Confessions of an Etonian

by I. E. M.

"The heart like the tendril accustomed to cling,
Let it grow where it will cannot flourish alone,
But must lean to the nearest, loveliest thing
It can twine itself round, and make closely its own."

And, to make the matter worse, I had also at this time finally to separate from my oldest companions, a pair of shoes. They formed the last relic of my English wardrobe, and had borne me over a long distance. Having really an attachment for them, I placed them high up in the fork of a Spanish chestnut tree, whither I could not help again climbing up, that I might take a last look at them as they rested pale with the dust of leagues, uncomplaining though deserted.

In a few days more I had reached the heart of Switzerland; but what a contrast had I experienced in passing from one country to the other! The whole of France, with the exception of my ever happy Loire, must surely be the most monotonous and unpicturesque tract of the whole continent; while Switzerland presents, at every turn, a combination of the paradisaical and of terrific sterility. Smiling patriarchal pastures, walled in by granite mountains, frowning in eternal silence and solitude, save when thundering with the awful avalanche. I said that their piles of granite were barren; but what a moment is it to explore your way companionless, and find them to be the source and spring of richness and fertility to Europe, as the sun is of warmth and light to the world—to pick your doubtfully hazardous way across the glacier, and there read great Nature's receipt for making rivers. You find that the nearer you climb towards the heavens, the more palpable are the works of their Creator:—

"My altars are the mountains, and the ocean—
Earth, air, stars—all that proceed from the great Whole,
Who has made and will receive the soul."

As to how mine was likely to be disposed of, the moment had now arrived when I was to consider; for not only had severe sickness overtaken me, but I suspected that my death-blow had been received. Severe sickness will bring the stoutest of us, and the most unthinking, to reflect soberly on the past, the present, and the future; at all events, it had this effect on me one night, among many other restless and sleepless ones, as in solitude I watched the flickering flame of the candle by my bedside. As for the present, until the moment of leaving my country, I had bestowed but little attention on it. It is the man of the world, who is wisely engrossed with that period; and, unfortunately, I had never been gifted with, or rather had never acquired, a sufficient stock of common sense to enable me to approximate that character.

We all love to contemplate and dwell on the brightest side of things, simply because that is the most pleasing to us; and having but little self-denial, I ever enveloped myself in the past, the sunniest side of my existence.

As for the future, with regard to a life to come, for that was what I was now to think about, my opinion, if it could be called such, laboured under confusion and inconsistency. Could anything have made me more miserable than another, it would have been the doubt of it; but from this I have ever been exempt, feeling assured, that were there none, our minds would no more have been created capable of entertaining an idea of it, than that our bodies would have been hampered with legs for which there was to be no need—and as these imply the function of walking, so our idea of futurity affords us the proof of it. Yet happy as I was in its belief, I always regretted that I had been born, notwithstanding that I was aware that an endless sleep and non-existence must be one and the same thing. My love of existence then, of some sort, must have been an acquired taste, like that of the opium-eater—I would that it had never commenced, but had not sufficient fortitude to relinquish it. But most probably this regret arose as I looked back through the bright and peaceful vista of my earliest days, and then fondly trusting that it could but lead to some lovely period, ere I existed here; but alas! I could recal no recollection of it, nor could any one else that I knew of, with the exception of Pythagoras, and, perhaps, my Lord Herbert of Cherbery.

But I must cut short all this absurdity, to call it by the mildest term, especially as my pilgrimage is drawing "towards an end, like a tale that is told."

I arose from my bed apparently with similar prejudices ere I was confined to it, but, with my constitution, they have happily received a fatal blow. Had I been with others, I should probably have lingered in Venice until my hour had come, but, as it was, what had I to stop for?

"Whether it was despair that urged me on,
God only knows—but to the very last,
I had the lightest foot in Ennerdale."