“There was no occasion for you to make the admission that you were somewhat warm-tempered. Your letter establishes the fact. Considering your age, you are a little volcano, and if the insurance were aware of your frequent visits to the Royal Exchange, they would demand double premium for the building. Indeed, I have my surmises _now_ as to the last conflagration.
“Your remark as to the money I have received may sound very well, mentioned as an isolated fact; but how does it sound when it is put into juxtaposition with the sums you have received? I, who have found everything, receiving a pittance; while you, who have found nothing but the shop to sell in, receiving such a lion’s share. I assert again, it is slavery. I am Sinbad the Sailor, and you are the Old Man of the Mountain (_sic_) clinging on my back, and you must not be surprised at my wishing to throw you off the first convenient opportunity.
“The fact is, you have the vice of old age very strong upon you, and you are blinded by it; but put the question to your sons, and ask them if they consider the present agreement fair. Let them arrange with me, and do you go and read your Bible. We all have our own ideas of Paradise, and if other authors think like me, the more pleasurable portion of anticipated bliss is that there will be no publishers there. That idea often supports me after an interview with one of your fraternity.”
Author and publisher told one another “their fact” plainly enough in this case, and one rather wonders what lies hid under the asterisks. In the absence of information as to the proportion in which they respectively shared the profits of the stories written before 1837, one cannot undertake to say whether the unnamed publisher of fiery temper, advanced age, and small stature, received a lion’s share or not. If so, it must have represented a handsome sum, for Marryat was by no means one of the worst treated of authors. Colburn gave him £400 for “Frank Mildmay.” For “Mr. Midshipman Easy” he received £1,400, apparently in a lump sum. “The Pirate” and “The Three Cutters,” published together, brought him in £750. His other books were paid on the same scale, and he certainly did not edit the _Metropolitan_ for nothing. His code of signals, which was not literature (and perhaps on that account only the more lucrative), was an appreciable income to him throughout his life. On the whole, Marryat seems to have found the profession of author sufficiently remunerative. His indignation with his publishers may be safely taken to be mainly a proof that, in common with most writing-men of his generation, he was a firm believer in the creed that authors are an ill-used body. This is no longer quite so orthodox as it was. The wind is rather blowing the other way, and it is becoming the right thing to say that authors have themselves to thank for their ill-luck if they do not earn as much as they ought, and must bear the burden like their fellow-men if they spend more than they earn. This good sense may corrupt into a cant as others have done, but it is good sense. Marryat--who would appear to have made three thousand pounds or so in 1835, for taking “Mr. Midshipman Easy” and the other two stories, with his copyrights and editorship, he can hardly have made less--was in any case not an example of an ill-paid author. If he had to complain of want of money it must have been because he was a gentleman of extravagant habits, with a fatal weakness for bad investments. To be sure, if an author were to be paid according to the pleasure he has given others, and if “the shop” which makes a profit on selling his work had to render some royalty on it for ever and ever, then indeed was Marryat, together with all those whose work is of the widely-read and lasting order, ill rewarded. But insuperable difficulties bar the road to that ideal. Since paper, printing, and advertisements must be provided, the provider of these necessary things must share; since the novelist cannot hawk his own goods in a barrow, he must pay somebody to do it for him; since the world’s copyright laws put a limit on the duration of proprietary right in books, there must come a time when they are at any man’s disposal to reprint. In the long run the balance of profit must needs be in favour of the shop. To be sure, the nation of authors may console itself by reflecting that it has its revenge. There is much on which the shop makes no gain, first or last.