Chapter M: N. to Mr. Hunt, May 1, 1762

"Can't you read figures, dear? Don't you know a five when you see it? Aren't you able to tell a two from a four unless they are labelled? I fondly believed you were, but as indications point the other way, I will have everything in a right line hereafter, so that I shall just have to drop you into the groove at the beginning and you will spin along of yourself to the end. I am your serf and slave--till I get the upper hands of you, which I shall one day--I always do, sooner or later. Don't be frightened, though. I shall roar you as gently as a sucking-dove. And please remember that Hebrews is not Romans--or, as one cannot remember what he never knew, please be informed. Aren't you glad you have somebody who can always set you right?

"There is one thing about my letters though;--when you do find the place you know where you are. Yours I don't. Now what do you mean? Do you mean that my book is not good enough to publish? If you do, why don't you say so?

"When I was in Congress anything that was indefinitely postponed was as good as lost. I wish you would say, straight as an arrow, just what you mean. You need not be afraid of wounding my feelings. I have boxed them up in ice and sawdust and set them on the top shelf till such time as my fortunes shall permit me to indulge in such luxuries. I am rhinocerine and pachydermatous. Lay on Macbeth, or Duff, or whoever you are.

"You see it is absurd for you to talk about postponing the publication of a general kind of book if it is worth publicating at all. If it were what I want it to be, you would rectangle it up in ten minutes and have it out. If it is not what I want it to be, I don't want it published at all. If it is only so-so, pay-the-way-y, very good, I will have none of it. I want it to be triumphantly good. I don't want any drawn battle. I want an unconditional surrender, with fort, guns, and ammunition. If I can't have that I don't want anything. Now can I have that? You tell me. I know you know. I have been flattered to death all my life.... If the book is coarse, and violent, and insipid, and diffuse, and superficial, and egotistical, and worthless, say so. That is just what I am afraid it is, and it keeps me awake nights.

"It occurs to me that possibly you may have so much on your hands that you cannot publish it. I don't believe that, though. People can always find time to do what they will to do,--any way I can, and I am a female Atlas. But if it were so, and you would tell me that you thought the book was good, I would get somebody else to publish it. I should not like to do it to be sure. I have set my heart on your publishing my first book. You see, as Mrs. Browning says, 'I love high though I live low.' You know if you aim at the sun you won't probably hit it, but you will hit higher than you would if you made your target out of a scrub oak. I don't want to go into the world through the back door. I want to go in, sir, by the main entrance! with drums beating and colors flying! with body-guard on each side, and carriages drawn up in line! That means you--Brummell & Hunt is the triumphal arch and the Seventh Regiment! But you see I am tired to death and disgust of waiting. It is three years now since I took to writing in good earnest, and all this while I have been burrowing under ground. It is almost two years since I sent 'My Garden' to the 'A. M.' Two years apiece for the other two things will be four years, and by that time I shall be a coral reef, with all the pulp of my soul dried up, and nothing left but the dead shell. You understand I am not impatient of preparation. I am not only willing but eager to work. If I thought I could be more worthy by waiting; if I thought crudeness would mellow, I would wait; but the book is done. It is not a question of improving it, but to be or not to be.

"It would be a great disappointment, and I am sure a positive loss to me, not to have you publish the book if it is fit to publish. You would give me a prestige which I assure you I have sense enough to value. And yet will not the book, if it is good, make its own way, even if it should be born in a garret? You see I look at this from my standing-point only, for you of course are too well established to be disgraced by my failure or illustrated by my success. I am the only one affected, don't you see? If I fail it will nerve me. If I succeed it will give me a point of support. You understand, by success I don't mean that I desire to make a sensation. The public, whose countenance I court, would be comprised in a hundred men and women. If I should secure their suffrage, the rest of the world might go whistle. If the hundred put me on the pedestal, the ten millions cannot pull me down, for it is quality and not quantity that leads in this world, no matter what the world thinks.

"I want to be out too, because that thing is only the inch of an ell. If that succeeds I have half a dozen others--'City Lights,'--in the same style--and 'Rocks of Offense,' which is to put everybody right in religious matters. You don't know what my prophetic style is? I tell you it leaves Isaiah and Jeremiah nowhere! Then there is 'Night Caps' for children, and 'Holiday Stories' for all the holidays, and 'Stories of the Old School-House,' etc. I have sent those to the Tract Society and all the Eleemosynary Institutions, but they were not considered pious enough, and I am afraid you profane establishments would think they were too pious, so betwixt the clergy and the laity I should come to the ground with a thud, from which, like Antæus, I always gather strength.

"I don't believe you half read my letters. I don't know that I blame you, but it leads you into obvious mistakes. You say you want to print several of the articles--two certainly. Goosey-goosey-gander, where shall I wander; did not I tell you that all but those two had been printed before, and the last one which you had rejected? Why do you talk?... I am going to Athens to buy a new dress the first pleasant day of next week after Monday. Would you be willing to send those two papers around to----? I can look them over and manipulate them, and return them the next day. If you obey the impulse of the natural heart, unmodified by pressure of editorial duties, you will tell me, as General Taylor told Santa Anna, 'Come and take them.' And I would be glad to do it and talk about these matters instead of writing. But you must know that I cannot talk--I say what I don't mean and I mean what I don't say, and so an interview would be entirely inconclusive and unsatisfactory.

"You will understand from this brief epistle that it is not the book that won't keep so much as it is my own self.

"If I have said anything here that I ought not to say, pray make believe that--there, I just remember that my little book is not 'Night-Caps' but 'Make-Believes'--there is a book 'Night-Caps' already. Well, what I was going to say is--make believe I have not said it. I am writing in greatest stress of time, for our mail goes at unearthly hours, and I cannot stop to be proper. I wish you would give me a general absolution, retro-and pro-spective, till this business is over. Yours very truly."

MR. HUNT TO M. N.

"I see we must speak by the card when we write to Miss Wont-understand.

"This then, is what I wished to say in my last clear and felicitous epistle.

"Of course your book cannot be published till the articles I propose to print in the A. M. have appeared there. This is what I meant by postponing the issue of the volume. I wished to say that, B. & H. would print your book, certainly, but the time when must at present be unsettled for the reason above given. I have read the articles now and like them hugely. They are capital stuff for a book, full of all readable qualities....

"I will not eat you if you call in here when you come to town, but you must have your own way."

All the confidence, and all the respect for the house of Brummell & Hunt, which these letters indicate, I not only admit, but I introduced my case by avowing that I thought them the head and front of all publishing houses.

With regard to the exemption of fifteen hundred as the first edition of "City Lights," Mr. Parry said that the word edition meant nothing as to number. It meant simply a single issue. In reply to a question, he said he did not know what was the usage of publishers in this regard. They had sometimes exempted as many as two thousand, and had known cases in which five thousand had been exempted, and, I understood him to say, had done it themselves. One thousand, he said, was the usual number. Being asked what would be his own understanding of an edition, if nothing were specified, he said he would frankly admit that he should suppose it meant one thousand; that when any larger number than a thousand was exempted, it was their custom always to specify the number; that he did not know why it was not done now, and presumed this was the only time they had exempted more than a thousand without specifying the number. The reason of this large exemption was that there was so much risk in publishing a new book, and that this book was published in a style that was unusually expensive. It cost a great deal more than any other on their list; that there was no prescribed usage in such matters, and they could have exempted more, but had no desire to do so. I had said that if it were to cost more, they should have told me.[11] They had letters of mine showing that I did know it cost more, but that I was so desirous to have it printed in this way, that, in my own language, which Mr. Markman read and Mr. Hunt repeated with an air which showed that whatever literature had gained, the stage lost its chief ornament when Mr. Hunt went into the book trade, "I went down on my knees to you to have it like Sir Thomas Browne."

In my original statement I had said, "When the first book was to be published, Mr. Hunt asked me what style I should like, and suggested that of the 'City Curate.' I preferred 'Sir Thomas Browne.' He made no objection, nor even hinted that it was more expensive than the other. [Then came the quotations.] "I do not recollect that anything was said about it afterwards. The following books were simply published in uniform style with the first." This is my recollection of the matter, which is simple and commonplace enough.

From my letters at the time, however, the firm of Brummell & Hunt infer a thrilling dramatic scene in which Mr. Hunt was the obdurate autocrat, or the wise and thrifty guardian, as the case may be, who, like Mrs. John Gilpin, though on publishing bent, had a frugal mind; but was at length moved by me,

"Languendo, gemendo
Et genuflectendo,"

to lay aside prudence and launch out into a style of publication which could be met only by some extraordinary sacrifice on my part, I professing to be until this late disclosure ignorant both of style and sacrifice.

I give the correspondence, inserting Mr. Hunt's letters to throw light on mine--the latter only appearing in Mr. Parry's defense.

Let it be remembered that the book was published September 18, 1762.

MR. HUNT TO M. N., SEPT. 2, 1762.

"It is our intention to publish 'C. L.,' on Saturday, the 13th of this month: not before, certainly. If any great excitement befall the country, we shall postpone till the following Saturday....

"Your new preface is pungent as a pepper. Your motto seems to be, 'Je suis prêt.'

"Give it to 'em any way you like. A proof of the preface will go to you in a few days. As to the binding of your book, I propose same style as 'Rs. of a City Curate,' gilt top leaves and beveled boards. Do you like that way?"

M. N. TO MR. HUNT, SEPTEMBER 3.

"For you to set up and pretend to ask me if I like 'City Curate' style, when you knew I went down on my knees to you to have it like 'Sir Thomas Browne,' and you said you would.

"The next book you publish for me, I am going to stand over you with a grip on your coat-collar from the time you give the first copy to the printer till the first edition stands on the shelf, and see if you cannot be kept to something. I don't know what your beveled boards are--only if you put a _d_ in, the adjective would apply more accurately--and I don't want my book to be boarded up any way, and if there is anything I hate, it is gilt tops, and if you don't do it as I want it, I don't care how it is done."

MR. HUNT TO M. N., SEPTEMBER 15.

"We shall publish, unless a defeat crowns our victories, your book this week. It will be a beauty, and look like 'Sir Thomas Browne,' in its red waistcoat."

[This letter was delayed and not received till the following letter was partly written.]