‘That,’ said the barber, as I took his chair, ‘was Lord Sebastian Flyte. A most amusing young gentleman.’

‘Apparently,’ I said coldly.

‘The Marquis of Marchmain’s second boy. His brother, the Earl of Brideshead, went down last term. Now he was very different, a very quiet gentleman, quite like an old man. What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted? A hair brush for his teddy-bear; it had to have very stiff bristles, not, Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with, but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky. He bought a very nice one with an ivory back and he’s having “Aloysius” engraved on it – that’s the bear’s name.’ The man, who, in his time, had had ample chance to tire of undergraduate fantasy, was plainly captivated. I, however, remained censorious, and subsequent glimpses of him, driving in a hansom cab and dining at the George in false whiskers, did not soften me, although Collins, who was reading Freud, had a number of technical terms to cover everything.

Nor, when at last we met, were the circumstances propitious. It was shortly before midnight in early March; I had been entertaining the college intellectuals to mulled claret; the fire was roaring, the air of my room heavy with smoke and spice, and my mind weary with metaphysics. I threw open my windows and from the quad outside came the not uncommon sounds of bibulous laughter and unsteady steps. A voice said: ‘Hold up’; another, ‘Come on’; another, ‘Plenty of time…House…till Tom stops ringing’; and another, clearer than the rest, ‘D’you know I feel most unaccountably unwell. I must leave you a minute,’ and there appeared at my window the face I knew to be Sebastian’s, but not, as I had formerly seen it, alive and alight with gaiety; he looked at me for a moment with unfocused eyes and then, leaning forward well into the room, he was sick.

It was not unusual for dinner parties to end in that way; there was in fact a recognized tariff for the scout on such occasions; we were all learning, by trial and error, to carry our wine. There was also a kind of insane and endearing orderliness about Sebastian’s choice, in his extremity, of an open window. But, when all is said, it remained an unpropitious meeting.

His friends bore him to the gate and, in a few minutes, his host, an amiable Etonian of my year, returned to apologize. He, too, was tipsy and his explanations were repetitive and, towards the end, tearful. ‘The wines were too various,’ he said: ‘it was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault. It was the mixture. Grasp that and you have the root of the matter. To understand all is to forgive all.’

‘Yes,’ I said, but it was with a sense of grievance that I faced Lunt’s reproaches next morning.

—

‘A couple of jugs of mulled claret between the five of you,’ Lunt said, ‘and this had to happen. Couldn’t even get to the window. Those that can’t keep it down are better without it.’