Form boys,
and notably one for whom our enterprise was to lay the foundations of a
career that has ended in the House of Lords, Arthur Cossington, now
Lord Paddockhurst. Cossington was at that time a rather heavy, rather
good-looking boy who was chiefly eminent in cricket, an outsider even as
we were and preoccupied no doubt, had we been sufficiently detached to
observe him, with private imaginings very much of the same quality
and spirit as our own. He was, we were inclined to think, rather a
sentimentalist, rather a poseur, he affected a concise emphatic style,
played chess very well, betrayed a belief in will-power, and earned
Britten's secret hostility, Britten being a sloven, by the invariable
neatness of his collars and ties. He came into our magazine with a
vigour that we found extremely surprising and unwelcome.

Britten and I had wanted to write. We had indeed figured our project
modestly as a manuscript magazine of satirical, liberal and brilliant
literature by which in some rather inexplicable way the vague tumult of
ideas that teemed within us was to find form and expression; Cossington,
it was manifest from the outset, wanted neither to write nor writing,
but a magazine. I remember the inaugural meeting in Shoesmith major's
study--we had had great trouble in getting it together--and how
effectually Cossington bolted with the proposal.

"I think we fellows ought to run a magazine," said Cossington. "The
school used to have one. A school like this ought to have a magazine."

"The last one died in '84," said Shoesmith from the hearthrug. "Called
the OBSERVER. Rot rather."

"Bad title," said Cossington.

"There was a TATLER before that," said Britten, sitting on the writing
table at the window that was closed to deaden the cries of the Lower
School at play, and clashing his boots together.

"We want something suggestive of City Merchants."

"CITY MERCHANDIZE," said Britten.

"Too fanciful. What of ARVONIAN? Richard Arvon was our founder, and it
seems almost a duty--"

"They call them all -usians or -onians," said Britten.

"I like CITY MERCHANDIZE," I said. "We could probably find a quotation
to suggest--oh! mixed good things."

Cossington regarded me abstractedly.

"Don't want to put the accent on the City, do we?" said Shoesmith, who
had a feeling for county families, and Naylor supported him by a murmur
of approval.

"We ought to call it the ARVONIAN," decided Cossington, "and we might
very