6. Hachette and the apotheosis of the historian grandfather
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The file on relations between the Librairie Hachette and François Guizot is exceptionally rich, and would deserve publication in its own right, not so much for the six publishing contracts it contains as for the abundant correspondence accompanying them – although it comes only from the publisher – as well as for some valuable statements of account.
When, in the spring of 1852, Louis Hachette, then in his fifties, came to present Guizot with a project he described as original, he was far from unknown to him. Twenty years earlier, he had become one of the main publishers of the textbooks that Guizot, as Minister of Public Instruction, had commissioned for his great undertaking to develop primary education in France. But this was the first time he was to conclude an agreement with Guizot in his own name. The house of Hachette, whose headquarters were then at 14 rue Pierre-Sarrazin before expanding to 77 boulevard Saint-Germain six years later, had obtained from the railway companies, in return for a 30% fee, the right to sell in stations small volumes forming a “Bibliothèque des Chemins de fer”. Anxious to diversify his offering, Hachette proposed to Guizot, who accepted, that he “supply a few volumes written, if not by you, at least under your direction and with an indication of your involvement on the title page.{{1}}[[1]]Letter signed Louis Hachette, dated 7 July 1852.[[1]]” These works would deal with the history of England and of the United States. The author could choose between two methods of payment: either, following a traditional formula, a flat fee of 150 francs per printed sheet, representing 32 pages of the octodecimo format adopted for the Bibliothèque; or three centimes per sheet for each volume, payable on publication, with 100 francs per sheet paid on delivery of the manuscript, “which would be set against the proceeds of the author’s royalty up to the amount due” – a kind of advance, in other words, based as always, it is true, not on actual sales but on copies printed. A month of negotiation was needed to reach agreement, for Guizot, in asking for a higher royalty, was defending not only his own interests but also those of the authors he was to recruit, set to work, and pay. Hachette, for his part, pleaded the low price at which he intended to sell works aimed at the general public, the fee due to the railway companies, and the fact that Guizot was not personally the author – “and one may, without disparaging the merit of the collaborators you have chosen, be less certain of the success of their works than of the success of yours{{2}}[[2]]Idem, 23 July 1852.[[2]]” –. And he struck a pose of offended dignity in the face of the distrust Guizot appeared to show him: “You speak to us of some arrangements to be made for verifying the number of editions and of copies printed. There is not one of the many authors with whom we deal who does not rely on our honesty for this.{{3}}[[3]]Ibidem.[[3]]” Finally, on 30 August 1852, the following provisions were agreed: “M. Guizot undertakes to have written at his own expense and under his direction, and to revise, twelve volumes”, whose titles follow, eight on the history of England and four on that of the United States, mainly biographies. The volumes were not to exceed six to eight printed sheets, that is, 192 to 256 pages. “The title of each work may or may not bear the name” of its author, but must include the words “revised by M. Guizot”. It was thus indeed Guizot’s name that the publisher was buying. In the end it cost him five centimes per printed sheet for each copy printed, or 30 to 40 centimes, with an “à valoir” – the very words now appear – of 100 francs per sheet on delivery of the manuscript. Each work would be printed in at least 3,000 copies, representing on average a royalty of roughly 1,000 to 1,200 francs. In addition, a double allowance of overs would be printed “on top of each ream”, which protected the author’s interests since the agreed print run was guaranteed to him, to “cover printing defects, copies distributed free of charge and the thirteenth copies it is customary to give in the book trade.” Finally, Guizot had it clearly specified that the publishers “will inform him by letter of any editions that may be produced and of the numbers in which they are to be printed.”
The terms of the negotiation and of the contract become clearer when one knows that this was not Guizot’s first venture of the kind. Indeed, at the very beginning of 1851, a draft agreement had been drawn up between him and Napoléon Chaix, a printer since 1845 at 20 rue Bergère, a successful publisher, since 1849, of the Indicateur des chemins de fer and of travel guides, and therefore already well established in railway stations. He had conceived the project of a Bibliothèque universelle which, according to its prospectus, “on the most advantageous financial terms, would place within the reach of all, and could spread among the humblest classes of society, the light of Religion, the lessons of the Moralists, the masterpieces of literature and the teachings of Science”. Guizot accepted “the philosophical and literary direction of this vast undertaking.” The Bibliothèque universelle, which was to comprise at least 500 octavo volumes of about 500 pages each, divided into series of 100 volumes sold at no more than 1.80 francs, would appear under the name of M. Guizot. He would choose the titles, and write or have written either translations or complete works, or prefaces, notices and summaries. He would receive five centimes per volume on the sale price, after payment had been collected, and not on print runs, which was something new. He would form an editorial committee of seven members responsible for carrying out the selected publications under his direction. Each editor would receive five centimes for every copy sold of a volume he had contributed to, and an attendance fee of 10 francs for meetings held every fortnight. The agreement was concluded for ten years, Guizot undertaking to supply one hundred volumes each year, so that the Bibliothèque would be complete within five years. Chaix expected at least 6,450 subscribers per series throughout France, that is, annual sales of 645,000 volumes, which would yield 32,250 francs for the director of the Bibliothèque. The project was taken quite far, since Guizot drew up lists of works to supply the Bibliothèque and lined up the names of possible contributors – always the same ones, those of his friends V. de Broglie, Vitet, Barante, Lenormant, Dumon, as well as the abbés Gerbet and Gratry. It is not known why or how Hachette took Chaix’s place, but this affair no doubt played some part in the hatred with which Chaix pursued Hachette until his death in 1865. Napoléon Chaix must have felt robbed of an idea he had been the first to conceive. As for Guizot, it is likely that going from one hundred volumes a year to twelve, proportionally better paid, amounted to a return to the reality principle. How could he have managed to direct, with his well-known rigour, the enormous undertaking envisaged by Chaix? Chaix did launch, under his own name alone, a Bibliothèque universelle des familles, but without managing to rise to the level of the Bibliothèque des chemins de fer.
The contract signed with Hachette would be all the more advantageous to Guizot since he would recruit authors of his own choosing at low cost. Indeed, he entrusted his son Guillaume with Alfred the Great, and his daughter Henriette with William the Conqueror and Edward III. Paul Lorain – tutor to his son François at the end of the Restoration, then his close collaborator at the Ministry of Public Instruction, and closely linked to Louis Hachette, his fellow student at the École normale – was also enlisted, and left it to Guizot to settle the terms he would be offered: “For myself, and I dare say for my son-in-law, without having spoken to him about it, since you cannot fail, both through your sense of justice and through your precious friendship for us both, to obtain fair payment for our work, I can only ask you to do what you have always done, and negotiate on my behalf better than I could myself.{{4}}[[4]]Letter of 12 July 1852.[[4]]” The son-in-law was Camille Rousset, Guillaume Guizot’s history teacher at the end of the 1840s, who had become a friend of the family. He took on Magna Carta, and his father-in-law the origins and founding of the United States. It is likely that the series editor, who conscientiously carried out his work of revision, passed on half of his fee to his authors, whose names did appear on the title page, with the exception of Henriette de Witt’s. Fearing perhaps that the historian would impose his academic conception of history, the publisher insisted on the need for the books he was taking on to be accessible: “Our collection is intended for a very particular readership, travellers who will take up our books not to study but to while away their journey.{{5}}[[5]]Letter signed Louis Hachette, dated 1 August 1852.[[5]]” How much did this “Histoire et voyages” series of the Bibliothèque des chemins de fer earn Guizot? Édouard III et les bourgeois de Calais, for example, went through five editions in Guizot’s lifetime, and three more up to 1887.
In March 1855, the Revue des deux mondes published a historical study by Guizot entitled “L’amour dans le mariage”. A contract was immediately concluded with Hachette for a small-format edition, and even then “by inserting the white space needed to bring the volume up to four sheets.” The printer Charles Lahure, whose workshop was at 9 rue de Fleurus, did indeed make it into an octodecimo volume of 92 pages. The author received 15 centimes per copy printed, the first edition being set at 5,000 copies, or 750 francs payable on publication. The clause on overs mentioned for the first time “the copies used for publicity”, in other words press copies. While the assignment was granted without any time limit, the English-language rights were of course reserved. Sales started at a brisk pace. Accordingly, an active and enterprising publisher, Hachette, after the first reprint, proposed to the author, “in order to prolong the success of this little book and to meet the demands of the public, which calls in every way for cheap publications, to reduce the price per copy to 50 centimes”, which would cut the author’s royalty by two-thirds, to five centimes. But the next print run would be raised to 10,000 copies instead of 3,000, and “this increase in sales would certainly compensate you for the reduction in your royalty.{{6}}[[6]]Letter signed Louis Hachette, dated 21 September 1855.[[6]]” Does lowering the price of a book increase sales proportionately? Even today the debate is not closed. Guizot, at any rate, was not convinced, and made a counter-proposal: to reduce the price from 1 franc 50 to 75 centimes, he himself then receiving 10 centimes per copy. Hachette rejected this “half-measure”, for his intention was to “compete” with the 50-centime publications that were then spreading{{7}}[[7]]Idem, 25 September 1855.[[7]]. Consequently, the third edition was printed in 3,000 copies on the same terms as the previous ones. Guizot was probably not wrong, for ten editions followed one another up to 1873, for a total of 32,000 copies generating 4,800 francs in royalties.
It was a more conventional contract that, like the previous one, gave book form on 31 July 1862 to a work then being published in the Revue des deux mondes, “Un projet de mariage royal”. This work of at least 300 pages – in fact 360 – “printed in the type of L’amour dans le mariage”, of which it was in a sense the sequel, was to form part of the “Bibliothèque variée” at 3 francs 50 per octodecimo Jésus volume{{8}}[[8]]A printed sheet of Jésus size yields, in octodecimo, sixteen leaves and thus thirty-six pages measuring 18.5 cm x 11.5 cm.[[8]], a series that included Edmond About as well as Byron, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Taine and other celebrities. The author’s royalty, for this assignment, also without time limit, amounted to 50 centimes per copy, or about 14%, the first print run being set at 6,000 copies. The English-language rights were reserved to the author and – a clause hitherto unusual – the proceeds of other foreign rights were shared between author and publisher. Article 6 was also new, and leonine: “Should MM. L. Hachette et Cie refuse, within the three months following the exhaustion of an edition, to proceed with the printing of a new edition, M. Guizot would regain free disposal of it.” It is true that neither the automatic placement of books with booksellers, who bought on a firm-sale basis, nor the booksellers’ ability to return them to the publisher existed at the time, so that it was easier to establish when a title was out of print. This was the last contract bearing the signatures of Guizot and Louis Hachette, whose health was already failing and who died exactly two years later, at 64. For quite some time, Émile Templier, born in 1821, his son-in-law since 1849 and from then on one of his two managing partners, had been in contact with Guizot, and from 1855 the letters signed by his father-in-law and addressed to Guizot were for the most part in his hand. Guizot appreciated this “intelligent, well-bred and obliging{{9}}[[9]]Letter from Guizot to his daughter Henriette of 27 October 1869. Cf. François Guizot, Lettres à sa fille Henriette (1836-1874), op. cit., p. 959.[[9]]” man. He was of the same generation as Michel Lévy, Hachette’s most active competitor and now Templier’s, and Guizot, who held them in equal esteem, kept the balance even between them, to the point of sometimes receiving both on the same day, one in the morning, the other in the evening. Each of them had the care and intelligence not to present himself as a rival before their common author. Thus Michel Lévy made no attempt to turn to his own advantage the trust Guizot placed in Templier when he contracted with him for his last and very large publishing operation. “I saw Michel Lévy yesterday,” Guizot reported on 31 October 1869, “and told him that I had concluded with Hachette. He expected it (…) We shall remain on good terms. {{10}}[[10]]François Guizot, Lettres à sa fille Henriette (1836-1874), op. cit., p. 961.[[10]]” And he confirmed this to him by letter.{{11}}[[11]]Letter of 11 November 1869: “I regret that we were unable to reach agreement over my Histoire de France racontée à mes petits-enfants. I shall gladly seize, when they arise, opportunities to show you my wish to maintain the good business relations we have had.”[[11]] Lévy, for his part, returned the courtesy: “You could not place the care of your interests in better hands.{{12}}[[12]]Letter of 1 November 1869. By way of compensation, Guizot offered Lévy the chance to gather into volumes various writings published separately. Lévy declined: “This competing publication would invite comparisons unfortunate for me, commercially speaking. You will therefore understand, dear Mr Guizot, that it will be very difficult for me to publish anything of yours for as long as MM. Hachette are publishing your Histoire de France.”[[12]]”
Indeed, on 30 July, Guizot had written to Émile Templier to ask whether the Librairie Hachette, of which Templier was “one of the two senior partners to whom the signature of agreements with authors on behalf of the firm is reserved”, would undertake to publish, on the one hand, a Histoire d’Angleterre racontée par M. Guizot à ses petits-enfants, written by his daughter Mme de Witt, in three volumes of about 500 pages, and on the other a Histoire de France racontée par M. Guizot à ses petits-enfants. Templier immediately expressed interest. But, so as to leave no possible avenue unexplored, and also as a matter of good manners, Guizot also approached Michel Lévy: “I intend to write the Histoire de France myself (…) I have kept my notes. It will run to 4 to 6 octavo volumes.{{13}}[[13]]Letter of 10 August 1869.[[13]]” In fact, the first project soon took second place, and this history of England did not appear from Hachette, in two volumes, until 1877-1878, after the death of Guizot, who took no part in writing it. It was therefore the Histoire de France which, after apparently easy negotiations, since Michel Lévy was hesitant to commit himself and unwilling to go beyond four volumes, gave rise to an agreement signed on 30 October 1869. In the meantime, the editorial conception of this publication had been refined and enriched. Guizot assigned to Hachette, “for the entire duration of his literary property and that of his heirs or representatives, whether under current legislation or under future legislation” – a new formulation reflecting changes in the law, which appears in the contracts concluded thereafter – the exclusive publishing rights to a Histoire de France, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’au 24 février 1848 racontée à mes petits-enfants, in two parts, the first running from the origins to 1789, in three volumes, the second from 1789 to 1848, in one volume. Publication in instalments, with illustrations, was adopted, paid at five centimes per copy, with a minimum first print run of 5,000. Should the two parties agree on an edition in volumes, the author would receive one franc for the octavo format and 50 centimes for the octodecimo Jésus format. The English-language rights were reserved to the author, and the others were shared with the publisher, who could in all cases sell the printing plates of the engravings for his own sole profit. If the publisher did not reprint within three months of an edition selling out, the author would recover his rights, but the plates would remain the property of the publisher.
It was under these conditions that this exceptional undertaking was launched. No doubt Guizot had long been thinking of this work, which he had had included in the contract signed with Gosselin in 1838. But now he was 82, and even though his vigour of mind was intact, great age had arrived. No doubt the lessons he had indeed been giving his grandchildren at Le Val-Richer for several years had been prepared by him and recorded by his daughter Henriette, but shaping them for a wide readership was an entirely different exercise. Émile Templier nevertheless did not hesitate to take the risk of an unfinished account, and for four years the great man’s hand did not falter, until in the last months his daughter wrote at his dictation. Twelve days after the contract was signed, Templier received the first 114 pages of the manuscript. Inaugurating a process that was to be repeated dozens of times, this text was passed on to the draughtsman Alphonse de Neuville, who produced the wood engravings, large and small, intended to illustrate each chapter. Guizot supplied him with documents, and sometimes adjusted his text to the illustration, to which he paid the closest attention, starting with the captions. Alphonse de Neuville reassured him: “My Simon de Montfort will be killed according to all the rules of medieval siegecraft, by an accurate mangonel, on a horse caparisoned in his arms as shown on his seal.{{14}}[[14]]Letter from A. de Neuville of 18 June 1871.[[14]]”
The first of the weekly instalments, each comprising 16 quarto pages in which the illustrations took up the equivalent of two pages, came out on 15 April 1870, in a print run of 15,000 copies, following a canvassing and advertising campaign that was repeated, on a larger scale, for the launch of each of the three following volumes. The first three instalments were thus sent to 62 newspapers, from L’Avenir national to L’Union bretonne, by way of the Journal des jeunes personnes{{15}}[[15]]In a review published in June 1870 in Le Correspondant, the critic Pierre-Paul Douhaire regretted that the illustrations contained too much nudity. A. de Neuville replied that “the Barbarians wore few clothes, but that we were reaching the period when nudes would disappear.” Letter from Templier to Guizot of 15 June 1870.[[15]]. A prospectus written by Guizot was sent to lycées and boarding schools, and a page of advertising was bought in La Mode illustrée, which had a circulation of 83,000. Many incidents got in the way of a production whose regularity was an essential factor of success: a carriage accident and bouts of illness suffered by the illustrator, strikes by the workers at the printer Simon Raçon, who at other times was overwhelmed with work, the drying time of printed sheets despite newly installed blowers… and above all the war with Prussia, then the Commune, so that publication was interrupted with the 16th instalment at the end of August 1870, resuming only in mid-June 1871. The author, for his part, went on writing without apparent weariness, delivering his text with clockwork regularity, to Templier’s great relief. The first bound volume, in quarto format, bringing together the first 37 instalments, or about 800 manuscript leaves, could thus be put on sale in November 1871, in time for the end-of-year purchases from which the publisher expected a great deal, for the work was an ideal gift for young and old. A few weeks later there appeared in book form the biographical study Guizot had devoted to his dear old friend Victor de Broglie, who had died in January 1870, published in September-October 1871 in the Revue des deux mondes. Templier had immediately made known his wish to publish it, not without “pointing out that the sale of this volume will necessarily be very limited.{{16}}[[16]]Letter from Templier of 22 September 1871.[[16]]” Accordingly, the contract signed on 6 October set the author’s royalty at 50 centimes per copy, although Le Duc de Broglie, published in the “Bibliothèque variée”, ran to 300 pages. It was printed in 1,500 copies, but, following a technique then spreading rapidly, plates were taken of the typesetting for a quick reprint in case of success. Guizot wanted a photograph of his friend inserted at the front of the book, but “that would cost us from 75 centimes to 1 franc per volume, the price of the memoir would be raised accordingly, which would jeopardise its sale{{17}}[[17]] Idem, 6 October 1871[[17]]”, and Guizot had to resign himself to it.
The first instalment of volume II went on sale in the third week of February 1872. Soon Templier was voicing a fear that grew throughout the year, even if it was partly feigned to spur on the author: that of running out of copy. “We now have only six instalments in hand, that is, enough to keep publishing for six weeks; and that is precisely the time we need to prepare the illustration of one instalment. If you were unable to send us copy very soon, it is much to be feared that our publication would be interrupted. Nothing would be more unfortunate.{{18}}[[18]]Idem, 11 March 1872.[[18]]” And again: “If our volume II is not fully printed by 15 November and ready to go to the binder, we shall lose half of the New Year sales. Now, for it to be illustrated and printed by that time, it is essential that we have all the copy at the beginning of October. {{19}}[[19]]Idem, 5 September 1872.[[19]]” To keep up the flow, Guizot thus had to send 30 to 40 leaves every week, which he wrote in his own hand and had fair-copied by a copyist so as to standardise the copy-fitting, not to mention reading the proofs within very tight deadlines. The challenge was met, since the second volume appeared in the very last days of November, again bringing together thirty-seven instalments, with a first print run of 3,000 copies like the previous one. But the narrative had got no further than the death of Louis XII, and it had to be acknowledged that the third and last volume planned would not be enough to reach 1789. The publisher expressed his embarrassment: “We announced to our subscribers a work that would consist of about 100 instalments, cost 50 francs and be published within two years; we must now inform them that this same work will run to about 140 instalments, cost 70 francs and will not be completed for another two years.{{20}}[[20]]Idem, 24 October 1872.[[20]]” Templier was still well short of the mark, since a fifth volume was to prove necessary, but he had no cause to complain, for the public remained loyal to this Histoire de France to the very end. The thirty-eight weekly instalments of volume III began on 21 May 1873. To set the year’s work schedule, Templier had an extraordinary table drawn up showing the number of each instalment and of each printed sheet, the date for delivery of copy – every five days until 10 October – and the date of release, so that the bound volume would be available on 20 November. Guizot organised himself accordingly: “I shall certainly do François II in the last ten days of June – Charles IX in three or four weeks of July – Henri III from 29 July to 15 or 20 August. That will leave me seven or eight weeks for Henri IV, until 15 October. That will be my final push.{{21}}[[21]]Letter of 18 June 1873. Cf. François Guizot, Lettres à sa fille Henriette (1836-1874), op. cit., p. 1021.[[21]]” It should be remembered that he was then in his 85th year. He completed his programme within a few days, sending off his last batch on 9 November, and volume III could be put on sale in mid-December. He set to work on the fourth volume without a break, and its publication in instalments resumed at the end of July 1874, each printed in 15,000 copies. Despite the death of his daughter Pauline in February, which shook him deeply, he worked relentlessly at Le Val-Richer, sending between June and July the copy for six of the thirteen chapters making up volume IV. But he was now dictating to Henriette, for the writing of his trembling hand was becoming illegible. On 28 August, Templier wrote to him: “We are now well on the way to completing our volume IV”, and expressed his wishes for an improvement in his health. A few days later, overcome by weakness, Guizot took to his bed, and he died on 12 September. The last chapter of volume IV, which he may not have had time to dictate, was devoted to the death of Louis XIV. It was Henriette who took charge of the fifth volume, “written according to the plan and from the notes of M. Guizot” , whose first instalment came out in March 1875, and which she completed with two volumes covering 1789 to 1848, published in 1878-1879.
Throughout the five years of this immense undertaking, the publisher had accompanied his author step by step, by turns accommodating or firm, pressing or reassuring, attentive to the technical aspects of production as well as to sales and marketing, keeping him informed of everything, always courteous and sometimes moved – in short, placing him in the best possible working conditions. In this respect, the dozens of letters, sometimes highly detailed, sent by Émile Templier and occasionally, in his absence, by Jean Georges Hachette, Louis’s youngest son, who had become a partner in the firm at 26 shortly before his father’s death, offer an exceptional testimony. The success of the undertaking was accordingly considerable, not only in France but throughout the world{{22}}[[22]]A copy was in the personal library of Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s right-hand man, who died in 1986. Cf. Rachel Polonsky, La lanterne magique de Molotov Voyage à travers l’histoire de la Russiev. , Paris, Denoël, 2012.[[22]]. A summary table of sales of the 109 instalments making up the first three volumes, drawn up in July 1874, shows that by that date each had sold between 19,000 and 25,000 copies, reaching the enormous total of 2,239,000, or 111,950 francs paid to the author, not counting the royalties from the bound volumes, which were reissued several times. To this must be added the proceeds from translations, beginning with English, the rights to which had been acquired by the London publisher Sampson Low, based at 188 Fleet Street, for £100 per volume{{23}}[[23]]The History of France from the earliest times to the year 1789, by M. Guizot, translated by Robert Black. S. Low, Marston, Low & Searle. The five volumes appeared between 1872 and 1883. This edition was distributed in the United States by the firm of Estes & Lauriat, 143 Washington Street, Boston.[[23]].