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‘Oh yes. Many times – I mean I’ve kissed the same girl many times. I believe she is the most beautiful girl in the world, and I intend to marry her one day.’

He went on to describe the incomparable virtues of his ‘little princess’, whom I gathered was a neighbour of his at Evenwood; and soon the sulky reticence that he had earlier displayed had been replaced by excited volubility, as he spoke of how he intended to be a famous writer and make a great deal of money, and live at Evenwood with his princess for ever and a day.

‘And Uncle Tansor is so kind to me,’ he said, as we made our way from Hall back to Long Chamber, in which Collegers were then shut up for the night. ‘Mamma says that I am almost like a son to him. He is a very great man, you know.’

A little later he came and stood by my bed.

‘What’s that you have there, Glyver?’ he asked.

I was holding the rosewood box in which my sovereigns had been placed, and which my mother had insisted I take with me to Eton to remind myself of my benefactress, whom I continued to believe had been Miss Lamb.

‘It’s nothing,’ I replied. ‘Just a box.’

‘I’ve seen that before,’ he said, pointing to the lid. ‘What is it?’

‘A coat of arms,’ I replied. ‘It’s only a decoration, nothing more.’

He continued to stare at the box for some moments before returning to his own bed. Later, in the darkness he whispered:

‘I say, Glyver, have you ever been to Evenwood?’

‘Of course not,’ I whispered back crossly. ‘Go to sleep. I’m tired.’

Thus I became the friend and ally of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt – his only friend and ally, indeed, for he showed no inclination to seek out any other. The ways of the School appeared to mystify and disgust him in equal measure, making him the inevitable target of the natural vindictiveness of his fellows. He should have been well able to withstand such assaults, being, as I say, a well-made boy, even strong in his way; but he was completely disinclined to offer up any physical resistance to his tormentors whatsoever, and it often fell to me to rescue him from real harm, as when he was set upon, soon after our arrival in Long Chamber, and assailed with pins in the initiatory operation known as ‘Pricking for Sheriff’. New Collegers were expected to display cheerfulness and equanimity in the face of such ordeals, and even to embrace them merrily. But I fear that Daunt, KS, was somewhat girlishly vocal in his complaints, in consequence of which he attracted even more unwelcome attention from that class of boy who is ever ready and eager to make the lives of his compatriots thoroughly miserable. I myself was never subjected to such troubles after I shut the head of one of the chief tormentors, a grinning oaf by the name of Shillito, in the door to Long Chamber, refusing to release him until his face had near turned blue. I had declined to take part in some piece of horseplay, and he had tipped a jug of cold water over me. He did not do it again. Mine is not a forgiving nature.

Daunt calls it ‘thraldom’, this friendship of ours; but it was a strange kind of slavery in which no submission was asked of the enslaved. As time went by, his dependence on me became an increasing irritation. He was free to do what he wished, make friends with whom he chose; but he did not. He seemed willingly to embrace his dependent state, though I would encourage him to find wings of his own. Despite this adhesiveness, I found him an able and lively debater on topics of which I was surprised he had any knowledge at all, and soon I began to discover an elasticity of mind and comprehension, and also a sort of energetic cunning, that sat strangely with the strain of moping dullness that so often characterized his company.

I saw, too, the solid academic grounding that he had received under his father; but with this went a fatal inability to fix the mental eye steadily on its object. He would garner quickly and move on. I, too, was hungry to learn whatever I could of man and the world, but my haste was not self-defeating speed. He assembled bright impressive surfaces of knowledge admirably, but the inner structures that would keep the building in place were flimsy, and constantly shifting. He was adaptable, fluid, accommodating; always absorbent, never certain or definitive. I sought to know and to comprehend; he sought only to acquire. His genius – for such I account it – consisted in an ability to reflect back the brilliance of others, but in a way that, by some alchemical transmutation, served to illuminate and enlarge himself. These qualities did not hold him back in his work: he was generally accounted one of the School’s best scholars; but they showed me – gifted, as I like to think, with finer instincts, like his own father – his true measure.

And so we proceeded together through the School, and began to attain a measure of seniority. He seemed to have thrown off many of his former timidities, and now often distinguished himself on the Playing-fields and on the river. Though I had acquired a large circle of other friends, he and I continued to enjoy a special intimacy arising from our first meeting. But then he began to show signs of a return to his former ways, by expressing renewed disapproval of some of my new friends. He would appear at all times of the day to suggest some activity or other, when often I was most disinclined to participate, or when he knew I was definitely engaged elsewhere. It was as if he wished to possess my company completely, to the exclusion of all others. He simply would not leave me be, and his dogged clinging to my coat-tails, to the detriment of my other friendships, began at last to arouse real annoyance in me, though I fought hard against showing it.

Then things got to such a pitch that, one day, as we were returning from a walk down the Slough Road, he angered me so much by his insistence that I must stop going around with a number of fellows, of whom he disapproved, that I was forced to tell him to his face that I found his company wearisome, and that I had other friends whom I liked better. I immediately regretted my harsh words, and apologized for them. This exchange, I suppose, accounts for the accusation of ‘coldness’ from me, though I continued – against my better judgment – to give freely of my time to him when I could, even when I was racking myself hard with a view to gaining the Newcastle* on leaving the School.

But then, not long after this incident, came an event that showed me Phoebus Rainsford Daunt in his true colours, and brought about my departure from the School. He mentions this crisis, briefly, and with estimable tact, in the account quoted earlier. I laughed out loud when I read it. Judge for yourself the trustworthiness of our hero as I now set matters before you in their true light.

*[‘Let it flourish’, alluding to the Eton school motto ‘Floreat Etona’. Ed.]

[A boy who was not a King’s Scholar (KS for short). Oppidans boarded in Dames’ houses in the town, and their families paid for their upkeep. Ed.]

[An allusion to the Reform Bill of that year, intermingled with personal overtones. Ed.]

*[Several printed pages from the Saturday Review of 10 October 1848 are interpolated here. Ed.]

[i.e. of the same year’s intake of Scholars. Ed.]

*[Marcus Terentius Varro, poet, satirist, antiquarian, jurist, geographer, scientist, and philosopher, called by Quintilian ‘the most learned of Romans’. Ed.]

*[A reference to the Eton Wall Game, a unique form of football, played on 30 November, St Andrew’s Day. The first recorded game, played between Collegers and Oppidans, was in 1766. It takes place on a narrow strip of grass against a brick wall, built in 1717, some 110 metres end to end. Though the rules are complex, essentially each side attempts to get the ball (without handling it) down to the far end of the wall, and then to score. It is a highly physical game as each player attempts to make headway through a seemingly impenetrable mass of opponents. Ed.]