in this collec- tion, and one tenor, 139, with a plain back but a beautiful belly, and in admirable preservation. But, while he was making these Amatise violins by the hundred, he had never- theless his fits of originality, and put forth an anomaly every 31 READIANA now and then ; sometimes it was a very long, narrow violin with elegant drooping corners, and sometimes, in a happier mood, he combined these drooping corners with a far more beautiful model. Of these varieties No. 86 gives just an indi- cation ; no more. These lucid intervals never lasted long, he was back to his Amatis next week. Yet they left, I think, the germs that broke out so marvellously in the next century. About the year 1703 it seems to have struck him like a revelation that he was a greater man than his master. He dropped him once and . for ever, and for nearly twenty years poured forth with unceasing fertility some admirable works, of which you have three fine examples, under average wear, hard wear, and no wear 90, 92, 91. Please look at the three violins in this order to realise what I have indicated before that time is no sure measure of events in this business. Nevertheless, in all these exquisite productions there was one thing which he thought capable of improvement there was a slight residue of the scoop, especially at the lower part of the back. He began to alter that about 1720, and by degrees went to his grand model, in which there is no scoop at all. This, his grandest epoch, is represented by the Duke of Cam- bridge's violin, Mr. Arkwright's, and M. le Comte's : this last has the additional characteristic of the stiffer sound-hole and the wood left broad in the wing of the sound-hole. One feature more of this his greatest epoch : the purfling, instead of exactly following the corner, is pointed across it in a manner completely original. He made these grand violins and a bass or two till about 1 729 ; after that the grand model is confined to his violins, and the details become inferior in finish. Of this there is an example in No. 84, a noble but rough violin, in parts of which certain connoisseurs would see, or fancy they saw, the hand of Bergonzi, or of Francesco or Homobuono Stradiuarius. These workmen undoubtedly lived, and survived their father a few years. They seem to have worked up his refuse wood after his death ; but their interference with his work while alive has been exaggerated t by French connoisseurs. To put a difficult question briefly : their theory fails to observe the style Stradiuarius was coming to even in 1727 ; it also ignores the age of Stradiuarius during this his last epoch of work, and says that there exists no old man's work by Stradiuarius himself; all this old man's work is done by younger men. However, generalities are useless on a subject so difficult and disputed. The only way is to get the doubtful violins or basses and analyse them, and should 32 CREMONA FIDDLES the Museum give a permanent corner to Cremonese instru- ments, this Francesco and Homobuono question will be sifted with examples. The minutiae of work in Stradiuarius are numerous and admirable, but they would occupy too much space and are too well known to need discourse. His varnish I shall treat along with the others. A few words about the man. He was a tall, thin veteran, always to be seen with a white leathern apron and a nightcap on his head ; in winter it was white wool, and in summer white cotton. His in- domitable industry had amassed some fortune, and "rich as Stradiuarius " was a byword at Cremona, but probably more current among the fiddle-makers than the bankers and merchants. His price towards the latter part of his career was four louis d'or for a violin ; his best customers Italy and Spain. Mr. Forster assures us on unimpeachable authority that he once sent some instruments into England on sale or return, and that they were taken back, the merchant being unable to get <5 for a violoncello. What ho ! Hang all the Englishmen of that day who are alive to meet their deserts ! However, the true point of the incident is, I think, missed by the narrators. The fact is that then, as now, England wanted old Cremonas, not new ones. That the Amati had a familiar reputation here and probably a ready market can be proved rather prettily out of the mouth of Dean Swift. A violin was left on a chair. A lady swept by. Her mantua caught it and knocked it down and broke it. Then the witty Dean applied a line in Virgil's Eclogue "Mantua vae miserse nimium vicina Cremonse." This was certainly said during the lifetime of Stradiuarius, and proves that the Cremona fiddle had a fixed reputation ; it also proves that an Irishman could make a better Latin pun than any old Roman has left behind him. Since I have diverged into what some brute calls anec-dotage let me conclude this article with one that is at all events to the point, since it tells the eventful history of an instrument now on show. THE ROMANCE OF FIDDLE-DEALING. Nearly fifty years ago a gaunt Italian called Luigi Tarisio arrived in Paris one day with a lot of old Italian instruments by makers whose names were hardly known. The principal dealers, whose minds were narrowed, as is often the case, to three or four makers, would not deal with him. M. Georges Chanot, younger and more intelligent, purchased largely, and encouraged him to return. He came back next year with a better lot ; and 33 c READIANA yearly increasing his funds, he flew at the highest game ; and in the course of thirty years imported nearly all the finest specimens of Stradiuarius and Guarnerius France possesses. He was the greatest connoisseur that ever lived or ever can live, because he had the true mind of a connoisseur and vast opportunities. He ransacked Italy before the tickets in the violins of Francesco Stradiuarius, Alexander Gagliano, Lorenzo Guadagnini, Giofredus Cappa, Gobetti, Morgilato Morella, Antonio Mariani, Santo Maggini, and Matteo Benti of Brescia, Michael Angelo Bergonzi, Montagnana, Thomas Balestrieri, Storioni, Vicenzo Rugger, the Testori, Petrus Guarnerius of Venice, and full fifty more, had been tampered with, that every brilliant masterpiece might be assigned to some popular name. To his immortal credit, he fought against this mania, and his motto was " A tout seigneur tout honneur." The man's whole soul was in fiddles. He was a great dealer, but a greater amateur. He had gems by him no money would buy from him. No. 91 was one of them. But for his death you would never have cast eyes on it. He has often talked to me of it ; but he would never let me see it, for fear I should tempt him. Well, one day Georges Chanot, Senior, who is perhaps the best judge of violins left, now Tarisio is gone, made an excur- sion to Spain, to see if he could find anything there. He found mighty little. But, coming to the shop of a fiddle- maker, one Ortega, he saw the belly of an old bass hung up with other things. Chanot rubbed his eyes, and asked him- self, was he dreaming? the belly of a Stradiuarius bass roasting in a shop-window ! He went in, and very soon bought it for about forty francs. He then ascertained that the bass belonged to a lady of rank. The belly was full of cracks ; so, not to make two bites of a cherry, Ortega had made a nice new one. Chanot carried this precious fragment home and hung it up in his shop, but not in the window, for he is too good a judge not to know the sun will take all the colour out of that maker's varnish. Tarisio came in from Italy, and his eye lighted instantly on the Stradiuarius belly. He pestered Chanot till the latter sold it him for a thousand francs, and told him where the rest was. Tarisio no sooner knew this than he flew to Madrid. He learned from Ortega where the lady lived, and called on her to see It. "Sir," says the lady, "it is at your disposition." That does not mean much in Spain. When he offered to buy it, she coquetted with him, said it had been long in her family; money could not replace a thing of that kind, and, in short, 34, CREMONA FIDDLES she put on the screw, as she thought, and sold it him for about four thousand francs. What he did with the Ortega belly is not known perhaps sold it to some person in the tooth-pick trade. He sailed exultant for Paris with the Spanish bass in a case. He never let it out of his sight. The pair were caught by a storm in the Bay of Biscay. The ship rolled ; Tarisio clasped his bass tight, and trembled. It was a terrible gale, and for one whole day they were in real danger. Tarisio spoke of it to me with a shudder. I will give you his real words, for they struck me at the time, and I have often thought of them since " AH, MY POOR MR. READE, THE BASS OF SPAIN WAS ALL BUT LOST." Was not this a true connoisseur ? a genuine enthusiast ? Ob- serve ! there was also an ephemeral insect called Luigi Tarisio, who would have gone down with the bass : but that made no impression on his mind. De mmimis non curat Ludovicus. He got it safe to Paris. A certain high priest in these mys- teries, called Vuillaume, with the help of a sacred vessel, called the glue-pot, soon re-wedded the back and sides to the belly, and the bass being now just what it was when the ruffian Ortego put his finger in the pie, was sold for 20,000 fr. (800). I saw the Spanish bass in Paris twenty-two years ago, and you can see it any day this month you like; for it is the identical violoncello now on show at Kensington, numbered 188. Who would divine its separate adventures, to see it all reposing so calm and uniform in that case "Post tot naufragia tutus." THIRD LETTER August 27th, 1872. " THE Spanish bass " is of the grand pattern and exquisitely made : the sound-hole, rather shorter and stiffer than in Stradiuarius's preceding epoch, seems stamped out of the wood with a blow, so swiftly and surely is it cut. The pur- fling is perfection. Look at the section of it in the upper bought of the back. The scroll extremely elegant. The belly is a beautiful piece of wood. The back is of excellent quality, but mean in the figure. The sides are cut the wrong way of the grain ; a rare mistake in this master. The varnish sweet, clear, orange-coloured, and full of fire. Oh, if this varnish could but be laid on the wood of the Sanctus 35 READIANA Seraphin bass ! The belly is full of cracks, and those cracks have not been mended without several lines of modern varnish clearly visible to the practised eye. Some years ago there was a Stradiuarius bass in Ireland. I believe it was presented by General Oliver to Signor Piatti. I never saw it; but some people tell me that in wood and varnish it surpasses the Spanish bass. Should these lines meet Signor Piatti's eye, I will only say that, if he would allow it to be placed in the case for a single week, it would be a great boon to the admirers of these rare and noble pieces, and very instructive. By the side of the Spanish bass stands another, inferior to it in model and general work, superior to it in preservation, No. 187. The unhappy parts are the wood of the sides and the scroll. Bad wood kills good varnish. The scroll is superb in workmanship ; it is more finely cut at the back part than the scroll of the Spanish bass ; but it is cut out of a pear tree, and that abominable wood gets uglier if possible under varnish, and lessens the effect even of first- class work. On the other hand, the back and belly, where the varnish gets fair-play, are beautiful. The belly is incom- parable. Here is the very finest ruby varnish of Stradiuarius, as pure as the day it was laid on. The back was the same colour originally, but has been reduced in tint by the friction this part of a bass encounters when played on. The varnish on the back is chipped all over in a manner most picturesque to the cultivated eye ; only it must go no farther. I find on examination that these chips have all been done a good many years ago, and I can give you a fair, though of course not an exact, idea of the process. Methinks I see an old gentleman seated sipping his last glass of port in the dining-room over a shining table, whence the cloth was removed for dessert. He wears a little powder still, though no longer the fashion ; he has no shirt-collar, but a roll of soft and snowy cambric round his neck, a plain gold pin, and a frilled bosom. He has a white waistcoat snow-white like his linen : he washes at home and a blue coat with gilt buttons. Item, a large fob or watch-pocket, whence bulges a golden turnip, and puts forth seed, to wit a bunch of seals and watch-keys, with per- haps a gold pencil-case. One of these seals is larger than the others : the family arms are engraved on it, and only im- portant letters are signed with it. He rises and goes to the drawing-room. The piano is opened ; a servant brings the Stradiuarius bass from the study ; the old gentleman takes it and tunes it, and, not to be bothered with his lapels, buttons 36 CREMONA FIDDLES his coat, and plays his part in a quartet of Haydn or a sym- phony of Corelli, and smiles as he plays, because he really loves music, and is not overweighted. Your modern amateur, with a face of justifiable agony, ploughs the hill of Beethoven and harrows the soul of Reade. Nevertheless, my smiling senior is all the time bringing the finest and most delicate varnish of Stradiuarius into a series of gentle collisions with the following objects : First, the gold pin ; then the two rows of brass buttons ; and last, not least, the male chatelaine of the period. There is an oval chip just off the centre of this bass ; I give the armorial seal especial credit for that : " A tout seigneur tout honneur." Take another specimen of eccentric wear : the red Stradiu- arius kit 88. The enormous oval wear has been done thus : It has belonged to a dancing-master, and he has clapped it under his arm fifty times a day to show his pupils the steps. The Guarnerius family consisted of Andreas, his two sons Petrus and Joseph, his grandson Petrus Guarnerius of Venice, and Joseph Guarnerius, the greatest of the family, whom Mons. Fetis considers identical with Guiseppe Antonio, born in 1683. There are, however, great difficulties in the way of this theory, which I will reserve for my miscellaneous remarks. Andreas Guarnerius was the closest of all the copyists of the Amati; so close, indeed, that his genuine violins are nearly always sold as Amati. Unfortunately he imitated the small pattern. His wood and varnish are exactly like Amati ; there is, however, a peculiar way of cutting the lower wing of his sound-holes that betrays him at once. When you find him with the border high and broad, and the purfling grand, you may suspect his son Petrus of helping him, for his own style is petty. His basses few, but fine. Petrus Guarnerius of Cremona makes violins prodigiously bombts, and more adapted to grumbling inside than singing out ; but their appearance magnifrcent : a grand deep border, very noble, sound-hole and scroll Amatise, and a deep orange varnish that nothing can surpass. His violins are singularly scarce in England. I hope to see one at the Exhibition before it closes. Joseph, his brother, is a thorough original. His violins are narrowed under the shoulder in a way all his own. As to model, his fiddles are bombe's like his brother's ; and, as the centre has generally sunk from weakness, the violin presents a great bump at the upper part and another at the lower. The violin 97 is by this maker, and is in pure and perfect condition ; but the wood having no figure, the beauty of the 37 READIANA varnish is not appreciated. He is the king of the varnishers. He was the first man at Cremona that used red varnish oftener than pale, and in that respect was the teacher even of Stradiu- arius. When this maker deviates from his custom and puts really good hare-wood into a violin, then his glorious varnish gets fair-play, and nothing can live beside him. The other day a violin of this make with fine wood, but undersized, was put up at an auction without a name. I suppose nobody knew the maker, for it was sold on its merits, and fetched 50 for it. 44 CREMONA FIDDLES It is now, I suppose, worth .500. Well, knock that violin down and crack it in two places, it will sink that moment to the value of the " violon du diable," and be worth 350. But collect twenty amateurs all ready to buy it, and, instead of cracking it, dip it into a jar of spirits and wash the varnish off. Not one of those customers will give you above <40 for it ; nor would it in reality be worth quite so much in the market. Take another example. There is a beautiful and very perfect violin by Stradiuarius, which the Times, in an article on these instruments, calls La Messie. These leading journals have private information on every subject, even grammar. I prefer to call it after the very intelligent man to whom we owe the sight of it the Vuillaume Stradiuarius. Well, the Vuillaume Stradiuarius is worth, as times go, ,600 at least. Wash off the varnish, it would be worth ,35 ; because, unlike No. 94, it has one little crack. As a further illustration that violins are heard by the eye, let me remind your readers of the high prices at which numberless copies of the old makers were sold in Paris for many years. The inventors of this art undertook to deliver a new violin, that in usage and colour of the worn parts should be exactly like an old and worn violin of some favourite maker. Now, to do this with white wood was impossible ; so the wood was baked in the oven or coloured yellow with the smoke of sulphuric acid, or so forth, to give it the colour of age ; but these processes kill the wood as a vehicle of sound ; and these copies were, and are, the worst musical instruments Europe has created in this century ; and, bad as they are at starting, they get worse every year of their untuneful existence ; yet, because they flattered the eye with something like the light and shade and picturesqueness of the Cremona violin, these pseudo-antiques, though illimitable in number, sold like wildfire ; and hundreds of self-deceivers heard them by the eye, and fancied these tin- pots sounded divinely. The hideous red violins of Bernard el, Gand, and an English maker or two, are a reaction against those copies ; they are made honestly with white wood, and they will, at all events, improve in sound every year and every decade. It comes to this, then, that the varnish of Cremona, as operated on by time and usage, has an inimitable beauty, and we pay a high price for it in second-class makers, and an enormous price in a fine Stradiuarius or Joseph Guarnerius. No wonder, then, that many violin-makers have tried hard to discover the secret of this varnish; many chemists have given days and nights of anxious study to it. 45 READIANA More than once, even in my time, hopes have run high, but only to fall again. Some have even cried Eureka ! to the public : but the moment others looked at their discovery and compared it with the real thing, "inextinguishable laughter shook the skies." At last despair has succeeded to all that energetic study, and the varnish of Cremona is sullenly given up as a lost art. I have heard and read a great deal about it, and I think I can state the principal theories briefly, but intelligibly. 1. It used to be stoutly maintained that the basis was amber ; that these old Italians had the art of infusing amber without impairing its transparency ; once fused, by dry heat, it could be boiled into a varnish with oil and spirit of turpentine, and combined with transparent yet lasting colours. To convince me, they used to rub the worn part of a Cremona with their sleeves, and then put the fiddle to their noses, and smell amber. Then I, burning with love of knowledge, used to rub the fiddle very hard and whip it to my nose, and not smell amber. But that might arise in some measure from there not being any amber there to smell. (N. B. These amber-seeking worthies never rubbed the coloured varnish on an old violin. Yet their theory had placed amber there.) 2. That time does it all. The violins of Stradiuarius were raw, crude things at starting, and the varnish rather opaque. 3. Two or three had the courage to say it was spirit varnish, and alleged in proof that if you drop a drop of alcohol on a Stradiuarius, it tears the varnish off as it runs. 4. The far more prevalent notion was that it is an oil varnish, in support of which they pointed to the rich appear- ance of what they call the bare wood, and contrasted the miserable hungry appearance of the wood in all old violins known to be spirit varnished for instance, Nicholas Gag- liano, of Naples, and Jean Baptiste Guadagnini, of Piacenza, Italian makers contemporary with Joseph Guarnerius. 5. That the secret has been lost by adulteration. The old Cremonese and Venetians got pure and sovereign gums, that have retired from commerce. Now, as to theory No. 1. Surely amber is too dear a gum and too impracticable for two hundred fiddle-makers to have used in Italy. Till fused by dry heat it is no more soluble in varnish than quartz is ; and who can fuse it ? Copal is inclined to melt, but amber to burn, to catch fire, to do any- 46 CREMONA FIDDLES thing but melt. Put the two gums to a lighted candle, you will then appreciate the difference. I tried more than one chemist in the fusing of amber ; it came out of their hands a dark brown opaque substance, rather burnt than fused. When really fused it is a dark olive green, as clear as crystal. Yet I never knew but one man who could bring it to this, and he had special machinery, invented by himself for it ; in spite of which he nearly burnt down his house at it one day. I believe the whole amber theory comes out of a verbal equi- voque ; the varnish of the Amati was called amber to mark its rich colour, and your cl priori reasoners went off on that, forgetting that amber must be an inch thick to exhibit the colour of amber. By such reasoning as this Mr. Davidson, in a book of great general merit, is misled so far as to put down powdered glass for an ingredient in Cremona varnish. Mark the logic. Glass in a sheet is transparent ; so if you reduce it to powder it will add transparency to varnish. Imposed on by this chimera, he actually puts powdered glass, an opaque and insoluble sediment, into four receipts for Cremona varnish. But the theories 2, 3, 4, 5 have all a good deal of truth in them ; their fault is that they are too narrow, and too blind to the truth of each other. IN THIS, AS IN EVERY SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY, THE TRUE SOLUTION IS THAT WHICH RECONCILES ALL THE TRUTHS THAT SEEM AT VARIANCE. The way to discover a lost art, once practised with varia- tions by a hundred people, is to examine very closely the most brilliant specimen, the most characteristic specimen, and, indeed, the most extravagant specimen if you can find one. I took that way, and I found in the chippiest varnish of Stradiuarius, viz., his dark red varnish, the key to all the varnish of Cremona, red or yellow. (N.B. The yellow always beat me dead, till I got to it by this detour.) There is no specimen in the collection of this red varnish so violent as I have seen; but Mr. Pawle's bass, No. 187, will do. Please walk with me up to the back of that bass, and let us disregard all hypotheses and theories, and use our eyes. What do we see before us ? A bass with a red varnish that chips very readily off what people call the bare wood. But never mind what these echoes of echoes call it. What is it ? It is not bare wood. Bare wood turns a dirty brown with age. This is a rich and lovely yellow. By its colour and its glassy gloss, and by disbelieving what echoes say and trusting only to our eyes, we may see at a glance it is not bare wood, but highly varnished wood. This varnish is evidently oil, 47 READIANA and contains a gum. Allowing for the tendency of oil to run into the wood, I should say four coats of oil varnish : and this they call the bare wood. We have now discovered the first process : a clear oil varnish laid on the white wood with some transparent gum not high coloured. Now proceed a step further; the red and chippy varnish, what is that? "Oh, that is a varnish of the same quality but another colour/' say the theorists No. 4. " How do you know ? " say I. "It is self-evident. Would a man begin with oil varnish and then go into spirit varnish ? " is their reply. Now observe, this is not humble observation, it is only rational preconception. But if discovery has an enemy in the human mind, that enemy is preconception. Let us then trust only to humble observation. Here is a clear varnish without the ghost of a chip in its nature ; and upon it is a red varnish that is all chip. Does that look as if the two varnishes were homogeneous ? Is chip precisely the same thing as no chip ? If homogeneous, there would be chemical affinity between the two. But this ex- treme readiness of the red varnish to chip away from the clear marks a defect of chemical affinity between the two. Why, if you were to put your thumbnail against that red varnish, a little piece would come away directly. This is not so in any known case of oil upon oil. Take old Forster, for instance ; he begins with clear oil varnish ; then on that he puts a distinct oil varnish with the colour and transparency of pea-soup. You will not get his pea-soup to chip off his clear varnish in a hurry. There is a bass by William Forster in the collection a hundred years old ; but the wear is con- fined to the places where the top varnish MUST go in a played bass. Everywhere else his pea-soup sticks tight to his clear varnish, being oil upon oil. Now, take a perfectly distinct line of observation. In var- nishes oil is a diluent of colour. It is not in the power of man to charge an oil varnish with colour so highly as the top varnish of Mr. Pawle's bass is charged. And it must be re- membered that the clear varnish below has filled all the pores of the wood ; therefore the diluent cannot escape into the wood, and so leave the colour undiluted ; if that red varnish was ever oil varnish, every particle of the oil must be there still. What, in that mere film so crammed with colour? Never ! Nor yet in the top varnish of the Spanish bass, which is thinner still, yet more charged with colour than any topaz of twice the thickness. This, then, is how Antonius Stradiuarius varnished Mr. Pawle's bass. He began with 48 CREMONA FIDDLES three or four coats of oil varnish containing some common gum. He then laid on several coats of red varnish, made by simply dissolving some fine red unadulterated gum in spirit ; the spirit evaporated and left pure gum lying on a rich oil varnish, from which it chips by its dry nature and its utter want of chemical affinity to the substratum. On the Spanish bass Stradiuarius put not more, I think, than two coats of oil varnish, and then a spirit varnish consisting of a different gum, less chippy, but even more tender and wearable than the red. Now take this key all round the room, and you will find there is not a lock it will not open. Look at the varnish on the back of the " violon du diable," as it is called. There is a top varnish with all the fire of a topaz and far more colour ; for slice the deepest topaz to that thinness, it would pale be- fore that varnish. And why ? 1st. Because this is no oily dilution ; it is a divine unadulterated gum, left there un- diluted by evaporation of the spirituous vehicle. 2nd. Because this varnish is a jewel with the advantage of a foil behind it ; that foil is the fine oil varnish underneath. The purest speci- men of Stradiuarius's red varnish in the room is, perhaps, Mr. Fountaine's kit. Look at the back of it by the light of these remarks. What can be plainer than the clear oil varnish with not the ghost of a chip in it, and the glossy top varnish, so charged with colour, and so ready to chip from the varnish below, for want of chemical affinity between the varnishes ? The basso di camera by Montagnana is the same thing. See the bold wear on the back revealing the heterogeneous varnish below the red. They are all the same thing. The palest violins of Stradiuarius and Amati are much older and harder worn than Mr. Pawle's bass, and the top varnish not of a chippy character : yet look at them closely by the light of these re- marks, and you shall find one of two phenomena either the tender top varnish has all been worn away, and so there is nothing to be inferred one way or other, or else there are flakes of it left ; and, if so, these flakes, however thin, shall always betray, by the superior vividness of their colour to the colour of the subjacent oil varnish, that they are not oil varnish, but pure gum left there by evaporating spirit on a foil of beautiful old oil varnish. Take Mrs. Jay's Amatise Stradiuarius; on the back of that violin towards the top there is a mere flake of top varnish left by itself; all round it is nothing left but the bottom varnish. That fragment of top varnish is a film thinner than gold leaf; yet look at its intensity ; it lies on the fine old oil varnish like fixed light- 49 D READIANA ning, it is so vivid. It is just as distinct from the oil varnish as is the red varnish of the kit. Examine the Duke of Cam- bridge's violin, or any other Cremona instrument in the whole world you like ; it is always the same thing, though not so self-evident as in the red and chippy varnishes. The Vuillaume Stradiuarius, not being worn, does not assist us in this particular line of argument ; but it does not contradict us. Indeed, there are a few little chips in the top varnish of the back, and they reveal a heterogeneous varnish below, with its rich yellow colour like the bottom varnish of the Pawle bass. Moreover, if you look at the top varnish closely you shall see what you never see in a new violin of our day ; not a vulgar glare upon the surface, but a gentle inward fire. Now that inward fire, I assure you, is mainly caused by the oil varnish below ; the orange varnish above has a hetero- geneous foil below. That inward glow is characteristic of all foils. If you could see the Vuillaume Stradiuarius at night and move it about in the light of a candle, you would be amazed at the fire of the foil and the refraction of light. Thus, then, it is. The unlucky phrase "varnish of Cremona" has weakened men's powers of observation by fixing a pre- conceived notion that the varnish must be all one thing. THE LOST SECRET IS THIS. THE CREMONA VARNISH IS NOT A VARNISH, BUT TWO VARNISHES ; AND THOSE VARNISHES ALWAYS HETEROGENE- OUS : THAT IS TO SAY, FIRST THE PORES OF THE WOOD ARE FILLED AND THE GRAIN SHOWN UP BY ONE, BY TWO, BY THREE, AND SOME- TIMES, THOUGH RARELY, BY FOUR COATS OF FINE OIL VARNISH WITH SOME COMMON BUT CLEAR GUM IN SOLUTION. THEN UPON THIS OIL VARNISH, WHEN DRY, IS LAID A HETEROGENEOUS VARNISH, VIZ., A SOLUTION IN SPIRIT OF SOME SOVEREIGN, HIGH COLOURED, PELLUCID, AND, ABOVE ALL, TENDER GUM. Gum-lac, which for forty years has been the mainstay of violin-makers, must never be used ; not one atom of it. That vile, flinty gum killed varnish at Naples and Piacenza a hundred and forty years ago, as it kills varnish now. Old Cremona shunned it, and whoever employs a grain of it, commits wilful suicide as a Cremonese varnisher. It will not wear ; it will not chip ; it is in every respect the opposite of the Cremona gums. Avoid it utterly, or fail hopelessly, as all varnishers have failed since that fatal gum came in. The deep red varnish of Cremona is pure dragon's blood ; not the cake, the stick, the filthy trash, which, in this sinful and adulterating generation, is retailed under that name, but the tear of dragon's blood, little lumps deeper in colour than a carbuncle, clear as crystal, and fiery as a ruby. Un- 50 CREMONA FIDDLES adulterated dragon's blood does not exist in commerce west of Temple Bar ; but you can get it by groping in the City as hard as Diogenes had to grope for an honest man in a much less knavish town than London. The yellow varnish is the unadulterated tear of another gum, retailed in a cake like dragon's blood, and as great a fraud. All cakes and sticks presented to you in commerce as gums are audacious swindles. A true gum is the tear of a tree. For the yellow tear, as for the red, grope the City harder than Diogenes. The orange varnish of Peter Guarnerius and Stradiuarius is only a mix- ture of these two genuine gums. Even the milder reds of Stradiuarius are slightly reduced with the yellow gum. The Montagnana bass and No. 94 are pure dragon's blood mel- lowed down by time and exposure only. A violin varnished as I have indicated will look a little better than other new violins from the first ; the back will look nearly as well as the Vuillaume Stradiuarius, but not quite. The belly will look a little better if properly prepared ; will show the fibre of the deal better. But its principal merit is that, like the violins of Cremona, it will vastly improve in beauty if much exposed and persistently played. And that improvement will be rapid, because the tender top varnish will wear away from the oily substratum four times as quickly as any vulgar varnish of the day will chip or wear. We cannot do what Stradiuarius could not do give to a new violin the peculiar beauty that comes to heterogeneous varnishes of Cremona from age and honest wear ; but, on the other hand, it is a mistake to suppose that one hundred years are required to develop the beauty of any Cremona varnishes, old or new. The ordinary wear of a century cannot be condensed into one year or five, but it can be condensed into twenty years. Any young amateur may live to play on a magnificent Cremona made for himself, if he has the enthusiasm to follow my directions. Choose the richest and finest wood ; have the violin made after the pattern of a rough Joseph Guarnerius ; then you need not sandpaper the back, sides, or head, for sandpaper is a great enemy to varnish ; it drives more wood- dust into the pores than you can blow out. If you sandpaper the belly, sponge that finer dust out, as far as possible, and varnish when dry. That will do no harm, and throw up the fibre. Make your own linseed oil the linseed oil of com- merce is adulterated with animal oil and fish oil, which are non-drying oils and varnish as I have indicated above, and when the violin is strung treat it regularly with a view to fast 51 READIANA wear; let it hang up in a warm place, exposed to dry air, night and day. Never let it be shut up in a case except for transport. Lend it for months to the leader of an orchestra. Look after it, and see that it is constantly played and con- stantly exposed to dry air all about it. Never clean it, never touch it with a silk handkerchief. In twenty years your heterogeneous varnishes will have parted company in many places. The back will be worn quite picturesque ; the belly will look as old as Joseph Guarnerius ; there will be a delicate film on the surface of the grand red varnish mellowed by exposure, and a marvellous fire below. In a word, you will have a glorious Cremona fiddle. Do you aspire to do more, and to make a downright old Cremona violin ? Then, my young friend, you must treat yourself as well as the violin; you must not smoke all day, nor the last thing at night ; you must never take a dram before dinner and call it bitters ; you must be as true to your spouse as ever you can, and, in a word, live moderately, and cultivate good temper and avoid great wrath. By these means, Deo volente, you shall live to see the violin that was made for you and varnished by my receipt, as old and worn and beautiful a Cremona as the Joseph Guarnerius No. 94, beyond which nothing can go. To show the fiddle-maker what may be gained by using as little sandpaper as possible, let him buy a little of Maunder' s palest copal varnish ; then let him put a piece of deal on his bench and take a few shavings off it with a carpenter's plane. Let him lay his varnish directly on the wood so planed. It will have a fire and a beauty he will never quite attain to by scraping, sandpapering, and then varnishing the same wood with the same varnish. And this applies to harewood as well as deal. The back of the Vuillaume Stradiuarius, which is the finest part, has clearly not been sandpapered in places, so probably not at all. Wherever it is possible, varnish after cold steel, at all events in imitating the Cremonese, and especially Joseph Guarnerius. These, however, are minor details, which I have only inserted, because I foresee that I may be unable to return to this subject in writing, though I shall be very happy to talk about it at my own place to any one who really cares about the matter. However, it is not every day one can restore a lost art to the world ; and I hope that, and my anxiety not to do it by halves, will excuse this prolix article. CHARLES READE. 52 THE STORY OF THE BOAT RACE OF 1872 To THE EDITOR OF THE "OBSERVER" THIS great annual race has become a national event. The rival crews are watched by a thousand keen eyes from the moment they appear on the Thames ; their trials against time or scratch crews are noted and reported to the world ; criticism aud speculation are unintermittent, and the Press prints two hundred volumes about the race before ever it is run. When the day comes England suspends her liberties for an hour or two, makes her police her legislators ; and her river, though by law a highway, becomes a race-course ; passengers and commerce are both swept off it not to spoil sacred sport ; London pours out her myriads ; the country flows in to meet them ; the roads are clogged with carriages and pedestrians all making for the river; its banks on both sides are blackened by an unbroken multitude five miles long; on all the bridges that command the race people hang and cluster like swarming bees ; windows, seats, balconies are crammed, all glowing with bright colours (blue predomi- nating), and sparkling with brighter eyes of the excited fair ones. The two crews battle over the long course under one con- tinuous roar of a raging multitude. At last and often after fluctuations in the race that drive the crowd all but mad there is a puff of smoke, a loud report, one boat has won, though both deserve ; and the victors are the true kings of all that mighty throng ; in that hour the Premier of England, the Primate, the poet, the orator, the philosopher of his age, would walk past unheeded if the stroke oar of the victorious boat stood anywhere near. To cynics and sedentary students all this seems childish, 53 READIANA and looks like paying to muscle a homage that is never given by acclamation to genius and virtue. But, as usual, the public is not far wrong ; the triumph, though loud, is evanescent, and much has been done and endured to earn it. No glutton, no wine-bibber, no man of impure life could live through that great pull; each victor abstinuit venere et vino, sudavit et alsit. The captain of the winning boat has taught Government a lesson ; for in selecting his men he takes care of Honour, and does not take care of Dowb, for that would be to throw the race away upon dry land ; but the public enthusiasm rest on broader and more obvious grounds than these. Every nation has a right to admire its own traits in individuals, when those traits are honourable and even innocent. England is not bound to admire those athletes, who every now and then proclaim their nationality by drinking a quart of gin right off for a wager ; but we are a nation great upon the water, and great at racing, and we have a right to admire these men, who combine the two things to perfection. This is the king of races, for it is run by the king of animals working, after his kind, by combination, and with a concert so strong, yet delicate, that for once it eclipses machinery. But, above all, here is an example, not only of strength, wind, spirit, and pluck indomitable, but of pure and crystal honour. Foot-races and horse-races have been often sold, and the bettors betrayed; but this race never and it never will be. Here, from first to last, all is open, because all is fair and glorious as the kindred daylight it courts. We hear of shivering stable-boys sent out on a frosty morning to try race-horses on the sly, and so give the proprietors private knowledge to use in betting. Sometimes these early worms have been preceded by earlier ones, who are watching behind a hedge. Then shall the trainer whisper one of the boys to hold in the faster horse, and so enact a profitable lie. Not so the University crews ; they make trials in broad daylight for their own information ; and those trials are always faith- ful. The race is pure, and is a strong corrective annually administered to the malpractices of racing. And so our two great fountains of learning are one fount of honour, God be thanked for it ! So the people do well to roar their applause, and every nobleman who runs horses may be proud to take for his example these high-spirited gentlemen, who nobly run a nobler creature, for they run themselves. The recent feature of this great race has been the recovery of Cambridge 54, THE STORY OF THE BOAT RACE OF 1872 in 1870 and 1871, after nine successive defeats; defeats the more remarkable that up to 1861 Oxford was behind her in the number of victories. The main cause of a result so peculiar was that system of rowing Oxford had invented and perfected. The true Oxford stroke is slow in the water but swift in the air ; the rower goes well forward, drops his oar clean into the water, goes well backward, and makes his stroke, but, this done, comes swiftly forward all of a piece, hands foremost. Thus, though a slow stroke, it is a very busy one. Add to this a clean feather, and a high sweep of the oars to avoid rough water, and you have the true Oxford stroke, which is simply the perfection of rowing, and can, of course, be defeated by superior strength or bottom; but, cceteris paribus, is almost sure to win. Nine defeats were endured by Cambridge with a fortitude, a patience, and a temper that won every heart, and in 1870 she reaped her reward. She sent up a crew, led by Mr. Goldie who had been defeated the year before by Darbi- shire's Oxford eight and coached by Mr. Morrison. This Cambridge crew pulled the Oxford stroke, or nearly, drove Oxford in the race to a faster stroke that does not suit her, and won the race with something to spare, though stuck to indomitably by Darbishire and an inferior crew. In 1871 Oxford sent up a heavy crew, with plenty of apparent strength, but not the precision and form of Mr. Goldie's eight. Cam- bridge took the lead and kept it. This year Oxford was rather unlucky in advance. The city was circumnavigable by little ships, and you might have tacked an Indiaman in Magdalen College meadow ; but this was unfavourable to eight-oar practice. Then, Mr. Lesley, the stroke, sprained his side, and resigned his post to Mr. Houblon, a very elegant oarsman, but one who pulls a quick stroke, not healthy to Oxford on Father Thames his bosom. Then their boat was found to be not so lively as the Cam- bridge boat built by Clasper. A new boat was ordered, and she proved worse in another way than Salter's. In a word, Oxford came to the scratch to-day with a good stiff boat, not lively, with 20lb. more dead weight inside the coxswain's jacket, and with a vast deal of pluck and not a little Hemiplegia. The betting was five to two against her. Five minutes before the rivals came out it was snowing so hard that the race bade fair to be invisible. I shall not describe the snow, nor any of the atmospheric horrors that 55 READIANA made the whole business purgatory instead of pleasure. I take a milder revenge ; I only curse them. Putney roared ; and out came the Dark Blue crew ; they looked strong and wiry, and likely to be troublesome atten- dants. Another roar, and out came the Light Blue. So long as the boats were stationary one looked as likely as the other to win. They started. Houblon took it rather easy at first ; and Cambridge obtained a lead directly, and at the Soap Works was half a length ahead. This was reduced by Mr. Hall's excellent steering a foot or two by the time they shot Hammersmith Bridge. As the boats neared Chiswick Eyot, where many a race has changed, Oxford gradually reduced the lead to a foot or two ; and if this could have been done with the old, steady, much-enduring stroke, I would not have given much for the leading boat's chance. But it was achieved by a stroke of full thirty-nine to the minute, and neither form or time was perfect. Mr. Goldie now called upon his crew, and the Clasper boat showed great qualities ; it shot away visibly, like a horse suddenly spurred ; this spurt proved that Cambridge had great reserves of force, and Ox- ford had very little. Houblon and his gallant men struggled nobly and unflinchingly on ; but, between Barnes Bridge and Mortlake, Goldie put the steam on again, and increased the lead to about a length and a half clear water. The gun was fired, and Cambridge won the race of 1 872. In this race Oxford, contrary to her best traditions, pulled a faster stroke than Cambridge ; the Oxford coxswain's expe- rience compensated for his greater weight. The lighter cox- swain steered his boat in and out a bit, and will run some risk of being severely criticised by all our great contemporaries except Zig-Zag. As for me, my fifty summers or fifty winters there is no great difference in this island of the blessed, they are neither of them so horrible as the spring have disinclined me to thunder on the young. A veteran journalist perched on the poop of a steam vessel has many advantages. He has a bird's-eye view of the Thames, and can steer Clasper' s boat with his mind far more easily than can a youngster squatted four inches above the water, with eight giants intercepting his view of a strange river, and a mob shouting in his ears like all the wild beasts of a thousand forests. Mr. Goldie has done all his work well for months. He chose his men impartially, practised them in time, and finally 56 THE STORY OF THE BOAT RACE OF 1872 rowed the race with perfect judgment. He took an experi- mental time, and finding he could hold it, made no premature call upon his crew. He held the race in hand, and won it from a plucky opponent without distressing his men need- lessly. No man is a friend of Oxford, who tells her to over- rate accidents, and underrate what may be done by a wise President before ever the boats reach Putney. This London race was virtually won at Cambridge. Next year let Oxford choose her men from no favourite schools or colleges, lay aside her prejudice against Clasper, and give him a trial ; at all events, return to her swinging-stroke, and practise till not only all the eight bodies go like one, but all the eight rowlocks ring like one ; and the spirit and bottom that enabled her to hang so long on the quarter of a first-rate crew in a first-rate boat will be apt to land her a winner in the next and many a hard-fought race. CHARLES READE. 57 BUILDERS' BLUNDERS To THE EDITOR OF THE " PALL MALL GAZETTE " FIRST LETTER SIR, Amidst the din of arms abroad and petty politics at home, have you a corner for a subject less exciting, but very important to Englishmen? Then let me expose that great blot upon the English intellect, the thing we call A HOUSE, especially as it is built in our streets, rows, and squares. To begin at the bottom the drains are inside and hidden ; nobody knows their course. A foul smell arises : it has to be groped for, and half the kitchen and scullery floors taken up blunder 1. Drains ought to be outside : and, if not, their course be marked, with the graving tool, on the stones, and a map of the drains deposited with a parish officer; overlying boards and stones ought to be hinged, to facili- tate examination. Things capable of derangement should never be inaccessible. This is common sense ; yet, from their drains to their chimneypots, the builders defy this maxim. The kitchen windows are sashes, and all sash-windows are a mistake. They are small ; they ought to be as large as possible. The want of light in kitchens is one of the causes why female servants -though their lot is a singularly happy one are singularly irritable. But, not to dwell on small errors, the next great blunder in the kitchen is THE PLASTER CEILING. The plaster ceiling may pass, with London builders, for a venerable antiquity that nothing can disturb, but to scholars it is an unhappy novelty, and, in its present form, inexcusable. It was invented in a tawdry age as a vehicle of florid orna- mentation ; but what excuse can there be for a plain plaster ceiling? Count the objections to it in a kitchen. 1. A 58 BUILDERS' BLUNDERS kitchen is a low room, and the ceiling makes it nine inches lower. 2. White is a glaring colour, and a white ceiling makes a low room look lower. 3. This kitchen ceiling is dirty in a month's wear, and filthy in three months, with the smoke of gas, and it is a thing the servants cannot clean. 4. You cannot hang things on it. Now change all this : lay out the prime cost of the ceiling, and a small part of its yearly cost, in finishing your joists and boards to receive varnish, and in varnishing them with three coats of good copal. Your low room is now nine inches higher, and looks three feet. You can put in hooks and staples galore, and make the roof of this business-room useful ; it is, in colour, a pale amber at starting, which is better for the human eye than white glare, and, instead of getting uglier every day, as the plaster ceiling does, it improves every month, every year, every decade, every century. Clean deal, under varnish, acquires in a few years a beauty oak can never attain to. So much for the kitchen. The kitchen stairs, whether of stone or wood, ought never to be laid down without a protecting nozzle. The brass nozzle costs some money, the lead nozzle hardly any : no nozzle can be dear ; for it saves the steps, and they are dearer. See how the kitchen steps are cut to pieces for want of that little bit of forethought in the builder. We are now on the first floor. Over our heads is a blunder, the plaster ceiling, well begrimed with the smoke from the gasalier, and not cleanable by the servants : and we stand upon another blunder ; here are a set of boards, not joined together. They are nailed down loose, and being of green wood they gape : now the blunder immediately below, the plaster ceiling of the kitchen, has provided a receptacle of dust several inches deep. This rises when you walk upon the floor, rises in clouds when your children run ; and that dust marks your carpet in black lines, and destroys it before its time. These same boards are laid down without varnish ; by this means they rot, and do not last one-half, nor, indeed, one-quarter, of their time. Moreover, the unvarnished boards get filthy at the sides before you furnish ; and thus you lose the cleanest and most beautiful border possible to your carpet. So the householder is driven by the incapacity of the builder to pitiable substitutes oil cloth, Indian matting, and stained wood, which last gets uglier every year, whereas deal boards varnished clean improve every year, every decade, every century. I am, Sir, yours very truly, CHARLES READE. 59 READIANA SECOND LETTER SIR, When last seen I was standing on the first floor of the thing they call a house, with a blunder under my feet un- varnished, unjoined boards ; and a blunder over my head the oppressive, glaring, plaster ceiling, full of its inevitable cracks, and foul with the smoke of only three months' gas. This room has square doors with lintels. Now all doors and doorways ought to be arched, for two reasons first, the arch is incombustible, the lintel and breast-summer are combus- tible ; secondly, the arch, and arched door, are beautiful ; the square hole in the wall, and square door, are hideous. SASH WINDOWS. This room is lighted by what may be defined "the un- scientific window." Here in this single structure you may see most of the intellectual vices that mark the unscientific mind. The scientific way is always the simple way ; so here you have complication on complication : one-half the window is to go up, the other half is to come down. The maker of it goes out of his way to struggle with Nature's laws : he grapples insanely with gravitation, and therefore he must use cords, and weights, and pulleys, and build boxes to hide them in he is a great hider. His wooden frames move up and down wooden grooves open to atmospheric influence. What is the consequence ? The atmosphere becomes humid ; the wooden frame sticks in the wooden box, and the unscientific window is jammed. What ho ! Send for the CURSE OF FAMILIES, the British workman ! Or one of the cords breaks (they are always breaking) send for the CURSE OF FAMILIES to patch the blunder of the unscientific builder. Now turn to the scientific window; it is simply a glass door with a wooden frame; it is not at the mercy of the atmosphere ; it enters into no contest with gravitation ; it is the one rational window upon earth. If a small window, it is a single glass door, if a large window, it is two glass doors, each calmly turning on three hinges, and not fight- ing against God Almighty and his laws, when there is no need. The scientific window can be cleaned by the householder's 60 BUILDERS' BLUNDERS servants without difficulty or danger, not so the unscientific window. How many a poor girl has owed broken bones to the sash-window ! Now-a-days humane masters, afflicted with unscientific windows, send for the CURSE OF FAMILIES when- ever their windows are dirty ; but this costs seven or eight pounds a year, and the householder is crushed under taxes enough without having to pay this odd seven pounds per annum for the nescience of the builder. We go up the stairs between two blunders : the balusters are painted, whereas they ought to be made and varnished in the carpenter's shop, and then put up ; varnished wood improves with time, painted deteriorates. On the other side is the domestic calamity, foul wear, invariable, yet never pro- vided for; furniture mounting the narrow stairs dents the wall and scratches it ; sloppy housemaids paw it as they pass, and their dirty gowns, distended by crinoline, defile it. What is to be done then?* Must the whole staircase be repainted every year, because five feet of it get dirty, or shall brains step in and protect the vulnerable part ? The cure to this curse is chunam ; or encaustic tiles, set five feet high all up the stairs. That costs money ! Granted ; but the life of a house is not the life of a butterfly. Even the tiles are a cheap cure, for repeated paintings of the whole surface mighty soon balance the prime cost of the tiles set over a small part. The water-closet has no fireplace. That is a blunder. Every year we have a few days' hard frost, and then, with- out a fire in the water-closet, the water in the pan freezes, the machinery is jammed, and the whole family endure a degree of discomfort, and even of degradation, because the builder builds in summer and forgets there is such a thing as winter. The drawing-room presents no new feature ; but the plaster ceiling is particularly objectionable in this room, because it is under the bedrooms, where water is used freely. Now if a man spills but a pint of water in washing or bathing, it runs through directly and defiles the drawing-room ceiling. Perhaps this blunder ought to be equally divided between the ceiling and the floor above, for whenever bedroom floors shall be properly constructed they will admit of buckets of water being sluiced all over them ; and, indeed, will be so treated, and washed as courageously as are sculleries and kitchens only under the present benighted system. 61 READIANA I pass over the third floor, and mount a wooden staircase, a terrible blunder in this part of the house, to the rooms under the roof. These rooms, if the roof was open-timbered, would give each inmate a great many cubic feet of air to breathe ; so the perverse builder erects a plaster ceiling, and reduces him to a very few cubic feet of air. This, the maddest of all the ceilings, serves two characteristic purposes ; it chokes and oppresses the poor devils that live under it, and it hides the roof ; now the roof is the part that oftenest needs repairs, so it ought to be the most accessible part of the house, and the easiest to examine from the outside and from the inside. For this very reason Perversity in person hides it ; whenever your roof or a gutter leaks, it is all groping and speculation, because your builder has concealed the inside of the roof with that wretched ceiling, and has made the outside acces- sible only to cats and sparrows, and the "curse of families." N.B. Whenever that curse of families goes out on that roof to mend one hole, he makes two. Why not ? thanks to the perverse builder you can't watch him, and he has got a friend a plumber. We now rise from folly to lunacy ; the roof is half perpen- dicular. This, in a modern house, is not merely silly, it is disgraceful to the human mind ; it was all very well before gutters and pipes were invented : it was well designed to shoot off the water by the overlapping eaves : but now we run our water off by our gutters and pipes, and the roof merely feeds them ; the steep roof feeds them too fast, and is a main cause of overflows. But there are many other objec- tions to slanted roofs, especially in streets and rows : 1st. The pyramidal roof, by blocking up the air, neces- sitates high stacks of chimneys, which are expensive and dangerous. 2nd. The pyramidal roof presses laterally against the walls, which these precious builders make thinner the higher they raise them, and subjects the whole structure to danger. 3rd. It robs the family of a whole floor, and gives it to cats and sparrows. I say that a five-storey house with a pyramidal roof is a five-storey house, and with a flat roof is a six-storey house. 4th. It robs the poor cockney of his country view. It is astonishing how much of the country can be seen from the roofs of most London streets. A poor fellow who works all day in a hole, might smoke his evening pipe, and see a wide tract of verdure but the builders have denied him that ; 62 BUILDERS' BLUNDERS they build the roof for cats and the " curse of families," they do not build it for the man whose bread they eat. 5th. It robs poor families of their drying-ground. 6th. This idiotic blunder, slightly aided by a subsidiary blunder or two, murders householders and their families wholesale, destroys them by the most terrible of all deaths burning alive. And I seriously ask you, and any member of either House, who is not besotted with little noisy things, to consider how great a matter this is, though no political squabble can be raised about it. Mind you, the builders are not to blame that a small, high house is, in its nature, a fire-trap. This is a misfortune in- separable from the shape of the structure and the nature of that terrible element. The crime of the builders lies in this, that they make no intelligent provision against a danger so evident, but side with the fire not the family. Prejudice and habitual idiocy apart, can anything be clearer than this, that, asjire mounts and smoke stifles, all persons who are above ajire ought to be enabled to leave the house by way of the roof, as easily and rapidly as those below thejire can go out by the street door. Now what do the builders do ? They side with fire ; they accumulate combustible materials on the upper floors, and they construct a steep roof most difficult and dangerous to get about on, but to the aged and infirm impossible. Are then the aged and infirm incombustible? This horrible dangerous roof the merciless wretches make so hard of access that few are the cases, as well they know by the papers, in which a life is saved by their hard road. They open a little trap-door horizontal, of course; always go against God Almighty and his laws, when you can ; that is the idiot's creed. This miserable aperture, scarcely big enough for a dog, is bolted or padlocked. It is seven feet from the ground. Yet the builder fixes no steps nor stairs to it ; no, get at it how you can. What chance has a mixed family of escaping by this hole in case of fire. Nobody ever goes on that beastly pyramid except in case of fire ; and so the bolt is almost sure to be rusty, or the key mislaid, or the steps not close ; and, even if the poor wretches get the steps to the place, and heave open the trap, in spite of rust and gravitation, these delays are serious ; then the whole family is to be dragged up through a dog-hole, and that is slow work, and fire is swift and smoke is stifling. 63 READIANA A thousand poor wretches have been clean murdered in my time by the builders with their trap-door and their pyramidal roof. Thousands more have been destroyed, as far as the builders were concerned; the firemen and fire-escape men saved them, in spite of the builders, by means which were a disgrace to the builders. But in my next, Sir, I will show you that in a row of houses constructed by brains not one of those tragedies could ever have taken place. I am, Sir, yours very truly, CHARLES READE. THIRD LETTER SIR, It is a sure sign a man is not an artist, if, instead of repairing his defects, he calls in an intellectual superior to counteract them. The fire-escape is creditable to its in- ventor, but disgraceful to the builders. They construct a fire-trap without an escape ; and so their fellow-citizens are to cudgel their brains and supply the builders' want of in- telligence and humanity by an invention working from the street. The fire-escape can after all save but a few of the builders' victims. The only universal fire-escape is THE RATIONAL ROOF. To be constructed thus : Light iron staircases from the third floor to top floor and rational roof. Flat roof, or roofs, metal covered, with scarcely perceptible fall from centre. Open joists and iron girders, the latter sufficiently numerous to keep the roof from falling in, even though fire should gut the edifice. An iron-lined door, surmounted by a skylight ; iron staircase up to this door, which opens rationally on to the rational roof. Large cistern or tank on roof with a force-pump to irrigate the roof in fire or summer heats. Round the roof iron rails set firm in balcony, made too hard for bairns to climb, and surmounted by spikes. Between every two houses a partition gate with two locks and keys complete. Bell under cover to call neighbour in fire or other emergency. Advantages offered by " the RATIONAL roof: " 1. High chimney stacks not needed. 2. Nine smoking chimneys cured out of ten. There are always people at hand to make the householder believe his chimney smokes by some fault of construction, and so they gull him into expenses, and his chimney smokes on because 64 BUILDERS' BLUNDERS it is not thoroughly swept. Send a faithful servant on to the rational roof, let him see the chimney-sweep's brush at the top of every chimney before you pay a shilling, and good-bye smoking chimneys. Sweeps are rogues, and the irrational roof is their shield and buckler. 3. The rails painted chocolate and the spikes gilt would mightily improve our gloomy streets. 4. Stretch clothes' lines from spike to spike, and there is a drying-ground for the poor, or for such substantial people as are sick of the washerwomen and their villainy. These heart- less knaves are now rotting fine cambric and lace with soda and chloride of lime, though borax is nearly as detergent and injures nothing. 5. A playground in a purer air for children that cannot get to the parks. There is no ceiling to crack below. 6. In summer heats a blest retreat. Irrigate and cool from the cistern : then set four converging poles, stretch over these from spike to spike a few breadths of awning; and there is a delightful tent and perhaps a country view. If the Star and Garter at Richmond had possessed such a roof, they would have made at least two thousand a year upon it, and perhaps have saved their manager from a terrible death. 7. On each roof a little flagstaff and streamer to light the gloom with sparks of colour, and tell the world is the master at home or not. This would be of little use now ; but when once the rational roof becomes common, many a friend could learn from his own roof whether a friend was at home, and so men's eyes might save their legs. 8. In case of fire, the young and old would walk out by a rational door on to a rational roof, and ring at a rational gate. Then their neighbour lets them on to his rational roof, and they are safe. Meantime, the adult males, if any, have time to throw wet blankets on the skylight and turn the water on to the roof. The rational roof, after saving the family which its predecessor would have destroyed, now proceeds to combat the fire. It operates as an obstinate cowl over the fire ; and, if there are engines on the spot, the victory is certain. Com- pare this with the whole conduct of the irrational roof. First it murdered the inmates ; then it fed the fire ; then it collapsed and fell on the ground floor, destroying more property, and endangering the firemen. I am, yours very truly, CHARLES READE. 65 E READIANA FOURTH LETTER SIR, The shoe pinches all men more or less ; but, on a calm survey, I think it pinches the householder hardest. A house is as much a necessary of life as a loaf; yet this article of necessity has been lately raised to a fancy price by the trade conspiracies of the building operatives not so much by their legitimate strikes for high wages as by their conspiring never to do for any amount of wages an honest day's work and the fancy price thus created strikes the householder first in the form of rent. But this excessive rent, although it is an outgoing, is taxed as income ; its figure is made the basis of all the imperial and parochial exactions, that crush the householder. One of these is singularly unfair ; I mean "the inhabited house duty." What is this but the property tax rebaptized and levied over again, but from the wrong person ? the property tax is a percentage on the rent, levied in good faith, from the person whom the rent enables to pay that percentage ; but the inhabited house duty is a similar percentage on the rent, levied, under the disguise of another name, from him whom the rent disables. In London the householder constantly builds and improves the freehold : instantly parochial spies raise his rates. He has employed labour, and so far counterbalanced pauperism ; at the end of his lease the house will bear a heavier burden ; but these heartless extortioners they bleed the poor wretch directly for improving parochial property at his own expense. At the end of his lease the rent is raised by the landlord on account of these taxed improvements, and the tenant turned out with a heavier grievance than the Irish farmer; yet he does not tumble his landlord, nor even a brace of vestrymen. The improving tenant, while awaiting the punishment of virtue, spends twenty times as much money in pipes as the water companies do, yet he has to pay them for water a price so enormous, that they ought to bring it into his cisterns, and indeed into his mouth, for the money. He pays through the nose for gas. He bleeds for the vices of the working classes ; since in our wealthy cities, nine-tenths of the pauperism is simply waste and inebriety. He often pays temporary relief to an impro- vident workman, whose annual income exceeds his own, but who will never put by a shilling for a slack time. 66 BUILDERS' BLUNDERS In short, the respectable householder of moderate means is so ground down and oppressed that, to my knowledge, he is on the road to despondency and ripening for a revolution. Now, I can hold him out no hope of relief from existing taxation ; but his intolerable burden can be lightened by other means ; the simplest is to keep down his bill for re- pairs and decorations, which at present is made monstrous by original misconstruction. The irrational house is an ANIMAL WITH ITS MOUTH ALWAYS OPEN. This need not be. It arises from causes most of which are removable; viz., 1st, from unscientific construction; 2nd, plaster ceilings ; 3rd, the want of provision for partial wear ; 4th, the abuse of paint ; 5th, hidden work. Under all these heads I have already given examples. I will add another under head 3. The dado or skirting board is to keep furniture from marking the wall; but it is laid down only one inch thick, whereas the top of a modern chair overlaps the bottom an inch and a half. This the builders do not, or will not, observe, and so every year in London fifty thousand rooms are spoiled by the marks of chair-backs on the walls, and the owners driven to the expense of painting or papering sixty square yards, to clean a space that is less than a square foot, but fatal to the appearance of the room. Under head 4 let me observe that God's woods are all very beautiful ; that ONLY FOOLS ARE WISER THAN GOD ALMIGHTY ; that varnish shows up the beauty of those woods, and adds a gloss ; and that house-paint hides their beauty. Paint holds dirt, and does not wash well ; varnish does. Paint can only be mixed by a workman. Varnish is sold fit to put on. Paint soon requires revival, and the old paint must be rubbed off at a great expense, and two new coats put on. Varnish stands good for years, and, when it requires revival, little more is necessary than simple cleaning, and one fresh coat, which a servant or anybody can lay on. 5. Hidden work is sure to be bad work, and so need repairs, especially in a roof, that sore tried part ; and the repairs are the more expensive that the weak place has to be groped for. I have now, I trust, said enough to awaken a few house- holders from the lethargy of despair, and to set them thinking a little and organising a defence against the extraordinary mixture of stupidity and low instinctive trade cunning of which they are the victims : for a gentleman's blunders hurt himself, but a tradesman's blunders always hurt his 67 READIANA customers. And this is singularly true of builders' blunders ; they all tend one way to compel the householder to be always sending for the builder, or that bungling rascal the plumber, to grope for his hidden work, or botch his bad work, or clean his unscientific windows, or whitewash his idiotic ceilings, or rub his nasty unguents off God's beautiful wood, and then put some more nasty odoriferous unguents on, or put cowls on his ill-cleaned chimneys ; or, in short, to repair his own countless blunders at the expense of his customer. Independently of the murderous and constant expense, the bare entrance into a modest household of that loose, lazy, drunken, dishonest drink-man and jack-man, who has the impudence to call himself " the British workman," though he never did half a day's real work at a stretch in all his life, is a serious calamity, to be averted by every lawful means. I am, Sir, yours faithfully, CHARLES READE. 68 WHO IS HE? To THE EDITOR OF THE "DAILY NEWS" SIR^ Your correspondent "Facing both Ways," complains that a trial, which lasted 101 days, has only revealed to him that the Tichborne Claimant is not Tichborne ; who the man really is remains obscure. I think, sir, your correspondent makes his own difficulty ; he overrates direct evidence, though this very trial has shown its extreme fallibility, and under- rates circumstantial evidence. This is an illusion ; circum- stantial evidence avails to convict a man of a murder no human eye has witnessed ; and a fortiori it avails to identify a pseudo-Tichborne with the man he really is. The proof of his identity lies in a number of circumstances, hetero- geneous, and independent of each other, yet all pointing to one conclusion, and all undeniable, and indeed not denied. Now it is a property of such coincidences, that, when they multiply, the proof rises, not on a scale of simple addition, but in a ratio so enormous that at the sixth coincidence we get to figures the tongue may utter, but the mind cannot realise. In cases of murder I have never known a treble coincidence, pointing to one man as the murderer, fail to result in a conviction. But in the Tichborne case the bare- faced coincidences, all pointing to the Tichborne Claimant as Arthur Orton, are not less than seven ; and to these you may add one of superlative importance, viz., the coincidence of character. Character is the key to men's actions, and it is clear that Arthur Orton, when quite a youth, was instinctively inclined towards an imposture of the same kind, though not the same degree, that a jury has fixed upon the Tichborne Claimant. This youth, though " Begot by butchers, and by butchers bred," did yet hold his haughty head high out in Brazil, and boasted of some lofty origin or other. If your correspondent will only take a sheet of paper and write down, in separate paragraphs, all the undisputed coincidences, and 69 READIANA then add the coincidence of character, and then add to that the circumstance that no other Arthur Orton could be found to go into the witness-box and say, " 1 am Arthur Orton/' though those four words would have been worth fifty thousand pounds to the Claimant and his bondholders, he will see before him such an array of heterogeneous proofs, all radiating to one centre, as no recorded trial ever elicited before. Now, the naturalists have laid down a maxim of reasoning in such cases which every lawyer in England would do well to copy into his notebook : " The true solution is that which recon- ciles all the indisputable facts." Apply this test to the theories that the Claimant is Castro, is Doolan, is Morgan ; those theories all dissolve before that immortal piece of wisdom like hailstones before the midsummer sun. In the same way to use a favourite form in Euclid it can be proved that no other person except Arthur Orton is the Tichborne Claimant. Is this uncertainty? What, then, of all we believe either human or divine is certain ? I am, Sir, yours faithfully, CHARLES READE. ALBERT TERRACE, KNIGHTSBRIDGE, March 18, 1872. 70 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES To THE EDITOR OF "FACT" FIKST LETTER SIR, In reply to your query it is true that after the trial at Nisi Prius, where " the Claimant " was Plaintiff, but before his trial at Bar as Defendant, I pronounced him to be Arthur Orton, and gave my reasons. These you now invite me to repeat. I will do so ; only let me premise that I am not so vain as to think I can say anything essentially new on this subject, which has been fully discussed by men superior to me in attainments. It so happens, however, that those superior men have always veiled a part of their own mental process, though it led them to a just conclusion : they have never stated in direct terms their major premiss, or leading principle. This is a common omission, especially amongst Anglo-Saxon reasoners ; but it is a positive defect, and one I do think I can supply. But before we come to the debatable matter, I fear I must waste a few words on the impossible namely, that this man is Roger Charles Tichborne. Well, then, let those who have not studied the evidence and cross-examination, just cast their eyes on this paper and see a sample of what they must believe, or else reject that chimera. That Roger Tichborne was drowned with thirty more, yet re- appeared years after, all alone, leaving at the bottom of the sea all his companions, and certain miscellaneous articles, viz. : 1. His affection for his mother, his brother, and others. 2. His handwriting. 3. His leanness. 4. His French. 5. His love of writing letters to his folk. 71 READIANA 6. His knowledge of Chateaubriand, and his comprehen- sion of what the deuce he, Roger Tichborne, was writing about when he put upon paper before his submersion that he admired Rene, and gave his reasons. 7. His knowledge of the Tichborne estates, and the counties they lay in. 8. His knowledge of his mother's Christian names. 9. His knowledge of his beloved sweetheart's face, figure, and voice. 10. His tattoo marks, three inches long. 11. His religion. 12. Five years of his life. These five years lay full fathom five at the bottom of the ocean hard by No. 10, when this aristocratic Papist married a servant girl in a Baptist chapel, and was only thirty years old, as appears on the register in his handwriting, which is nothing like Tichborne' s. Along with this rubbish we may as well sweep away the last inven- tion of weak and wavering intellects, that the Claimant is no individual in particular, but a sort of solidified myth, incarnate alias, or obese hallucination. And now having applied our besoms to the bosh, let us apply our minds to the debatable. Since he is not dead Castro, nor dead Tichborne, nor live Alias, who is he ? Here then to those, who go with me so far, I proceed to state the leading principle, which governs the case thus narrowed, and always implied, though unfortunately never stated led our courts to a reasonable conclusion. That principle is . THE PROGRESSIVE VALUE OF PROVED COINCIDENCES ALL POINTING TO ONE CONCLUSION. Pray take notice that by proved coincidences I mean coin- cidences that are 1. Not merely seeming, but independent and real. 2. Either undisputed, or indisputable. 3. Either extracted from a hostile witness, which is the highest kind of evidence, especially where the witness is a deliberate liar ; or 4. Directly sworn to by respectable witnesses in open court, and then cross-examined and not shaken which is the next best evidence to the involuntary admissions of a liar interested in concealing the truth. Men born to be deceived like children may think these precautions extravagant ; but they are neither excessive nor new : they are sober, true, and just to both the parties in 72 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES every mortal cause ; they have been for ages the safeguard of all great and wary minds ; and neither I nor any other man can lay down any general position of reasoning, that will guide men aright, who are so arrogant, so ignorant, or so weak, as to scorn them. On the other hand, if your readers will accept these safe- guards, the general principle I have laid down will never deceive them ; it will show them who the Claimant is, and it will aid them in far greater difficulties, and more important inquiries ; for, like all sound principles of reason, it is equally applicable to questions of science, literature, history, or crime. I am, Sir, yours faithfully, CHARLES READE. SECOND LETTER SIR, A single indisputable coincidence raises a presumption that often points towards the truth. A priori what is more unlikely than that the moon, a mere satellite, and a very small body, should so attract the giant earth as to cause our tides ? Indeed, for years science rejected the theory ; but certain changes of the tide coinciding regu- larly with changes of the moon wore out prejudice, and have established the truth. Yet these coincident changes, though repeated ad infinitum, make but one logical coincidence. On the other hand, it must be owned that a single coinci- dence often deceives. To take a sublunary and appropriate example, the real Martin Guerre had a wart on his cheek ; so had the sham Martin Guerre. The coincidence was genuine and remarkable : yet the men were distinct. But mark the ascending ratio see the influence on the mind of a double coincidence when the impostor with the real wart told the sisters of Martin Guerre some particulars of their family history, and reminded Martin's wife of something he had said to her on their bridal night, in the solitude of the nuptial chamber, this seeming knowledge, coupled with that real wart, struck her mind with the force of a double coincidence ; and no more was needed to make her accept the impostor, and cohabit with him for years. Does not this enforce what I urged in my first letter as to the severe caution necessary in receiving alleged, or seeming, or manipulated coincidences, as if they were proved and real ones ? However, I use the above incident at present mainly 73 READIANA to show the ascending power on the mind of coincidences when received as genuine. I will now show their ascending value when proved in open court and tested by cross-examination. A. was found dead of a gunshot wound, and the singed paper that had been used for wadding lay near him. It was a fragment of the Times. B.'s house was searched, and they found there a gun recently discharged, and the copy of the Times, from which the singed paper aforesaid had been torn ; the pieces fitted exactly. The same thing happened in France with a slight variation ; the paper used for wadding was part of an old breviary, sub- sequently found in B.'s house. The salient facts of each case made a treble coincidence. What was the result ? The treble coincidence sworn, cross- examined, and unshaken, hanged the Englishman, and guil- lotined the Frenchman. In neither case was there a scintilla of direct evidence ; in neither case was the verdict impugned. I speak within bounds when I say that a genuine double coincidence, proved beyond doubt, is not twice, but two hundred times, as strong, as one such coincidence, and that a genuine treble coincidence is many thousand times as strong as one such coincidence. But, when we get to a fivefold coincidence real and proved, it is a million to one against all these honest circumstances having combined to deceive us. As for a sevenfold coincidence not manipulated, nor merely alleged, but fully proved, does either history, science, litera- ture, or crime offer one example of its ever misleading the human mind ? Why, the very existence of seven indepen- dent and indisputable coincidences, all pointing to one con- clusion, is a rarity so great, that, in all my reading, I hardly know where to find an example of it except in the defence that baffled this claimant at Nisi Prius. Now, on that occasion, the parties encountered each other plump on various lines of evidence. There were direct recog- nitions of his personal identity by respectable witnesses, and direct disavowals of the same by respectable witnesses, just as there were in the case of the sham Martin Guerre, who brought thirty honest disinterested witnesses to swear he was the man he turned out not to be. With this part of the case I will not meddle here, though I have plenty to say upon it. But both parties also multiplied coincidences : only some of these were real, some apparent, some manipulated, some 74 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES honest and independent, some said or sworn out of court by liars, who knew better than venture into the witness-box with them ; some proved by cross-examination, or in spite of it. We have only to subject this hodge-podge of real and sham to the approved test laid down in my first letter, and we shall see daylight ; for the Claimant's is a clear case, made obscure by verbosity, and conjecture in the teeth of proof ! A. He proved in court a genuine coincidence of a corporeal kind viz., that Roger Tichborne was in-kneed, with the left leg turned out more than the right, and the Claimant was in- kneed in a similar way. This is a remarkable coincidence, and cross-examination failed to shake it. But when he attempted to prove a second coincidence of corporeal peculiarities like the above, which, being the work of nature, cannot be combated, what a falling off in the evidence. B. They found in the Claimant a congenital brown mark on the side ; but they could only assert or imagine a similar mark in Tichborne. No viva voce evidence by eye-witnesses to anything of the sort. C. They proved, by Dr. Wilson, a peculiar formation in the Claimant ; but instead of proving by some doctor, sur- geon, or eye-witness a similar formation in Tichborne, they went off into wild inferences. The eccentric woman, who kept her boy three years under a seton, had also kept him a long time in frocks ; and the same boy, when a moody young man, had written despondent phrases, such as, in all other cases, imply a dejected mind, but here are to be perverted to indicate a malformed body, although many doctors, surgeons, and nurses knew Tichborne's body, and not one of all these ever saw this malformation which, in the nude body, must have been visible fifty yards off. In short, the coincidences B. and C. were proved incidences with unproved " Go's." Failing to establish a double coincidence of congenital fea- tures or marks, the Claimant went off into artificial skin-marks. Examples : Roger had marks of a seton ; the Claimant showed marks of a similar kind. Roger had a cut at the back of his head, and another on his wrist. So had the Claimant. Roger had the seams of a lancet on his ankles. The Claimant came provided with punctures on the ankle. Roger winked and blinked. So did the Claimant. Then there was something about a mark on the eyelid ; but on this head I forget whether the Claimant's witness ever 75 READIANA faced cross-examination. Nor does it very much matter, for all these artificial coincidences are rotten at the core : unlike the one true corporeal coincidence the Claimant proved, they could all be imitated ; and, as regards the ankles, imitation was reasonably suspected in court, for the Claimant's needle- pricks were unlike the seam of a lancet, and were not applied to the ankle pulse, as they would have been, by a surgeon, on lean Tichborne, in whom the saphena vein would be manifest, and even the ankle-pulse perceptible, though not in a fair, fat, and false representative. Then the seton marks were stiffly disputed, and the balance of medical testimony was that the Claimant's marks were not of that precise character. These doubtful coincidences were also encountered by direct dissidences on the same line of observation. Roger was bled in the temporal artery, and the Claimant showed no puncture there. Roger was tattooed with a crown, cross, and anchor by a living witness, who faced cross-examination, and several witnesses in the cause saw the tattoo marks at various times ; and it was no answer to all this positive evidence to bring witnesses who did not tattoo him, and other witnesses who never saw the tattoo marks. The pickpocket, who brought twenty witnesses that did not see him pick a certain pocket, against two who did, was defeated by the intrinsic nature of evidence. I shall ask no person to receive any coincidence from me that was so shaken and made doubtful, and also neutralised by dissidences, as the imitable skin-marks in this case were. But the Claimant also opened a large vein of apparent coincidences in the knowledge shown by him at certain times and places of numerous men and things known to Roger Tichborne. These were very remarkable. He knew private matters known to Tichborne and A, to Tichborne and B, to Tichborne and C, &c., and he knew more about Tichborne than either A, B, C, &c., individually knew. It is not fair nor reasonable to pooh-pooh this. But the defendants met this fairly ; they said these coincidences were not arrived at by his being Tichborne, but by his pumping various individuals who knew Tichborne : and they applied fair and sagacious tests to the matter. They urged as a general truth that Tichborne in Australia would have known just as much about himself, his relations, and his affairs as he subsequently knew in England. And I must do them the justice to say this position is impregnable. Then they went into detail and proved that when Gibbs first spotted the Claimant at Wagga-Wagga, he was as ignorant as 76 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES dirt of Tichborne matters ; did not know the Christian names of Tichborne's mother, nor the names of the Tichborne estates, nor the counties where they lay. They then showed the steps by which his ignorance might have been partly lessened and much knowledge picked up ; they showed a lady, who longed to be deceived, and all but said so, putting him by letter on to Bogle Bogle startled, and pumped the Claimant showing the upper part of his face in Paris to the lady who wanted to be deceived, and, after recognition on those terms, pumping her largely ; then coming to England with a large stock of fact thus obtained, and in England pumping Carter, Bulpitt, and others, searching Lloyd's, &c. 2. Having proved the gradual growth of knowledge in the Claimant between Wagga- Wagga and the Court of Common Pleas, they took him in court with all his acquired knowledge, and cross-examined him on a vast number of things well-known to Tichborne. Under this test, for which his preparations were necessarily imperfect, he betrayed a mass of ignorance on a multitude of things familiar to Roger Tichborne, and he betrayed it not frankly as honest men betray ignorance, or oblivion of what they have once really known, but in spite of such fencing, evading, shuffling, and equivocating, as the most experienced have rarely seen in the witness-box. Personating a gentleman he shuffled without a blush ; personating a col- legian, he did not know what a quadrangle is. The inscrip- tion over the Stonyhurst quadrangle, " Laus Deo," was strange to him. He thought it meant something about the laws of God. He knew no French, no Latin. He thought Caesar was a Greek : and, when a crucial test was offered him, which, if he had been Tichborne, he would have welcomed with de- light, and turned the scale in his favour, when a thoughtful comment by Roger Tichborne on the character of Rene was submitted to him, and he was questioned about this Eene, he was utterly flabbergasted. He wriggled and writhed, and brazened out his ignorance, but it shone forth in spite of him. He was evidently not the man who had tasted Chateaubriand, and written a thoughtful comment on Rene. His mind was not that mind any more than his handwriting was that hand- writing." To judge this whole vein of coincidences, and their neutra- lising dissidences, the jury had now before them three streams of fact. 1. That at Wagga- Wagga the Claimant knew nothing about Tichborne more than the advertisements told him. 77 READIANA 2. That in England he knew an incredible number of things about Tichborne. 3. That in England he took Mrs. Towneley for Roger's sweetheart, and even at the trial was ignorant of many things Tichborne could not be ignorant of. NOW, IN ALL CASES, WHERE THERE ARE SEVERAL FACTS INDIS- PUTABLE, YET SEEMINGLY OPPOSED, SCIENCE DECLARES THE TRUE SOLUTION TO BE THAT WHICH, SETTING ASIDE THE DOUBTFUL FACTS, RECONCILES ALL THE INDISPUTABLE FACTS. This maxim is infallible. The good sense of the jury led them to this solution as surely as science would have led a jury of Huxleys and Tyndalls to it ; and they decided that the coincidences were remarkable but manipulated, the knowledge astonishing but acquired, the ignorance an inevitable residue, which only Tichborne could have escaped. They saw a small pump working in Australia, a large pump working in Paris, a huge pump working in England, but a human, and therefore finite, pump after all, as proved in court by examination of the Radcliffes, Gosford, and others ; and above all, by cross examination of the Claimant, which last is the highest evi- dence. So much for the single genuine coincidence of the knees, and the manipulated coincidences of artificial skin-marks, and acquired knowledge, relied on for the Claimant. At this stage your readers should ask themselves two questions 1st. Is not history printed experience; and ought expe- rience to be printed in vain ? Did not the real wart, and the simulated knowledge, and the thirty direct witnesses of the sham Martin Guerre, an- ticipate the broad outline of this Claimant's case ? 2nd. As regards the coincidences, which were not only open to the charge of manipulation,- but also neutralised by dis- sidences, are they mighty enough to convince any candid mind that a fat, live person who slaughtered bullocks and married a housemaid, and swore in the box without a blush that he had lied, like a low fellow, to his friend and bene- factor, Gibbs, and that he well knew, and had loved, and after the manner of the lower orders seduced a lady (though he afterwards took Mrs. Towneley for her), and still follow- ing the lower orders, blasted her reputation was the lean, dead aristocrat, Tichborne, who went down in the Bella, with all hands, not one of whom has reappeared, and died, as he 78 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES had lived, the delicate, loyal lover of the chaste Kate Doughty and a gentleman and a man of honour ? I will now show, in contrast, the indisputable coincidences, which, converging from different quarters, all point to one conclusion that the Claimant is Arthur Orton, of Wapping. I am, Sir, yours faithfully, CHARLES READE. THIRD LETTER SIR, I now venture to hope that all I have written will seem silly to fanatics, and that unprejudiced minds will grant me 1. That, where there are indisputable facts and doubtful ones, the true solution is that which ignores the doubtful, and reconciles all the indisputable, facts. 2. That two coincidences are a hundred times as strong as one, and five coincidences a million times as strong as one ; and so on in a gigantic ratio as the coincidences multiply. 3. That coincidences, like other circumstances, must rest on legal evidence, and that there is a scale of legal evidence, without which a man would be all at sea in any great trial, since such trials arise out of a conflict of evidence. I indi- cated this scale in my first letter ; but as it is not encountered, but ignored in all the replies I have seen, I will amplify and enforce it. THE SCALE OF EVIDENCE. A. A written affidavit, not cross-examined, is " PERJURY MADE EASY." B. A written affidavit, signed by a person who could carry his statement into open Court, but does not, is PER- JURY DECLARED : for, when a man's actions contradict his words, it is his words that lie. C. In open Court the lowest kind of evidence is the evidence in chief of the plaintiff, or defendant. D. The highest evidence is the admission, under cross-exami- nation, of the plaintiff, or defendant. E. The next highest is the evidence in chief of disinterested persons, not shaken by cross-examination. These rules were not invented by me, nor for me nor against the Claimant. They are very old, very true, and equally applicable to every great trial past, present, and to come. Yet you have a correspondent, in whose mind this scale of 79 READIANA evidence has no place ; he gravely urges that the bestial ignorance of the Tichborne estates, and the bereaved woman's name he called his mother, shown by the Claimant at Wagga- Wagga, in his very will, a solemn instrument, by which he provided for his own wife, and expected child, was not real, as forsooth all his knowledge was, but feigned in order to humbug his protector without a motive, and bilk his own wife out of her sole provision, and sole claims on the Tichborne property ; and for this self-evident falsehood your correspondent's authority is the evidence of the Claimant himself, a party in the suit, and a party interested in lying, and throwing dust in the eyes of simpletons, who cannot see a church by daylight if some shallow knave says it is a pigeon-house. It was almost as childish to reply to me with the evidence of Moore. What evidence ? Why, he never ventured into court. Mr. Moore is a humbug, who wrote down a romance, and fled. Catch him carrying his tale into the witness-box, and being cross-examined out of fiction's fairy realm into one of Her Majesty's jails ! See scale of evidence B. These two great instruments of evidence, men and circumstances, re- semble each other in this, that men do not lie without a motive, and circumstances never have a motive, and therefore never lie, though man may misinterpret them. And it is the beauty of true coincidences that in them circumstance pre- ponderates, and man plays second fiddle. A coincidence often surprises even deceitful men into revealing the truth : for a coincidence is two facts pointing to one conclusion ; and the effect of the first fact is seldom seen till the second comes, and then it is too late to tamper effectually with the pair. You will see this pure and unforeseeing character running through most of the coincidences I now lay before you. 1. It was proved that Tichborne was in-kneed and dead, and that the Claimant and Arthur Orton are in-kneed and alive. 2. Disinterested witnesses swore that Arthur Orton was unusually stout at twenty, and was called at Wapping " bul- locky" Orton. Later in his life, Australian witnesses, who knew him, described him as uncommonly lusty. The Claimant's figure is described in similar terms by all the Australian wit- nesses who knew him. Now, many a lean youth puts on fat between thirty-five and forty, but lean, active men do not very often fatten from twenty to thirty. This, therefore, is a coincidence, though a feeble one. 3. Arthur Orton, born September 13th, 1832, was the youngest son of George Orton, a shipping butcher, and an 80 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES importer of Shetland ponies. He used to ride the ponies from the Dundee steamers, and so got a horseman's seat ; for they are awkward animals to ride, if you take them like that, one after another, raw from the Shetland Isles. When full grown, but under age, he slaughtered and dressed sheep and bullocks for his father. The Claimant in Australia lived by riding, and slaughter- ing, and dressing beasts. On this point, his own evidence agrees with that of every witness who knew him. And when he came up the Thames in the Cella to personate Tichborne, he asked the pilot what had become of Ferguson, the man who used to be pilot of the Dundee boats. All this taken together is rather a strong coincidence. It may seem weak ; but apply a test. To whom does all this, as a whole, apply ? The riding the slaughtering and the spontaneous interest in an old Dundee pilot ? To Castro ? To Tichborne ? To any known man not an Orton ? 4. In 1848, Arthur Orton, aged 16, sailed to Valparaiso, and subsequently, in June 1849, made his way to Melipilla. He was young, fair, the only English boy in the place, and the good people took to him. He made friends with Dona Hayley, wife of an English doctor, and with Thomas Castro and his wife, and many others. They were very kind to him in 1849 and '50, particularly Dona Hayley, and in these gentle minds the kindly feeling survived the lapse of time, and his long neglect of them. Not foreseeing in 1850 his little game in 1866, Arthur Orton told Dona Hayley he was the son of Orton, the Queen's butcher, and as a child had played with the Queen's children. Not being a prophet, all this bounce at that date went to aggrandise Orton. He spoke of Arthur's sisters by name, and Dona Hayley, twenty years after, remembered the names with slight and natural varia- tions. The wife of Thomas Castro was called at Melipilla Dona Natalia Sarmiento ; but this English boy, knowing her to be the wife of Castro, used to call her Mrs. Castro. This seems to have amused Dona Hayley, and she noted it. This boy was not Castro, for Castro was an elderly Spaniard, kind to this boy on the spot, and at the time. He was not Tichborne, for Tichborne was in England till late in 1852. Tichborne's alibi during Arthur Orton's whole visit to Melipilla is proved by a cloud of witnesses, and his own writing, and is, indeed, admitted; he sailed late in 1852, and reached Chili in 1853. Arthur Orton was back in England, June 1851. Now so much of this as respects Arthur Orton is the first 81 F READIANA branch of a pure, unforeseen coincidence. The second branch is this The Claimant on the 28th August 1867 wrote from his solicitor's office, 25 Poultry, to prepare the good Meli- pillians for a new theory that Arthur Orton, seventeen years old to the naked eye, was not Castro (that cock might fight in Hobart Town, but not in Melipilla) ; not Castro, but Tich- borne, age 23. He wrote to Thomas Castro, complained he was kept out of his estates, and begged to be kindly re- membered to Don Juan Hayley, to Clara and Jesusa, to Don Ramon Alcade, Dona Hurtado, to Senorita Matilda, Jose Maria Berenguel, and his brother, and others, in short to twelve persons besides Castro himself. One of the messages has per se the character of a coincidence. "My respects to Dona Natalia Sarmiento, or, as I used to call her, Mrs. Castro." Thomas Castro, to whom this was sent, being in confine- ment as a lunatic, his son Pedro Castro replied in a letter full of kindness, simple faith, and a desire to serve his injured friend. His letter carries God's truth stamped on it. His replies to the kind messages accord with our sad experience of time and its ravages. " His father bereft of reason, his mother dead this fourteen months. Dona Hayley' s recollection of the boy perfect, and she is ready to serve him, and depose to the truth. But the doctor's memory gone through intemper- ance, Dona Jesusa dead." "Don Jose Maria Berenguel is not so called, his name is Don Francesco Berenguel. He is established at Valparaiso." Then the writer goes on to say what had become of the other friends inquired after by the Claimant. One of them he specifies in particular as taking fire at the Claimant's letter, and remembering all about him, and desirous to serve him, he himself being animated by the same spirit, tells him that Dona Francesca Ahumada retains a lock of his hair, which he suggests the Claimant might turn to account : and so he might if he had been Tichborne. In the same spirit he warns him that his enemies had an agent at Melipilla hunting up data to use against him. The correspondence thus begun continued in the same spirit. The whole coincidence is this : The Claimant stayed a long time at Melipilla in 1849 and 1 850, and called himself Arthur Orton, and proved himself Arthur Orton, by giving full details of his family, and left Chili in 1850, during all which time an alibi is proved for Tichborne, but none can be proved nor has ever been attempted, for Arthur Orton. On the contrary, a non alibi was directly proved for him. He was traced from Wapping to Valparaiso, and Melipilla, in 1848. His stay there 82 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES till 1850 was proved, and then he was traced in 1850 into the Jessie Miller, and home to Wapping in 1851 just as he had been traced out by ships' registers and a cloud of witnesses. The coincidence rests on the two highest kinds of evidence, the Claimant's written admission, and the direct evidence of respectable witnesses unshaken by cross-examination (see scale of evidence), and it points to the Claimant as Arthur Orton. Those who can see he is not Tichborne, but are deceived by the falsehoods of men into believing he, is not Orton, should give special study to this coincidence ; for here the Claimant is either Tichborne or Orton. No third alternative is possible. At Melipilla, in 1850, he was either Orton, who was there, aged 17, or Tichborne, who was in England, aged 23. 5. There was, for some years, a bulky man in Australia riding and breaking horses, slaughtering and dressing beasts. His name Castro appears when that of Orton disappears. The two men seem to differ in name but not in figure and occupation. And no witness ever came into the witness-box and swore that he had ever seen these two portly butchers in two different skins. In 1867 the Claimant explained this phenomenon. In his letter to Thomas Castro he wrote thus : " And another strange thing I have to tell you, and I have no doubt you will say I took a great liberty on myself, that is to say, I took and made use of your name, and was only known in Australia by the name of Thomas Castro. I said also I belonged to Chili." He adds, however, an assurance that he had never disgraced him as a horseman. This coincidence proves that whenever we meet in Australia a bulky butcher, stock-keeper, horse-breaker, &c., called Thomas Castro, of Chili, that means the Claimant, and also means Arthur Orton, of Melipilla. And Arthur Orton of Melipilla is Arthur Orton of Wapping. 6. This sham Castro, sham Chilian, sham aristocrat, &c., married, as people do nine times in ten, into his own class, a servant girl who could not write her name. She made her mark. He forged a friend's name. Apparently he did not foresee he was going to leave off shamming Castro and begin shamming Tichborne, a stiff Papist ; so he got married by a dissenting minister, and in signing the register, described himself as thirty years old. Castro was, say sixty ; Tichborne was thirty-six. Who was thirty ? Arthur Orton of Wapping. 83 READIANA 7. It was the interest of Gibbes this man should be Tich- borne. His wishes influenced his judgment. He inclined to think he was the right man. But some things staggered him ; in particular the man's want of education. Gibbes told him frankly that seemed inconsistent. Then the Claimant, to get over that, told Gibbes that in childhood he had a nervous affection which checked his education. He then described this affection so correctly that Gibbes said, " Bless me, that is St. Vitus's dance." "Yes," said the Claimant, "that is what they used to call it." This solution eased Gibbes' mind, and he sat down and, honestly enough, sent an account of the conversation to Lady Tichborne's agent ; he wrote it to serve the plaintiff, not fore- seeing the turn that revelation of the truth would take. Coming home in the Rachaia there was some document or other to be read out, and the passengers confided this to the Claimant as a person claiming the highest rank. He blundered and made a mess of it, and showed his ignorance so that suspicion was raised, and one Mr. Hodson put it point- blank to him " You a baronet, and can't read ! " Then the Claimant told him he had been afflicted in his boyhood with St. Vitus's dance, and could not learn his letters. It was afterwards proved by a surgeon and a multitude of witnesses that at ten years of age Arthur Orton had been frightened by a fire, and afflicted with St. Vitus's dance, and that this had really checked his education, and that the traces of it had remained by him for years ; and that, in fact, he was sent to sea in hopes of a cure. This coincidence is very strong. Observe it is not confined to the disease ; but to the time of life, and its effect on a boy's education. No doubt a third man neither Tichborne nor Orton might have St. Vitus's dance as a little boy, and so be made a dunce, in spite of great natural ability. There is not above a hundred thousand to one against it; but coming after coincidences 4, 5, and 6, which clear away Castro and all other mere vapours, and confine the question to Tichborne or Orton, have I not now the right to say, Tichborne, by admission of all the witnesses on both sides, never had St. Vitus's dance; Arthur Orton undisputably had St. Vitus's dance ; the Claimant, to account for his ignorance, spon- taneously declared at different times, and to different people, that he had been afflicted with St. Vitus's dance, and this coincidence points to the Claimant as Arthur Orton of Wapping ? Yours obediently, CHARLES READE. 84 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES FOURTH LETTER g IRj I W H1 ask those who have done me the honour to keep my last letter, to draw a circle on a sheet of paper, the larger the better, and to draw seven radii from its centre across the line of circumference to the edge of the paper ; then upon those extended radii, and between the circle and the edge of the paper, I will ask them to write in small letters a short epitome of each coincidence, or a few words recalling what they consider its salient feature. Those who will do me the honour to take the trouble, and so become my fellow-labourers in logic, will not repent it. It will, I think, assist them, as it has assisted me, to realise how vast an area both of territory and of multifarious evidence is covered at the circumference by these seven coincidences, which nevertheless converge to one central point, no bigger than a pin's head, viz., that this Claimant, who has owned himself a sham Castro of Chili, but clings to his other alias, Tichborne, is Arthur Orton of Wapping. 8. From the day the Bella foundered to the day Gibbes spotted the Claimant, a period of thirteen or fourteen years, Roger Tichborne never wrote a line to his mother or his brother, or any relation or friend. This is accounted for rationally and charitably by his being dead at the bottom of the ocean. No, says the Claimant, I was alive all the time, and let my mother and my brother and my sweetheart think I had died horribly, cut off in my prime. The animal never realised that he was both drawing upon human credulity, and describing a monster and a beast. What was it that so blinded his most powerful understand- ing? From 1852 to 1865 Arthur Orton never wrote a line to Wapping. He let the father who reared him, the mother who bore him, go to their graves without one little word to say their son was alive. Not a line to brother, sister, or sweetheart. This unnatural trait being absent in Tichborne till he was drowned, and present in the Claimant by his own confession, and in Arthur Orton by a pyramid of evidence, is a startling coincidence of a new class. The unnatural heart of the Claimant is the unnatural heart of Arthur Orton. 9. In 1 852 Arthur Orton went out to Hobart Town with two Shetland ponies in the Middleton. 85 READIANA Subsequently, as the Claimant swore, he was for years at Boisdale and Dargo, slaughtering and riding, &c., in the service of Mr. W. Foster, and under the name of Castro, the Chilian. Foster's widow confirmed most of this, and pro- duced her account-books for 1854, 55, 56, 57, and 58, with full details of the Claimant's service during a part of that time ; but she knew him as Arthur Orton, and he figured as Arthur Orton all through the books, and the name of Castro did not occur in any of these books. The books were dry account-books written in Australia, with a short-sighted view to the things of the place and the time, and not in prophetic anticipation of a London trial, that lay hid in the womb of time. Not to multiply coincidences unfairly, I am content to throw in here, that on a page of a book produced by this Australian witness, was written as follows : DAEGO, llth March 1858. "If Arthur Orton, &c.," vowing vengeance, in good set terms, on some persons who had wronged him. The witness had no doubt this was written by her servant, the Claimant, whom, by-the-bye, she recognised in court as her Arthur Orton ; and two judges compared the handwrit- ing with the Claimant's, and declared positively they were identical. Now, the judges try so many questions of hand- writing, and examine so many skilled witnesses, that they become great experts in all matters of this kind ; and as they are judges who unlike other European judges can and do disagree, I think their consent on this matter, though not sworn evidence, is very convincing to any candid mind. However, I have no wish to press this part of the coincidence separately, or unduly ; but I do say that, taken altogether, No. 9 is a most weighty coincidence. 10. A pocket-book was produced at the trial with miscel- laneous entries by the Claimant, artfully inserted to identify him with Tichborne. That being the object, it is unfortunate that he wrote down as follows : La Bella, R. C. Tichborne arrived at Hobart Town, July 4, 1854. Because at the trial he said he landed at Melbourne. The person who landed at Hobart Town was Arthur Orton in the Middleton. In this same book he wrote Rodger Charles Tichborne, and Miss Mary Anne Loader, 7 Russell's 86 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES Buildings, High Street, Wapping. Now, here are three things Roger Tichborne was ignorant of: 1. That his name was Rodger. 2. That Maiy Anne Loader existed. 3. That she lived at 7 Russell's Buildings, High Street, Wapping. Now, who on earth was this, that landed, not at Melbourne, but Hobart Town, and knew so little about Roger Tichborne, and so much about Mary Anne Loader ? Who could it be but Mary Anne Loader's quondam sweet- heart, whose letters, written in the Claimant's handwriting, and signed Arthur Orton, she brought into Court, and identi- fied the man himself as her own sweetheart, Arthur Orton ? That identification would be valueless by itself, in this special line of argument, but the entry in the pocket-book by the Claimant's own hand makes it a coincidence. 11. At Wagga-Wagga the Claimant, being called upon to play the part of Tichborne, made a will, and appointed execu- tors, to wit " John Jarvis, Esq., of Bridport, Dorsetshire, and my mother, Lady Hannah Frances Tichborne." Failing either of them, he appointed Sir John Bird, of Hertfordshire. As guardian of his children, he appointed his friend Gibbes ; and failing him, Mr. Henry Angell. Now when all this was looked into by the other side, the Claimant's aristocratic friend, Sir John Bird, was found to be a myth. That aristocrat existed, like the Claimant's own pretensions to aristocracy, in the Claimant's imagination ; but the plebeians were real men : friends of Tichborne ? Of course not. Jarvis and Angell were old friends of Arthur Orton. When this was discovered, the Claimant pretended these plebeian executors were suggested to him by Arthur Orton ; but Arthur Orton was not on the spot, except in the skin of the Claimant; out of that skin neither Gibbes nor any witness saw him at Wagga-Wagga when that will was drawn. At the trial Angell recognised the Claimant as his old acquaintance, Arthur Orton, and that evi- dence confirms a coincidence which was already very striking. 12. The Claimant came home, asked after Ferguson, Arthur Orton's old friend, as he steamed up the river, and at last got to Ford's Hotel with his wife. It was Christmas Day, a cold evening, and he was in the bosom of his family, which people do not leave for strangers on Christmas night. What does he do ? Gets up, leaves his family and the Christmas fire, and goes off all alone in a four- wheel ? 87 READIANA Where to ? To Tichborne ? To some place where the Tichborne family could be heard of? No ; to Wapping. He gets to the Globe,, Wapping, finds Mrs. Johnson, who keeps the house, and her mother who had once kept it. The Claimant walks in, orders a glass, and talks about the Ortons and their neighbours, showing so much more know- ledge than any stranger in the neighbourhood could have pos- sessed, that Mrs. Fairhead looked at him more keenly, saw a likeness to old George Orton, and said, " Why, you must be an Orton." Such is the attraction of Wapping that he goes down there again next day and sees a Mrs. Pardon, who also observes his likeness to the Ortons. He passes himself off not as Tich- borne, who never could be a friend of Orton's, but as a Mr. Stephens, who might, if he existed, except as an alias. He does not attempt the Tichborne lie at Wapping, any more than the Castro lie at Melipilla. The portrait of his own wife and child, which he gave as a portrait of Arthur Orton's wife and child, and the other curious details are pretty well known, and I have no wish to go too far into debatable matter. Take the indisputable part only of this twelfth coincidence and read it with its eleven predecessors. 13. There were remarkable coincidences between the spell- ing and the handwriting of the Claimant and Arthur Orton. This is a part of the subject I cannot properly do justice to. I can only select from the mass of evidence the Chief Justice submitted to the jury. The Claimant writes the word receive receve, so does Arthur Orton ; also anythink and nothink for anything and nothing, a mistake peculiar to the lower orders. They also spell Elizabeth Elisaberth. " Few " they spell fue ; "whether " " weather." The pronoun I they both write i, after the manner of the lower orders. But as this is not merely a coincidence but a vein of coincidences which it would take columns to explain, I prefer to refer the candid reader to the masterly dissection of handwriting that took place at the last trial, and the Chief Justice's most careful analysis of it. 14. At the first trial there were heavy sums at stake, and a wide belief in the Claimant, and a romantic interest in him. The Claimaint's friends would have given hundreds of 88 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES pounds to any seaman, who would come into the box and prove he sailed in the Bella on her last trip. We all know Jack tar ; give him his month's pay, and he is as ready to sail to the port of London as to any other, and readier to sail to London for 300 and his month's pay than to any other port for his month's pay alone. Yet not one of these poor fellows could be got alive to London for the first trial. Why not ? Creation was raked for witnesses, and with remarkable success. Why could not one of these seamen be raked for love or money into the witness-box of the Common Pleas ? Was it because money will not draw men from the bottom of the sea, or was it because the trial was in London, and a large sum of money awaited them there for expenses ? Who does not see that, had the trial been at Melbourne, these fabulous seamen would have been heard of, not at Melbourne, but in London or some other port ten thousand miles off, where they could have been talked about in far away Melbourne, but never shown to a Melbourne jury. Well, the real inability, and pretended unwillingness, of those poor seamen to come to London and get two or three hundred pounds apiece, is matched by the real inability, and fictitious unwillingness, of Arthur Orton to show his face in London except in the skin of the Claimant. The two non- appearances makes one coincidence. The Claimant, who knows better than any other man, de- clared Arthur Orton to be alive in 1 866 ; and in Australia ; and from that time a hundred thousand eyes have been looking for him in the Colony, yet nobody can find him there alive, or get legal evidence of so marked a man's decease. At the first trial seven or eight thousand pounds were wait- ing for him, just to show his person in the witness-box in any man's skin but the Claimant's. Yet he held aloof, and by his absence killed the Claimant's case at Nisi Prius. At the criminal trial there were still a thousand pounds or two waiting for this needy butcher. Yet he never came into the witness-box, and his absence killed the Claimant's defence. Imbeciles are now after all these years invited to believe he kept away on both occasions merely because he had com- mitted some crime in Australia. This is bosh. There is no warrant out against Arthur Orton in Australia. And if suspected of a crime there, he was clearly safer in England than there. 89 READIANA Had he appeared at either trial, his evidence would have been simply this. " I am Arthur Orton, son of George Orton : my brothers are so-and-so, my sisters are so-and-so. You can confront them with me." Outside this straight line hostile counsel could not by the rules of the court cross-examine so narrow and inoffensive a deponent ; or if they did he need not answer them. No judge in England would fail to tell him so. But the truth is that there was never a counsel against him, who would have made matters worse by a wild cross-examination. They would have thrown up their Orton case that moment, and merely persisted that the Claimant was not Tichborne. Only as they had committed themselves to both theories, his evi- dence would have been death to one, and sickness to the other. The Claimant and his counsel knew all this, yet they made no effort to show Arthur Orton to either jury, though there was money enough to tempt him into the witness-box a dozen times over. The only real difficulty was to show him at Nisi Prius except in the skin of the plaintiff, and to show him at the Central Criminal Court except in the skin of the defendant. Years have rolled on, but that difficulty remains insuperable. Even now Arthur Orton's appearance out of the Claimant's skin would shake one limb of the verdict, and also create revulsion of feeling enough to relieve the Claimant of his second term of imprisonment. But neither pay, nor the money that is still waiting for him, nor the public acclama- tions that he knows would hail him, can drag Arthur Orton to light except in the skin of the defendant. And so it will be till sham Castro, sham Stephens, sham Tichborne, and real Orton all die at one and the same moment in the skin of the Claimant. After all these years and all these reasons for appearing, no man whatever he may pretend really believes in his heart that Arthur Orton will ever appear to us except in the skin of the Claimant. 15. I forgot to note in its place a remarkable coincidence. After several interviews with Gibbes and some correspon- dence with Lady Tichborne, but whilst his knowledge of Tichborne affairs was still very confined, it was thought ad- visable by his friends that the Claimant should make a statutory declaration. He made one accordingly in the character of Roger Tichborne, and by this time he had learned the date of Roger's birth, and landed him at Mel- bourne, June 24*th, 1854. But, being still ignorant when 90 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES Roger sailed on his last voyage, viz., 1st March 1853, and in La Pauline, he declared as follows : I left England in the Jessie Miller, 28th November 1852." Now, in point of fact Arthur Orton sailed while Tichborne was at Upton in the Middleton ; but he sailed 28th November 1852, which is a coincidence ; and the Jessie Miller is a ship unknown to Roger Tichborne, but well known to Arthur Orton, for he sailed in her from Valparaiso in 1851. Subsequently, having declared he was picked up at sea by the Osprey, and carried into Melbourne, he was asked for the name of his principal benefactor, the captain, and of the other kind souls who had saved him, fed him, &c., for three months, and earned his eternal gratitude ; all he could recall was Lewis Owen or Owen Lewis. Now Arthur Orton' s ship, the Middleton, contained two persons, one Lewis and one Owen. So here we find him dragging into his " voyages imaginaires " of Tichborne, true particulars of two voyages by Arthur Orton. Your readers, especially those who have paid me the compliment of drawing the circle with radii converging to one centre, can now fill the interstices of those radii, and so possess a map of the fifteen heterogeneous, and independent, coincidences converging from different quarters of the globe, and different cities, towns, and streets, and also from different departments of fact, material, moral, and psychological, towards one central point, that this man is Arthur Orton. Then, if you like, apply the exhaustive method, of which Euclid is fond in his earlier propositions. Fit the fifteen coincidences on to Roger Tichborne if you can. If this is too impossible, try them on Castro the Chilian, or Stephens, the man who dropped down on Wapping from the sky. You will conclude with Euclid, " in the same way it can be proved that no other person except Arthur Orton is the true centre of this circle of coincidences." My subject proper ends here ; but with your permission I will add a short letter correcting the false impression con- veyed to the judges by defendant's counsel, that the famous Irish case of James Annesley was a precedent favourable to the Claimant. I will also ask leave to comment uppn the question whether the extreme term of imprisonment under the Act ought to be inflicted, and also that term repeated ; for false oaths sworn by the same individual in the course of a single litigation. I am, yours faithfully, CHARLES READE. 91 READIANA SUPPLEMENTAL LETTER SIR, The ordinary features of a trial are repeated ad injinitum; but now and then, say once in a hundred remarkable trials, comes an intellectual phenomenon There is at the disposal of the plaintiff's counsel, or the defendant's, a friendly witness, whose evidence to some vital point ought to carry far more weight, if believed, than any other person's evidence : yet that friendly witness is not called. Let a vital point of the case be matter of direct and absolute knowledge to A, but only matter of strong belief or conviction to B, C, and D, A is then, as regards that vital matter, the principal witness, and all B, C, and D can do is to corroborate in a small degree the higher evidence of A. Then, if A is not called, this suppression casts utter discredit upon the inferior witnesses, who are called, and upon the whole case. The reason is obvious to all persons acquainted with litigation. Verdicts are obtained, and, above all, held, by the evidence alone. Witnesses are not allowed to go into the box without consent of counsel. Counsel are consulted behind the scenes as to what witnesses are necessary to the case, and may be safely shown to the jury, and trusted to the ordeal of cross- examination. If then an able counsel withholds his principal witness from the jury, he throws dirt upon his own case ; but he is not the man to throw dirt upon his own case, except to escape a greater evil. Now, what greater evil than throwing dirt upon his case can there be ? Only one his principal witness is always the very witness who may kill his case on the spot, either by breaking down under cross-examination, or in some other way, which a wary counsel foresees. Therefore, when either suitor through his counsel does not call his principal witness, the case is always rotten. History offers no example to the contrary, and only one apparent example, which better information corrected. In fact, whenever with evidence against him, an able counsel dares not call his principal witness, the court might save time and verbiage by giving the verdict against him without any more palaver. Such a verdict would always stand. 92 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES You have a correspondent, who cannot see the superiority of indisputable coincidences, to " Jack swears that Jill says/' and even to direct evidence contradicted by direct evidence. I will give this gentleman one more chance. Does he think that all judges are fools, ex qfficio, and all jurymen idiots by the effect of the sheriff's summons ? If not, let him consult that vast experience of trials he must possess, or he would hardly have the presumption to teach me how to sift legal evidence, and let him ask himself did he ever know a judge and a jury, who went with any suitor, that dared not call his principal witness. I know one case, but the verdict was upset. Does he know a single case ? I doubt it. I will give one example out of thousands to the contrary, which I had from the lips of a very popular writer, beloved by all who knew him, the late Mr. Lever. It was a reminiscence of his youth. At some county assize in Ireland, counsel called the sort of witnesses I have denned above, as B, C, and D, but did not call witness A. The judge was a good lawyer, but not polished, having been born a peasant ; but had none the less influence with country juries for that, perhaps rather more. He objected bluntly to this as a waste of time, and said the jury would expect to see witness A, and the sooner the better. " My Lord," says the counsel, " I must be permitted to conduct my case according to my own judgment." The judge raised no objection; only in return he claimed his right, which was to read a newspaper so long as the case was so conducted. When counsel had had their say, my lord came out of his journal, fixed his eyes on the jury, and summed up. My deceased friend gave me every syllable of his summing up, and here it is : THE SHORTEST SUMMING-UP ON RECORD. The Judge : " He didn't call his principal witness. WEE-Y- WHEET!" This WEE-Y-WHEET, hitherto written for archaeological reasons "Pheugh," was a long, ploughman's whistle, with which my lord pointed his summing up, and such is the power of judicious brevity falling on people possessed of common sense, that the jury delivered their verdict like a shot against the ingenious suitor, who did not call his prin- cipal witness. It was in this same country, nevertheless, that, 93 READIANA on the single occasion I have referred to, a jury gave the verdict to the party who did not call his principal witness. It was the great case of Campbell Craig versus Richard Earl of Anglesey. Craig, in this cause, was a mere instru- ment. James Annesley, claiming the lands and title of Anglesey, leased a farm to Craig. Anglesey expelled Craig. Craig sued Anglesey as lessee of James Annesley, and then disappeared from the proceedings. James Annesley, who had thirteen years before been kidnapped by this defendant, and sent out to the colonies, took these indirect proceedings as the son and heir of Lord and Lady Altham, to whose lands and title had succeeded, first a most respectable nobleman, the Earl of Anglesey, and, on his decease, his brother, the said Richard Annesley, both these succeeding Lord Altham in turn by apparent default of direct issue. James Annesley therefore had only to prove his legitimacy, as clearly as he proved this very defendant had kidnapped him by force and the estates were his. Now both parties agreed that James Annesley was the son of Lord Altham ; but the defendant said James Annesley' s mother was not Lady Altham, but one Joan Landy, a servant in Lord Altham's house, who nursed him from his birth, not in Lord Altham's house, but a cabin hard by, where he was admitted to have lived with her fifteen months. There was no parish register to settle the matter, and Lady Altham, an Englishwoman, driven out of the country many years before by her husband's brutality, had died in England, and never mentioned in England that she had a son in Ireland. The plaintiff called a cloud of second-class witnesses, but he could not be got to call Joan Landy, who had such an absolute knowledge whether the boy was her child, or her nursling, as nobody else could have. Defendant's counsel, Prime-Sergeant Malone, one of the greatest forensic reasoners the British Empire has produced, dwelt strongly upon the plaintiffs conduct in not showing this witness to the jury. Here is his general position " It is a rule that every case ought to be proved by the best testimony the nature of the thing will admit, and this Joan Landy was the very best witness that could have been produced on the side of the plaintiff." He then showed this without any difficulty, and afterwards made rather an extraordinaiy and significant statement. "The counsel on the other side did very early in this case promise we should see her : only, as she was the 94 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES person that was to wind up the case, she was to be the plaintiffs last witness, and this was the reason given for not producing her till the trial was near an end." He adds that having kept her out of court on this pretence, they now shifted their ground and professed not to call her " because she was a weak woman and might forget or be put off the thread of her story." This last theory he exposes with that admirable logic I find in all his recorded speeches, and urges that the plaintiff's counsel were simply afraid to subject their principal witness to the ordeal of cross-examination. The three judges for it was a trial at bar all ignored this strong point for the de- fence, and the jury steered themselves through a mass of contradictory evidence by an unsafe inference the defen- dant had kidnapped the boy, and therefore the defendant, who as Lord Altham's brother, must have known all about the matter, had shown by his actions that he knew him to be legitimate. James Annesley got the verdict. But the soundness of Malone's reasoning was soon demonstrated. A bill of excep- tions was tendered, and admitted, and pending its discussion, James Annesley' s case was upset in a criminal trial. His impetuous friends indicted Mary Heath, a main pillar of the defence for perjury. She was ably defended, and destroyed her accuser. 1 She brought home several perjuries to some of James Annesley's witnesses, and to the whole band of them in one vital matter. They had sworn in concert that the boy was christened on a certain day at Dunmore, his god- mother being Mrs. Pigot, and one of his godfathers Sergeant Cuff. Well, Mary Heath proved that Mrs. Pigot was nursing her husband with a broken leg 100 miles off, and showed by the records of the Court of Chancery that Sergeant Cuff moved the Court that very day in person, and in Dublin, 100 miles from Dunmore. After this James Annesley's case got blown more and more. The judges would not act on that verdict, and the Court of Chancery restrained him from taking fresh proceedings of a similar nature in the county Wexford. Public opinion turned dead against him. He was horse- whipped on the Curragh by the defendant, and showed his plebeian origin, by taking it like a lamb. Growing con- tempt drove him out of Ireland, and he lived in England upon his English connections, and fell into distress. His 1 See The King v. Mary Heath, published in pamphlet form. 95 READIANA last public act was to raise a subscription at Richmond. This appears either in the Annual Register or the Gentleman's Magazine of the day I forget which but distinctly remember reading it in one or other of those repertories. His successful defendant outlived him, and held the title of Anglesey, and the Irish and English estates, till his death. After that he gave some trouble, because he had practised trigamy with such skill, that the English peers could not find out who was the legitimate heir to his earldom. The Irish peers, with the help of the logical Malone, cracked the nut in Ireland, and so saved the Irish titles. In this discussion James Annesley's pretensions were referred to, but only as an extinct matter and a warning to juries not to go by prejudice against evidence. See the minutes of the proceedings before the Irish Lords, published at Dublin by David Hay, 1773, p. 19, and elsewhere. It certainly is curious that both counsel for the Claimant Orton should have been ignorant how the famous case of James Annesley terminated, and should have cited it in sup- port of Orton ; curious that both the judges should have sub- mitted to so singular an error. However, there is a real parallel between the cases, though not what the learned counsel imagined. 1st. James Annesley was either an impostor or the tool of impostors, and Arthur Orton is an impostor. 2nd. James Annesley's counsel dared not call his principal witness, Joan Landy, and Arthur Orton's counsel dared not call his principal witnesses, viz., the sisters of Arthur Orton. Who, in this world, could settle the Orton question with one half the authority of these two ladies ? It was only to call them and let them look at the Claimant, and swear he was not Arthur Orton and stand cross-examina- tion. Why was this not done? Withholding them from the jury threw dirt on all the other witnesses, who could only swear to the best of their belief, or offer reasons, not pure evidence. The comments of Serjeant Malone on the absence of Joan Landy from the witness-box, Craig v. Anglesey, 322, all apply here; so does the ploughman's whistle of that sagacious judge ; who economised the time of the court. It is not that the value of these ladies' evidence is not known. They have been got to sign affidavits that the man is not their brother. Why with this strong disposition to serve him could they not be 96 THE DOCTRINE OF COINCIDENCES trusted to the ordeal of an open court? Serjeant Malone put it down to dread of cross-examination. There is, how- ever, another thing on the cards which naturally escapes a lawyer, for their minds are not prepared for unusual things. Lord and Lady Altham were both very dark. James Annesley was fair. Now, suppose Joan Landy was fair, and otherwise like the plaintiff, whom we now know to have been her child ? Annesley's counsel may have been afraid to show her to the eyes of the jury, and her son sitting in their sight, as the evidence of John Purcell shows he was. Old George Orton is said to have marked all his children, including the Claimant, pretty strongly. Suppose these two sisters are like George Orton, and the Claimant, sworn to be like George Orton, is also like these sisters, this would be a reason for showing the public their handwriting to a state- ment, and not showing a jury their faces. Between this and the dread of cross-examination lies the key to the phenomenon. He didn't call his principal witness. Wee-y-rvheet ! Enough has been said, I hope, to reconcile men of sense to the verdicts of two juries. The sentence is quite another matter. I do not approve it, and will give my reasons in a short letter, my last upon the whole subject. Yours faith- fully, CHARLES READE. 97 OUR DARK PLACES To THE GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS No. I GENTLEMEN, On Friday last, a tale was brought to me that a sane prisoner had escaped from a private madhouse, had just baffled an attempt to recapture him by violent entry into a dwelling-house, and was now hiding in the suburbs. The case was grave : the motives alleged for his incarcera- tion were sinister; but the interpreters were women, and consequently partisans, and some, though not all, the parties concerned on the other side, bear a fair character. Humanity said, " look into the case ! " Prudence said, " look at it on both sides." I insisted, therefore, on a personal interview with Mr. . This was conceded, and we spent two hours together : all which time I was of course testing his mind to the best of my ability. I found him a young gentleman of a healthy complexion, manner vif, but not what one would call excited. I noticed however that he liked to fidget string, and other trifles between his finger and thumb at times. He told me his history for some years past, specifying the dates of several events; he also let me know he had been subject for two years to fits, which he described to me in full. I recognised the character of these fits. His conversation was sober and reasonable. But had I touched the exciting theme ? We all know there is a class of madmen who are sober and sensible till the one false chord is struck. I came therefore to that delusion which was the original ground of 's incarcera- tion ; his notion that certain of his relations are keeping money from him that is his due. This was the substance of his hallucination as he revealed it to me. His father was member of a firm with his uncle and others. Shortly before his death his father made a will 98 OUR DARK PLACES leaving him certain personalties, the interest of ,5000, and, should he live to be twenty-four, the principal of ditto, and the reversion, after his mother's death, of another consider- able sum. Early last year he began to inquire why the principal due to him was not paid. His uncle then told him there were no assets to his father's credit, and never had been. On this, he admits, he wrote "abominably passionate" letters, and demanded to inspect the books. This was refused him, but a balance-sheet was sent him, which was no evidence to his mind, and did not bear the test of Addition, being 40,000 out on the evidence of its own figures. This was his tale, which might be all bosh for aught I could tell. Not being clever enough to distinguish truth from fancy by divination, I took cab, and off to Doctors' Commons, determined to bring some of the above to book. Well, gentlemen, I found the will, and I discovered that my maniac has understated the interest he takes under it. I also find, as he told me I should, his uncle's name down as one of the witnesses to the will. Item, I made a little private discovery of my own, viz., that is residuary legatee, subject to his mother's life interest, and that all his interest under the will goes to five relations of the generation above him should he die intestate. I now came to this conclusion, which I think you will share with me, that 's delusion may or may not be an error, but cannot be a hallucination, since it is simply good logic founded on attested facts. For on which side lies the balance of credibility ? The father makes a solemn statement that he has thousands of pounds to bequeath. The uncle assents in writing while the father is alive, but gives the father and himself the lie when the father is no longer on earth to con- tradict him. They say in law, " Allegans contraria non est audiendus." Being now satisfied that the soi-disant delusion might be error but could not be aberration of judgment, I subjected him to a new class of proofs. I asked him if he would face medical men of real eminence, and not in league with mad- house doctors. " He would with pleasure. It was his desire." We went first to Dr. Dickson, who has great experience, and has effected some remarkable cures of mania. Dr. Dickson, as may well be supposed, did not take as many seconds as I had taken hours. He laughed to scorn the very notion that the man was mad. "He is as sane as we are," said Dr. 99 READIANA Dick son. From Bolton Street we all three go to Dr. Ruttledge, Hanover Square, and, on the road, Dr. Dickson and I agree to apply a test to Dr. Ruttledge, which it would have been on many accounts unwise to apply to a man of ordinary skill. Dr. Dickson introduced and me thus : "One of these is insane, said to be. Which is it?" Dr. Ruttledge took the problem mighty coolly, sat down by me first, with an eye like a diamond: it went slap into my marrow-bone. Asked me catching questions, touched my wrist, saw my tongue, and said quietly, "This one is sane." Then he went and sat down by and drove an eye into him, asked him catching questions, made him tell him in order all he had done since seven o'clock, felt pulse, saw tongue : " This one is sane too." Dr. Dickson then left the room, after telling him what was 's supposed delusion, and begged him to examine him upon it. The examination lasted nearly half-an-hour, during which related the circumstances of his misunderstanding, his capture, and his escape, with some minuteness. The result of all this was a certificate of sanity ; copy of which I subjoin. The original can be seen at my house by any lady or gentleman connected with literature or the press. " We hereby certify that we have this day, both conjointly and separately, examined Mr. and we find him to be in every respect of sound mind, and labouring under no delusion whatever. Moreover we entertain a very strong opinion that the said Mr. has at no period of his life laboured under insanity. " He has occasionally had epileptic fits. "(Signed) JAMES RUTTLEDGE, M.D. S. DICKSON, M.D. "19 GEORGE STREET, HANOVER SQUARE, gtfi August, 1858." This man, whose word I have no reason to doubt, says the keeper of the madhouse told him he should never go out of it. This, if true, implies the absence of all intention to cure him. He was a customer, not a patient ; he was not in a hospital, but in a gaol, condemned to imprisonment for life, a sentence so awful that no English judge has ever yet had the heart to pronounce it upon a felon. is an orphan. The law is too silly, and one-sided, and slow, to protect him 100 OUR DARK PLACES against the prompt and darmg.hieii who afct evesmcw bunting him. But while those friends the God of the fatherless has raised him concert his defence, you can aid justice greatly by letting daylight in. I will explain why this is in my next. I am, Gentlemen, your obedient servant, CHARLES READE. GARRICK CLUB, loth August, 1858. No. II GENTLEMEN, In England "Justice" is the daughter of " Publicity." In this, as in every other nation, deeds of villainy are done every day in kid gloves ; but they can only be done on the sly : here lies our true moral eminence as a nation. Our Judges are an honour to Europe, not because Nature has cut them out of a different stuff from Italian Judges : this is the dream of babies : it is because they sit in courts open to the public, and "sit next day in the newspapers."^ Legislators who have not the brains to appreciate the Public, and put its sense of justice to a statesmanlike use, have yet an instinctive feeling that it is the great safeguard of the citizen. Bring your understandings to bear on the following sets of propositions in lunacy law : First grand division Maxims laid down by Shelford. "A. The law requires satisfactory evidence of insanity. B. Insanity in the eye of the law is nothing less than the prolonged departure, without an adequate external cause, from the state of feeling, and modes of thinking, usual to the individual when in health, c. The burthen of proof of insanity lies on those asserting its existence. D. Control over persons represented as insane is not to be assumed without necessity. E. Of all evidence, that of medical men ought to be given with the greatest care, and received with the utmost caution. F. The medical man's evidence should not merely pronounce the party insane, but give sufficient reasons for thinking so. For this purpose it behoves him to have investi- gated accurately the collateral circumstances. G. The impu- tations of friends or relations, &c., are not entitled to any weight or consideration in inquiries of this nature, but ought to be dismissed from the minds of the judge and jury, who are bound to form their conclusions from impartial evidence of 1 We are indebted to Lord Mansfield for this phrase. 101 facts,, and riot -to be l%d astray by any such fertile sources of error and injustice." The second class of propositions is well known to your readers. A relative has only to buy two doctors, two surgeons, or even two of those "whose poverty though not their will consents/' and he can clap in a madhouse any rich old fellow that is spending his money absurdly on himself, instead of keeping it like a wise man for his heirs ; or he can lock up any eccentric, bodily-afflicted, troublesome, account- sifting young fellow. In other words, the two classes of people, who figure as suspected witnesses in one set of clauses, are made judge, jury, and executioner, in another set of clauses, one of which, by a refinement of injustice, shifts the burthen of proof from the accusers to the accused in all open proceedings subsequent to his wrongful imprisonment. Shelford, 56. Now what is the clue to this apparent contradiction to this change in the weathercock of legislatorial morality ? It is mighty simple. The maxims, No. 1, are the practice and principle that govern what are called " Commissions of Lunacy." At these the newspaper reporters are present. No. 2 are the practice and principle legalised, where no newspaper reporters are present. Light and darkness. Since then the Law de Lunatico has herself told us that she is an idiot and a rascal when she works in the dark, but that she is wise, cautious, humane, and honest in the light, my orphan and myself should indeed be mad to disregard her friendly hint as to her double character. This, gentlemen, is why we come to you first : you must give us publicity, or refuse us justice. We will go to the Commissioners in Lunacy, but not before their turn. We dare not abjure experience. We know the Commissioners ; we know them intus et in cute; we know them better than they know themselves. They are of two kinds, one kind I shall dissect elsewhere ; the rest are small men afflicted with a common malady, a commonplace conscience. These soldiers of Xerxes won't do their duty if they can help it ; if they can't, they will. With them justice depends on Publicity, and Publicity on you. Up with the lash ! ! I am now instructed by him who has been called mad, but whose intelligence may prove a match for theirs, to propose to his enemies to join him in proving to the public that their con- victions are as sincere as his. The wording of the challenge being left to me, I invite them to an issue, thus : 102 OUR DARK PLACES " My lads, you were game to enter a dwelling-house kept by women, and proposed to break open a woman's chamber- door, till a woman standing on the other side with a cudgel, threatened ' to split your skulls,' and that chilled your mar- tial ardour. " Vos etenim juvenes animum geritis muliebrem Ila virago viri. " And now you are wasting your money (and you will want it all) dressing up policemen, setting spies, and, in short, doing the Venetian business in England ; and all for what ? You want our orphan's body. Well, it is to be had without all this dirty manoeuvring, and silly small treachery. Go to Jonathan Weymouth, Esq., of Clifford s Inn. He is our orphan's solicitor, duly appointed and instructed ; he will accept ser- vice of a writ de lunatico inquirendo, and on the writ being served, Mr. Weymouth will enter into an undertaking with you to produce the body of E. P. F. in court, to abide the issue of a daylight investigation. If you prove him mad, you will take him away with you ; if you fail to make him out mad before a disinterested judge, at all events you will prove yourselves to be honest, though somewhat hard-hearted men and women." Should this proposal be accepted, the proceedings of our opponents will then assume a respectability that is wanting at present, and in that case these letters will cease. Sub judice Us erit. I am, Gentlemen, your obedient servant, CHARLES READE. No. Ill GARRICK CLUB, October. GENTLEMEN, My last letter concluded by inviting the person, who had incarcerated my orphan on the plea of insanity, to prove that, whether mistaken or not, he was sincere. No such evidence has been offered. He has therefore served a writ upon this person, and will proceed to trial with all possible expedition, subject of course to the chances of demurrer, or nonsuit. 1 1 Individually I entertain no apprehension on this score. The con- stitutional rights of Englishmen are safe in the hands of the present judges ; and trial by jury, in a case of this character, is one of those rights provided, of course, the proper Defendant has been sued. 103 READIANA It would not be proper to say more, pendente lite. But, some shallow comments having been printed elsewhere, it seems fair that those Editors, who had the humanity, the courtesy, and, let me add, the intelligence, to print my letters, should possess this proof that their columns have not been trifled with by their obliged and obedient servant, CHARLES READE. No. IV " Cunctando restituit rem." GENTLEMEN, When, four months ago, I placed my orphan under the wing of the law, I hoped I had secured him that which is every Englishman's right, a trial by judge and jury ; and need draw no further upon your justice and your pity. I have clung to this hope in spite of much sickness of heart, month after month; but at last both hope and faith are crushed in me, and I am forced to see, that without a fresh infusion of publicity, my orphan has no reasonable hope of getting a public trial, till he shall stand with his opponents before the God of the fatherless. I do not say this merely because his trial has been postponed, and postponed, but because it has been thrice postponed on grounds that can be reproduced three hundred times just as easily as thrice, unless the light of publicity is let in. Let me premise that the matters I have to relate are public acts, and as proper for publication and criticism as any other judicial proceedings, and that they will make the tour of Europe and the United States in due course. When the day of trial drew near in November last, defendant's attorney applied to have trial postponed for a month or two, for the following sole reason : He swore, first, that a Mr. 3 Stars, dwelling at Bordeaux, was a witness without whom defendant could not safely proceed to trial ; and he swore, second, that said 3 Stars had written to him on the 18th November, that, owing to an accident on the railway, he was then confined to his room, and had little hope of being able to leave Bordeaux under a month. No. 1, you will observe, is legal evidence ; but No. 2 is no approach towards legal evidence. Nothing is here sworn to but the fact that there exists an unsworn statement by a Mr. 3 Stars. On this demi-semi-affidavit, unsupported by a particle of legal evidence, a well-meaning 104 OUR DARK PLACES judge, in spite of a stiff remonstrance, postponed the trial, nominally for one month, really for two months. I fear my soul is not so candid as the worthy judge's, for on the face of this document, where he saw veracity, I saw disingenuous- ness, stand out in alto relievo. So I set the French police upon Mr. 3 Stars, and received from the Prefect of La Gironde an official document, a copy of which is enclosed herewith. By it we learn, first, that the accident or incident was not what plain men understand by an accident on a railway. The man hurt a leg getting down from a railway carriage just as he might from his own gig. Second, that it was not quite so recent as his suppression of date might lead a plain man to presume, but was three weeks old when he wrote as above ; third, that he must have been well long before the 9th of December, for, writing on that day, the Prefect describes him as having made frequent excursions into Medoc since his incident. Unfair inaccuracy once proved in so important a statement, all belief is shaken. In all human probability, Mr. 3 Stars was convalescent on the 18th November, viz., three weeks after his railway incident. But it is certain he was well on or about the 1 st December, and that, consequently, he could with ease have attended that trial, which his statement that he could not move till about 18th December caused to be put off for two months. What man who knows the world can help suspecting that the arbitrary period of a month was arranged between him and the attorney, not so much with reference to the truth as to the sittings of the Court at Westminster upon special jury cases ? So much for abjuring the experience of centuries, and postponing an alleged lunatic's trial for two months, upon indirect testimony that would be kicked out of a County Court in a suit for a wheelbarrow : hearsay stuccoed, nursery evidence ; not legal evidence. Well, gentlemen, the weary months crawled on, and the lame, old, broken-winded, loitering beldame, British justice, hobbled up to the scratch again at last. Mr. 3 Stars was now in England. That sounded well. But he soon showed us that " Ccelum non aninaam mutant qui trans mare currunt." His health still fluctuated to order. Pretty well as to the wine trade ; very sick as to the Court of Queen's Bench. He comes from Bordeaux to London (and that is a good step), burning, we are told, to attend the trial at Westminster. The 105 READIANA trial draws near: he whips off to Hampstead? No; to Wales. Arrived there, he writes, in due course, to his late colleague in affidavit, that he can't travel. This time the gentleman that does the interlocutory swearing for the defen- dant (let us call him Fabius), doubting whether the 3 Stars malady would do again by itself, associated with his " malade affidavitaire" two ladies, whom, until they compel me to write a fifth letter, I will call Mrs. Plausible and Mrs. Brand. Non-legal evidence as before. Fabius swears, not that 3 Stars is ill ; that might have been dangerous ; but that 3 Stars says he is ill : which is true. Item, that Mrs. Brand cannot cross the ditch that parts France from England, because she has had an operation performed. It turns out to have been twelve months ago. Item, Fabius swears that Mrs. Plausible says, the little Plausibles have all got scarlatina ; and, therefore, Fabius swears that Mrs. Plausible thinks the constitutional rights of the English people ought to remain in doubt and suspense, in the person of our orphan, till such time as the said scarlatina has left her nursery (and the measles not arrived ?), "A tout bambin tout honneur." All which conjectural oaths, and sworn conjectures, and nursery dialectics, they took to Mr. Justice Erie, of all gentle- men in the world ; and moved to postpone the trial indefi- nitely. Early in the argument their counsel having, I think, gone through the schools at Oxford, took a distaste to the Irish syllogism that gleamed on his brief ; videlicet, no witness who has scarlatina can come to Westminster and stand cross- examination by Q.C. Little b, c, and d are not witnesses but have got scarlatina. Ergo, capital A can't come to Westminster and stand cross- examination by Q.C. Counsel threw over Mrs. Plausible and Hibernian logic generally, and stood on the 3 Stars malady, second edition, and the surgical operation that was only twelve months old. But Mr. Justice Erie declined to postpone human justice till sickness and shamming should be no more. He refused to ignore the plaintiff, held the balance, and gave them a just and reasonable delay, to enable them to examine their " malades affidavitaires " upon commission. He was about to fix Satur- day, Jan. 5, for the trial. They then pleaded hard for Monday. This was referred to plaintiffs attorney, who con- ceded that point. Having accepted this favour, which was clearly a conditional one, and only part of the whole arrange- ment, they were, I THINK, bound by professional good faith 106 OUR DARK PLACES not to disturb the compact. They held otherwise : they in- stantly set to work to evade Mr. Justice Erie's order, by tinkering the Irish syllogism. In just the time that it would take to send Mrs. Plausible a letter, and say it is no use the little Plausibles having scarlatina ; you must have it yourself, madam ; you had better have it by telegraph Mrs. Plausible announces the desired malady, but not upon oath. " Scarla- tina is easily said." // va sans dire que they don't venture before Mr. Justice Erie again with their tinkered affidavit. They slip down to Westminster, and surprise a fresh judge, who has had no opportunity of watching the rise and pro- gress of disease. Their counsel reads the soldered affidavit. Plaintiff's counter affidavits are then intrusted to him to read. What does he do ? He reads the preamble, but burks the affidavits. The effect was inevitable. Even bastard affidavits cannot be met by rhetoric. They can only be encountered by affidavits. Judges decide, not on phrases, but on the facts before them. Plaintiff's facts being silenced, and defendant's stated, the judge naturally went with defendant, and post- poned the trial. (No. 3.) Now, gentlemen, I am the last man in the world to cry over spilled milk. I don't come to you to tinker the untinkerable past, but, for the future, to ask a limit to injustice in its worst form, trial refused. Without your help, this alleged lunatic is no nearer the term of his sufferings ; no nearer the possibility of removing that frightful stigma, which is not stigma only, but starvation ; no nearer to trial of his sanity by judge and jury, than he was four months ago. True, there are now three judges who will not easily be induced to impede the course of justice in this case ; but there are other uninformed j udges who may be surprised into doing it general. Fabius can at any day of any month swear that some male or female witness says she wants to come into the witness-box, and can't. And so long as " Jack swears that Jill says " is confounded with legal evidence, on interlocutory motions, justice can be defeated to the end of time, under colour of postponement. Gentlemen, it is a known fact among lawyers that, in nine cases out of ten, post- ponement of trial has no other real object but evasion of trial by tiring out the plaintiff, or breaking his heart, or ruining him in expenses. I see little reason whatever to doubt that this is a principal object here. Defendants have a long purse. Plaintiff is almost a pauper in fact, whatever he may be in law. Mr. 3 107 READIANA Stars, sworn to as an essential witness, has not seen the boy for years. How can he, therefore, be a very essential witness to his insanity at or about the period of his capture ? Dr. Pillbox and Mr. Sawbones must be better cards so far : in a suit at law the evidence of insanity, like that of sanity, cannot be spread out thin over disjointed years, like the little bit of butter on a schoolboy's bread. Mr. 3 Stars may be an evidence as to figures : but then the books are to be in court subpoena ; and nobody listens much to any of us swearing arithmetic, when a ledger is speaking. The lady I have called Mrs. Plausible, would not, in my humble opinion, go into a witness-box if she were paid a hundred pounds a minute. I mean this anything but discourteously. I implore all just and honest men, especially those who are in the service of the State, to try and realise the frightful situation in which postponement of trial keeps an alleged lunatic. The bloodhounds are hunting him all this time. There were several men looking after him the very last day he lost his hopes of immediate trial. Suppose that, on unsubstantial grounds, and illegal evidence, time should be afforded to find him out and settle the questions of fact and law, by brute force, what complexion would these thoughtless delays of justice assume then in the eye of the nation ; ay, and to do them justice, in the consciences of those whose credulity would have made the bloodhounds of a lunatic asylum masters of an argument that has been now for many months referred to the Lord Chief Justice of England and a special jury. Mind, the constitution has been tampered with ; " habeas corpus " has been suspended by the boobies that framed the Lunacy Acts. The judges have power to impede justice, but none to impede injustice. In these peculiar cases, I am advised, they can't order a sane man out of a lunatic asylum into the witness- box. Justice hobbles, but injustice flies to its mark. I declare to you that I live in mortal terror lest some evil should befall this man, under the very wing of the court not of course from the defendant but from some member or members of the gang of stupid ruffians I am assured are still hanging about the skirts of the defence ; men some of whom have both bloodshed and reasonshed on their hands already. My very housemaids have been tampered with to discover where " the pursuer," as the Scotch call him, is hiding and quaking. Is such an anomaly to be borne ? Is a man to be at the same time run from with affidavits and chased with human blood- hounds ? Is this a state of things to be prolonged, without 108 OUR DARK PLACES making our system the scorn and laughing-stock of all the citizens and lawyers of Europe ? Fletcher v. Fletcher only wants realising. But some people are so stupid, they can realise nothing that they have not got in their hands, their mouths, or their bellies. This is no common case ; no common situation. This particular Englishman sues not merely for damages, but to recover lost rights dearer far than money, of which rights he says he is unjustly robbed ; his right to walk in daylight on the soil of his native land, without being seized and chained up for life like a nigger or a dog ; his footing in society, his means of earning bread, and his place among mankind. For a lunatic is a beast in the law's eye and society's ; and an alleged lunatic is a lunatic until a jury pronounces him sane. I appeal to you, gentlemen, is not such a suitor sacred in all good men's minds ? Is he not defendant as well as plaintiff? Why, his stake is enormous compared with the nominal de- fendant's ; and, if I know right from wrong, to postpone his trial a fourth time, without a severe necessity, would be to insult Divine justice, and trifle with human misery, and shock the common sense of nations. I am, your obedient servant, CHARLES READE. With this a copy is enclosed of the French Prefect's letter, and other credentials. These documents are abandoned to your discretion. Nothing in the above letter is to be construed as assuming that the defendant has a bad case. He may have a much better one than the plaintiff. I am not asking for the latter a verdict to which he may have no right ; but a trial, to which he has every right. BOBDEAUX, le 9 D&embre, 1858. MONSIEUR, En reponse a la lettre que vous m'avez adressee, a la date du 26 Novembre dernier, j'ai 1'honneur de vous transmettre les renseignements qui m'ont ete fournis sur le S r Cunliffe, sujet anglais. Le S r Cunliffe demeure a Bordeaux, rue Corie, 43. II est negociant en vins et parait jouir de 1'estime des personnes qui le connaissent. II est vrai qu'un accident lui est arrive, il y a un mois et demi, sur le chemin de fer ; il est tombe en descendant et s'est blesse a une jambe; par suite il a garde le chambre 109 READIANA pendant quelque temps, mais aujourd'hui il parait tre retabli ; vaque a ses occupations ordinaires et fait souvent des excur- sions dans le Medoc, a quelques lieues de Bordeaux. Recevez, Monsieur, 1'assurance de ma parfaite consideration, Le Prefet de la Gironde, (Signed) A MONSIEUE CHARLES READE, 6 BOLTON Row, MAYPAIE, LONDEES. In spite of letter four : the trial was postponed twice more. At last it came and is reported in The Times of July 8, 1859- The court was filled with low repulsive faces of mad- house attendants and keepers, all ready to swear the man was insane. He was put into the witness-box, examined and cross-examined eight hours, and the defendant succumbed without a struggle. The coming damages were compounded for an annuity of 100 a year, ,50 cash, and the costs. As bearing upon this subject, my letter to the Pall Mall Gazette of Jan. 17, 1870, entitled "How Lunatics' Ribs get Broken," should be read. This letter is now reprinted at the beginning of Hard Cash. 110 THE RIGHTS AND THE WRONGS OF AUTHORS To THE EDITOR OF THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE" FIKST LETTER SIR, Those, who do not bestow sympathy, have no right to ask it. But if a man for years has been quick to feel, and zealous to relieve, his neighbour's wrongs, he has earned a right to expose his own griefs and solicit redress. By the same rule, should a class, that has openly felt and tried to cure the wrongs of others, be deeply wronged itself, that class has a strong claim to be heard. For the public and the State to turn a deaf ear would be ungrateful, and also im- politic ; it would be a breach of the mutual compact that cements society, and tend to discourage the public virtue of that worthy class, and turn its heart's milk to gall. Now, the class "authors" may be said to rain sympathy. That class has produced the great Apostle of Sympathy in this age ; and many of us writers follow in his steps, though we cannot keep up with his stride. In the last fifty years legislation and public opinion have purged the nation of many unjust and cruel things ; but who began the cure ? In most cases it can be traced to the writer's pen, and his singular power and habit of sympathising with men whose hard case is not his own. Accordingly, in France and some other countries this meritorious and kindly class is profoundly re- spected, and its industry protected as thoroughly as any other workman's industry. But in Great Britain and her colonies, and her great offshoot, the class is personally undervalued, and its property too often pillaged as if it was the production of an outlaw or a beaver. The notorious foible of authors is disunion ; but our wrongs are so bitter, that they have at last driven us, in spite of our besetting infirmity, into a public 111 READIANA league for protection, 1 and they drive me to your columns for sanctuary. I ask leave to talk common sense, common justice, common humanity, plain arithmetic, and plain English, to the Anglo-Saxon race, about the property of authors a theme which has hitherto been rendered unintelligible to that race by bad English, technical phrases, romantic petti- fogging, cant, equivoques, false summing, direct lies, round- about sentences, polysyllables, and bosh. Do not fear that I will abuse the public patience with sentimental grievances. I have lived long enough to see that each condition of life has its drawbacks, and no class must howl whenever the shoe pinches, or the world would be a kennel, sadly sonorous in the minor key. I will just observe, but in a cheerful spirit, that in France the sacred word " Academy" means what it meant of old a lofty assemblage of writers and thinkers, with whom princes are proud to mingle ; and that in England the sacred word is taken from writers and thinkers, and bestowed with jocular blasphemy upon a company of painters and engravers, most of them bad ones ; that the great Apostle of Sympathy, when dead, is buried by acclamation in Westminster Abbey, but is not thought worthy of a peerage while living, yet a banker is, who can show no title to glory but a lot of money ; that what puny honours a semi-barbarous but exceeding merry State bestows on the fine arts are given in direct ratio to their brainlessness music, number one ; painting, number two ; fiction, the king of the fine arts, number nothing ; that authors pay the Queen's taxes and the parochial rates, and yet are compelled to pay a special and unjust tax to public libraries, while painters, on the contrary, are allowed to tax the public full fifteen thousand pounds a year for leave to come into a public shop, built with public money, and there buy the painters' pictures. All these are Anglo-Saxon humours, that rouse the contempt of the Latin races, but they cannot starve a single author and his family ; so we leave them to advancing civilisation, political changes, and the ridicule of Europe. But insecurity of property is a curse no class can endure, nor is bound to endure. It is a relic of barbarism. Every nation has groaned under it at some period ; but, while it lasted, it always destroyed happiness and goodness. It made fighting and bloodshed a habit, and criminal retaliation a form 1 The Association to Protect the Eights of Authors, 28 King Street, Covent Garden. 112 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS of justice. Insecurity of property saps public and private morality ; it corrupts alike the honest and the dishonest. It eggs on the thief, and justifies the pillaged proprietor in stealing all round, since in him theft is but retribution. Under this horrible curse there still groans a solitary class of honest, productive workmen, the Anglo-Saxon author, by which word I mean the writer, who receives no wages, and therefore his production becomes his property, and his sole means of subsistence. To make his condition clear to plain men, I will place him in a row with other productive work- men and show the difference : 1. His own brother, the Anglo-Saxon writer for wages, is never robbed of a shilling. He has the good luck not to be protected by feeble statutes, but by the law of the land at home and abroad. 2. His first cousin, the Latino-Celtic author, has his pro- perty made secure by the common law of his nation, and efficient statutes, criminal as well as civil. 3. The painter, the cabinet-maker, the fisherman, the basket- maker, and every other Anglo-Saxon workman, who uses his own or open materials, and, receiving no wages, acquires the production, has that production secured to him for ever by the common law with criminal as well as civil remedies. Only the Anglo-Saxon author has no remedy against piracy under the criminal law, and feeble remedies by statute, which, as I shall show, are sometimes turned from feeble to null by the misinterpretations of judges, hostile (through error) to the spirit and intention of the statute. The result of this mess is that the British author's property is pillaged at home ten times oftener than any other productive workman's property ; that in Australia he is constantly robbed, though his rights are not as yet publicly disputed ; that in Canada he is picked out as the one British subject to be half- outlawed ; and that he is fully and formally outlawed in the United States, though the British writer for wages is not outlawed there, nor the British mechanical inventor, nor the British printers these artisans are paid for printing in the United States a British author's production nor the British actor ; he delivers in New York for five times as many dollars as his performance is worth those lines which the British author has created with five times his labour and his skill, yet that author's remuneration is outlawry. Unjust and cruel as this is, the other Anglo-Saxon authors are still worse used, especially the American author. He 113 H READIANA suffers the same wrongs we do, and a worse to boot. Our home market is not seriously injured by American piracy, but his home market is. The remuneration of the established American author is artificially lowered by the crushing com- petition of stolen goods ; and as for the young American author, however promising his genius, he is generally nipped in the bud. I can give the very process. He brings the publisher his manuscript, which represents months of labour and of debt, because all the time a man is writing without wages the butcher's bill and baker's are growing fast and high. His manuscript is the work of an able novice ; there are some genuine observations of American life and manners, and some sparks of true mental fire ; but there are defects of workmanship : the man needs advice and practice. Well, under just laws his countryman, the publisher, would nurse him ; but, as things are, he declines to buy, at ever so cheap a rate, the work of promise, because he can obtain gratis works written with a certain mechanical dexterity by hum- drum but practised English writers. Thus stale British mediocrity, with the help of American piracy, drives rising American genius out of the book market. Now, as the United States are not defiled with any other trade, art, or business, in which an American can be crushed under the competition of stolen goods, the rising author, being an American, and therefore not an idiot, flings American author- ship to the winds, and goes into some other trade, where he is safe from foul play. At this moment many an American, who, under just laws, would have been a great author, is a second-rate lawyer, a second-rate farmer, or a third-rate parson: others overflow the journals, because there they write, not for property, but wages, and so escape from bad statute law to the common law of England and the United States. But this impairs the just balance of ephemeral and lasting literature. It creates an excess of journalists. This appears by four tests the small remuneration of average journalists ; the prodigious number of native journals com- pared with native books ; the too many personalities in those too many journals ; and the bankruptcy of 800 journals per annum. Now I am ashamed to say all this injudicious knavery had its root in England. It was here the words were first spoken and written which, being thoughtlessly repeated by statesmen, judges, writers of law-books, and now and then by publicists, have gradually deluded the mind and blunted the conscience of the Anglo-Saxon. That great race is in- 114 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS ferior to none in common sense, respect for property, small as well as great, and impartial justice. To be false to all these, its characteristic and most honourable traits, it must be under some strong delusions. I will enumerate these, and show that they have neither truth, reason, common law, nor anti- quity to support them ; and I hope, with God's help and the assistance of those able men I may convince, to root them out of the Anglo-Saxon mind, and so give the Anglo-Saxon conscience fair play. CHARLES READE. SECOND LETTER SIR, The four main delusions that set the public heart against authors' rights are : 1. THE ^ETHERIAL MANIA. That an author is a disembodied spirit, and so are his wife and children. That to refuse an unsalaried fisherman an exclusive title to the fish he has laboured for in the public sea would starve the fisherman and his family; but the same course would not starve the unsalaried author, his wife, and his children. Those little imps may seem to cry for bread ; but they are squeaking for ideas. The aetherial mania intermits, like every other. Its lucid intervals coincide with the visits of the rent-gatherer, the tax-gatherer, and the tradesmen with their bills. On these occasions society admits that an author is a solid, and ought to pay or smart ; but returns to aether when the funds are to be acquired, without which rent, taxes, and tradesmen cannot be paid, nor life, far less respectability, sustained. No Anglo-Saxon can look the aetherial crotchet in the face and not laugh at it. Yet so subtle and insidious is Prejudice, that you shall find your Anglo-Saxon constantly arguing and acting as if this nonsense was sense : and, pray believe me, the most dangerous of all our lies are those silly, skulking falsehoods which a man is ashamed to state, yet lets them secretly influence his mind and conduct. Lord Camden, the great enemy of authors in the last century, was an example. Compel him to look the aetherial mania in the face, and his good sense would have revolted. Yet, dissect his arguments and his eloquence, you will find they are both secretly founded on the aetherial mania, and stand or fall with it. 2. AN HISTORICAL FALSEHOOD. That intellectual property is not founded on the moral sense of mankind, nor on the 115 READIANA common law of England, but is the creature of modern statutes, and an arbitrary invasion of British liberty. This falsehood is as dangerous as it looks innocent. It crosses the Atlantic, and blunts the American conscience : and it even vitiates the judicial mind at home. It works thus down at Westminster. The judges there hate and despise Acts of Parliament. They make no secret of it ; they sneer at them openly on the judgment-seat, filling foreigners with amazement. Therefore, when once they get into their heads that a property exists only by statute, that turns their hearts against the pro- perty, and they feel bound to guard common law liberties against the arbitrary restrictions of that statute. Interpreted in this spirit, a statute, and the broad intention of those who framed it, can be baffled in many cases that the Legislature could not foresee, of which I shall give glaring examples. 3. That the laws protecting intellectual property enable authors to make more money than they deserve, and that piratical publishers sell books, not for love of lucre, but of the public, and for half the price of copyrighted books. I will annihilate this falsehood, not by reasoning, but by pal- pable facts and figures. 4. The worst delusion of all is, that what authors, and the Legislature, call intellectual property is neither a common law property nor a property created by statute, but a monopoly created by a statute. This confusion of ideas, unknown to our ancestors, and at variance with the distinctive terms they used, was first advanced by Mr. Justice Yates in the year 1769- He re- peated it eight times in Millar v. Taylor ; and, indeed, without it his whole argument falls to the ground. The fallacy has never been exposed with any real mental power, and has stultified senatorial and legal minds by the thousand. It was adopted and made popular by Macaulay in the House of Commons, February 14, 1841. He was on a subject that required logic ; he substituted rhetoric, and said striking things. He said, " Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly." In another part of his rhetoric he defined copy- right " a tax on readers to give a bounty to authors ; " and this he evidently thought monstrous, the remuneration to producers in general not being an item that falls on the public purchaser ; but where he learned that, only God, who made him, knows. In another part he stigmatised copyright as " a monopoly in books." He did not carry out these conclusions 116 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS honestly. Holding them, it was his duty to advocate the extinction of intellectual property; but, if his conclusions were weak, his premises were deadly. He took a poisoned arrow out of the custody of a few pettifoggers, and put it into the hands of ten thousand knaves and fools ; where the respected word " property " had stood for ages, he and the pettifogger Yates, whom he echoed, set up the hated word st monopoly." " Rank weeds do grow apace ; " this fallacy spread swiftly from the Senate to the bar, from the bar to the bench. I have with my own ears heard the Barons of the Exchequer call copyright a monopoly ; nor is the expression confined to that court ; it is adopted by writers of law-books, and so infects the minds of the growing lawyers. But only consider the effect Here is a property the great public never reads about nor understands, and is therefore at the mercy of its public teachers. It hears the mouthpieces of law, and the mouthpieces of opinion, declare from their tribunals that the strange, unintelligible property called by the inhuman and unintelligible name of tf copyright " is a monopoly. The public has at last got a word with a meaning. It knows what monopoly is, knows it too well. This nation has groaned under monopolies, and still smarts under their memory. It abhors the very sound, and thinks that whoever baffles a monopoly sides with divine justice and serves the nation. Therefore to call an author's property a monopoly is to make the conscience of the pirate easy, and even just men apathetic when an author is swindled ; it is to prejudice both judges and juries, and prepare the way to false verdicts and disloyal judgments. I pledge myself to prove it is one of the stupidest falsehoods that muddleheads ever uttered, and able but un- guarded men ever repeated. I undertake to prove this to the satisfaction of the Anglo-Saxon race, and of all the honest lawyers who have been decoyed into the error, and have delivered it as truth from the judgment-seat this many a year. At present I will only say that if any statesman or practical lawyer, or compiler of law-books, who either by word of mouth or in print has told the public "copyright" is a " monopoly," dares risk his money on his brains, I will meet him on liberal terms. I will bet him a hundred and fifty pounds to fifty copyright is not a monopoly, and is property. All I claim is capable referees. Let us say Lord Selborne, Mr. Robert Lowe, and Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, if those gentle- men will consent to act. I offer the odds, so I think I have a right to demand discriminating judges. If any gentle- 117 READIANA man takes up this bet I will ask him to do it publicly by letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, and we will then proceed to deposit the stakes, &c.* From all these cruel delusions I draw one comfort : perhaps authors are not hated after all, but only misunderstood ; and, if we can enlighten the mind of statesmen, lawyers, and the public, we may find the general heart as human to us as ours has always been to our fellow-citizens, and they don't deny it. The two great properties of authors are " copyright," or the sole right of printing and reprinting for sale the individual work a man has honestly created, and " stage-right," or the sole right of representing the same for money on a public stage. The men who violate these rights have for ages been called pirates. The terms " copyright" and "stage-right" are our calamities. They keep us out of the Anglo-Saxon heart, by parting us from its language. France calls them both by one name, " les droits d'auteurs ; " and it is partly the long use of this human phrase that has made France so just and humane to authors. Warned by this experience, I pause in alarm before these repulsive words, that stand like a bristling wall between us and manly sympathy ; and I implore the reader of these letters to be very intelligent, to open his mind to evidence that under these unfortunate and technical words lie great human realities ; that both rights mean property, and that to infringe either property has just the same effect on an author as to rob his house ; but to infringe them habitually by defect of law or judicial prejudice is far more fatal ; the burglar only takes an author's superfluities, but the unchecked pirate takes his house itself, and, indeed, his livelihood : " You take my house, when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house ; you take my life, When you do take the means whereby I live." I do earnestly beg the reader, then, in the name of wisdom, justice, humanity, and Christianity, not to be baffled by a miserable husk where there is really a rich kernel ; not to let the technical appearance of two words divert him from a serious effort to comprehend the rights and the wrongs of those men, living, whose insensible remains he worships when dead. In face of eternal justice the dead and the living author are one man ; the dead is an author who was alive yesterday ; the living is an author who will be dead to-morrow. * No person has ever ventured to encounter Mr. Eeade, and risk his money on his opinion that copyright is a monopoly. 118 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS In a word, then, take away or mutilate either of the pro- perties so unfortunately named, and you remove the sole check of piracy ; but, piracy unchecked, the ruin and starva- tions of authors, and the extinction of literature follow as inevitably as sunset follows noon. To give the reader a practical insight into this, I will select literary piracy, or infringement of copyright, and show its actual working. The composition is the true substance of a book ; the paper, ink, and type are only the vehicles. The volumes combine the substance and the vehicles, and are the joint product of many artisans, and a single artist, the author. The artisans, to wit, the paper-makers, compositors, pressmen, and binders are all paid, whether the book succeeds or fails. To go from the constructors to the sellers, you find the same distinction ; the retail bookseller takes the enormous pull of 25 per cent, on every copy, yet the failure of the work entails no loss on him unless he overstocks himself because he is paid out of the gross receipts. But the author and the publisher take their turn last, and can only be paid out of profits. Where there is a loss it must all fall on author or publisher, or both. Now, books not being so necessary to human life as food or clothing, publishing is a somewhat speculative trade. It is calculated that out of, say, ten respectable books, about half do not pay their expenses, and of the other five four yield but a moderate profit both to author and publisher, but that the tenth may be a hit and largely remunerative to publisher and author, supposing those two to share upon fair terms. But here comes in the pirate. That caitiff does not print from manuscripts nor run risks. He holds aloof from literary enterprise till comes the rare book that makes a hit. Then he and his fellows rush upon it, tear the property limb from jacket, and destroy the honest shareholders' solitary chance of balancing their losses. The pirate who reprints from a proprietor's type, and reaps gratis the fruit of the publisher's early advertisements, and does not pay the author a shilling, can always undersell the honest author or the honest publisher, who pays the author, and buys publicity by advertising, and sets up type from manuscript, which process costs more than reprinting. This reduces the honest author's and publisher's business to two divisions : the unpopular books often the most valuable to the public by which they lose money or gain too little to live and pay shop, staff, &c. ; and the popular book, by which they would gain money, but cannot, because the pirates rush in and share, and undersell, 119 READIANA and crush, and kill. I appeal to all the trades and all the arts if any trade or any art ever did live, ever will live, or can live, upon such terms? The trade all commercial enterprise requires capital, and all genuine capital is timorous and flies from insecure property. The art to produce popular books requires, as a rule, such intelligence and capacity for labour, as need not starve for ever, but can go in the course of a generation, and after much individual misery, from literature to some easier profession. Therefore, piracy drives out both capital and brains, and marks out for ruin the best literature, and would extinguish it if not severely checked. This is evident, but it does not rest on speculation. History proves it. Piracy drove Goldoni out of Italy, where he was at the top of the tree, into France, and made him end his days a writer of French pieces for the one godlike nation that treated a pirate like any other thief, and a foreign author like a French author; piracy extinguished an entire literature in Belgium; piracy, A.D. 1875, stifles a gigantic literature in the United States ; piracy for a full century has lowered the British and American drama three hundred per cent. ; A.D. 1694, the protection afforded to copyright by the licensing Acts being removed, literary piracy obtained a firm footing in England for a time. What followed ? In a very few years a handful of hungry pirates reduced both authors and respect- able publishers to ruin, them, and their families. This was sworn and proved before Queen Anne's Parliament, and stands declared and printed in their Copyright Act, A.D. 1709. Those collected examples of honest artists and traders ruined by piracy are hidden for a time in the Record Office ; but there are many sad and public proofs that piracy can break an honest trader's heart, or an honest workman's. I will select two out of hundreds. The ill-fated scholar we call Stephanus was not only ruined but destroyed, mind and body, by a piratical abridgment. He found the Greek lan- guage without a worthy lexicon. He spent twenty years compiling one out of the classical authors. It was and is a gigantic monument of industry and learning. He printed it with his own press and rested from his labours ; he looked at his Colossus with honest pride, and boasted on the title-page, very pardonably, " Me duce plana via est, quse salebrosa f uit." What was his reward ? A man, who had eaten his bread for years as a journeyman printer, sat down, and without any real 120 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS labour, research, or scholarship, produced in one volume an abridgment of the great lexicon. With this the miscreant undersold his victim, and stopped his sale, and ruined him. In his anguish at being destroyed by his own labour stolen, the great scholar and printer went mad, and died soon after. The composer of our National Anthem surely deserved a crust to keep body and soul together. Well, piracy would not let him have one. His immortal melodies sold for thou- sands of pounds, but the pirate stole it all and never gave the composer a farthing. At eighty years of age he hung him- self in despair to escape starvation. The old cling to life goodness knows why ; it is very rare for a man of eighty to commit suicide ; but when an inventor sees brainless thieves rich by pillaging his brains, and is gnawed by hunger as well as the heart's agony and injustice too bitter to bear, what wonder if he curses God and man, and ends the intolerable swindle how he can. The malpractice, which could murder the composer of our National Anthem, has surely some little claim to national disgust, and the legal restraints upon that malpractice to a grain of sympathy. Well, its only restraints upon earth are not justice nor humanity it mocks at these but copyright and stage-right, whose ugly sound pray for- give, and listen to their curious history. CHARLES READE. THIRD LETTER SIR, The Greeks and Romans and Saxons had no printing press, and no theatres taking money at the doors. It is idle to search antiquity, or even mediaeval England, for copyright, or stage-right, or my right to my Cochin China hen and every chick she hatches. " Bonae legis est ampliare jura ; " common law, old as its roots are, has at every period of its existence expanded its branches, because its nature is the reverse of a parliamentary enactment, and is such as permits it to apply old principles to new contingencies ; to bloodhounds, potatoes, straw-paper, the printing press, each as they rise. Copyright and stage-right, and many other recent rights, grew out of two old principles of common law ; and these laid hold of the printing press and the theatre as soon as they could and how they could. The first old principle is this : Productive and unsalaried labour, if it clash with no property, creates a property. All the uncaught fish in the sea belong to the 121 READIANA public. Yet every caught fish comes to hand private property, because productive labour, when it clashes with no precedent title, creates property at common law. The second old principle is this. Law abhors divestiture, or forfeiture of property. From time immemorial the law of England has guarded property against surmises and surprises by denning the terms on which it will permit divestiture. They are two " consensus " and " delictum ; " that is to say, " clear consent" and "long neglect," each to be proved before a jury. By the first principle viz., that productive labour not clashing with property creates property a writer or his pay- master acquires the sole right to print the new work for sale. All lawyers out of Bedlam go thus far with me. By the second the proprietor acquires nothing at all ; he merely retains for ever that sole right to print which he has acquired by productive labour unless, indeed, he divests himself by " clear consent " or " long neglect," to be proved before a jury. Transfer to another individual is "clear consent." To leave a printed book fifty years out of print might possibly be " delictum," or long neglect if a jury should so decide and that would make the right common. But to print and reprint one's own creation is to exercise the exclusive right, and exercise is the opposite of " delictum : " it is the very course the common law has prescribed from time immemorial to keep alive an exclusive right when once acquired. So much for the governing principles. Now for their operation. No French nor Dutch jurist disputes that intellectual pro- perty was the product of his national law, though afterwards regulated by statutes ; and that alone is a reply to the meta- physical sophists who argue a priori that common law could not recognise a property so subtle. However, a little fact is worth a great deal of sophistical conjecture. So let us examine fact, and candidly. In England the early history of the property has to be read subject to a just caution; we must assign no judicial authority to unconstitutional tribunals, but only glean old facts from them, and that discreetly. From the infancy of printing till the year 1640, an Englishman could neither print his own book honestly nor his neighbour's dishonestly without a license from the Crown. Its principal agent in this iron rule was the Star Chamber, a tribunal whose deeds and words are not worth the millionth of a straw judicially. But, as historical evidence, especially on any matter 122 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS irrelevant to its vices, its records are as valuable to a modern as any other ancient official memoranda of current events. The original word for " copyright " was " copy/' and the Star Chamber used this word in very early times. This proves a bare fact, that copyright existed of old in printed books, and that, under the Tudor Sovereigns, it was an antiquity ; since it had even then lived long enough to take the technical name "copy," whereas literary monopolies granted by the Crown were invariably and with just discrimination called " patents ; " and "stage-right," whose existence (in unprinted dramas) by common law, at this time, is not doubted by any English lawyer, had no name at all, direct nor roundabout. The Stationers' Company was first chartered in 1556. In 1558 they enter copyrights under the names of their pro- prietors, and the entries continue in an unbroken series until 1875. In 1582 there are entries with this proviso, that the Crown license to print should be void, if it be found that the copyright belonged to another person. This shows how Eng- lishmen, when not corrupted by pettifoggers, gravitate towards law and the sanctity of property. The Stationers' Company was chartered by the Crown, and invested with some uncon- stitutional powers; yet in a very few years they make the Royal license bow to a precedent title of proprietorship, that could in 1582 have no foundation but in common law. In 1640 the Star Chamber was abolished, and for a while everybody printed what he liked ; thereupon, as free opinions diifer, some wrote against the Parliament. Straight the two Houses of Parliament took a leaf out of the book of Kings, and passed an ordinance forbidding any work to be printed without a formal license ; and then, as pirates, relieved of the licenser, had begun their game, the same ordinance forbade printing without the consent of the owner of the copyright, on pain of forfeiture of the books to the owner of the copy- right. Thus the Commonwealth, in protecting copyright, went a step beyond the monarchical Governments that pre- ceded it : which please make a note of, Brother Jonathan. November 1644, Milton published his famous defence of unlicensed printing, and attacked that portion of the afore- said ordinance, which infringed common-law liberties ; but he sanctioned very solemnly that portion which protected common-law rights. That great enthusiast for just liberty used these words, " the j ust retaining of each man his several ( copy' (copyright), which God forbid should be gainsaid." Anno 1662. Act 13 and 14 Charles II. prohibited printing 123 READIANA any book without consent of the owner, upon pain of certain forfeitures, half to the King, half to the owner. This statute followed the wording of the Republican ordinance. I need hardly say that in any Act of Parliament "owner" means the " legal owner/' not the claimant of an impossible or even doubtful right. Under this statute a leading case was tried, that might be entitled Property v. Monopoly. " Streater " held what our ancestors with a scientific precision their muddle- headed descendants have lost till this day called a " patent." He was law patentee, i.e., he had from the Crown a sole right to print law reports, and that, Messrs. Yates and Macaulay, was " a monopoly in books " if you like. Streater reprinted Judge Croke's reports. Roper sued Streater, proving his own legal ownership by purchase of Croke's copyright from Croke's exe- cutor. Roper's title was at common law, for the statute of Charles II. never pretended to confer ownership ; it only pro- tected the existing legal owner by special remedies. Streater (Monopoly) pleaded the King's grant ; Roper (Property) de- murred. This brought the question of law before the full Court of Common Pleas. It was given for the plaintiff against the King, by judges who were removable at the will of the Sove- reign, and more inclined to stretch a point for him than against him. Opposed to a Royal grant, had Roper's title at law been doubtful, they would have swept him out of court with a besom. Successive licensing Acts protected the common-law owner of copyright until 1694, when the last Act expired; but as another was threatened for five years, a dread hung over piracy. This being removed in 1&99, the pirates went to work with such fury that the proprietors of copyright began to cry out, and in 1703 petitioned Parliament for protection. For six weary years they besieged hard hearts and apathetic ears. One of the petitions survives, and therein the petitioners, though it was their interest to exaggerate their case, and say they had no remedy at law, do, on the contrary, admit there is a remedy at common law. But they say it is inadequate that in an action on the case the jury will give no more damages than can be proved, and how can a thousand piratical copies be traced all over the country ? ' ' Besides, the defendant is always a pauper," &c. &c., cited from the journals of the House. In 1709 the Legislature took pity on authors and honest publishers, and passed an Act, the words of which and their contemporaneous interpretation are necessarily the last great link in the history of copyright, before that creature of the common law became the nursling of statutes. The preamble 124 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS of a statute is not law, but history : it relates antecedent facts, and declares the cause and motives of the enactment to follow. Instead of comments I put italics : "Whereas printers, booksellers, and others have of late frequently taken the liberty of printing, reprinting, and publishing books and other writings, without the consent of the authors, or proprietors, to their very great detriment, and too often to the ruin of them and their families for pre- venting therefore such practices for the future, be it enacted " 8th Anne, cap. 19, sec. 1. In the body of the Act thus prefaced, the old word "copy" for " copyright " is used six times in the sense it had been used for ages, and, so far from inventing even a new protec- tion to old copyright, as dreamers fancy, the Act, in that respect also, is a servile imitation of the various licensing Acts. As the Monarchical licensing Acts, and the Republican ordinances, found owners and proprietors of "copy" so this Act finds proprietors of '"copy" and, as the Republican and Monarchical Acts protected the existing owners or proprietors of " copy " by confiscation of the piratical books, so this Act protects the existing proprietors of " copy," by confiscation of the piratical books ; and, to any man with an eye in his mind, this deliberate imitation of preceding Acts, that had recog- nised "copyright" at common law, and protected it by penalties, is not only a recognition of the property, but a recognition of the recognitions and the penalties. Dreamers always confound dates ; they forget that many of the Parlia- ment men A.D. 1709 had themselves in person passed a licensing Act. Even the one apparent novelty the curtail- ing clause was a bungling attempt to arrive in another way at the temporary feature, which was the characteristic of the licensing Acts. The bill, we know, went into Committee an Act protecting propertyybr ever by penalties. In Committee it encountered old members, and these, with a servile double imitation of the licensing Acts, which were penal, and only passed for a term, fixed an imitation term to the imitation penalties, but so unskilfully that, by the grammatical sense of their words, they shortened the days of the sacred ever- lasting property itself. Subject to a saving clause, which afterwards proved too obscure and feeble to combat the spoliation clause, they fixed a term of a book already printed, twenty-one years ; of a book to be printed, fourteen years ; but fourteen more should the author survive the first term. Such to a reader of this day, when the application of the 125 READIANA lying term " monopoly " has blunted the understanding and the conscience, is the apparent sense of the statute. But you must remember that in 1709 the word "monopoly" had never been applied to " copyright " by any human creature : and so rooted was all common-law property, and the sense of its inviolability, in the English mind, that neither the laymen nor the lawyers of Queen Anne's generation read the statute as curtailing the sacred property. Honest Englishmen, not blinded by cant, know no difference of sanctity in property. From a hovel to a palace it is equally sacred. Curtailment of an Englishman's property is spoliation in futuro, and spolia- tion, without a full equivalent, is a public felony Englishmen were slow to suspect the State of. Queen Anne's Parliament sat at Westminster, not Newgate ; and therefore the curtailing clauses were interpreted to apply to the new penalties, not to a thing so inviolable as the ancient property. Authors con- tinued, after this statute, to assign their copyright for ever, and publishers to purchase them for ever, just as they did before the statute; and, for forty years at least, while the contemporaneous exposition of the statute was still warm, equity judges, who had conversed with members of both Houses that passed the Act, and with lawyers who had framed it, and had means of knowing the mind of Parliament that we can never have, granted relief by injunction to several plaintiffs, who by the lapse of time had no legal claim to any benefit from the statute, but only from the precedent common-law right. In 1769 Millar v. Taylor the judges of the King's Bench, by a majority of three to one, decided that Queen Anne's statute had not curtailed the ancient right, but, like its models, the licensing Acts, had supported it by penalties, which expired in a few years, leaving the bare right protected only by action upon the case, as it was before the statute. This decision stood for five years. But all those five years the lying word "monopoly," launched by the dissentient judge in Millar v. Taylor, was undermining the property. February 9, 1774, on an appeal from the Court of Chancery in Donaldson v. Becket, the House of Peers directed the judges at common law to reply to three questions, which may be thus condensed : 1. Had an author the sole right at common law to print his MS. ? 2. If so, did he lose his exclusive right by printing ? 3. Did the statute of Queen Anne curtail this right, and confine it entirely to the times and other conditions specified ? 126 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS On the first question the judges, including Lord Mansfield, were nine to three, on the second, eight to four against the forfeiture, and on the third, six to six. But Lord Mansfield, whose great learning left little room in his mind for so small a trait as pluck, withheld his voice, without changing his mind, and made the numbers appear to be on the first question eight to three, on the second seven to four, on the third six to five. Pursuing the same delicate course in the House of Peers itself, he sacrificed the biggest thing on earth, and that is justice, to an extremely pretty, but small, thing, etiquette ; whereas Lord Camden, who for known reasons hated authors, and hated Lord Mansfield, laid aside not only etiquette, but judicial gravity, and ranted and canted without disguise, as counsel for the pirates, and so stole a majority (of lay lords, not lawyers), whose judgment, however, went only to this, that the statute had curtailed the everlast- ing common-law right. Thus these lucky knaves, the pirates, got a sham majority of the judges to defy the contemporaneous and continued interpretation of a statute sixty years old a malpractice without precedent in our courts and anomaly upon anomaly to curtail so sacred a thing as an Englishman's property. Unfortunately their good luck did not stop there ; though they were defeated upon the first and second questions, yet the Anglo-Saxon muddlehead now interprets their bastard victory on the first question, into a victory on the second question, where they were overpowered by numbers, and crushed by weight, Mansfield and Blackstone being in the majority, and in the minority three comic judges, Eyre, Per- rot, and Adams, who held in the teeth of all the cases that an author has not, by common law, the sole right to print his own manuscript. Now the metaphysical muddleheads, led by Yates, had the same contempt for these three comic judges, their allies, that Mansfield and Blackstone had for their allies and them. So then the majority who said " No, copyright at common law is not forfeited by its lawful exercise," for law abhors forfeiture were agreed in principle; but the minority were only agreed to say, " Copyright in printed books did not exist at common law." They could not agree why. The only principle the metaphysical judges, and the comic judges, held in common, was " a labefactation of all principle," viz., a resolution to outlaw authors per fas et nefas. But the Anglo-Saxon addlepate, unable to observe, and therefore un- able to discriminate, contemplates, with his mooning, lack- 127 READIANA lustre eye, a consistent majority, led by the only judges Europe recognised as jurists, and a minority, composed of trumpery little obscure judges at war with each other ; and, in the teeth of this treble majority, by numbers, weight, and unanimity, says copyright was declared by the judges a creature of statutes. Not so, my friend and jackass. A great majority of the judges, led by giants, and agreeing in principle, overpowered a small and discordant minority of judicial dwarfs, and declared copyright in printed books a creature of the common law, and a nursling of statutes. Looking at the conduct of its first nurse, in 1 709, the latter term is doubly appropriate ; for, when a nurse is not the mother, she is the very woman to overlie the bantling, and shorten its days. Thus from 1700-1709, authors and their assignees suffered such lawless devastation of their property and undeserved ruin as no other citizens ever endured at that epoch of civilisation; and in 1774 the same favourite victims of in- justice suffered two such wrongs, judicial and legislatorial, as would, had they fallen on any powerful class of citizens, have drenched the land in blood, have set the outlawed proprietors killing pirates like rats, and imperilled the House of Lords, both as a tribunal and a branch of the Legislature. And this is the right way to measure public crimes ; for, though it is safer to trample unjustly on the worthy and the weak than on the strong, it is not a bit more just, and it is not so much more expedient as it looks ; for every dog gets his day. The judicial wrong. The judges are the constitutional interpreters of statutes, and their interpretations are law. Precedent rules our courts like iron. When judges, who sit near the time of an Act, interpret it in open court by judg- ments, and so precedents of interpretation accumulate, the chain of practical interpretations becomes law, and immutable ; especially if the Act so interpreted came after a right at common law and recognised it. Never, since England was a nation, has sixty years' interpretation of a statute been upset, except to injure authors. Sixty years' interpretation of Queen Anne's statute, had the interpretation been injurious to authors, would have stood as immovable as the walls of West- minster Hall. Not one English judge would have listened either to reason, or to principle, or to grammar, or to all three, against a chain of precedents, had those precedents been injurious to authors. Every lawyer knows this is so, and 128 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS that the answer of the judges to an innovating author would have been, " We do not make interpretations of old statutes ; we find them in the cases. Have you a case, Mr. Author ? " The House of Lords was not itself in this matter. Besides the excess of lay peers, there were two elements that vitiated its judgment. 1st. Lord Mansfield withheld his vote. That was monstrous. In the tribunal whence there is no appeal, if the most capable judge withholds his voice, the majority is a delusion. I don't say his silence was without precedent. But the other side flung precedent to the winds. 2nd. Lord Camden, one of the judges, was corrupt. A man may be corrupted with other things than bribes. This lawyer was corrupted by his passions. He hated authors for blackballing him at their club, and he hated Lord Mansfield for being a greater lawyer than himself. Lord Mansfield was silent, yet Camden spoke at him all through; and he spoke on the judg- ment-seat, not as judges speak who are trying to be just, but as counsel play with claptrap on the prejudices of a jury and what were the lay lords but a jury ! He, who had never worked his brain for reputation only, but also for money, money for pleading causes, money for doing justice on the Bench, pension-money for having judged cases and been paid at the time, he had the egotism and the impudence to urge that "Glory is the sole reward of authors, and those who desire it scorn all meaner views. Away, then," says canting Camden, "with the illiberal avarice that, at sixty or seventy years of age, still seeks a return from books written at thirty or forty. No, let the aged author take his tottering limbs and his grey hairs to an almshouse or starvation; I'm. all right: /Ve got a pension." With such justice, such un- selfishness, such humanity as this, well wrapt in rant and omnipotent cant, he bribed Lord Noodle and Lord Doodle judges in virtue of their titles to annul a chain of true judicial precedents, to pillage the property of their intel- lectual superiors, and doom their declining days to poverty and degradation. Why not ? The villainy could not recoil on any one of the perpetrators : the lay judges had all got land from their sires, a property, the title to which is generally impure, but it cannot be curtailed, and the pensioned petti- fogger was kept in affluence by the State he no longer worked for ; that State, which does not pension retired authors, and therefore was all the more bound to secure to their old age the property for creating which they receive neither salaries nor pensions against pilfering pirates, metaphysical muddle- 129 i READIANA heads, romantic pettifoggers, canting pensioners, and all the other egotists, dunces, and knaves, who, possessing the lower intellect, hate the highest intellect, and grudge it a long lease of its own poor, little, insufficient freehold, held by ten thou- sand times the purest title law can find on sea or land Creation. The legislatorial wrong. The nation cried shame at the judicial robbery of authors and their assigns. The House of Commons, which is the representative of the country in Parlia- ment, wasted no time, but proceeded to cure the wrong by fresh legislation. They brought in a bill restoring the common- law right apart from the statutory penalties. It was carried by a large majority. But in the Upper House it encountered Lord Camden. To be sure, matters were changed now : justice and humanity no longer asked him to resign his new, but grammatical, interpretation of an old statute. They bowed to his new interpretation, and merely asked him to legislate accordingly: to rectify the unhappy misunderstanding by a fairer and more humane enactment. No ! the cruel legislator retained the perverse malignity of the passionate judge ; he met all the petitions of the sufferers, and all the assignments for ever of literary property, that had been made in good faith, with a. falsehood that copyright is a monopoly and with the same rant and cant he had defiled the judgment-seat with in Donaldson v. Becket. He wrought upon the passions and the illiterate prejudices of a House, which was not the enlightened assembly it is now ; justice in the person of Lord Mansfield once more sat mumchance, apathetic, cowardly, dumb, despis- ing secretly the romantic injustice, the pseudo-metaphysical idiocy, the rant and cant, and misplaced malevolence, he should have got up and throttled, like a man ; unfortunate authors ! the foibles of your friends, the vices of your enemies, all tended by some gravitation of injustice to weigh down the habitual victims ; and so a small majority of the peers was got to overpower a large majority of the Commons, and the sense and humanity of the nation. Upon this, authors and honest publishers fell into deep dejection, and resigned all hope of justice during their enemy's lifetime. After his death the House of Peers became more human ; they seemed to admit, with tardy regret, that Lord Camden had misled them a little; that an author, after all, was not an old wild beast, but an old man ; and so they gave him back his stolen property for his whole life, and for twenty-eight years at least. 130 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS That remorse did not decline, but grew as civilisation ad- vanced. In 1 842, Parliament, advised by lawyers worthy of the name, passed a nobler bill. They gave the lie direct to Mr. Justice Yates and Lord Camden, by formally declaring copyright to be property (Act 5 and 6 Victoria, cap. 45, sect. 25), and they postponed the statutory dissolution of this sacred and declared property for forty-two years at least, and seven years after the author's death. But for Macaulay's rhetoric, and his popular cry " Mono- poly," Parliament would have refunded us our property for sixty years: and that may come as civilisation and sound views of law advance. For, in this more enlightened century, the progress of intellectual property keeps step with advanc- ing civilisation and sound views of trade. Accordingly in 1838 there was a faint attempt at international justice to authors, and in 1851 other nations began really to compre- hend what France, the leading nation in this morality, had always seen, that the nationality of an author does not affect his moral claim to a property in his composition. But that question includes international stage-right, and must follow its legal history; which, however, will not detain us long from the main topic of these letters. CHARLES READE. FOURTH LETTER SIR, Stage -right is a term invented by me, and first printed in a book called " The Eighth Commandment." The judges of the Common Pleas accepted it from me when I argued in person the question of law, that arose out of the first count in Reade v. Conquest. The term was necessary. Truth and legal science had not a fair chance, so long as the fallacious phrase " Dramatic Copyright " infested the courts and the books : its use, by counsel and judges, had created many misunderstandings, and one judicial error, Cumberland v. Planche. Language has its laws, which even the learned cannot violate with impunity : adjectives can qualify a sub- stantive, but cannot change its substance ; " Dramatic Copy- right " either means the exclusive right of printing a play- book, or it means nothing : but, since the word "Copyright " covers the exclusive right of printing a play book, Dramatic Copyright " does really mean nothing. It is an illogical, per- nicious phrase, and, if any lawyer will just substitute the 131 READIANA word " Stage-right/' he will be amazed at the flood of light the mere use of a scientific word will pour upon the fog that at present envelops history and old decisions, especially Coleman v. Wathen, Murray v. Elliston, and Morris v. Kelly, leading cases. Stage-right, or the sole right of an author to produce and reproduce his unprinted dramas on the stage, is allowed by lawyers to have been a common-law right up to the date of 3 Will. IV. This admission shortens discussion. Henslowe's Theatre was exceptional : in his days and Shakespeare's most theatres were managed thus : established actors were the shareholders, and obtained plays on various terms ; if an author was a member of the sharing company, he was paid by his share of the profits. The non-sharing author received a sum, or the overplus of a certain night, or both. The stage- right of an author vested in the company upon the common- law principle that the paymaster of a production is its proprietor. To this severe equity we owe a literary mis- fortune ; several hundred plays, many of them masterpieces, were kept out of print, and have been lost. The plays of Jonson, Fletcher, Shakespeare, and others, were confined to the theatre until well worn. Messrs. Pope, Warburton, and Jonson had not the key to Shakespeare's business, and wrote wildly that he neglected his reputation, did not think his works worth printing, and, thanks to his flightiness, his lines come down to us more corrupt than the text of Velleius Pater- culus : but the truth is, other plays were kept out of print as long as his were, and his text is by no means the only corrupt one of that day ; and what those fine fellows call his flighti- ness was good sense and probity. He valued reputation, as all writers do. But he valued it at its value. The man wrote poems as well as plays, and did the best thing possible with both : of a poem the road to a little fame and profit was the printing press ; of a play the way to great fame and profit was the theatre ; readers were very few, playgoers numerous beyond belief; observe, then, his good sense he prints his poems in 1594, almost as soon as he can afford to do it : of his plays he prints a few, one at a time, and never till each play has been well worn in the theatre. Observe his probity ; he was a sharing author, and his fellow shareholders had an equitable lien on his plays. To gratify his vanity by wholesale publication of his plays would have been unfair to them. This is connected with my subject thus In his will, particular as it is, he did not bequeath his plays to any one. 132 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS Therefore, primti facie they would go to his residuary legatee. But they did not go to her. Created by a shareholder in the Globe, and handsomely paid for year by year, they remained, by current equity, the property of the theatre. The share- holders kept them to the boards for seven years after his death, and then printed them. His first editors, Hemming and Condell, had been his joint shareholders in the Globe. Now observe how the men of that day commented by antici- pation on the romantic cant of recent pettifoggers, that cen- turies ago if any one printed a MS., he resigned all the rights he held while it was in MS. ! The copyright in Shakespeare's plays it was not violated at all. The stage-right it was not violated for some years after the plays were printed ; but, as printing and publishing plays facilitate dramatic piracy, though they do not make it honest, some companies plucked up courage in 1627, and began to perform Shakespeare's dramas from the printed book. Then the holders of the stage- right went to the licenser of plays, and he stopped the com- pany of the Red Bull Theatre in that act of piracy. See " Collier's Annals of the Stage," vol. ii. p. 8. The Chamber- lain's decision, in this matter, is of no legal value ; but it shows historically that the moral sense and equity, which in the present day govern stage-right and copyright, were not in- vented by recent Parliaments ; and the proof is accumulative, for ten years later namely, in 1637 another Chamberlain is found acting on the same equity, and in terms worth noting. On application from the shareholders of the Cockpit in Drury Lane, the Chamberlain gave solemn notice to other companies not to represent certain plays, twenty-four in number, which " did all and every of them properly, and of right, belong to that company," and he "requires all masters and governors of playhouses, and all others whom it concerns, to take notice and forbear to impeach the said William Bieston (who repre- sented the shareholders of the Cockpit) in the premises." Of these twenty-four plays some were in MS., and some printed. The notice is worded by a lawyer, and the declared object is to protect property. Malone in Prolegomena to Shakespeare, vol. iii. p. 158. Soon after this the theatres were closed ; and that made the readers of plays a hundred, where one had been, and de- ranged for ever the equitable custom that prevailed before the Civil War. As soon as the theatre reopened, dramatists made other and better terms, and those terms were uniform ; they never sold their manuscripts out and out to the theatre ; from 133 READIANA 1662 to 1694 they divided their stage-right from their copy- right ; they took from the theatre the overplus of the third night, generally at double prices, and they always sold the copyright to the booksellers. Testibus Downes, Pepys, Malone, Collier, and many others. The following figures can be relied on : Stage-right. In 1694 Southerne obtained another night, the sixth. In 1705 Farquhar obtained a third night, the ninth, and authors held these three nights about a century. Dryden, under the one- night system, used to receive for stage-right about ,100, and for copyright 20-25. But his plays were not very popular. Southerne, for "The Fatal Marriage," A.D. 1694, stage-right two nights' overplus, 260, copyright 36. Rowe's "Jane Shore," stage-right three nights, copyright 50, 15s. Rowe's "Jane Grey," stage-right three nights, copyright ,75. Southerne's " Spartan Dame," stage-right not known, copyright 120, A.D. 1719- Gibber's "Non- Juror" and Smythe's "Rival Modes," stage-right three nights each, copyright a hundred guineas apiece from Book- seller Lintot. Fenton's "Marianne," stage-right and copy- right, total 1000, A.D. 1723. " George Barnwell," by Lillo, stage-right the overplus of three nights, copyright 105. This copyright Lillo assigned to Bookseller Gray and his heirs for ever, on the 25th of November 1735. The assign- ment is to be seen to this day, printed in full, in the edition of 1 8 1 0. Dr. Young's " Busiris," stage-right three nights, copy- right 84. Lintot. Copyright alone of Addison's " Drummer " (failed at the time on stage), 50. Dr. Young's " Revenge," stage-right large, copyright 50. " Beggar's Opera," stage- right 1600, copyright 400. " Polly," by the same author, representation stopped by the Chamberlain, copyright 1200. This proves little ; it was published by subscription. " The Brothers," by Dr. Young, stage-right and copyright 1000, the proportions not ascertained. " The Follies of a Day," by Holcroft, stage-right 600, copyright 300. "Road to Ruin," stage-right 900, copyright 400. Goldsmith's "Good-natured Man," stage-right 300, copyright 200. " She Stoops to Conquer," stage-right 500, copyright 300. Now the other branch of fiction had but one market, copy- right : yet the copyright of a story in prose or verse was less valuable than the copyright of a play. Milton's " Paradise Lost" was sold in 1657 for 5 per edition, which was rather less than the copyright of a play in 1662, and 80 per cent, less than the stage-right. Defoe did not receive 105 for 134 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS " Robinson Crusoe." Pope's " Rape of the Lock/' first edition, 7. Second edition, ,15. Dr. Johnson's "Irene/' a very bad play, brought him ,315. "Rasselas," an exquisite tale, only 100; and his true narratives, and best work, "The Lives of the Poets," only 200. Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield " only 60, which compare with the copyrights of Goldsmith's plays ; that were nevertheless less remunerative than his stage-rights. Of the two properties in a play, both so largely remunerated, neither could have been an empty sound ; book-copyright, far less valuable, was, we know, secure ; nor is it credible that the stage-right was legally dissolved, if the author went into print ; otherwise, the managers would have objected to the dramatist going into print, and the managers were clearly masters of the situation. Macklin v. Richardson A.D. 1770. Macklin, author of a MS. farce, used to play it, but never printed. Richardson took it down shorthand from the actor's lips, and printed it. Macklin filed an injunction. Defendant tried the reasoning of Mr. Justice Yates : " Plaintiif had flown his bird ; had given his ideas to the public, and no member of the public could be restrained from doing what he liked with them." This piece of thieves' cant failed, and the injunction was made perpetual. This is a pure copyright case ; stage-right never entered the discussion. Coleman v. Wathen, and Murray v. Elliston, were neither copyright, nor stage-right, but bastard cases, where the wrong plaintiff came into court. They arose out of an imperfect vocabulary. " Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools," says Lord Bacon : the sole right of printing being represented by a good hard substantive, any mind could realise that right, but the sole right of representation not being represented by a substantive, the soft heads of little lawyers could not realise its distinct existence and heterogeneous character. One has only to supply the substantive, stage-right, and the fog flies. Coleman v. Wathen. O'Keefe wrote a play ; by this act he created two properties assignable to distinct traders a common-law right, stage-right ; and a statutoiy right, copy- right. He assigned the copyright to Coleman in terms that could not possibly convey the stage-right. Wathen played the play piratically at Richmond. This was an infraction of O'Keefe's stage-right, but not of Coleman' s copyright : yet bad legal advisers sent not O'Keefe, but Coleman, into court as plaintiff. Coleman produced in court an assignment of copyright, and sued under the Act of Parliament for breach 135 READIANA of it : but that statutory right had never been infringed. As for the stage-right, it never came into court at all ; it stayed outside with O'Keefe and the common law. Murray v. Elliston. The same error. Lord Byron, by writing " Sardanapalus," created stage-right at common law, and copyright by statute. He assigned the copyright to Murray. He could have assigned the stage-right to Morris. By not assigning it to anybody he retained it. " Expressum facit cessare taciturn." Elliston played "Sardanapalus." If Murray had been well advised, he would have sent off a courier to Lord Byron, and obtained an assignment of the common-law right of representation. Instead of that, this assignee of the copyright went to Eldon, and asked him to restrain a piracy upon the author's stage-right, which was actually at that moment the author's property and not Murray's. Now it is sworn in the Blue-book of 1832 that Lord Eldon never refused an injunction to a manager who had purchased a stage-right. But of course when not a manager, but a publisher, the assignee of a statutory copyright, came to him to restrain an infringement of common-law stage-right, he declined to interfere, and sent the plaintiff to Westminster. The judges decided against this plaintiff, but did not give their reasons. That is very unusual ; but how could they give their reasons ? The poor dear souls had not got the words to explain with. Existing language was a mere trap. They had got one word for two distinct properties : so they very wisely avoided their vehicle of confusion, language, and acted the just distinction they could not speak for want of a substantive. There is no reason to suppose that they would have denied the title of a theatrical manager armed with an assignment of the stage-right in "Sardanapalus." There was a side question of abridgment in Murray v. Ellis- ton, but that was for a jury. The judges had nothing to do with that : what they denied was Murray's right to bring an action; and they were right: he was no more the plaintiff than my grandmother was. Morris v. Kelly. This is the only stage-right case in the books. Morris, manager of the Haymarket Theatre, was not a dealer in copyrights, but stage-rights. He produced, not an assignment of O'Keefe's copyright, as Coleman had done, but good prima facie evidence that he had purchased O'Keefe's stage-right. The very same judge, who declined to assist the assignee of Byron's copyright in a case of piratical representa- tion, granted an injunction with downright alacrity when the 136 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS assignee of O'Keefe's stage-right stood before him. The play, whose performance was thus restrained, had been in print ever so long. Therefore, the theory that under the common law stage-right exists in a MS., but expires if the play is printed, received no countenance from that learned and wary judge, Lord Eldon. I knew the plaintiff, Morris : he was a most respectable man ; he has sworn before Parlia- ment that Lord Eldon constantly granted injunctions in support of a manager's stage-right. Morris's evidence is inci- dentally confirmed by " Godson on Patents:" he mentions an injunction, Morris v. Harris, which is not reported. The sworn deposition of Morris, and the support given to it by the two recorded cases, Morris v. Kelly, and the unre- ported case mentioned by Godson, would be meagre evidence, if opposed; but there is nothing at all to set against that evidence not a case, not a dictum ; and it accords with the prices of plays, play-books, and story-books in prose and verse, for 150 years, 1657-1810. Stage-right, therefore, in unprinted plays was, by admission, a creature of the common law and the natural product of common justice : the immense publicity given to the author's ideas by representation did not justify the public in carrying away the words to represent them in another theatre. Printing a play would greatly facilitate piracy : but the power to misappropriate is not the right to misappropriate. That printing a play could actually forfeit so heterogeneous a property as stage-right is a con- jecture. What little evidence there is runs against the for- feiture. Up to the Commonwealth, the Chamberlain, alleging property, stopped violation of stage-right in plays, whether they were printed or not. After the Restoration we have only the evidence of prices for 150 years, and Lord Eldon's judgment. He protected stage-right after publication, and his is the only judicial decision that touches stage-right at common law, either in MSS. or play-books. If, therefore, we are to go by impartial principles of law and the best direct evidence we can get, and superior weight of judicial authority, speaking obiter in Donaldson v. Becket, and ad rem in Morris v. Kelly, stage-right in MSS., and even in printed plays, was like copyright, a creature of common sense, common justice, and common law ; but, like copyright, is now a nursling of statutes, thanks to a sudden onslaught by pirates. For, if law be ever so clear, but carry no penalty for breach, property is the sport of accident ; so, on the close of the war in 1815, monopoly and piracy fell upon the 137 READIANA dramatist, and destroyed him. Two theatres got the sole right to play legitimate pieces in London, and this made the author their slave. They robbed him of his three nights' overplus, and threw him a few pounds for a drama worth thousands. As to the provincial theatres, a single pirate drove all the dramatists clean out of them. Here is a copy of his public advertisement and please observe it is unprinted plays he pirates wholesale : " Mr. Kenneth, at the corner of Bow Street, will supply any gentleman with any manuscript on the lowest terms " and here is an example : Mr. Douglas Jerrold gives evidence to the Parliamentary Com- mission, Blue-book, p. 156 : " ' The Rent Day ' was played in the country a fortnight after it was produced at Drury Lane, and I have a letter in my pocket in which a provincial manager said he would willingly have given me <5 for a copy, had he not before paid ,2 for it to some stranger" (meaning Kenneth). The method of this caitiff is revealed in another quarter. " Kenneth went to the theatre with a shorthand writer, who took the words down and the mise-en-scene. He had copyists ready at home to transcribe, and the stolen goods were on their way to the provincial theatres in a few hours." But the London theatres also pirated the author. Moncrieff deposed that he produced "Giovanni," a musical piece, at a minor theatre. Drury Lane, one of the two theatres that had a monopoly in legitimate pieces, sent into Surrey, stole this illegitimate piece, and played it in the teeth of the author. The manager made thousands by it, and brought out Madame Vestris in it, and she made thousands. It was only the poor author that was swindled for enriching both manager and actor. That victim of ten thousand wrongs dared not resist this piece of scoundrelism ; the managers would have excluded him altogether from the market, narrowed by monopoly. But piracy has also its indirect effects. Even honest people will not give much for a property they see others stealing. By "The Rent Day " the theatre cleared twenty thousand pounds; but the author only 150; and for "Black-eyed Susan," which saved Manager Elliston from bankruptcy and made him flourish like a green bay-tree, the author received only 60 ; whereas the actor, Cooke, who played a single part in it, cleared 4000 during its first run, and afterwards made a fortune out of it in the country theatres, which did not pay the author at all. The Commissioners proceeded fairly. They heard the authors relate their wrongs, the monopolists defend their 138 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS monopolies, and the pirates prove their thefts pure patriotisms as usual : and they reported to Parliament a deep decline of the British drama, and denounced as its two causes, the monstrous monopoly of the managers, and the insecurity of the author's property; on the latter head these are their instructive words : " A dramatic author at present is subjected to indefensible hardship and injustice, and the disparity of the protection afforded to his labours, when compared even with that granted to authors in any other branch of letters, seems alone sufficient to divert the ambition of eminent and suc- cessful writers from that department of intellectual exertion." Thereupon Parliament, in the interest of justice and sound national policy, took away from the two patent theatres their wicked monopoly, and secured the property of a dramatist by a stringent enactment. The last link in the evidence is the statute itself. 3 & 4 Will. IV. did not create a property ; it found one; and it found a law, but ineffectual. The title, which is evidence, when not contradicted in the body of an Act, runs thus : " An Act to amend the laws relating to dramatic literary property." Then, as to the Act itself, it protects the dramatist so sharply, that if Parliament had been creating a right, they would certainly have fixed a term. But they respected the common-law right they were nursing, and left it perpetual ; and this, to my personal knowledge, they did because of the growing disgust to the spoliation authors had suffered from preceding Parliaments. What this Parliament thought was, that stage-right existed for ever in unprinted dramas ; and they laboured to extend the right to its just consequences, and protect it for ever by special provisions. When the right had been a statutory right for ten years, it got curtailed ; but Parliament, that took it from the common law, did not curtail it. This is the mere legal history of two sacred properties up to the dates when Parliament, after profound consideration, and full discussion at wide intervals, did, without haste, or prejudice, or any of those perturbing influences with which Lord Camden corrupted the Peers in his day, declare both these properties to be not monopolies, but personal properties. The full statutory definition amounts to this "they are personal properties, so sacred during the term of their statutory existence, that they carry a main feature of real property ; the very proprietor cannot convey them to another, by word of mouth : and indeed a bare licence to print, or to perform in a theatre, concurrently with the proprietor, is void, 139 READIANA unless given in writing." This distinct recognition of pro- perty was a return, in principle, to the common law, and the principle was too just and healthy not to grow and expand. Exceptional law is bad law, and stands still. Good law is of wide application, and therefore grows. When one nation takes wider views of justice or durable policy than other nations, we do not say like our forefathers, "That nation is hare-brained." We say, nowadays, "That nation is before the rest ; " implying that we shall be sure to follow, soon or late : and we always do. France saw thirty years ago that children must not be starved, and so murdered, by adulterated milk. She enlisted science ; detected, fined, imprisoned the adulterators, and made them advertise their own disgrace in several journals. She was not mad, nor divine; she was human, but ahead. Prussia saw long ago that the minds of children must be protected, like their other reversionary interests. If, therefore, parents were so wicked as to bring children into the world and not educate them, she warned, she fined, she imprisoned the indulgent and self- indulgent criminals. She was before other nations, that is all. England was the first to see free trade. She was before the rest of Europe, that is all. France saw, ages ago, that if A creates by labour a new intellectual production, and B makes one of its vehicles, the paper, and C and D set up, and work, the type, which is another vehicle, and print the sheets, and E (the publisher) sells the intellectual production, together with its vehicles, in volumes to F (the retail book- seller), and F sells them to the public, all these workers and traders must be remunerated in some proportion to what they contribute ; and that the nationality either of A, B, C, D, E, or F is equally irrelevant ; and it is monstrous to pick out A, whose contribution to the value is the largest, and say, You are a foreigner, and therefore you can claim neither property, nor wages, nor profit in France, though the smaller contributors, B, C, D, E, and F, have a right to be remunerated, whether they are foreigners or not. French jurists, with the superior logic of their race, saw this years ago, and in 1851 we all began to follow the leading nation, according to our lights : and they were blinkers ; because we were not Latins, but Anglo- Saxons : God has not made us jurists ; so the devil steps in, whenever we are off our guard, and makes us pettifoggers. I am going to ask brother Jonathan a favour. I want him to cast a side glance, but keen as himself at what passed 140 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS between France and England from 1851-1875 inclusively, and then ask himself honestly whether the European things I shall relate do not appeal to his own sense of justice and true public policy. The United States of America can teach us, and have taught us, many things. We can teach them a few things ; not that we are wiser, but that we are older. Age alone brings certain experiences. In the United States Piracy says, " I will get you a constant supply of good cheap books and dramas : it is your interest to encourage me, and not to foster literary poverty." Piracy says this in the United States, and is believed. Why not ? It looks like a self-evident truth. But piracy has said this in Europe many times, and in many generations, and in many countries, and has been believed, and believed, and believed. But European nations have, by repeated trials, at sundry times, and in divers places, found out whether what piracy says is a durable truth, or a plausible lie. Thus what in America is still a matter of intelligent conjecture, has become, in Europe, a matter of absolute, proved, demonstrated certainty ; and, on this account, I ask American statesmen for the first time in their lives to bring the powers of their mind really to bear on the European facts I shall relate, and am ready to depose to on oath either before an American Congress or a British Parliament. CHARLES READE. FIFTH LETTER SIR, INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT AND STAGE-RIGHT, A.D. 1851-52. It is instructive to look back and see how this great advance in justice and public policy was received by different classes. 1. The managers of our theatres, and the writers of good French pieces into bad English ones, showed uneasiness and hostility. 2. The British publishers, dead apathy. M. Paguerre, President of the " Cercle de la Libraire," came to London to invite their hearty co-operation ; "but found them indifferent except as regards America. To the moral bearings of the question they appeared tolerably callous." Athenaeum, Sep- tember 20, 1851. This was afterwards proved by the pro- digious silence of their organs. On this, the greatest literary event of modern times, the Quarterly Review, the Edinburgh, the British Quarterly, London and Westminster, Blackwood, 141 READIANA Fraser, the New Monthly, North British, Christian Observer, Eclectic Review, Dublin Review, Dublin University Review, de- livered no notice nor comment, not one syllable. They shut out contemporary daylight, and went on cooking the stale cabbage of small old ages by the light of a farthing candle. 3. This phenomenal obtuseness was not shared by the journals and weeklies. The journalists, though they have little personal interest in literary property, being remune- rated in a different way, uttered high and disinterested views of justice and public policy. They welcomed the treaty unanimously. Accept a few articles as index to the rest. Examiner, 1851, November 29 ; 1852, January 24, September 4, October 30. Leader, 1851, November 15, November 29. Sunday Times, December 7, 1851. Era, same date. Critic, 1851, March 15, February 2, 1852. The Times, 1851, Novem- ber 19 and November 26 ; also December 1, page 4, column 6. Illustrated London News, 1851, May 24. Literary Gazette, 1851, May 24, July 5, November 15, November 22, December 13. Athenceum, 1851, January 18, March 15 and 29, June 7, August 2, September 20, November 22. Art Journal, 1851, September and November. The New York Literary World, March 1851. It would be agreeable to my own feelings to go through these articles ; they bristle with hard facts proving that piracy upon foreigners is a mere blight on literature, and a special curse to the nation the pirate lives in. But, perhaps, a reader or two, like those St. Paul calls noble, will search the matter, and to save time, the rest may believe me, writing with the notes before me. I will, however, select a good specimen. A letter from Cologne, by an old observer of piratical translations in Germany, states that thirty years before date, good translations of Scott came into the German market; Bulwer followed, then Dickens. They were read with avidity ; so, not being property, rival translations came out by the dozen. This cut down the profits, and the rival publishers were obliged to keep reducing the pay of the trans- lators till at last it got to 6 for translating 3 vols. Act 1. Act 2. Bad translations, by incompetent hands, bad type, bad paper : valueless as literature ; yet, by English reputation and cheapness, under-selling the German inventor. Death to the German novelist; a mere fraud on the German public bad translations being counterfeit coin and no good to any German publisher, because they all tore the speculation to rags at the first symptom of a sale. Literary Gazette, November 15, 1851. 142 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS The Times, November 26, 1851, supported the proposed treaty in a leader, taking the higher ground of morality, justice, and humanity, but omitting sound national policy. The leader contains such observations as these : " Intel- lectual produce has been the only description of goods ex- cluded from equitable conditions of exchange." " Genius has been outlawed. The property it should have owned has, by the comity of nations, been treated as the goods of a con- victed felon." After giving examples of French, English, and American genius pillaged, the writer goes on thus : "Still worse, copies were multiplied at a cheap rate in Brussels, and disseminated all over the Continent." " There has long existed a profound immorality of thought with regard to the productions of genius." " How short- sighted the policy has been, the example of Belgium evinces. The effect of its habitual piracy has simply been the extinc- tion of literary genius throughout Belgium." The Illustrated London News, May 24, 1851, welcomed international justice, and put the logic of international larceny rather neatly : " An English book was treated like any other commodity produced by skill and industry, and so was a foreigner's watch; but not a foreigner's book." In a word, the British journalists, all those years ago, showed rare enlightenment, and personal generosity; for there are no writers more able, and indeed few so surprising to poor Me, as the first-class journalist, whose mind can pour out treasures with incredible swiftness, and at any hour, how- ever unfavourable to composition ; bed-time to wit, or even digestion-time. Yet these remarkable men, in their business sacrifice personal reputation, and see it enjoyed by moderate writers of books : this would sour a petty mind, and the man would say, like Lord Camden, " Let authors be content with the reputation they gain ; and what is literary property to me ? I have no stake in it." But these gentlemen showed them- selves higher-minded than Lord Camden ; they silenced ego- tism, and rose unanimously to the lofty levels of international justice, and sound policy ; and it would ill become me, and my fellows, in Great Britain and America, to forget this good deed, or to pass it by without a word of gratitude and esteem. 4. With less merit, because we were interested, every author worthy of the name hailed the new morality with ardour. The American authors in particular conceived hopes that justice and sound policy would cross a wider water, than the ditch, which had hitherto obstructed the march of justice in 143 READIANA Europe ; and they organised a club to support the movement, with Mr. Bryant for president. I myself had glorious hopes I now look back on with bitter melancholy. I was one of the very few men who foresaw a glorious future for the British drama. It was then so thoroughly divorced from literature, and so degraded, that scholars in general believed it could never again rear its head, which once towered above all nations. But I was too well read in its previous fluctuations, and, above all, in their causes, to mistake a black blight on the leaves for a decayed root. England is by nature the most dramatic country in the world ; piracy, while it lasts, has always been able to overpower nature, and always will ; but, piracy got rid of, nature revives. The condition of the theatre, in 1851, was this a province of France, governed by English lieutenants, writers without genius, petty playwrights, public critics, who could get their vile versions of a French play publicly praised by the other members of their clique. The manager was generally an actor thirsting for this venal praise. If he produced an original play, he was pretty sure not to get it ; but, by deal- ing with the clique for stolen goods, he secured an article that suited him to a T ; it was cheap, nasty, praised. The first- class theatres, whose large receipts qualified them to encourage the British inventor, barred him out with new French plays, or old English ones anything they could steal ; yet they could spend ,80 a night for actors and singers. Haymarket Theatre, 1851. Opened with Macready's fare- wells. Began its pieces, February 4, with " Good for Nothing" (French) ; February 6, " Presented at Court " (French) ; March 3, " Don Caesar de Bazan " (French) ; March 8, "Othello;" March 25, "Tartuffe" (French); March 27, " Make the Best of It" (French); April 21, " Arline" (a piratical burlesque of an English opera) ; May 3, " Retired from Busi- ness " (English, perhaps) ; May 26, " Crown Diamonds " (French); June 18, "The Cadi" (French); June 23, "John Dobbs " (French) ; June 24, Mr. Hackett, an American actor, in Falstaff, &c. ; July 1, " Grimshaw, Bagshaw, and Bradshaw" (French) ; July 7, " Son and Stranger " (German) ; August 13, " The Queen of a Day " (I don't know whether original or French) ; August 21, " His First Champagne " (French) ; "Tartuffe" and "The Serious Family" (both French); Sep- tember 10, "Grandmother Grizzle" (French) ; October 1 1, "La Sonnambula" (Italian), "Grandmother Grizzle" (French), and " Grimshaw," &c. ; October 14, " Sonnambula" and " Mrs. 144 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS White" (French); November 17, "Charles the Second" (French), ' ' God save the King " a Jacobite song, the words and treble by Henry Carey, the bass by Smith (Carey sang "God Save King James" till the tide turned against the Stuarts, and carried this melody with it, lines and all) "Rough Diamond" (French); November 18, "The Ladies' Battle ' (French) ; November 25, " The Two Bonny castles " (French) ; November 26, The Beggar's Opera " (Old English) ; Decem- ber 9, "The Man of Law" (French); December 2, "The Princess Radiant" (doubtful). The Lyceum. January 1 to March 24, " King Charming " (French story dramatised), and farces ; March 24, " Cool as a Cucumber" (French); April 21, " Queen of the Frogs " (French fairy tale) ; May 20, " Only a Clod " (French) ; June 4, " Court Beauties " (French) ; October 2, " Game of Specula- tion" (French), "Forty and Fifty" (French), "Practical Man " (English, I think) ; December 26, " Prince of Happy Land" (French story dramatised). This is no selection, but the whole business of these first-class London theatres, and a true picture of the drama in the City of Shakespeare. I comprehended the entire situation, and saw that the new treaty was a godsend, and might give England back her drama, if supported heartily. I visited France, and many of her dramatists ; we hailed the rising sun of justice together, and, as good words without deeds are rushes and reeds, I gave Auguste Maquet ,40 for his new drama, " Le Chateau de Grantier." The promised Act of Parliament came out. Alas ! what a disappointment ! A penny dole, clogged with a series of ill-natured conditions. It was like a mother's conscience compelled to side with a stranger against the child of her heart " Oh, they all tell me he is a blackguard ; but he is such a darling." It was full of loopholes for the sweet pirate : full of gins, and springes, and traps for authors and honest traders. International Copyright. The State sells to the foreign author the sole right of translation and sale in England, for a petty period, on cruel conditions. 1. He must notify on the title-page of the original work that he reserves the right of translation. 2. He must register the original work at our Stationers' Hall a rat-hole in the City and deposit a copy gratis within three months after first publication. 3. Must publish authorised translation in England within one year. 4. Must register that translation, and deposit a copy in our 145 K READIANA rat-hole, within a certain time 15 & 16 Viet. cap. 12. In short, the State is "alma mater" to the rascal, "injusta noverca " to the honest trader. The poor wretch, protected after this fashion, glares and trembles, and says to himself, " Incedo per ignes." The first stipulation is reasonable, and all-sufficient ; the rest are utterly superfluous, vexatious, oppressive, ill-natured. If the foreign author and his assignee escape by a miracle all these gins, springes, and author-traps, the State secures them for five years only what was their own for ever jure divino, and by the law of France, and by the universal human law of productive, unsalaried labour, without any gins, springes, or ill-natured, catchpenny conditions whatever. International stage-right, 15 & 16 Viet. cap. 12. Stipulations 1, 2, and 4, same as above. 3. Must publish the authorised translation in England within three months of registering original play, &c. In this clause, and indeed in No. 2, you see the old unhappy confusion of stage-right with copyright. Why, in the name of common sense, is the dramatist, because he objects to be swindled in a theatre, to be compelled to publish ? Publica- tion is not a dramatist's market. There is no sale for a play- book in England nowadays. How can the poor wretch afford to translate and publish a translated play, of which the public would not take six copies, though he should spend .100 advertising? Such imbecile legislation makes one's blood boil. Was ever so larcenous a tax on honesty? It is a pecuniary premium on Theatrical Piracy ; that kind of pirate does not print ; he merely steals and sells to the Theatre ; so his "alma mater," and our "injusta noverca," does not perse- cute him with any tyrannical and irrelevant tax applicable to copyright, but not to stage-right. It only bleeds the everlast- ing victim, the honest author. But there was worse behind. When the victim of ten thousand wrongs has been bled out of all the money it costs to publish an unsaleable translation, and has escaped the gins, springes, author-traps, and probity-scourges, and looks for his penny dole, his paltry five years' stage-right, then he is encountered with a perfidious proviso. " Nothing herein contained shall be so construed as to pre- vent fair imitation or adaptation to the English stage of any dramatic piece or musical composition published in any foreign country, but only of piratical translations." Now, the English theatre has seldom played a translation ; 146 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS the staple piracy from 1662 to 1852, and long after, was by altering the names of men and places from French to English, shortening and vulgarising the dialogue, and sometimes com- bining two French pieces, and sometimes altering the sex of a character or two ; sometimes, though very rarely, adding a character, as Mawworm in (t The Hypocrite " adapted from se Tartuffe." But whether servile or loose, the versions from French pieces were adaptations, not honest translations ; and all the more objectionable, since here a dunce gratifies his vanity as well as his dishonesty, and shams originality, which is a fraud on the English public as well as on the French writer; moreover, it is the adaptation swindle that turns French truths into English lies. The Legislature, there- fore, appeared to say this : " The form of piracy most con- venient to the English dramatic pirate seems to be not direct reproduction; but colourable piracy. We will profit by that experience. We will compel the honest dealer to translate literally ; we will put the poor devil to the expense of publishing his literal translation. No manager will ever play his literal translation. However, to make sure of that, we now legalise piracy in the established and fashionable form of fair adaptation or imitation." This, after one's experiences of the Anglo-Saxon pettifogger, seemed to reveal that animal at work defiling the scheme of the Latin jurists, and ensnaring his favourite victim, an author's property : and so it turned out to be. We soon learned how the trick had been done : a piratical manager had employed a piratical writer to crawl up the backstairs of the House of Commons, and earwig Lord Palmerston, and get this proviso inserted to swindle the French dramatist. The Minister, I need hardly say, did not realise what a perfidy he was lending himself to, and the French Government had no chance of divining the swindle, because this thief's cant of "fair adaptations and imitations" is entirely English; the Frenchmen did not even know what the words meant, nor are they translateable ; " imitations faites de bonne foi " has quite a different sense from " fair imitations ; " and how could they suspect that a great nation, treating with them on pro- fessedly higher views of national justice than had heretofore prevailed, could hold out its right hand to receive protection of its main intellectual export magazines, reviews, histories, biographies, novels yet with its left hand slyly filch away the main intellectual export of the nation it was dealing with, in time of peace and in declared amity ? 147 READIANA History, thank God, offers few examples of such turpitude. But why ? It is only because legislators, in protecting any other class of property, are never so weak as to take advice of pirates a set of God-abandoned miscreants, whose advice to us, and to you, Brother Jonathan, and to any other nation on the globe, is always a compound of Newgate and Bedlam. When the French did find the Satanic juggle out, they concealed neither their disgust nor their contempt. They reminded each other that their fathers had used a certain phrase, " Perfide Albion," which we had treated as a jest. Was it such a jest after all ? Could we discover a more accurate epitaph for this piece of dastardly juggling ? Here is a distich they applied : " Comptez done sur les trait^s signes par le mensem ge, Ces actes solennels avec art prepares ; " and here a quatrain on the " fair imitations " that our Legis- lature protected and secured gratis as soon as ever it had decoyed the poor honest gull into the expense of publishing the translation that no creature could try to read nor theatre would play : " Quoiqu'en disent certains railleurs, J'imite, et jamais je ne pille. Vous avez raison, Monsieur Drille : Oui, vous imitez les voleurs." The Satanic proviso that disgraced us in the eyes of a noble nation recoiled, as it always does and always will, Brother Jonathan, upon the nation that had been inveigled into legalising piracy. It postponed the great British drama for another quarter of a century. Colourable piracy of French pieces being legalised instead of crushed, drove the native dramatist off the boards. The shops were limited by monopoly (6 and 7 Victoria), and piracy enabled a clique of uninventive writers to monopolise the goods. If, by a miracle, a genuine dramatist got a play played, then piracy punished him in another way. The price was not a remuneration, but a punishment of labour and skill. I saved a first-class theatre from bankruptcy with a drama. I received only ,110; and the last ten pounds I had to county-court the manager for ; gratitude is too good a thing to waste on that etherial vapour, yclept an author. For " Masks and Faces," a comedy which has survived a thousand French pieces, and more, Mr. Taylor and I received ,150. In France it would have been 4000. 148 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS For " Two Loves and a Life/' a drama that has been played throughout Anglo-Saxony, and is played to this day, we re- ceived 100. In France it would have been worth 5000. The reason is, a manager was through bad legislation a fence, or receiver of stolen goods, and he would only pay fence's prices even to inventors. I am known, I believe, as a novelist ; but my natural gift was for the drama : my greatest love was for the drama; yet the Satanic proviso, and the colourable piracy it inflicted on the nation, drove me off the boards, and many other men of similar calibre. I beg attention to this, not as a personal wrong ; in that light I should be ashamed to lay it before the English and American public, but as one of a thousand useful examples, that nature gives way before piracy. Able men always did, and always must, turn from their natural market, choked, defiled, and lowered, by piracy, to some other less congenial business, where there is fair play. This is how American literature is even now depopulated. I invite evidence from American authors. The Satanic proviso injured the drama. A French truth, I repeat, may be an English lie; and, as the adapter puts English names of men and places to French pieces, this happened eternally. The maids and wives presented on the English stage were called Mrs. and Miss ; but the situations and sentiments were French. Thus the women of England were habitually misrepresented. Now the public gets tired of a shop that keeps selling false pictures of familiar objects. The Satanic proviso injured our drama in a third way. Property never blocks the theatre ; piracy always. " The Courier of Lyons " was played in nearly every London theatre, one year, 1855 ; and made the theatre unpopular by monotony. " The Corsican Brothers " was played in every London theatre without exception, and in many of them at the same time. In the drama's healthy day each theatre played its own pieces. But, under the hoof of piracy, variety is crushed : in one month, viz., May 1852, the Princess's Theatre played "The Corsican Brothers," Surrey Theatre "Corsican Brothers," Haymarket " O Gemini ! " a burlesque on the subject, and Olympic " Camberwell Brothers." Adelphi, which had played "The Corsican Brothers," was playing "The Queen of the Market" ("La Dame de la Halle"); Strand, "The Lost Husband" ("La Dame de la Halle"); Lyceum, "Chain of Events" ("La Dame de la Halle"). As for "Don Caesar de Bazan," that piece entirely blocked the first-class London H9 READIANA theatres for months ; and I, who write these lines, fled to Paris, where "Don Caesar" was property, merely to get away from the doomed city, where "Don Caesar/' not being property, had become a monotony-scourge, and an emptier of theatres into music-halls, public-houses, and Baptist chapels. In 1859, though I had left the theatre in despair, I still thought it my duty to combat the Satanic proviso for the benefit of the nation and of other dramatists, whom it would otherwise stifle, as it had me. I wrote a book denouncing it on the two grounds of justice and public policy, and I appealed, in that book, to the commercial probity and good sense of the House of Commons, and the sense of honour in legal matters which resides, theoretically, in the bosom of the Peers. I sowed good seed, and it fell among stones. I hope for better luck this time. But were I sure to fail, and fail, as long as I live, I would still sow the good seed, that cannot wholly die ; for it is truth immortal. There being, at that time, a great outcry against American piracy, I publicly denied that the United States had ever been guilty of any act so dishonest, disloyal, and double-faced, as Great Britain had committed by treating with France for international rights, and contriving, under cover of that treaty, to steal the main intellectual property of that empire ; and I offered to bet 70 to 40 this was so. < < The Eighth Commandment," p. 156. I refer to that now, because it is a fair proof I am one who can hold the balance between my native country and the United States ; and such I think are the men to whom that great Republic should lend an ear ; for such men are somewhat rare ; they have some claim to be called citizens of the world, and are as incapable of deliberate injustice as sham patriots are incapable either of national justice or national wisdom. In 1866 I was examined, before the House of Commons, by Mr. Goschen, and cross-examined by members rather hos- tile to my views. I answered 150 questions, most of them judiciously put ; and full a third of them bore on the effects of national piracy in injuring the nation that pirates. Cross- examination trebles the value of evidence ; and therefore I recommend it with some confidence to the study of those, who care enough for the truth in these matters, to prefer the sunlight of experience to that Jack-o'-lantern, a priori reason- ing. I have no time to quote more than one answer : " If you strike out that clause (the Satanic proviso), I pledge you my honour as a gentleman that you will see a great drama 150 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS arise in England." (Report of the Select Committee on Theatrical Licences. Price 3s. 8d. Index 9d. Hansard, Great Queen Street, London.) 1875. Parliament has rescinded the Satanic proviso, and thereby laid the first stone of a great British drama, as time will show. Between 1852 and 1875 I felt, with many others, that the American Legislature is cruel and unjust to authors ; but I have never urged it with any spirit, because my noble ardour was chilled by a precept of the highest possible authority to say nothing of its morality and good sense. I think it runs to this effect, errors excepted : " Take out first the beam that is in thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to take out the mote in Brother Jonathan's eye." Now this year, Parliament having at last taken the beam out of my eye, I do see my way to address a remonstrance to that great nation, which hangs aloof from modern progress, and selects for hatred, contempt, and outlawry, while living, those superior men, whose dead bones it worships. CHARLES READE. SIXTH LETTER SIR, INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT WITH AMERICA: The ques- tion has been mooted for forty years, and various British Governments have made languid movements towards obtain- ing justice for British and American authors. These have failed ; languor often does : so now faint-hearted souls say, " Oh, it is no use : you might as well appeal to the Andes against snow, or to a hog in his neighbour's garden for clemency to potatoes, as ask the Americans for humanity to British authors." Before I can quite believe this, they must write out of my head, and my heart, that this American people, torn by civil war, and heartsore at what seemed our want of principle and just sympathy, sent over a large sum of money to relieve the British cotton-spinners, whom that war, and their own imprudent habits, had brought low. Moreover, I can never despair of a cause, because it has been bungled forty years. There is a key to every lock ; and if people will go on trying the wrong keys for forty years that is no proof that the right key will fail for forty more. To find the right key, we must survey for the first time the whole American situa- 151 READIANA tion. It comprises five parties : the judges the Legislature the authors the publishers the people. The judges what, in speaking to a Frenchman, we call the law of England, is, in America, the common law of both countries ; our common ancestors grew it : the American colonists carried it in their breasts across the Atlantic ; and it has the same authority in the States as here : it bows to legis- lative enactments ; but, wherever they are silent, it is the law of the land. An American lawyer, who cites it with the reverence it really deserves, does not pay us any compliment. He is going back to the wisdom and justice of his own ancestors. Now Congress not having meddled with inter- national copyright or stage-right, an English author's copy- right in New York, A.D. 1875, is what it was in London before the statute of Queen Anne, and his stage-right what it was before 3 & 4 William IV. Half our battle is won in the courts; for the American judges concede to an English author stage-right in unprinted dramas. " Keene v. Wheatley ; " 9 American Law Reg. 23. " Crowe v. Aitken ; " 4 Am. Law Review, 23, and other cases. And they concede copyright in unpublished manuscripts (" Palmer v. de Witt," c.). If, under the latter head, they tied the sole right of print- ing to the paper and handwriting of the manuscript, our case would be hopeless. But they disown this theory, and give a British author the incorporeal right, that is, the sole right to print his composition, though the pirate may be in as lawful possession of a copy as is the public purchaser of a printed book. I shall now prove that full international copyright is included in that admission. There are three theories of copyright at common law : The washerwoman's theory. The lawyer's theory. The mad sophist's theory. THE WASHERWOMAN'S THEORY. That there can be no in- corporeal property at common law. An author's manuscript is property. If another misappropriates it, and prints the words, that is unlawful ; but the root of the offence is mis- appropriating the material object, the author's own written paper. Thus, if a hen is taken unlawfully, to sell the eggs she lays after misappropriation is unlawful. The lawyer's and the sophist's theory both rest on a funda- mental theory opposed to the above, viz., that an author's 152 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS mental labour, intellectual and physical, creates a mixed property, words on paper; that the words are valuable as vehicles of ideas, and are a property distinct from the paper ; and only the author has a right to print them under any circumstances. Examples : Pope wrote letters to various people : they paid the postage ; the paper, and the inked forms of the letters, became theirs, and ceased to be Pope's. Curll possessed this corporeal property lawfully. Yet Pope re- strained the printing. " Pope v. Curll." Lord Clarendon gave a written copy of the famous history to a friend. That gentleman's son inherited it. Had Lord Clarendon's heir misappropriated this written paper, he could have been indicted, and sent to gaol. Yet, when the lawful possessor of the transcript sent it to press, with the words on it not written by the author's hand, but conveying the author's ideas, Lord Clarendon's heir sued him, nearly a century after the history was composed, and obtained heavy damages. " Duke of Queensberry v. Shebbeare." There are many other cases, including " Macklin v. Richardson," and " Palmer v. De Witt," lately tried in New York. But this peculiar position in " Queensberry v. Shebbeare " is the best to scruti- nise. A is the lawful possessor, by inheritance, of a transcript. B is the author's heir. If B steals A's transcript he can be indicted; if A prints his own transcript, he violates the pure incorporeal copyright of B, and cannot be indicted, but can be sued on the case for violation of a property as incorporeal and detached from paper and all other material substance as any that was confirmed to an author by Queen Anne's statute, or the Acts of Congress in re. THE LAWYER'S THEORY. When an author exerts this ad- mitted incorporeal right, by printing and publishing, a new party enters, the public purchaser; he acquires new rights, which have to be weighed against the author's existing right strengthened by possession ; for the author has created a large material property under his title, which would be destroyed as property if his copyright was forfeited by publication. How our ancestors dealt with this situation is a simple matter of history ; therefore we distrust speculation entirely and go by the legal evidence. THE MAD SOPHIST'S THEORY rejects with us the washer- woman's theory, and concedes that an author has, at common law a intellectual property, or copyright, thus abridged he 153 READIANA has the sole right, under any circumstances whatever, to print his unprinted words. But, when he publishes, he sells the volumes without reserve ; he cannot abridge his contract with the reader and retain the sole right under which he printed. He has abandoned his copyright by the legal force of his act, and this is so self-evident that the sophist declines to receive evidence against it. Whether copyright in printed books existed before Queen Anne's Act, he decides in a later age, whose modes of thinking are different, by a priori reasoning, and refuses to inquire how old the word " copy " is, or what is meant under the Tudor and Stuart Princes, in acts of State, licensing Acts, and legal assignments, or to look into the case of " Roper v. Streater," Eyre v. Walker," or any other legal evidence whatever. This was the ground taken by Justice Yates in " Millar v. Taylor." He founded a school of copyright sophists, reason- ing a priori against a four-peaked mountain of evidence. He furnished the whole artillery of falsehood, the romantic and alluring phrases " a gift to the public," &c., the equivoques, and confusions of ideas, among which the very landmarks of truth are lost to unguarded men. Since it is this British pettifogger who, in the great Re- public, stands between us and the truth between us and law between us and morality between us and humanity between us and the eighth commandment of God the Father between us and the golden rule of God the Son, Judge Yates becomes, like Satan, quite an important equivo- cator, and I must undeceive mankind about Judge Yates and his fitness to rule the Anglo-Saxon mind. In " Millar v. Taylor," the case that has given Judge Yates so great a temporary importance in England and America, the main question was a simple historical fact : did copyright in printed books, which preceded legislation in France and Holland, also precede in England a certain enactment called Queen Anne's statute ? No a priori reasoning was needed here. The Latin jurists used none to ascertain the identical fact in their own country, and, therefore, with no better evidence than we have, they are unanimous. We are divided by a priori reasoning on fact. In " Millar v. Taylor " two modes of searching truth encoun- tered each other on the narrow ground, each party rejecting the washerwoman's theory, and admitting pure copyright, but disputing whether in England it was forfeited by publication. 154 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS One method is by a priori reasoning, and was the method of the Greek sophists and mediaeval schoolmen. The other is by observation and evidence, and is the method of Lord Bacon and his pupils. Scholars sometimes permit themselves to talk as if the former method was universal in the ancient world. That statement is excessive. Plain men, in their business, antici- pated the Baconian method thousands of years ago, as the jury in "Millar v. Taylor" followed it. The Greek sculptors anticipated it, and their hands reached truth, while the philosophers, their contemporaries, were roaming after their will-o'-the-wisp, "And found no end in wandering mazes lost." There was the pity of it ; those who, by learning, leisure, and ability, were most able to instruct mankind, were enticed by bad example and the arrogance of the intellect, into a priori reasoning, and diverted from docile observation ; and so they fell into a system that kept the sun out and the door shut. The other system, in 250 years, has enlightened that world which lay in darkness. To test the systems, take any period of 400 years before Lord Bacon, and estimate the progress of the world in know- ledge and useful discoveries. Then take the 250 years after Lord Bacon. I vary the figures, out of justice, to allow for increased population. Lord Bacon was the saviour of the human intellect. He discouraged plausible conjecture, or a priori reasoning, and taught humble, close observation. Thereby he gave the key of the heavens to Newton, and the key of nature and her forces to the physical investigator, and the prying mechanic. Man began to cultivate the humble but wise faculty of obser- vation ; it grew by cultivation, and taught him how to wrestle with nature for her secrets, and extort them. There is scarcely a branch of useful learning that method has not improved 500 per cent. Of course, even since Lord Bacon, prejudice has, in holes and corners, resisted observation; but the final result is sure. A priori reasoning bled people to death with the lancet for two centuries after Bacon ; but Bacon has conquered the lancet. A handful of Jesuits will tell you that the historical query, whether one Bishop of Rome has contradicted another in faith, must not be learned from contemporary history, but evolved by internal thought a thousand years afterwards. Well, that mediaeval crotchet 155 READIANA will go and Bacon stay. And so it must be, sooner or later, with everything, copyright at common law the national expediency of piracy the infallibility of men with mitres everything. The world has tasted Bacon. It will never eat cobwebs again for long. To put the matter in another form Such of our common ancestors, Brother Jonathan, as invented phrases, were nearly always acute observers. They called a prodigal "a spend- thrift," having observed how often that character dissipated the savings of another man. A quarrel, with almost divine sagacity, they called not " a difficulty," which is a brainless word, but a misunderstanding, and they called a madman a man out of his senses. Why not out of his reason ? Well, they had observed. The madman, who did not fly at their throats, but gave them time to study him, did nothing but reason all day and not illogically; but blinded by some preconceived idea, could not see, nor hear, nor observe. Intelligent madmen have busy minds, and often argue speciously, but start from some falsehood contradicted by their senses. The senses are the great gates of wisdom, and to the lunatic these gates are always more or less closed by prepossession. Now events distant by space or time cannot be seen nor heard by us, but by persons present. Where they get recorded at the time, the senses of the eye-witnesses have spoken ; and the pupil of Lord Bacon must have recourse to the senses and report of those persons. Into that evidence he peers, and even cross-examines it if he can ; and he can sometimes ; for, when a dead witness makes an admission, it has the effect and value of a truth extracted from a living witness against his will. Where contemporary evidence is abundant and mam- form, it is very reliable, and the man who opposes & priori reasoning, or preconceived ideas to it, is A LUNATIC IN THE SECOND DEGREE. I feel that I am giving a large key to unlock a small box ; but small keys have failed; and Cicero says well, "Errare, falli, labi, tarn turpe est quam decipi." I will, therefore, in my next give The Baconian method v. the method of the ancients, or Millar v. Taylor, showing how an English judge proved, out of the depths of his inner consciousness, that copyright at common law could not have existed, even as a waggish Oxford professor proved, by the same method, that Napoleon Bonaparte could never have existed. CHARLES READE. 156 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS SEVENTH LETTER SIR, The poet Thomson, in 1729, assigned the copyright of " The Seasons " to Millar, his heirs and assigns for ever. In 1763 Taylor printed "The Seasons" and Millar sued him: the case, as handled, turned mainly on whether copyright in printed books was before Queen Anne's statute. This being a mixed question of law and fact, the opinion of the jury was taken upon documentary evidence, the records of Stationers' Hall, and many ancient assignments of copyright drawn up by lawyers long before the statute, and others long after it. The defendant had powerful counsel : so this evidence doubt- less was sifted, and kept within the rules. The jury brought a special verdict, in which are these words ' ' And the said jurors, upon their oath, further say that before the reign of her Majesty Queen Anne, it was usual to purchase from authors the perpetual copyright of their books, and assign the same for valuable considerations, and to make the same the subject of family settlements." The jury here were within their province ; they swore not to a matter of law, but to a custom, in which, however, lawyers at different epochs had taken a part by drawing the legal assignments, Most of this evidence has melted away, but the sworn verdict of twelve unprejudiced men of the world remains, and, by the law of England and America, overpowers and indeed annuls, all judicial conjectures in this one matter of fact. On this basis the judges discussed the law, and Lord Mansfield, Mr. Justice Willes, and, above all, Mr. Justice Aston, uttered masterpieces of learning, wisdom, close reasoning, and common sense, that the instructors of youth in Harvard, Oxford, &c., would do well to rescue from their dusty niche, and make them teachers of logic, law, and morals, in universities and schools. They built on all the rocks : 1st, on the voice of conscience ; on Meum and Tuum ; on the sanctity of productive labour ; on the title of labourer A to the fruits of A's labour, and the primd facie absence of a title in B to the fruits of A's labour without a just equivalent. 2nd, on the universal admission that an author alone has a right to print his written words, and on the legal consequence that by exercising this sole right and creat- ing a large material property under it, he keeps the right alive, not dissolves it, since common law abhors divestiture of an ad- mitted right, and loss of property created by invitation of law, 157 READIANA From these principles they went, Srdly, to special evidence, and traced the history of the exclusive right to print published books ; showed it at a remote period called by the very technical and legal name the statute adopted centuries later ; proved the recognition of this right by name in proclamations and decrees, and Republican ordinances, and three parlia- mentary licensing Acts under three different Sovereigns prior to Queen Anne's statute ; the entire absence of dissent in the old judges, and their uniform concurrence when speak they did ; their dicta in re, and their obiter dicta as that " the statute of Charles II. did not give the right (copyright), but the action:" and "of making title to a copyright," and of et a copy " being a property paramount to the King's grant, and so on and then they cited law cases in a series, begin- ning with " Roper v. Streater," long before the statute, and continued in equity long after the statute upon titles created long before the statute, as " Eyre v. Walker," where the assign- ment of the copyright was in writing dated 1657, and "Tonson v. Walker," where the assignment (Milton's " Paradise Lost ") was dated 1667 : " Motte v. Falkner," &c. They also cited the preamble, or historical preface, of the statute itself, and other matters. This reveals the Baconian method, and the true legal method, which goes by principles resting on large in- duction, and applicable to all citizens, impartially ; and by the best direct evidence accessible. Against the Washer- woman's theory they cited " Pope v. Curll," and " Queensberry v. Shebbeare." Judge Yates accepted, though rather sullenly, "Pope v. Curll," and " Queensberry v. Shebbeare," and, in stat- ing his own theory, forswore the washerwoman. He admitted that, before the statute, if any person printed an author's words without his express consent to print them, he acted unlawfully, although he came by them by legal means, as by loan or devolution. The word " devolution " he used expressly to keep within " Queensberry v. Shebbeare " (4 Burroughs, 2379). But from that point he parted company with the judges and the jury, and undertook to prove, out of the depths of his inner consciousness, that the incorporeal right, which in "Queensberry v. Shebbeare," prevailed against sixty years' lawful possession of a written copy, could not possibly have continued against five minutes' lawful possession of a printed copy : (risum teneatis, amid). Yates. "Goods must be capable of possession, and have some visible substance ; for, without that, nothing is capable 158 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS of actual possession." " Nothing can be an object of property which has not a corporeal substance," &c. This proposition repeated about six times. "The author's unpublished manuscript is corporeal. But after publication by the true proprietor, the mere intellectual ideas in a book are totally incorporeal, and therefore in- capable of any distinct separate possession ; they can neither be et seized, forfeited, nor possessed," &c., and this discovery he repeated often, and rang the changes. " Can the senti- ments themselves, apart from the paper, be taken in execu- tion for a debt ? In case of treason, can they be forfeited ? If they cannot be seized, the sole right of publishing them cannot be confined to the author. There can be no property where there can be no forfeiture," &c. &c. Behold the lunatic in the second degree ! His senses, if he had not been out of them, revealed that copyright in printed books existed by law while he spoke, and yet that ideas were incorporeal, and could not be seized nor forfeited; nor the sentiments taken in execution. The nature of ideas through- out creation was the same before and after Queen Anne's little trumpery statute ; yet here is a lunatic in the second degree, who either says Queen Anne's Parliament had re- pealed God Almighty in this particular, or says nothing at all ; for the sole point in dispute is, Did copyright in printed books exist amongst English human beings, before Queen Anne's statute, as it did amongst French human beings, before any special enactment or did it exist in written works only ? Who but a lunatic in the second degree cannot see that the sole right of printing unpublished ideas is the very same property in the ideas as the sole right of reprinting the same ideas, and that all publication can do is to let in another claimant to the right of printing, viz., the public purchaser. As to all his "galimatias" that there can be no property detached from a visible substance the fool has gone and blundered into THE WASHERWOMAN'S THEORY, and blundered out of the insane sophist's. The insane sophist began with disowning the washerwoman. She, poor wretch, is con- tradicted not only by "Roper v. Streater," but by "Queens- berry v. Shebbeare " and " Pope v. Curll," the cases Yates admits. But Lord Mansfield collared the insane sophist and would-be washerwoman on this, and literally pulver- ised his washerwoman's twaddle, with fifteen sledge-ham- mer sentences beginning thus : " It has all along been 159 READIANA expressly admitted/' and ending "under a commission of bankruptcy." I do not cite the pulverising paragraphs, because there is no need. Yates's attempt to smuggle in the washerwoman's theory under the insane sophist's is self-evident, and has failed utterly ; for to " Pope v. Curll," and " Queensberry v. Shebbeare," are since added "Macklin v. Richardson," and "Palmer v. De Witt," both death-blows to the washer- woman's theory. Palmer v. De Witt. Robertson, English dramatist, wrote a comedy, " Caste," and played it all over England, but did not publish. He assigned the copyright, and stage-right, at common law, to Palmer, an American citizen. De Witt published " Caste " in New York. Palmer sued him, and the case was settled, by judgment for Palmer, who was, in law, the English author. (New York Court of Appeals, Feb. 27, 1872.) The judgment lies before me. There was no violation whatever of the manuscript. Nothing was misappropriated but the naked right to print and publish a composition, to which enormous publicity has been given by twenty prompt copies and fifty sets of parts, and representa- tion in fifty theatres at least. Therefore this American Court of very high authority has gone with Lord Mansfield, and other great lawyers, and swept the very mainstay of Judge Yates's sophistry away for ever. This narrows the question to forfeiture, or non-forfeiture, by publication, of copyright at common law. Now this soi- disant forfeiture, Queen Anne's Parliament treat, in the preamble, or historical prelude, as a malpractice, a violation of property; they say it is unjust cruel and new ; which is pre- statutory evidence in the statute itself. Yates gives Queen Anne's Parliament the lie, and undertakes to prove, out of the depths of his inner consciousness, that this malpractice was at the very moment when Parliament denounced it, and prepared, in imitation of preceding Acts, to punish it as a misdemeanour just, reasonable, and old. Having set this very Parliament above the Creator, he now sets it below Yates. However, his argument runs thus : he says that we authors put forward ideas and sentiments, as the direct object of property at common law in old times, and insult common sense and justice in pretending that we could publish our ideas, yet reserve the right of printing those ideas for publi- cation. This is plausible, and paves the way for his romantic phrases that have intoxicated ordinary minds, such as " the act of publication, when voluntarily done by the author him- 160 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS self, is virtually and necessarily a gift to the public" Then handling it no longer as a donation but under the head of implied contracts, which is a much sounder view of the author's sale to the public purchaser, he says, neatly enough, the seller delivers it without restriction, and the buyer re- ceives it without stipulation. Then he jumps to this droll inference : " Nothing less than legislative power can restrain the use of anything." This, however, is a purely chimerical distinction ; the common law was founded partly on Royal statutes, largely conceived, and resembling maxims; and limited uses are not altogether unknown to it ; every river is a highway, over which the public can pass, and even bathe in it, without infringing property ; but not always fish ; and a right of way obtained by use, or leased to the churchwardens, under which the public can lead its cow across a freeholder's field, gives no right to graze her upon the path ; and, if I let the public into my tea-garden at sixpence a head to eat all the fruit they can, no express stipulation is required to reserve the fruit trees. Moreover, Yates's position is too wide ; it lets in other nations ; now the French and Dutch common law give it the lie direct in copyright itself; so, if we must reason a priori, the chances are fifty to one the English common law gave it the lie too. But this is our direct reply for the multiplying power of the press is so unique, it excludes all close comparisons so far from claiming a property in ideas, that is the very thing the holders of copyright at common law did not claim. That is the claim of the patentees alone, as I shall show in the proper place. So far from ideas becoming incorporeal after publication, &c., which statement of Yates's is a "galimatias," and an idiotic confusion ; ideas are incorporeal only at a period long antecedent to publication viz., while they lie in the author's mind. An author connects his ideas with matter once, and for ever, when he embodies them in a laboured sequence of words marked by his hand on paper. These written words are matter, by collocation, laboured sequence, and the physical strokes of a pen with a black unguent ; matter, as distinct from the paper as gas is from the pipe, and, though they convey mental ideas, the written words themselves are not so fine a material as gas, which yet is measured and sold by the foot. The phrase " intellectual labour " is an equivoque and a snare that has deluded ten thousand minds. It applies 161 L READIANA somewhat loosely to study ; but an author's productive labour is only one species of skilled labour ; it is physical, plus intel- lectual, labour, and those compositions which led to common- law rights were the result of long, keen labour, intellectual and physical, proved to be physical by the vast time occupied whereas thought is instantaneous and by shortening the life of the author's body, through its effects on the blood- vessels of the brain, which are a part, not of the mind but of the body. The said vessels get worn by an author's pro- ductive labour, and give way. This, even in our short expe- rience, has killed Dickens, Thackeray, and perhaps Lytton. The short life of authors in general is established by statistics. See Neison's "Vital Statistics." The words are the material vehicle of the ideas ; the paper is the material vehicle of the words. The author has, by admission of Yates, the sole right to do as follows, and does it : He takes the written words, which are the vehicle of his ideas, to the printing compositor, and the compositor takes printed letters identical with the author's, though differing a little in shape but that is a mere incident of the day ; in the infancy of printing they were identical in shape, only worse formed he sets the letters in formes, and passes them to the pressman. For this the compositor charges say ,28. With the pressman, and not with the compositor, who is a copyist for the Press, begins the Press. Now comes the mechanical miracle which made copyright necessary and inevitable ; the Press can apply different sheets to the same metal letters conveying the composition ; thus a thousand different paper volumes are created in which the letters and the author's composition are one, but the volumes of paper a thousand. The volumes are now ready, but not issued : and I beg particular attention to the author's admitted position at common law one moment before publication. He has still, by law (Yates assenting), the sole right to print, and publish ; he has created, for sale, a thousand volumes, under an ex- clusive legal right to create volumes for sale.: he has added to his original legal right three equities: 1st, priority of printing, which is nothing against a legal title, but some- thing against a rhapsodical title ; 2nd, the peculiar expense of setting up type from written words ; 3rd, occupancy ; and the equitable right to sell again the thousand volumes, a large material property created under an exclusive legal title founded on morality and universal law, and conceded by Judge Yates. For the force of occupancy added to title, 162 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS see Law, passim ; and for the force of the above special equity, see " Sweet v. Cator." Well, the man in possession of the legal right, and also of the additional equities, and also of the material volumes, now does a proper and rational act, by which the public profits confessedly, an act such as no man was ever lawfully punished for ; he publishes, or sets in circulation, his one composition contained in many paper vehicles. He sells each volume say for six shillings to the trade, eight shillings to the public reader. What he intends to sell to the public reader for eight shillings, is paper and binding, two shillings ; printers' work, sixpence ; useful or entertaining knowledge, alias his own labour, four shillings ; the right of using the ideas in many ways, of even plagiarising and printing them re-worded, and also the right of selling again the very thing the purchaser bought the one material volume with its mental contents. Prima facie, the contract, so understood, is not an unjust one to the buyer, nor an extortionate one for the seller. His profit, on these terms, does not approach the retail trader's, who, in practice, is the seller to the public, yet forfeits nothing by the sale. Now it is a maxim of the common law, that where two interpretations of a contract, express or implied, are possible, one that gives no great advantage to either party, and the other that gives a monstrous advantage to one party, the fairer interpretation is to be preferred, since men, meeting in business, are presumed by the law to exchange equivalents ; and this rule, established by cases, applies especially where a whole class of contracts is to be interpreted. Please observe that the ground I am upon, viz., of implied contracts, was selected by Yates, and I ask which interpretation, Yates's or ours, agrees with the undisputed common-law doctrine of equivalents ? The purchase of books is a lottery. But there are a host of prizes. Lord Bacon's works gave the public purchaser a great deal more than a thousand million pounds' worth of knowledge and power ; yet he made no extra charge to justify a claim on his copyright founded on purchase of his volumes. The great books balance the little : and the buyer has the choice. Colonel Gardiner was converted in an afternoon, from vicious courses, not by a vision, but a duodecimo ; and that is a fact attested by Jupiter Carlyle. I didn't find it in my intestines, where Yates looks for facts. Many men, about the very time of " Millar v. Taylor/' ascribed the salvation of their souls to a copy of Doddridge's " Rise and Progress of Religion in the 163 READIANA Soul." If a pupil of Yates, before purchase of Doddridge, that would be a great improvement in a reader's prospects for 8s. Besides, after he has been converted from Yates's reading of the 8th of Anne, to Doddridge's reading of the 8th of Moses, and his soul saved, &c., he can lend or sell the volume. Then why pillage Doddridge for un-Yatesing him, and saving his soul dirt cheap ? Find me the party to any other contract, who can eat his cake, yet sell it afterwards, like the honest purchaser of a good volume. CHARLES READE. EIGHTH LETTER SIR, The next intellectual article the insane sophist opposes to evidence is vituperation, or mendacity trading upon popular prejudice. " It is a monopoly opposed to the great laws of property," &c., repeated ten times. Now gauge his logic. He says : 1. The sole right of printing a man's own composi- tion is a perpetual property at common law. 2. If the pro- prietor exerts that perpetual right lawfully, to the benefit of himself and the community, and law, mistaking him for a felon, divests him of it, the good citizen forfeits his property. 3. If law declines to abjure its abhorrence of forfeitures, and does not divest him of his sacred property, the sacred pro- perty becomes monopoly. How ? by bare retention ? by non- forfeiture ? by continuation ? Did ever continuation or non- forfeiture of a property metamorphose that property into a monopoly ? So then if my hen and her chickens run upon a common, and law, having imbibed a spite against feathered property, lets the public in to scramble for them, I can scramble with the lot, but lose my property in my hen and chickens. But if law declares they are mine still, though my blind confidence has made it very easy to pirate them, then my property in my hen and my chickens becomes a mono- poly which word means the sole right to sell any hens or any chickens whatever. Is this a lunatic, or a liar? or both ? I have no theory of my own about monopoly. I merely apply settled truths that idiots repeat like cuckoos but cannot apply. Monopoly is defined in the law-books, and justly defined, to be " an exclusive right to sell any species of mer- chandise " te genus quoddam mercaturae." Property is a wider right over a narrower object. It is the 164 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS sole right of keeping, destroying, leasing, or selling, not a species of merchandise, but only that individual specimen of merchandise, or those individual specimens, which happen to be the man's own by law. One well-known historical feature of monopoly is that it was the creature of Royal prerogative ; another that it has always clashed in trade with undoubted property. In this kingdom are now no literary monopolies, but there is one dramatic monopoly, viz., the exclusive right of the licensed managers to represent any play whatever yours, mine, or theirs (6 & 7 Victoria). But literary mono- polies infested the ages Anachronist Yates misrepresents ; and those men of the common law he underrates and they were great masters of logic compared with him always called them by their right name, " Patents." Under Henry VIII., one Sax ton had the sole right to sell printed maps and charts, and, under Elizabeth, Tallis and Bird, to sell music. Both were vetoes on a species nature, monopoly name, a patent root, prerogative. The owners of copyright groaned publicly, again and again, under these infractions of their property by prerogative patents ; and, after the second revo- lution, when prerogative was staggering under repeated blows, literary property, or copyright, took a literary patent or monopoly boldly by the throat, in "Roper v. Streater." Streater, law patentee, had, from the Crown, the sole right to sell law reports by whomsoever written. This was monopoly an exclusive right to sell a species of literary composition. Roper bought of Judge Croke's executor the copyright or sole right to reprint Judge Croke's reports, and line his trunk with them or sell them which is property. And this muddlehead Yates could look with his moon-calf s eye at "Roper v. Streater," yet call literary property in a man's own (by purchase) printed composition, a monopoly, even when he saw literary monopoly and literary property cheek by jowl in a court of law fighting each other as rival suitors and the monopoly in a species of books declaring its nature, its distinctive title, "patent," and its root in preroga- tive ; and the literary property declaring its nature, its dis- tinctive title, copyright, and its root in common law. So that, in " Roper v. Streater," the plaintiff gives Yates the lie on behalf of property ; the defendant gives him the lie on behalf of monopoly ; and the judges give him the lie in the name of the common law, when he calls copyright in a man's own printed book " a monopoly contrary to the great laws of property " In my very first letter I offered the statesmen and lawyers 165 READIANA Yates has gulled with this fallacy a bet of 150 to .50 a man's copyright in his own printed book is property, and not mono- poly ; yet of all the men who are so ready to swindle authors at home and abroad out of a million pounds by means of this pettifogger's lie, not one has had the honesty nor the manhood to risk 50 of his own against 150 of an author's, upon the lie. I hope the world will see through this, and loathe it, and despise it, as I do. To sum up the bag of moonshine. To any man who has read history at its sources, as Mansfield and Blackstone did, Yates's whole picture of old England is like an historical novel written by an unlettered girl. She undertakes, like him, to present antiquity; and what she does portray is the little bit of her own age she has picked up, its thoughts and phrases. Under the Tudors and the Stuarts her characters are impreg- nated with modern views of liberty, and rhapsodise accord- ingly : they have even a smattering of "political economy " and let you know it ; and they say " the Sabbath " " illusions " " developments " " to burke an inquiry " " the fact of my being so and so," meaning " the circumstance of my being so and so/' and her counsel address the jury for a criminal, and you may thank your stars if Lady Jane Grey does not lay down her Longinus (of whom there was not a copy in the kingdom) and waltz with the Spanish Ambassador. The sentiments and the phrases Judge Yates ascribes to men under the Tudors, the Stuarts, the Commonwealth, and the Dutchman, are all pure anachronisms, quite as barefaced to any scholar as those in a virgin's novel. Old England never personified "the public," as Yates fancies it did, and "Fur Publicola," or the patriot thief of copyright, was yet unborn. The men who built seven gables to one house, and break- fasted on ale, had no such extravagant anticipations of liberty as to despoil private property in its sacred name. Indeed "copy" was a word oftener used than "liberty," under James I., and even when liberty began to struggle, it was against power in high places, not property in low ones. It cut down prerogatives ; it did not run away with fig-trees because the proprietor sold it the figs. The tall talk, the bombastical mendacity, " publication of a volume being a gift of the copyright to the public " " a property in ideas," &c., all this rhapsodical rubbish emanated from romantic petti- foggers, gilding theft, at a known date namely, between 1740 and 1765, and the ideas were not a month older than the varnish, for they were all invented, not by judges, but 166 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS by counsel for the defence of post-statutory piracies. Find me this slip-slop defiling the mouths of the old judges. So much for h priori reasoning against evidence. What else was to be expected ? The system of reasoning that kept the world dark for ages, it would be odd indeed if that system could not darken a single subject, and turn so small a thing as a pettifogging judge into so common a thing as a lunatic. THE BACONIAN METHOD v. THE METHOD OF THE DARK AGES. Evidence on one line may mislead, but concurrent evidence never. By concurrent evidence I mean veins of evidence starting from different points, but converging to one centre. Three distinct coincidences, pointing to one man as a murderer, have always hanged him in my day. I have many examples noted. Almost the greatest concurrence of heterogeneous evidence on any historical fact whatever, is that which proves copyright at law in printed books before Queen Anne ; which also proves an Englishman has full copyright in the United States. First let me ask What is A WORD ? The insane sophists seem to fancy it is a thing, or else air. It is neither. It is defined, and justly, by the logicians, " the current sign of an established thing." It can never precede the thing signified. We all know the word-making process ; for we have all seen it. There was no word more wanted than " telegram," yet it was not coined till years after the thing signified. I saw the verb "to burke" created. It was coined about six months after Burke, who smothered folk for the anatomists, was hung; but it took years to penetrate the kingdom. When a word gets to be used by different classes, governing and governed, that is the voice of the nation, and its currency shows the thing to be full-blown and long-established. It is simply idiotic to look, with moon-calf eye, at an ancient popular word, and bay the moon with conjectures that no ancient thing was signified. Heads of the evidence against forfeiture of copyright by publication. 1. The word "copy" from the Tudor Princes to Queen Anne's statute, and in the statute, and after the statute, always used to signify the sole right of printing before and after publication. That alone bars Yates's theory that publi- cation dissolves the property. 2. The ancient use of this technical word in disconnected 167 READIANA things and places, yet always to denote property and occupation. Example A. Entries of sales and transfers of copyright, from 1558 to 1709, at Stationers' Hall, by occupiers. Proviso in 1582 that where the king had licensed any individual to print, the licence should nevertheless be void, if the copyright belonged to another. B. Recognition of " copy " as property in Acts of the Star Chamber, and Republican ordinances, both valid as historical evidence, and in the licensing acts of Parlia- ment 13 & 14 Charles II., 1 James II., c. 7, 4 William and Mary, c. 24, which are evidence, and something more, since, in all these, Royal Parliaments, having the same powers as Queen Anne's, protected, by severe penalties, that very pro- perty at law in published books which Yates divines out of his inside had expired by publication. Either these licensing Acts were copyright Acts which is absurd or they protected copyright as it existed for ever at common law. Here " copy," or " copyright," might very well imitate Des Cartes, and say, " PROTEGOR ; ERGO SUM." C. Use of the old word " copy," in Queen Anne's statute. The first statute on any matter is written under the common law. Even this truism has escaped the babblers on copyright. In Queen Anne's Act, the word " copy " is used six times in its common-law sense ; and it is first applied, viz., in sect. 1, not to manuscripts on the eve of publication, but to printed books ; and the preference antiquity had for the printed book over the MS. is here continued ; twenty-one years the minimum term to a pub- lished book, fourteen to a MS. on the eve of publication. Is that how Yates talks about the MS. and the book ? D. Recognition of the word, and thing, in business. Public and notorious sales of ancient copyrights, some of them famous : "The Whole Duty of Man;" Dryderi's copyrights, both dramatic and epic ; Milton's, Southern's, Rowe's, and some of Defoe's, Swift's, and Addison's. E. Several assignments of " copy " for ever, that now survive only in the verdict of the jury, tf Millar v. Taylor." A vast number drawn after the statute upon the perpetual common-law right : one, referred to in a former letter, survives in print, " George Barnwell," ed. 1810. F. The use of the word "by lawyers" in these pre-statutory agreements, also in the declaration " Ponder v. Bradyl," an action on the case brought for piratical printing of "The Pilgrim's Progress," "of which" so runs the plaint " the plaintiff was, and is, the true proprietor ; whereby he lost the profit and benefit of his ' copy.' " This brief and technical statement of the grievance is not like a pleader 168 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS groping his way by periphrasis to a doubtful right. The pleader is on a beaten track. 3. The terms on which Milton leased the copy of " Paradise Lost" to Simmons, in 1667. 5 for the first edition, 5 for the second edition, 5 for the third. (See Todd's Life of Milton.") This contradicts Yates, and his theory of forfeiture by publication, as precisely as A can contradict B in advance. When the liar speaks first, true men can fit the contradiction to the lie, in terms ; but, when the honest men speak first, the liar can evade their direct grip, by choice of terms ; for he has the last word. Put yourself in the place of Simmons ; if you were a publisher, and publication for- feited copyright, would you agree to give an author the very same sum for the second edition, and the third, as for thejirst ? I am quite content to refer Simmons's treaty with Milton to Messrs. Harper & Co., Messrs. Osgood, Ticknor & Co., Messrs. Appleton & Co., Messrs. Sheldon & Co., New York publishers. They shall decide between Yates and me. Mr. Justice Yates says Simmons's was an agreement with Milton, under the common law, for the mere sale of early sheets, and I say Mr. Justice Yates is a romancer. Now multiply this evidence by a hundred. We only know this business (Milton and Simmons) through the accidental cele- brity of the book; but the jury, in 1769, had a pile of examples before them. 4. The subsequent history of " Paradise Lost." Paid by Simmons to John Milton 5 in 1667. In 1669, 5 for the second edition. In 1674, 5 for the third edition, paid to Milton's widow. In 1680, sale of the copyright, for 8, Dame Milton to Simmons. Simmons, in two years, sold the copyright to Aylmer for 25 ; and Aylmer, 1683, sold half to Tonson, and, in 1690, the other half for a considerable sum. Soon after that a vast public sale set in; yet Tonson held the copyright undisturbed. The temptation was strong; but so was the common law. It was never pirated till 1739, seventy-two years after first publication. It was no sooner pirated than Tonson moved the court. It had no pro- tection under the Act. That protection expired in 1731. A judge, who was a ripe lawyer before Queen Anne's statute, and knew the precedent common-law right, re- strained the piracy at once under the common law, " Tonson v. Walker." Legal History 1667-1710, protected by common law alone, and never pirated. 1710-1731, protected by common 169 READIANA law and statute. 1732 to 1774, by common law only. Pro- tected by injunction, 1739, and again in 1751. 5. The verdict of the special jury in "Millar v. Taylor." They were not men blinded by any preconceived notion ; they were twelve men of the world ; they sifted the evidence, and found disjunctively that it was "usual, before Queen Anne, to purchase from authors perpetual copyrights, and to assign the same from hand to hand, and to make them the subject of family settlements : " all those disjunctive findings are equally good against the public claimant, unless Yates can prove it was also the custom before Queen Anne to settle Bagshot Heath, and Wimbledon Common, and ten turnpike roads upon son Dick, with a mortgage to nephew Tom, and a remainder to cousin Sal. His legal objection that custom short of im- memorial cannot make a legal title is specious. But he for- gets ; the root of our title is not in anything so short as what lawyers call immemorial custom. Our title is acquired by productive labour, and is personal property a legal right six times as old as the British nation. The narrow question of fact the jury dealt with was this was it usual for the act of publication to dissolve in one moment the perpetual right Judge Yates admits, a right acquired not by custom, if you please, but by productive labour and universal law ? For its modest office of interpreter of law, applied to so narrow a matter as non-forfeiture of an admitted right, the custom of two hundred years (solidified by a law case or two), and con- tradicted by no elder nor concurrent custom, is more than suffi- cient " consuetude interpres legum." The special jury were educated men ; impartial men ; sworn men ; many men ; unanimous men ; Yates was one unsworn man, with a bee in his bonnet. The twelve jurors were the constitutional tribu- nal, chosen of old by the Kingdom, and still chosen by the great Republic to try such issues. The one Yates was, as respects this issue, an unconstitutional tribunal appointed by himself, and no more sworn to try that issue than Dr. Kenealy was sworn to try the issue in the "Queen v. Baker." The verdict of that jury is law; and the usage of the kingdom for ages before Queen Anne is proved to be non-forfeiture by publication, and proved on evidence since dispersed ; and therefore PROVED TO THE END OF TIME. 6. The preamble of the statute. This is pre-statutory evidence, and Yates says it accords with his views. The 170 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS reader shall judge. I will draw a preamble honestly embody- ing his views as every candid mind shall own and I will place it cheek by jowl with Queen Anne's prelude. PREAMBLE 1 LA YATES. PREAMBLE OF THE ACT STH ANNE. Whereas, for the greater en- Whereas printers, booksellers, couragement of writers and other and other persons, have of late f re- learned men, to produce laborious quently taken the liberty of print- and useful books of lasting benefit ing, reprinting, and publishing to mankind, it is expedient to books, and other writings, with- restrict, for certain times, and out the consent of the authors, or under certain conditions, that just proprietors, of such books and liberty, which the subjects of this writings, to their very great detri- realm have hitherto enjoyed, of ment and too often to the ruin reprinting and publishing all such of them and their families ; for works as by publication have preventing therefore such prac- become common property; be it tices for the future, be it en- enacted, &c. acted, &c. I make no comment. I but invite ripe men to inspect this as intelligently as girls do Sir Octopus. Eyes and no eyes have muddled copyright long enough. 7. Law cases. A. " Roper v. Streater." King's Bench. Alias copyright, or literary property, v. monopoly. Judgment of the whole Bench for copyright at law against monopoly and prerogative. B. " Roper v. Streater." House of Lords. The Lords admitted perpetual copyright at law, but de- clared the king had a paymaster's claim to judge Croke's reports because he paid the judges and acquired a copyright in their decisions. Thus they smuggled him in as proprietor at common law. Yates's theory of forfeiture by publication never occurred to the mind of any judge, either in the King's Bench or the House of Lords. C. The injunctions soon after the statute. Here there are two things to be considered. 1st. A judge does not roll out of his cradle on to the woolsack. Sir Joseph Jekyl was a ripe lawyer in 1 700, when " Roper v. Streater " was tried in the Lords. He saw the common-law right long before the statute, and went by it after the statute, and against the literal words of the statute ; for they affix a term, and so could never suggest a new perpetual right. In 1735 he restrained a piracy on " The Whole Duty of Man," published in 1657 ("Eyre v. Walker"). 2nd. In those days an injunction really meant " an injunction 171 READIANA to stay waste of some property not disputable at law.'' Where there was a shadow of doubt at Westminster no equity judge would ever grant an injunction. This is notorious. Con- sequently the injunctions granted on the perpetual common- law right, by judges so timid, are evidence not only of their own adhesion to the perpetual common-law right, but proves that all the contemporary judges at Westminster concurred tacitly. Agreeably to this Lord Mansfield distinctly declares that the first doubt, which ever arose about the perpetual right, was in " Tonson v. Collins ; " and the Court of Chancery, on hearing a mere whisper of that doubt down at Westminster, instantly refused the injunction, because of the doubt, though they did not share it. I myself know from quite another source that they even suspended their proceedings in " Macklin v. Richardson" because "Millar v. Taylor" was pending in the King's Bench. Therefore the chain of injunctions they granted between 1735 and 1751, on the perpetual common- law right, were post-statutory acts by pre-statutory minds repre- senting the whole judicial opinion of the nation before and after the statute. 8. Admissions. This is the highest kind of evidence. A. Milton attacked a parliamentary licensing Act with great spirit. When a man falls upon a measure in the heat of controversy he is seldom nice. Yet this polemic and great enthusiast for liberty drew the reign at private property, and solemnly approved the constitutional clause in the Act, the severe protection of copyright. B. The petitioners to Parlia- ment in 1703. It was their interest to make a strong case for parliamentary interference. Yet they admitted they had an action on the case against pirates, and had no fears of a verdict; but could not get sufficient damages, nor enforce them, because the pirates were paupers. The force of this unwilling evidence has never been justly appreciated. C. A Legal Phenomenon. Judge Yates had a peck at several minor cases, but never once, in a discourse that lasted three hours, did he dare to touch " Roper v. Streater," either in the King's Bench or the House of Lords. Now when a lawyer dare not call his own principal witness, we all know fact is dead against him ; and, when he affects to ignore the leading case against him, that means he cannot get over the law of that case, and knows it. Of course a more honest judge would have faced it, and either got over it, or else given in to it. Indeed, there is no other recorded instance in which a dissentient puisne judge ever shirked the leading case 172 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS relied on by the chief of his court and the other puisnes in any case so fully reported as "Millar v. Taylor." It is phenomenal. Every practical lawyer knows in his heart what it means, and it is a game that only pays with dull or inex- perienced men. To us, who know courts of law, and the tact of counsel in gliding, with a face of vituline innocence, over what they cannot encounter, it is but shallow art ; for it blows the gaff ; and the critic goes at once to the ignored case, to see why it was ignored. Well, Yates ignored " Roper v. Streater " because he wanted people to believe two infernal falsehoods (1) that perpetual copyright at law in printed books did not exist before Queen Anne, and (2) that, had it existed, it would have been a monopoly opposed to properly. Now, in both these particulars, Roper, or property, gave him the lie Streater, or monopoly, gave him the lie and all the judges, in both courts, gave him the lie. That is why he evaded " Roper v. Streater," and the unprecedented evasion is evidence that he knew it smashed him. Thus " Palmer v. De Witt," and the other cases, backed by common sense and universal law, prove a man's perpetual in- corporeal property in the fruit of his own skilled labour. That law, deviating from all its habits, divested a man of so sacred a right because he exercised it, is a chimera supported only by a priori reasoning and romantic phrases born about 1750, and unknown to the old judges. First we answer a fool according to his folly, and pull his chimera to pieces. Then we answer him not according to his folly, but on the great Baconian method. And now this is clear ; either Bacon was an idiot, or Yates was an idiot. We prefer Bacon, and to go, in a matter of fact, by the general usage, and the sense of the old kingdom, sworn to on evidence by a jury, and confirmed and solidified by a chain of reported law cases, beginning before the statute and continuing by the force of common law after the statute, in a perfect catena ; also the obiter dicta of the old judges, and their dicta ad rem, all which heterogeneous evidence is " uncontradicted by any usage, book, judgment, or saying." Teste Lord Mansfield. So then " Robertson v. De Witt " and the complete proof supra of non-forfeiture by publication at common law give us copyright in printed books in the United States. We claim it from the judges at Washington, should we be driven to fight it in that form, and meantime we appeal to their consciences to back us with the Legislature of their country. For, if Robertson, making twenty copies of (t Caste," and fifty sets of parts, which is 173 READIANA multiplication of copies in a way of trade, and handing the parts to two hundred different actors a reading public and delivering the words for money to about a million spec- tators who pay, cannot by the common law be pillaged of his sole right to print and publish, what a farce it is to pretend on grounds of common law that another British writer, for publishing a book and selling one hundred copies in Great Britain, can be lawfully despoiled in the United States of his sole right, in spite of Blackstone and Mansfield, and on the ground of a mere variation in the mode of publicity and the way of selling. By such reasoning law is divorced from com- mon sense and from all ancient interpretation and usage, and from even the shadow of morality. Now law exists, not for the sake of law, but of morality. CHARLES READE. NINTH LETTER SIR, The power of judges is often crippled by precedents, that revolt their consciences and their sense ; but a Legislature is happier; the justice it sees, that it can do. Now, when literary property was first seriously discussed in the States, the question whether copyright is a property or a monopoly, a natural right or a creature of prerogative, had just been discussed in England, and the Legislature of Massachusetts read " Millar v. Taylor" and "Donaldson v. Becket," and decided between the dwarf sophist Yates, and the great lawyer Mansfield, in very clear terms. I beg particular atten- tion to this, that Justice Yates pointed to the title of Queen Anne's statute, as " an Act for the encouragement of learning, by vesting the copies (copyrights) of printed books in the authors or purchasers," and said very fairly that the term "vested" implied that the right did not exist before, in the opinion of Parliament. To this Lord Mansfield replied that the title of an Act is no part of an Act; and that in the body of the Act the word " to vest " is not used, but the word " to secure," and that the preamble would decide the question, even if a title could be cited against the body of an Act, for the preamble is full and clear in its recognition of the then existing property. In March 1783, the Legislature of Massachusetts gave judgment on this question of title v. body and preamble, as precisely as if Mansfield and Yates had referred it to them. 174 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS They passed their first Copyright Act under this title " An Act for the purpose of securing to authors the exclusive right and benefit of publishing their literary productions for twenty- one years." Having elected between "vest" and "secure" in their title, they passed to the second point ; and, to leave no shadow of a doubt as to their views, drew such a preamble, as even Mr. Justice Yates, who affects to misunderstand Queen Anne's preamble, could hardly twist from its meaning ; and I shall be grateful to any American critic, who will do American and English authors so much justice as to inspect the com- parative preambles I put together in my last and compare both with this which I now cite : " Whereas the improvement of knowledge, the progress of civilisation, the public weal of the community, and the advancement of human happiness, greatly depend on the efforts of learned and ingenious persons in the various arts and sciences : As the principal encouragement such persons can have to make great and beneficial exertions of this nature must depend on the legal security of the fruits of their study and industry to themselves ; and, as such security is one of the natural rights of all men, there being no property more peculiarly a man's own than that which is produced by the labour of his mind, therefore to encourage learned and ingenious persons to write useful books for the benefit of mankind, Be it enacted," &c. 1 Mass. Laws, 94, ed. 1801. The other States followed this example and these senti- ments; all avoid the word "vest" and employ the word "secure," and all, or most of them, recognise the security of an author's property as " a right perfectly agreeable to the principles of natural justice and equity." See the excellent work on copyright of G. T. Curtis, an American jurist, p. 77. The very idea of " monopoly " is absent from all these Acts ; they emanated from men who were lovers of liberty and constitutional rights, and had shown how well they could fight for them; whereas canting Camden illustrated his peculiar views of the common law by not uttering one word of objection in the House of Lords to a parliamentary tax upon the Colonies for the benefit of England ; an usurpation it would be as difficult to find in the law of England as it is easy to find copyright there. From these sound principles of justice and national policy the Legislature of the United States has fallen away, and listened this many years to cant, and the short-sighted greed of a Venetian oligarchy sticking like a fungus on the fair trunk 175 READIANA of the Republican tree. But I dare say not one member of Congress knows how unjust and unwise is the present state of statute law, as regards British and American authors. It is not only injustice we writhe under, but bitter, and biting, and inconsistent partiality. Even little lawyers, though their mental vision is too weak to see the essential difference between patent-right and copy- right, have a sort of confused notion that copyright is a trifle more sacred, and consistent with common law, than the various and distinct monopolies, just and unjust, which the narrow vocabulary of law huddles together under the term patent- right. Yet, in this great and enlightened Republic, inter- national copyright and stage-right, by statute, are refused, and international patent-right established. The distinction is a masterpiece of partiality, immorality, and inconsistency. The patent on new substances discovered or imported is a monstrous, unconstitutional restraint of just liberty, and will be abolished whenever Legislature rises to a science. The patent of invention is salutary. It is the exclusive right to carry out and embody, by skilled labour, one or two bare and fleshless ideas, but sometimes of prodigious value to the world : oftener, of course, not worth a button. The patent of invention is a mild monopoly in a species or sub-species of ideas ; but copyright in bare ideas does not exist. Copyright cannot arise until the bare and fleshless ideas of the author, infinitely more numerous than a patentee's, have been united with matter, and wrought out by the mental and physical labour of the writer, which physical labour accelerates the death of his body. An author's physical posture, when at work, is the same as a printing compositor's physical posture see the famous portrait of Dickens at work and his physical labour is similar, and equally bad for the body, whereas thinking and sweating at the same time are healthy. The author does the intellectual and physical labour not only of the architect or the mechanical inventor, but also of the builder or of the skilled constructor, and his written manuscript corresponds not with the specification of a patent, or the plan of a house, but with the wrought article, and the built house. The printing press adds nothing to the author's pro- duction ; it does not even alter the vehicles, but only improves them, and that only of late years, since running hand. The modern manuscript is paper with a certain laborious sequence of words marked on it in ink by skilled labour ; the book is paper with the same laborious sequence of words marked on 176 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS it by mere mechanical labour taking little time. Let A read from the manuscript and B from the book, and both readers deliver the same complete production, corresponding with the patented or patentable article, not with the bare specification. This object of property, the author's material web of words, has not, in itself, the value of a patentable article. Its value lies in its unique power of self-reproduction by means of the actor or the press. Mechanical articles of very moderate value are more valuable per se than any author's MS., but mechanical articles have no power of self-reproduction. There is no magic machine with which three quiet idiots, without an atom of constructive skill, can reproduce steam-engines, power presses, and sewing-machines. But three quiet idiots, with the printing press, can, without one grain of the original author's peculiar art, skill, and labour, reproduce exactly his whole composition, and can rob him of the entire value in his object of property, because, without the sole right of printing, his object of property has not the value of a deal shaving, whereas an article that might be patented, but is not, is worth ninety -two per cent, of the same article patented. Thus the American Legislature outlaws the complete, executed, wrought out property of a Briton, and protects his inchoate monopoly or exclusive right to go and work upon certain bare intellectual ideas, provided they are bare ideas applicable to mechanics. Take this specification to a Patent Office. " I have invented a young man and two sisters in love with him. They were amiable till he came, but now they undermine each other to get the young man; and they reveal such faults that he marries an artful jade who praised everybody." You apply for a patent or monopoly of these bare ideas, this little sub-species of story. You are refused, not because there is no invention in the thing there is mighty little, but there is as much as in nine patents out of ten : where is the author who could not sit on a sofa and speak Patents ? but because the common law, whose creature copyright is, pro- tects in an author, not invention, but constructive labour; gives him no property in bare ideas, but only in a laboured sequence of written words which convey ideas, but are pro- duced by physical and intellectual labour mixed, and are distinctly material in nature and character, though they carry an intellectual force and value. The piratical imitation of a patented sewing-machine is only imitation by skilled workmen of the patentee's ideas ; it is not 177 M READIANA identical reproduction of his wrought-out and embodied ideas, by mere mechanics working a stealing machine. To pirate a patented article you must employ the same kind of constructive skill the patentee, or his paid constructors employ, and then you only mimic ; but to pirate an author and steal his identical work, none of an author's skill or labour is required. All the brains required to reproduce mechanically that sequence of words, which is an author's object of property, are furnished to this day by John of Gutenberg, who invented the machine by which an author lives or dies, as law protects him, or lets thieves rob him with a stealing instrument worked by mere mechanics. So then the American Legislature protects a foreigner's monopoly, and steals a foreigner's property. The monopoly this great Republic protects is the creature of the British Crown, to which the great Republic owes nothing, and the property it outlaws is a property that arose in the breast and brain and conscience of our common ancestors. They, whose wisdom and justice founded this property in England, were just as much Americans as English, and we all sprang from those brave, just, and honest men. To swindle poor, weak, deserving, private men of a kindred nation out of this sacred property, which our common ancestors created and venerated and defended against the Crown in " Roper v. Streater," as the United States defended their rights against a Parliament usurping Russian prerogatives, a property which Milton revered, whose heart was with the Pilgrim Fathers, and all just liberty whatever; and to protect a Briton's monopoly, the mere creature of arbitrary prero- gative this double iniquity, I say, is legislation that disgraces the name of legislation and national sentiment ; it is a prodigy of injustice, partiality, and inconsistency. What ! I spend two thousand hours' labour on a composition ; to be sold it must be wedded to vehicles, paper, type, binding, and it must be advertised. I pay the paper-makers, the printers, the binders. I pay the advertisements : the retail trader takes twenty-five per cent, of my gross receipts; the publisher justly shares my profits. The book succeeds. I cross the water with it, and its reputation earned by my labour, and my advertisements ; I ask a trifling share of the profits from an American publisher, who profits by me as much as ever my British publisher did. "You!" says he, "you are nobody in this business. I shall pay for the vehicles, but not for the production that sells the vehicles. I shall pay the paper-makers, and also the printers 178 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS and binders, Britons or not. But I shall take your labour gratis, on the pretence that you are a Briton." The American public pays a dollar for the book ; fifty-five cents of the value is con- tributed by the English author. The various labourers, who are all paid, make up the forty-five cents amongst them. He who alone contributes fifty-five per cent, is the one picked out of half-a-dozen workmen concerned to be swindled out of every cent, and the Legislature never even suspects that by so doing it disgraces legislature and mankind. An Englishman writes a play, mixing labour with invention. The stage carpenter contributes a petty mechanical idea suggested by the scene ; he uses wavy glass at an angle under limelight to represent the water. The play crosses the Atlantic ; anybody steals it for all the Legislature cares, but, if they touch my carpenter's demi-semi-invention, his bare fleshless intellectual idea of placing an old substance, glass, at an angle under another old thing, limelight "Halte la ne touchez pas a la Reine!" The creature of Crown Prerogative protects in New York and Boston the naked half idea of the British carpenter. No American glass and limelight honestly bought must be wedded to that bare idea; and the idea taken gratis. Only the property can be stolen because it belongs to the everlasting victim of man's beastly cruelty and injustice ; the dirty little British monopoly is secure. The British actor must be paid four times his British price for delivering the British author's property in a New York or Boston theatre ; the fiddlers, Britons or not, for fiddling to it ; the door-keepers for letting in the public to see it, &c. Only the one imperial workman, who created the production, and inspired the carpenter with his lucrative demi-semi-idea, and set the actors acting, and the fiddlers fiddling, and the public paying, and the thief of a manager jingling another man's money, is singled out of about eighty people, all paid out of his one skull, to be swindled of every cent, on the pretence that he is a Briton ; but really because he is an author. The world wicked and barbarous as it is affords no parallel to this. It is not the injustice of earth; it is the injustice of hell. CHARLES READE. 179 READIANA TENTH LETTER SIR, I ask leave to head this letter THE FIVE-FOLD INIQUITY. The outlawry of British authors and their property is a small portion of the injustice. The British Legislature has for years offered the right hand of international justice ; it is therefore the American Legislature that robs the American author in England. That is No. 2. But the worst is behind. The United States are a stiff protectionist nation. The American chair-maker, carriage-maker, horse-breeder, and all producers whatever are secured by heavy imposts against fair competition with foreigners. Also the American publisher, and the American stationer. The tariff taxes paper, I think, and is severe on English books. But turn to the American author. He cannot write a good work by machinery; like the English author, he can only produce it by labour, intel- lectual and physical, of a nature proved to shorten life more or less. While he is writing it, debt must accumulate. When written, how is this laborious producer in a protec- tionist nation protected ? Are imported compositions paid for like any other import, and also taxed at the ports to protect the native producer ? On the contrary, the foreign literary composition is the one thing not taxed at the ports, and also the one thing stolen. And the State, which dances this double shuffle on the author's despised body at home, robs him of his property abroad. The enormity escapes the judgment of the American public in a curious way, which I recommend to the notice of metaphysicians. It seems that men can judge things only by measurement with similar things. But the world offers no parallel to this compound iniquity, and so, com- parison being impossible, the unique villainy passes for no villainy. I will try and remove that illusion. Let us suppose a fast- trotting breed of horses, valueless in trade without a car and harness. You must yoke the horse to car and harness, and then they run together, and are valuable ; but they don't melt together, because they are heterogeneous properties ; and so are the author's composition and its vehicles heterogeneous 180 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS properties ; you may mix the two, but you cannot confound them as you can flour and mustard, by mixing. An American citizen breeds a horse, at considerable expense, for the dealers. They supply the cart and harness, and have virtually a monopoly in the trade. Carts and harness, to be imported, must be bought and taxed. But the Legislature permits the dealer and trade monopo- list to steal foreign horses, and also import them untaxed. How can the American breeder compete with this double iniquity ? The analogy is strict. This is the social, political, and moral position of the American author in a protectionist nation, and he owes it to his own Legislature. Our Legis- lature offers to treat him as a man, not a beast. Now does this poor devil pay the national taxes? He does. What for? The State has no claim on him. The State has out- lawed him ; has disowned his citizenship, and even his humanity. Is he expected not to take any property he can lay his hand on ? Stuff and nonsense ! Law is only a mutual compact between man and man. In the American author's case, the Republic, through its representatives, has dissolved that mutual compact, and broken the public faith with the individual subject. The man is now reduced to a state of nature, and may take anything he can lay his hands on. There is not a casuist, alive or dead, who will deny this. Earth offers no parallel to this quintuple iniquity. 1. British monopoly respected. 2. British property stolen. 3. American author struck out of the national system, Protection. 4. Crushed under the competition of foreign stolen goods. 5. Robbed of his natural property, and his rights of man, in England. A property founded, as the sages of Massachusetts justly say, on the natural rights of man to the fruits of his labour, cannot be property in one country and no property in another. It can be protected in one country and stolen in another ; but it is just as much property in the country where it is stolen, as in the country where it is protected. Geographical pro- bity local morality Thou shalt not steal except from a British author out of bounds Do unto your neighbour as you would he should do to you unless he is a British author out of bounds all these are vain endeavours to pass geogra- phical amendments upon God's laws, and on the old common law, and on the great ungeographical conscience of civilised mankind. The honest man spurns these provincial frauds, 181 READIANA plain relics of the savage ; and the pirate takes them, with a sneer, as stepping-stones to the thing withheld. In proof of this I give a few indirect consequences of the five-fold iniquity. 1. Mutilation and forgery. The same people that steal a foreign author's property mutilate it, and forge his name to what he never wrote : and they cannot be hindered, except by international copyright. A. Tom Taylor and Charles Reade write a comedy called "The King's Rival." Here Nell Gwynne, a frail woman with a good heart, plays a respectable part, because her faults are not paraded, and her good quali- ties appear in action. The comedy concludes in the King's closet; he forgives his cousin, the Duke of Richmond, and Francis Stuart ; the centre doors are thrown open, the Queen and Court appear, and the King introduces the Duke and Duchess as a newly married couple, and the curtain falls, because the suspense has ceased; and that is a good rule. The character of Nell Gwynne was admirably played, and we arranged for the actress (Mrs. Seymour) to show one hand, and a frolic face at a side curtain, unseen, of course, by the Queen and the Court, who occupy the whole background. Our Transatlantic thief was not satisfied with this, nor with stealing our brains. He brings Nell Gwynne out of her sly corner into the very centre of the stage, and gives her a dialogue with the King, during which the Queen is mute, perhaps with astonishment. The twaddle of the speakers ends with the King inviting the company to adjourn to the playhouse, and receive another lesson from Mistress Gwynne. That lady, who in the play had shown a great deal less vanity than characterises actresses in general, now replies pedan- tically for the first time : " It is our desire, your Majesty, while we amuse, to improve the mind. Our aim is By nature's study to portray most clear From Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, immortal Shakespeare, How kings and princes by our mimic art Yield their sway and applaud the actor's part. The Bard of Avon in that prolific age Traced thoughts upon the enduring page." Is it possible ? " Precepts in that powerful work we find To improve the morals and instruct the mind. 182 RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF AUTHORS There he holds, as 'twere, a mirror up to Nature, Shows Scorn her own image, Virtue her own feature. To-night, king, queen, lords, and ladies act their part, Each prompted by the workings of the heart, And Nelly hopes they will not lose their cause Nor will they if favoured by your applause." This is how dunces and thieves improve writers. Though she is the King's mistress, this unblushing hussy stands in the very centre of the stage, with the King between her and his wife, the Queen of England ; and though she is an actress who had delivered the lines of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and other melodious poets, she utters verses that halt and waddle, but do not scan. The five-foot line is attempted, but there are four-foot lines and six foot-lines, and lines unscan- nable. Now there is no surer sign of an uneducated man than not knowing how to scan verses. We detect the uneducated actor in a moment by this. Our self-imposed collaborates forges the name of a Cambridge scholar and an Oxford scholar to a gross and stupid indelicacy, showing the absence both of sense and right feeling, and also to verses that do not scan. He lowers us, as writers and men, in the United States, which is a very educated country with universities in it ; and, as these piratical books are always sent into England, in spite of our teeth, he enables the home pirate to swindle us out of our property, and also of our credit as artists, scholars, and gentlemen, at home. The humbugs who, following Yates and Camden, say an author should write only for fame, will do well to observe that, wherever our property is outlawed, our reputation and credit as artists are sure to be filched away as well. The Publishers' Circular, a publication singularly gentle and moderate, has had to remonstrate more than once on the double villainy of taking an historical or scientific treatise, using the British author's learning, so far as it suited, and then falsifying his conclusions with a little new matter, and still forging his name to the whole for trade purposes. If this is not villainy, set open the gates of Newgate and Sing-Sing, for no greater rogues than these are in any convict prison. B. Fitzball, an English playwright, dramatised a novel of Cooper's. Fitzball coolly reversed the sentiments, and so, without a grain of invention, turned the American inventor's genius inside out, and made him write the Briton up and the colonist down. Such villainy in time of war would make a soldier blush. What is it in time of peace ? The British 183 READIANA Legislature is willing to put this out of any Fitzball's power. 2. Recoil of Piracy. I have the provincial right in a comedy, " Masks and Faces." Many years ago I let the book run out of print, because I found it facilitated piratical repre- sentation. Instantly piratical copies, published in New York, were imported ; and, on the most moderate calculation, the American Legislature has enabled British managers, actors, and actresses to swindle me, in my own country, out of eight hundred pounds in the last fourteen years on this single property. I have stopped the piratical version by injunction. But I can only stop its sale in shops. It penetrates into theatres like a weasel or a skunk; and no protection short of international copyright and stage-right is any protection. America saps British morality by example ; British actresses are taught, by Congress, to pillage me in the States. They come over here and continue the habit the American Legisla- ture has taught them. At this very moment I have to sue a Glasgow manager, because an English actress brought over a piratical American book of " Masks and Faces " in spite of the injunction, and they played it in Glasgow ; and I can see the lady thinks it hard, since she had a right to pillage her countryman in the States, that she should not be allowed to pillage him also in his own country. That is how all local amendments on the eighth commandment operate. They make the whole eighth commandment seem unreasonable and inconsistent. 3. A Dublin editor pirated my story, " It is Never too Late to Mend," under the title of " Susan Merton : a Tale of the Heart." This alarmed me greatly ; it threatened a new vein of fraud on copyrights. I moved the Irish Court of Chancery at once. The offender pleaded ignorance, and produced, to my great surprise, an American paper, in which the story was actually published under the title " Susan Merton : a Tale of the Heart" and the English author's name suppressed. So careful of an author's fame, my Lord Camden, are those superior spirits who set him an example of nobility by de- spising his property. " It is Never too Late to Mend" is an ideaed title.