Our friend Pen was not sorry when his Mentor took leave of the young
gentleman on the second day after the arrival of the pair in Oxbridge,
and we may be sure that the Major on his part was very glad to have
discharged his duty, and to have the duty over. More than three months of
precious time had that martyr of a Major given up to his nephew--Was ever
selfish man called upon to make a greater sacrifice? Do you know many men
or Majors who would do as much? A man will lay down his head, or peril
his life for his honour, but let us be shy how we ask him to give up his
ease or his heart's desire. Very few of us can bear that trial. Say,
worthy reader, if thou hast peradventure a beard, wouldst thou do as
much? I will not say that a woman will not. They are used to it: we take
care to accustom them to sacrifices but, my good sir, the amount of
self-denial which you have probably exerted through life, when put down
to your account elsewhere, will not probably swell the balance on the
credit side much. Well, well, there is no use in speaking of such ugly
matters, and you are too polite to use a vulgar to quoque. But I wish to
state once for all that I greatly admire the Major for his conduct during
the past quarter, and think that he has quite a right to be pleased at
getting a holiday. Foker and Pen saw him off in the coach, and the former
young gentleman gave particular orders to the coachman to take care of
that gentleman inside. It pleased the elder Pendennis to have his nephew
in the company of a young fellow who would introduce him to the best set
of the university. The Major rushed off to London and thence to
Cheltenham, from which Watering-place he descended upon some neighbouring
great houses, whereof the families were not gone abroad, and where good
shooting and company was to be had.
A quarter of the space which custom has awarded to works styled the
Serial Nature, has been assigned to the account of one passage in Pen's
career, and it is manifest that the whole of his adventures cannot be
treated at a similar length, unless some descendant of the chronicler of
Pen's history should take up the pen at his decease, and continue the
narrative for the successors of the present generation of readers. We are
not about to go through the young fellow's academical career with, by any
means, a similar minuteness. Alas, the life of such boys does not bear
telling altogether. I wish it did. I ask you, does yours? As long as what
we call our honour is clear, I suppose your mind is pretty easy. Women
are pure, but not men. Women are unselfish, but not men. And I would not
wish to say of poor Arthur Pendennis that he was worse than his
neighbours, only that his neighbours are bad for the most part. Let us
have the candour to own as much at least. Can you point out ten spotless
men of your acquaintance? Mine is pretty large, but I can't find ten
saints in the list.
During the first term of Mr. Pen's academical life, he attended classical
and mathematical lectures with tolerable assiduity; but discovering
before very long time that he had little taste or genius for the pursuing
of the exact sciences, and being perhaps rather annoyed that one or two
very vulgar young men, who did not even use straps to their trousers so
as to cover the abominably thick and coarse shoes and stockings which
they wore, beat him completely in the lecture-room, he gave up his
attendance at that course, and announced to his fond parent that he
proposed to devote himself exclusively to the cultivation of Greek and
Roman Literature.
Mrs. Pendennis was, for her part, quite satisfied that her darling boy
should pursue that branch of learning for which he had the greatest
inclination; and only besought him not to ruin his health by too much
study, for she had heard the most melancholy stories of young students
who, by over-fatigue, had brought on brain-fevers and perished untimely
in the midst of their university career. And Pen's health, which was
always delicate, was to be regarded, as she justly said, beyond all
considerations or vain honours. Pen, although not aware of any lurking
disease which was likely to end his life, yet kindly promised his mamma
not to sit up reading too late of nights, and stuck to his word in this
respect with a great deal more tenacity of resolution than he exhibited
upon some other occasions, when perhaps he was a little remiss.
Presently he began too to find that he learned little good in the
classical lecture. His fellow-students there were too dull, as in
mathematics they were too learned for him. Mr. Buck, the tutor, was no
better a scholar than many a fifth-form boy at Grey Friars; might have
some stupid humdrum notions about the metre and grammatical construction
of a passage of Aeschylus or Aristophanes, but had no more notion of the
poetry than Mrs. Binge, his bed-maker; and Pen grew weary of hearing the
dull students and tutor blunder through a few lines of a play, which he
could read in a tenth part of the time which they gave to it. After all,
private reading, as he began to perceive, was the only study which was
really profitable to a man; and he announced to his mamma that he should
read by himself a great deal more, and in public a great deal less. That
excellent woman knew no more about Homer than she did about Algebra, but
she was quite contented with Pen's arrangements regarding his course of
studies, and felt perfectly confident that her dear boy would get the
place which he merited.
Pen did not come home until after Christmas, a little to the fond
mother's disappointment, and Laura's, who was longing for him to make a
fine snow fortification, such as he had made three winters before. But he
was invited to Logwood, Lady Agnes Foker's, where there were private
theatricals, and a gay Christmas party of very fine folks, some of them
whom Major Pendennis would on no account have his nephew neglect.
However, he stayed at home for the last three weeks of the vacation, and
Laura had the opportunity of remarking what a quantity of fine new
clothes he brought with him, and his mother admired his improved
appearance and manly and decided tone.
He did not come home at Easter; but when he arrived for the long
vacation, he brought more smart clothes; appearing in the morning in
wonderful shooting jackets, with remarkable buttons; and in the evening
in gorgeous velvet waistcoats, with richly-embroidered cravats, and
curious linen. And as she pried about his room, she saw, oh, such a
beautiful dressing-case, with silver mountings, and a quantity of lovely
rings and jewellery. And he had a new French watch and gold chain, in
place of the big old chronometer, with its bunch of jingling seals, which
had hung from the fob of John Pendennis, and by the second-hand of which
the defunct doctor had felt many a patient's pulse in his time. It was
but a few months back Pen had longed for this watch, which he thought the
most splendid and august timepiece in the world; and just before he went
to college, Helen had taken it out of her trinket-box (where it had
remained unwound since the death of her husband) and given it to Pen with
a solemn and appropriate little speech respecting his father's virtues
and the proper use of time. This portly and valuable chronometer Pen now
pronounced to be out of date, and, indeed, made some comparisons between
it and a warming-pan, which Laura thought disrespectful, and he left the
watch in a drawer, in the company of soiled primrose gloves, cravats
which had gone out of favour, and of that other school watch which has
once before been mentioned in this history. Our old friend, Rebecca, Pen
pronounced to be no long up to his weight, and swapped her away for
another and more powerful horse, for which he had to pay rather a heavy
figure. Mr. Pendennis gave the boy the money for the new horse; and Laura
cried when Rebecca was fetched away.
Also Pen brought a large box of cigars branded Colorados, Afrancesados,
Telescopios, Fudson Oxford Street, or by some such strange titles, and
began to consume these not only about the stables and green-houses, where
they were very good for Helen's plants, but in his own study, of which
practice his mother did not at first approve. But he was at work upon a
prize-poem, he said, and could not compose without his cigar, and quoted
the late lamented it Lord Byron's lines in favour of the custom of
smoking. As he was smoking to such good purpose, his mother could not of
course refuse permission: in fact, the good soul coming into the room one
day in the midst of Pen's labours (he was consulting a novel which had
recently appeared, for the cultivation of the light literature of his own
country as well as of foreign nations became every student)--Helen, we
say, coming into the room and finding Pen on the sofa at this work,
rather than disturb him went for a light-box and his cigar-case to his
bedroom which was adjacent, and actually put the cigar into his mouth and
lighted the match at which he kindled it. Pen laughed, and kissed his
mother's hand as it hung fondly over the back of the sofa. "Dear old
mother," he said, "if I were to tell you to burn the house down, I think
you would do it." And it is very likely that Mr. Pen was right, and that
the foolish woman would have done almost as much for him as he said.
Besides the works of English "light literature" which this diligent
student devoured, he brought down boxes of the light literature of the
neighbouring country of France: into the leaves of which when Helen
dipped, she read such things as caused her to open her eyes with wonder.
But Pen showed her that it was not he who made the books, though it was
absolutely necessary that he should keep up his French by an acquaintance
with the most celebrated writers of the day, and that it was as clearly
his duty to read the eminent Paul de Kock, as to study Swift or Moliere.
And Mrs. Pendennis yielded with a sigh of perplexity. But Miss Laura was
warned off the books, both by his anxious mother, and that rigid moralist
Mr. Arthur Pendennis himself, who, however he might be called upon to
study every branch of literature in order to form his mind and to perfect
his style, would by no means prescribe such a course of reading to a
young lady whose business in life was very different.
In the course of this long vacation Mr. Pen drank up the bin of claret
which his father had laid in, and of which we have heard the son remark
that there was not a headache in a hogshead; and this wine being
exhausted, he wrote for a further supply to "his wine merchants," Messrs.
Binney and Latham of Mark Lane, London: from whom, indeed, old Doctor
Portman had recommended Pen to get a supply of port and sherry on going
to college. "You will have, no doubt, to entertain your young friends at
Boniface with wine-parties," the honest rector had remarked to the lad.
"They used to be customary at college in my time, and I would advise you
to employ an honest and respectable house in London for your small stock
of wine, rather than to have recourse to the Oxbridge tradesmen, whose
liquor, if I remember rightly, was both deleterious in quality and
exorbitant in price." And the obedient young gentleman took the Doctor's
advice, and patronised Messrs. Binney and Latham at the rector's
suggestion.
So when he wrote orders for a stock of wine to be sent down to the
cellars at Fairoaks, he hinted that Messrs. B. and L. might send in his
university account for wine at the same time with the Fairoaks bill. The
poor widow was frightened at the amount. But Pen laughed at her
old-fashioned views, said that the bill was moderate, that everybody
drank claret and champagne now, and, finally, the widow paid, feeling
dimly that the expenses of her household were increasing considerably,
and that her narrow income would scarce suffice to meet them. But they
were only occasional. Pen merely came home for a few weeks at the
vacation. Laura and she might pinch when he was gone. In the brief time
he was with them, ought they not to make him happy?
Arthur's own allowances were liberal all this time; indeed, much more so
than those of the sons of far more wealthy men. Years before, the thrifty
and affectionate John Pendennis, whose darling project it had ever been
to give his son a university education, and those advantages of which his
own father's extravagance had deprived him, had begun laying by a store
of money which he called Arthur's Education Fund. Year after year in his
book his executors found entries of sums vested as A. E. F., and during
the period subsequent to her husband's decease, and before Pen's entry at
college, the widow had added sundry sums to this fund, so that when
Arthur went up to Oxbridge it reached no inconsiderable amount. Let him
be liberally allowanced, was Major Pendennis's maxim. Let him make his
first entree into the world as a gentleman, and take his place with men
of good rank and station: after giving it to him, it will be his own duty
to hold it. There is no such bad policy as stinting a boy--or putting him
on a lower allowance than his fellows. Arthur will have to face the world
and fight for himself presently. Meanwhile we shall have procured for him
good friends, gentlemanly habits, and have him well backed and well
trained against the time when the real struggle comes. And these liberal
opinions the Major probably advanced both because they were just, and
because he was not dealing with his own money.
Thus young Pen, the only son of an estated country gentleman, with a good
allowance, and a gentlemanlike bearing and person, looked to be a lad of
much more consequence than he was really; and was held by the Oxbridge
authorities, tradesmen, and undergraduates, as quite a young buck and
member of the aristocracy. His manner was frank, brave, and perhaps a
little impertinent, as becomes a high-spirited youth. He was perfectly
generous and free-handed with his money, which seemed pretty plentiful.
He loved joviality, and had a good voice for a song. Boat-racing had not
risen in Pen's time to the fureur which, as we are given to understand,
it has since attained in the university; and riding and tandem-driving
were the fashions of the ingenuous youth. Pen rode well to hounds,
appeared in pink, as became a young buck, and, not particularly
extravagant in equestrian or any other amusement, yet managed to run up a
fine bill at Nile's, the livery-stable keeper, and in a number of other
quarters. In fact, this lucky young gentleman had almost every taste to a
considerable degree. He was very fond of books of all sorts: Doctor
Portman had taught him to like rare editions, and his own taste led him
to like beautiful bindings. It was marvellous what tall copies, and
gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the booksellers and binders put
upon Pen's bookshelves. He had a very fair taste in matters of art, and a
keen relish for prints of a high school--none of your French Opera
Dancers, or tawdry Racing Prints, such as had delighted the simple eyes
of Mr. Spicer, his predecessor--but your Stranges, and Rembrandt
etchings, and Wilkies before the letter, with which his apartments were
furnished presently in the most perfect good taste, as was allowed in the
university, where this young fellow got no small reputation. We have
mentioned that he exhibited a certain partiality for rings, jewellery,
and fine raiment of all sorts; and it must be owned that Mr. Pen, during
his time at the university, was rather a dressy man, and loved to array
himself in splendour. He and his polite friends would dress themselves
out with as much care in order to go and dine at each other's rooms, as
other folks would who were going to enslave a mistress. They said he used
to wear rings over his kid gloves, which he always denies; but what
follies will not youth perpetrate with its own admirable gravity and
simplicity? That he took perfumed baths is a truth; and he used to say
that he took them after meeting certain men of a very low set in hall.
In Pen's second year, when Miss Fotheringay made her chief hit in London,
and scores of prints were published of her, Pen had one of these hung in
his bedroom, and confided to the men of his set how awfully, how wildly,
how madly, how passionately, he had loved that woman. He showed them in
confidence the verses that he had written to her, and his brow would
darken, his eyes roll, his chest heave with emotion as he recalled that
fatal period of his life, and described the woes and agonies which he had
suffered. The verses were copied out, handed about, sneered at, admired,
passed from coterie to coterie. There are few things which elevate a lad
in the estimation of his brother boys, more than to have a character for
a great and romantic passion. Perhaps there is something noble in it at
all times--among very young men it is considered heroic--Pen was
pronounced a tremendous fellow. They said he had almost committed
suicide: that he had fought a duel with a baronet about her. Freshmen
pointed him out to each other. As at the promenade time at two o'clock he
swaggered out of college, surrounded by his cronies, he was famous to
behold. He was elaborately attired. He would ogle the ladies who came to
lionise the university, and passed before him on the arms of happy
gownsmen, and give his opinion upon their personal charms, or their
toilettes, with the gravity of a critic whose experience entitled him to
speak with authority. Men used to say that they had been walking with
Pendennis, and were as pleased to be seen in his company as some of us
would be if we walked with a duke down Pall Mall. 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. No generous boy
ever lived, I suppose, that has not had some wonderment of admiration for
another boy; and Monsieur Pen at Oxbridge had his school, his faithful
band of friends and his rivals. When the young men heard at the
haberdashers' shops that Mr. Pendennis, of Boniface, had just ordered a
crimson satin-cravat, you would see a couple of dozen crimson satin
cravats in Main Street in the course of the week--and Simon, the
Jeweller, was known to sell no less than two gross of Pendennis pins,
from a pattern which the young gentleman had selected in his shop.
Now if any person with an arithmetical turn of mind will take the trouble
to calculate what a sum of money it would cost a young man to indulge
freely in all the above propensities which we have said Mr. Pen
possessed, it will be seen that a young fellow, with such liberal tastes
and amusements, must needs in the course of two or three years spend or
owe a very handsome sum of money. We have said our friend Pen had not a
calculating turn. No one propensity of his was outrageously extravagant;
and it is certain that Paddington's tailor's account; Guttlebury's cook's
bill for dinners; Dillon Tandy's bill with Finn, the print seller, for
Raphael-Morgheus and Landseer proofs, and Wormall's dealings with
Parkton, the great bookseller, for Aldine editions, black-letter folios,
and richly illuminated Missals of the XVI. Century; and Snaffle's or
Foker's score with Nile the horsedealer, were, each and all of them,
incomparably greater than any little bills which Mr. Pen might run up
with the above-mentioned tradesmen. But Pendennis of Boniface had the
advantage over all these young gentlemen, his friends and associates, of
a universality of taste: and whereas young Lord Paddington did not care
twopence for the most beautiful print, or to look into any gilt frame
that had not a mirror within it; and Guttlebury did not mind in the least
how he was dressed, and had an aversion for horse exercise, nay a terror
of it; and Snaffle never read any printed works but the 'Racing Calendar'
or 'Bell's Life,' or cared for any manuscript except his greasy little
scrawl of a betting-book:--our Catholic-minded young friend occupied
himself in every one of the branches of science or pleasure
above-mentioned, and distinguished himself tolerably in each.
Hence young Pen got a prodigious reputation in the university, and was
hailed as a sort of Crichton; and as for the English verse prize, in
competition for which we have seen him busily engaged at Fairoaks, Jones
of Jesus carried it that year certainly, but the undergraduates thought
Pen's a much finer poem, and he had his verses printed at his own
expense, and distributed in gilt morocco covers amongst his acquaintance.
I found a copy of it lately in a dusty corner of Mr. Pen's bookcases, and
have it before me this minute, bound up in a collection of old Oxbridge
tracts, university statutes, prize-poems by successful and unsuccessful
candidates, declamations recited in the college chapel, speeches
delivered at the Union Debating Society, and inscribed by Arthur with his
name and college, Pendennis--Boniface; or presented to him by his
affectionate friend Thompson or Jackson, the author. How strange the
epigraphs look in those half-boyish hands, and what a thrill the sight of
the documents gives one after the lapse of a few lustres! How fate, since
that time, has removed some, estranged others, dealt awfully with all!
Many a hand is cold that wrote those kindly memorials, and that we
pressed in the confident and generous grasp of youthful friendship. What
passions our friendships were in those old days, how artless and void of
doubt! How the arm you were never tired of having linked in yours under
the fair college avenues or by the river side, where it washes Magdalen
Gardens, or Christ Church Meadows, or winds by Trinity and King's, was
withdrawn of necessity, when you entered presently the world, and each
parted to push and struggle for himself through the great mob on the way
through life! Are we the same men now that wrote those inscriptions--that
read those poems? that delivered or heard those essays and speeches so
simple, so pompous, so ludicrously solemn; parodied so artlessly from
books, and spoken with smug chubby faces, and such an admirable aping of
wisdom and gravity? Here is the book before me: it is scarcely fifteen
years old. Here is Jack moaning with despair and Byronic misanthropy,
whose career at the university was one of unmixed milk-punch. Here is
Tom's daring Essay in defence of suicide and of republicanism in general,
apropos of the death of Roland and the Girondins--Tom's, who wears the
starchest tie in all the diocese, and would go to Smithfield rather than
eat a beefsteak on a Friday in Lent. Here is Bob of the ---- Circuit, who
has made a fortune in Railroad Committees, and whose dinners are so good
--bellowing out with Tancred and Godfrey, "On to the breach, ye soldiers
of the cross, Scale the red wall and swim the choking foss. Ye dauntless
archers, twang your cross-bows well; On, bill and battle-axe and
mangonel! Ply battering-ram and hurtling catapult, Jerusalem is ours--id
Deus vult." After which comes a mellifluous description of the gardens of
Sharon and the maids of Salem, and a prophecy that roses shall deck the
entire country of Syria, and a speedy reign of peace be established--all
in undeniably decasyllabic lines, and the queerest aping of sense and
sentiment and poetry. And there are Essays and Poems along with these
grave parodies, and boyish exercises (which are at once so frank and
false and mirthful, yet, somehow, so mournful) by youthful hands, that
shall never write more. Fate has interposed darkly, and the young voices
are silent, and the eager brains have ceased to work. This one had genius
and a great descent, and seemed to be destined for honours which now are
of little worth to him: that had virtue, learning, genius--every faculty
and endowment which might secure love, admiration, and worldly fame: an
obscure and solitary churchyard contains the grave of many fond hopes,
and the pathetic stone which bids them farewell--I saw the sun shining on
it in the fall of last year, and heard the sweet village choir raising
anthems round about. What boots whether it be Westminster or a little
country spire which covers your ashes, or if, a few days sooner or later,
the world forgets you?
Amidst these friends, then, and a host more, Pen passed more than two
brilliant and happy years of his life. He had his fill of pleasure and
popularity. No dinner- or supper-party was complete without him; and
Pen's jovial wit, and Pen's songs, and dashing courage and frank and
manly bearing, charmed all the undergraduates, and even disarmed the
tutors who cried out at his idleness, and murmured about his extravagant
way of life. Though he became the favourite and leader of young men who
were much his superiors in wealth and station, he was much too generous
to endeavour to propitiate them by any meanness or cringing on his own
part, and would not neglect the humblest man of his acquaintance in order
to curry favour with the richest young grandee in the university. His
name is still remembered at the Union Debating Club, as one of the
brilliant orators of his day. By the way, from having been an ardent Tory
in his freshman's year, his principles took a sudden turn afterwards, and
he became a liberal of the most violent order. He avowed himself a
Dantonist, and asserted that Louis the Sixteenth was served right. And as
for Charles the First, he vowed that he would chop off that monarch's
head with his own right hand were he then in the room at the Union
Debating Club, and had Cromwell no other executioner for the traitor.
He and Lord Magnus Charters, the Marquis of Runnymede's son,
before-mentioned, were the most truculent republicans of their day.
There are reputations of this sort made, quite independent of the
collegiate hierarchy, in the republic of gownsmen. A man may be famous in
the Honour-lists and entirely unknown to the undergraduates: who elect
kings and chieftains of their own, whom they admire and obey, as
negro-gangs have private black sovereigns in their own body, to whom they
pay an occult obedience, besides that which they publicly profess for
their owners and drivers. Among the young ones Pen became famous and
popular: not that he did much, but there was a general determination that
he could do a great deal if he chose. "Ah, if Pendennis of Boniface would
but try," the men said, "he might do anything." He was backed for the
Greek Ode won by Smith of Trinity; everybody was sure he would have the
Latin hexameter prize which Brown of St. John's, however, carried off,
and in this way one university honour after another was lost by him,
until, after two or three failures, Mr. Pen ceased to compete. But he got
a declamation prize in his own college, and brought home to his mother
and Laura at Fairoaks a set of prize-books begilt with the college arms,
and so big, well-bound, and magnificent, that these ladies thought there
had been no such prize ever given in a college before as this of Pen's,
and that he had won the very largest honour which Oxbridge was capable of
awarding.
As vacation after vacation and term after term passed away without the
desired news that Pen had sate for any scholarship or won any honour,
Doctor Portman grew mightily gloomy in his behaviour towards Arthur, and
adopted a sulky grandeur of deportment towards him, which the lad
returned by a similar haughtiness. One vacation he did not call upon the
Doctor at all, much to his mother's annoyance, who thought that it was a
privilege to enter the Rectory-house at Clavering, and listened to Dr.
Portman's antique jokes and stories, though ever so often repeated, with
unfailing veneration. "I cannot stand the Doctor's patronising air", Pen
said. "He's too kind to me, a great deal fatherly. I have seen in the
world better men than him, and am not going to bore myself by listening
to his dull old stories and drinking his stupid old port wine." The tacit
feud between Pen and the Doctor made the widow nervous, so that she too
avoided Portman, and was afraid to go to the Rectory when Arthur was at
home.
One Sunday in the last long vacation, the wretched boy pushed his
rebellious spirit so far as not to go to church, and he was seen at the
gate of the Clavering Arms smoking a cigar, in the face of the
congregation as it issued from St. Mary's. There was an awful sensation
in the village society, Portman prophesied Pen's ruin after that, and
groaned in spirit over the rebellious young prodigal.
So did Helen tremble in her heart, and little Laura--Laura had grown to
be a fine young stripling by this time, graceful and fair, clinging round
Helen and worshipping her, with a passionate affection. Both of these
women felt that their boy was changed. He was no longer the artless Pen
of old days, so brave, so artless, so impetuous, and tender. His face
looked careworn and haggard, his voice had a deeper sound, and tones more
sarcastic. Care seemed to be pursuing him; but he only laughed when his
mother questioned him, and parried her anxious queries with some scornful
jest. Nor did he spend much of his vacations at home; he went on visits
to one great friend or another, and scared the quiet pair at Fairoaks by
stories of great houses whither he had been invited; and by talking of
lords without their titles.
Honest Harry Foker, who had been the means of introducing Arthur
Pendennis to that set of young men at the university, from whose society
and connexions Arthur's uncle expected that the lad would get so much
benefit; who had called for Arthur's first song at his first
supper-party; and who had presented him at the Barmecide Club, where none
but the very best men of Oxbridge were admitted (it consisted in Pen's
time of six noblemen, eight gentlemen-pensioners, and twelve of the most
select commoners of the university), soon found himself left far behind
by the young freshman in the fashionable world of Oxbridge, and being a
generous and worthy fellow, without a spark of envy in his composition,
was exceedingly pleased at the success of his young protege, and admired
Pen quite as much as any of the other youth did. I was he who followed
Pen now, and quoted his sayings; learned his songs, and retailed them at
minor supper-parties, and was never weary of hearing them from the gifted
young poet's own mouth--for a good deal of the time which Mr. Pen might
have employed much more advantageously in the pursuit of the regular
scholastic studies, was given up to the composition of secular ballads,
which he sang about at parties according to university wont.
It had been as well for Arthur if the honest Foker had remained for some
time at college, for, with all his vivacity, he was a prudent young man,
and often curbed Pen's propensity to extravagance: but Foker's collegiate
career did not last very long after Arthur's entrance at Boniface.
Repeated differences with the university authorities caused Mr. Foker to
quit Oxbridge in an untimely manner. He would persist in attending races
on the neighbouring Hungerford Heath, in spite of the injunctions of his
academic superiors. He never could be got to frequent the chapel of the
college with that regularity of piety which Alma Mater demands from her
children; tandems, which are abominations in the eyes of the heads and
tutors, were Foker's greatest delight, and so reckless was his driving
and frequent the accidents and upsets out of his drag, that Pen called
taking a drive with him taking the "Diversions of Purley;" finally,
having a dinner-party at his rooms to entertain some friends from London,
nothing would satisfy Mr. Foker but painting Mr. Buck's door vermilion,
in which freak he was caught by the proctors; and although young Black
Strap, the celebrated negro fighter, who was one of Mr. Foker's
distinguished guests, and was holding the can of paint while the young
artist operated on the door, knocked down two of the proctor's attendants
and performed prodigies of valour, yet these feats rather injured than
served Foker, whom the proctor knew very well and who was taken with the
brush in his hand, and who was summarily convened and sent down from the
university.
The tutor wrote a very kind and feeling letter to Lady Agnes on the
subject, stating that everybody was fond of the youth; that he never
meant harm to any mortal creature; that he for his own part would have
been delighted to pardon the harmless little boyish frolic, had not its
unhappy publicity rendered it impossible to look the freak over, and
breathing the most fervent wishes for the young fellow's welfare--wishes
no doubt sincere, for Foker, as we know, came of a noble family on his
mother's side, and on the other was heir to a great number of thousand
pounds a year.
"It don't matter," said Foker, talking over the matter with Pen,--"a
little sooner or a little later, what is the odds? I should have been
plucked for my little-go again, I know I should--that Latin I cannot
screw into my head, and my mamma's anguish would have broke out next
term. The Governor will blow like an old grampus, I know he will,--well,
we must stop till he gets his wind again. I shall probably go abroad and
improve my mind with foreign travel. Yes, parly-voo's the ticket. It'ly,
and that sort of thing. I'll go to Paris and learn to dance and complete
my education. But it's not me I'm anxious about, Pen. As long as people
drink beer I don't care,--it's about you I'm doubtful, my boy. You're
going too fast, and can't keep up the pace, I tell you. It's not the
fifty you owe me,--pay it or not when you like,--but it's the every-day
pace, and I tell you it will kill you. You're livin' as if there was no
end to the money in the stockin' at home. You oughtn't to give dinners,
you ought to eat 'em. Fellows are glad to have you. You oughtn't to owe
horse bills, you ought to ride other chaps' nags. You know no more about
betting than I do about Algebra: the chaps will win your money as sure as
you sport it. Hang me if you are not trying everything. I saw you sit
down to ecarte last week at Trumpington's, and taking your turn with the
bones after Ringwood's supper. They'll beat you at it, Pen, my boy, even
if they play on the square, which. I don't say they don't, nor which I
don't say they do, mind. But I won't play with 'em. You're no match for
'em. You ain't up to their weight. It's like little Black Strap standing
up to Tom Spring,--the Black's a pretty fighter but, Law bless you, his
arm ain't long enough to touch Tom,--and I tell you, you're going it with
fellers beyond your weight. Look here--If you'll promise me never to bet
nor touch a box nor a card, I'll let you off the two ponies."
But Pen, laughingly, said, "that though it wasn't convenient to him to
pay the two ponies at that moment, he by no means wished to be let off
any just debts he owed;" and he and Foker parted, not without many dark
forebodings on the latter's part with regard to his friend, who Harry
thought was travelling speedily on the road to ruin.
"One must do at Rome as Rome does," Pen said, in a dandified manner,
jingling some sovereigns in his waistcoat-pocket. "A little quiet play at
ecarte can't hurt a man who plays pretty well--I came away fourteen
sovereigns richer from Ringwood's supper, and, gad! I wanted the money."
--And he walked off, after having taken leave of poor Foker, who went
away without any beat of drum, or offer to drive the coach out of
Oxbridge, to superintend a little dinner which he was going to give at
his own rooms in Boniface, about which dinners, the cook of the college,
who had a great respect for Mr. Pendennis, always took especial pains for
his young favourite.