the American decision had been, according to his thinking, dishonest,
therefore no other than dishonest decision was to be expected from
Americans. Against that idea I protested, and now protest. American
dishonesty is rampant; but it is rampant only among a few. It
is the great misfortune of the community that those few have been
able to dominate so large a portion of the population among which
all men can vote, but so few can understand for what they are
voting.
Since this was written the Commission on the law of copyright has
sat and made its report. With the great body of it I agree, and
could serve no reader by alluding here at length to matters which
are discussed there. But in regard to this question of international
copyright with the United States, I think that we were incorrect
in the expression of an opinion that fair justice,--or justice
approaching to fairness,--is now done by American publishers to
English authors by payments made by them for early sheets. I have
just found that (pounds)20 was paid to my publisher in England for the
use of the early sheets of a novel for which I received (pounds)1600 in
England. When asked why he accepted so little, he assured me that
the firm with whom he dealt would not give more. "Why not go to
another firm?" I asked. No other firm would give a dollar, because
no other firm would care to run counter to that great firm which
had assumed to itself the right of publishing my books. I soon after
received a copy of my own novel in the American form, and found
that it was published for 7 1/2d. That a great sale was expected
can be argued from the fact that without a great sale the paper and
printing necessary for the republication of a three-volume novel
could not be supplied. Many thousand copies must have been sold.
But from these the author received not one shilling. I need hardly
point out that the sum of (pounds)20 would not do more than compensate
the publisher for his trouble in making the bargain. The publisher
here no doubt might have refused to supply the early sheets, but
he had no means of exacting a higher price than that offered. I
mention the circumstance here because it has been boasted, on behalf
of the American publishers, that though there is no international
copyright, they deal so liberally with English authors as to make
it unnecessary that the English author should be so protected.
With the fact of the (pounds)20 just brought to my knowledge, and with the
copy of my book published at 7 1/2d. now in my hands, I feel that
an international copyright is very necessary for my protection.
They among Englishmen who best love and most admire the United
States, have felt themselves tempted to use the strongest language
in denouncing the sins of Americans. Who can but love their personal
generosity, their active and far-seeking philanthropy, their love
of education, their hatred of ignorance, the general convictions
in the minds of all of them that a man should be enabled to walk
upright, fearing no one and conscious that he is responsible for
his own actions? In what country have grander efforts been made by
private munificence to relieve the sufferings of humanity? Where
can the English traveller find any more anxious to assist him than
the normal American, when once the American shall have found the
Englishman to be neither sullen nor fastidious? Who, lastly, is
so much an object of heart-felt admiration of the American man and
the American woman as the well-mannered and well-educated Englishwoman
or Englishman? These are the ideas which I say spring uppermost
in the minds of the unprejudiced English traveller as he makes
acquaintance with these near relatives. Then he becomes cognisant
of their official doings, of their politics, of their municipal
scandals, of their great ring-robberies, of their lobbyings and
briberies, and the infinite baseness of their public life. There
at the top of everything he finds the very men who are the least
fit to occupy high places. American public dishonesty is so glaring
that the very friends he has made in the country are not slow
to acknowledge it,--speaking of public life as a thing apart from
their own existence, as a state of dirt in which it would be an
insult to suppose that they are concerned! In the midst of it all
the stranger, who sees so much that he hates and so much that he
loves, hardly knows how to express himself.
"It is not enough that you are personally clean," he says, with
what energy and courage he can command,--"not enough though the
clean outnumber the foul as greatly as those gifted with eyesight
outnumber the blind, if you that can see allow the blind to lead
you. It is not by the private lives of the millions that the outside
world will judge you, but by the public career of those units whose
venality is allowed to debase the name of your country. There never
was plainer proof given than is given here, that it is the duty of
every honest citizen to look after the honour of his State."
Personally, I have to own that I have met Americans,--men, but more
frequently women,--who have in all respects come up to my ideas of
what men and women should be: energetic, having opinions of their
own, quick in speech, with some dash of sarcasm at their command,
always intelligent, sweet to look at (I speak of the women), fond
of pleasure, and each with a personality of his or her own which
makes no effort necessary on my own part in remembering the difference
between Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Green, or between Mr. Smith and Mr.
Johnson. They have faults. They are self-conscious, and are too
prone to prove by ill-concealed struggles that they are as good as
you,--whereas you perhaps have been long acknowledging to yourself
that they are much better. And there is sometimes a pretence at
personal dignity among those who think themselves to have risen
high in the world which is deliciously ludicrous. I remember two
old gentlemen,--the owners of names which stand deservedly high
in public estimation,--whose deportment at a public funeral turned
the occasion into one for irresistible comedy. They are suspicious
at first, and fearful of themselves. They lack that simplicity of
manners which with us has become a habit from our childhood. But
they are never fools, and I think that they are seldom ill-natured.
There is a woman, of whom not to speak in a work purporting to be
a memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of
the chief pleasures which has graced my later years. In the last
fifteen years she has been, out of my family, my most chosen friend.
She is a ray of light to me, from which I can always strike a spark
by thinking of her. I do not know that I should please her or do
any good by naming her. But not to allude to her in these pages
would amount almost to a falsehood. I could not write truly of
myself without saying that such a friend had been vouchsafed to me.
I trust she may live to read the words I have now written, and to
wipe away a tear as she thinks of my feeling while I write them.
I was absent on this occasion something over three months, and
on my return I went back with energy to my work at the St. Paul's
Magazine. The first novel in it from my own pen was called Phineas