The Story of the House of Cassell/Part 1, Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
FROM TEA MERCHANT TO PUBLISHER
Four or five years after his appointment as agent of the National Temperance Society, Cassell had developed from an ill-paid, ill-lettered and obscure itinerant missioner into a celebrity who hobnobbed with celebrities. His house in St. John's Wood was the meeting place of writing people, artistic people, reforming people; he was the constant host of George Cruikshank, Mrs. Henry Wood, and the Howitts.
The transformation was due to his own quality, undoubtedly; but it was speeded up by the good fortune which, in 1841, during one of his temperance tours in the Eastern counties, threw him into the company of a Lincolnshire woman, Mary Abbott. She was a few years older than Cassell, a calm-eyed, discerning, managing woman. Fit mate for the ambitious and high-spirited man who fell in love with her, she was equally enamoured of him. In less than a year after their meeting they were married, had spent a short honeymoon in Wales, and settled down to housekeeping in London.
The house in St. John's Wood had been impossible to Cassell at the age of twenty-four but for the little fortune his wife inherited from her father. This was, in fact, the original material basis of all Cassell's enterprise, for it enabled him to begin doing business for himself and reaping the fruits of his own boundless energy applied to his own penetrating observation. The habits, tastes and views of the people were an open book to Cassell. From his boyhood he had keenly interested himself in every social phenomenon that came within his view. One of the facts he had noticed, as a traveller and a teetotaller, was that he could get tea and coffee only with difficulty and at high prices. For people of small means home-brewed ale and home-made wine were the normal drink; the poor took cheap beer, rum and gin. Cassell had come to the conclusion that cheap tea and coffee would not only promote temperance in the masses but put money in the purse of the man who purveyed them; and he had resolved to be that man if ever enough capital came his way.
With the aid of his wife's legacy, then, he began as a tea and coffee merchant in Coleman Street, in the City. The business was an immediate success. It was moved to larger premises successively in Abchurch Lane and in Fenchurch Street. Cassell was one of the early believers in large advertising. Teetotallers, and therefore potential customers for tea, were to be found all over the country; but the only means of informing them of the existence of John Cassell and his cheap tea was the Press. Through the newspapers he reached the pledged teetotallers, and at the same time created a large clientèle among the gentile public, who, if they did not care twopence for his doctrine, were eager to take advantage of his prices. He invented the "packet" system of tea-selling which has become a commonplace of modern business.
This avatar was not a long one. But it helped him towards his real destiny in a curious way. He wanted more advertising, and wanted it cheap. He therefore bought a second-hand printing press with which to laud his wares. Very soon he was employing the idle moments of his machine in the printing of temperance tracts, which he wrote himself. Thus, simply, began his translation from the condition of tea merchant to that of publisher. One interesting point about this embryonic stage of the House of Cassell is that, having put roughly illustrated covers on one or two of his tracts, he noticed that they were much more successful than the rest. Stored up in his shrewd mind, this was the germ of the Art Department of Cassell and Co.
Taking a brother-in-law into partnership, Cassell had a larger leisure and was better able to indulge his pet tastes. Thenceforward he spent much of his time in the pleasant work of editing and publishing periodical papers. His first venture grew out of the temperance crusade—a little magazine called the Teetotal Times. It was printed for Cassell by William Cathrell at 335 Strand, and begun in 1846. The next year the Teetotal Essayist appeared to supplement and fortify the Times. They swallowed each other up in 1849, and subsequently made one appearance a month for some years as the Teetotal Times and Essayist.
But before this amalgamation took place, Cassell had boldly stepped into another and a wider field. In July, 1848, he made his first attempt towards a popular weekly newspaper, and brought out the Standard of Freedom. The paper was " of the utmost dimensions allowed by law, and larger than the double sheet of the Times; price 4½d. per number, or 4s. 9d. per quarter paid in advance." His statement of its principles and policy throws a bright light on Cassell 's philosophy and upon his conception of an ideal society.
To free trade in labour was added free trade in commerce. Protective duties, bounties, or restrictions on importation or exportation, bank monopolies, official sinecures and pensions, and, still worse, superfluous public offices to which salaries and illusive duties are attached, were all indefensible. Going a step farther, the Standard of Freedom advocated freedom in religion. Religion the editor believed to be a matter of private conviction and sentiment—a concern exclusively between man and his Maker. Entire freedom and spontaneity were the very essence of religion; civil and religious organizations were naturally incompatible, and Church and State could not be united without serious injury to both. The religions of the churches, as of individuals, it was argued, must rest in free conviction, and therefore all laws enforcing external religious conformity were indefensible.
The Standard did not wave long. It did nothing but credit to Cassell's courageous and independent mind and nothing but harm to his bank balance. In October, 1851, it was incorporated with the Weekly News and Chronicle, and Cassell turned aside to other enterprises. One of these was the Working Man's Friend, a paper he had started in 1850; the other was the production of cheap educational books. Cassell knew the life of the working man thoroughly—none better. He knew the material temptations that beset him, the intellectual desert in which he lived, and the perils of the loafing in ale-houses and at street corners which was his chief recreation. He knew, too, of the pathetic efforts that had been made to give him new interests, such as the work of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge—formidable and forbidding name!—and that of the Penny Magazine. He was not going to make the mistakes these institutions had made. His Working Man's Friend did not patronize, did not give itself airs; nor did it play down to the lowest intelligence. It was full of sympathy and understanding of the workman's life. The first number was well received.
Cassell then began to get a great quantity of "letters to the Editor," written by working men, and within a few weeks he announced that he would publish a supplementary number to accommodate these communications. He said he was convinced that a fair proportion of his readers accustomed themselves to "the habit of close thinking," and that if they could be induced to commit their thoughts to paper they might render good service not only to their fellow working men but also to other classes of the community. They responded wonderfully. He received over two hundred articles in the course of a few days, and promised a succession of monthly supplements filled with these things.
They won high praise from Cobden and the Earl of Carlisle, among other notabilities, who both wrote their congratulations to Cassell. The compliments were well-earned. The first three numbers contained work by three people who afterwards amply justified Cassell 's estimate of their capacity for "close thinking." One was "J. A. Langford, chairmaker, Birmingham," who became John Alfred Langford, LL.D., F.R.H.S., the author of "A Century of Birmingham Life." Another was "Robert Whelan Boyle, printer, Camden Town," who lived to be first editor of the Daily Chronicle. The third was "Janet Hamilton, shoemaker's wife, Langloan, Lanarkshire."
Her first literary work to see print was the letter sent to the Working Man's Friend. She had never been to school, and was theoretically quite uneducated; but she wrote many poems and essays which, in the words of Punch, entitled her to "a niche in the Temple of Fame." John Bright, who visited her in her Scottish home, declared that she was the most remarkable old lady he had ever met.
Probably nobody could read the Working Man's Friend nowadays. It was in the sombre, heavy style of the era of night schools and mechanics' institutes. But it played its part in assisting the self-education of the masses for two or three years before it gave way to better and brighter stuff from the same Press.
Already, in the early days of the Working Man's Friend, Cassell had begun to arouse public curiosity and to acquire popular fame. This was manifested on a great occasion in 1851—that of the triumphal progress of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian exile, through the streets of London. There had appeared in the Friend a series of articles by Cassell proclaiming Kossuth's heroism and unselfish patriotism. From the office in the Strand where his papers were issued Cassell hung out a large Hungarian tricolour. Kossuth saw it as he passed, ordered the postilions to stop, and sent in a messenger to say that he desired the pleasure of shaking hands with Cassell. The greeting took place amid an outburst of cheering from the crowd in the streets and the spectators at the windows. Cassell was afterwards present with Cobden at the great meeting on Copenhagen Fields, Islington, when Kossuth delivered his eloquent address of gratitude to the English people for their sympathy towards Hungary.
Cassell now took the decisive step which led him to become a publisher on the grand scale. In order better to cope with the increasing sales of his publications, he bought the whole of Cathrell's plant, became proprietor of every department of his business, and imposed upon his title pages the legend, soon to become so familiar, "Printed and Published by John Cassell."
It was a "great" year, 1851—the year of the Exhibition. Cassell was not the man to let such a chance go by. Undaunted by the display of preparations by all the chief papers, and especially by the Illustrated London News, he made up his mind to bring out a better story of the Exhibition than anybody else. It cost him money, but it was profitable outlay, for popular interest in the Exhibition was intense. About a fortnight beforehand announcements appeared in the Press of the forthcoming publication of the Illustrated Exhibitor, a periodical description of various features of the show, with a liberal supply of engravings. The first week in June Cassell ordered advertisements to be inserted in the papers to the value of £100. His manager seriously admonished him on this extravagance. "This Exhibition time," said Cassell, banging the table with his fist, "everybody is going to stand on tiptoe, and if I don't do the same I shan't be seen. So, spend the money!"
Cassell proved wiser than his manager. The whole of the copies first printed were sold immediately. Day after day the machines could barely keep up with the demand. This success had a determining influence on his work. His experience of the Illustrated Exhibitor confirmed his observation in the matter of the Temperance tracts. It was the pictures which chiefly sold both. From that time onwards illustrations became a principal feature of his periodicals. The Illustrated Exhibitor came out in monthly numbers at 2d. from June to December. Its circulation had reached 100,000 in the latter month, when it was merged in the first Magazine of Art.
The place in the Strand was no longer big enough to accommodate Cassell's growing business. Looking for larger and more convenient premises, he found them in La Belle Sauvage Yard.
LA BELLE SAUVAGE INN