Julian Home. A tale of college life

Preface To The Third Edition

It is impossible for an Author to be fully aware of the defects of any work of his own until he has read it over sufficiently long after its composition to enable him to judge of it dispassionately and impartially. Such a perusal has made me more than ever conscious of certain imperfections in this story, the existence of which I had previously suspected rather than discovered. Some of these imperfections, so far as they were capable of remedy, I have endeavored to remove in the present Edition. Keenly alive as I am to those that yet remain, I still venture to cherish the hope that the tale may prove both interesting and beneficial to some readers in the future, as I know that, in spite of its numerous deficiencies, it has been in the past.

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Speech-Day at Harton 7

II. Julian Home 15

III. A Retrospect 22

IV. How Julian lost a Fortune 33

V. Saint Werner’s . . 44

VI. Rencontres 57

VII. The Scorn of Scorn 66

VIII. Study and Idleness 76

IX. The Boat-race 84

X. Contrasts 91

XI. Screwed in 99

XII. A Gust of the Soul 109

XIII. The Clerkland Scholarship 118

XIV. Mr. Carden 133

XV. Kennedy’s Dishonor 141

XVI. A Day of Wonder 154

XVII. A Night of Terror 166

XVIII. The Alpen-Gluhen 174

XIX. Only a Blush 182

XX. Bruce the Tempter 189

XXI. One of the Simple Ones 198

XXII. De Vayne’s Temptation 209 vi. CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

XXIII. Kennedy’s Wine-party, and what came of it 219

XXIV. De Vayne’s Christmas Holidays 229

XXV. Memory the Book of God 238

XXVI. Hazlet 252

XXVII. Julian and Kennedy 266

XXVIII. Kennedy’s Despair 274

XXIX. Eva enters the Chapel 284

XXX. Repentance 293

XXXI. Bruce in Trouble 303

XXXII. A Quiet Prospect 314

XXXIII. Farewell 323

JULIAN HOME.

Chapter The First. Speech-day At Harton

A little bench of heedless bishops there,

And here a chancellor in embryo.

Shenstone.

It was Speech-day at Harton. From an early hour handsome equipages had been dashing down the street, and depositing their occupants at the masters’ houses. The perpetual rolling of wheels distracted the attention every moment, and curiosity was keenly on the alert to catch a glimpse of the various magnates whose arrival was expected. At the Queen’s Head stood a large array of carriages, and the streets were thronged with gay groups of pedestrians, and full of bustle and liveliness.

The visitors — chiefly parents and relatives of the Harton boys — occupied the morning in seeing the school and village ; and it was a pretty sight to observe mothers and sisters as they wandered with delighted interest through the scenes so proudly pointed out to them by their young escort. Some of them were strolling over the cricket-field, or through the pleasant path down to the bathing-place. Many lingered in the beautiful chapel, on whose painted windows the sunlight streamed, making them flame like jewelry, and flinging their fair shadows of blue, and scarlet, and crimson, on the delicate carving of the

JULIAN HOME.

pillars on either side. But, on the whole, the boys were most proud of showing their friends the old school-room, on whose rude panels many a name may be deciphered, carved there by the boyish hand of poets, orators, and statesmen, who in the zenith of their fame still looked back with fond remembrance on the home of their earlier days, and some of whom were then testifying by their presence the undying interest which they took in their old school.

The pleasant morning wore away, and the time for the Speeches drew on. The room was thronged with a distinguished company, and presented a brilliant and animated appearance. In the centre was a table loaded with prize-books, and all round it sat the secular and episcopal dignitaries for whom seats had been reserved, while the chair was occupied by a young Prince of the royal house. On the other side was a slightly-elevated platform, on which were seated the monitors who were to take part in the day’s proceedings, and behind it, under the gallery set apart for old Hartonians, crowded a number of gentlemen and boys who could find no room elsewhere.

“Now, papa,” said a young lady sitting opposite the monitors, “I’ve been asking Walter here which is the cleverest of those boys.”

“Ahem! young men you mean,” interrupted her elder sister.

“ No, no ! ” said Walter positively, “ call them boys ; to call them young men is all bosh; we shall have ‘young gentlemen ’ next, which is awful twaddle.”

“ Well, which of those boys on the platform is the cleverest — the greatest swell he calls it? Now you profess to be a physiognomist, papa, so just see if you can guess.”

“I’m to look out for some future Byron or Peel among them; eh, Walter?”

“ Yes.”

The old gentleman put on his spectacles, and deliberately looked round the row of monitors, who were awaiting the Head-master’s signal to begin the speeches.

“Well, haven’t you done yet, papa? what an age you are. Walter says you ought to tell at a glance.”

“Patience, my dear, patience. I’ll tell you in a minute. There,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “ that boy seated last but one on the bench nearest us has more genius than any of them, I should say.” Pie pointed to one of the youngest-looking of the monitors, who would also have been the most striking in personal appearance had not his features worn a look of greater sadness and greater delicacy than was desirable in a boyish face.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” chuckled Walter and his sister. “ Try again.”

“ I’m very rarely wrong, you little rogue, in spite of you ; but I’ll look again. No, there can be no doubt about it. Several of those faces show talent, but one only has a look of genius, and that is the face of the boy I pointed out before. What is his name?”

“Oh, that’s Home. He’s clever enough in his way, but the fellow you ought to have picked out is the monitor I fag for — Bruce, the head of the school.”

“Well, show me your hero.”

“ There he sits, right in the middle of them, opposite us. There, that’s he just going to speak now.”

He pointed to a tall, handsome fellow, with a look of infinite self-confidence, who at that moment made a low bow to the assembly, and then began to recite with much force a splendid burst of oratory from one of Burke’s great speeches ; which he did with the air of one who had no doubt that Burke himself might have studied with benefit the scorn which he flung into his invective, and the Olympian grace with which he waved his arm. A burst of applause followed the conclusion of his recitation, during which Bruce took his seat with a look of unconcealed delight and triumph.

“ There, papa — what do you think of that ? Wasn’t I right now?” said the young IPartonian, whose name was Walter Thornley.

But the old gentleman’s only answer was a quiet smile, and he had not joined in the general clapping.

JULIAN HOME.

“ Is Home to take any part in the speeches ? ” he inquired.

“ O yes ! he’s got some part or other in one of the Shakspeare scenes ; but he won’t do it half as well as Bruce.”

“ I observe he’s got several of the prizes.”

“ Yes, that’s true. He’s a fellow that grinds, you know, and so he can’t help getting some. But Bruce, now, never opens a book, and yet lie’s swept off no end of a lot, as you’ll see.”

“Humph! Walter, I don’t much believe in your boys that ‘ never open a book,’ and, as far as I can observe, the phrase must be taken with very considerable latitude ; I still believe that the boy who ‘ grinds,’ as you call it, is the abler boy of the two.”

“ Yes, Walter,” said his brother, an old Ilartonian, “ whenever a fellow, who has got a prize, tells you he won it without opening a book, set him down as a shallow puppy, and don’t believe him.”

By this time four of the monitors were standing up to recite a scene from the Merchant of Venice, and Home among them ; his part was a very slight one, and although there was nothing remarkable in his way of acting, yet he had evidently studied with intelligence his author’s meaning, and his modest self-possession attracted favorable regards. But, a few minutes after, he had to recite alone a passage of Tennyson’s Morte d’ Arthur, and then he appeared to greater advantage. Standing in a perfectly natural attitude, he began in low clear tones, enunciating every line with a distinctness that instantly won attention, and at last warming with his theme he modulated his voice with the requirements of the verse, and used gestures so graceful, yet so unaffected, that when, with musical emphasis, he spoke the last lines, —

“ Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,

And on the mere the wailing died away,” —

lie seemed entirely absorbed in the subject, and for

JULIAN HOME.

half a minute stood as if unconscious, until the deep murmur of applause startled his meditations, and he sat down as naturally as he had risen.

“Well done, old Home,” said Walter; while Mr. Thornley nodded rapidly two or three times, and murmured after him, —

“ And on the mere the wailing died away.’’

“ Really, I think Julian did that admirably, did he not?” said a young and lovely girl to her mother, as Home sat down.

“By jingo,” whispered AY alter, “I believe these people just by us are Home’s people.”

“People?” said his sister; “what do you mean by his people ? ”

“O you know, Mary; you girls are always shamming you don’t understand plain English. I mean his people”

Mary smiled, and looked at the strangers. “ Yes, no doubt of it,” she said, “ that young lady has just the same features as Mr. Home, only softened a little ; more refined they could not be. And they’ve been hearing all your rude remarks, Walter, no doubt.”

The boy was right, for when the speeches were over, they saw Home otter his arm to the two ladies and lead them out into the courtyard, where everybody was waiting, under the large awning, to hear the lions of the day cheered as they came down the school steps. Bruce was leading the cheers; he seemed to know everybody and everybody to know him, and as group after group passed him, he was bowing and smiling repeatedly while he listened to the congratulations which were lavished upon him from all sides. Among the last his own family came out, and when he gave his arm to his mother and descended the school-steps, one of the other monitors suddenly cried —

•“ Three cheers for the Head of the school.”

The boys cordially echoed the cheers, and taking off his hat, Bruce stood still with a flush of exultation on his handsome face, in an attitude peculiar to him whenever he was undergoing an ovation.

JULIAN HOME.

“ Pose plastique : King Bruce snuffing up the in. cense of flattery ! ” muttered a school Thersites, standing by.

“Green-minded scoundrel,” was the reply; “that’s because he beat you to fits in the Latin verse.”

“How very popular he seems to be, Julian,” said Miss Home to her brother, as they stood rather apart from the fashionable crowd.

“Very popular, and, on the whole, he deserves his popularity ; how capitally he recited to-day ; ” and Julian loooked at him and sighed.

“And now, mother, will you come to lunch,” he said ; “you’re invited to my tutor’s, you know.”

They went and took a hasty lunch, heartily enjoying the simple and general good humor, which was the order of the day ; and finding that there was still an hour before the train started which was to convey them home, Julian took them up to the old churchyard, and while they enjoyed the only breath of air which made the tall elms murmur in the burning day, he showed them the beautiful scene spread out at their feet, and the distant towers of Elton and St. George. Field after field, filled with yellowing harvests or grazing herds, stretched away to the horizon, and nothing on earth could be fairer than that soft sleep of the golden sunshine on the green and flowery meadowland, while overhead only a few silvery cloudlets variegated with their fleecy lustre the expanse of blue, rippling down to the horizon like curves of white foam at the edges of a summer sea.

“ No wonder a poet loved this view,” said Mrs. Home. “By the by, Julian, which is the tomb he used to lie upon ? ”

“There! just behind us; that one with the fragments broken off by stupid picturesque tourists.”

“ And so Byron really used, as a boy, to rest under these elms, and look at this lovely view!” said his sister.

“Yes, Violet. I wonder how much he’d have given, in after-life, to be a boy again,” said Julian thoughtfully ; “ and have a fresh start — a rejuvenescence, beginning after a summer hour spent on the old tombstone;” and Julian sighed again.

“My dear Julian,” said Violet, gaily rallying him, “ what a boy you are ! What business have you to sigh here of ail places, and now of all times ? That’s the second time in the course of an hour that I’ve heard you. Imagine a Harton monitor sighing twice on speech-day! You must be tired of us.”

“ Did I sigh ? Abominably rude of me. * I really didn’t mean it,” said Julian ; and shaking off the influences which had slightly depressed him for the moment, he began to laugh and joke with the utmost mirth until it became time to meet the train. He accompanied his mother and sister to the station, bade them an affectionate farewell, and then walked slowly back, for the beauty of the summer evening made him loiter on the way.

“Poor Julian ! ” said Violet to her mother when the train started ; “ he lets the sense of responsibility weigh on him too much, I’m afraid.”

But Julian was thinking that the next time he came to the station would probably be at the end of term, when his school-boy days would be over. lie leaned against a gate, and looked long at the green quiet hill, with its tall spire and embosoming trees, till he fell into a reverie.

A slap on the back awoke him, and turning round he saw the genial, good-humored face of one of his fellowmonitors, Hugh Lillyston.

“Well, Julian, dreaming as usual — castle-building, and all that sort of thing, eh?”

“ No ; I was thinking how soon one will have to bid good-bye to dear old Harton. How well the chapel looks from here, doesn’t it ? — and the church towering above it.”

“The chapel being like a fair daughter seated at her mother’s feet, as your poetical tutor remarked the other day. Well, Julian I’m glad we shall leave together anyhow. Come and have some tea.”

Julian went to his friend’s room. The fag brought the tea and toast, and they spent a merry evening,

JULIAN HOME.

chatting over the speeches, and the way in which the day had gone off. At lock-up, Julian went to write some letters, and then feeling the melancholy thought of future days stealing over him, he plunged into a book of poems till it was bed-time, being disturbed a good deal, however, by the noisy mirth which resounded long after forbidden hours from Bruce’s study overhead. Bruce was also to leave Harton in a month, and they were going up together to St. Werner’s College, Camford. But the difference was, that Bruce went up wealthy and popular; Julian, whose retiring disposition and refined tastes won him far fewer though truer friends, was going up as a sizar, with no prospect of remaining at the university unless he won himself the means of doing so by his own success. It was this thought that had made him sigh.

Chapter The Second. Julian Home

O thou goddess,

Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon’st In these two princely boys ; they are as gentle As zephyrs blowing beneath the violet,

Not wagging his sweet head ; and yet as fierce,

Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud’st wind That by the top doth take the mountain pine,

And makes him bow to the vale.

Cymbeline, Act iv.sc. 2.

It was but recently (as will be explained hereafter) that the circumstances had arisen which had rendered it necessary for Julian Home to enter St. Werner’s as a sizar; and since that necessity had arisen, he had been far from happy. A peculiar sensitiveness had been from childhood the distinctive feature of his character. It rendered him doubly amenable to every emotion of pleasure and pain, and gave birth to a self-conscious spirit, which made his nature appear weaker, when a boy, than it really was. While he was at Harton, this self-consciousness made him keenly, almost tremblingly, alive to the opinions of others about himself. His self-depreciation arose from real humility, and there was in his heart so deep a fountain of love towards all his fellows, and so sympathizing an admiration of all their good or brilliant qualities, that he was too apt to suffer himself to be tormented by the indifference or dislike of those who were far his inferiors.

It was strange that such a boy should have had enemies, but he was sadly aware that in that light

JULIAN HOME.

some regarded him. Had it been possible to conciliate them without any compromise in his line of action, he would have done so at any cost ; but as their enmity arose from that vehement moral indignation which Julian both felt and expressed against the iniquities which he despised and disapproved, he knew that all union with them was out of his power. As a general rule, the best boys are by no means the most popular.

It was the great delight of Julian’s detractors to compare him unfavorably with their hero, Bruce. Bruce, as a fair scholar and a good cricketer, with no very marked line of his own — as a fine-looking fellow, anxious to keep on good terms with everybody, and with an apparently hearty “ well met ” for all the world — cut against the grain of no one’s predilections, and had the voice of popular favor always on his side. While ambition made him work tolerably hard, as far as he could do so without attracting observation, the line he took was to disparage industry, and ally himself with the merely cricketing set, with some of whom he might be seen strolling arm-in-arm, in loud conversation, at every possible opportunity. Julian, on the other hand, though a fair cricketer, soon grew weary of the “ shop ” about that game, which for three months formed the main staple of conversation among the boys, and while lie took no great pains to conceal this fact, he in his turn found himself unable to enlist more than a few in any interest for those intellectual pursuits which were the chief joy of his own life.

“ Home, I’ve been watching you for the last half-hour,” said Bruce, one day at dinner, “and you haven’t opened your lips.”

“ I’ve had nothing to say.”

“ Why not?”

“Because, since we came in, not one word has been said about any human subject but cricket, cricket, cricket ; it’s been the same for the last two months ; and as I haven’t been playing this morning ”

“ Well, no one wants you to talk,” interrupted Brogten, one of the eleven, Julian’s especial foe. “ l say, Bruce did you see ”

JULIAN HOME.

“I was only going to add,” said Julian, with perfect good humor, heedless of the interruption, “that I couldn’t discuss a game I didn’t see.”

“ Nobody asked you, sir, she said,” retorted Brogten rudely; “if it had been some sentimental humbug, I daresay you’d have mooned about it long enough.”

“ Better, at any rate, than some of your low stories, Brogten,” said Lillyston, firing up on his friend’s behalf.

“ I don’t know. I like something manly.”

“ Vice and manliness being identical, then, according to your notions?” said Lillyston.

Brogten muttered an angry reply, in which the only audible words were “ confound ” and “ milksops.”

“ Well spoken, advocate of sin and shame ;

Known by thy bleating, Ignorance thy name,”

thought Julian ; but he did not condescend to make any further answer.

“I hate that kind of fellow,” said Brogten, loud enough for the friends to hear, as they rose from the table ; “ fellows who think themselves everybody’s superiors, and walk with their noses in the air.”

“I wonder that you will still be talking, Brogten; nobody marks you,” said Lillyston, treating with the profoundest indifference a stupid calumny. But poisoned arrows like these quivered long and rankled painfully in Julian’s heart.

Yet no sensible boy would have given Julian’s reputation in exchange for that of Bruce ; for in all except the mean and coarse minority, Julian excited either affection or esteem, and he had the rare inestimable treasure of some real and noble-hearted friends ; while Bruce was too vain, too shallow, and too fickle to inspire any higher feeling than a mere transient admiration.

Latterly it had become known to the boys that Julian was going up to St. Werner’s as a sizar, and being ignorant of the reasons which decided him, they had been much surprised. But the little clique of his enemies made this an additional subject of annoyance,

JULIAN HOME.

and there were not wanting those who had the amazing bad taste to repeat to him some of their speeches. There are some who seem to think that a man must rather enjoy hearing all the low tittle-tattle of envious backbiters.

“ I knew he must be some tailor’s son or other,” remarked Brogten.

“I say, Bruce, we shall have to cut him at St. Werner’s,” observed an exquisite young exclusive.

Such things — the mere lispings of malicious folly — Julian could not help hearing ; and they galled him so much that he determined to have a talk on the subject with his tutor, who was a St. Werner’s man. It was his tutor’s custom to devote the hour before lock-up on every half-holiday to seeing any of his pupils who had any heed of his advice or counsel; but as on the rich summer evenings few were to be tempted from the joyous sounds of the cricket-field, Julian found him sitting alone in his study reading.

“Ila, Julian! ” he exclaimed, rising at once, with a frank and cordial greeting. “I hope that you are not in any trouble which brings you from bats and balls to so dull a place as your tutor’s study ?”

“ No, sir, not in trouble exactly,” said Julian ; “ though I’ve come to ask you about something. But am I disturbing you ? If so I'll go and ‘ pursue vagrant pieces of leather again,’ as Mr. Stokes says when he wants to dismiss us to cricket.”

“Not in the least. I rather enjoy being disturbed during this hour. But what do you say to a turn in the open air? One can talk so much better walking than sitting down on opposite sides of a fireplace with no fire in it.”

Julian readily assented, and Mr. Carden took his arm as they bent their way down to the cricket-field. There they stopped involuntarily for a time, to look at the house match which was going on, and the master entered with the utmost vivacity into the keen yet harmless “ chaff ” which was being interchanged between the partisans of the rival houses.

“ What a charming place this field is,” he said, “ on

JULIAN HOME .

a summer evening, while the sunset lets fall upon it the last ‘ innocuous arrows of its golden sheaf.’ When I am wearied to death with work or vexation — which, alas ! is too often — I always run down here, and it gives me a fresh lease of life.”

Julian smiled at his tutor’s metaphorical style of speech, which he knew was in him the natural expressions of a glowing and poetic heart that saw no reason to be ashamed of its own warm feelings and changeful fancies ; and Mr. Carden, wrapped in the scene before him, and the sensations it excited, murmured to himself some of his favorite lines : —

“ Alas ! that one

Should use the days of summer but to live,

And breathe but as the needful element The strange superfluous glory of the air !

Nor rather stand in awe apart, beside

The untouched time, and murmuring o’er and o’er

In awe and wonder, ‘ These are summer days ! ’ ”

“ Shall we stroll across the fields, sir, before lock-up? ” said Julian, as a triumphant shout proclaimed that the game was over, and the Park had defeated the Grove.

“ Yes, do. By the by, what was it that you had to ask me about?”

“ Oh, sir, I don’t think I’ve told you before ; but I’m going up to St. Werner’s as a sub-sizar.”

Mr. Carden looked surprised. “ Indeed ! Is that necessary ? ”

“Yes, sir; it’s a choice between that and not going at all. And what I wanted to ask you was, whether it will subject me to much annoyance or contempt ; because, if so ”

“ Contempt , my dear fellow ! ” said Mr. Carden quickly. “Yes,” he added, after a pause, “ the contempt of the contemptible— certainly of no one else.”

“ But do you think that any Ilarton fellows will cut me?”

“ Unquestionably not ; at least if any of them do, it will be such a proof of their own absolute worthlessness that you will be well rid of such acquaintances.”

JULIAN HOME.

Julian seemed but little reassured by this summary way of viewing the matter.

“ But I hope,” he said, “ that no one (even if they don’t cut me) will regard my society as a matter of mere tolerance, or try an air of condescension.”

“Look here, Julian,” said the master; “a sub-sizar means merely a poor scholar, for whom the college has set apart certain .means of assistance. From this body have come some of the most distinguished men whom St. Werner’s has ever produced; and many of the Fellows (indeed quite a disproportionate number) began their college career in this manner. Now tell me— should you care the snap of a finger for the opinion or the acquaintance of a man who could be such an ineffable fool as to drop intercourse with you because you are merely less rich than he? Don’t you remember those grand old words, Julian —

“ Lives there for honest poverty

Who hangs his head, and a’ that ?

The coward slave, we pass him by,

And dare be poor for a’ that.”

“And yet, sir, half the distinctions of modern society rest upon accidents of this kind.”

“ True, true ! quite true ; but what is the use of education if it does not teach us to look on man as man, and judge by a nobler and more real standard than the superficial distinctions of society ? But answer my question.”

“Well, sir, 1 confess that I should think very lightly of the man who treated me in that way ; still I should be annoyed very much by his conduct.”

“I really think, Julian,” replied Mr. Carden, “that the necessity which compels you to go up as a sizar will be good for you in many ways. Poverty, self-denial, the bearing of the yoke in youth, are the highest forms of discipline for a brave and godly manhood. The hero and the prophet are rarely found in soft clothing or kingly houses ; they are never chosen from the palaces of Mammon or the gardens of Belial.”

They talked a little longer on the subject, and Mr.

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Carden pointed out how, at the universities, more than anywhere, the aristocracy of intellect and character are almost solely recognized, and those patents of nobility honored which come direct from God. “After a single term, Julian, depend upon it, you will smile at the sensitiveness which now makes you shrink from entering on this position. At least, I assume that even by that time your name will be honorably known, as it will be if you work hard. You must never forget that ‘ Virtus vera nobilitas’ is the noble motto of your own college.”

“ Well, I will work at any rate,” said Julian ; “ indeed I musty

“But may I ask why you have determined on going up as sizar ? ”

“ O yes, sir. I am far too grateful for all your many kindnesses to me, not to tell you freely of my circumstances.”

And so, as they walked on that beautiful summer evening over the green fields, Julian, happy in the quiet sympathizing attention of one who was not only a master, but a true, earnest, and affectionate friend, told him some of the facts to which we shall allude in the retrospect of the next chapter.