Young Men I Have Met
by J. M. Barrie
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: Originally serialised in the Young Man Magazine between January and November 1890, Young Men I Have Met is Barrie’s humorous take on a variety of types.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Originally serialised in the Young Man Magazine between January and November 1890, Young Men I Have Met is Barrie’s humorous take on a variety of types.
Episode One – The Sentimentalist
For years I had forgotten Christopherson, but he came before me lately as a reminiscence. I was wandering around the quadrangle of my old Scottish University, feeling like one returned from the dead, when he who had been my most loved professor, wrung me by the hand, and asked me to dine with him at seven. ‘I have something to show you,’ he said with a chuckle – and after dinner I saw it. It was a copy of one of his own books, with my name on the fly-leaf, and he had picked it up at a bookstall. ‘You must have sold me second-hand,’ he said, twinkling. I denied vehemently, and at the same time I remembered Christopherson. Christopherson is the sentimentalist. Nobler sentiments never came from any lips than his. Rectitude was his strong point. It was he who sold that book of mine, and others with it. He stole them. Yet let justice be done to Christopherson. Thief were too bald a word for one gifted with his grand manner. More fitting is it to say that he borrowed my books in my absence and did not return them. He would never have allowed this to make any difference between us. That is why I call him a sentimentalist.
Christopherson, if I remember aright, was a popular man in those undergraduate days. Mothers believed in him because he had no humour, and fathers because he had such an eye for the line that divides right from wrong. Occasionally our parents came up to the University town to see how we were getting on, and they were generally glad to find such a solid fellow as Christopherson in Tom’s rooms. Christopherson’s enthusiasm was always in evidence, so that he never failed to show to advantage. If a mean act was mentioned in his presence he immediately went on fire, and what he said was worth remembering for weeks. I can picture him still as, with flashing eyes and clenched fist, he poured scorn upon weakness; upon sham religion, for instance, the very name of which was abhorrent to him; and I also see him, a few hours afterwards the bosom friend of sham religionists, among whom his splendid sentiments made him something of a king. For let it be seen that Christopherson – as I understood him – was magnificently in earnest on both sides. He found noble sentiments ready to his hand everywhere, and when attacking a person or a custom at eight o’clock in one company, and becoming defendant at nine o’clock in another, he was equally in a glow. Sentiment was a horse ever standing ready for him. He jumped on, and away they went. Then he dismounted with a proud chest, and at once did a mean thing, if convenient. All he remembered next day was his gallop.
It was always easy to be confidential with Christopherson. Young men who can talk readily with each other about their books and their pipes are still shy of their feelings, which they consider too sacred to mention in ordinary conversation. Often when they would like to blurt out little bits of sentiment they are tongue-tied lest derision be the result – which is a pity, for their friends (if worth their salt) would like to unlock their bosoms too, and the exchange would be mutually beneficial. In passing, let it be said that young men are best in pairs, for it is then that they get nearest each other’s hearts; where there are three or more, the talk is trivial. Christopherson got our confidences more easily than most, doubtless because he himself was so open. He would swell with indignation at the student who used cribs, until you confessed that you had once done so yourself. Then he would prove the immorality of your conduct, and positively do you good, if you did not discover how he stood so high in the next examination. Had he always been able to live on horseback there would have been no more gallant man than he. Even after we knew him better than he knew himself it seemed to us that the real Christopherson was the sentimentalist, and the man whom we could not have trusted with our watch a mere momentary Mr Hyde.
Though, happily, not a humourist, Christopherson had satire, and it was fired at most of the professors. He condemned them for their earthiness and their disregard of students’ feelings. You could not but feel that if Christopherson were a professor, he would be gentle and considerate to those under him – at least it was thus we pictured him, if we had not seen him shoving street Arabs into the gutter with his cane. In politics he was a Socialist, and I can recall his powerful exposure of Lord Salisbury at our Debating Society, the Premier having displeased him by a contemptuous reference to the poor. Were not the poor as good as the rich? thundered Christopherson. He drew a pathetic picture of an old woman at an apple-stall, and in moving language compared her soul to that of the proudest member of the aristocracy. As it were, he took her on his horse behind him, and defied Lord Salisbury to touch her if he dared. This, I remember, happened some nights before he ran away from his lodgings without paying the rent.
Christopherson had an aptitude for discovering the weak points in his friends. Perhaps it was his sentiment that made him enlarge these, until we quite disliked each other. Christopherson was the man to show Smith how contemptible was the greed of their common friend, Jones; and to point out to Jones that Smith’s scholarship was a pretence. Indignation with vice forced him to make a clean breast of our shortcomings, yet this will I say for Christopherson, that he seldom condemned us in our presence; to our faces he was friendly, like one with inherent delicacy; nay, lest Jones might think that his greed was a sore subject with Christopherson, the sentimentalist borrowed money of him, and, with the carelessness of a true friend, never again recurred to the subject. Jones, however, when he was desperately hard up, did mention the loan, and then Christopherson threatened never to have monetary transactions with Jones again; and, indeed, I think it was about this time that he got his first pound from me. Possibly, it was not Smith, the sham scholar, that Christopherson loathed so much as sham scholarship, of which, he considered Smith an illustration; at all events, a little before the degree examination he approached Smith in the friendliest manner, and offered to become his pupil for nothing.
Christopherson, who was always good at making new friends, was also accomplished in the art of losing old ones. Smith, I think, was not wide of the mark when he said to me once that Christopherson rather palled upon one after a time. Though not given to talk in superlatives, Smith spoke with considerable warmth; and he was, perhaps, prejudiced because Christopherson had gone off with the umbrella of one of Smith’s guests. I walked under that umbrella with Christopherson, for he kindly invited me to do so, and I remember he spoke well and freely of Smith’s pedantry.
Soon after that, Christopherson and I had a difference of opinion about ten shillings, which I was certain I had laid on the table till I lit my pipe, and it ended in my telling him to go away and never come back. He buttoned his coat proudly over the ten shillings, and, in a fine burst of sentiment, announced that he would never darken my door again. Then he marched off with a swelling bosom, and I felt that he had made a worthy exit. Soon afterwards he wrote, asking me to ‘make it a pound’, and I have not heard from him since. But wherever he is, I am confident that Christopherson has not sold his horse.
For years I had forgotten Christopherson, but he came before me lately as a reminiscence. I was wandering around the quadrangle of my old Scottish University, feeling like one returned from the dead, when he who had been my most loved professor, wrung me by the hand, and asked me to dine with him at seven. ‘I have something to show you,’ he said with a chuckle – and after dinner I saw it. It was a copy of one of his own books, with my name on the fly-leaf, and he had picked it up at a bookstall. ‘You must have sold me second-hand,’ he said, twinkling. I denied vehemently, and at the same time I remembered Christopherson. Christopherson is the sentimentalist. Nobler sentiments never came from any lips than his. Rectitude was his strong point. It was he who sold that book of mine, and others with it. He stole them. Yet let justice be done to Christopherson. Thief were too bald a word for one gifted with his grand manner. More fitting is it to say that he borrowed my books in my absence and did not return them. He would never have allowed this to make any difference between us. That is why I call him a sentimentalist.
Christopherson, if I remember aright, was a popular man in those undergraduate days. Mothers believed in him because he had no humour, and fathers because he had such an eye for the line that divides right from wrong. Occasionally our parents came up to the University town to see how we were getting on, and they were generally glad to find such a solid fellow as Christopherson in Tom’s rooms. Christopherson’s enthusiasm was always in evidence, so that he never failed to show to advantage. If a mean act was mentioned in his presence he immediately went on fire, and what he said was worth remembering for weeks. I can picture him still as, with flashing eyes and clenched fist, he poured scorn upon weakness; upon sham religion, for instance, the very name of which was abhorrent to him; and I also see him, a few hours afterwards the bosom friend of sham religionists, among whom his splendid sentiments made him something of a king. For let it be seen that Christopherson – as I understood him – was magnificently in earnest on both sides. He found noble sentiments ready to his hand everywhere, and when attacking a person or a custom at eight o’clock in one company, and becoming defendant at nine o’clock in another, he was equally in a glow. Sentiment was a horse ever standing ready for him. He jumped on, and away they went. Then he dismounted with a proud chest, and at once did a mean thing, if convenient. All he remembered next day was his gallop.
It was always easy to be confidential with Christopherson. Young men who can talk readily with each other about their books and their pipes are still shy of their feelings, which they consider too sacred to mention in ordinary conversation. Often when they would like to blurt out little bits of sentiment they are tongue-tied lest derision be the result – which is a pity, for their friends (if worth their salt) would like to unlock their bosoms too, and the exchange would be mutually beneficial. In passing, let it be said that young men are best in pairs, for it is then that they get nearest each other’s hearts; where there are three or more, the talk is trivial. Christopherson got our confidences more easily than most, doubtless because he himself was so open. He would swell with indignation at the student who used cribs, until you confessed that you had once done so yourself. Then he would prove the immorality of your conduct, and positively do you good, if you did not discover how he stood so high in the next examination. Had he always been able to live on horseback there would have been no more gallant man than he. Even after we knew him better than he knew himself it seemed to us that the real Christopherson was the sentimentalist, and the man whom we could not have trusted with our watch a mere momentary Mr Hyde.
Though, happily, not a humourist, Christopherson had satire, and it was fired at most of the professors. He condemned them for their earthiness and their disregard of students’ feelings. You could not but feel that if Christopherson were a professor, he would be gentle and considerate to those under him – at least it was thus we pictured him, if we had not seen him shoving street Arabs into the gutter with his cane. In politics he was a Socialist, and I can recall his powerful exposure of Lord Salisbury at our Debating Society, the Premier having displeased him by a contemptuous reference to the poor. Were not the poor as good as the rich? thundered Christopherson. He drew a pathetic picture of an old woman at an apple-stall, and in moving language compared her soul to that of the proudest member of the aristocracy. As it were, he took her on his horse behind him, and defied Lord Salisbury to touch her if he dared. This, I remember, happened some nights before he ran away from his lodgings without paying the rent.
Christopherson had an aptitude for discovering the weak points in his friends. Perhaps it was his sentiment that made him enlarge these, until we quite disliked each other. Christopherson was the man to show Smith how contemptible was the greed of their common friend, Jones; and to point out to Jones that Smith’s scholarship was a pretence. Indignation with vice forced him to make a clean breast of our shortcomings, yet this will I say for Christopherson, that he seldom condemned us in our presence; to our faces he was friendly, like one with inherent delicacy; nay, lest Jones might think that his greed was a sore subject with Christopherson, the sentimentalist borrowed money of him, and, with the carelessness of a true friend, never again recurred to the subject. Jones, however, when he was desperately hard up, did mention the loan, and then Christopherson threatened never to have monetary transactions with Jones again; and, indeed, I think it was about this time that he got his first pound from me. Possibly, it was not Smith, the sham scholar, that Christopherson loathed so much as sham scholarship, of which, he considered Smith an illustration; at all events, a little before the degree examination he approached Smith in the friendliest manner, and offered to become his pupil for nothing.
Christopherson, who was always good at making new friends, was also accomplished in the art of losing old ones. Smith, I think, was not wide of the mark when he said to me once that Christopherson rather palled upon one after a time. Though not given to talk in superlatives, Smith spoke with considerable warmth; and he was, perhaps, prejudiced because Christopherson had gone off with the umbrella of one of Smith’s guests. I walked under that umbrella with Christopherson, for he kindly invited me to do so, and I remember he spoke well and freely of Smith’s pedantry.
Soon after that, Christopherson and I had a difference of opinion about ten shillings, which I was certain I had laid on the table till I lit my pipe, and it ended in my telling him to go away and never come back. He buttoned his coat proudly over the ten shillings, and, in a fine burst of sentiment, announced that he would never darken my door again. Then he marched off with a swelling bosom, and I felt that he had made a worthy exit. Soon afterwards he wrote, asking me to ‘make it a pound’, and I have not heard from him since. But wherever he is, I am confident that Christopherson has not sold his horse.
About the Author
J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) is of course best known for his play Peter Pan. As well as being a dramatist, he was famous in his own day for fiction. A graduate of Edinburgh University, he cut his teeth in journalism in Nottingham and London. Find out more about him at the unco online bookstore.