The idea had originated, I think, between Mrs. St. Quinten and Churchill Smith. Churchill Smith was a man with whom, I must own, I never felt that perfect sympathy which bound me to the others. Perhaps among us all he was the most gifted. Such at least was the opinion of Mrs. St. Quinten and, perhaps, of himself. He was a cousin of the lady’s, and had made himself particularly objectionable to the husband by instigating his relative to write philosophical essays. It was his own speciality to be an unbeliever and a German scholar; and we gave him credit for being so deep in both arts that no man could go deeper. It had, however, been decided among us very early in our arrangements—and so decided, not without great chance of absolute disruption—that his infidelity was not to bias the magazine. He was to take the line of deep thinking, German poetry, and unintelligible speculation generally. He used to talk of Comte, whose name I had never heard till it fell from his lips, and was prepared to prove that Coleridge was very shallow. He was generally dirty, unshorn, and, as I thought, disagreeable. He called Mrs. St. Quinten Lydia, because of his cousinship, and no one knew how or where he lived. I believe him to have been a most unselfish, abstemious man—one able to control all appetites of the flesh. I think that I have since heard that he perished in a Russian prison.
My dearest friend among the number was Patrick Regan, a young Irish barrister, who intended to shine at the English Bar. I think the world would have used him better had his name been John Tomkins. The history of his career shows very plainly that the undoubted brilliance of his intellect, and his irrepressible personal humour and good-humour have been always unfairly weighted by those Irish names. What attorney, with any serious matter in hand, would willingly go to a barrister who called himself Pat Regan? And then, too, there always remained with him just a hint of a brogue—and his nose was flat in the middle! I do not believe that all the Irishmen with flattened noses have had the bone of the feature broken by a crushing blow in a street row; and yet they certainly look as though that peculiar appearance had been the result of a fight with sticks. Pat has told me a score of times that he was born so, and I believe him. He had a most happy knack of writing verses, which I used to think quite equal to Mr. Barham’s, and he could rival the droll Latinity of Father Prout who was coming out at that time with his “Dulcis Julia Callage,” and the like. Pat’s father was an attorney at Cork; but not prospering, I think, for poor Pat was always short of money. He had, however, paid the fees, and was entitled to appear in wig and gown wherever common-law barristers do congregate. He is Attorney-General at one of the Turtle Islands this moment, with a salary of £400 a year. I hear from him occasionally, and the other day he sent me “Captain Crosbie is my name,” done into endecasyllabics. I doubt, however, whether he ever made a penny by writing for the press. I cannot say that Pat was our strongest prop. He sometimes laughed at “Lydia,”—and then I was brought into disgrace, as having introduced him to the company.
Jack Hallam, the next I will name, was also intended for the Bar: but, I think, never was called. Of all the men I have encountered in life he was certainly the most impecunious. Now he is a millionaire. He was one as to whom all who knew him—friends and foes alike—were decided that under no circumstances would he ever work, or by any possibility earn a penny. Since then he has applied himself to various branches of commerce, first at New York and then at San Francisco; he has laboured for twenty-four years almost without a holiday, and has shown a capability for sustaining toil which few men have equalled. He had been introduced to our set by Walter Watt, of whom I will speak just now; and certainly when I remember the brightness of his wit and the flow of his words, and his energy when he was earnest, I am bound to acknowledge that in searching for sheer intellect—for what I may call power—we did not do wrong to enrol Jack Hallam. He had various crude ideas in his head of what he would do for us—having a leaning always to the side of bitter mirth. I think he fancied that satire might be his forte. As it is, they say that no man living has a quicker eye to the erection of a block of buildings in a coming city. He made a fortune at Chicago, and is said to have erected Omaha out of his own pocket. I am told that he pays income-tax in the United States on nearly a million dollars per annum. I wonder whether he would lend me five pounds if I asked him? I never knew a man so free as Jack at borrowing half-a-crown or a clean pocket-handkerchief.
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
