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  • The Fall of the House of Moxon: James Bertrand Payne and the Illustrated Idylls of the King
  • Jim Cheshire (bio)

Ancient Pistol, peacock Payne, Brute in manner, rogue in grain, How you squeezed me, peacock Payne! Scared was I and out I ran And found by Paul’s an honest man. Peace be with you, peacock Payne, I have left you, you remain Ancient Pistol, sealskin Payne.1

Tennyson’s angry epigram, written in Spring 1869, was a response to the actions of James Bertrand Payne, the manager of his publisher Edward Moxon and Co., after tensions that had been building up for some years erupted into a fierce dispute.2 This argument led to the collapse of the firm that Merriam called the “Publisher of Poets” and a legal dispute during which Emma Moxon (Edward Moxon’s widow) accused Payne of fraud, a charge that initially failed but was proven on appeal.3 The argument between Tennyson and Payne had a number of causes but all of them involved Payne’s commercial exploitation of Tennyson’s poetry and the impact this had on the poet’s reputation. This essay will argue that the dispute revolved around an ambitious edition of Idylls of the King, illustrated by the French artist Gustave Doré, a book that historians have assumed was a success but in fact was a key factor in the ruin of the Moxon firm. The failure of this lavish edition marks a turning point in Tennyson’s career: he severed links with the firm who had published his books for over thirty years and his later publishers never again attempted large-scale illustrated editions of his poetry.

This revealing episode in the history of Victorian literature has received only the most superficial attention. Hallam Tennyson’s Memoir of his father is typically reticent and underlines the family’s sensitivity about the incident: he includes a letter from Tennyson to Francis Palgrave which discusses the [End Page 67] illustrated Idylls but edits out the financial information.4 When compared with the complete letter the emphasis has been changed: it seems to be a discussion about the aesthetic value of the illustrations rather than a discussion of the financial success of the project.5 Hallam goes on to create an impression of the regret that Tennyson felt about leaving the Moxon firm, in part through a comment he included from his mother’s journal: “We would that the necessity [of leaving Moxon’s] had not arisen” to which he added the footnote “Virtually through the death of Mr E Moxon,” a strange comment given that Moxon had died a decade before Tennyson left the firm (Memoir, 2:63). Payne is barely mentioned in Hallam’s Memoir and he is not listed in the index. The long draft of his work “Materials for a life of A. T. Collected for My Children” shows that Hallam consistently omitted or edited entries concerning Payne.6 The Memoir is later at pains to show that Tennyson continued to admire Doré and records how he had a cordial breakfast with him some years later at the Moulin Rouge (Memoir, 2:77). Charles Tennyson, the poet’s grandson and more candid biographer, noted the tension between the publisher and poet and observed that “the manager had ideas about publicity and presentation which were quite out of key with his own” but fails to mention the illustrated Idylls of the King.7 Modern biographies basically follow this pattern and even specialized studies have missed the significance of this episode. Hagen’s Tennyson and His Publishers, though in many ways an excellent study, discusses a series of arguments between Payne and Tennyson but misinterprets the significance of the illustrated Idylls of the King suggesting “sales were excellent.”8 This error highlights another factor which seems to have contributed to the misunderstanding of the episode: many commentators both Victorian and more recent seem to have been convinced by the publicity generated by both Payne and subsequent publishers who attempted to recoup the losses of the firm. In 1871 all Payne’s property and interests were assigned to Messrs. Ward Lock and Tyler who were acting as trustees for the firm...

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