# The Story of the House of Cassell/Part 2, Chapter 1

CHAPTER I
CASSELL, FETTER AND GALPIN
Cassell died leaving to his partners something more than a large business. He bequeathed to them an ideal. His ambition had been to bring good literature to the millions who did the rough work of the world, to project some ray from the golden lamp athwart the bricklayer's hod and the miner's pick. Fortunately his legacy descended to men who were able and eager to realize it.
A memoir of Cassell which appeared in the Illustrated Family Paper was censured by the Bookseller of that era on two grounds. One was that full justice had not been done to the commercial talents of his surviving partners, to whom the success of the firm was said to be largely owing; the other, that some of the commercial failures of Cassell's earlier time were even more praiseworthy than his greatest successes, since they were the best evidence of his sincere resolve at all costs to enable men to break through "poverty's unconquerable bar" into the realms of knowledge. However mistaken the Family Paper may have been in its too generous application of the rule de mortuis, Cassell himself never failed to give to Fetter and Galpin full credit for their contributions to the common stock. Their qualities certainly blended into a happy business combination which assured to the House a long period of extraordinary prosperity.
George William Fetter, a Devonian, born at Barnstaple in 1823, narrowly escaped becoming a country draper. A moneyed aunt snatched the apprentice away from the counter and secured for him a partnership with a Mr, Duff, printer, of Playhouse Yard. Mr. Duff retired, or was bought out, and Petter, looking about for a partner, was introduced by Mr. Pare, the Dublin engineer, to ​Thomas Dixon Galpin. Galpin had spent his early youth as a sea-rover. Had he not, while serving on a West Indiaman, fallen in love with Miss Pare, and had not Mr. Pare objected to his daughter marrying a sailor, Galpin would probably have died a seaman, and the history of Cassell's would have been differently written. The fresh colour of this tall, well-built, open-air man clung to him all through his life in the City. He became the business expert, the financial adviser. Petter assumed general control with a special eye on the editorial side of the work.
"Petter," wrote the late Bonavia Hunt, "was a man of excitable brain, indomitable will, and boundless energy. He possessed that rare combination of faculties, a grasp of high policy and a grip of the minutest detail. Except under the most trying circumstances he rarely lost command of himself, but when he did he was a living tornado. His storm, however, was not thunder and lightning, but a blizzard of sarcasm. The object of it emerged from his employer's presence seared and crumpled, and yet if he was anything of a man the ultimate effect of this discipline was to brace him to fresh efforts rather than to deter and discourage him. And if any member of the establishment, however humble his position, had any personal ailment or domestic trouble, no one could be kinder or more sympathetic than he who was known amongst us as 'the Great Man,' as well as by other and more sportive epithets.
GEORGE WILLIAM PETTER
​failed to hit his mark and to fix on his hearer's mind the exact impression he intended to leave there.
"His special department was the editorial; and although there was at that time, as always since, a chief or managing editor, it was clearly understood that any member of the staff might be sent for by Mr. Petter himself, who thus retained his grasp of all the details of the work. From the first he took a special interest in me, which I then did not so heartily appreciate as afterwards. He made up his mind that I should be thoroughly trained in all the auxiliary matters affecting the production of a magazine, and to that end placed me first in the composing-room and the reader's closet, then in the electro-typing department, and lastly in the machine-room. This 'prentice work was relieved by the devotion of a few hours each day to the minor duties of an editorial office, such as the keeping of a register of manuscripts received and retained or returned, making précis of readers' reports or of the plot of a serial story."
Petter's constant energy of character was manifested not merely in business, but in his political, religious and social activities as well. He was an ardent Protestant, a fervent Evangelical, an indefatigable speaker on all occasions. He became the figurehead and chief spokesman at any ceremonial affair in which the firm was concerned, though he resisted all invitations to stand for Parliament. He seems to have been generally defective in the sense of humour. One precious story is told of him. It was the custom of the partners and heads of departments to take lunch together in a room on the premises, apparently so that the discussion of the affairs of La Belle Sauvage should not stop during any moment from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. At one lunch after the publication of Cassell's "History of the Franco-German War," Petter had been denouncing war as un-Christian and declaiming with such vigour that nobody ventured to put in a word for Mars; but as the party broke up, Henry Jeffery, the chief of the counting-house, ​thinking he was unheard by the senior partner, said in his loud, piercing and emphatic voice: "It's all very well for Petter to talk about war in that way, but he should remember the thousands we have made out of the Franco-German War!" As it happened, Petter was still in the room, and within hearing, and, instead of laughing off the contretemps, waxed full of wrath at Jeffery's outspokenness.
Another member of the staff relates that he once wrote a paragraph for the Live Stock Journal, one of the firm's papers, about the "Lion Sermon" annually preached in a City church to commemorate Sir John Gayer's escape from a lion in the seventeenth century. The incident was not treated very seriously, and a friend of Petter's with a keen nose for heresy wrote complaining that one of his papers was casting doubt or ridicule upon the story of Daniel in the lions' den. So Petter sent for the author, who without difficulty persuaded him that no reference was made or implied to the Biblical story. Having intimated that he was quite satisfied, Petter begged the contributor to co-operate with him in giving a religious tone to the Live Stock Journal!
THOMAS DIXON GALPIN
​be no doubt that the Shaftesbury always seemed to Petter to set the seal on his career as a teacher of altruism to the masses.
Galpin was less in the public eye. He was at once the foil and the completion of Petter; an excellent man of affairs, assiduous and tactful, and keeping careful watch on finance. But he was generally disposed to follow the line of least resistance and willing to defer to his partners in questions of literature and art. He brought the scent of the sea into La Belle Sauvage, and much of the bonhomie of the sea-companionship. Jovial and affable, he loved his own little joke so much that it could always be seen broadening his face into a smile before it was born in speech. But all through his thirty years at the Yard he displayed most valuable qualities of even judgment and constant common sense. His staff were loyal to him because they knew he would hold the scales justly in any cause of disagreement.
In 1870, the Henry Jeffery to whom allusion has been made, one of the managers at La Belle Sauvage, was taken into partnership, in company with Mr. Robert Turner, who had been first conspicuously successful in the conduct of the New York branch, and subsequently as general manager in London. The firm then became "Cassell, Petter, Galpin and Co." But this was a mere phase of transition. It lasted only till 1883. Then, following the irresistible trend of large business, the firm, in the month of April, converted itself into a limited liability company. Galpin undertook control. Petter retaining a seat on the Board, and Turner remaining as general manager. But a new and notable name was introduced: Mr. H. O. Arnold Forster became secretary of the company. Forster's adoptive father, the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, took the chair at the meeting of the staff held in Exeter Hall (on June 9, 1883) to celebrate the transformation of the business. He had invested in some shares and was pleased to be allowed "to take a seat in the fresh coach," chiefly, as he said with customary candour, because he had ​no doubt he would get good interest for his money: he "did not believe in business that did not pay." There was a modern note in his observation that the arrangement for enabling members of the staff to acquire shares was "calculated to bring about good feeling between capital and labour, and offered a good example to employers generally."
In the next few years came a rapid break-up of the old associations. Petter died in the autumn of 1888. He had kept at work long after most men would have ceased to struggle. Towards the end Bonavia Hunt visited him where he lay in a private hotel in Piccadilly, and took his farewell after praying with him at the dying man's request. Turner had retired from the management in 1885, but remained on the Board. Galpin held the managing directorship till the year of Petter's death, when, at the age of 60, he resigned his active work, though he kept his seat as a director for another ten years. He wished his working colleagues good-bye and received from them a present at a meeting in 1889 in Exeter Hall, with the Right Hon. A. J. Mundella in the chair. Galpin was succeeded in the chairmanship of the Board by Turner, who presided for three years, to be followed by the late Viscount Wolverhampton (then Sir Henry Fowler), who held the post from 1891 to 1903, with the exception of his three years as a Minister in the Government of 1892-95. He gave place to Sir Clarence Smith.
In 1885, after Turner's retirement, Edward Whymper had been appointed general manager. The famous explorer and mountaineer had, some years before, as a member of a firm of engravers established by his father, undertaken to illustrate "Picturesque Europe "for Cassell's, and did it to their complete satisfaction. But it soon became clear to him that he did not, and would not, like managing, and he resigned. The directors filled the position in 1887, by the appointment of Sir Wemyss Reid, who became for eighteen years the central figure in the concern.
​Wemyss Reid was already a publicist and journalist of note. He had made his mark as editor of the Leeds Mercury long before he became associated with Cassell's, and at the time of his engagement had undertaken to write the authorized biographies of W. E. Forster and Lord Houghton. These works appeared, the one in 1888, the other in 1890, and were followed by two other biographies, his "Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Playfair," in 1899, and the Life of his close personal friend, William Black, in 1902. A remarkably fluent writer, he was also a capital raconteur, an easy and graceful after-dinner speaker, and a popular clubman, who lived to become chairman of the Reform Club, an office in which he took great pride and delight. But no one, however great his admiration of Sir Wemyss Reid's gifts and qualities, could assert that he was adapted for the management of a great publishing house in difficult times.
In 1890, even before the Life of Lord Houghton was off his hands, he had started the Speaker, which was published by Cassell's, though not their property. For ten years he edited this review, and wrote its chief political articles, and when his connexion with the paper ceased he regularly contributed a political survey of the month to the Nineteenth Century, the publication of his last article almost synchronizing with the announcement of his death. For this division of interest and energy the time were peculiarly unsuitable. At an earlier period he might have held the general managership with credit. He was a popular figure among authors and journalists, and was able to secure for the House the books of some notable authors, such as J. M. Barrie. But during the 'nineties the people were forming new tastes in reading, spirited rival firms were springing up to minister to them, and no publishing house, however long established, that catered for the masses could afford to rest upon its laurels. It is not surprising, therefore, that the later years of Sir Wemyss Reid's period of management were marked by a serious ebb in the fortunes of the House. ​Long before his death his health had begun to fail, and the last year or two of his life was a gallant struggle against physical infirmity. It was characteristic both of his courage and of his love for writing that when the physicians told him he had only a few months to live, he should have set to work upon his "Recollections." In this race against time his rapid pen was the winner. The first volume was published in the year of its author's death (1905); the second volume is being kept back until its piquant political revelations can be made public without indiscretion.
With the death of Wemyss Reid we reach the end of the third epoch in the direction of the House of Cassell, and the beginning of its modern history. Before approaching it we turn to some outstanding figures and their achievements in other departments.
Sir WEMYSS REID