increasing independence of the
ostensible career makes it the organ of corrective criticism; it
accumulates disturbing energy. Then it breaks our overt promises and
repudiates our pledges, coming down at last like an overbearing mentor
upon the small engagements of the pupil.

In the life of the individual it takes the role that the growth of
philosophy, science, and creative literature may play in the development
of mankind.

2

It is curious to recall how Britten helped shatter that obvious,
lucidly explicable presentation of myself upon which I had embarked
with Margaret. He returned to revive a memory of adolescent dreams and a
habit of adolescent frankness; he reached through my shallow frontage
as no one else seemed capable of doing, and dragged that back-self into
relation with it.

I remember very distinctly a dinner and a subsequent walk with him
which presents itself now as altogether typical of the quality of his
influence.

I had come upon him one day while lunching with Somers and Sutton at
the Playwrights' Club, and had asked him to dinner on the spur of the
moment. He was oddly the same curly-headed, red-faced ventriloquist, and
oddly different, rather seedy as well as untidy, and at first a little
inclined to make comparisons with my sleek successfulness. But that
disposition presently evaporated, and his talk was good and fresh and
provocative. And something that had long been straining at its checks in
my mind flapped over, and he and I found ourselves of one accord.

Altiora wasn't at this dinner. When she came matters were apt to become
confusedly strenuous. There was always a slight and ineffectual struggle
at the end on the part of Margaret to anticipate Altiora's overpowering
tendency to a rally and the establishment of some entirely unjustifiable
conclusion by a COUP-DE-MAIN. When, however, Altiora was absent, the
quieter influence of the Cramptons prevailed; temperance and information
for its own sake prevailed excessively over dinner and the play of
thought.... Good Lord! what bores the Cramptons were! I wonder I
endured them as I did. They had all of them the trick of lying in wait
conversationally; they had no sense of the self-exposures, the gallant
experiments in statement that are necessary for good conversation. They
would watch one talking with an expression exactly like peeping through
bushes. Then they would, as it were, dash out, dissent succinctly,
contradict some seco