ALSO BY HORACE A. VACHELL
QUINNEYS'
THE HILL
A ROMANCE OF FRIENDSHIP
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
| First Edition | April, 1905 |
| Fortieth Impression | Jan., 1950 |
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.Greek text appears as originally printed, but with a mouse-hover transliteration, κραιπάλη.
To
GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL
I dedicate this Romance of Friendship to you with thesincerest pleasure and affection. You were the first tosuggest that I should write a book about contemporarylife at Harrow; you gave me the principal idea; you havefurnished me with notes innumerable; you have revisedevery page of the manuscript; and you are a peculiarlykeen Harrovian.
In making this public declaration of my obligations toyou, I take the opportunity of stating that the charactersin "The Hill," whether masters or boys, are not portraits,although they may be called, truthfully enough, compositephotographs; and that the episodes of Drinking andGambling are founded on isolated incidents, not on habitualpractices. Moreover, in attempting to reproduce thecurious admixture of "strenuousness and sentiment"—yourown phrase—which animates so vitally Harrow life,I have been obliged to select the less common types ofHarrovian. Only the elect are capable of such friendshipas John Verney entertained for Henry Desmond; and fewboys, happily, are possessed of such powers as Scaife isshown to exercise. But that there are such boys as Verneyand Scaife, nobody knows better than yourself.
Beechwood,
February 22, 1905