A friend’s recent experience reminded me of Steerforth in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.
He was a charming, good-looking, multi-talented senior boy when a desperate young David escaped his abusive stepfather and, with the aid of a spinster aunt, got into a good school. New boys are normally treated very badly but Steerforth, for whatever reason, cast the cloak of his own popularity over the boy, and they were friends from then on.
As time goes on, the reader sees glimpses of a questionable side to the boy’s hero, but David does not. Steerforth knows that his real character does not live up to his admirer’s image of him.
One day, he asks David, “Whatever you learn of me, please always remember me as I was in my best moments.”
Since we are all flawed, that is a request we might all sincerely make.
And I, for one, would say, with David, “Oh, of course, of course, I will always remember you at your best.”
