The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 | Page 4

the embargo was removed. The Luck of Roaring Camp was printed as it was written, and printing office and vestal proof-reader survived the shock.'
It is amazing to think that, but for the determination and self-confidence of quite a young author, a story that has gladdened and softened the hearts of thousands,--a story that has drawn welcome smiles and purifying tears from all who can appreciate its deftly-mingled humour and pathos,--a story that has been a boon to humanity--might have been sacrificed to the shallow ruling of a prudish 'young-lady' proof-reader, and a narrow-minded, pharisaical deacon-printer!
It is appalling to think what might have happened if through nervousness or modesty the writer had been frightened by the premature criticisms of this precious pair.
The "deacon-printer" mentioned by Pemberton was Jacob Bacon, a fine specimen of the printer of the latter half of the last century. He was the junior partner of the firm of Towne and Bacon, the printers of Harte's first volume, The Lost Galleon. Mr. Towne (not Tane, as spelled in Merwin's Life of Bret Harte) obtained judgment in Boston for the printing of that volume. (See further, Mrs. T. B. Aldrich's Crowding Memories, as to satisfaction of judgment.)
A half-tone portrait of the "prudish 'young-lady' proof-reader" (what a lacerating taunt!) is printed in the Bret Harte Memorial Number of the Overland (September, 1902).
The proof-readers have not dealt kindly with The Luck of Roaring Camp; but the first of that ilk to mutilate the story was also the worst, to wit, the aforesaid "prudish 'young-lady' proof-reader."
Good usage in typography was utterly unknown to this young lady,--punctuation, capitalization, the use of the hyphen in dividing and compounding words. In practice she did not--perhaps could not--recognize any distinction between a cipher and a lower-case o. As to spelling, one may find "etherial," "azalias," "tessallated."
Noah Brooks, in the Overland Memorial Number, says (p. 203),--
He [Bret Harte] collected some half-dozen stories and poems and they were printed in a volume entitled "The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches," (1870.)
There were no poems printed in that volume. It was published in Boston by Fields, Osgood, & Co. Printed at the University Press at Cambridge, then unquestionably the best book-printing house in the United States, of course many of the typographical errors were weeded out. This volume was reprinted in London by John Camden Hotten.
It is to be regretted that the University Press was not more painstaking in the proof-reading, for the Overland typographical perversions persist in some instances to the present day. The reader is not misled by the lubbering punctuation of the sentence, "She was a coarse, and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman." The usage in such a construction is, "She was a coarse, and it is to be feared a very sinful, woman." But note where the sense is affected:--
Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame forever.
Cherokee Sal could not possibly be the sin and shame of Roaring Camp forever; hence the sense calls for a comma after "shame," in the extract. It is gratifying to note that the comma is used in the Hotten reprint.
Another egregious blunder which has persisted is the printing of the word "past" for "passed," in the extract below.
Then he [Kentuck] walked up the gulch, past the cabin, still whistling with demonstrative unconcern. At a large redwood tree he paused and retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin.
It remained for a proof-reader at the Riverside Press to reconstruct the sentence by deleting the comma after the word "gulch"; thus, "the gulch past the cabin." That Kentuck "again passed the cabin" seems not to have been considered. Hence, in the Houghton Mifflin Company's printings of The Luck of Roaring Camp, the last error is worse than the first.
These errors are not venial. Those that are such have not been mentioned, as they occur in almost every book, and appear to be unavoidable. Other errors, evincing a lack of knowledge of good usage in book-typography, must also pass unnoticed.
The Luck of Roaring Camp having been disposed of, consideration of Dr. Royce's review of the Shirley Letters will be resumed.
The Doctor, on page 350 of his work, says, "In her little library she had a Bible, a prayer-book, Shakespeare, and Lowell's 'Fable for the Critics,' with two or three other books." Shirley (p. 100, post) says she had a--
Bible and prayer-book, Shakespeare, Spenser, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Lowell's Fable for Critics, Walton's Complete Angler, and some Spanish books.
The poet Spenser's name was spelled with a c in the Pioneer, but the article "the" was not used before "Critics," as in the extract from Royce,--an unpardonable error in a book printed in Cambridge,