I spent a nervous day in anticipation of that meeting. Pat Regan was with me all day, and threatened dissolution. “There isn’t a fellow in the world,” said he, “that I love better than Walter Watt, and I’d go to Jamaica to serve him;”—when the time came, which it did, oh, so soon! he was asked to go no further than Kensal Green;—“but—!” and then Pat paused.
“You’re ready to quarrel with him,” said I, “simply because he won’t laugh at your jokes.”
“There’s a good deal in that,” said Regan; “and when two men are in a boat together each ought to laugh at the other’s jokes. But the question isn’t as to our laughing. If we can’t make the public laugh sometimes we may as well shut up shop. Walter is so intensely serious that nothing less austere than lay sermons will suit his conscience.”
“Let him preach his sermon, and do you crack your jokes. Surely we can’t be dull when we have you and Jack Hallam?”
“Jack’ll never write a line,” said Regan; “he only comes for the muffins. Then think of Churchill Smith, and the sort of stuff he’ll expect to force down our readers’ throats.”
“Smith is sour, but never tedious,” said I. Indeed, I expected great things from Smith, and so I told my friend.
“ ‘Lydia’ will write,” said Pat. We used to call her Lydia behind her back. “And so will Churchill Smith and Watt. I do not doubt that they have quires written already. But no one will read a word of it. Jack, and you, and I will intend to write, but we shall never do anything.”
This I felt to be most unjust, because, as I have said before, I was already engaged upon the press. My work was not remunerative, but it was regularly done. “I am afraid of nothing,” said I, “but distrust. You can move a mountain if you will only believe that you can move it.”
“Just so;—but in order to avoid the confusion consequent on general motion among the mountains, I and other men have been created without that sort of faith.” It was always so with my poor friend, and, consequently, he is now Attorney-General at a Turtle Island. Had he believed as I did—he and Jack—I still think that the Panjandrum might have been a great success. “Don’t you look so glum,” he went on to say. “I’ll stick to it, and do my best. I did put Lord Bateman into rhymed Latin verse for you last night.”
Then he repeated to me various stanzas, of which I still remember one:—
“Tuam duxi, verum est, filiam, sed merum est;
Si virgo mihi data fuit, virgo tibi redditur.
Venit in ephippio mihi, et concipio
Satis est si triga pro reditu conceditur.”
This cheered me a little, for I thought that Pat was good at these things, and I was especially anxious to take the wind out of the sails of “Fraser” and Father Prout. “Bring it with you,” said I to him, giving him great praise. “It will raise our spirits to know that we have something ready.” He did bring it; but “Lydia” required to have it all translated to her, word by word. It went off heavily, and was at last objected to by the lady. For the first and last time during our debates Miss Collins ventured to give an opinion on the literary question under discussion. She agreed, she said, with her friend in thinking that Mr. Regan’s Latin poem should not be used. The translation was certainly as good as the ballad, and I was angry. Miss Collins, at any rate, need not have interfered.
At last the evening came, and we sat round the table, after the teacups had been removed, each anxious for his allotted task. Pat had been so far right in his views as to the diligence of three of our colleagues, that they came furnished with piles of manuscript. Walter Watt, who was afflicted with no false shame, boldly placed before him on the table a heap of blotted paper. Churchhill Smith held in his hand a roll; but he did not, in fact, unroll it during the evening. He was a man very fond of his own ideas, of his own modes of thinking and manner of life, but not prone to put himself forward. I do not mind owning that I disliked him; but he had a power of self-abnegation which was, to say the least of it, respectable. As I entered the room, my eyes fell on a mass of dishevelled sheets of paper which lay on the sofa behind the chair on which Mrs. St. Quinten always sat, and I knew that these were her contributions. Pat Regan, as I have said, produced his unfortunate translation, and promised with the greatest good-humour to do another when he was told that his last performance did not quite suit Mrs. St. Quinten’s views. Jack had nothing ready; nor, indeed, was anything “ready” ever expected from him. I, however, had my own ideas as to what Jack might do for us. For myself, I confess that I had in my pocket from two to three hundred lines of what I conceived would be a very suitable introduction, in verse, for the first number. It was my duty, I thought, as editor, to provide the magazine with a few initiatory words. I did not, however, produce the rhymes on that evening, having learned to feel that any strong expression of self on the part of one member at that board was not gratifying to the others. I did take some pains in composing those lines, and thought at the time that I had been not unhappy in mixing the useful with the sweet. How many hours shall I say that I devoted to them? Alas, alas, it matters not now! Those words which I did love
