Pendennis

“ Pen was getting on in the world, and could flatter as well as laugh in his sleeve.
Major Pendennis was appeased instantly, and very much pleased. He tapped affectionately his nephew’s arm on which he was leaning, and said,—“you, sir, you are my flesh and blood! Hang it, sir, I’ve been very proud of you and very fond of you, but for your confounded follies and extravagances—and wild oats, sir, which I hope you’ve sown ’em. I hope you’ve sown ’em; begad! My object, Arthur, is to make a man of you—to see you well placed in the world, as becomes one of your name and my own, sir. ”

“ When this direful loss was made visible to Major Pendennis as of course it was the first time the elder saw the poor young man’s shorn pate, and when Pen was quite out of danger, and gaining daily vigour, the Major, with something like blushes and a queer wink of his eyes, said he knew of a—a person—a coiffeur, in fact—a good man, whom he would send down to the Temple, and who would—a—apply—a—a temporary remedy to that misfortune. ”

“ Major Pendennis cried; "how should you, my dear young lady? and novels ain't true, as you remark admirably, and there is no romance left in the world. Begad, I wish I was a young fellow, like my nephew." "And what," continued Miss Amory, musing, "what are the men whom we see about at the balls every night—dancing guardsmen, penniless treasury clerks—boobies! If I had my brother's fortune, I might have such an establishment as you promise me—but with my name, and with my little means, what am I to look to? ”

“ Miss Blanche said, “I believe that you are enraged with Fanny for being so impudent as to forget you, and that you are actually jealous of Mr. Huxter.” Perhaps Miss Amory was right, as the blush which came in spite of himself and tingled upon Pendennis’s cheek (one of those blows with which a man’s vanity is constantly slapping his face) proved to Pen that he was angry to think he had been superseded by such a rival. ”

“ A country parson, or a barrister in a street near Russell-square, or a captain in a dragoon-regiment, who will take lodgings for me, and come home from the mess tipsy and smelling of smoke like Sir Francis Clavering. That is how we girls are destined to end life. O Major Pendennis, I am sick of London, and of balls, and of young dandies with their chin-tips, and of the insolent great ladies who know us one day and cut us the next—and of the world altogether. ”

“ He and the proctor capped each other as they met, as if they were rival powers, and the men hardly knew which was the greater.
In fact, in the course of his second year, Arthur Pendennis had become one of the men of fashion in the University. It is curious to watch that facile admiration, and simple fidelity of youth. They hang round a leader: and wonder at him, and love him, and imitate him. ”

“ May not the man of the world take his moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful? Ask of your own hearts and memories, brother and sister, if we do not live in the dead; and (to speak reverently) prove God by love?
Of these matters Pen and Warrington often spoke in many a solemn and friendly converse in after days; and Pendennis’s mother was worshipped in his memory, and canonised there, as such a saint ought to be. Lucky he in life who knows a few such women! ”

“ Major Pendennis vowed that he liked snug dinners of all things in the world, and confounded her ladyship’s impudence for daring to ask such a man as him to a second day’s dinner. But he was a man of an economical turn of mind, and bethinking himself that he could throw over these people if anything better should offer, he accepted with the blandest air. ”

“ Arthur Pendennis can't marry a convict's daughter; and sit in Parliament as member for the hulks. You must wash your hands of the whole affair, Pen. You must break off. You must give no explanations of why and wherefore, but state that family reasons render a match impossible. It is better that those poor women should fancy you false to your word than that they should know the truth. ”

“ Pynsent, with great candor. "She drags her shoulders out of her dress: she never lets her eyes alone: and she goes simpering and ogling about like a French waiting-maid."
"Pynsent, be civil," cried the other, "somebody can hear."
"Oh, it's Pendennis of Boniface," Mr. Pynsent said. "Fine evening, Mr. Pendennis; we were just talking of your charming cousin."
"Any relation to my old friend, Major Pendennis?" asked Mr. Wagg.
"His nephew. Had the pleasure of meeting you at Gaunt House," Mr. Pen said, with his very best air—the acquaintance between the gentleman was made in an instant. ”

“ Pendennis, I will name no names, but in the very best circles of London society I have seen men suffering the most excruciating agony, I have known them to be cut, to be lost utterly, from the vulgarity of their wives’ connections. ”

“ Old John opened the dining-room door for the Major. The room was darkened with the blinds down, and surrounded by all the gloomy pictures of the Pendennises. 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 hall table: his newspapers, and his letter-bag, with John Pendennis, Esquire, Fairoaks, engraved upon the brass plate, were there in waiting. The doctor and the lawyer from Clavering, who had seen the chaise pass through, came up in a gig half an hour after the Major’s arrival, and entered by the back door. ”

“ Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and constant dread of the opinion of his neighbour, was prodigiously annoyed by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteris, and tossing about Master Pen’s reputation. ”

“ Pendennis.
"Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue!" was what the guardian was disposed to say; but he kept his temper, not without a struggle. "No doubt, no doubt," he said. "You would sacrifice any thing for him. Every body knows that. But it is, after all, then, your fortune which Pen is offering to the young lady; and of which he wishes to take possession at eighteen."
"I know my mother will give me any thing," Pen said, looking rather disturbed.
"Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If your mother keeps the house, it is but fair that she should select her company. ”

“ His wounded tutor, his many duns, the skip and bed-maker who waited upon him, the undergraduates of his own time and the years below him, whom he had patronized or scorned—how could he bear to look any of them in the face now? He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut himself, and there he penned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks, regards, remorse, and despair, requesting that his name might be taken off the college books, and intimating a wish and expectation that death would speedily end the woes of the disgraced Arthur Pendennis. ”

“ Pendennis, who had driven in her pony-chaise into Clavering with respect to some arrangements, about leaving off mourning probably, was prevailed upon to enter the curate's apartments, he sent out for poundcakes instantly. The sofa on which she sate became sacred to him from that day: and he kept flowers in the glass which she drank from ever after.
As Mrs. Pendennis was never tired of hearing the praises of her son, [pg 36] we may be certain that this rogue of a tutor neglected no opportunity of conversing with her upon that subject. ”

“ Master Frank had been put inside of the carriage and was asleep there by the side of the major, dozing away the effects of the constant luncheon and champagne of which he had freely partaken.
The major was revolving in his mind meanwhile the news the receipt of which had made him so grave. "If Sir Francis Clavering goes on in this way," Pendennis the elder thought, "this little tipsy rascal will be as bankrupt as his father and grandfather before him. The Begum's fortune can't stand such drains upon it: no fortune can stand them: she has paid his debts half-a-dozen times already. ”

“ Pen had made a sad blunder or two when the awful Chief broke out upon him.
“Pendennis, 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 after-life to your country. If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the correctness of their opinion) , for what a prodigious quantity of future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! ”

“ There was a very blank anchorite repast when Pen dined from home: and he himself headed the remonstrance from the kitchen regarding the deteriorated quality of the Fairoaks beer. She was becoming miserly for Pen. Indeed, who ever accused women of being just? They are 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 Pendennis could by any possibility gratify by endowing her with the inestimable treasure of a heart which he was longing to give away. ”

“ She is full of many talents and winning ways, I grant you. I am fond of the girl, sir. I'm a lonely old man; I lead a life that I don't like, among boon companions, who make me melancholy. I have but this child that I care for. Have pity upon me, and don't take her away from me, Mr. Pendennis—don't take her away."
The old man's voice broke as he spoke, its accents touched Pen, much more than the menacing or sarcastic tone which Bows had commenced by adopting.
"Indeed," said he, kindly; "you do me a wrong if you fancy I intend one to poor little Fanny. ”

“ Arthur Pendennis, said, he should be happy to give him the best set of rooms to be had in college—a gentleman-pensioner’s set, indeed, which were just luckily vacant. So they parted until dinner-time, which was very near at hand, and Major Pendennis pronounced Mr. Buck to be uncommonly civil indeed. Indeed when a College Magnate takes the trouble to be polite, there is no man more splendidly courteous. ”

“ The large footmen were perpetually walking with little rose-coloured pink notes to Fairoaks; where there was a pretty house-maid in the kitchen, who might possibly tempt those gentlemen to so humble a place. Miss Amory sent music, or Miss Amory sent a new novel, or a picture from the ‘Journal des Modes,’ to Laura; or my lady’s compliments arrived with flowers and fruit; or Miss Amory begged and prayed Miss Bell to come to dinner; and dear Mrs. Pendennis, if she was strong enough; and Mr. Arthur, if a humdrum party were not too stupid for him; and would send a pony-carriage for Mrs. Pendennis ”

“ James’s Street and Bury Street, where we have had the honour of visiting our friend Major Pendennis in his lodgings. The Major was walking daintily towards his apartment, as Strong, burning with wrath and redolent of Havanna, strode along the same pavement opposite to him.
“Confound these young men: how they poison everything with their smoke,” thought the Major. “Here comes a fellow with mustachios and a cigar. ”

“ Is there no old age but his without reverence? Did youthful folly never jeer at other bald pates? For the past two or three years, he had begun to perceive that his day was well-nigh over, and that the men of the new time had begun to reign.
After a rather unsuccessful autumn season, then, during which he was faithfully followed by Mr. Morgan, his nephew Arthur being engaged, as we have seen, at Clavering, it happened that Major Pendennis came back for a while to London, at the dismal end of October, when the fogs and the lawyers come to town. ”

“ 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 passion, an infatuation,"—the major grinned—"for an actress who has been performing here. ”

“ Bows was puzzled with this exhibition of cordiality: "The lad's relatives can't be really wanting to marry him to her," he thought—and so they departed.
"Now for it," thought Major Pendennis: and as for Mr. Costigan he profited instantaneously by his daughter's absence to drink up the rest of the wine; and tossed off one bumper after another of the Madeira from the Grapes, with an eager, shaking hand. The major came up to the table, and took up his glass and drained it with a jovial smack. ”

“ The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to be a gentleman. By prudence and economy, his income was largely increased, and finally he sold his business for a handsome sum, and retired forever from handling of the mortar and pestle, having purchased as a home the house of Fair-Oaks, nearly a mile out of Clavering.
The estate was a beautiful one, and Arthur Pendennis, his son, being then but eight years of age, dated his earliest recollections from that place.
Fair-Oaks lawn comes down to the little river Brawl, and on the other side were the plantations and woods of Clavering Park. ”

“ Until the enemy had retired altogether from before the place, Major Pendennis was resolved to keep his garrison in Fairoaks. He did not appear to watch Pen’s behaviour or to put any restraint on his nephew’s actions, but he managed nevertheless to keep the lad constantly under his eye or those of his agents, and young Arthur’s comings and goings were quite well known to his vigilant guardian.
I suppose there is scarcely any man who reads this or any other novel but has been baulked in love some time or the other, by fate and circumstance, by falsehood of women, or his own fault. ”