“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 pig-headed as that insular feeling which makes us think nothing to be good that is not home-grown?”
“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 open-handed 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.[A] “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.”
[A] See “Sartor Resartus”