Chapter Two #2
Peter’s heart lurched. For the past seven years, he and Andrew had read through the monthly report from the Court of Chancery that recorded all the British patents granted.
Their goal had been simple—find and invest in new technology that promised high impact and strong yields.
Some of their investments had failed to pan out.
Others had experienced moderate returns, nothing outrageous but enough to supplement the Strafford Estates’ dwindling income.
They still needed that one metaphorical gold mine, an investment so successful that his sleep would finally be settled.
In the years since Peter had become duke, the exodus of people from the country to burgeoning cities had quickened.
The upkeep of buildings and modernization of farming systems cost money at a time when rent was bringing in less and less revenue.
It was becoming more difficult to find money for new schools or to fund local hospitals.
Then his baby sisters grew into women, and the urgency of his situation fully grasped him.
Meg married, and her husband up and left thrice in five years—the latest while she was with child.
Jac had shown no interest in marriage, which meant that she might one day require funds to live comfortably on her own.
And Winnie? The Lord only knew what trouble she would cause and how much it would cost to extract her from it.
His desire to harness the industrial revolution became an urgent need.
Two years ago, a new patent was granted for the Linotype.
Every part of the book and newspaper printing business had been revolutionized except one—the setting of type.
It was the bottleneck preventing a new age of information.
Automating the setting of type would decrease the cost of book production, paving the way for more affordable books that even the middle and lower classes could purchase.
Automating type would shorten production timelines.
Newspapers could be published daily instead of weekly.
Imagine how much more news one could read when there were daily papers.
Imagine what could be achieved when everyone on his estates was well-read and well-informed.
Imagine the security he could provide them once the Linotype turned a profit.
He glanced toward a pouting Jac. All he had to do was replenish the coffers and his sisters would always be cared for.
Andrew gestured to the hall. “It’s too big to fit through the door.”
Peter’s hands shook as he left Jac behind, protesting.
Light from the foyer’s floor-to-ceiling windows set the machine’s metal components gleaming.
His breath caught. It was the first time he’d seen it in person.
Until now, he’d received two photographs and detailed diagrams of each part.
The pamphlet they’d created to advertise the product used an expertly rendered sketch, but none of it did justice to the real thing.
“What is it?” Jac had felt her way from the drawing room chair to the doorway. She had both hands wrapped around the frame as though she were frail instead of blind. Lifting her nose in the air, she sniffed.
“It is the future, Jac. But you can’t smell that either.”
“Is it more interesting than the rest of my mail?”
“Definitely.” Peter took a seat on the stool, with its shiny leather cushion and sturdy oak legs.
He and the Linotype’s inventor, Ottmar Mergenthaler, had wanted every element of the setup to be of high quality.
Each machine would see all-day use for decades.
Peter would not skimp on any part of it.
As he placed his hands on the keys, his breath caught. Tentatively, then with more force, he pressed a key. There was a small metallic click as a letter dropped from its channel and slid down to the assembler. A second tap set another matrix free.
THIS WILL CHANGE THE WORLD.
He slid the letters to the left, where, in practice, liquid metal would cast the line of words into something solid that could be coated with ink and pressed with paper.
“I didn’t think to melt the tin for this,” Andrew said.
“No. That’s sensible. We don’t need molten metal around Jac right now. Do we have slugs ready to show people?”
Andrew reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, solid line of type. “Many. The plan is to leave one with each printer we visit, regardless of whether they order.” He placed the type into Peter’s outstretched hand.
“That’s smart,” Peter said, rolling the slug between his fingers.
“If they don’t purchase a machine, the slug can be a reminder that they’re behind the times.
They’ll crack eventually. When their competitors start producing newspapers every day or twenty book titles in a year, they’ll have no choice. ”
From the doorway, Jac scoffed. “Don’t you sound conniving, brother? Truly, you could hide your anticipation of other people’s failure.”
Peter scowled. Her words demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of his intentions.
“Just because I expect laggards to fail doesn’t mean that I want it.
The Linotype offers businesses the opportunity to succeed in ways that no one has before.
But if they choose not to embrace the future, their failure is inevitable and no one’s fault but their own. ”
“Cold, brother.”
“It’s not cold. Is it?” he asked, turning to Andrew.
Andrew cocked his head. “It’s a little cold, but necessary. You can’t hold back the tide. If we didn’t invest in this, someone else would have and the future would still be the Linotype.”
“See?” Peter turned back to his sister. “You can’t hold back the tide.”
“Are there any corrections from yesterday’s proofs?
” Eleanor stood in the doorway to the publisher’s office looking at the woman with softly graying hair and sharp business acumen, who had a dozen handwritten submissions stacked on her desk, with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf behind her that spanned the length of the room.
It was crammed full of every edition of every book the publishing house had printed in its two dozen years.
“No changes. Your work is exceptional, as always.” Sophie gestured for Eleanor to enter while her eyes remained trained on the pages in front of her.
Eleanor smiled. “Perfect.” She hadn’t expected errors, but on the rare occasion they would slip through—usually when she’d been in a rush and not arranged her typecase properly the day before. She took a seat across from her longtime mentor. “What’s next?”
Sophie had set up Cumberland Press two decades earlier and employed only women to print and bind texts ranging from wildly political treatises to fascinating nonfiction to smutty novels that were hidden behind drugstore counters and read in the safety of one’s bedroom.
The book Eleanor had finished typesetting today was a rather heavy accounting of the Ottoman Civil War, and while it was fascinating, she felt like something lighter.
The Pocket Manual of Ladylike Behavior. Sophie shook her head without pausing as she peppered the page with red ink.
“I know, I know. It sounds dull, but it’s exactly what the toffs want and we could use their money.
Hallowell’s last book did not land the way we had hoped it would.
But here, I think you’ll enjoy this one.
” She finally turned her attention from her work and picked up a handwritten manuscript.
Eleanor took the pages, unbound save for a piece of twine that crossed over the back and tied in Sophie’s typical sharp bow over the title page. “‘Beyond Good and Evil.’ German. Are you making an offer on this one?”
Sophie pursed her lips. “I am. I think the author might be the most talented I’ve encountered in years. If we could sign him, it could shift our position significantly. I’d like to know what you think.”
Eleanor had more than a dozen books waiting to be read, piled onto the long table in her living room.
They wouldn’t be shelved until she’d finished them and made comments about their strengths and weaknesses in the small notebook she kept for just that purpose.
Regardless, Sophie’s manuscript would skip the queue and be read that night so she could give feedback in the morning.
“Is there anything else that needs to be set before I go? Can I get a head start on tomorrow?”
“You can take the rest of the afternoon off,” Sophie replied. “Weren’t you saying the zoo had new arrivals? Weren’t there echidnas you wanted to see?”
She did want to see the echidnas. “Did you know they lay eggs? It is incredible because they’re mammals and mammals traditionally give birth to live young. Except in Australia, apparently, because they have the echidna and the platypus, and both are monotremes.”
The corners of Sophie’s lips edged upward, as they almost always did when Eleanor shared one of the many curiosities she had crammed into her brain. “I look forward to hearing all about it out on the way to meet the mysterious Chester tonight.”
Chester. His manuscript had been delivered in the middle of the night, left on the doorstep along with a bottle of gin. Eleanor leaned forward. “Have we discovered anything new about this author?”
Sophie shook her head. “Nothing. He, or she I suppose, sent the meeting location an hour ago. It is a tiny restaurant on Hobbes Street, which is neither exclusive nor dingy. It gives nothing away.”
“Has signing an author ever involved such intrigue?” Eleanor’s life seemed full of subterfuge of late. First the Tattler, then the Captain, now the mysterious Chester. For a person so insistent on the accuracy of one’s facts, all of this ambiguity was surprisingly exciting.
Sophie sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Just once, and the author was a nightmare to work with. Chester’s novel has the potential to be a bestseller when it releases.
We need it; we really do, but I cannot handle another diva, Eleanor.
I simply cannot. I need a second opinion as to this person’s nature. ”
Eleanor grinned. “Well, I will be there. I’m rather eager to see the wheels turn on this side of the business.”
Sophie sighed and picked up the red pen. “Thank you. Now go enjoy your afternoon.”
Eleanor nodded. “I shall.” It was a glorious day, and she was going to spend it wandering through one of her favorite places, feeling the sun warm her skin and learning a plethora of new things.
When she returned home that evening, she would have plenty to include in her letter to the Tattler, and in the note she would slip inside for the Captain.
Perhaps with a firsthand account of Australia’s most bizarre animals, she could convince him to set aside whatever responsibilities seemed to keep him caged, just for an afternoon.
She reached down to slip the manuscript Sophie had given her into her satchel.
A thin booklet lay on the floor. “Here. You’ve dropped this,” she said, picking it up.
As she turned it over, her heart wobbled.
The front cover was dominated by a sketch of a machine, as tall as a person and wider by two.
It had dozens of chutes in front of what looked to be a collection of letters.
“What is it?” she asked, surprised at the sharp edge of her voice.
Eleanor had been in many, many printing houses and had seen nothing like it.
“Don’t worry about that.” Sophie’s ears turned pink as she took the pamphlet and shoved it under the pages she was editing. “I told him I wasn’t interested.”
“You told who?”
“The Duke of Strafford. Or his business manager, as it were. He seemed perplexed at my lack of interest, so I have no doubt he’ll be back. I’m sure he’ll have more trouble selling it than he anticipates.”
“But what is it?”
Sophie swallowed. “He’s calling it a Linotype.”
“A Linotype… It’s a machine that sets type?
” It was suddenly a little more difficult to breathe.
She played with the word in her mind. A linotype.
A linotype. A line-o-type. “A line of type? It sets a line of type at a time?” She lurched across the desk, manners be damned, and grabbed the corner of the pamphlet that peeked out from below Sophie’s work.
Sophie tried to snatch it back without success. “Eleanor, you are excellent at what you do. You are the best.”
“I know that,” she snapped. She was the best compositor in London. She was the fastest and the most accurate. She charged exorbitant amounts and still printers begged for her time. For other compositors, it was a job. For her, it was a living. She was not threatened by a machine.
The cover sketch made little sense. It was an imposing mess of levers, chutes, and keys.
The inside pages contained more detail. Each key released a single “matrix” of the corresponding character, which slid down an inclined chute to its place in a line.
Once the line was complete, it was covered in a molten alloy of tin, antimony, and lead, forming a solid line of type. An elevator then reset the matrices.
“Stupid,” Eleanor said. “Who in their right mind would work so close to molten metal? All it would take is one slip, one fault in the machine, and you’re looking at severe burns, infection, maybe death.”
“That is true,” Sophie replied.
“And why would you want to set an entire line at a time? If you find a mistake in the proof, you have to create another entire line. If there’s a mistake in my proofs—which there never is, I’ll have you know—I simply need to replace that single letter. That would take a tenth of the time.”
Sophie reached across the desk, placing a firm and reassuring palm on the mahogany. “Which is why I told him I was not interested. Why change a thing when it’s working so well?”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly. So put it out of your mind.”
Eleanor took a deep breath. She would do just that.
She glanced down at the pamphlet, which she’d unwittingly crushed.
The ink hadn’t been set properly. It had stained her fingers and there was the smallest smudge of black on her pristine gown.
Typical. The manufacturer of this Linotype was promising to revolutionize publishing and couldn’t even set ink properly.
What a hack. “Dash it. I must wash my hands before this gets all over me.” She dropped the pamphlet on the desk.
Sophie picked it up and tossed it in the trash can. “Go enjoy the zoo. Come back and tell me all about the echidna.”