The Altar Fire | Page 3

on normal lines. His mother died while he was a boy. He had one brother, younger than himself, and a sister who was younger still. He went to a leading public school, where he was in no way distinguished either in work or athletics. I gathered, when I first knew him, that he had been regarded as a clever, quiet, good- natured, simple-minded boy, with a considerable charm of manner, but decidedly retiring. He was not expected to distinguish himself in any way, and he did not seem to have any particular ambitions. I went up to Cambridge at the same time as he, and we formed a very close friendship. We had kindred tastes, and we did not concern ourselves very much with the social life of the place. We read, walked, talked, played games, idled, and amused ourselves together. I was more attached to him, I think, than he was to me; indeed, I do not think that he cared at that time to form particularly close ties. He was frank, engaging, humorous, and observant; but I do not think that he depended very much upon any one; he rather tended to live an interior life of his own, of poetical and fanciful reflection. I think he tended to be pensive rather than high- spirited--at least, I do not often remember any particular ebullition of youthful enthusiasm. He liked congenial company, but he was always ready to be alone. He very seldom went to the rooms of other men, except in response to definite invitations; but he was always disposed to welcome any one who came spontaneously to see him. He was a really diffident and modest fellow, and I do not think it even entered into his head to imagine that he had any social gifts or personal charm. But I gradually came to perceive that his mind was of a very fine quality. He had a mature critical judgment, and, though I used to think that his tastes were somewhat austere, I now see that he had a very sure instinct for alighting upon what was best and finest in books and art alike. He used to write poetry in those days, but he was shy of confessing it, and very conscious of the demerits of what he wrote. I have some of his youthful verses by me, and though they are very unequal and full of lapses, yet he often strikes a firm note and displays a subtle insight. I think that he was more ambitious than I perhaps knew, and had that vague belief in his own powers which is characteristic of able and unambitious men. His was certainly, on the whole, a cold nature in those days. He could take up a friendship where he laid it down, by virtue of an easy frankness and a sympathy that was intellectual rather than emotional. But the suspension of intercourse with a friend never troubled him.
I became aware, in the course of a walking tour that I took with him in those days, that he had a deep perception of the beauties of nature; it was not a vague accessibility to picturesque impressions, but a critical discernment of quality. He always said that he cared more for little vignettes, which he could grasp entire, than for wide and majestic prospects; and this was true of his whole mind.
I suppose that I tended to idealise him; but he certainly seems to me, in retrospect, to have then been invested with a singular charm. He was pure-minded and fastidious to a fault. He had considerable personal beauty, rather perhaps of expression than of feature. He was one of those people with a natural grace of movement, gesture and speech. He was wholly unembarrassed in manner, but he talked little in a mixed company. No one had fewer enemies or fewer intimate friends. The delightful ears soon came to an end, and one of the few times I ever saw him exhibit strong emotion was on the evening before he left Cambridge, when he altogether broke down. I remember his quoting a verse from Omar Khayyam:--
"Yet ah! that spring should vanish with the rose, That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close,"
and breaking off in the middle with sudden tears.
It was necessary for me to adopt a profession, and I remember envying him greatly when he told me that his father, who, I gathered, rather idolised him, was quite content that he should choose for himself at his leisure. He went abroad for a time; and I met him next in London, where he was proposing to read for the bar; but I discovered that he had really found his metier. He had written a novel, which he showed me, and though it was in some ways an immature performance,