Arthur C. Fifield - Godfrey Blount's friend and publisher

When Godfrey Blount died in July 1937, he divided his estate of £9,904 12s 11d between his nephew Charles Hubert Boulby Blount, MC Air Commodore RAF and Arthur Charles Fifield, a retired publisher.  This seems slightly strange because whilst having no children, Godfrey’s wife Ethel Blount did not die until 1942, I can only assume that by leaving some of his estate to his nephew, Godfrey was in fact providing for Ethel.  Godfrey’s good friends Joseph King and Greville MacDonald did not die until 1943 and 1944 respectively.

Arthur C. Fifield, publisher of Godfrey Blount's Arbor Vitae

So who was Arthur Fifield?  Blount had been publishing works with Arthur Fifield since 1899’s Arbor Vitae, so as a minimum they would have known each other for 45 years.

Fifield was a follower of Tolstoy, and had worked for the Free Age Press.  This was set up in 1900 by Vladimir Chertkov, a wealthy aristocrat from St Petersburg, and perhaps the most prolific follower of Tolstoy, and his most devoted disciple.  "Since the autocracy considered Tolstoyism an enemy, Chertkov left for England in 1896." (Wikipedia) But it also seems that Chertkov created problems in the Tolstoy family, some of which was dramaticized in the 2009 film 'The Last Station', a few clips of which are here on The Guardian's website.

Vladimir Chertkov with Tolstoy
from Wikipedia

"Chertkov had a troubled relationship with most of the Tolstoy family, and tried actively to destroy the relationship between Tolstoy and his wife Sophia. Tolstoy's final flight, for example, is described as having been greatly influenced by Chertkov. Sophia was especially troubled by what she felt was his hypocritical philosophy: he decried wealth, but had his own fancy estate. His associates lay about her house and ate free and paid no rent and criticized her materialism, while she raised several children and ran the entire business side of Tolstoy's writing (at Tolstoy's wish), which provided a major source of income for Yasnaya Polyana and enabled their lifestyle.

"Additionally, Chertkov convinced Tolstoy to sign a secret will and give control of his works to Chertkov instead of Sophia. He then used this control to publish versions of Tolstoy's collected works as he wanted. He also criticized Sophia, discredited her diaries and her own writing, and played up his own relationship with the Count. Chertkov also fostered a positive relationship with the newly formed Soviet state, which he used to suppress Sophia's version of Tolstoy's life story and his relationship with her." (Wikipedia, ibid.)

Chertkov arrived in Croydon in 1897 at the beginning of his eleven-year exile.  He immediately began publishing banned Tolstoyan materials in Russian, and also established the Free Age Press as an outlet for cheap, uncopyrighted English translations of Tolstoy’s newer works, on the model of his Posrednik publishing operation in Russia. 

Free Age Press Tolstoyian publication,
published by Arthur C. Fifield

Early in 1900 he asked Arthur C. Fifield, a Brotherhood Church member with whom he had frequently discussed the publication and distribution of books, to manage the latter.  The Free Age Press at the time has 'Maldon Essex' as it's address, this is 4 miles away from Purleigh, where Chertkov was living in the Purleigh Colony, and Fifield was reported to be living 'just down the road'.  The Free Age Press then consisted of Arthur Fifield and Chertkov, and a few translators such as Aylmer Maude.  Fifield was an ‘assistant translator’, improving the English of Chertkov and other Russians.  He also did all the office work and made arrangements with printers.  ‘I was publisher, manager, joint editor, joint translator, publicity agent, advertising expert, warehouseman, porter, packer, clerk, book-keeper, office boy and stamp licker, all in one,’ Fifield wrote.   

The Free Age Press had two branches “the production of Russian language Tolstoyan materials and secondly the production of Tolstoy’s writing in cheap additions for an international English readership.  These cheap pamphlets had considerable international reach and could be purchased as far afield as Shanghai and New York City.  Tolstoy praised the publications price, presentation and accessibility to ‘English speaking working people; and through Chertkov maintained a ‘special relationship’ with the publishing enterprise.   The Free Age Press was the best known and likely the most profitable Tolstoyan publishing enterprise, arguably due to the numerous members of the Tolstoyan movement who worked for the enterprise.  Notably Arthur Fifield, a member of the Croydon Brotherhood Church, ensured the popularity of the publications in its initial years.  Despite its success, Chertkov’s leadership alienated many of his Tolstoyan coworkers and publishing output diminished.”  (https://tolstoyans.wordpress.com/tolstoyan-enterprises/publishing-enterprises/)

Free Age Press publications, 1900

“…Fifield worked with Free Age for only three years, from early 1900 to the middle of 1902, in that time bringing out forty-three publications.  He left after a dispute with Chertkov (the aristocrat quarrelled with practically all his associates) and soon thereafter started his own publishing house, the Simple Life Press, later using his own name, A.C.Fifield, Publisher.  In this new form he produced many volumes of Tolstoyan themes, including a few by Tolstoy himself.  His books spanned the concerns of the London Tolstoyans: works by and on Tolstoy himself, simplicity in living (the Simple Life Series seems to have been his first set of publications, with over twenty volumes), vegetarianism, protest against exploitation, and affirmations of the hope of human brotherhood….Five of the twenty titles cited by Gandhi in his Hind Swaraj were from Fifield.  There were two essays by Thoreau, ‘On the Duty of Civil Disobedience’ and ‘Life Without Principle’ and Godfrey Blount’s A New Crusade, calling for simplicity in lifestyle, the revival of traditional crafts, and the renewing of country life.  The fourth was The Fallacy of Speed by Thomas Taylor, a sweeping critique of modern civilization, questioning the presumed benefits of improved transportation. …Eleven Fifield titles were found in Gandhi’s ashram library, including Sayings of Tolstoy (1911), Crosby’s Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster (1904), and Percy Reffern’s Tolstoy – a Study (1907).  Salome Hocking (Mrs Fifield) was represented by her novel of Tolstoyan communities, Belinda the Backward; A Romance of Modern Idealism (1905).  Three were by the vegetarian Henry D.Salt, including Animals’ Rights (1905).”  ( Hunt, James D., An American Looks at Gandhi: Essays in Satyagraha, Civil Rights, and Peace, Bibliophile, South East Asia, 2005)

"...Charles W. Daniel (1871 – 1955) became the principal organizer of the London Tolstoyan Society, in 1902, he began his own publishing business and also distributed Free Age books, eventually supplanting Fifield as the leading publisher of unorthodox books with a Tolstoyan ambience.” (ibid.)

From reading about Daniel it appears that my modern understanding of the term ‘crank’ (my previous posts The Haslemere Cranks)  and it’s meaning at the time are not in alignment: “In 1904, he stated a monthly, first called The Crank, and later The Open Road.  The first name was suggested by Mary Everest Boole, one of its regular contributors.  ‘A crank’, she said, ‘is a little thing that makes revolutions’. 

Arthur C. Fifield's wife, Salome Hocking,
published by Arthur C. Fifield

Fifield married Salome Hocking.  Alston (Alston, Charlotte, Tolstoy and his Disciples: The History of a Radical International Movement, I.B. Tauris, 2013) refers to her as “sometime manager of the Free Age Press”.   Fifield and Hocking married in 1894.  Hocking’s novel Belinda the Backward: A Romance of Modern Idealism appears to have been heavily influenced by her time at the Free Age Press and is based on working in a publishers printing Russian literature for a Mr Kovelevsky (Chertkov) and other identifiable characters.  Alston states that “Fifield believed that his wife genuinely feared Chertkov, but she insisted that her portrait of him was not malicious.”  The Hockings appear to have been a literary family from Brannel, Cornwall, Salome’s brother Joseph Hocking (1860-1937) was a Methodist minister who used fiction as a means of conveying his Christian beliefs, and her brother Silas K. Hocking is described in a similar fashion.   There is further information on the Hockings in various publications including Pulp Methodism: The Lives and Literature of Silas, Joseph and Salome Hocking, Three Cornish Novelists (Kent, Alan M., Cornish Hillside Publications, 2002).

Fifield met Chertkov through the Brotherhood Church, but what was this?  "The Croydon Brotherhood Church’s charismatic leader, John C. Kenworthy, underwent a Tolstoyan conversion and thereafter preached a blend of Christian Socialism and Tolstoyan anarchism.  (It is still active today, see their website here)  By 1897, several followers had settled on a lot of land in Purleigh, Essex; the agricultural commune underwent fast expansion.  Among the sympathizers who settled locally, Tolstoy’s disciple, the political exile Vladimir Chertkov…Although they donned Norfolk jackets, flannel shorts, and smocks like Ashbee’s men, early Purleigh and Whiteway settlers, rather than pursue silversmithing and cabinetry, worked the land like Tolstoy among his peasantry at Yasnaya Polyana…At the height of its popularity, Purleigh Colony inspired similar experiments outside Blackburn, Sheffield, and Leeds.  But the colonists’ decision to pledge nearly half of Purleigh’s capital to the transport to Canada of a refugee Russian pacificst sect, the Doukhobors,  precipitated the ultimate financial collapse of Purleigh in 1900.  Internal dissension had already spurred a splinter group to break away and found Whiteway Colony in the Cotswolds in 1898…

"The English Tolstoyan life vividly recounted in one novel produced by an ally and associate, Salome Hocking, who, with her spouse, Arthur C. Fifield, had deliberately settled down the road from Purleigh Colony. 

“One hesitates to call the novel a satire, because it does not parody crankish behaviour. …Belinda enumerates her physical discomforts there.  The fire from the insufficient wood stove leaves everything they eat and drink tasting of smoke, and the floor and ceiling beams of the cottage are black with it.  The windows are badly fitted, so she tries to stifle the drafts by placing her comb and brush against the gaps around the window frames.  There is a shortage of linen and space, so she sleeps on a mattress on the floor of the front room with a carriage rug and her coat as additional blankets.  As the cottage is without cupboards or wardrobes, she is promised a few nails on which to hang her dresses.  Most of all, it is the dark bread, baked from the grain that they have grown and harvest, that offends her, it is inedible, hard, saltless, and dry; and it constitutes much of the two-meal-a-day diet at the colony. 

Salome Hocking,
from Salome Hocking: A Cornish Woman Writer, Goodman, Gemma,
Women of Cornwall Monograph Series, The Hypatia Trust, 2004

“What is interesting is that long after she has settled in and experienced a winter in the colony, Belinda reflects on the necessity of crafts as a means of sustaining both happiness and the fabric of the commune.  Most of those who remain at the colony are, like, her, bookish and city-bred.  But she observes that “genuine” country people excel at skills of carpentry and shoe mending and that the winter is when farmers repair gates and doors and harnesses and replace hinges and fastenings.  She argues that the colonist has to be as handy as a sailor and “be able to knock up a shed, make a table and bench, and, if possible, a chair for himself”.  “For a colony to be successful some handicraft should be allied to agriculture”  Notice, however, that while she uses the term handicraft, there is no goal here of selling one’s work or converting others’ tastes to more Aesthetic designs.  In this Tolstoyian environment, one aims for self-sufficiency rather than market success.” (Maltz, Diana, Living by Design: C.R. Ashbee’s Build of Handicraft and Two English Tolstoyan Communities, 1897-1907, Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 39, No.2 (2011) pp.409-426)

Sadly, the most famous mention of Arthur C. Fifield is his rejection letter to Gertrude Stein in 1912.  The best explanation of this event (online) states “In 1912, Gerturude Stein sent a manuscript to London-based publisher Arthur C. Fifield.  The modernist author, known for her avant-garde and at times impenetrable prose, had sent what would later be The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress, published in 1925.  The novel is one of Stein’s more challenging works, using present particple, limited vocabulary, and a lot of repitition.  It was this last feature that Fifield drew upon to craft his rejection letter (19 April 1912):

“Dear Madam

I am only one, only one, only one.  Only one being, one at the same time.  Not two, not three, only one.  Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour.  Only one pair of eyes.  Only one brain.  Only one being.  Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your M.S. three or four times.  Not even one time.  Only one look, only one look is enough.  Hardly one copy would sell here.  Hardly one.  Hardly one.

Many thanks.  I am returning the M.S. by registered post.  Only one M.S. by one post.”  (http://mentalfloss.com/article/65717/read-publishers-rejection-letter-gertrude-stein)