Henniker Heaton retired from parliament owing to ill-health. In 1911, while he was on a visit to Australia, a baronetcy was conferred upon him, and on his return a public welcome, held under the auspices of the British Empire League and presided over by Earl Curzon, was accorded him at the Guildhall. In September 1914 he was taken ill while returning from Carlsbad, and he died at Geneva on 8 September. He had four sons and two daughters, and was succeeded by his eldest son, John (born 1877).
Henniker Heaton had an attractive and vital personality, with the gift of imparting to others something of his own tireless enthusiasm about the things for which he cared. The campaign for postal reform opened in 1886, when he moved a resolution in the House of Commons with a view to establishing a system of universal penny postage. He was opposed on financial grounds, and defeated. From this moment Henniker Heaton preached his gospel both in and out of season, for he was of the type that does not recognize refusal. By 1890 he had succeeded in reducing international postage from six-pence to twopence half-penny. When at last he succeeded (at Christmas 1898) in making imperial penny postage an accomplished fact, Australia still stood out, and it was not until 1905 that he was able to post a penny letter to Australia. Unhappily he did not live to see the adoption of his cherished ideal of penny postage to France. The secret of his success as a reformer may be gauged by a saying of Mr. Asquith, ‘If I give way to Henniker Heaton on a single point, he is on my door-step next morning with fifty more’. He had a genius for friendship and was a keen clubman, being one of the early founders of the Bath Club.
[Mrs. Adrian Porter (daughter), The Life and Letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton, Bart., 1916; private information.]
HEINEMANN, WILLIAM (1863–1920), publisher, was born at Surbiton 18 May 1863, the eldest son of Louis Heinemann (a native of Hanover who became naturalized in 1856, shortly after settling in England) by his wife, Jane Lavino, a native of Manchester. William Heinemann received a cosmopolitan education, partly at a gymnase in Dresden and partly with a tutor in England. As a young man he intended to become a musician, and went to Germany to study music. Always a fastidious critic of himself as well as of others, he realized, although he became an accomplished musician, that he lacked the creative power necessary even for interpretative work of the highest order. His genius was for appreciation: he was as fine a judge of a painting or of a book as of music.
It was in the publication of books that Heinemann's flair for discovering and guiding the talent of others found full expression. He loved books, and cared not only for their content, but for the craft of book-making, in which he became an acknowledged master. He received his training as publisher in the firm of Messrs. Trübner, of Ludgate Hill, afterwards Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, and set up in business for himself in London in 1890. Mr. Sydney Pawling joined him in 1893. The first book published by the firm was The Bondman (1890) by (Sir) Hall Caine, which had a great popular success. Among his earliest publications was J. M. Whistler's Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890). Heinemann, who was a great friend of the painter, later published Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pennell's Life of Whistler. During the years 1895–1897 he published The New Review under the editorship of William Ernest Henley [q.v.].
Although the scope of Heinemann's firm was wide, it was, perhaps, the brilliance of its fiction list that made it especially remarkable: R. L. Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling were two of the earliest names; Sarah Grand, Flora Annie Steel, Israel Zangwill, Max Beerbohm, John Masefield, John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad, William Somerset Maugham, and H. G. Wells were also amongst the Heinemann authors. It was once said of Heinemann that he ‘had a nose for merit like that of a dog for truffles’. He published many plays, including most of those by Sir Arthur Pinero, Somerset Maugham, Israel Zangwill, Henry Davies, and Charles Haddon Chambers. Heinemann himself wrote plays, which were published by the firm of John Lane—The First Step (1895), Summer Moths (1898), and War (1901). But, as always in his creative work, he remained the dilettante. He had brilliant ideas but he turned them off lightly and bent his serious energies towards producing beautifully the creations of other minds. Hand in hand with his appreciative and critical faculties went a strong and sound sense of business, and a gift for organization. He played a great part in founding, in 1896, the Publishers' Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and
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