As good as their words

Published on Saturday 19 September 2009 19:55

IN AN elegant drawing room on a leafy street in one of Edinburgh's well-heeled suburbs, Denise Chambers sits surrounded by 200 years of family memories. Over the mantelpiece hangs a portrait of her husband's great, great grandmother as a girl, captured by the esteemed portrait painter Sir George Hayter.

In a bookcase lie rows of first editions, many written by her husband's great, great grandfather Robert Chambers. On a rack by the door sit copies of every Chambers dictionary imaginable.

Denise Chambers, a warm, refined woman in her mid-70s, is now the closest living connection with the Chambers publishing dynasty following the death in 2007 of her husband Antony, who ran the company for more than 40 years. Responsible for the Chambers dictionaries and one of the greatest successes of the Scottish publishing world, the Chambers' family story encompasses two centuries of Scottish history and is filled with poverty, riches, tragedy, and above all, a love of the written word.

Last week Hachette UK, who bought Chambers Harrap three years ago, announced it would be closing the company's Edinburgh office with the loss of 27 jobs, thus severing Chambers' ties with Scotland forever. "It was quite a blow," says Denise. "Since I've been married it's been very much part of my life. And it was very much my husband's life." So much so, she says, she is glad he is no longer around to see it happen. "He would have been very upset that it was leaving Edinburgh. There won't be a great deal of the company left at all. I'm glad he wasn't here to hear about it," she says.

That a publishing firm which was once one of the world's most influential could reach such an ignominious end – the Chambers name will live on but the titles will be transferred to offices in London and France – would have seemed inconceivable to previous generations of the Chambers family.

But how did Chambers gain its reputation to become what His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman describes as "the most human of dictionaries"?

The answer lies in portraits hanging in a spare bedroom in the Chambers family home. On the left is Robert Chambers, smiling and relaxed; on the right is his brother William Chambers, serious and focused. If it were not for these markedly different temperaments, it remains questionable whether Chambers dictionaries would have existed at all.

"Both William and Robert were of a particular Scottish mould," says Professor Alistair McCleery, professor of literature and culture at Napier University and a co-director of the Scottish Archive of Print and Publishing History Records.

"They were both self-educated, they were dynamic entrepreneurs but they also had an acute sense of social conscience that was partly derived from their religious beliefs but also from their own experience."

The Chambers brothers were born into a privileged mill-owning family in the Borders town of Peebles – William in 1800 and Robert in 1802. When the two were still children, their well-meaning father extended his generosity to French prisoners of war garrisoned in the town. He lent them money for clothes with the arrangement they would repay the debt when they returned to France. They never did, and the family was financially ruined. In 1813, the penniless Chambers left for Edinburgh to start a new life.

Robert, who had a deformed foot, was quieter and the more bookish of the two. He read the Encyclopedia Britannica at an early age and swapped his "jeelie pieces" for books. At the age of 16, with no prospects of going to university, he set up a book stall on Leith Walk, which consisted of his and his father's book collections.

With the help of his brother, who had picked up some financial know-how as a result of the family's fall, the pair started to do well. Following the purchase of a small second-hand press in 1819, they published 750 copies of The Songs Of Robert Burns. It was a bestseller, and the company started to gain a reputation. A book, written by Robert and named Traditions of Edinburgh, followed in 1824. In 1832, now operating under the company name W&R Chambers, they started their own weekly newspaper, The Chambers Journal, which concerned itself with many of the social issues of the day.

"They experienced a fall into poverty and a rise out of poverty and they were acutely aware of what poverty meant," says McCleery. "Robert was quite a shy and not altogether social person and I think probably his experience of poverty contributed to that. William, however, was a much more outgoing and confident politician."

William's contribution to Edinburgh society was enormous. A one-time Lord Provost of Edinburgh, he brought in new laws governing the maintenance of the Old Town, providing new houses with more space and light for residents and improving sanitation, leading to the abolition of the "gardez-lou" tradition in the city. He also paid for the restoration of St Giles Cathedral and had a street – Chambers Street – named after him.

Robert, meanwhile, concerned himself with writing. He contributed regularly to the Journal and was noted for a number of literary works. Yet his greatest achievement was to remain under wraps for the rest of his life. In 1844, a weighty tome named Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was published anonymously. Preceding Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species by 15 years, it debunked the story of Genesis and put forward a theory on the development of the universe, suggesting it gestated in a similar way to that of an embryo, and describing it as having "evolved". It became an instant bestseller, with an estimated 100,000 readers in Britain alone, and massive sales in the US. The author, of course, was Robert Chambers.

"It was on the edges of what was acceptable during that period," says Professor Jim Secord, professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge and the author of Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

"When it was published all these different people were accused of being the author. Even Prince Albert at one point was suggested. But it really was an incredibly important work because it meant that 15 years before Origin of Species the evolution of humans was on the public agenda throughout Britain and America."

The book was in part the product of a mental trauma he suffered in the late 1830s. "He had some kind of a breakdown as he had been writing so continuously throughout the 1830s and had had various quarrels with his brother," says Secord. "I think he felt like he needed to recover and so he moved to St Andrews for a period of three or four years. During that time he withdrew to write Vestiges."

That the two quarrelled was not, according to Secord, uncommon. "They were very different in temperament. William was much more business-like while Robert had ambitions as a poet early in his life and was much more imaginative. There was this fundamental difference in character between the two. But obviously they were able to work together well."

In 1859 the first part of Chambers's Encyclopedia was published and in 1867 they published their first dictionary, Chambers's Etymological Dictionary, by James Donald. By the time Robert died in 1871, the day-to-day running of the business had passed to his eldest son, also named Robert and known as Robert 'Secundus' within the Chambers family.

He published a larger version of the dictionary, Chambers's English Dictionary, in 1872, and the Chambers's Biographical Dictionary in 1897. That was followed by a compact edition of the English dictionary, Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary, in 1901.

The company, by then one of the largest English-language publishers in the world, passed on to his son, Charles. According to an interview Antony Chambers gave to McCleery in 1999, his grandfather had a rather relaxed approach to business, taking plenty of holidays, playing golf (a family passion, Robert too was a keen golfer), shooting and fishing.

His son, another Robert, who took over the business in the 1920s, had a rather more pragmatic approach, quietly building up the dictionary side of the business. This was despite personal tragedy when his wife died when their son Antony was just 18 months old. Robert later remarried, but tragedy struck again in 1940, after Antony went to the front to fight and was captured by the Germans and held in a prisoner of war camp.

"Robert had a brain tumour and died aged 52," says Denise. "As my husband was in the prisoner of war camp when it happened he never knew that Tony was safe. He died before they had news that Tony was all right."

Antony returned after four years in a prisoner of war camp to find himself a director of Chambers, aged just 27. "He was very much devoted to the business," says Denise. "He loved it and was always very interested and dedicated."

But while Antony poured his heart and soul into the business, diversifying with a range of different types of dictionary such as titles devoted to Scrabble, crosswords and quotations, the publishing playing field was becoming increasingly rocky.

"The business began to decline from the 1970s onwards," says McCleery. "That was because of the change in markets in independent publishing, where it became more difficult to survive, and also, as often happens with family firms, it comes to a generation who are not interested."

Although Denise says her eldest son Michael had hoped to join the business, the firm was sold off to Group de la Cit in 1989 not long after Antony Chambers retired, while Michael was spending a year in Australia. After the sale, Antony busied himself with reading up on the Chambers family history and, in the final years of his life, rediscovered diaries he had written while in the PoW camp.

Denise would like to have them published. "We are having them typed up at the moment," she says. "It would maybe be nice to see them in print." One last publication, perhaps, from an extraordinary Scottish family who once dominated the world of publishing.

Lost Scottish giants

John Brown and Company.

This Sheffield-based steel-manufacturer took over J&G Thomson's Clydebank yard in 1899 and became one of the best known shipbuilding companies in the world. It was used by the Royal Navy and became the shipbuilders of choice for the Cunard Line, building their flagship liners, the RMS Lusitania and RMS Aquitania. Its last major order was the QE2, but the John Brown name disappeared in the 1970s as the shipbuilding industry moved to cheaper countries.

Sir William Arrol & Co

This was a leading Scottish civil engineering business based in Dalmarnock, Glasgow. It was founded by engineer William Arrol in 1873. Among bridges built by the firm were the Forth Bridge and Forth Road Bridge, Tower Bridge in London, North Bridge in Edinburgh and the Caledonian Railway Bridge across the River Clyde. However, the company was bought by Gateshead-based firm Clarke Chapman in 1969 and the Dalmarnock works were closed in 1986.

John Menzies

Established in 1833, John Menzies developed a chain of newsagents across the UK which existed until the late 1990s. Strongly associated with Scotland, it was sold to English firm W H Smith in 1998. Today Menzies plc still exists, but as a distributor of newspapers and magazines throughout the UK and providing aviation services.

William Low

This Dundee-based firm owned a chain of supermarkets across Scotland. The group often served small towns, although it had large stores in Dundee and Perth. The firm was bought by Tesco for 275 million in 1994.