t Britten had come
up through the Suez Canal, and his ship had spoken a pilgrim ship on
the way. It gave him a startling quality of living knowledge. From these
pilgrims we got to a comparative treatment of religions, and from that,
by a sudden plunge, to entirely sceptical and disrespectful confessions
concerning Gates' last outbreak of simple piety in School Assembly. We
became congenial intimates from that hour.

The discovery of Britten happened to me when we were both in the Lower
Fifth. Previously there had been a watertight compartment between the
books I read and the thoughts they begot on the one hand and human
intercourse on the other. Now I really began my higher education, and
aired and examined and developed in conversation the doubts, the ideas,
the interpretations that had been forming in my mind. As we were both
day-boys with a good deal of control over our time we organised walks
and expeditions together, and my habit of solitary and rather vague
prowling gave way to much more definite joint enterprises. I went
several times to his house, he was the youngest of several brothers, one
of whom was a medical student and let us assist at the dissection of a
cat, and once or twice in vacation time he came to Penge, and we went
with parcels of provisions to do a thorough day in the grounds and
galleries of the Crystal Palace, ending with the fireworks at close
quarters. We went in a river steamboat down to Greenwich, and fired by
that made an excursion to Margate and back; we explored London docks
and Bethnal Green Museum, Petticoat Lane and all sorts of out-of-the-way
places together.

We confessed shyly to one another a common secret vice, "Phantom
warfare." When we walked alone, especially in the country, we had both
developed the same practice of fighting an imaginary battle about us
as we walked. As we went along we were generals, and our attacks pushed
along on either side, crouching and gathering behind hedges, cresting
ridges, occupying copses, rushing open spaces, fighting from house to
house. The hillsides about Penge were honeycombed in my imagination with
the pits and trenches I had created to check a victorious invader coming
out of Surrey. For him West Kensington was chiefly important as the
scene of a desperate and successful last stand of insurrectionary troops
(who had seized the Navy, the Bank and other advantages) against a
royalist army--reinforced by Germans--advancing for reasons best kn