Dedication and Preface of The History of Pindennis. This is a LibriVox recording. Our LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kristen Lewis, Houston, Texas. The History of Pindennis by William Makepeace Thackeray. Dedication to Dr. John Ellison. My dear doctor, 13 months ago, when it seemed likely that this story had come to a close, a kind friend brought you to my bedside, which in all probability I should never 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 friendship and sympathy. At that time, when kindness and friendship were most needed and welcome, and as you would take no other fee but thanks, let me record them here on 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, fell in art, as it constantly does in must, it at least has the advantage of a certain truth and honesty, which a work more elaborate might lose. In this constant communication with the reader, the writer is forced into frankness of expression and to speak out as online in fill-ins 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 the 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 in conversation, so of a writer who delivers himself up to you and perforce unreservedly. Is he honest? Does he tell the truth in the main? Does he seem accrued aided by the desire to find out and speak it? Is he a quack who shams sentiment or mouths for effect? Does he seek popularity by claptracks 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 writers and the publisher's pocket benefited by the recital of the most active horrors. What more exciting than a rufficon with many admirable virtues in St. Giles is visited constantly by a young lady from Belgravia. What more stirring than the contrast of society, the mixture of slang and fashionable language, the escapes, the battles, the murders. Nay, up till nine o'clock this very morning my poor friend, Colonel Adamont, 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 honourable forbearance on the part of the publishers because, on attempting it, I found that I felt from one of experience of my subject and never having been intimate with any convict in my life and the manners of ruffians and gall-birds being quite unfamiliar to me. The idea of entering into competition with M. Eugene Serr 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 gentleman of our age, this is an attempt to describe one of them, no better nor worse than most educated men. Even these we cannot show as they are with the notorious follibles 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 plead 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 this story, I described a young man resisting and affected by temptation. My object was to say that he had the passions to fill and the manliness and the 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, messrooms, what is the life and talk of your sons. A little more frankness than his customary has been attempted in this story with no bad desire on the writer's part. It is hoped and with no ill consequences to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant, at any rate, truth is best from whatever chair, from those which graver writers or thinkers argue, as from that at which the storyteller sits as he concludes his labor and bids his kind reader farewell. Kensington, November 26, 1850 End of Dedication and Preface, Recording by Kristen Lois, Easton, TX Chapter 1. Of the History of Pendenis This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of Pendenis, by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 1. Shows How First Love May Interrupt Breakfast One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendenis came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a certain club in Palmall, of which he was a chief ornament. As he was one of the finest judges of wine in England and a man of active dominating and inquiring spirit, he had been very properly chosen to be a member of the committee of this club and indeed was almost the manager of the institution and the stewards and waiters bowed before him as reverentially as to a duke or a field marshal. At a quarter past ten, the Major invariably made his appearance in the best black 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 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. Pendenis'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 fictitious nature of his rich brown hair and that there were a few crow's feet round about the somewhat faded eyes of his handsome modelled 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 Pendenis. 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 and in freak gar bravado endeavored twice our 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 francs 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, Pendenis was the man to whom everyone appealed. Marcunesses 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 Paul Mall for he touched his hat to everybody and every other man he met was a lord. The major sat down at his accustomed table then and while the waiters went to bring him his toast in his hot newspaper he surveyed his letters through his gold double eyeglass. He carried it so gaily he would hardly have known it was spectacles in disguise and examined one pretty note after another and laid them by an order. There were large solemn dinner cards suggestive of three courses in heavy conversation. There were neat little confidential notes conveying female entreaties. There was a note on thick official paper from the Marquis of Steen telling him to come to Richmond to a little party at the Starr and Garder and speak French which language the major possessed very perfectly and another from the Bishop of Ealing and Mrs. Trail requesting the honour of major Pendenis's company at Ealing House all of which letters Pendenis read gracefully and with the more satisfaction because Glory, the scotch surgeon breakfasting opposite to him was looking on and hating him for having so many invitations which nobody ever sent to Glory. These perused the major took out his pocketbook to see on what days he was disengaged in 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 Steen and the little French party at the Starr and Carter 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 fancier interest then he took his breakfast and looked over 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's so-and-so's fate and in the interval of these occupations carried on cheerful conversation with his acquaintances about the room among the letters which formed major Pendenis's budget for that morning there was only one on red and which lay solitary and apart from all the fashionable 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 petitioner who to be sure could hardly hope to get a hearing among so many grand folks who attended his levée because this was a letter from a female relative of Pendenis 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 fair oaks and graved upon it and clevering St. Mary's for a postmark it was a double letter and the major commenced perusing the envelope and attacked the inner epistle it is a letter from another joke growled Mr. Glowery inwardly Pendenis would not be leaving that to the last I'm thinking my dear major Pendenis the letter ran I beg and implore you to come to me immediately very likely thought Pendenis and Steen's dinner today I am in the very greatest grief and perplexity my dearest boy who has been hither to everything the fondest mother could wish is grieving me dreadfully as 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 point cysts upon marrying her hi what's making Pendenis swear now Mr. Glowery 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 in treat 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 Pendenis Fair Oaks Tuesday the major concluded reading the last word of the letter a damn pretty business at Fair Oaks 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 a large signet of the Pendenis's even larger than the major's own and with supplementary wax sputtered all around the seal in token of the writer's tremulousness and agitation the epistle ran thus Fair Oaks Monday midnight my dear uncle and informing you of my engagement with Miss Costigan daughter of J. Chesterfield Costigan a squire of Costigan's town but perhaps better known to you under her professional name of Miss Fathering Gay of the theatre's Royal Drury Lane and Crow Street and of the Norwich and Welsh Circuit I'm 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'm sorry to say by the intelligence which I have this night convey to her a beseech you my dear sir to come down in reason with her and console her although obliged by poverty to earn an honourable maintenance by the exercise of her splendid talents Miss Costigan's family is as ancient and noble as our own when our ancestor Ralph Pendenis 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 in 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 our 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 forever as I never had 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 it was Miss C's own delicacy which suggested that the difference of age which I never have felt might operate as a bar to our union but 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 for 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 Cremorus Hominem who will not feel any of the weak scruples and fears which annotate 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 of my Emily your affectionate nephew Arthur Pendenis Jr when the major had concluded the perusal of this letter his countenance assumed an expression of such rage and horror that Glory, the surgeon official 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 Pendenis the head of the Pendenis is going to marry an actress ten years as senior a headstrong boy going to plunge into match money the mother has spoiled the young Rascal grown 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 show my head and he thought with an inexpressible pang that he must give up Lord Steen's dinner at Richmond and must lose his rest and pass the night in an abominable tight male coach instead of taking pleasure as he had promised himself and some of the most agreeable and select society in England and he must not only give up this but all other engagements for some time to come who knows how long the business might detain him he quitted his breakfast table for the adjoining writing room and there roofily rode off refusals to the Marquis the Earl the Bishop and all his entertainers and he ordered his servants to take places in the male coach for that evening of course charging the sum which he dispersed for the seats to the account of the widow and the young scapegrace of whom he was the guardian Recording by Christian Louis Easton, Texas The History of Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray 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 Cleverine 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 sick rooms and ladies of 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 Venn toothbrushes, hair powder and London periphery for these facts a few folks at Cleverine would vouch where people's memories were far more tenacious perhaps than they are in a great bustling metropolis and yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a penny worth of salt or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap was a gentleman of good education and of as an older family as any in the whole country of Somerset he had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennuses up to the time of the Druids and who knows how much farther back they had intermarried with the Normans at a very late period of their family's existence and they were related to all the great families of Wells in Brittany Pendennis had had a piece of university education too and might have pursued that career with great honour but that in his second year at Cambridge his father died insolvent and poor Pinn was obliged to but take himself to the pestle in Abram 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 Marion that forced John Pendennis into so odious a colon he quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the course-minded practitioner his relative and set up for himself at bath with this modest medical enzyme he had for some time a hard struggle with poverty and it was all he could do to keep the shop and its guilt ornaments and decent repair and his bed ridden mother in comfort but Lady Ribstone happening to be passing to the rooms with an intoxicated Irish chairman who bumped her ladyship up against Penn's very doorpost and drove his chair pole through the handsomest pink bottle in the surgeon's window a lighted screaming from her vehicle and was accommodated with the chair in Mr. Pendennis's shop where she was brought round with cinnamon and cell volatile Mr. Pendennis's manners were so uncommonly gentlemen-like and soothing that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Ribstone of Codland Berry in the country 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 Christmas holidays from Eton over-aid 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 Codland Berry 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 periphery as unworthy of a gentleman of ancient lineage then he shut up the shop altogether and only had a little surgery attended by a Gentile 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 happiest of scene from her bedroom windows to which her chair was rolled her beloved John stepped into a closed carriage of his own a one horse carriage it is true but with the arms of the family of Pendennis handsomely emblazed on the panels what would Arthur say now, she asked, speaking of a younger son of hers who never so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny through all his time of poverty and struggles Captain Pendennis is with his regimen in India mother Mr. Pendennis remarked and if you please I wish you would not call me Johnny before the young man before Mr. Parkins presently the day came when she ceased to call her son by the name of Johnny or by any other title of endearment or affection and his house was very lonely without that kind through courious 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 40 years old when these events befell before the war was over, before George the Magnificent came to the throne before this history indeed but what is a gentleman without his pedigree Pendennis by this time had his handsomely framed and glazed and hanging up in his drawing room between the pictures of Codland Berry House in Somersetshire and St. Boniface's College, Cambridge 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 Stern'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 a bath that virtuous woman, old lady Pontipool daughter of Reginald 12th Earl of Bear Acres and by consequence great grand aunt to the present Earl and widow of John 2nd Lord Pontipool and likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wells 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 Bear Acres before mentioned and the daughter of Lieutenant R. Thistlewood R. N. killed at the battle of Copenhagen under Lady Pontipool's roof Miss Thistlewood found a comfortable shelter as far as boarding and lodging went but suffered under such an infernal tyranny as only women can inflict on or bear from one another the doctor who paid his visits to my lady Pontipool at least twice a day could not but remark the angelatical sweetness and kindness with which the young woman bore her elderly relatives' insults and it was as they were going in the fourth morning 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 no time the most ardent of men perhaps he had had a love affair in early life which she 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 the 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 Pontipool family had come down upon the property which was being knelt into boxes and packed into hampers and swaddled up with hay-bands and buried in straw and locked under three keys in green bays plate-chest encarded away under the eyes of poor Miss Allen 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 and fine she did not know where then pinned Dennis 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 pinned Dennis 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 could 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 this 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 wrapped his teeth and smiled artificially who was laboriously plight to the butler as he glid upstairs into the drying room and profusely civil to the ladies maid who waited at the bedroom door from whom her old patroness used to ring as for a servant and who came with even more eagerness who got upstories as he sent in droughts for his patient's amusement and his own profit perhaps she would have chosen a different man but she knew on the other hand how worthy pinned Dennis was how prudent, how honourable how good he had been to his mother and constant in his care for her and the upshot of this interview was that she blushing very much made pinned Dennis an extremely low curtsy and asked leave too to consider his very kind proposal they were married in the Dull Bath season which was the height of the season in London and pinned Dennis had previously through a professional friend MRCS secured lodgings in Hall Street Cavendish Square took his wife thither in a chase and pair conducted her to the theatre, the parks and the Chapel Royal showed her the folks going to a drawing room and then a word gave her all the pleasures of the town he likewise left cards upon Lord Pontypool upon the right honourable the Earl of Bear Acres and a Bonser, Pepin and Lady Ribstone his earliest and kindest patrons Bear Acres took no notice of the cards Pontypool called, admired Mrs. pinned Dennis and said Lady Pontypool would come and see her which her ladyship did per proxy of John her footmen who brought her a card and an imitation to a concert five weeks off pinned Dennis was back in his little one-horse carriage dispensing droughts and pills at that time but the Ribstones asked him and Mrs. pinned Dennis to an entertainment of which Mr. pinned Dennis bragged to the last day of his life the secret ambition of Mr. pinned Dennis had always been to be a gentleman it takes much time and careful saving for a provincial doctor whose gains are not very large to lay by enough money wherewith to purchase a house and land but besides our friend's own frugality and prudence fortune aided him considerably in his endeavour and brought him to the point which he so panted to obtain he laid out some money very adventurously in the purchase of a house and small estate close upon the village of Clevering before mentioned words cannot describe nor did he himself ever care to confess to anyone his pride when he found himself a real land proprietor and could walk over acres of which he was the master a lucky purchase which he had made of shares in a copper mine added very considerably to his wealth and he realised with great prudence while this mine was still at its full vogue finally he sold his business at Bath to Mr. Parkins for a handsome sum of ready money and for an annuity to be paid to him during a certain number of years after he had forever retired from the handling of mortar and pestle Arthur Pendennis his son was eight years old at the time of this event so that it is no wonder that the latter who left Bath and the surgery so young should forget the existence of such a place almost entirely and that his father's hands had ever been dirty by the compounding of odious pills or the preparation of filthy plasters the old man never spoke about the shop himself never alluded to it and the medical practitioner clevering to attend to his family when the occasion arrived sunk the black breeches and stockings altogether attended market and sessions and wore a bottle green coat and brass buttons with drab gators just as if he had been an English gentleman all of his life he used to stand at his lodge gate and see the coaches come in and bow gravely to the guards and watchmen as they touched their hats and drove by it was he who founded the Clevering Book Club and set up the Samaritan Soup and Blanket Society it was he who brought the mill which used to run through the cackle field before away from that village and through Clevering at church he was equally active as a vestry man and a worshipper at market every Thursday he went from pin to stall looked at samples of oats and munched corn felt beast punched geese in the breast and weighed them with a knowing air and did business with the farmers at the Clevering Arms as well as the old frequency of that house of call it was now his shame as it formerly was his pride to be called doctor and those who wished to please him always gave him the title of squire heaven knows where they came from but a whole range of pendentist portraits presently hung around the doctor's oak dining room lay lies and van dykes he avowed all the portraits to be and one question just to the history of the originals would vaguely say they were ancestors of his you could see by his wife's looks that she disbelieved in this geological legends for she generally endeavored to turn the conversation when he commenced them but his little boy believed them to be to the fullest extent and Roger pendentus of agon court Arthur pendentus of clericy general pendentus of van heimt and otternaud were as real and actual beings for this young gentleman as room shall we say as robinson carousel or peter wilkins or the seven champions of crister dome whose history were in his library pendentus's fortune which at best was not above eight hundred pounds a year did not with the best economy and management permit his living with the great folks of the country but he had a decent comfortable society of the second best sort if they were not the roses they live near the roses as it were and had a good deal of the odor of gentile life they had out their plate and dined each other round in the moonlight nights twice a year coming a dozen miles to these festivals and besides the country the pendentus's had a society of the town of flavoring as much as nay more than they liked for mrs. Pibus was always poking about Helen's conservatories and intercepting the operation of her soup tickets and coal clubs Captain Glander's HP 50th dragon guards was forever swaggering about the squire's stables and gardens and endeavouring to enlist him in his choirs with the vicar with the postmaster with the reverend F. Wops shot of clevering grammar school for overflogging his son angle C. Glander's with all the village and fine and pendentus and his wife often bless themselves that their house of Fair Oaks was nearly a mile out of Cleavering or the premises would never have been free from the prying eyes and prattle of one or other of the male and female inhabitants there Fair Oaks lawn comes down to the little river Braum and on the other side were the plantations and woods as much or left of them of Cleavering Park Sir Francis Cleavering Bart the park was let out in pasture and fed down by sheep and cattle when the pendentuses came first to live at Fair Oaks shutters were up on the house a splendid free stone palace with great stairs statues and porticles where of you may see a picture in the beauties of England's and Wells Sir Richard Cleavering Sir Francis's grandfather had commenced the run of the family by building of this palace his successor had achieved the run by living in it the presence of Francis was abroad somewhere nor could anyone be found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion though the deserted rooms, moldy clanking halls and dismal galleries of which Arthur Pendentus many a time walked trembling when he was a boy at sunset from the lawn of Fair Oaks there was a pretty sight it in the opposite park of Cleavering were in the habit of putting on a rich golden tinge making them both wonderfully the upper windows of the great house framed so as to make your eyes wink the little river ran off noisily westward and was lost in a somber wood behind which the towers of the old Abbey Church of Cleavering whereby the town is called Cleavering St. Mary's to the present day rose up in purple splendor little Arthur's figure and his mother's cast long blue shadows over the grass and he would repeat in a low voice for a scene of great natural beauty always moved the boy who inherited this sensibility from his mother certain lines beginning these are thy glorious works, parents of good, almighty thine this universal frame greatly to Mrs. Pendentus' delight such walks and conversation generally ended in a profusion of fallile and maternal embraces for to love and to pray were the main occupations of this dear woman's life and I have often heard Pendentus say in his wild way that he felt that he was sure of going to heaven for his mother never could be happy there without him as for John Pendentus as the father of the family and that sort of thing everybody had a greater respect for him and his orders were obeyed like those of the Meads and Persians his hat was as well brushed perhaps as that of any man in this empire his mills were served at the same minute every day and woe to those who came late as little pen and disorderly little rascals sometimes did prayers were recited, his letters were read his business dispatched, his stables and garden inspected his hen houses and kennel his barn and pigsty visited always at regular hours after dinner he always had a nap with the globe newspaper on his knee and his yellow bandana handkerchief on his face Major Pendentus sent the yellow handkerchiefs from India and the brother had helped in the purchase of his majority so that they were good friends now and so as his dinner took place at six o'clock to a Bennett and the sunset business alluded to may be supposed to have occurred at about half past seven it is probable that he did not much care for the view in front of his lawn windows or take any share in the poetry and caresses that were taking place there they seldom occurred in his presence however frisky they were before mother and child were hushed and quiet when Mr. Pendentus walked into the drawing room his newspaper under his arm and here a wild little pen buried in a great chair read all the books of which he could lay hold the squire pursued his own articles in the gardener's gazette or took a solemn hand at Piquette with Mrs. Pendentus or an occasional friend from the village Pendentus usually took care of that at least one of his grand dinners should take place when his brother the major who on the return of his regiment from India and New South Wales had sold out and gone upon half pay came to pay his biannual visit to Fair Oaks my brother major Pendentus was a constant theme of the retired doctor's conversation all the family delighted in my brother the major he was the link which bound them to the great world of London and the fashion he always brought down the last news of the nobility and was in the constant habit of dining with lords and great folks he spoke of such which soldier like respect and decorum he would say Lord Bear Acres has been good enough to invite me to the Bear Acres for the pheasant shooting or my Lord Stein is so kind as to wish for my presence at Stillbrook for the Easter holidays and you may be sure the whereabouts of my brother the major was carefully made known by worthy Mr. Pendentus to his friends at the Cleverine Reading Room at Justice's meetings or at the country town their carriages would come from ten miles round to call upon major Pendentus in his visits to Fair Oaks the fame of his fashion as a man about town was established throughout the country there was talk of his marrying Miss Hunkle of Lilybank, old Hunkle the attorney's daughter with at least fifteen hundred a year to her fortune but my brother the major refused the negotiation adventurous as it might seem to most persons as a bachelor he said nobody cares how poor I am I have the happiness to live with people who are so highly placed in the world that a few hundred or thousands a year more or less can make no difference in the estimation in which they are pleased to hold me Miss Hunkle the most respectable lady is not in possession of either the birth or the manners which would entitle her to be received into the sphere in which I have the honor to move I shall live and die an old bachelor John and your worthy friend Miss Hunkle I have no doubt will find some more worthy object of her affection than a worn out old soldier on half-pay time showed the correctness of the surmise of the old man of the world Miss Hunkle married a young French nobleman and is now at this moment living at Lilybank under the title of Baroness D. having been separated from her wild young scape grace of a Baron very shortly after their union the major was a great favor with almost all the little establishments of Fair Oaks he was as good-natured as he was well-bred and had a sincere liking in regard for his sister-in-law whom he pronounced and with perfect truth to be as fine a lady as in England and an honor to the family indeed Mrs. Penn Dennis's tranquil beauty her natural sweetness and kindness and that simplicity and dignity which are a perfect purity and innocence are sure to bestow upon a handsome woman rendering her quite worthy of her brother's praises I think it is not natural prejudice which makes me believe that a hybrid English lady is the most complete of all heaven subjects in this world in whom else do you see so much grace and so much virtue so much faith and so much tenderness with such a perfect refinement and chastity and by hybrid ladies I don't mean duchesses and countesses be they ever so high in station they can be but ladies and no more but almost every man who lives in this world has the happiness let us hope of counting each persons amongst his circle of acquaintances women and whose angeletic natures there is something awful as well as beautiful to contemplate at whose feet the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down and humble ourselves in admiration of that adorable purity which never seems to do or to think wrong author Penn Dennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with his happy qualities during his childhood and youth the boy thought of her a little less than an angel as a supernatural being all wisdom love and beauty when her husband drove her into the country town or to the size balls or concerts there he would step into the assembly with his wife on his arm and look the great folks in the face as much to say look at that my lord can any of you show me a woman like that and she had raged some country ladies with three times her money by a sort of desperate perfection which they found in her Miss Pibus said she was cold and haunty Miss Pierce that she was too proud of her station Mrs. Wapshod as a doctor of divinity's lady would have the pause of her who was only the wife of a medical practitioner in the meanwhile this lady moved through the world quite regardless of all the comments that were made in her praise or disfavor she did not seem to know that she was admired or hated for being so perfect but carried on calmly through life saying her prayers loving her family helping her neighbors and doing her duty that even a woman should be fought less however as an arrangement not permitted by nature which assigns to us mental defects as it's a word to us headaches illnesses or death without which the scheme of the world could not be carried on may some of the best qualities of mankind could not be brought into the exercise as pain produces our elites fortitude and endurance difficulty perseverance poverty industry ingenuity danger courage and whatnot so the very virtues on the other hand will generate some vices and in fine Mrs. Pindenis had that vice which Miss Pirebus and Miss Pierce discovered in her namely that of pride which did not vest itself so much in her own person as in that of her family she spoke about Mr. Pindenis a worthy little gentleman enough but there are others as good as he with an awful reference as if he had been the Pope of Rome on his throne and she a cardinal kneeling at his feet and giving him incense the major she had to be sort of a bayard among majors and as for her son Arthur she worshipped that youth with an ardor which the young scapegrace accepted almost as coolly as the statue of the saint in St. Peter's receives the raptuous escalations which the faithful deliver on his toe this unfortunate superstition and idol worship of this good woman was the cause of a great deal of the misfortune which befell the young gentleman who is the hero of this history and deserves therefore to be mentioned at the outset of a story Arthur Pindenis's school fellows at the Greyfriars school state that as a boy he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or a scholar he did in fact just as much as was required of him and no more if he was distinguished for anything it was for verse writing but what was his enthusiasm ever so great it stopped when he had composed a number of lines demanded by the regulations unlike young Swettenham for instance who would no more of poetry in his composition than Mr. Wakeley yet could bring up a hundred dreary hexameters in the master after a half holiday or young Fluxmore who not only did his own verses but all the fifth forms besides he never read to improve himself out of school hours but on the contrary devired all the novels, plays and poetry on which he could lay on his hands he never was flogged but it was a wonder how he escaped the whipping post when he had money he spent at royalties and tarts for himself and his friends he has been known to disperse nine and six pence out of ten shillings awarded to him in a single day when he had no funds he went on tick when he could get no credit he went without and was almost as happy he has been known to take a thrashing for a crony without saying a word but a blow ever so slight from a friend would make him roar to fighting he was a verse from his earliest use as indeed to psychic the Greek grammar or any other exertion and would engage in none of them except at the last extremity he seldom if ever told lies and never bullied little boys those masters of seniors who were kind to him he loved with boyish ardor and though the doctor when he did not know his horus or could not construe his Greek play said that the boy pendentus was a disgrace to the school a candidate for ruin in this world and a perdition in the next a profligate who would most likely bring his vulnerable father to ruin and his mother to a dishonored grave and the like yet as the doctor made use of these compliments to most of the boys in the place which had not turned out as unusual number of felons or pickpockets little pen at first uneasy and terrified by these charges became gradually accustomed to hear them and he has not in fact either murdered his parents or committed any act worthy of transportation or hanging up to the present day there were many of the upper boys among the sister Syrians with whom pendentus was educated who assumed all the privileges of men long before they quitted their cemetery many of them for example smoked cigars and some had already begun the practice of inebriation one had fought a duel with an ensign in a marching in consequence of a row at the theatre another actually kept a bug in horse at a livery stable in Convent Garden and might be seen driving any Sunday in Hyde Park with a groom with squared arms and an admiral buttons by a side many of the seniors were in love and showed each other in confidence poems addressed to or letters and lock of hair received from young ladies but pen a modest and timid youth rather envied those who imitated them as yet he had not got beyond the theory as yet the practice of life was all to come and by the way yitinder mothers and sober fathers of Christian families a prodigious thing that theory of life is is orally learned at a great public school why if you could hear those boys of 14 who blush before mothers and sneak off in silence and the present of their daughters talking among each other it would be the woman's turn to blush then before he was 12 years old and if while his mother fancied him an angel of candor little pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awkwardly wise upon certain points and so madam has your pretty little rosy cheek son who is coming home from school for the ensuring Christmas holidays I don't say that the boy is lost or that the innocence has left him which he had from heaven which is our home but that the shades of the prison house are closing very fast over him and that we are helping as much as possible to corrupt him well pen had just made his public appearance in a coat with a tail our God of Arilis and was looking most anxiously in his little study glass to see if his whiskers were growing like those of more fortunate use his companions and instead of the treble voice with which he used to speak and sing for his singing voice was a very sweet one and he used one little to be made to perform home sweet home my pretty page and a French song or two which his mother had taught him and other ballets for the delection of the senior boys had suddenly plunged into a deep bass diversified by a squeak which one he was called upon to construe in school said the master and scholars laughing he was about sixteen years old in a word when he was suddenly called away from his academic studies it was at the close of the fordner in school and pen had been none noticed all the previous part of the morning until now when the doctor put him on to construe in a Greek plate he did not know a word of it though little timmons his form fellow was prompting him with all his might pen had made a sad blunder or two when the awful chief broke up upon him pen dinners sir he said your idleness is incorrigible and your stupidity beyond example you are a disgrace to your school and to your family and I have no doubt will prove so in afterlife to your country if that vice sir which is described to us as a root of all evil be really what moralists have representative and I have no doubt of the correctness of their opinion for what a prodigious quantity a future crime and wickedness are you unhappy boy lay in the seed miserable trifle a boy who can strews nigh and instead of D but at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely a folly and ignorance and dullness inconceivable but of crime of deadly crime a filial ingratitude which I tremble to contemplate a boy sir who does not learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for his education a boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neighbor a man who forges on his neighbor pays a penalty of his crime at the gallows and it is not such a one that I pity for he will be deservingly cut off but is maddened and heartbroken parents who are driven to premature grave by his crimes or if they live drag on a wretched and dishonored old age go on sir and I warn you that the very next mistake that you make shall subject to you to the punishment of the rod who is that laughing what ill conditioned boy is there that dares to laugh shouted the doctor while the master was making this oration there was a general titter behind him in the school room the orator had us back to the door of this ancient apartment which was open and a gentleman who was quite familiar with the place for both major arthur and mr john pendennis had been at the school was asked in the fifth form boy who say by the door for pendennis the lad grinning pointed to the culprit against whom the doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just wrath major pendennis could not help laughing he remembered having stood under that very pillar where pend the younger now stood and having been insulted by the doctor's predecessor years and years ago the intelligence was passed around that it was pendennis's uncle in an instant and a hundred young faces wandering and giggling between terror and laughter turned now to the newcomer and then to the awful doctor the major asked the fifth form boy to carry his card up to the doctor which the lad did with an arch look major pendennis had written on the card I must take AP home his father is very ill as the doctor received the card and stopped his herig with rather a scared look the laughter the boys half constrained until then burst out in the general's shout silence roared the doctor stamping with his foot pin looked up and saw who was his deliverer back into him gravely with one of his white gloves and tumbling down his books pin went across the doctor took out his watch it was two minutes to one we will take the juvenile at afternoon school he said nodding to the captain and all the boys understanding the signal gathered up their books and poured out the hall young pin saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home is there anything that matter with my mother he said he could hardly speak though for emotion and tears which were ready to start no said the major but your father is very ill go and pack your trunk directly I've got a post chase at the gate pin went off quickly to his boarding house to do as his uncle bed him and the doctor now left alone in the school room came out to shake hands with his old school fellow you would not have thought it was the same man as Cinderella at a particular hour became from a blazing innocent princess quite an ordinary little maid in a grey petticoat so as the clock struck one all the thunder and majesty an awful wrath of the school master disappeared there's nothing serious I hope so the doctor it is a pity to take a boy away unless there is he is a very good boy rather idle and unenergetic but he is very honest gentleman like little fellow though I can't get him to construe as I wish won't you come in and have some lunch and my wife will be very happy to see you but major pendentus declined the lunch and he said his brother was very ill had had a fit the day before and it was a great question if they should see him alive there's no other son is there said the doctor the major answered no and there's a good a good property I believe asked the other in an offhand way so so said the major as the chase drove through claverine the hustler standing whistling under the archway of the claverine arms winked the polystyllium obviously as much as to say all was over the gardener's wife came and opened the lodge gates and let the travelers through with the silent shake of the head all the blinds were down at fair oaks the face of the old footman was as blank when he let them in author's face was white too more than with grief whatever of warmth and love the deceased man might have had and he adored his wife and loved and admired his son with all his heart he had shut them up within himself nor had the boy ever been able to penetrate that frigid outward barrier but author had been his father's pride and glory through life and his name the last which John pendentus had tried to articulate whilst he laid with his wife's hand clasping his own cold calm as a flickering spirit went out into the darkness of death and life and the world passed away from him the little girl whose face had peered for a moment under the blinds as the chase came up opened the door from the stairs into the hall and taken author's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her letting him upstairs to his mother old John opened the dining room door for the major the room was darkened with the blinds down and was rendered by all the gloomy pictures of the pendentus's he drank a glass of wine the bottle had been opened for the squire four days before his hat was brushed and laid on the tall table his newspapers and his letter bag with John pendentus the squire ferox engraved upon the brass plate were there and waiting the doctor and the lawyer from Cleverine who had seen the chase pass through came up in a gig half an hour after the major's arrival and entered by the back door the former gave a detailed account of the seizure and demise of Mr. Pendentus enlarged on his virtues in the estimation which the neighborhood held him on what a loss he would be to the magistrates bench the county hospital etc Mrs. Pendentus bore up wonderfully he said especially since master Arthur's arrival the lawyer stayed and dined with major pendentus and they talked business all the evening the major was his brother's executor and joint guardian to the boy with Mrs. Pendentus everything was left unreservedly to her except in case of a second marriage an occasion which might offer itself in the case of so young and handsome a woman Mr. Tatham gallantly said when different provisions were enacted by the deceased the major would of course take entire superintendents of everything under this most impressive occasion aware of this authority old John the footman when he brought major pendentus a candle to go to bed followed afterwards with a plate basket and the next morning brought him a key of the hall clock the squire all we choose to wind up of the Thursday John said Mrs. Pendentus's maid brought him messages from her mistress she confirmed the doctor's report of the comfort which master Arthur's arrival had caused to his mother what passed between that lady and the boy is not of import a veil should be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief the maternal passion is a sacred mystery to me what one sees symbolized in the Roman churches in the image of the Virgin mother with the bossam bleeding with love I think one may witness and admire the almighty bounty for every day I saw a Jewish lady only yesterday with a child at her knee from whose face toward the child there's shown a sweetness so angeletical that it seemed to form a sort of glory around both I protest I could have not before her too and adored in her the divine benefits in endowing us with maternal storage which began with our race and sanctifies the history of mankind so it was with this in a word that Mrs. Pendentus comforted herself on the death whom however she always reverenced as the best, the most upright wise, high-minded accomplished and awful of men if the women did not make idols of us and if they saw us as we see each other would life be bearable or could society go on let a man pray that none of his womankind should form a just estimation of him if your wife knew you as you are neighbor she would not grieve much about being your widow and would let your grave lamp go out at very soon or perhaps not even take the trouble to light it whereas Helen Pendentus put up the handsomest of the memorials to her husband and constantly renewed it with the most precious oil as for Arthur Pendentus after that awful shock which the side of his dead father must have produced on him and the pity in filling which such an event no doubt occasioned I am not sure that in the very moment as he embraced his mother and tenderly consoled her and promised to love her forever there was not springing up in his breast a filling of secret triumph and exultation he was the chief now on Lord he was Pendentus and all around about him were his servants and handmaids you'll never send me away little Laura said tripping by him and holding his hand you won't send me to school will you Arthur Arthur kissed her head no she shouldn't go to school as for going himself that was quite out of the question he had determined that that part of his life should not be renewed in the midst of the general grief and the corpse still lying above he had leisure to conclude that he would have it all holidays for the future and that he wouldn't get up till he liked or stand the bullying of the doctor anymore and had made a hundred of such daydreams and resolves for the future how one's thoughts will travel and how quickly our wishes beget them when he with Laura in his hand went into the kitchen on his way to the dog kennel the fowl houses and other his favorite haunts all the servants there assembled in great silence with their friends and the laboring men and their wives and Sally Potter who went with the post back to Cleavering and the baker's man from Cleavering all there assembled and drinking beer on the melancholy occasion rose up on his entrance and bowed or curtsied to him they never used to do so last holidays he felt at once a with indescribable pleasure the cook cried out oh lord and whispered how master author do grow Thomas the groom in the act of drinking put down the jug alarmed before his master Thomas's master felt the honor keenly he went through and looked at the pointers as floor put her nose up to his waistcoat and Ponto yelling with pleasure hurled at his chain pin patronized the dogs and said poo Ponto poo flora in his most condescending manner and then he went and looked at Laura's hens and at the pigs and at the orchard and at the dairy perhaps he blushed to think that it was only last holidays he had in a manner robbed the great apple tree and been scolded by the dairymaid for taking cream they buried John Pendenis Esquire formerly an intimate medical practitioner at Bath and subsequently an able magistrate a bid for the landlord and a benefactor to many charities and public institutions and this neighborhood and county with one of the most handsome funerals that had been seen since Sir Roger Cleverine was buried here the clerk said in the Abney Church of Cleverine St. Mary's a fair marble slab from which the above inscription is copied was erected over the fair oak's pew in the church on it you may see the Pendenis coat of arms and crest an eagle looking toward the sun with a motto Nick T'nu Pena to the present day Dr. Portman alluded to the deceased most handsomely and effectively a dear departed friend in a sermon next Sunday an author Pendenis reigned in his stead End of Chapter 2 Recording by Kristen Lewis, Houston, Texas Recording by Winston Coulthart The History of Pendenis by William Makepeace Thackeray Chapter 3 In which Pendenis appears as a very young man indeed Arthur was about 16 years old we have said when he began to reign in person for I see that the artist is to illustrate this book and who makes sad work of the likeness will never be able to take him off he had what his friends would call a dumpy but his mother styled a neat little figure his hair was of a healthy brown color which looks like gold in the sunshine his face was round rosy, freckled and good-humoured his whiskers when those facial ornaments for which he sighed so ardently were awarded to him by nature were decidedly of a reddish hue in fact without being a beauty he had such a frank good-natured kind face and laughed so merrily at you out of his honest blue eyes that no wonder Mrs. Pendenis thought him the pride of the whole county between the ages of 16 and 18 he rose from 5 feet 6 to 5 feet 8 inches in height at which altitude he paused but his mother wondered at it he was 3 inches taller than his father was it possible that any man could grow to be 3 inches taller than Mr. Pendenis you may be certain he never went back to school the discipline of the establishment did not suit him and he liked being at home much better the question of his return was debated and his uncle was for his going back the doctor wrote his opinion that it was most important for Arthur's success and afterlife that he should know a Greek play thoroughly but Penn adroitly managed to hint to his mother what a dangerous place Greyfriars was and what sad fellows some of the chaps there were and the timid soul taking alarm at once acceded to his desire to stay at home then Penn's uncle offered to use his influence Royal Highness the Commander in Chief who was pleased to be very kind to him and proposed to get Penn a commission in the foot guards Penn's heart leapt at this he had been to hear the band at St. James's play on a Sunday when he went out to his uncle he had seen Tom Ricketts of the fourth form who used to wear a jacket and trousers so ludicrously tight that the elder boys could not forbear using him the quality of a butt he had seen this very Ricketts arrayed in crimson and gold with an immense bare skin cap on his head staggering under the colours of the regiment Tom unrecognised him and gave him a patronising nod Tom a little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey stick last quarter and there he was in the centre of the square rallying around the flag of his country surrounded by bayonets, cross belts scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals talking familiarly to immense warriors with tufts to their chins and waterloo medals what would not Penn have given to wear such epaulettes and enter such a service but Helen Pendennis when this point was proposed to her by her son put on a face full of terror and alarm she said she did not quarrel really but that in her opinion a Christian had no right to make the army a profession Mr. Pendennis never never would have permitted his son to be a soldier finally she said she would be very unhappy if he thought of it now Penn would have soon cut off his nose and ears as deliberately and of a forethought malice made his mother unhappy and as he was of such a generous disposition that he would give away anything to anyone he instantly made a present of his visionary red coat and epaulettes and his ardour for military glory to his mother she thought him the noblest creature in the world but major Penn Dennis when the offer of the commission was acknowledged and refused wrote back a curt and somewhat angry letter to the widow and thought his nephew was rather a spoony he was contented however when he saw the boy's performances out hunting at Christmas when the major came down as usual to fair oaks Penn had a very good mare and rode her with uncommon pluck and grace he took his fences with great coolness and yet with judgement and without bravado he wrote to the chaps at school about his top boots and his feats across country he began to think seriously of a scarlet coat and his mother must own that she thought it would become him remarkably well though of course she passed hours of anguish during his absence and daily expected to see him brought home on a shutter with these amusements in rather too great plenty it must not be assumed that Penn neglected his studies altogether he had a natural taste in reading every possible kind of book which did not fall into his school course it was only when they forced his head into the waters of knowledge that he refused to drink he devoured all the books at home from Inchbold's theatre to White's ferriery he ransacked the neighbouring bookcases he found a clevering an old cargo of French novels which he read with all his might and he would sit for hours perched upon the topmost bar of Dr. Portman's library steps with a folio on his knees whether it was Haick Lutz Travels Hobbs Leviathan Augustine Opera or Chaucer's poems he and the vicar were very good friends and from his reverence Penn learned that honest taste for port wine which distinguished him through life and as for that dear good woman Mrs. Portman was not in the least jealous though her doctor vowed himself in love with Mrs. Penn Dennis whom he pronounced to be by far the finest lady in the county all her grief was as she looked up fondly at Penn perched on the book ladder that her daughter, Minnie was too old for him as indeed she was Miss Myre Portman being at that period only two years younger than Penn's mother as much as Penn and Mrs. Penn Dennis together are these details insipid look back good friend at your own youth and ask how was that I like to think of a well nurtured boy brave and gentle warm-hearted and loving and looking the world in the face with kind honest eyes what bright colours it wore then and how you enjoyed it a man has not many years of such time he does not know them whilst they are with him it is only when they are past long away that he remembers how dear and happy they were in order to keep Mr. Penn from indulging in that idleness of which his friend, the doctor of the cisterians had prophesied such awful consequences Mr. Smirk Dr. Portman's curate was engaged at a liberal salary to walk or ride over from clustering and pass several hours daily with the young gentleman Smirk was a man perfectly faultless at a tea table wore a curl and a fair forehead and tied his neck cloth with a melancholy grace he was a decent scholar and mathematician and taught Penn as much as the lad was supposed to learn which was not much for Penn had soon taken the measure of his tutor who, when he came riding into the courtyard at fair roaks on his pony turned out his toes so absurdly and left such a gap between his knees and the saddle that it was impossible for any lad endowed with a sense of humour to respect such an equestrian he nearly killed Mr. Smirk with terror by putting him on Penn's mare and taking him a ride over a common where the county fox hounds then bunted by that staunch old sportsman Mr. Hardhead of Dumpling Bear happened to meet Mr. Smirk on Penn's mare Rebecca she was named after Penn's favourite heroine the daughter of Isaac of York astounded the hounds as much as he disgusted the huntsman laming one of the former visiting and riding amongst the pack and receiving a speech from the latter more remarkable for energy of language than any oration he had ever heard since he left the bargemen on the banks of Isis Smirk confided to his pupil his poems both Latin and English and presented to Mrs. Pendenis a volume of the latter printed at Clapham his native place the two read the ancient poems together and rattled through them at a pleasant rate very different from that steady grubbing pace with which the Cisterians used to go over the classic ground senting out each word as they went and digging up every root in the way Penn never liked to halt but made his tutor construe when he was at fault and thus galloped through the Iliad in the Odyssey the tragic play writers and the charming wicked Aristophanes whom he vowed to be the greatest poet of all but he went at such a pace that though he certainly galloped through a considerable extent of the ancient country he clean forgot it in afterlife and had only such a vague remembrance of his early classic course as a man has in the House of Commons let us say who still keeps up two or three quotations with a reviewer who just for decency's sake hints at a little Greek our people are the most prosaic in the world but the most faithful and with curious reverence we keep up and transmit from generation to generation the superstition of what we call the education of a gentleman besides the ancient poets you may be sure Penn read the English Smirk sighed and shook his head sadly both about Byron and Moore but Penn was a sworn fire worshiper and a corset he had them by heart and used to take little Laura into the window and say Zuleika I am not thy brother in tones so tragic that they caused the solemn little maid to open her great eyes still wider she sat until the proper hour for retirement sewing at Mrs Penn Dennis' knee and listening to Penn reading out to her of knights without comprehending one word of what he read he read Shakespeare to his mother which he said she liked but didn't and Byron and Pope and his favourite Lala Rook which pleased her indifferently but as for Bishop Herber and his friends above all this lady used to melt right away and be absorbed into her pocket tanker chief when Penn read those authors to her in his kind boyish voice the Christian year was a book which appeared about that time the son and the mother whispered it to each other with awe faint, very faint and seldom in afterlife Penn Dennis heard that solemn church music but he always loved the remembrance of it and of the times when it struck on his heart and he walked over the fields full of hope and void of doubt as the church bells rang on a Sunday morning it was at this period of his existence that Penn broke out in the poet's corner of the county chronicle with some verses with which he was perfectly well satisfied his other verses signed N.E.P addressed to a tear on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo to Madame Caradori singing at the Assai's meetings on St. Betholomew's day a tremendous denunciation of popery and a solemn warning to the people of England to rally against emancipating the Roman Catholics etc etc all of which masterpieces Mrs. Penn Dennis no doubt keeps to this day along with his first socks the first cutting of his hair his bottle and other interesting relics of his infancy he used to Gallop Rebekah over the he used to Gallop Rebekah over the neighbouring dumpling downs wound to the county town which if you please we shall call Chatteras spouting his own poems and filled with a byronic aphletis as he thought his genius at this time was of a decidedly gloomy cast he brought his mother a tragedy in which though he killed sixteen people before the second act it made her laugh so that he thrust the masterpiece into the fire in a pet he projected an epic poem in black verse Cortes or the conqueror of Mexico he wrote part of Seneca or the fatal birth an Ariadne in Naxos classical pieces with choruses and stroves and antistroves which sadly puzzled poor Mrs. Penn Dennis and began a history of the Jesuits in which he lashed that order with a tremendous severity and warned his Protestant fellow countrymen of their machinations his loyalty did his mother's heart good to witness he was a staunch unflinching church and king man in those days and at the election when Sir Giles Beanfield stood at the blue interest against Lord Treehawk Lord Irie's son a wig and a friend of Popery Arthur and Dennis with an immense bow for himself which his mother made and with a ribbon for Rebecca rode alongside of the reverend Dr. Portman on his grey mare dowdy and at the head of the clevering voters whom the doctor brought up to plump for the Protestant champion on that day Penn made his first speech at the blue hotel and also it appears for the first time in his life took a little more wine than was good for him Mercy what a scene it was at Fair Oaks at ever so much a clock at night what moving about of lanterns in the courtyard and stables though the moon was shining out what a gathering of servants as Penn came home clattering over the bridge and up the stable yard with half a score of the clevering voters yelling after him the blue song of the election he wanted them all to come in and have some wine some very good Madeira capital Madeira John go get some Madeira and there's no knowing what the farmers would have done had not madame Penn Dennis made her appearance in a white wrapper with a candle and scared those zealous blues so by the sight of her pale handsome face that they touched their hats and rode off besides these amusements and occupations in which Mr Penn indulged there was one which forms the main business pleasure of youth if the poets tell us a right whom Penn was always studying and this young fellow's heart was so ardent and his imagination so eager that as not to be expected he should long escape the passion to which we allude and which ladies you have rightly guessed to be that of a love Penn sighed for it in secret and like the love sick sway in an ovid opened his breath and said Ora veni what generous youth is there that has not courted some such windy mistress in his time yes Penn began to feel the necessity of a first love of a consuming passion of an object on which he could concentrate all those vague floating fancies under which he sweetly suffered of a young lady to whom he could rarely make verses and whom he could set up in a door in place of those unsubstantial Ianthes and Zileikas to whom he addressed the outpourings of his gushing moos he read his favourite poems over and over again he called upon Alma Venice the delight of gods and men he translated anachryon's odes and picked out passages suitable to his complaint for Walla, Dryden, Pryor and the like Smirk and he were never wary in their interviews of discoursing about love the faithless tutor entertained him with sentimental conversations in place of lectures and algebra in Greek for Smirk was in love too he couldn't help it being in daily intercourse with such a woman Smirk was madly in love as far as such a mild flame as Mr Smirks could be called madness with Mrs Penn Dennis that honest lady sitting down below stairs teaching little Laura to play the piano or devising flannel petticoats for the poor round barter or otherwise busied with the calm routine of her engaged in life was little aware what storms were brewing in two bosoms upstairs in the study in Penn's as he sat in a shooting jacket with his elbows on the green study table and his hands clutching his curly brown hair Homer under his nose and unworthy Mr Smirks with whom he was reading here they would talk about Helen under mashes like my mother Penn used to avouch but I say Smirk by Jove I'd cut off my nose to see Helen and he would spout certain favourite lines which the reader will find in their proper place in the third book he drew portraits of her they are extant still with straight noses and enormous eyes and Arthur Penn Dennis deliney of its head pinks it gallantly written underneath as for Mr Smirk he naturally preferred Andromache and in consequence he was uncommonly kind to Penn he gave him his Elizabeth Horace of which the boy was fond and his little Greek testament which his own mumma at Clapham had purchased and presented to him he bought him a silver pencil case and in the matter of learning let him do just as much through as little as ever he pleased he always seemed to be on the point of unbosoming himself to Penn nay he confessed the latter that he had a an attachment an ardently cherished attachment about which Penn Dennis longed to hear and said tell us old chap did you notice him as she got blue eyes or black but Dr Portman's curate heaving a gentle sigh cast up his eyes to the ceiling and begged Penn faintly to change the conversation poor Smirk he invited Penn to dine in his lodgings over Madame Frisbees the Milaners in Clevering and once when it was raining Mrs Penn Dennis became a place into Clevering with respect to some engagements about leaving off morning probably was prevailed upon to enter the curate's apartments he sent out for pound cakes instantly the sofa on which he sat became sacred to him from that day and he kept flowers in the glass which he drank from ever after as Mrs Penn Dennis was never tired of hearing the praises of her son we may be certain that this rogue of a tutor neglected no opportunity of conversing with her upon that subject it might be a little tedious to him to hear the stories about Penn's generosity about his bravery in fighting the big naughty boy about his fun and jokes about his prodigious skill in Latin music riding etc but what price would he not pay to be in her company and the widow after these conversations thought Mr Smirk a very pleasing and well informed man as for her son she had not settled in her mind whether he would be senior wrangler an Archbishop of Canterbury or double first class at Oxford and Lord Chancellor that all England did not possess as peer was a fact about which there was in her mind no manner of question a simple person of inexpressive habits she began forthwith to save and perhaps to be a little parsimonious in favour of her boy there were no entertainments of course at fair roaks during the year of her weeds nor indeed did the doctors silver dish covers of which she was so proud and which were flourished all over with the arms of the Penn Dennis's and so mounted with their crest come out of the plate chests again for long long years the household was diminished and its expenses curtailed there was a very blank anchor repost when Penn dined from home and he himself headed the remonstrance from the kitchen regarding the deteriorated quality of the fair roaks beer she was becoming miserly for Penn indeed whoever accused woman of being just always sacrificing themselves or somebody for somebody else's sake there happened to be no young woman in the small circle of friends who were in the widow's intimacy whom Penn Dennis could by any possibility gratify by endowing her with the innest in the world treasure of a heart which he was longing to give away some young fellows in his predicament bestowed their young affections upon Dolly the dairymaid or cast the eyes of tenderness upon Molly the blacksmith's daughter Penn thought of Penn Dennis much too grand a personage to stoop so low he was too high minded for a vulgar intrigue and at the end of an intrigue or a seduction had he ever entertained it his heart would have revolted as from the notion of any act of baseness or dishonour Miss Minnie Portman was too old too large and too fond of reading Rowland's ancient history the Miss Boardbacks admirable Boardback's daughters of St. Vincent's a fourth of June House as it was called the Miss Boardbacks admirable Boardback's daughters of St. Vincent's or fourth of June House as it was called disgusted Penn with the London heirs which they brought into the country from Gloucester Place where they passed the season and looked down upon in as a chit Captain Glonders' HP 50th Dragoon Guards three girls were in brown Holland Pinafores as yet with the ends of their hairplats tied up in dirty pink ribbon not having acquired the art of dancing the youth avoided such chances as he might have of meeting with the fair sex at the chatterous assemblies in fine he was not in love because there was nobody at hand to fall in love with and the young monkey used to ride out day after day in quest of Dalsinia and peep into the pony's chasers and gentlefolk's carriages as they drove along the broad turnpike roads with a hard beating within them and a secret tremor and hope that she might be in that yellow post-chase winging up the hill or one of those three girls in beaver bonnets in the back seat of the double gig which the fat old gentleman in black was driving at four miles an hour the post-chase contained a snuffy old dowager of 70 with a maid her contemporary the three girls in the beaver bonnets were no handsomer than the turnips that skirted the roadside do as he might and ride where he would the fairy princess that he was to rescue and win had not yet appeared to honest pen upon these points he did not discourse to his mother he had a world of his own what generous, ardent imaginative soul has not a secret pleasure place in which it distorts let no clumsy prying or dull meddling of ours try to disturb it in our children Action was a brute for wanting to push in where Diana was bathing leave him occasionally alone my good madam if you have a poet for a child even your admirable advice may be a bore sometimes you are faultless but it does not follow that everybody in your family is to think exactly like yourself yonder little child may have thoughts too deep even for your great mind and fancy so coy and timid that they will not bear themselves when your ladyship sits by Helen Pendennis by the force of sheer love divine the great number of her son's secrets but she kept these things in her heart if we may so speak and did not speak of them besides she had made up her mind that he was to marry little Laura who would be 18 when Pen was 6 and 20 and finished his college career and it made his grand tour and was settled either in London astonishing all the metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar or better still in a sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks and roses closed to a delightful romantic ivy covered church from the pulpit of which Pen would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached while these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in Honest Pen's bosom it chanced one day that he rode into Chatteros for the purpose of carrying to the county chronicle a tremendous and thrilling poem for the next week's paper and putting up his horse according to custom at the stables of the George Hotel there he fell in with an old acquaintance a grand black tandem with scarlet wheels came rattling into the innyard as Pen stood there in converse with the holster about Rebecca and the voice of the driver called out Hello Pen Dennis is that you in a loud patronising manner Pen had some difficulty in recognising under the broad brimmed hat and the vast great coats and neck-cloths with which the newcomer was habited the person and figure of his quantum schoolmate Rebecca a year's absence had made no small difference in that gentleman a youth who had been deservedly whipped a few months previously who spent his pocket money on tarts and hard-bake now appeared before Pen in one of those costumes towards the public consent that I take to be quite as influential in this respect as Johnson's dictionary has awarded the title he had a bulldog between his legs and in the scarlet shawl neck-cloth was a Pen representing another bulldog in gold he wore a fur waistcoat laced over with gold chains a green cutaway coat with basket buttons and a white uppercut ornamented with cheese plate buttons on each of which was engraved some stirring incident of the road or the chase all of which ornaments set off this young fellow's figure to such advantage that you would hesitate to say which character in life he most resembled and whether he was a boxer, engle-get or a coachman in his gala suit left that place for good, Pen Dennis Mr. Focus said descending from his land-do and giving Pen Dennis a finger yes, this year or more Pen said beastly old hole Mr. Focus remarked hate it, hate the doctor hate Towser, the second master hate everybody there not a fit place for a gentleman not at all, said Pen with an air of the utmost consequence by God, sir I sometimes dream now that the doctor's walking into me Focus continued and Pen smiled as he thought that he himself had likewise fearful dreams of this nature when I think of the diet there by God, sir I wonder how I stood it mangy mutton, brutal beef pudding on Thursdays and Sundays and that fit to poison you just look at my leader did you ever see a pretty animal drove her from paymouth came the nine mile in two and forty minutes not bad going, sir are you stopping at paymouth, Fokker? Pen Dennis asked I'm coaching there said the other with a nod what? asked Pen and in a tone of such wonder that Fokker burst out laughing and said he was blurred if he didn't think Pen was such a flat as not to know what coaching meant I'm come down with a coach from Oxford a tutor don't you see old boy he's coaching me and some other men for the little go me and Spaven have the drag between us and I thought I'd just tool over and go to the play did you ever see rocans do the horn pipe and Mr Fokker began to perform some steps of that popular dance in the in-yard looking round for the sympathy of his groom and the stable men Pen thought he would like to go to the play too and could ride home afterwards so he accepted Fokker's invitation to dinner and the young men entered the inn together where Mr Fokker stopped at the bar and called upon Miss Rinser the landlady's fair daughter who presided there to give him a glass of his mixture Pen and his family had been known of the George ever since they came into the country and Mr Pen Dennis's carriages and horses always put up there to visit the county town the landlady dropped the air of Fair Oaks a very respectful curtsy and complimented him upon his growth and manly appearance and asked news of the family at Fair Oaks and of Dr Poitman and the clevering people to all of which questions the young gentlemen answered with much affability but he spoke to Mr and Mrs Rinser with that sort of good nature with which a young prince addresses the subjects never dreaming that those bonjins were his equals in life Mr Fokker's behaviour was quite different he inquired for Rinser and the cold in his nose told Mrs Rinser a riddle asked Miss Rinser when she would be ready to marry him and paid his compliments to Miss Bennet the other young lady in the bar all in a minute of time and with a liveliness which said all these ladies in a giggle and he gave a clerk expressive of great satisfaction as he tossed off his mixture which Miss Rinser prepared and handed to him have a drop said he to Penn it's recommended to me by the faculty as a what do you call him asthmatic old boy give the young one a glass R and score it up to yours truly poor Penn took a glass and everybody laughed at the face that he made as he put it down gin bitters and some other cordial was the compound with which Mr Fokker was so delighted as to call it by the name of Fokker's own as Penn choked sputtered and made faces the other took occasion to remark to Mr Rinser that the young fellow was green very green but that he would soon form him and then they proceeded to order dinner to determine who consist of turtle and venison cautioning the landlady to be very particular about icing the wine then Mrs Fokker and Penn strolled down the high street together the former having a cigar in his mouth which he had drawn out of a case almost as big as a portman too he went in to replenish it at Mr Lennises and talked to that gentleman for a while sitting down on the counter and looked in at the fruterers to see the pretty girl there to whom he played compliments similar to those before addressed to the bar at the George then they passed the county chronicle office for which Penn had his packet ready in the shape of lines to Thyrissa but poor Penn did not like to put the letter into the editor's box while walking in company with such a fine gentleman as Mr Fokker they met heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered with chatterers and stopped and talked about the baymouth balls and what a pretty girl was Miss Brown and what a demfine woman Mrs Jones was it was in vain that Penn recalled to his own mind what a stupid ass Fokker used to be at school how he could scarcely read how he was not cleanly in his person and notorious for his blunders and delmas Mr Fokker was no more like a gentleman now than in his school days and yet Penn felt a secret pride in strutting down High Street with a young fellow who owned tandems, talked to offices and ordered turtle and champagne for dinner he listened and with respect too to Fokker's accounts of what the men did at the University of which Mr F was an ornament and encountered a long series of stories about boat racing, bumping college grass-plats and milk-punch and began to wish to go to college himself to a place where there were many such pleasures and enjoyments Farmer Garnett, who lived close by Fair Oaks riding by at this minute and touching his hat to Penn the latter stopped him and sent him a message to his mother to say that he had met with an old school fellow and should dine in chatterers the two young gentlemen continued their walk passing round the Cathedral Yard where they could hear the music of the afternoon service a music which always exceedingly impressed and affected Penn but wither Mr Fokker came for the purpose of inspecting the nursery maids who frequent the Elms Walk there and who are uncommonly pretty at chatterers and here they strolled until with the final burst of music the small congregation was played out Old Doctor Portman was one of the few who came from the venerable gate spying Penn he came and shook him by the hand and eyed with wonder Penn's friend from whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued which curled from the doctor's honest face and shovel hat an old school friend of mine Mr Fokker said Penn the doctor said hmm and scowled at the cigar he did not mind a pipe in his study but the cigar was an abomination to the worthy gentleman I came up on Bishop's business the doctor said we'll ride home Arthur if you like I I'm engaged to my friend here Penn answered you better come home with me said the doctor his mother knows he's out sir Mr Fokker remarked don't you Penn Dennis but that does not prove that he had not better come home with me the doctor growled and walked off with great dignity old boy don't like the weed I suppose Fokker said ha who's here he has the general and Bingley the manager how do costs how do Bingley how does my worthy and gallant Fokker the gentleman addressed as the general and wore a shabby military cape with a mangy collar and a hat cocked very much over one eye trust you are well my dear sir said the other gentleman and that the theatre royal will have the honour of your patronage tonight we performed The Stranger in which your humble servant will can't stand you in tights and hessians Bingley young Fokker said I'm not a general with the Irish action said but I think you'll lack my father again Mrs Halle my name's not Jack Costigan Penn looked at these individuals with the greatest interest he had never seen an actor before and he saw Mr Portman's red face looking over the doctor's shoulder as he retreated from the cathedral yard evidently quite dissatisfied with the acquaintances into whose hands Penn had fallen perhaps it would have been much better had he taken the parson's advice and company home but which of us knows his fate