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
