Wrecked in Port: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

"Well, we must take care that you fulfil all her ladyship's expectations, Walter! What you are doing now must merely be a stepping-stone to something much better. I don't intend to die until I have seen you a leader in the people's cause, my boy! Oh yes, I allow you're soundly with them now, and fight their battles well and effectively with the pen; but I want to live to see you in Parliament, to hear you riddling the plutocrats with your banter, and overwhelming the aristocrats with your scorn!"

"My dear old friend, I fear you pitch the note a little too high," said Joyce, with a laugh. "I don't think you will ever see me among the senators."

"And why not?" asked old Byrne, in a very excited manner--"and why not, pray? Is there any one speaks better at the Club? Is there any one more popular among the leaders of the cause, or with them? If those miserable Tories had not swallowed the leek fifty times in succession, as they have just done, and thereby succeeded in clinging to office for yet a few months, the chiefs of the party, or at least of one section of it--the 'ultras,' as they are good enough to call us--would have relied greatly on your advice and assistance, and when the election comes, as come it must within a very short time, you will see how you will be in requisition. And about your position, Walter? I think we should look to that at once. I think you should lose no time in entering yourself at some Inn of Court, and commence reading for the bar!"

"Don't ask me to make any change in my life at present, old friend!" said Walter. "No!" as he saw the old man with an impatient gesture about to speak--"no, I was not going to plead the want of the money; for, in the first place, I know you would lend it to me, and in the second I am myself making, as you know, an excellent income. But I don't want to undertake anything more just now than what I am actually engaged in. I am quite sufficiently occupied--and I am very happy."

Old Byrne was compelled to be satisfied with this declaration, but he grumbled out that it should only be temporary, and that he intended to see Walter in a very different position before he died.

Walter Joyce said nothing more than the truth when he said that he was very happy. He had fallen into exactly the kind of life which suited him, the pursuance of a congenial occupation amongst companions of similar tastes. There are, I take it, but few of us professional plyers of the pen who do not look back with regret and with something akin to wonder to that halcyon time when we first entered upon authorship; when the mere act of writing was in itself pleasant, when the sight of a proof-sheet was calculated to fill one with infinite delight, when one glowed with delight at praise, or writhed in agony under attack. In after life, when the novelty has entirely worn off, when the Pegasus which ambled, and kicked, and pranced, has settled down into the serviceable hack of ordinary use, often obliged, like other hacks, to go through his work and to put forth his paces at inopportune times and seasons, it seems impossible to believe that this freshness of feeling, this extraordinary enthusiasm, can ever have existed; unless, perchance, you see the reflex of yourself in some one else who is beginning to pursue the sunny verdant end of that path which with you at present has worn down into a very commonplace beaten track, and then you perceive that the illusion was not specially your own, but is common to all who are in that happy glorious season of youth.

Walter Joyce was thoroughly happy. He had pleasant rooms in Staples Inn--a quiet, quaint, old-world place, where the houses with their overhanging eaves and gabled roofs and mullioned windows recall memories of Continental cities and college "quads," and yet are only just shut off from the never-ceasing bustle and riot of Holborn. The furniture of these rooms was not very new, and there was not very much of it; but the sitting-room boasted not merely of two big easy-chairs, but of several rows of bookshelves, which had been well filled, by Jack Byrne's generosity, with books which the old man had himself selected; and in the bedroom there was a bed and a bath, which, in Joyce's opinion, satisfied all reasonable expectations. Here, in the morning, he read or wrote; for he was extending his connection with literature, and found a ready market for his writings in several of the more thoughtful periodicals of the day. In the afternoon he would go down to the Comet office, and take part in the daily conference of the principal members of the staff. There present would be Mr. Warren, the proprietor of the paper, who did not understand much about journalism, as, indeed, could scarcely be expected of him, seeing that the whole of his previous life had been taken up in attending to the export provision trade, in which he had made his fortune, but who was a capital man of business, looked after the financial affairs of the concern, and limited his interference with the conduct of the paper in listening to what others had to say. There would be Mr. Saltwell, who devoted himself to foreign politics, who was a wonderful linguist, and a skilful theological controversialist, and who, in his tight drab trousers, cut-away coat, and bird's-eye cravat, looked like a racing trainer or a tout; Mr. Gowan, a Scotchman, a veteran journalist of enormous experience, who, as he used to say, had had scores of papers "killed under him;" Mr. Forrest, a slashing writer, but always in extremes, and who was always put on to any subject which it was required should be highly lauded or shamefully abused--it did not matter much to Mr. Forrest, who was a man of the world; and Mr. Ledingham, a man of great learning but very ponderous in style and recondite in subject, whose articles were described by Mr. Shimmer as being "like roast pig, very nice occasionally, but not to be indulged in often with impunity," were also usual attendants at the conference, which was presided over by the recognised editor of the Comet, Terence O'Connor.

Mr. O'Connor was the type of a class of journalists which yet exists, indeed, but is not nearly so numerous as it was a few years ago. Your newspaper editor of to-day dines with the duke and looks in at the countess's reception; his own reporter includes him amongst the distinguished company which he, the reporter, "observes" at select reunions; he rides in the Park, and drives down to his office from the House of Commons, where he has been the centre of an admiring circle of members, in his brougham. Shades of the great men of bygone days--of White and Berry, of Kew and Captain Shandon--think of that Terence O'Connor was of the old school. He had made journalism his profession since he left Trinity, and had only won his position by hard labour and untiring perseverance, had written in and edited various provincial newspapers, had served his time as sub and hack on the London press, and had eventually risen to the editorial chair which he filled so admirably. A man of vast learning, with the simplicity of a child, of keen common sense tempered with great amicability, an admirable writer, an ardent politician, wielding great power with never-failing impartiality, Terence O'Connor passed his life in a world in which he was exceptionally influential, and to which he was comparatively unknown. His neighbours at Clapham had no idea that the slim gray-haired gentleman whom they saw pottering about in his garden on summer afternoons, or lying on the grass under the shade of a big tree playing with his children, was the lightning-compeller and the thunder-creator of the Comet.Though most earnest while engaged in his work, it was his greatest delight to leave every trace of it behind him at his office, and to be entirely free from its influence when at home with his wife and children. Occasionally, of course, the few old friends who dined with him would start a political or literary discussion, in which he would bear his part; but he was never happy until the conversation found its way back into the ordinary social channels, or until a demand was made for music, of which he was passionately fond. It was a lucky thing for Walter Joyce to make the acquaintance and to win the regard of such a man as Terence O'Connor, who had a wonderfully quick eye for character, and who, having noticed Walter's readiness of appreciation and bright incisive style in the few articles which he wrote on the occasion of his first introduction by Mr. Byrne, suggested that the post at Berlin should be offered to him. The more they were thrown together the better they liked each other. Walter had the greatest admiration for O'Connor's talent and power of work; while the elder man looked kindly on his young friend's eagerness and enthusiasm, his desire for distinction, and his delight at laudation, perhaps as somewhat reflecting his own feelings before he had become settled down to the mill-horse grind--ah, how many years ago!

After the conference had broken up, Joyce, to whom, perhaps, a subject had been given to treat, would go back to his chambers and work at it for two or three hours, or he would remain at the office discussing the matter in detail with Terence O'Connor, and taking his friend's advice as to the manner of treatment. Or, if he were free, he would lounge in the Park, and stare at the equipages, and the toilettes, and the London panorama of luxury there constantly going by, all new to the country-bred young man, to whom, until he went to Lord Hetherington's, the old rumbling chariot of Sir Thomas Churchill, with its worsted-epauletted coachman and footman, was a miracle of comfort and a triumph of taste. Or he would ramble out with Shimmer, or Forrest, or some other of his colleagues, to the suburbs, over the breezy heights of Hampstead, or through the green Willesden lanes, and get the city dust and smoke blown out of them. When he was not on duty at the office at night, Walter would sometimes take the newspaper admission and visit the theatre; but he had little taste for the drama, or rather, perhaps, for such dramatic representations as were then in vogue, and it pleased him much more to attend the meetings of the Forum, a club constituted for the purpose of discussing the principal political and social questions of the day, and composed of young barristers and newspaper writers, with a sprinkling of public-office men, who met in the large room of a tavern situated in one of the quiet streets leading from Fleet Street to the river. The leaders of the different political parties, and others whose deeds or works had given them celebrity or notoriety, were happy in their ignorance of the existence of the Forum, or they must have been rendered uncomfortable by finding themselves the objects of so much wild denunciation. The members of the Forum were not in the habit of concealing their opinions, or of moderating the language in which those opinions were expressed; and the debate in which the then holders of office were not denounced as effete and useless nincompoops, bound by degrading ties of subserviency to a policy which, while originally dangerous, was now degrading, or in which the leaders of the Opposition were not stigmatised as base-bred ruffians, linked together by the common bond of ignorance with the common hope of rapine--was considered dull and spiritless indeed. As Mr. Byrne had intimated, Walter Joyce was one of the most prominent members of this debating club; he had a clear resonant voice, capable of excellent modulation, and spoke with fluency. His speeches, which were tinged with a far more pronounced radicalism--the effect of the teaching of Jack Byrne--than had previously been promulgated at the meetings of the Forum, soon became widely talked of among the members and their friends, and Walter's rising was eagerly looked forward to, and warmly hailed, not merely for the novelty of his doctrine, but for the boldness and the humour with which he sought to inculcate it. His success was so great that the heads of the Tory party in the club became alarmed, and thought it necessary to send off for Alister Portcullis, who was formerly the great speaker on their side, but who had recently become editor of a provincial paper, to return to town, and oppose Joyce on one or two special subjects of discussion. Portcullis came up to London, and the encounter took place before a room crowded to the ceiling (it was rumoured--and believed by some--that the Premier and the leader of the Opposition were present, with wigs drawn over their eyes and comforters over their noses), and re-echoing to the cheers of the partisans. Walter was understood to have held his own, and, indeed, to have had the best of it; but Portcullis made a very good speech, covering his opponent with sarcasm and invective, and declaiming against the cause which he represented with a whirlwind of fury which greatly incensed old Jack Byrne, who happened to be sitting immediately beneath him.

Political feeling ran very high just at that time, and the result of the forthcoming election was looked forward to with the greatest confidence by the Radicals. The organisation of the party was very complete. A central committee, of which Mr. Byrne and Terence O'Connor were members, had its sittings in London, and was in daily communication with the various local committees of the principal provincial towns, and most of the intending candidates had been despatched to make a tour of the neighbourhood which they proposed to represent, with the view of ascertaining the feelings of the electors, and ingratiating themselves with them.