MUM'S
By E. E. KELLETT
" SUNT lacrunae rerum : it is sad to think that, like so many noble dwellings and ancient porticoes, an. institution which, but a few years since, one reckoned all but immortal, has fallen before the advance of new con- ditions, and the rivalry of too powerful competitors. I am reminded of the feelings of the world when Charlemagne died :
" It seemed beyond the common legal sway Of Death and Nature o'er our kind, That such a one as he should pass away, And aught be left behind."
I well recall the days of the old -" three-decker," the three- volume novel at thirty-one and six—a price far beyond the means of an average household. How often did I hear the words " I must order it from Mudie's " when a new and expensive book came out ! It was thus, as I have been told, that Macaulay's History penetrated into hundreds of middle- class families ; and it was thus, as I personally remember, that Middlemarch and Endymion, in all the freshness of their gilded youth, were read by our fireside. Through Mudie's the scattered intelligentsia of England maintained a certain unity, and kept themselves on a certain mental level : the weekly parcel, received in the most out-of-the- way places, helped the isolated clergyman or doctor not to fall far behind the times. That parcel was looked for like the manna in the wilderness. An impromptu piece of doggerel uttered by a paterfamilias when the blessing failed to arrive in due time remains rooted in my memory : " As children must have Punch and Judy, so I can't do without my Mudie." It would seem, by what one hears, that Punch and Mudie are likely to perish together.
There had been, of course, lending-libraries long before 1842, when Charles Edward Mudie, a young bookseller of twenty-four, started his great undertaking. Even in the time of Mrs. Malaprop, which must have been before 1776, there were ways of borrowing novels. It was in the circu- lating libraries of Bath, which apparently were very numerous, that Lydia Languish bade Lucy inquire for The Fatal Con The Mistakes of the Heart, and The Delicate Distress and those " books in marble covers about smart girls and dapper lovers," in which Macaulay and his sister revelled, were certainly not all purchased. The novelists of a hundred years ago—Plumer Ward, Albert Smith, Theodore Hook, relied even more than their successors of today on the libraries for their circulation. I possess several of their novels, in -their original three-volume form, -picked up for sixpence or a shilling in second-hand bookshops. These bear clear evidence of having been once in circulating libraries, and of having been passed from hand to hand. But when Mudie began lending books as well as selling them he was really starting something new, and was setting a fashion which, for fully fifty years, others might try to imitate, but could never surpass. His idea may be summed up in a few words. It was to appeal to that unique and most remarkable institution, the Victorian family, large, domesticqted, reputable. To this he lent not only novels, but improving works of all kinds, and he ministered to its tastes and prejudices with skilled adaptability. His library was carefully labelled " select " : that is, it was chosen to suit the right people. There was nothing in it to raise a blush ; gnats and camels were alike strained out ; and the Lydia of the fifties had no need to throw a "Mudie " under the sofa when her aunt made an unexpected entrance.
There is no doubt that in this sifting Charles Mudie did on the whole good service ; he saved the heads of the family a good deal of time, and left them free from anxiety when in the evening all sat down together, and one of them was chosen to read the book aloud. But there is equally little doubt that after a time he began to abuse his powers, and became a kind of unofficial censor. It was Mudie who decided what books it was fitting, and what it was unfit- ting, for the great British public to read. You had to procure your Ouidas from elsewhere : Messrs. Mudie did not stock them. If I remember rightly, Wilkie Collins's New Magdalen was one of those put on the New Oxford Street Index Expur- gatorius ; and many other equally innocent books could be named which were thus banned. As might be expected, Mudie sometimes overreached himself, and unintentionally raised the circulation of " wicked " works. It was, occasion- ally, a good advertisement not to be on his select list. Remon- strance, rebellion, and ridicule attended him as they have since attended the censor of plays. I have heard him called Mrs. Grundy's second husband, a prying garbage-hunter, or simply an old woman, and his " prurient prudery " became almost a proverb. But as long as the custom of reading books aloud prevailed in the " family circle," he was able to defy criticism ; and the millions of select books he lent out prove that the vigorous excisions he made still left an enormous mass of respectable literature, and found an enormous number of respectable people to welcome it.
It may have been in part the increasing free-spokenness of writers, and the growing demand on the part of readers for a less rigid censorship, that began the decline of Mudie's. But there were certainly many other causes. The Free Libraries supplied novels, not more than a few weeks late, ad libitum. The three-volume novel went out of fashion, and the one volume at six shillings took its place.; nay, some novelists, like Walter Besant, provided their goods at three and sixpence. The two-shilling yellow-back began to appear ; and vast numbers of people actually bought their novels. Along with this came the establishment of other libraries, possibly more up to date, or enjoying greater advantages—Boot's, Harrod's, The Times—not to mention those which, in every neighbourhood, with or without the precaution of a deposit, will lend you a book for twopence. Against all this it was impossible to contend; and the outward and visible signs of failure were not wanting. People who came up to London had been accustomed to look on Mudie's in New Oxford Street as a landmark, or even as a place of pilgrimage. As well miss St. Paul's as miss this power-station from which light and leading had been, during what seemed like an eternity, distributed through the land. But there came a day when they looked, and it was not there ; and they were bewildered, like the " caravans of Tema " which hoped for the oasis and could not find it. The old place was to know the Library no more ; could the ancient plant survive in its new home ?
For a year or two, if you searched for it, you could discover it in Kingsway : but it is now to vanish for ever. " Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade of that which once was great has passed away."
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