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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
The bogus English Mercurie still turns up in accounts of the early newspaper press. It figures in an article by « an English Typo » in the American Art Printer, and he adds the information that « to its direct assistance can be fairly traced the English victories that followed! » In the same number we are informed that « Mr Delane, editor of The Times, receives $20,000. » Eleven years have passed since Mr. Delane departed this life. ؟Does he still draw his salary?
We have had from time to time in our pages references to the types devised some years ago by the noted French printer, M. Claude Motteroz. The references to these types in the English trade papers have been disparaging, and we were by no means favorably impressed with the only example we had seen—an electrotyped specimen published in the Printing Times some years ago. The primary object of the designer, we may remark, was legibility, the beauty and grace of the letter being a secondary consideration. We have this month to acknowledge the courtesy of M. Motteroz in sending us not only specimen sheets of the entire series, but a parcel of valuable books published by the Librairie des Imprimeries réunies—the old publishing house of Quantin—who have adopted his types. (Only, last month we mentioned that they had been adopted by the École Estienne du Livre). We shall refer to the types more fully in a later issue. Meantime, we thank M. Motteroz for the books, which are all beautifully printed, and include some school grammars, M. Charvets' Enseignement de l'art decoratif, a large quarto volume with over twelve hundred illustrations; Paris, ses Vues, Places, Monuments, Théâtres, octavo, with two hundred illustrations, Chincholle's Pensées de tout le Monde, a miniature parchment-bound, volume with pages bordered with red line and gold ground of network; and lastly— choicest of all—a parchment-bound pocket Horace, translated into French verse by Auguste de Bors, with charming etchings by Paul Avril—a veritable édition de luxe, on hand-made paper, and simply perfect in typographic execution. It is no small honor to the types of M. Motteroz that they have been selected for publications such as these.
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Mr R. Winder, according to the Paper and Printing Trades Journal, is a solicitor at Bolton. His new composing-machine is at work only in a private printing-office of his own. It is being much altered and improved, and the inventor asserts that when completed it will be as quick as any other and much cheaper.
It has been observed that during the yellow-fever visitation in South America the printers were almost exempt. They have been equally fortunate in cholera-smitten districts. In Chile the cholera took great numbers of victims of all ranks and classes, but not a printer on the roll of the Typographical Union was touched. During the visitation in Florida very few printers succumbed; and in the states of New Orleans and Alabama the same held good. So that the occupation of a compositor is not so unhealthy as some would have us believe.
A correspondent of the Gutenberg-Journal draws attention to the large and bewildering number of appellations for processes of book-illustration. These are some that he has collected: Tissiérography, zincography, paniconography (or gillotage, after the name of its inventor, M. Gillot), photogravure, photozincography, heliogravure, heliography, heliotype, heliochromotype, hélioglyptie, phototype, hélioplanography, photoglyptie, phototypography, photochromo, pantotype, woodburytype, panotype, albertype, typochromo, callotype, autotype, diaphanotype, chrysogypy, gelatinography, téténotype, lencography, chaostype. This list might be greatly extended.
The Literary World has detected some slips in the great « Century » Dictionary. The English provincial slang word « nipper, » meaning a youngster, is elaborately defined as « a boy who waits on a gang of navvies, to fetch them water, carry their tools to the smithy, &c., also a boy that goes about and assists a costermonger » —a most egregious example of limiting a generic term to a specific meaning. The lexicographer is also caught tripping in his statement that a « pot-boy » « carries beer for sale to passers-by » —an unlawful act. Neither of these blunders would have been made by an English compiler; but Americans are strangely ignorant of matters of everyday life in the Old Country.
Writing of those fearful and wondrous emblematic designs adorning the astrological almanacs, Mr J. G. Holloway says in The Times:—I have often heard it asked, « ؟Who on earth are the designers of them? » I can answer the question as to one. Poor Charles Keene was. One evening upwards of forty years ago, I was sitting with the late George Ingelow, brother of the poetess, when in came Keene and asked us to guess what commission he had just received. It was to design and draw on wood the « prophetic picture » for one of the forthcoming almanacs. The great work was tackled then and there. Never were three « Fates » so merry over their dismal work as we. We wove the web, and Keene, in the character of Atropos, only did the « cut. » What a design it was! Death as a skeleton poised his dart over a crowned hooded figure; demons hauled on a rope fixed to a church; a stately throne-seat tilted to its fall; ships went down; powder magazines went up: all the whole thing. ؟Was credit taken, I wonder, in the next year's almanac, as the custom was, for the accuracy of the predictions?
Under the head of « The Struggle for Fame, » the Wellington Evening Press writes: There are many amusing and harmless fictions in many walks of professional life. A doctor, for instance, must not advertise, a lawyer must not « tout » for work, and so on. Yet we see, when a doctor has a fad like Brown-Sequard's Elixir of Life, Pasteur's rabbit-exterminator, or Koch's consumption-killer, how they cry, loud enough for the world to hear, « Eureka! » And lectures that will be reported and flashed by the electric spark all over the world are at once given, and manifestoes sent forth which are sent, day after day, to the ends of the civilized world, and the most gigantic free advertising indulged in for stuff not any more beneficial, and certainly not so harmless, as the veriest quack nostrum. Lawyers mustn't advertise in newspapers, and they never—hardly ever—ask a client for a job. Their method of advertising, when they do descend to it, is strictly on as free a ticket as the doctors'. A little scene in court, some impertinent remarks to a magistrate or judge, downright rudeness, and sometimes what might be termed blackguardly treatment of an unfortunate witness—these are the methods of getting cheap advertising resorted to by some lawyers. The reporter anxious for « copy » feels like a digger on a gold-bearing leader when the scene is got up, and falls delightedly into the trap laid for him. The unenlightened public say, « What a cute lawyer Mr So-and-so is! My word, he frightens the judges and the juries and the witnesses, you bet—he don't care a darn for anyone! » And the scene and the paragraph have done their work.
The Rev. Mr Wills, whose name has repeatedly appeared in our pages in connexion with a certain East Coast paper, has accepted a call to Rotorua. Since the late libel cases he has received anonymous threats of tar-and-feathers, assassination, &c., and though he has had experience already of personal violence and has not shrunk from his duties, his wife's health has become so impaired from continual anxiety that he has chosen to remove to a sphere where the community, undemoralized as yet by « the reptile press » will allow a minister of the Gospel to fulfil his functions without going in daily peril of his life.
Scotsmen have not enough « devil » to satisfy Mr John Burns, and he thus denounces them: « The curse of Scotsmen was that respectability that was degrading their manhood, their moral and mental fibre. They were too respectable. They cared too much for law. » Even more emphatic testimony to the character of the English working men was borne by a prominent continental anarchist, a few years ago, who returned to his own country disappointed and disgusted, after an unsuccessful mission. Nothing could be done with the British workmen, he declared—they had such an invincible respect for constituted authority and the Ten Commandments! It is gratifying, when so many adverse influences are abroad, to meet with such disinterested testimony to the essential soundness of the British national character.
Commenting on the letter by the Minister of Education which accompanied the circular giving the Otago Trades and Labor Council's communication, the Auckland Herald says:— « The Minister seems to allow that the Trades and Labor Council of Dunedin have a right to address him on the subject of school books, and he actually refers to their letter, which probably was the work of three or four people, as 'an important movement of the public mind.' The Trades and Labor Council must feel greatly flattered. It will be observed, however, that the Minister does not ask for an answer; he does not require any action to be taken. He simply' thinks that your board may like to be informed,' and so on. His note says quite plainly, 'just throw this into the waste paper basket. I must keep up appearances with these chaps, but never mind it.' At the Auckland board this letter was read with a grin all round, and it was simply ordered to be 'received.' » —It is strange that it does not occur to the Herald that these remarks apply equally well to its own leading article, which was also circulated officially by the Minister of Education for the opinion of the boards.
The following is a neat American satire on the system of « interviewing »:—Interviewer: « Mr Swelhed, I have come to get your views on the proposed change in the curriculum of the grammar school. » Mr Swelhed: « Curriculum! what's that? I'm ag'in it whatever it is! » Mr Swelhed (reading the report of the interview): « Our distinguished townsman, Mr M. T. Swelhed, was found at his charming home, surrounded by abundant indication of ripe scholarship and sturdy common sense. In reply to our reporter's question he said: 'I do not desire to force my opinions on the public, but I will say that I have given to this question long and studious attention, incidentally examining into the curricula of institutions of learning both at home and abroad; and, although I find in the existing course of study not a few matters for condemnation, still, upon the whole, I cannot say that I should advise any radical change under the peculiar circumstances surrounding the subject at the present time.' » « By George, that feller's got my exact language, word for word. And he didn't take no notes, neither! By George, what a memory that feller must have! »
Nowadays (says the London correspondent of the Argus) Scotchmen are the best jokers, and London editors and Lord Mayors are the people who require the aid of the surgeon. A laughable skit on a doctors' strike, penned by a Caledonian journalist, was recently transferred in all seriousness to the columns of the Daily Chronicle. And this week we have seen the Standard and the Daily Telegraph swallowing without a grimace a transparent Antipodean hoax. It was embodied in a letter to the Lord Mayor of London from a supposed Scotchman out of work in Sydney, who, on behalf of himself and his mates, forwarded a couple of threepenny bits as a contribution to the relief of London distress, stipulating in a postscript that his Lordship should send an official acknowledgement of receipt. Apart from the suggestive humour of the Scotchmen and the threepenny bits, this postscript was in itself sufficient to brand the whole thing as a delightful joke. But Lord Mayor Savory saw nothing in it to laugh at, and deliberately ordered that an acknowledgement should be sent as requested. He did more, for he sent the letter to a news-agency for general circulation, but only the editors of the two aforesaid dailies fell into the trap.