A History of Pendennis

A History of Pendennis.

Volume 1.

by William Makepeace Thackeray.

TO DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON.

My Dear Doctor,

Thirteen months ago, when it seemed likely that this story had come to a close, a kind friend brought you to my bedside, whence, in all probability, I never should have risen but for your constant watchfulness and skill. I like to recall your great goodness and kindness (as well as many acts of others, showing quite a surprising friends.h.i.+p and sympathy) at that time, when kindness and friends.h.i.+p were most needed and welcome.

And as you would take no other fee but thanks, let me record them here in behalf of me and mine, and subscribe myself,

Yours, most sincerely and gratefully,

W. M. THACKERAY.

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 clap-traps or other arts? I can no more ignore good fortune than any other chance which has befallen me. I have found many thousands more readers 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 publishers' 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 compet.i.tion 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 to describe one of them, no better nor worse than most educated men--even these we can not 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.ses in society, in the clubs, colleges, newsrooms--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_.

PENDENNIS.

CHAPTER I.

SHOWS HOW FIRST LOVE MAY INTERRUPT BREAKFAST.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

One fine morning

At a quarter past ten the major invariably made his appearance in the best blacked boots in all London, with a checked morning cravat that never was rumpled until dinner time, a buff waistcoat which bore the crown of his sovereign on the b.u.t.tons, 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 fact.i.tious nature of his rich brown hair, and that there were a few crows'-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 b.u.t.tons 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.

He always took possession of the same table in the same corner of the room, from which n.o.body ever now thought of ousting him. One or two mad wags and wild fellows had in former days, and in freak or bravado, endeavored twice or thrice 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 every body, 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-gla.s.s. He carried it so gayly, you would hardly have known it was spectacles in disguise, 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 speak French, which language the major possessed very perfectly; 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 n.o.body 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 the paper, the gazette, the births and deaths, and the fas.h.i.+onable 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 fas.h.i.+onable London letters, with a country postmark and a homely seal.

The superscription was in a pretty, delicate female hand, and though marked "Immediate" by the fair writer, with a strong dash of anxiety under the word, yet the major had, for reasons of his own, neglected up to the present moment his humble rural pet.i.tioner, 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 ante-chamber under the slop-basin.

At last it came to be this letter's turn, and 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.

"Is it 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 very greatest grief and perplexity. My dearest boy, who has been hitherto every thing the fondest mother could wish, is grieving me _dreadfully_. He has formed--I can hardly write it--a pa.s.sion, 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 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 Theaters Royal Drury Lane and Crow-street, and of the Norwich and Welsh Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which can not, according to the present prejudices of society, at least, be welcome to my family. My dearest mother, on whom, G.o.d 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 her, 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.blest 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.