John Murray to the Bishop of Llandaff.

December 31, 1839.

MY LORD,

I am told that your Lordship continues to make heavy complaints of the inconvenience you incur by making me the publisher of “Lord Dudley’s Letters,” in consequence of the great distance between St. Paul’s Churchyard and Albemarle Street, and that you have discovered another cause for dissatisfaction in what you consider the inordinate profits of a publisher.

My Lord, when I had the honour to publish for Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, the one resided in Edinburgh, the other in Venice; and, with regard to the supposed advantages of a publisher, they were only such as custom has established, and experience proved to be no more than equivalent to his peculiar trouble and the inordinate risque which he incurs.

My long acquaintance with Lord Dudley, and the kindness and friendship with which he honoured me to the last, made me, in addition to my admiration of his talents, desire, and, indeed, expect to become the publisher of his posthumous works, being convinced that he would have had no other.  After what has passed on your Lordship’s side, however, I feel that it would be inconsistent with my own character to embarrass you any longer, and I therefore release your Lordship at once from any promise or supposed understanding whatever regarding this publication, and remain, my Lord,

Your Lordship’s humble Servant,

JOHN MURRAY.

The Bishop of Llandaff seems to have thought better of the matter, and in Mr. Murray’s second letter to him (January 1, 1840) he states that, after his Lordship’s satisfactory letter, he “renews his engagement as publisher of Lord Dudley’s ‘Letters’ with increased pleasure.”  The volume was published in the following year, but was afterwards suppressed; it is now very scarce.

Mrs. Jameson proposed to Mr. Murray to publish a “Guide to the Picture-Galleries of London.”  He was willing to comply with her request, provided she submitted her manuscript for perusal and approval.  But as she did not comply with his request, Mr. Murray wrote to her as follows: 

John Murray to Mrs. Jameson.

July 14, 1840

MY DEAR MADAM,

It is with unfeigned regret that I perceive that you and I are not likely to understand each other.  The change from a Publisher, to whose mode of conducting business you are accustomed, to another of whom you have heard merely good reports, operates something like second marriages, in which, whatever occurs that is different from that which was experienced in the first, is always considered wrong by the party who has married a second time.  If, for a particular case, you have been induced to change your physician, you should not take offence, or feel even surprise, at a different mode of treatment.

My rule is, never to engage in the publication of any work of which I have not been allowed to form a judgment of its merits and chances of success, by having the MSS. left with me a reasonable time, in order to form such opinion; and from this habit of many years’ exercise, I confess to you that it will not, even upon the present occasion, suit me to deviate.