Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/238

 Holy Land in connection with the writing of the work. This offer he accepted, and ultimately produced the book which has since attained so wide a fame.... Archdeacon Farrar duly received in 1873 the sum we had agreed to pay him for writing 'The Life of Christ,' but in consideration of the success of the work we paid him in 1874 an additional sum of £200, in 1875 a further sum of £350, besides an honorarium of £100 for the preparation of an index; in 1876 £200, in 1877 £250, in 1878 £250, and in 1881 £100. Thus for the work which we had covenanted to pay only £600 we voluntarily paid in addition £1,450, making a total of £2,050 in all.

"This, however, does not exhaust the story of our dealing with Archdeacon Farrar. He agreed to write for us a similar Life of St. Paul. By this time both he and ourselves knew the pecuniary value of his work. For the 'St. Paul' we agreed to pay him the sum of £1,000 down. Subsequently Mr. Farrar informed us that, in consequence of the great success of the 'Life of Christ,' he had received an offer of £2,000 and a royalty from another firm of publishers for a similar book. Although under no compulsion to do so, we at once raised our payment to the same money; with the result that he has received up to the present date, including a royalty of £2,333 17s. 1d., a sum of £4,333 17s. 1d. for this particular book. We leave your readers to judge whether there was anything inequitable in a bargain which had results such as these for the author."

Sir Walter Besant, as chairman of the Society of Authors, entered into the correspondence and invited the Company to state what profit they had made out of the transactions. By other correspondents it was urged that this fact was irrelevant: the scheme had originated with the House, and had it resulted in a loss to them they would not have looked to the author to compensate them for their bad bargain. On October 10 Mr. Galpin, as the only surviving partner, invited Archdeacon Farrar, through the Times, to repeat to the world what he was reported to have alleged against the Company behind their backs. The appeal was not successful: all that the Archdeacon would say was that in his remarks at the Church Congress he had never dreamt of the most distant reference to himself or to them, and that he had never said