Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/565

 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 recal 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 connexion 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. Skimmer 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 today 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