For William, "the most critical part of my struggle was over." At that time the united daily expenses in housekeeping of the brothers did not exceed a shilling. years after beginning business the cost of William's own living was limited to sixpence a day, and all that was over of his profits he laid out in adding to his stock. He saved in every way, buying his books in sheets and putting them into boards himself, saving on an average 3d. or 4d. a volume. His leisure time he spent in writing pieces of poetry in a fine hand, and selling them for albums; then he bought an old printing-press and types, in order to unite printing with his other business. The outlay was only £3, and with this miserable fount he actually printed a pocket edition of Burns, and after months of toil, which he considered cost nothing as he had time on his hands, in the interval of minding his stall, he sold off the whole edition, and cleared £9, by the transaction. Next he added a circulating library to his stall, and painted a sign, which he set up over his stall announcing that he was "bookseller and printer." So he went on, now printing "rules for friendly and burial societies," now striking off pawnbroker's tickets, now executing an order for 10,000 shop-bills, and at last buying a new fount of type, and starting a periodical called the Kaleidoscope, from the optical toy just invented by David Brewster. It was to appear once a fortnight; the price was to be 3d.; Robert was to be editor and principal writer, and William to be printer and publisher, contributing occasional articles. It was on the 1st of October, 1821, that the Kaleidoscope first appeared, and, though it did not last, it paid its expenses, and was a trial of the brothers' wings, and encouraged them to higher flights. The last number appeared on the 12th of January, 1822. From about this time the brothers began to have larger views. Those three or four years of hard work had fulfilled every reasonable expectation. Robert's small stock had increased to be worth about £200, and William's position was as prosperous. Leith Walk had served its turn. The brothers were made for better things than keepers of bookstalls, and printers of shop-bills and pawnbrokers' tickets, although they migrated from the Walk and their stalls with a feeling akin to regret. Robert removed to India Place, Edinburgh, in 1822, and William to Broughton Street in 1823; both places being stepping-stones to something better. PART II. If the period between 1818 and 1822 were the Dark Ages of the brothers, the ten years between 1822 and 1832 may be called their Medieval Period. In them Robert shewed literary power of a higher kind than was to be seen in the Kaleidoscope, and began by publishing his Illustrations of the Author of Waverley, a book made up of short sketches of persons in the south of Scotland, popularly believed to have been the originals of characters in the earlier novels of Sir Walter Scott. It would have been strange if, in these guesses, the writer had not sometimes gone a little wide of the mark, but on the whole these speculations were wonderfully correct. The book appeared in 1822, William, of course, being the printer, and was well received at the time, and republished in 1824. After being settled in India Place, Robert designed and, in 1824, brought out, (William being again printer and publisher,) his Traditions of Edinburgh, in which he collected all the old stories about the Scottish metropolis which he could either gather from books or from the memories of old and remarkable inhabitants. It appeared in parts, and after the first, materials almost unbounded came to the young author, chiefly, as he says, "from aged professional and mercantile gentlemen," and among the rest, from the well-known Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, now best remembered, perhaps, by the caricature portrait which he drew and published of Queen Elizabeth dancing before the Scotch Ambassadors. As soon as the first part came out, it attracted the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who told Mr. Constable he wondered "whence the boy got all that information." He came from Tweedside, too, S. VI. B and that was a sure way into Sir Walter's heart. It was not, however, till the first volume was completed, that Sir Walter overwhelmed the bashful author by calling on him in company with Mr. Lockhart. A very few days after this visit Robert Chambers received from the great novelist, along with a very kind letter, sixteen folio pages of manuscript, containing all the reminiscences, which he could summon up at the time, of old persons and things in Edinburgh. This was the beginning of a constant intercourse between the two, which only came to an end with Sir Walter's death; and when, later on, Robert Chambers was preparing his Popular Rhymes of Scotland Sir Walter lent him "whole sheets of his recollections, with appropriate explanations." Before the Traditions were finished, Robert Chambers was well and favourably known as a rising young author of antiquarian tastes to the literary world of Edinburgh, and the book was shortly followed by a sequel or companion, called Walks in Edinburgh, and published in 1825. Then, in 1826, came the Popular Rhymes, the Picture of Scotland, and numerous other works which appeared between 1826 and 1830 in Constable's Miscellany. In December, 1829, he took a still more important step, and was married to Miss Anne Kirkwood. While Robert was thus busy, William was as active in his particular line as printer and publisher, not only of his brother's books, but of whatever other books were confided to him. Shortly after the Traditions of Edinburgh were completed, he gave up the mechanical occupation of a general printer and adhered rather to publishing and more distinctly literary undertakings. Thus he compiled, with great trouble and much personal research, 9. work which he called the Book of Scotland. When it was completed he sold it to a publisher for £30. This was a poor reward, but the immediate result was an order from another publisher to prepare the Gazetteer of Scotland, for which the price was to be £100. To do this properly William Chambers made several long pedestrian journeys through Scotland, in which, by exercising his old rigorous economy, his expenses did not exceed a few shillings a day. The Gazetteer, as it finally appeared in a thick octavo volume, in double columns and small type, was almost entirely the work of William Chambers, whose share of the sum paid for the copyright was £70. Thus the two brothers spent the interval between 1822 and 1832, the only drawback to their prosperity being an absurd scheme of their sanguine father, who entered into a lawsuit to recover some property to which he had an imaginary claim. It need not be said that he lost it, and that his sons, to save him from prison, had to pay the costs. Thus Robert lost a large part of the money he had realized by his Traditions, and William was crippled in his resources for two or three years. At last, in November, 1824, their father died, a wreck, sinking under misfortunes which he had brought upon himself by his want of foresight. His wife lived the rest of her days with her sons, and William and Robert were freed from demands, which had been a drag upon their rising fortunes. In 1832 began the cheap Literature movement in the British Isles into which the two brothers threw themselves with characteristic energy. Their early struggles were over, their heroic age past, and their career became more prosperous but less interesting. In January, 1832, they issued the prospectus of Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, a weekly sheet at three-halfpence. Of this William was editor and publisher and printer, while Robert by his leading articles, which took the shape of moral, familiar, and humorous Essays, obtained for the new speculation a wide circulation. The success of the undertaking was far beyond the expectations of those who started it. In a few days the sale rose to 56,000, and at the third number, when the sale extended to England, 80,000 copies were sold. From that day forth Chambers' Journal continued a lasting success. The secret of its deserved popularity was no doubt owing to the energy and enterprise with which it was conducted, and to the great and varied ability displayed by Robert as a writer. In the words of William, "Robert and I had come through too many tribulations and seen too vividly the consequences of lost chances of well-doing among those about us, now to trifle with the opportunity of honourable advancement which had been fortunately placed in our way." The brothers continued the career so steadily and seriously begun with the same resolution and forbearance to the end. It is known to all, how the house of W. and R. Chambers of Edinburgh, became publishers in London also, and have always maintained a commanding position in the trade. It is known at least to many how Robert extended his literary labours into wider fields, and by turns enlightened and delighted his readers by his geological, scientific, and topographical writings. In 1863 he brought out his Book of Days, which proved a great success, but a great injury to his health. "That book has been my death blow," he was heard to say. Though he lived on and worked on he was never the same, and at last, on the 14th of March, 1871, in the 69th year of his age, he died very gently at St. Andrews, a victim as it seemed to himself and his family of that excessive literary labour which often proves so fatal by overtaxing the nervous system. Such is a very brief sketch of the life of one of the most genial and industrious men whom Scotland, rich in such characters, has ever produced.—The Times. |