Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/171

137 CONSTABLE, CADELL, AND BLACK. 137 duced, will probably appear much clearer to the gene- ration which shall follow the present." The remaining portion of this chapter will in itself bear ample testimony to the truth of this prediction ; for we shall have to touch upon two distinct lives, and two long and very successful lives, to trace the pro- gress of the chief works which passed out of Con- stable's hands so shortly before his death. Robert Cadell had been admitted a partner in the house upon his marriage with Constable's daughter, but she died childless long before the failure, and Cadell was soon married again to a Miss Mylne, Thus the family ties were severed, and, when the crash came, Cadell felt no hesitation in entering the field as a rival to his late partner. The stock of the Waverley Novels was sold off, far below the market value, and the London publishers, judging from this that the intrinsic worth of the copy- right had irretrievably declined, allowed Cadell, as we have seen, in conjunction with Scott, to become the purchaser at the low price of 8500. The success of the republication was astounding, and showed what real life and vivacity was still left in the copyright. By this scheme the whole of the novels were reprinted in five-shilling volumes with excellent illustrations, giving for ten shillings in two volumes what had been originally published in three at a guinea and a half. After Scott's death the debt still amounted to ,54,000 ; his life was insured for 22,000, there was 2000 in hand, and now Cadell most handsomely ad- vanced 30,000 in order that the remaining debt might be liquidated, taking as his only security the right to the profit that might accrue from the copyright pro- perty, The family, dreading that the term of copy- 9