Short Fiction

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