Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there lived in a small
town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was
Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his name
painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and mortar over
the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath, where Mr.
Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon; and where
he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and ladies at the
most interesting periods of their lives, but would condescend to sell a
brown-paper plaster to a farmer's wife across the counter,--or to vend
tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery. For these facts a few
folks at Clavering could vouch, where people's memories were more
tenacious, perhaps, than they are in a great bustling metropolis.
And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a pennyworth of
salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, was a gentleman of good
education, and of as old a family as any in the whole county of Somerset.
He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennises up to the time of
the Druids, and who knows how much farther back? They had intermarried
with the Normans at a very late period of their family existence, and
they were related to all the great families of Wales and Brittany.
Pendennis had had a piece of University education too, and might have
pursued that career with great honour, but that in his second year at
Cambridge his father died insolvent, and poor Pen was obliged to betake
himself to the pestle and apron. He always detested the trade, and it was
only necessity, and the offer of his mother's brother, a London
apothecary of low family, into which Pendennis's father had demeaned
himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis into so odious a calling.
He quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the coarse-minded
practitioner his relative, and set up for himself at Bath with his modest
medical ensign. He had for some time a hard struggle with poverty; and it
was all he could do to keep the shop and its gilt ornaments in 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 Pen's very door-post, and drove his chair-pole
through the handsomest pink bottle in the surgeon's window, alighted
screaming from her vehicle, and was accommodated with a chair in Mr.
Pendennis's shop, where she was brought round with cinnamon and
sal-volatile.
Mr. Pendennis's manners were so uncommonly gentlemanlike and soothing,
that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Ribstone, of Codlingbury, in the
county of Somerset, Bart., appointed her preserver, as she called him,
apothecary to her person and family, which was very large. Master
Ribstone coming home for the Christmas holidays from Eton, over-ate
himself and had a fever, in which Mr. Pendennis treated him with the
greatest skill and tenderness. In a word, he got the good graces of the
Codlingbury family, and from that day began to prosper. The good company
of Bath patronised 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 tooth-brushes and perfumery, as unworthy of a
gentleman of an ancient lineage: then he shut up the shop altogether, and
only had a little surgery attended by a genteel young man: then he had a
gig with a man to drive him; and, before her exit from this world, his
poor old mother had the happiness of seeing from her bedroom window to
which her chair was rolled, her beloved John step into a close carriage
of his own, a one-horse carriage it is true, but with the arms of the
family of Pendennis handsomely emblazoned on the panels. "What would
Arthur say now?" she asked, speaking of a younger son of hers--"who never
so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny through all the time of his
poverty and struggles!"
"Captain Pendennis is with his regiment in India, mother," Mr. Pendennis
remarked, "and, if you please, I wish you would not call me Johnny before
the young man--before Mr. 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 though querulous voice. He had his
night-bell altered and placed in the room in which the good old lady had
grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in the great large bed there.
He was upwards of forty years old when these events befell; before the
war was over; before George the 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 Codlingbury 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 Sterne's officer called for his sword,
now that he was a gentleman and could show it.
About the time of Mrs. Pendennis's demise, another of her son's patients
likewise died at Bath; that virtuous woman, old Lady Pontypool,
daughter of Reginald twelfth Earl of Bareacres, and by consequence
great-grand-aunt to the present Earl, and widow of John second Lord
Pontypool, and likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the Armageddon
Chapel, Clifton. For the last five years of her life her ladyship had
been attended by Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant relative of the
noble house of Bareacres, before mentioned, and daughter of Lieutenant R.
Thistlewood, R.N., killed at the battle of Copenhagen. Under Lady
Pontypool's roof Miss Thistlewood found a 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 Pontypool at least twice a day, could not but
remark the angelical sweetness and kindness with which the young lady
bore her elderly relative's insults; and it was, as they were going in
the fourth mourning coach to attend her ladyship's venerated remains to
Bath Abbey, where they now repose, that he looked at her sweet pale face
and resolved upon putting a certain question to her, the very nature of
which made his pulse beat ninety, at least.
He was older than she by more than twenty years, and at no time the most
ardent of men. Perhaps he had had a love affair in early life which he
had to strangle--perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or
drowned, like so many blind kittens: well, at three-and-forty he was a
collected quiet little gentleman in black stockings with a bald head, and
a few days after the ceremony he called to see her, and, as he felt her
pulse, he kept hold of her hand in his, and asked her where she was going
to live now that the Pontypool family had come down upon the property,
which was being nailed into boxes, and packed into hampers, and swaddled
up with haybands, and buried in straw, and locked under three keys in
green baize plate-chests, and carted away under the eyes of poor Miss
Helen,--he asked her where she was going to live finally.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she said she did not know. She had a
little money. The old lady had left her a thousand pounds, indeed; and
she would go into a boarding-house or into a school: in fine, she did not
know where.
Then Pendennis, looking into her pale face, and keeping hold of her cold
little hand, asked her if she would come and live with him? He was old
compared to--to so blooming a young lady as Miss Thistlewood (Pendennis
was of the grave old complimentary school of gentlemen and apothecaries),
but he was of good birth, and, he flattered himself, of good principles
and temper. His prospects were good, and daily mending. He was alone in
the world, and had need of a kind and constant companion, whom it would
be the study of his life to make happy; in a word, he recited to her a
little speech, which he had composed that morning in bed, and rehearsed
and perfected in his carriage, as he was coming to wait upon the young
lady.
Perhaps if he had had an early love-passage, she too had one day hoped
for a different lot than to be wedded to a little gentleman who rapped
his teeth and smiled artificially, who was laboriously polite to the
butler as he slid upstairs into the drawing-room, and profusely civil to
the lady's-maid, who waited at the bed-room door; for whom her old
patroness used to ring as for a servant, and who came with even more
eagerness; who got up stories, as he sent in draughts, 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 Pendennis was, how
prudent, how honourable; how good he had been to his mother, and constant
in his care of her; and the upshot of this interview was, that she,
blushing very much, made Pendennis an extremely low curtsey, and asked
leave to--to consider his very kind proposal.
They were married in the dull Bath season, which was the height of the
season in London. And Pendennis having previously, through a professional
friend, M.R.C.S., secured lodgings in Holles Street, Cavendish Square,
took his wife thither in a chaise and pair; conducted her to the
theatres, the Parks, and the Chapel Royal; showed her the folks going to
a drawing-room, and, in a word, gave her all the pleasures of the town.
He likewise left cards upon Lord Pontypool, upon the Right Honourable the
Earl of Bareacres, and upon Sir Pepin and Lady Ribstone, his earliest and
kindest patrons. Bareacres took no notice of the cards. Pontypool called,
admired Mrs. Pendennis, and said Lady Pontypool would come and see her,
which her ladyship did, per proxy of John her footman, who brought her
card, and an invitation to a concert five weeks off. Pendennis was back
in his little one-horse carriage, dispensing draughts and pills at that
time: but the Ribstones asked him and Mrs. Pendennis to an entertainment,
of which Mr. Pendennis bragged to the last day of his life.
The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis 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 attain. He laid out some money very
advantageously in the purchase of a house and small estate close upon the
village of Clavering before mentioned. Words cannot describe, nor did he
himself ever care to confess to any one, his pride when he found himself
a real landed 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 for ever retired from the handling of the 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 dirtied 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; called in the medical
practitioner of Clavering to attend his family when occasion arrived;
sunk the black breeches and stockings altogether; attended market and
sessions, and wore a bottle-green coat and brass buttons with drab
gaiters, just as if he had been an English gentleman all his life. He
used to stand at his lodge-gate, and see the coaches come in, and bow
gravely to the guards and coachmen as they touched their hats and drove
by. It was he who founded the Clavering Book Club: and set up the
Samaritan Soup and Blanket Society. It was he who brought the mail, which
used to run through Cacklefield before, away from that village and
through Clavering. At church he was equally active as a vestryman and a
worshipper. At market every Thursday, he went from pen to stall, looked
at samples of oats, and munched corn, felt beasts, punched geese in the
breast, and weighed them with a knowing air, and did business with the
farmers at the Clavering Arms, as well as the oldest frequenter 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 Pendennis
portraits presently hung round the Doctor's oak dining-room; Lelys and
Vandykes he vowed all the portraits to be, and when questioned as 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 these
genealogical legends, for she generally endeavoured to turn the
conversation when he commenced them. But his little boy believed them to
their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis
of Crecy, General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were as real and
actual beings for this young gentleman as--whom shall we say?--as
Robinson Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of Christendom,
whose histories were in his library.
Pendennis's fortune, which, at the best, was not above eight hundred
pounds a year, did not, with the best economy and management, permit of
his living with the great folks of the county; but he had a decent
comfortable society of the second-best sort. If they were not the roses,
they lived near the roses, as it were, and had a good deal of the odour
of genteel 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 county, the Pendennises had the society of the
town of Clavering, as much as, nay, more than they liked: for Mrs. Pybus
was always poking about Helen's conservatories, and intercepting the
operation of her soup-tickets and coal-clubs Captain Glanders (H. P.,
50th Dragoon Guards) was for ever swaggering about the Squire's stables
and gardens, and endeavouring to enlist him in his quarrels with the
Vicar, with the Postmaster, with the Reverend F. Wapshot of Clavering
Grammar School, for overflogging his son, Anglesea Glanders,--with all
the village in fine. And Pendennis and his wife often blessed themselves,
that their house of Fairoaks was nearly a mile out of Clavering, or their
premises would never have been free from the prying eyes and prattle of
one or other of the male and female inhabitants there.
Fairoaks lawn comes down to the little river Brawl, and on the other side
were the plantations and woods (as much as were left of them) of
Clavering Park, Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. The park was let out in
pasture and fed down by sheep and cattle, when the Pendennises came first
to live at Fairoaks. Shutters were up in the house; a splendid freestone
palace, with great stairs, statues, and porticos, whereof you may see a
picture in the 'Beauties of England and Wales.' Sir Richard Clavering,
Sir Francis's-grandfather, had commenced the ruin of the family by the
building of this palace: his successor had achieved the ruin by living in
it. The present Sir Francis was abroad somewhere; nor could anybody be
found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion, through the deserted
rooms, mouldy clanking halls, and dismal galleries of which, Arthur
Pendennis many a time walked trembling when he was a boy. At sunset, from
the lawn of Fairoaks, there was a pretty sight: it and the opposite park
of Clavering were in the habit of putting on a rich golden tinge, which
became them both wonderfully. The upper windows of the great house flamed
so as to make your eyes wink; the little river ran off noisily westward,
and was lost in a sombre wood, behind which the towers of the old abbey
church of Clavering (whereby that town is called Clavering St. Mary's to
the present day) rose up in purple splendour. 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, Parent of Good; Almighty! thine this
universal frame," greatly to Mrs. Pendennis's delight. Such walks and
conversation generally ended in a profusion of filial and maternal
embraces; for to love and to pray were the main occupations of this dear
woman's life; and I have often heard Pendennis 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 Pendennis, as the father of the family, and that sort of
thing, everybody had the greatest respect for him: and his orders were
obeyed like those of the Medes and Persians. His hat was as well brushed,
perhaps, as that of any man in this empire. His meals were served at the
same minute every day, and woe to those who came late, as little Pen, a
disorderly little rascal, 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 pigstye visited,
always at regular hours. After dinner he always had a nap with the Globe
newspaper on his knee, and his yellow bandanna handkerchief on his face
(Major Pendennis sent the yellow handkerchiefs from India, and his
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
minute, 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 which were taking place there.
They seldom occurred in his presence. However frisky they were before,
mother and child were hushed and quiet when Mr. Pendennis walked into the
drawing-room, his newspaper under his arm. And here, while little Pen,
buried in a great chair, read all the books of which he could lay hold,
the Squire perused his own articles in the 'Gardener's Gazette,' or took
a solemn hand at picquet with Mrs. Pendennis, or an occasional friend
from the village.
Pendennis usually took care 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 biennial visit to Fairoaks. "My brother, Major
Pendennis," 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 with soldierlike
respect and decorum. He would say, "My Lord Bareacres has been good
enough to invite me to Bareacres for the pheasant shooting," or, "My Lord
Steyne 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. Pendennis to his friends at the
Clavering Reading room, at Justice-meetings, or at the County-town. Their
carriages would come from ten miles round to call upon Major Pendennis in
his visits to Fairoaks; the fame of his fashion as a man about town was
established throughout the county. There was a 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
this negotiation, advantageous 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
hundreds or thousands a year more or less can make no difference in the
estimation in which they are pleased to hold me. Miss Hunkle, though a
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 honour 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 de Carambole, having been
separated from her wild young scapegrace of a Baron very shortly after
their union.
The Major was a great favourite with almost all the little establishment
of Fairoaks. He was as good-natured as he was well bred, and had a
sincere liking and regard for his sister-in-law, whom he pronounced, and
with perfect truth, to be as fine a lady as any in England, and an honour
to the family. Indeed, Mrs. Pendennis's tranquil beauty, her natural
sweetness and kindness, and that simplicity and dignity which a perfect
purity and innocence are sure to bestow upon a handsome woman, rendered
her quite worthy of her brother's praises. I think it is not national
prejudice which makes me believe that a high-bred English lady is the
most complete of all Heaven's 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 high-bred
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 the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting a few such
persons amongst his circle of acquaintance--women, in whose angelical
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.
Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with these
happy qualities. During his childhood and youth, the boy thought of her
as little less than an angel,--as a supernatural being, all wisdom, love,
and beauty. When her husband drove her into the county town, or to the
assize 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 as to say,
"Look at that, my lord; can any of you show me a woman like that?" She
enraged some country ladies with three times her money, by a sort of
desperate perfection which they found in her. Miss Pybus said she was
cold and haughty; Miss Pierce, that she was too proud for her station;
Mrs. Wapshot, as a doctor of divinity's lady, would have the pas 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 disfavour. 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 neighbours, and
doing her duty.
That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an arrangement not
permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental defects, as it awards to
us headaches, illnesses, or death; without which the scheme of the world
could not be carried on,--nay, some of the best qualities of mankind
could not be brought into exercise. As pain produces or elicits fortitude
and endurance; difficulty, perseverance; poverty, industry and ingenuity;
danger, courage and what not; so the very virtues, on the other hand,
will generate some vices: and, in fine, Mrs. Pendennis had that vice
which Miss Pybus 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. Pendennis (a worthy little gentleman
enough, but there are others as good as he) with an awful reverence, 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 held to be a
sort of Bayard among Majors: and as for her son Arthur she worshipped
that youth with an ardour which the young scapegrace accepted almost as
coolly as the statue of the Saint in Saint Peter's receives the rapturous
osculations 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 his story.
Arthur Pendennis's schoolfellows at the Greyfriars School state that, as
a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as 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 was his
enthusiasm ever so great, it stopped when he had composed the number of
lines demanded by the regulations (unlike young Swettenham, for instance,
who, with no more of poetry in his composition than Mr. Wakley, yet would
bring up a hundred dreary hexameters to the master after a half-holiday;
or young Fluxmore, who not only did his own verses, but all the fifth
form's besides). He never read to improve himself out of school-hours,
but, on the contrary, devoured all the novels, plays, and poetry, on
which he could lay his hands. He never was flogged, but it was a wonder
how he escaped the whipping-post. When he had money he spent it royally
in tarts for himself and his friends; he has been known to disburse nine
and sixpence 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 averse from his earliest
youth, as indeed to physic, 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 or seniors
who were kind to him, he loved with boyish ardour. And though the Doctor,
when he did not know his Horace, or could not construe his Greek play,
said that that boy Pendennis was a disgrace to the school, a candidate
for ruin in this world, and perdition in the next; a profligate who would
most likely bring his venerable father to ruin and his mother to a
dishonoured grave, and the like--yet as the Doctor made use of these
compliments to most of the boys in the place (which has not turned out an
unusual number of felons and 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 Cistercians with whom
Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the privileges of men long before
they quitted that seminary. 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 buggy and horse at a livery stable in Covent
Garden, and might be seen driving any Sunday in Hyde Park with a groom
with squared arms and armorial buttons by his side. Many of the seniors
were in love, and showed each other in confidence poems addressed to, or
letters and locks of hair received from, young ladies--but Pen, a modest
and timid youth, rather envied these than 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, ye tender mothers and sober fathers of Christian
families, a prodigious thing that theory of life is as orally learned at
a great public school. Why, if you could hear those boys of fourteen who
blush before mothers and sneak off in silence in the presence of their
daughters, talking among each other--it would be the women's turn to
blush then. Before he was twelve years old and if while his mother
fancied him an angel of candour, little Pen had heard talk enough to make
him quite awfully wise upon certain points--and so, Madam, has your
pretty little rosy-cheeked son, who is coming home from school for the
ensuing 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, or
cauda virilis, and was looking most anxiously in his little study-glass
to see if his whiskers were growing, like those of more fortunate youths
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
when 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
ballads for the delectation of the senior boys), had suddenly plunged
into a deep bass diversified by a squeak, which when he was called upon
to construe in school set 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 forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed
all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him on
to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though little
Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might. 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! Miserable
trifler! A boy who construes de and, instead of de but, at sixteen years
of age is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance, and dulness
inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of 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
neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his
crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one that I pity (for he will
be deservedly cut off), but his maddened and heart-broken parents, who
are driven to a premature grave by his crimes, or, if they live, drag on
a wretched and dishonoured old age. Go on, sir, and I warn you that the
very next mistake that you make shall subject you to the punishment of
the rod. Who's that laughing? What ill-conditioned boy is there that
dares to laugh?" shouted the Doctor.
Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general
titter behind him in the schoolroom. The orator had his 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 asking the fifth-form boy who sate 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 Pen the younger now stood, and having been assaulted by the
Doctor's predecessor years and years ago. The intelligence was 'passed
round' that it was Pendennis's uncle in an instant, and a hundred young
faces wondering and giggling, between terror and laughter, turned now to
the new-comer 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 A. P. home; his father is very ill."
As the Doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather a
seared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then, burst
out in a general shout. "Silence!" roared out the Doctor stamping with
his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the Major beckoned
to him gravely with one of his white gloves, and tumbling down his books,
Pen went across.
The Doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. "We will take
the Juvenal at afternoon school," he said, nodding to the Captain, and
all the boys understanding the signal gathered up their books and poured
out of the hall.
Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home.
"Is there anything the matter with my mother?" he said. He could hardly
speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready to start.
"No," said the Major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your trunk
directly; I have got a postchaise at the gate."
Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him;
and the Doctor, now left alone in the schoolroom, came out to shake hands
with his old schoolfellow. You would not have thought it was the same
man. As Cinderella at a particular hour became, from a blazing and
magnificent Princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a grey petticoat,
so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath
of the schoolmaster disappeared.
"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the Doctor. "It is a pity to
take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle and
unenergetic, but he is a very honest gentlemanlike little fellow, though
I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and have some
luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."
But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. 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 eh--a good eh--property I believe?" asked the other
in an off-hand way.
"H'm--so so," said the Major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end. And
Arthur Pendennis got into the postchaise with his uncle never to come
back to school any more.
As the chaise drove through Clavering, the hostler standing whistling
under the archway of the Clavering Arms, winked the postilion ominously,
as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the
lodge-gates, and let the travellers through with a silent shake of the
head. All the blinds were down at Fairoaks--the face of the old footman
was as blank when he let them in. Arthur's face was white too, with
terror 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 been
ever able to penetrate that frigid outward barrier. But Arthur had been
his father's pride and glory through life, and his name the last which
John Pendennis had tried to articulate whilst he lay with his wife's hand
clasping his own cold and clammy palm, as the 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 chaise came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and
taking Arthur's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him
upstairs to his mother. 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. The former gave a detailed
account of the seizure and demise of Mr. Pendennis, enlarged on his
virtues and the estimation in which the neighbourhood held him; on what a
loss he would be to the magistrates' bench, the County Hospital, etc.
Mrs. Pendennis bore up wonderfully, he said, especially since Master
Arthur's arrival. The lawyer stayed and dined with Major Pendennis, and
they talked business all the evening. The Major was his brother's
executor, and joint guardian to the boy with Mrs. Pendennis. 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 superintendence of
everything under this most impressive and melancholy occasion. Aware of
this authority, old John the footman, when he brought Major Pendennis the
candle to go to bed, followed afterwards with the plate-basket; and the
next morning brought him the key of the hall clock--the Squire always
used to wind it up of a Thursday, John said. Mrs. Pendennis'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 symbolised in the Roman
churches in the image of the Virgin Mother with a bosom 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, and
from whose face towards the child there shone a sweetness so angelical,
that it seemed to form a sort of glory round both. I protest I could have
knelt before her too, and adored in her the Divine beneficence in
endowing us with the maternal storge, which began with our race and
sanctifies the history of mankind.
So it was with this, in a word, that Mrs. Pendennis comforted herself on
the death of her husband, 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, neighbour, she would not grieve much about
being your widow, and would let your grave-lamp go out very soon, or
perhaps not even take the trouble to light it. Whereas Helen Pendennis
put up the handsomest of memorials to her husband, and constantly renewed
it with the most precious oil.
As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which the sight of his
dead father must have produced on him, and the pity and feeling which
such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the very moment
of the grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly consoled her,
and promised to love her for ever, there was not springing up in his
breast a feeling of secret triumph and exultation. He was the chief now
and lord. He was Pendennis; and all round 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 and patted 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, that he
wouldn't get up till he liked, or stand the bullying of the Doctor any
more, and had made a hundred of such day-dreams 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 favourite haunts, all the
servants there assembled in great silence with their friends, and the
labouring men and their wives, and Sally Potter who went with the
post-bag to Clavering, and the baker's man from Clavering--all there
assembled and drinking beer on the melancholy occasion--rose up on his
entrance and bowed or curtseyed to him. They never used to do so last
holidays, he felt at once and with indescribable pleasure. The cook cried
out, "O Lord," and whispered, "How Master Arthur do grow!" Thomas, the
groom, in the act of drinking, put down the jug alarmed before his
master. Thomas's master felt the honour keenly. He went through and
looked at the pointers. As Flora put her nose up to his waistcoat, and
Ponto, yelling with pleasure, hurtled at his chain, Pen patronised 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 Pendennis, Esquire, "formerly an eminent medical
practitioner at Bath, and subsequently an able magistrate, a benevolent
landlord, and a benefactor to many charities and public institutions in
this neighbourhood and county," with one of the most handsome funerals
that had been seen since Sir Roger Clavering was buried here, the clerk
said, in the abbey church of Clavering St. Mary's. A fair marble slab,
from which the above inscription is copied, was erected over the
Fairoaks' pew in the church. On it you may see the Pendennis coat of
arms, and crest, an eagle looking towards the sun, with the motto 'nec
tenui penna,' to the present day. Doctor Portman alluded to the deceased
most handsomely and affectingly, as "our dear departed friend," in his
sermon next Sunday; and Arthur Pendennis reigned in his stead.