Apart from these compensations I had the companionship of David who was now quite the “old soldier” and as argumentative as ever. In fact, while I pored over my one-inch-to-the-mile map of Cheshire after dinner, he was usually sitting on in the Mess and taking an active part in the wordy warfare of other “old soldiers,” among whom he was now listened to as one having authority. It was something to have been in the Battle of the Somme; but to have been at the Battle of Loos as well made him feel quite a big gun. In our hut, however, we sought fresher subjects than bygone battles and obliterated trenches. I enjoyed talking about English literature, and listened to him as to an oracle which I could, now and then, venture to contradict. Although he was nine years younger than I was, I often found myself reversing our ages, since he knew so much more than I did about almost everything except foxhunting. He made short work of most books which I had hitherto venerated, for David was a person who consumed his enthusiasms quickly, and he once fairly took my breath away by pooh-poohing Paradise Lost as “that moribund academic concoction.” I hadn’t realized that it was possible to speak disrespectfully about Milton. Anyhow, John Milton was consigned to perdition, and John Skelton was put forward as “one of the few really good poets.” But somehow I could never quite accept his supremacy over Milton as an established fact. At that period Samuel Butler was the source of much of David’s ingenuity at knocking highly-respected names and notions off their perches.
Anyhow, I was always ready to lose another literary illusion, for many of my friend’s quiddities were as nicely rounded, and as evanescent, as the double smoke rings he was so adroit at blowing. He was full of such entertaining little tricks, and I never tired of hearing him imitate the talk of excitable Welshmen. He was fond of music, too; but it was a failure when we went to an orchestral concert in Liverpool. David said that it “upset him psychologically.” It was no good as music either. No music was really any good except the Northern Folk-Ballad tunes which he was fond of singing at odd moments. “ The Bonny Earl of Murray ” was one