One of the greatest enjoyments which are likely to fall to the lot of a man in middle life, is to spend a week or so with the old school-and-college companion whom he has not seen since the graver page of life has been turned over for both parties. It is as unlike any ordinary visit-making as possible. It is one of the very few instances in which the complimentary dialogue between the guest and his entertainer comes to have a real force and meaning. One has to unlearn, for this special occasion, the art so necessary in ordinary society, of interpreting terms by their contraries. And in fact it is difficult, at first, for one who has been used for some years to a social atmosphere whose warmth is mainly artificial, to breathe freely in the natural sunshine of an old friend’s company; just as a native Londoner is said sometimes to pine away, when removed into the fresh air of the country. We are so used to consider the shake of the hand, and the “Very glad to see you,” of the hundred and one people who ask us to dinner, as merely a polite and poetical form of expressing, “You certainly are a bore; but as you are here, I must make the best of you”—that it costs us an effort to comprehend that “How are you, old fellow?” does, in the present case, imply a bonâ fide hope that we are as sound in health and heart, if not as young, as formerly. And especially when a man’s pursuits have led him a good deal into the world, and many of his warmer feelings have been, insensibly perhaps, chilled by the contact, the heartiness of his reception by some old college friend who has led a simple life, the squire of his paternal acres, or the occupant of a country parsonage, and has gained and lost less by the polishing process of society, will come upon him with a strangeness almost reproachful. But once fairly fixed within the hospitable walls, the natural tone is recognised, and proves contagious; the formal encrustations of years melt in the first hour of after-dinner chat, and the heart is opened to feelings and language which it had persuaded itself were long forgotten. And when the end of your three weeks’ holiday arrives at last, which you cannot persuade yourself has been more than three days (though you seem to have lived over again the best half of your life in the time), you have so far forgotten the conventional rules of good-breeding, that when your friend says to you on the last evening, “Must you really go? Can’t you stay till Monday?” you actually take him at his word, and begin to cast about in your mind for some possible excuse for stealing another couple of days or so, though you have heard the same expression from the master of every house where you have happened to visit, and never dreamt of understanding it in any other than its civilised (i. e., non-natural) sense—as a hint to fix a day for going, and stick to it, that your entertainer may “know the worst.”
I was heartily glad, therefore, when at last I found that there was nothing to prevent me from paying a visit (long promised, and long looked forward to, but against which, I began to think, gods and men had conspired) to my old and true friend Lumley. I dare say he has a Christian name; indeed, I have no reason to doubt it, and, on the strength of an initial not very decipherable, prefixed to the L in his signature, I have never hesitated to address him, “J. Lumley, Esq.;” but I know him as Long Lumley, and so does every man who, like myself, remembers him at Oxford; and as Long Lumley do all his cotemporaries know him best, and esteem him accordingly; and he must excuse me if I immortalise him to the public, in spite of godfathers and godmothers, by that more familiar appellation. A cousin was with him at college, a miserable sneaking fellow, who was known as “Little Lumley;” and if, as I suspect, they were both Johns or Jameses, it is quite desirable to distinguish them unmistakably; for though the other has the best shooting in the country, I would not be suspected of spending even the first week of September inside such a fellow’s gates.
But Long Lumley was and is of a very different stamp; six feet three, and every inch a gentleman. I wish he was not, of late years, quite so fond of farming: a man who can shoot, ride, and translate an ode of Horace as he can, ought to have a soul above turnips. It is almost the only point on which we are diametrically opposed in tastes and habits. We nearly fell out about it the very first morning after my arrival.
Breakfast was over—a somewhat late one in honour of the supposed fatigues of yesterday’s journey, and it became necessary to arrange proceedings for the day. What a false politeness it is, which makes a host responsible for his guests’ amusement! and how often, in consequence, are they compelled to do, with grimaces of forced satisfaction, the very thing they would not! However, Lumley and myself were too old friends to have any scruples of delicacy on that point. I had been eyeing him for some minutes while he was fastening on a pair of formidable high-lows, and was not taken by surprise when the proposal came out, “Now, old fellow, will you come and have a look at my farm?”
“Can’t I see it from the window?”
“Stuff! come, I must show you my sheep: I assure you they are considered about the best in this neighbourhood.”
“Well, then, I’ll taste the mutton any day you like, and give you my honest opinion.”
“Don’t be an ass now, but get your hat and come along; it’s going to be a lovely day; and we’ll just take a turn over the farm—there’s a new thrashing-machine I want to show you, too, and then back here to lunch.”
“Seriously, then, Lumley, I won’t do anything of the kind. I do you the justice to believe, that you asked me here to enjoy myself; and that I am quite ready to do in any fairly rational manner; and I flatter myself I am in nowise particular; but as to going bogging myself among turnips, or staring into the faces and poking the ribs of shorthorns and south-downs—why, as an old friend, you’ll excuse me.”