The history of Pendennis; his fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy

Front matter

*

I s

YOUTH BETWEEN PLEASURE AND DUTY.

Preface

If this kind of composition, of which the two years* product is now laid before the public, fail in art, as it constantly does and must, it at least has the advantage of a certain truth and honesty, which a work more elaborate might lose. In his constant communication with the reader, the writer is forced into frankness of expression, and to speak out his own mind and feelings as they urge him. Many a slip of the pen and the printer, many a word spoken in haste, he sees and would recall as he looks over his volume. It is a sort of confidential talk between writer and reader, which must often be dull, must often flag. In the course of his volubility, the perpetual speaker must of necessity lay bare his own weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities. And as we judge of a man’s character, after long frequenting his society, not by one speech, or by one mood or opinion, or by one day’s talk, but by the tenor of his general bearing and conversation ; so of a writer, who delivers himself up to you , perforce unreservedly, you say, Is he honest ? Does he tell the truth in the main ? Does he seem actuated by a desire to find out and speak it ? Is he a quack, who shams sentiment, or mouths for effect ? Does he seek popularity by claptraps or other arts ? I can no more ignore good fortune than any other chance which has befallen me. I have found many thousand more readers

VI

PREFACE.

than I ever looked for. I have no right to say to these, You shall not find fault with my art, or fall asleep over my pages ; but I ask you to believe that this person writing strives to tell the truth. If there is not that, there is nothing. •

Perhaps the lovers of “ excitement ” may care to know, that this book began with a very precise plan, which was entirely put aside. Ladies and gentlemen, you were to have been treated, and the writer’s and the publisher’s pocket benefited, by the recital of the most active horrors. What more exciting than a ruffian (with many admirable virtues) in St. Giles’s, visited constantly by a young lady from Belgravia ? What more stirring than the contrasts of society ? the mixture of slang and fashionable language ? the escapes, the battles, the murders ? Nay, up to nine o’clock this very morning, my poor friend, Colonel Altamont, was doomed to execution, and the author only relented when his victim was actually at the window.

The “ exciting ” plan was laid aside (with a very honorable forbearance on the part of the publishers), because, on attempting it, I found that I failed from want of experience of my subject ; and never having been intimate with any convict in my life, and the manners of ruffians and jail-birds being quite unfamiliar to me, the idea of entering into competition with M. Eugene Sue, was abandoned. To describe a real rascal, you must make him so horrible that he would be too hideous to show ; and unless the painter paints him fairly, I hold he has no right to show him at all.

Even the gentlemen of our age — this is an attempt

PREFACE.

vii

to describe one of them, no better nor worse than most educated men — even these we cannot show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their lives and their education. Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a Man. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many ladies have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because in the course of the story, I described a young man resisting and affected by temptation. My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the manliness and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear — it is best to know it — what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms, — what is the life and talk of your sons. A little more frankness than is customary has been attempted in this story; with no bad desire on the writer’s part, it is hoped, and with no ill consequence to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant ; at any rate truth is best, from whatever chair — from those whence graver writers or thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller sits as he concludes his labor, and bids his kind reader farewell.

Kensington, Nov. 26th 1850.

t

.

' 1

..

.

.

. *

...

CONTENTS,

CHAP. PACK.

I. Shows how first love may interrupt breakfast 7

II. A pedigree and other family matters II

III. In which Pendennis appears as a very young man

indeed 27

IV. Mrs. Haller 39

V. Mrs. Haller at home 48

VI. Contains both love and war 61

VII. In which the Major makes his appearance 72

VIII. In which Pen is kept waiting at the door, while the

reader is informed who little Laura was 80

IX. In which the Major opens the campaign 92

X. Facing the enemy 99

XI. Negotiation 105

XII. In which a shooting match is proposed 114

XIII. A crisis 122

XIV. In which Miss Fotheringay makes a new engage-

ment 130

XV. The happy village 137

XVI. Which concludes the first part of this history 148

XVII. Alma Mater 165

XVIII. Pendennis of Boniface 174

XIX. Rake’s progress . . 187

XX. Flight after defeat 195

XXI. Prodigal’s return 203

XXII. New Faces 212

XXIII. A little innocent 229

XXIV. Contains both love and jealousy 238

XXV. A house full of visitors 247

XXVI. Contains some ball-practising 261

XXVII. Which is both quarrelsome and sentimental 270

XXVIII. Babylon 284

XXIX. The Knights of the Temple 296

XXX. Old and new acquaintances 305

X

CONTENT'S.

CHAP.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII.

XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

XLII.

XLIII.

XLIV.

XLV.

XLVI.

XLVII.

XLVIII.

XLIX.

L.

LI.

LII.

LIII.

LIV.

LV.

LVI.

LVII.

LVIII.

LIX.

LX.

LXI.

LXII.

LXIII.

LXIV.

LXV.

LXVI.

LXVII.

LXVIII.

LXVIX.

LXX.

LXXI.

LXXII.

LXXIII.

LXXI V.

LX XV.

PAGE.

In which the Printer’s Devil comes to the door. ... 317 Which is passed in the neighborhood of Ludgate

Hill, 329

In which the history still hovers about Fleet Street. 340

A dinner in the Row 346

The Pall Mall Gazette/’ 356

Where Pen appears in town and country 362

In which the Sylph reappears 377

In which Colonel Altamont appears and disappears 386

Relates to Mr. Harry Foker’s affairs 395

Carries the reader both to Richmond and Greenwich 407

Contains a novel incident 416

Alsatia 428

In which the Colonel narrates some of his adventures 435

A chapter ot conversations 447

Miss Amory s partners 461

Monseigneur S'Amuse 473

A visit 0/' politeness 487

In Shepherd’s Inn 493

In or near the Temple Garden 499

The happy village again . , 508

Which had very nearly been the last of the story. . 515

A critical chapter 527

Convalescence 53 7

Fanny’s occupation’s gone 549

In which Fanny engages a new medical man 560

Foreign ground. 572

“ Fairoaks to Let.” 584

Old Friends 594

Explanations 607

Conversations 615

The way of the world 629

Which accounts perhaps for chapter XXII 1 644

Phillis and Corydon 657

Temptation 663

In which Pen begins his canvas 674

In which Pen begins to doubt his election 683

In which the Major is bidden to stand and deliver 696 in which the Major neither yields his money nor

his life 707

In which Pendennis counts his eggs 715

Fiat justitia 722

In which the decks begin to clear 730

Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter . 738

Shows how Arthur had better have taken a return-

ticket 743

A chapter of match-making 755

Exeunt omnes 763

PENDENNIS.

Chapter I. Shows How First Love May Interrupt Breakfast

One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthui Pendennis came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a certain Club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament. At a quarter past ten the Major invariably made his appearance in the best blacked boots in all London, with a checked morning cravat hat never was rumpled until dinner-time, a buff waistcoat which bore the crown of his sovereign on the buttons, and linen so spotless that Mr. Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would probably have employed her had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly the country. Pendennis’s coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very cane, were perfect of their kind as specimens of the costume of a military man en retraite. At a distance, or seeing his back merely, you would have taken him to be not more than thirty years old : it was only by a nearer inspection that you saw the factitious nature of his rich brown hair, and that there were a few crow’s-feet round about the somewhat faded eyes of his handsome mottled face. His nose was of the Wellington pattern. His hands and wristbands were beautifully long and white. On the latter he wore handsome gold buttons given to him by his Royal Highness the Duke of York, and on the others more than one elegant ring, the chief and largest of them being emblazoned with the famous arms of Pendennis.

PENDENNIS.

He always took possession of the same table in the same corner of the room, from which nobody ever now thought of ousting him. One or two mad wags and wild fellows had, in former days, endeavored to deprive him of this place ; but there was a quiet dignity in the Major’s manner as he took his seat at the next table, and surveyed the interlopers, which rendered it impossible for any man to sit and breakfast under his eye ; and that table — by the fire, and yet near the window — became his own. His letters were laid out there in expectation of his arrival, and many was the young fellow about town who looked with wonder at the number of those notes, and at the seals and franks which they bore. If there was any question about etiquette, society, who was married to whom, of what age such and such a duke was, Pendennis was the man to whom every one appealed. Marchionesses used to drive up to the Club, and leave notes for him, or fetch him out. He was perfectly affable. The young men liked to walk with him in the Park or down Pall Mall ; for he touched his hat to everybody, and every other man he met was a lord.

The Major sate down at his accustomed table then, and while the waiters went to bring him his toast and his hot newspaper, he surveyed his letters through his gold double eye-glass, and examined one pretty note after another, and laid them by in order. There were large solemn dinner cards, suggestive of three courses and heavy conversation ; there were neat little confidential notes, conveying female entreaties ; there was a note on thick official paper from the Marquis of Steyne, telling him to come to Richmond to a little party at the Star and Garter; and another from the Bishop of Ealing and Mrs. Trail, requesting the honor of Major Pendennis’s company at Ealing House, all of which letters Pendennis read gracefully, and with the more satisfaction, because Glowry, the Scotch surgeon, breakfasting opposite to him, was looking on, and hating him for having so many invitations, which nobody ever sent to Glowry.

These perused, the Major took out his pocket-book to see on what days he was disengaged, and which of these many hospitable calls he could afford to accept or decline.

He threw over Cutler, the East India Director, in Baker Street, in order to dine with Lord Steyne and the little French party at the Star and Garter — the Bishop he accepted, because, though the dinner was slow, he liked to dine with bishops — and so went through his list and disposed of them according to his fancy or interest. Then he took his breakfast and looked over

PENDENNIS.

the paper, the gazette, the births and deaths, and the fashionable intelligence, to see that his name was down among the guests at my Lord So-and-so’s fete, and in the intervals of these occupations carried on cheerful conversation with his acquaintances about the room.

Among the letters which formed Major Pendennis’s budget for that morning there was only one unread, and which lay solitary and apart from all the fashionable London letters, with a country post-mark and a homely seal. The superscription was in a pretty delicate female hand, marked “ immediate ” by the fair writer ; yet the Major had, for reasons of his own, neglected up to the present moment his humble rural petitioner, who to be sure could hardly hope to get a hearing among so many grand folks who attended his levee. The fact was, this was a letter from a female relative of Pendennis, and while the grandees of her brother’s acquaintance were received and got their interview, and drove off, as it were, the patient country letter remained for a long time waiting for an audience in the antechamber, under the slop-basin.

At last it came to be this letter’s turn, a^:l the Major broke a seal with “ Fairoaks ” engraved upon it, and “ Clavering St. Mary’s ” for a post-mark. It was a double letter, and the Major commenced perusing the envelope before he attacked the inner epistle.

“ It is a letter from another Jook” growled Mr. Glowry, inwardly. “ Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, I’m thinking.

“ My dear Major Pendennis,” the letter ran, “ I beg and implore you to come to me immediately ” — very likely, thought Pendennis, and Steyne’s dinner to-day — “ I am in the greatest grief and perplexity. My dearest boy, who has been hitherto everything the fondest mother could wish, is grieving me dreadfully. He has formed — I can hardly write it — a passion, an infatuation,” — the Major grinned — “for an actress who has been performing here. She is at least twelve years older than Arthur — who will not be eighteen till next February — and the wretched boy insists upon marrying her.”

“ Hay ! What’s making Pendennis swear now ? ” — Mr. Glowry asked of himself, for rage and wonder were concentrated in the Major’s open mouth, as he read this astounding announcement.

“ Do, my dear friend,” the grief-stricken lady went on, “ come to me instantly on the receipt of this ; and, as Arthur’s guardian, entreat, command, the wretched child to give up this most io deplorable resolution.” And after more entreaties to the above effect, the writer concluded by signing herself the Major’s unhappy affectionate sister, Helen Pendennis.”

“ Fairoaks, Tuesday” — the Major concluded, reading the last words of the letter — “ A d — d pretty business at Fairoaks, Tuesday ; now let us see what the boy has to say ; ” and he took the other letter, which was written in a great floundering boy’s hand, and sealed with the large signet of the Pendennises, even larger than the Major’s own, and with supplementary wax sputtered all round the seal, in token of the writer’s tremulousness and agitation.

The epistle ran thus —

“ Fairoaks , Monday , Midnight.

“ My dear Uncle,

“ In informing you of my engagement with Miss Costigan, daughter of J. Chesterfield Costigan, Esq., of Costiganstown, but, perhaps, better known to you under her professional name of Miss Fotheringay, of the Theatres Royal Drury Lane and Crow Street, and of the Norwich and Welsh Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which cannot, according to the present prejudices of society at least, be welcome to my family. My dearest mother, on whom, God knows, I would wish to inflict no needless pain, is deeply moved and grieved, I am sorry to say, by the intelligence which I have this night conveyed to her. I beseech you, my dear Sir, to come down and reason with ner and console her. Although obliged by poverty to earn an honorable maintenance by the exercise of her splendid talents, Miss Costigan’s family is as ancient and noble as our own. When our ancestor, Ralph Pendennis, landed with Richard II. in Ireland, my Emily’s forefathers were kings of that country. I have the information from Mr. Costigan, who, like yourself, is a military man.

“ It is in vain I have attempted to argue with my dear mother, and prove to her that a young lady of irreproachable character and lineage, endowed with the most splendid gifts of beauty and genius, who devotes herself to the exercise of one of the noblest professions, for the sacred purpose of maintaining her family, is a being whom we should all love and reverence, rather than avoid ; — my poor mother has prejudices which it is impossible for my logic to overcome, and refuses to welcome to her arms one who is disposed to be her most affectionate daughter through life.

“ Although Miss Costigan is some years older than myself, that circumstance does not operate as a barrier to my affection, and I am sure will not influence its duration. A love like mine, Sir, I feel, is contracted once and for ever. As I never dreamed of love until I saw her — I feel now that I shall die without ever knowing another passion. It is the fate of my life ; and having loved once, I should despise myself, and be unworthy of my name as a gentleman, if I hesitated to abide by my passion : if I did not give all where I felt all, and endow the woman who loves me fondly with my whole heart and my whole fortune.

“ I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily — for why, in truth, should it be delayed? A delay implies a doubt, which I cast from me as unworthy. It is impossible that my sentiments can change towards Emily — that at any age she can be anything but the sole object of my love. Why, then, wait? I entreat you, my dear Uncle, to come down and reconcile my dear mother to our union, and I address you as a man of the world, qtii mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes , who will not feel any of the weak s cruples and fears which agitate a lady who has scarcely ever left her village.

“ Pray, come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that — apart from considerations of fortune — you will admire and approve ji my Emily.

“Your affectionate Nephew,

“Arthur Pendennis, Jr.”

When the Major had concluded the perusal of this letter, his countenance assumed an expression of such rage and horror that Glowry, the surgeon, felt in his pocket for his lancet, which he always carried in his card-case, and thought his respected friend was going into a fit. The intelligence was indeed sufficient to agitate Pendennis. The head of the Pendennises going to

PENDENNIS.

1 1 marry an actress ten years his senior, — the head-strong boy about to plunge into matrimony. “ The mother has spoiled the young rascal,” groaned the Major inwardly, “ with her cursed sentimentality and romantic rubbish. My nephew marry a tragedy queen ! Gracious mercy, people will laugh at me so that I shall not dare to show my head ! ” And he thought with an irrepressible pang that he must give up Lord Steyne’s dinner at Richmond, and must lose his rest and pass the night in an abominable tight mail-coach, instead of taking pleasure, as he had promised himself, in some of the most agreeable and select society in England.

He quitted his breakfast-table for the adjoining writing-room, and there ruefully wrote off refusals to the Marquis, the Earl, the Bishop, and all his entertainers ; and he ordered his servant to take places in the mail-coach for that evening, of course charging the sum which he disbursed for the seats to the account of the widow and the young scapegrace of whom he was guardian.

Chapter II. A Pedigree And Other Family Matters

Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there lived in a small town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath, where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon ; and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sickrooms, and ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, but would condescend to sell a brown-paper plaster to a farmer’s wife across the counter, — or to vend toothbrushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery.

And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a pennyworth of salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, was a gentleman of good education, and of as old a family as any in the whole county of Somerset. He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennises up to the time of the Druids, • — and who knows how much farther back ? They had inter-

PENDENNIS.

married with the Normans at a very late period of their family existence, and they were related to all the great families of Wales and Brittany. Pendennis had had a piece of University education too, and might have pursued that career with honor, but in his second year at Oxbridge his father died insolvent, and poor Pen was obliged to betake himself to the pestle and apron. He always detested the trade, and it was only necessity, and the offer of his mother’s brother, a London apothecary of low family, into which Pendennis’s father had demeaned himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis into so odious a calling.

He quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the coarseminded practitioner his relative, and set up for himself at Bath with his modest medical ensign. He had for some time a hard struggle with poverty ; and it was all he could do to keep the shop in decent repair, and his bedridden mother in comfort : but Lady Ribstone happening to be passing to the Rooms with an intoxicated Irish chairman who bumped her ladyship up against Fen’s very door-post, and drove his chair-pole through the handsomest pink-bottle in the surgeon’s window, alighted screaming from her vehicle, and was accommodated with a chair in Mr. Pendennis’s shop, where she was brought round with cinnamon and sal-volatile.

Mr. Pendennis’s manners were so uncommonly gentlemanlike and soothing, that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Ribstone, of Codlingbury, in the county of Somerset, Bart., appointed her preserver, as she called him, apothecary to her person and family, which was very large. Master Ribstone coming home for the Christmas holidays from Eton, over-ate himself and had a fever, in which Mr. Pendennis treated him with the greatest skill and tenderness. In a word, he got the good graces of the Codlingbury family, and from that day began to prosper. The good company of Bath patronized him, and amongst the ladies especially he was beloved and admired. First his humble little shop became a smart one : then he discarded the selling of toothbrushes and perfumery: then he shut up the shop altogether, and only had a little surgery attended by a genteel young man : then he had a gig with a man to drive him ; and, before her exit from this world, his poor old mother had the happiness of seeing from her bedroom window, to which her chair was rolled, her beloved John step into a close carriage of his own, a one-horse carriage it is true, but with the arms of the family of Pendennis handsomely emblazoned on the panels. “ What would Arthur say

PEND ENNIS.

r3

now > ” she asked, speaking of a younger son of hers — “ who never so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny through all the time of his poverty and struggles ! ”

“ Captain Pendennis is with his regiment in India, mother,'” Mr. Pendennis remarked, “ and, if you please, I wish you would not call me Johnny before the young man — before Mr. Perkins.”

Presently the day came when she ceased to call her son by any title of endearment or affection ; and his house was very . lonely without that kind though querulous voice. He had his night-bell altered and placed in the room in which the good old lady had grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in the great large bed there. He was upwards of forty years old when these events befell ; before the war was over ; before George the Magnifiqent came to the throne ; before this history indeed : but what is a gentleman without a pedigree ? Pendennis, by this time, had his handsomely framed and glazed, and hanging up in his drawing-room between the pictures' of Codlingbury House in Somersetshire, and St. Boniface’s College, Oxbridge, where he had passed the brief and happy days of his early manhood. As for the pedigree he had taken it out of a trunk, as Sterne’s officer called for his sword, now that he was a gentleman and could show it.

About the time of Mrs. Pendennis’s demise, another of her son’s patients likewise died at Bath ; that virtuous old woman, old Lady Pontypool, daughter of Reginald twelfth Earl of Bareacres, and by consequence great grand-aunt to the present Earl, and widow of John second Lord Pontypool, and likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the Armageddon Chapel, Clifton. For the last five years of her life her ladyship had been attended by Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant relative of the noble house of Bareacres, before mentioned, and daughter of Lieutenant R. Thistlewood, R. N., killed at the battle of Copenhagen. Under Lady Pontypool’s roof Miss Thistlewood found a shelter : the Doctor, who paid his visits to my Lady Pontypool at least twice a day, could not but remark the angelical sweetness and kindness with which the young lady bore her elderly relative’s ill-temper ; and it was as they were going in the fourth mourning coach. to attend her ladyship’s venerated remains to Bath Abbey, where they now repose, that he looked at her sweet pale face and resolved upon putting a certain question to her, the very nature of which made his pulse beat ninety, at least.

He was older than she by more than twenty years, and at

PENDENNIS .

no time the most ardent of men. Perhaps he had had a love affair in early life which he had to strangle — perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens : well, at three-and-forty he was a collected quiet little gentleman in black stockings with a bald head, and a few days after the ceremony he called to see her, and, as he felt her pulse, he kept hold of her hand in his, and asked her where she was going to live now that the Pontypool family had come down upon the property, which was being nailed into boxes, and packed into hampers, and swaddled up with haybands, and buried in straw, and locked under three keys in green-baize plate-chests and carted away under the eyes of poor Miss Helen, — he asked her where she was going to live finally.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she said she did not know. She had a little money. The old lady had left her a thousand pounds, indeed ; and she would go into a boarding-house or into a school ; in fine she did not know where.

Then Pendennis, looking into her pale face, and keeping hold of her cold little hand, asked her if she would come and live with him ? He was old compared to — to so blooming a young lady as Miss Thistlewood (Pendennis was of the grave old complimentary school of gentlemen and apothecaries), but he was of good birth, and, he flattered himself, of good principles and temper. His prospects were good, and daily mending. He was alone in the world, and had need of a kind and constant companion, whom it would be the study of his life to make happy ; in a word, he recited to her a little speech, which he had composed that morning in bed, and rehearsed and perfected in his carriage, as he was coming to wait upon the young lady.

Perhaps if he had had an early love-passage, she too had one day hoped for a different lot than to be wedded to a little gentleman who rapped his teeth and smiled artificially, who was laboriously polite to the butler as he slid up stairs into the drawing-room, and profusely civil to the lady’s-maid, who waited at the bedroom door ; for whom her old patroness used to ring as for a servant, and who came with even more eagerness ; perhaps she would have chosen a different man — but she knew, on the other hand, how worthy Pendennis was, how prudent, how honorable ; how good he had been to his mother, and constant in his care of her ; and the upshot of this interview was, that she, blushing very much, made Pendennis an extremely low curtsey, and asked leave to — to consider his very kind pro posal.