with no sense of the invidious in so doing. He was save for myself, by
my remembrance, the only member of the Law School there present; I see
him moreover altogether remarkably, just incorruptibly and exquisitely
dumb, though with a "gentlemanly" presence, a quasi-conservative New
Jersey finish (so delicate those dim discriminations!) that would have
seemed naturally to go with a certain forensic assurance. He looked so
as if he came from "good people"--which was no very common appearance on
the Harvard scene of those days, as indeed it is to a positive degree no
so very common appearance on any scene at any time: it was a note of
aspect which one in any case found one's self, to whatever vague tune,
apt quite to treasure or save up. So it was impossible not to recognise
in our soundless _commensal_ the very finest flower of shyness, the very
richest shade of the deprecating blush, that one had perhaps ever
encountered; one ended in fact by fairly hanging on the question of
whether the perfection of his modesty--for it was all a true welter of
modesty, not a grain of it anything stiffer--would beautifully hold out
or would give way to comparatively brute pressure from some point of our
circle. I longed to bet on him, to see him through without a lapse; and
this in fact was so thoroughly reserved to me that my eventual relief
and homage doubtless account for the blest roundness of my impression.
He had so much "for" him, was tall and fine, equipped and appointed,
born, quite to an effect of ultimately basking, in the light of the Law,
acquainted, one couldn't fail of seeing, with a tradition of manners,
not to mention that of the forensic as aforesaid, and not to name either
the use of "means," equally imputable: how rare accordingly would be the
_quality_, letting even the quantity alone, of his inhibitions, and how
interesting in the event the fact that he was absolutely never to have
deviated! He disappeared without having spoken, and yet why should I now
be noting it if he hadn't nevertheless admirably expressed himself? What
this consisted of was that there was scarce anything he wouldn't have
done for us had it been possible, and I think, in view of the
distinctness with which he still faces me, the tenderness with which he
inspires my muse and the assurance with which I have "gone into" him,
that I can never in all my life since have seen so precious a message
delivered under such difficulties. Admirable, ineffaceable, because so
essentially all _decipherable_, Vanderpool!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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