Paul and the Printing Press Part 13

CHAPTER VIII

THE ROMANCE OF BOOKMAKING

"Ever since last night, Dad," remarked Paul, the next evening at dinner, "I have been wondering how the old printers got rid of the Latin text, lettering, or whatever you call it, and got down to printing in English like ours."

"You're starting on a long story," replied Mr. Cameron, glancing up from his plate. "The development of our modern type requires a volume in itself. Many scholars and many craftsmen contributed to that glorious result. It did not come all in a minute. Gutenburg's uneven Latin lettering was a far cry from our uniform, clear, well-designed variety of print. In the first place, as I told you before, good ink and good paper were necessary to beautiful text, and these Gutenburg did not have. Gradually, however, as a result of repeated experiments, paper and ink that were of practical value were manufactured. China had long been successful in printing because of the fine texture of her paper. Italy, the home of the arts, caught up Gutenburg's invention and brought not only lettering but paper-making to a marvelous degree of perfection."

"Italy and China always seem to be doing things," laughed Paul.

"Both nations were inventive and original," answered Mr. Cameron. "The difference between them was that while China locked all her discoveries up within her own walled cities, Italy shared her knowledge with the rest of the world and made it and herself immortal."

"The Italians were a great people, weren't they?"

"They were true lovers of all that was best and most beautiful,"

answered his father gravely. "Even their aristocracy felt it no disgrace to toil to perfect a fine art. To make that which was excellent more excellent still was the aim of rich and poor. n.o.bles, artisans, barefooted friars worked together towards that common goal. It was an Italian prince, Nicholas V, a man who afterward became Pope, who founded the Vatican Library and collected five thousand books, at a time, you must remember, when a book was a rare and almost priceless treasure. To him we owe the preservation of many a valuable old ma.n.u.script that might otherwise have been destroyed. Five thousand volumes was in those days a vast number to get together."

"Our public libraries would not think so now," smiled Paul.

"No, because at present books are so easily within reach that we scarcely appreciate them. We certainly read only a very small proportion of them."

"I know I don't read many," said Paul soberly.

"You will read more as you grow older, son," returned his father kindly.

"But most of us are intellectually lazy; even grown-up persons devote a good part of their short lives to reading things that profit them nothing."

"Things like the _March Hare_, for example," suggested Paul facetiously.

"Many a worse thing than the _March Hare_, I'm afraid," his father responded. "We seem to think we have unlimited time before us, and that there is no hurry about reading the good things we mean to read before we die; so we waste our precious moments on every sort of trash--cheap novels, worthless magazines, newspaper gossip, and before we know it, our lives are gone. I overlook your being so foolish; but for me it is inexcusable. The Italians of the Renaissance did not give themselves over to such folly. They put their hearts seriously into building up their age and generation. Lorenzo de Medici dragged from the corners of Europe and Asia some two hundred Greek and Latin ma.n.u.scripts. Other Florentines, Venetians, Romans collected private libraries. Princes of the land turned their wealth not to their own idle pleasure but to financing Gutenburg's invention and establishing printing presses which the culture and brain of the country controlled. There was a printing press at the Vatican itself, and scholars who were paid large salaries met in consultation concerning the literature printed. The best artists contributed their skill to the undertaking. Indeed, it was a disagreement about some theological work that Martin Luther had come from Germany to help with that sent him back home in a temper. And not only was the matter printed carefully scrutinized but also every detail of its production was thought out--the size of the page, the size of the type, the width of the margins, the quality of the paper, the variety of type to be used. What wonder that under such conditions printing was rapidly transformed from a trade to an art. When we think of the exquisite books made in this far-away day, we sigh at our present output."

Mr. Cameron's face clouded, then brightened.

"Nevertheless when all is said and done, books are not for the person of wealth alone. The work of the Aldi of Italy, the Elzevirs of Leyden, the Estiennes of Paris, although of finest quality, was much too expensive for universal use. For it is the subject matter inside the book which, when all is said and done, is the thing we are after, and which we are eager to spread abroad; and never in any age has every type of literature been so cheap and accessible, or the average of culture so high as now. If a person is ignorant to-day it is his own fault. Nothing stands between him and the stars but his own laziness and indifference."

"_Time_, my dear Henry," interrupted Mrs. Cameron. "Do not leave out the element of time. Remember that the farther away we get from the beginning of learning, the greater acc.u.mulation there is for us to master. Like a mammoth s...o...b..ll, each century has rolled up its treasure until such a ma.s.s has come down to us that it is practically impossible for us to possess ourselves of it. Sometimes when I think of all there is to know, I am depressed."

"And me, too, Mater," echoed Paul. "It seems hopeless."

"But there are short outs," argued Mr. Cameron. "No one expects any of us to read all the books of the past. The years have sifted the wheat from the chaff, and by a process of elimination we have found out pretty well by this time what the great books are. By cla.s.sifying our subjects we can easily trace the growth and development of any of the really significant movements of the world; we can follow the path of the sciences; study the progress of the drama from its infancy to the present moment; trace the growth of the novel; note the perfecting of the poetic form. History, philosophy, the thought of all the ages is ours. That is what I mean when I say there is no excuse for persons of our era being uninformed. We are reaping the results of many unfoldings and can see things with a degree of completeness that our ancestors could not; they looked at life's problems from the bottom of the hill and got only a partial view; we are seeing them from the top, and understanding--or we should be understanding--more fully, their interrelation."

"I suppose," mused Paul thoughtfully, "that those who come after us will see even farther than we."

"They ought to, and I believe they will," his father answered. "_Nothing walks with aimless feet_, in my opinion. It is all part of a gigantic, divine plan. The small beginnings of the past have been the seed of to-day's harvest. We thank Gutenburg for our books. We thank such men as Nicholas V and many another of his ilk for the Vatican Library, the British Museum, the numberless foreign museums; we owe a debt to our nation for our own Congressional Library, to say nothing of the smaller ones that, through the public spirit of generous citizens, have opened their doors to our people and done so much to educate and democratize our country."

There was a moment of silence.

"And quite aside from the thousands of volumes written in our own language, we have access to the literature of other nations both in translation and in their mother tongue. Remember that after printing had got well under way, type in other languages--Arabic, Greek, Hebrew--had to be developed in order that the literature of other languages might augment our own."

"I don't think I took that into account," remarked Paul.

"Of course," continued Mr. Cameron less seriously, "not every person of the olden time was alert for learning. Human nature was much the same then as now.

"I'm afraid even in the midst of all this thirst for knowledge there were those who cared far more for the outside of a book than for the inside," he continued humorously. "Books were bound in brocade, in richly ornamented leather embossed with gilt; some had covers of gold or silver studded with gems, while others were adorned with carved ivory or enamel. As time went on and the religious ma.n.u.scripts written, illuminated, and bound by the monks gave place to the more elaborate productions of a printing age, ecclesiasts were not skilful enough to do the ill.u.s.trating demanded, and a guild of bookbinders sprang up. Into the hands of artists outside the cloister were put the more dainty and worldly pictures required by secular text. Then followed a period when scholars who owned books were no longer forced to loan them to students to copy for their own use, as had been the case in the past. Books became less expensive and were accessible to everybody. Slowly they were got into more practical form--were made smaller and less bulky; not only outside but inside they were improved. 'The Lives of Saints' and Fox's 'Book of Martyrs' gave way first to the tales of Merlin and King Arthur in various versions, stories of Charlemagne, and romances of similar character. Copyrights being unknown, there was no law to protect a book, and hence all the adventures of the hero of any one tongue were pa.s.sed on to the favorite hero of another nationality; as a result French, Italian, Spanish, and Celtic literature teem with heroes who perform marvellous deeds of identical character."

Paul was amused.

"Amadis of France, the popular idol of the French people, worked the same marvels as King Arthur did, only under another name. Every nation borrowed (or rather stole) from every other. It was not considered reprehensible to do so. Shakespeare worked over the Italian _novelle_ of Boccaccio, weaving them into his great English dramas, and n.o.body censured him. It was this craving for romance that overcame the delight in mere display and roused interest not alone in the binding of a book but in its contents. True collectors and book-fanciers still strove with one another to obtain choice, beautiful, and fabulously expensive volumes. But for the most part the book came back to its original purpose and took its place as a mouthpiece of literature."

"Do you mean that books became cheap?" asked Paul.

"Not what we should consider cheap--that is, not for a long time. You see, the thing that makes a book cheap is not alone the material put into it, or the price for which it can be obtained of the author; it is largely the size of the edition printed that reduces the expense of production. It is practically as much work to print fifty copies of a volume as several hundred. The labor of setting the type is the same.

The circle of readers was not large enough in olden times to justify a volume being manufactured in large numbers; nor were there any methods for advertising and distributing books broadcast as there are now."

"Oh," exclaimed Paul, "I see. Of course there weren't."

"Advertising and distribution play a very important part in our present-day book trade," his father went on. "To-day publishers frequently announce and advertise the book of a well-known author before the ma.n.u.script is completed, sometimes even before it is written at all. They get a scenario or resume of the story, and take orders for the book as if it were really already finished. Or with the ma.n.u.script in their hands they will often begin 'traveling it' long before it is printed. The reason for this is that in a large country like ours it takes a long time for salesmen to get about and secure orders from the various selling houses of our large cities. It means spreading a book from coast to coast. While the publisher is getting the book through the press, correcting proof, having ill.u.s.trations and the colored jacket designed and printed, perhaps having posters made for advertising, his salesmen are taking orders for it by means of a condensation of the story and a dummy cover similar to the one which later will be put on the volume. Then, when the books are ready, they are shipped east and west, north and south, but are not released for sale until a given date, when all the stores begin selling them simultaneously. You can see that this is the only fair method, for it would be impossible, for example, for San Francisco to advertise a book as new, if it had been already selling in Boston for a month or so. All the selling houses must have the same chance. So a date of publication is usually set and announced.

Frequently, however, long before that date an edition, or several editions of a popular book will be sold out. Booksellers will be so certain that they can dispose of a great number of volumes that they will place large orders ahead in order to be sure of securing the books they desire."

"Can they always tell ahead what people will want?" inquired Paul.

"No, not always. Sometimes the public will be caught by a story and it will become popular not only to the amazement of the bookseller, but to the surprise of both publisher and author as well. One cannot always prophesy what readers will like, especially if an author is new. It is a great gamble. But usually an author whose work is known and liked can safely be calculated upon to sell."

"Is it much work for a publisher to get a book ready for the market after he once gets the ma.n.u.script from the author?" asked Paul.

"To produce a well-printed, artistic book requires infinite care and pains," replied Mr. Cameron. "Of course a book can be rushed through.

Such a thing is possible. But under ordinary conditions it is several months, sometimes a year, before the book is ready for sale. First a galley proof of the ma.n.u.script is made; by this I mean the subject matter is printed on a long strip of paper about the width of a page but several times as long. Then this proof, which is made chiefly to be sure the type is correctly set, is examined, and the errors in it are rectified. After this it is again corrected and is cut up into lengths suitable for a page. Following this the page proof is printed, care being taken that the last word at the bottom of one page joins on to the top word of the next. It is very easy to omit a word and thus mar the sense. It is also a rule of most publishing houses that the top line of each page shall be a full line, and in consequence it is often a Chinese puzzle to make the text conform to the rule. Readers often have to insert a line or take one out to meet this necessity, and sometimes an author's text is garbled as a result. No writer likes having words or whole sentences introduced or omitted; and you can't quite blame him, either, for he has to stand behind the book and receive not only what praise it may win but also the blame showered on it by both the public and the reviewers. Naturally the book--not alone the story but the style and choice of words--is a.s.sumed to be his. If he is a careful worker he has probably weighed every word that has gone into the phrasing. He therefore does not relish having his style meddled with, even for such a technicality as the filling out of a short line."

"Is it really better to heed this printer's edict?" laughed Paul.

"I think without question the book makes a better appearance if the rule is heeded," declared Mr. Cameron. "A printer does and should take pride in the looks of his page. The beauty of a book is quite an element in its production. After the type has been set up and corrected, and the proof paged, the next consideration is the size of the paper to be used, the quality, the texture. The width of the margins, the clearness or brilliancy of the text, the appearance and flexibility of the binding all have to do with the artistic result which is, or should be, the aim of every publisher. When all these details have been decided upon there is yet another important factor in book-producing--the item of expense.

Books being no longer the property of the few, they must be within the reach of the many, and the book-manufacturer's business is to make them so. It is precisely because we have such a large reading public that America has attained her high intellectual average. Not that we are a cultured nation. By no means. What I mean is that our public school system offers education so freely, and even compels it so drastically, that there is a much smaller proportion of illiterate persons here than in most lands. Our illiterates are largely foreigners who have not been in our country long enough to become educated. Most of them have immigrated from places where they had no educational advantages, and some of them are, alas, now too old to learn. The great part of our native-born citizens can read and write, and vast numbers of them have a much broader education than that. It is by means of the wide distribution of learning and enlightenment that we hope to banish ignorance and superst.i.tion and spread patriotism and democracy. So you see books are a giant element in our national plan, and the writing and publishing of what is worthy and helpful is a service to the country. To do all this the publisher has no easy puzzle to solve--to produce what is good literature artistically, and at a price where he shall have his legitimate profit, and yet give to the public something within the range of its purse."

"I guess I'd rather stick to my job on the _March Hare_!" exclaimed Paul.

"I imagine it is quite big enough for you at present," smiled his father. "Between the public, and the printer, and the bookbinder the publisher is torn in many directions. And then there is the author, who, as I say, does not like his text tampered with. Firms differ greatly about this. Some publishers feel perfectly justified in going ahead and remodeling a writer's work to suit themselves; others regard an author's ma.n.u.script as a sacred possession and never change so much as a punctuation mark on it without asking permission. They may suggest changes but they will not make them. It is a point of honor with them not to do so."

Mr. Cameron smoked reflectively.

"Authors, however," he went on, "are not as badly off as they were before they had the copyright. Their stories can no longer be stolen with impunity as in the past. They are better paid, too. Many an olden-time author received very scant remuneration for his labor; sometimes he received none at all. Many had to beg the patronage of the rich in order to get their works printed; contracts were unfair and publishers unprincipled. The unfortunate author was the prey of vultures who cheated him at every turn. Many died in extreme poverty, only to become famous when it was too late. In our day the law has revolutionized most of these injustices, and although there are still unprincipled publishers as there are always scamps in every calling, the best cla.s.s houses deal honorably with their writers, transforming the relation between author and publisher into one of friendliness and confidence rather than one of animosity and distrust."

"I suppose it is policy for a publisher to be fair."

"It is more than policy; it is honesty," returned Mr. Cameron. "It does, however, pay, for without the writer the publisher could not exist, and no writer is going to put his work in the hands of a person he cannot trust. It is a short-sighted man who kills the goose that lays the golden egg!"