Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/114



was not less well supported by his business managers than Petter by his editors. By Henry Jeffery, for example, head of the counting-house for five-andtwenty years. He had previously been with Petter and Galpin in Playhouse Yard. A good deal of managerial work came into the hands of this keen, hawk-eyed, forceful man, who concealed a really kind heart behind a demeanour ranging from severity to savagery. He was a tireless worker for the firm, a driver of hard bargains, a discerning judge of business chances. But occasionally he came to grief.

One notable instance of this is concerned with a book since famous. The idea of a "History of Our Own Times" was conceived at La Belle Sauvage, and the work was commissioned to Mr. Justin McCarthy, then a leader writer on the Daily News with a certain reputation in Fleet Street. While he was writing the book the future Nationalist leader became deeply involved in Irish politics, and, before he had finished it, was Member for Longford and a prominent figure in the Home Rule group in Disraeli's last Parliament. This development greatly alarmed Jeffery. He scented heresy which might be dangerous to the reputation of the House. Cassell's was identified in the public mind with the cause of Protestantism and English orthodoxy. Again, could a Home Rule M.P. who was agitating for the innovation of a Parliament in Dublin possibly be a dispassionate historian of the events of his time? Combining the two objections—the peril to the bloom on Cassell's Protestant fame and his own skepticism about Mr. McCarthy's qualifications as an impartial historian—Jeffery succeeded in communicating his panic