Confessions of an Etonian

by I. E. M.

Towards the close of the evening, laying aside etiquette, as Crusoe would in his solitary isle, I went out in order to visit a curate who had lately taken the parish bordering on my own, and who, like myself, had just entered on his noviciate. Here I found Seymour, a fellow Etonian and contemporary.

Though we had never before been intimate, how happy was I to meet with him. For years had I been in the habit of seeing him every day, when all was happiness, and now to be with him again, though my prospects were as gloomy as the barren moors around us! I felt how different was my regard for him to that for friends of later date. The truth is, we knew each other!

This, together with youthful and happy associations, is the secret of all those lasting friendships commenced in boyhood. We feel, however we may try to conceal it, that our acquaintances in later life may be playing a part, or at all events, may be guided more or less by interested motives; while, on the other hand, should sad experience not have taught us the same policy, it will inevitably happen, that sooner or later we shall have to deplore our imprudence. It is not so much that we are betrayed as misconstrued; our opinions are misinterpreted from ignorance of our real dispositions. This, then, is why it has become so imperative on us to shroud ourselves in reserve; and, alas! the more so as our dispositions may be sanguine and ardent. Hence, too, the Lord Chesterfield's scouted maxim, "Do not be, but seem," though his lordship is not to be reprobated so much as the world, that compelled him thus to advise his own son. But I fear I shall be found fault with by both parties, as I have learnt to be, but not to seem.

No wonder, then, that we hasten to renew our early friendships, and throw aside all this deplorable restraint.

"Your father is a horrid radical," I once heard a boy say to the Lord Chancellor's son.

"And your mother is his Majesty's mistress," was the retort, in even plainer language.

This is adopting the other extreme, but will here serve as a sample of that youthful openness, however ridiculous and disagreeable, which teaches us at once how to choose our friends and confidants, with little fear of being mistaken; and when we have arrived at manhood, whatever number of years may have separated us, we are still conscious of each other's nature, because we have learnt, in the meantime, that it never changes, in whatever degree it may have done so in appearance. Let any one, for a moment, bestow his attention upon some prominent person of the present day, whose character may contrast with what it was in boyhood, and has he confidence in him? in other words, is he imposed upon with the rest? He may cling to him for auld lang syne, but he will be far from being deceived, while the other is as conscious that he is not so.

For this reason, I have always thought well of those who have carried on their early intimacy to after-life. One of them must be creditable to our race, for I have noticed friendship between two indifferent characters ever to be brief.

Seymour, poor fellow, was just now under rather adverse circumstances, for he had arrived here but five days, and had been confined to his bed during the four last of them, having caught cold from wet feet, which I regretted the more, as he had but little chance, in such a country, of ever again enjoying the comfort of dry ones. When I arrived at his hovel he had just come down to his sitting-room, and I think I seldom recollect a more comfortless, or ludicrous scene either. Till this moment, I suppose, he who had roughed it as little as any one, was now looking pale, wretched, and emaciated, with his slender, gentlemanly figure crouched close upon the comfortless fire-place. Should he have the energy to stir for anything, his nicely arranged hair was instantly dimmed with the cobwebs and dust which it gathered as it swept across the low ceiling. On the dark and damp floor was scattered a number of splendidly bound books, with a Wilkinson's saddle. Along the wall was tidily arranged an extensive collection of Hoby's boots, and a hat-box, imprinted with "Lock, Saint James' Street," but which article was now converted into a temporary corn-bin, and was nearly full of black oats.