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’.
†[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.
‡[An allusion to the Reform Bill of that year, intermingled with personal overtones.
*[Several printed pages from the
†[i.e. of the same year’s intake of Scholars.
*[Marcus Terentius Varro, poet, satirist, antiquarian, jurist, geographer, scientist, and philosopher, called by Quintilian ‘the most learned of Romans’.
*[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.
*[The Christopher Inn (now Hotel), in Eton High Street.
*[The Duke of Newcastle Scholarship, Eton’s premier academic award, which would have financed Glyver’s time at King’s College, Cambridge, the school’s sister foundation.
12
Pulvis et umbra*
One Wednesday afternoon, in the autumn of 1836, as I was returning from Windsor with a small group of companions, to which Daunt had unwelcomely attached himself, I was summoned to see the Head Master, Dr Hawtrey, in Upper School.†
‘I believe that you have been given exceptional permission to use the Fellows’ Library?’ he asked.
The Library was strictly out of bounds to all boys; but I confirmed that I had been given the key by one of the Fellows, the Reverend Thomas Carter, whose pupil I had been when he was Lower Master. Mr Carter, having read several papers that I had written, was sympathetic to my enthusiastic interest in bibliographical matters, and so had allowed me the unusual, though only temporary, freedom of the Library to gather material for a new paper that I was writing on the history and character of the collection.
‘And you have made use of this privilege recently?’ I began to feel uncomfortable at the questioning, but as I knew that I had committed no misdemeanour, and because I also knew that Dr Hawtrey was a distinguished bibliophile, I unhesitatingly said that I had been there the previous afternoon, making notes on Gesner’s
‘And you were alone?’
‘Quite alone.’
‘And when did you return the key?’
I replied that normally I would have taken the key straight back to Mr Carter, but that yesterday I had gone out on the river with Le Grice, leaving the key in his boarding-house – in which I also had use of a room–until we returned.
‘So when you came off the river, you took the key back to Mr Carter?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Mr Glyver, I have to tell you that I have received a serious allegation against you. According to information I have been given, I have reason to believe that you have taken a most valuable item from the Library without permission, with the intention of keeping it.’
