Short Fiction · The Panjandrum (2/3) (2/4)

Walter Watt was a fellow of ⸻. ⸻ I believe has fellows who do not take orders. It must have had one such in those days, for nothing could have induced our friend, Walter Watt, to go into the Church. How it came to pass that the dons of a college at Oxford should have made a fellow of so wild a creature was always a mystery to us. I have since been told that at ⸻ the reward could hardly be refused to a man who had gone out a “first” in classics and had got the “Newdigate.” Such had been the career of young Watt. And, though I say that he was wild, his moral conduct was not bad. He simply objected on principle to all authority, and was of opinion that the goods of the world should be in common. I must say of him that in regard to one individual his practice went even beyond his preaching; for Jack Hallam certainly consumed more of the fellowship than did Walter Watt himself. Jack was dark and swarthy. Walter was a fair little man, with long hair falling on the sides of his face, and cut away over his forehead⁠—as one sees it sometimes cut in a picture. He had round blue eyes, a well-formed nose, and handsome mouth and chin. He was very far gone in his ideas of reform, and was quite in earnest in his hope that by means of the Panjandrum something might be done to stay the general wickedness⁠—or rather ugliness of the world. At that time Carlyle was becoming prominent as a thinker and writer among us, and Watt was never tired of talking to us of the hero of Sartor Resartus. He was an excellent and most unselfish man⁠—whose chief fault was an inclination for the making of speeches, which he had picked up at an Oxford debating society. He now lies buried at Kensal Green. I thought to myself, when I saw another literary friend laid there some eight years since, that the place had become very quickly populated since I and Regan had seen poor Watt placed in his last home, almost amidst a desert.

Of myself, I need only say that at that time I was very young, very green, and very ardent as a politician. The Whigs were still in office; but we, who were young then, and warm in our political convictions, thought that the Whigs were doing nothing for us. It must be remembered that things and ideas have advanced so quickly during the last thirty years, that the Conservatism of 1870 goes infinitely further in the cause of general reform than did the Radicalism of 1840. I was regarded as a Democrat because I was loud against the Corn Laws; and was accused of infidelity when I spoke against the Irish Church Endowments. I take some pride to myself that I should have seen these evils to be evils even thirty years ago. But to Household Suffrage I doubt whether even my spirit had ascended. If I remember rightly I was great upon annual parliaments; but I know that I was discriminative, and did not accept all the points of the seven-starred charter. I had an idea in those days⁠—I can confess it now after thirty years⁠—that I might be able to indite short political essays which should be terse, argumentative, and convincing, and at the same time full of wit and frolic. I never quite succeeded in pleasing even myself in any such composition. At this time I did a little humble work for the ⸻, but was quite resolved to fly at higher game than that.

As I began with the lady, so I must end with her. I had seen and read sheaves of her MS., and must express my conviction at this day, when all illusions are gone, that she wrote with wonderful ease and with some grace. A hard critic might perhaps say that it was slip-slop; but still it was generally readable. I believe that in the recesses of her privacy, and under the dark and secret guidance of Churchill Smith, she did give way to German poetry and abstruse thought. I heard once that there was a paper of hers on the essence of existence, in which she answered that great question, as to personal entity, or as she put it, “What is it, to be?” The paper never appeared before the Committee, though I remember the question to have been once suggested for discussion. Pat Regan answered it at once⁠—“A drop of something short,” said he. I thought then that everything was at an end! Her translation into a rhymed verse of a play of Schiller’s did come before us, and nobody could have behaved better than she did, when she was told that it hardly suited our project. What we expected from Mrs. St. Quinten in the way of literary performance I cannot say that we ourselves had exactly realised, but we knew that she was always ready for work. She gave us tea and muffins, and bore with us when we were loud, and devoted her time to our purposes, and believed in us. She had exquisite tact in saving us from wordy quarrelling, and was never angry herself, except when Pat Regan was too hard upon her. What became of her I never knew. When the days of the Panjandrum were at an end she vanished from our sight. I always hoped that Mr. St. Quinten reconciled himself to literature, and took her back to his bosom.

While we were only determining that the thing should be, all went smoothly with us. Columns, or the open page, made a little difficulty; but the lady settled it for us in favour of the double column. It is a style of page which certainly has a wiser look about it than the other; and then it has the advantage of being clearly distinguished from the ordinary empty book of the day. The word “padding,” as belonging to literature, was then unknown; but the idea existed⁠—and perhaps the thing. We were quite resolved that there should be no padding in the Panjandrum. I think our most ecstatic, enthusiastic, and accordant moments were those in which we resolved that it should be all good, all better than anything else⁠—all best. We were to struggle after excellence with an energy that should know no relaxing⁠—and the excellence was not to be that which might produce for us the greatest number of half-crowns, but of the sort which would increase truth in the world, and would teach men to labour hard and bear their burdens nobly, and become gods upon earth. I think our chief feeling was one of impatience in having to wait to find to what heaven death would usher us, who unfortunately had to be human before we could put on divinity. We wanted heaven at once⁠—and were not deterred though Jack Hallam would borrow ninepence and Pat Regan make his paltry little jokes.

We had worked hard for six months before we began to think of writing, or even of apportioning to each contributor what should be written for the first number. I shall never forget the delight there was in having the young publisher in to tea, and in putting him through his figures, and in feeling that it became us for the moment to condescend to matters of trade. We felt him to be an inferior being; but still it was much for us to have progressed so far towards reality as to have a real publisher come to wait upon us. It was at that time clearly understood that I was to be the editor, and I felt myself justified in taking some little lead in arranging matters with our energetic young friend. A remark that I made one evening was very mild⁠—simply some suggestion as to the necessity of having a more than ordinarily well-educated set of printers;⁠—but I was snubbed infinitely by Churchill Smith. “Mr. X.,” said he, “can probably tell us more about printing than we can tell him.” I felt so hurt that I was almost tempted to leave the room at once. I knew very well that if I seceded Pat Regan would go with me, and that the whole thing must fall to the ground. Mrs. St. Quinten, however, threw instant oil upon the waters. “Churchill,” said she, “let us live and learn. Mr. X., no doubt, knows. Why should we not share his knowledge?” I smothered my feelings in the public cause, but I was conscious of a wish that Mr. Smith might fall among the Philistines of Cursitor Street, and so of necessity be absent from our meetings. There was an idea among us that he crept out of his hiding-place, and came to our conferences by byways; which was confirmed when our hostess proposed that our evening should be changed from Thursday, the day first appointed, to Sunday. We all acceded willingly, led away somewhat, I fear, by an idea that it was the proper thing for advanced spirits such as ours to go to work on that day which by ancient law is appointed for rest.

Mrs. St. Quinten would always open our meeting with a little speech. “Gentlemen and partners in this enterprise,” she would say, “the tea is made, and the muffins are ready. Our hearts are bound together in the work. We are all in earnest in the good cause of political reform and social regeneration. Let the spirit of harmony prevail among us. Mr. Hallam, perhaps you’ll take the cover off.” To see Jack Hallam eat muffins was⁠—I will say “a caution,” if the use of the slang phrase may be allowed to me for the occasion. It was presumed among us that on these days he had not dined. Indeed, I doubt whether he often did dine⁠—supper being his favourite meal. I have supped with him more than once, at his invitation⁠—when to be without coin in my own pocket was no disgrace⁠—and have wondered at the equanimity with which the vendors of shellfish have borne my friend’s intimation that he must owe them the little amount due for our evening entertainment. On these occasions his friend Watt was never with him, for Walter’s ideas as to the common use of property were theoretical. Jack dashed at once into the more manly course of practice. When he came to Mrs. St. Quinten’s one evening in my best⁠—nay, why dally with the truth?⁠—in my only pair of black dress trousers, which I had lent him ten days before, on the occasion, as I then believed, of a real dinner party, I almost denounced him before his colleagues. I think I should have done so had I not felt that he would in some fashion have so turned the tables on me that I should have been the sufferer. There are men with whom one comes by the worst in any contest, let justice on one’s own side be ever so strong and ever so manifest.

But this is digression. After the little speech, Jack would begin upon the muffins, and Churchill Smith⁠—always seated at his cousin’s left hand⁠—would hang his head upon his hand, wearing a look of mingled thought and sorrow on his brow. He never would eat muffins. We fancied that he fed himself with penny hunches of bread as he walked along the streets. As a man he was wild, unsociable, untamable; but, as a philosopher, he had certainly put himself beyond most of those wants to which Jack Hallam and others among us were still subject. “Lydia,” he once said, when pressed hard to partake of the good things provided, “man cannot live by muffins alone⁠—no, nor by tea and muffins. That by which he can live is hard to find. I doubt we have not found it yet.”

This, to me, seemed to be rank apostasy⁠—infidelity to the cause which he was bound to trust as long as he kept his place in that society. How shall you do anything in the world, achieve any success, unless you yourself believe in yourself? And if there be a partnership either in mind or matter, your partner must be the same to you as yourself. Confidence is so essential to the establishment of a magazine! I felt then, at least, that the Panjandrum could have no chance without it, and I rebuked Mr. Churchill Smith. “We know what you mean by that,” said I;⁠—“because we don’t talk German metaphysics, you think we aint worth our salt.”

“So much worth it,” said he, “that I trust heartily you may find enough to save you even yet.”

I was about to boil over with wrath; but Walter Watt was on his legs, making a speech about the salt of the earth, before I had my words ready. Churchill Smith would put up with Walter when he would endure words from no one else. I used to think him mean enough to respect the Oxford fellowship, but I have since fancied that he believed that he had discovered a congenial spirit. In those days I certainly did despise Watt’s fellowship, but in later life I have come to believe that men who get rewards have generally earned them. Watt on this occasion made a speech to which in my passion I hardly attended; but I well remember how, when I was about to rise in my wrath, Mrs. St. Quinten put her hand on my arm, and calmed me. “If you,” said she, “to whom we most trust for orderly guidance, are to be the first to throw down the torch of discord, what will become of us?”

“I haven’t thrown down any torch,” said I.

“Neither take one up,” said she, pouring out my tea for me as she spoke.

“As for myself,” said Regan, “I like metaphysics⁠—and I like them German. Is there anything so stupid and pigheaded as that insular feeling which makes us think nothing to be good that is not homegrown?”

“All the same,” said Jack, “who ever eat a good muffin out of London?”

“Mr. Hallam, Mary Jane is bringing up some more,” said our hostess. She was an openhanded woman, and the supply of these delicacies never ran low as long as the Panjandrum was a possibility.

It was, I think, on this evening that we decided finally for columns and for a dark gray wrapper⁠—with a portrait of the Panjandrum in the centre; a fancy portrait it must necessarily be; but we knew that we could trust for that to the fertile pencil of Mrs. St. Quinten. I had come prepared with a specimen cover, as to which I had in truth consulted an artistic friend, and had taken with it no inconsiderable labour. I am sure, looking back over the long interval of years at my feelings on that occasion⁠—I am sure, I say, that I bore well the alterations and changes which were made in that design until at last nothing remained of it. But what matters a wrapper? Surely of any printed and published work it is by the interior that you should judge it. It is not that old conjuror’s head that has given its success to Blackwood, nor yet those four agricultural boys that have made the Cornhill what it is.

We had now decided on columns, on the cover, and the colour. We had settled on the number of pages, and had thumbed four or five specimens of paper submitted to us by our worthy publisher. In that matter we had taken his advice, and chosen the cheapest; but still we liked the thumbing of the paper. It was business. Paper was paper then, and bore a high duty. I do not think that the system of illustration had commenced in those days, though a series of portraits was being published by one distinguished contemporary. We readily determined that we would attempt nothing of that kind. There then arose a question as to the insertion of a novel. Novels were not then, as now, held to be absolutely essential for the success of a magazine. There were at that time magazines with novels and magazines without them. The discreet young publisher suggested to us that we were not able to pay for such a story as would do us any credit. I myself, who was greedy for work, with bated breath offered to make an attempt. It was received with but faint thanks, and Walter Watt, rising on his legs, with eyes full of fire and arms extended, denounced novels in the general. It was not for such purpose that he was about to devote to the production of the Panjandrum any erudition that he might have acquired and all the intellect that God had given him. Let those who wanted novels go for them to the writer who dealt with fiction in the open market. As for him, he at any rate would search for truth. We reminded him of Blumine.2 “Tell your novel in three pages,” said he, “and tell it as that is told, and I will not object to it.” We were enabled, however, to decide that there should be no novel in the Panjandrum.