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The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2




"The letter does the boy very great honor, very great honor, my dear,"
he said, patting it as it lay on Helen's knee--"and I think we have
all reason to be thankful for it--very thankful. I need not tell you
in what quarter, my dear, for you are a sainted woman: yes, Laura, my
love, your mother is a sainted woman. And Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, I
shall order a copy of the book for myself, and another at the
Book club."

We may be sure that the widow and Laura walked out to meet the mail
which brought them their copy of Pen's precious novel, as soon as that
work was printed and ready for delivery to the public; and that they
read it to each other: and that they also read it privately and
separately, for when the widow came out of her room in her
dressing-gown at one o'clock in the morning with volume two, which she
had finished, she found Laura devouring volume three in bed. Laura did
not say much about the book, but Helen pronounced that it was a
happy mixture of Shakspeare, and Byron, and Walter Scott, and was
quite certain that her son was the greatest genius, as he was the best
son, in the world.

Did Laura not think about the book and the author, although she said
so little? At least she thought about Arthur Pendennis. Kind as his
tone was, it vexed her. She did not like his eagerness to repay that
money. She would rather that her brother had taken her gift as she
intended it; and was pained that there should be money calculations
between them. His letters from London, written with the good-natured
wish to amuse his mother, were full of descriptions of the famous
people and the entertainments, and magnificence of the great city.
Every body was flattering him and spoiling him, she was sure. Was he
not looking to some great marriage, with that cunning uncle for a
Mentor (between whom and Laura there was always an antipathy), that
inveterate worldling, whose whole thoughts were bent upon pleasure,
and rank, and fortune? He never alluded to--to old times, when he
spoke of her. He had forgotten them and her, perhaps: had he not
forgotten other things and people?

These thoughts may have passed in Miss Laura's mind, though she did
not, she could not, confide them to Helen. She had one more secret,
too, from that lady, which she could not divulge, perhaps, because she
knew how the widow would have rejoiced to know it. This regarded an
event which had occurred during that visit to Lady Rockminster, which
Laura had paid in the last Christmas holidays: when Pen was at home
with his mother, and when Mr. Pynsent, supposed to be so cold and so
ambitious, had formally offered his hand to Miss Bell. No one except
herself and her admirer knew of this proposal: or that Pynsent had
been rejected by her, and probably the reasons she gave to the
mortified young man himself, were not those which actuated her
refusal, or those which she chose to acknowledge to herself. "I
never," she told Pynsent, "can accept such an offer as that which you
make me, which you own is unknown to your family, as I am sure it
would be unwelcome to them. The difference of rank between us is too
great. You are very kind to me here--too good and kind, dear Mr.
Pynsent--but I am little better than a dependent."

"A dependent! who ever so thought of you? You are the equal of all the
world," Pynsent broke out.

"I am a dependent at home, too," Laura said, sweetly, "and indeed I
would not be otherwise. Left early a poor orphan, I have found the
kindest and tenderest of mothers, and I have vowed never to leave her
--never. Pray do not speak of this again--here, under your relative's
roof, or elsewhere. It is impossible."

"If Lady Rockminster asks you herself, will you listen to her?"
Pynsent cried, eagerly.

"No," Laura said. "I beg you never to speak of this any more. I must
go away if you do;" and with this she left him.

Pynsent never asked for Lady Rockminster's intercession; he knew how
vain it was to look for that: and he never spoke again on that subject
to Laura or to any person.

When at length the famous novel appeared, it not only met with
applause from more impartial critics than Mrs. Pendennis, but, luckily
for Pen, it suited the taste of the public, and obtained a quick and
considerable popularity. Before two months were over, Pen had the
satisfaction and surprise of seeing the second edition of "Walter
Lorraine," advertised in the newspapers; and enjoyed the pleasure of
reading and sending home the critiques of various literary journals
and reviewers upon his book. Their censure did not much affect him;
for the good-natured young man was disposed to accept with
considerable humility the dispraise of others. Nor did their praise
elate him overmuch; for, like most honest persons, he had his own
opinion about his own performance, and when a critic praised him in
the wrong place, he was hurt rather than pleased by the compliment.
But if a review of his work was very laudatory, it was a great
pleasure to him to send it home to his mother at Fairoaks, and to
think of the joy which it would give there. There are some natures,
and perhaps, as we have said, Pendennis's was one, which are improved
and softened by prosperity and kindness, as there are men of other
dispositions, who become arrogant and graceless under good fortune.
Happy he who can endure one or the other with modesty and good-humor!
Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be,
by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor!





CHAPTER IV.

ALSATIA.


Bred up, like a bailiff or a shabby attorney, about the purlieus of
the Inns of Court, Shepherd's Inn is always to be found in the close
neighborhood of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, and the Temple. Somewhere
behind the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych-street,
Holywell-street, Chancery-lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the
outer world; and it is approached by curious passages, and ambiguous
smoky alleys, on which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers,
brandy-ball and hard-bake venders, purveyors of theatrical prints for
youth, dealers in dingy furniture, and bedding suggestive of any thing
but sleep, line the narrow walls and dark casements with their wares.
The doors are many-belled, and crowds of dirty children form endless
groups about the steps, or around the shell-fish dealers' trays in
these courts, whereof the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are
drabbled with a never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here,
in deadly, guttural tones, satirical songs against the Whig
administration, against the bishops and dignified clergy, against the
German relatives of an august royal family; Punch sets up his theater,
sure of an audience, and occasionally of a halfpenny from the swarming
occupants of the houses; women scream after their children for
loitering in the gutter, or, worse still, against the husband who
comes reeling from the gin-shop. There is a ceaseless din and life in
these courts, out of which you pass into the tranquil, old-fashioned
quadrangle of Shepherd's Inn. In a mangy little grass-plat in the
center rises up the statue of Shepherd, defended by iron railings from
the assaults of boys. The hall of the Inn, on which the founder's
arms are painted, occupies one side of the square, the tall and
ancient chambers are carried round other two sides, and over the
central archway, which leads into Oldcastle-street, and so into the
great London thoroughfare.

The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have
long since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that
any of the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices
of the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the
ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of
Genius and Capital Company, another--the only gentleman whose name
figures here and in the "Law List," is Mr. Campion, who wears
mustaches, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a week; and
whose West End offices are in Curzon-street, Mayfair, where Mrs.
Campion entertains the nobility and gentry to whom her husband lends
money. There, and on his glazed cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion;
here he is Campion and Co.; and the same tuft which ornaments his
chin, sprouts from the under lip of the rest of the firm. It is
splendid to see his cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings,
as the vehicle stops at the door leading to his chambers. The horse
flings froth off his nostrils as he chafes and tosses under the
shining bit. The reins and the breeches of the groom are glittering
white--the luster of that equipage makes a sunshine in that
shady place.

Our old friend, Captain Costigan, has examined Campion's cab and horse
many an afternoon, as he trailed about the court in his carpet
slippers and dressing-gown, with his old hat cocked over his eye. He
suns himself there after his breakfast when the day is suitable; and
goes and pays a visit to the porter's lodge, where he pats the heads
of the children, and talks to Mrs. Bolton about the thayatres and me
daughter Leedy Mirabel. Mrs. Bolton was herself in the profession
once, and danced at the Wells in early days as the thirteenth of Mr.
Serle's forty pupils.

Costigan lives in the third floor at No. 4, in the rooms which were
Mr. Podmore's, and whose name is still on the door (somebody else's
name, by the way, is on almost all the doors in Shepherd's Inn). When
Charley Podmore (the pleasing tenor singer, T.R.D.L., and at the
Back-Kitchen Concert Rooms), married, and went to live at Lambeth, he
ceded his chambers to Mr. Bows and Captain Costigan, who occupy them
in common now, and you may often hear the tones of Mr. Bows's piano of
fine days when the windows are open, and when he is practicing for
amusement, or for the instruction of a theatrical pupil, of whom he
has one or two. Fanny Bolton is one, the porteress's daughter, who has
heard tell of her mother's theatrical glories, which she longs to
emulate. She has a good voice and a pretty face and figure for the
stage; and she prepares the rooms and makes the beds and breakfasts
for Messrs. Costigan and Bows, in return for which the latter
instructs her in music and singing. But for his unfortunate propensity
to liquor (and in that excess she supposes that all men of fashion
indulge), she thinks the captain the finest gentleman in the world,
and believes in all the versions of all his stories; and she is very
fond of Mr. Bows, too, and very grateful to him; and this shy, queer
old gentleman has a fatherly fondness for her, too, for in truth his
heart is full of kindness, and he is never easy unless he
loves somebody.

[Illustration]

Costigan has had the carriages of visitors of distinction before his
humble door in Shepherd's Inn: and to hear him talk of a morning (for
his evening song is of a much more melancholy nature) you would fancy
that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were in the constant habit of
calling at his chambers, and bringing with them the select nobility to
visit the "old man, the honest old half-pay captain, poor old Jack
Costigan," as Cos calls himself.

The truth is, that Lady Mirabel has left her husband's card (which has
been stuck in the little looking-glass over the mantle-piece of the
sitting-room at No. 4, for these many months past), and has come in
person to see her father, but not of late days. A kind person,
disposed to discharge her duties gravely, upon her marriage with Sir
Charles, she settled a little pension upon her father, who
occasionally was admitted to the table of his daughter and son-in-law.
At first poor Cos's behavior "in the hoight of poloit societee," as he
denominated Lady Mirabel's drawing-room table, was harmless, if it was
absurd. As he clothed his person in his best attire, so he selected
the longest and richest words in his vocabulary to deck his
conversation, and adopted a solemnity of demeanor which struck with
astonishment all those persons in whose company he happened to be.
"Was your Leedyship in the Pork to-dee?" he would demand of his
daughter. "I looked for your equipage in veen:--the poor old man was
not gratified by the soight of his daughter's choriot. Sir Chorlus, I
saw your neem at the Levée; many's the Levee at the Castle at Dublin
that poor old Jack Costigan has attended in his time. Did the Juke
look pretty well? Bedad, I'll call at Apsley House and lave me cyard
upon 'um. I thank ye, James, a little dthrop more champeane." Indeed,
he was magnificent in his courtesy to all, and addressed his
observations not only to the master and the guests, but to the
domestics who waited at the table, and who had some difficulty in
maintaining their professional gravity while they waited on
Captain Costigan.

On the first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan
maintained a strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost time
when he got to the Back-Kitchen, where he bragged about his
son-in-law's clart and burgundee, until his own utterance began to
fail him, over his sixth tumbler of whiskey-punch. But with
familiarity his caution vanished, and poor Cos lamentably disgraced
himself at Sir Charles Mirabel's table, by premature inebriation. A
carriage was called for him: the hospitable door was shut upon him.
Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at the Kitchen of his
resemblance to King Lear in the plee--of his having a thankless
choild, bedad--of his being a pore worn-out, lonely old man, dthriven
to dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his sorrows
in punch.

It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of fathers, but
it must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when his credit was
exhausted and his money gone, he would not unfrequently beg money from
his daughter, and make statements to her not altogether consistent
with strict truth. On one day a bailiff was about to lead him to
prison, he wrote, "unless the--to you insignificant--sum of three
pound five can be forthcoming to liberate a poor man's gray hairs from
jail." And the good-natured Lady Mirabel dispatched the money
necessary for her father's liberation, with a caution to him to be
more economical for the future. On a second occasion the captain met
with a frightful accident, and broke a plate-glass window in the
Strand, for which the proprietor of the shop held him liable. The
money was forthcoming on this time too, to repair her papa's disaster,
and was carried down by Lady Mirabel's servant to the slip-shod
messenger and aid-de-camp of the captain, who brought the letter
announcing his mishap. If the servant had followed the captain's
aid-de-camp who carried the remittance, he would have seen that
gentleman, a person of Costigan's country too (for have we not said,
that however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer Irish
gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecuniary affairs?)
call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle down to the Roscius's
Head, Harlequin-yard, Drury-lane, where the captain was indeed in
pawn, and for several glasses containing rum and water, or other
spirituous refreshment, of which he and his staff had partaken. On a
third melancholy occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness,
and wanted money to pay the physician whom he was compelled to call
in; and this time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her father's safety, and
perhaps reproaching herself that she had of late lost sight of her
father, called for her carriage and drove to Shepherd's Inn, at the
gate of which she alighted, whence she found the way to her father's
chambers, "No. 4, third floor, name of Podmore over the door," the
porteress said, with many courtesies, pointing toward the door of the
house into which the affectionate daughter entered, and mounted the
dingy stair. Alas! the door, surmounted by the name of Podmore, was
opened to her by poor Cos in his shirt-sleeves, and prepared with the
gridiron to receive the mutton-chops, which Mrs. Bolton had gone
to purchase.

Also, it was not pleasant for Sir Charles Mirabel to have letters
constantly addressed to him at Brookes's, with the information that
Captain Costigan was in the hall waiting for an answer; or when he
went to play his rubber at the Travelers', to be obliged to shoot out
of his brougham and run up the steps rapidly, lest his father-in-law
should seize upon him; and to think that while he read his paper or
played his whist, the captain was walking on the opposite side of Pall
Mall, with that dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed
steadily upon the windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he
was old, and had many infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to
his wife, whom he adored with senile infatuation: he said he must go
abroad--he must go and live in the country--he should die, or have
another fit if he saw that man again--he knew he should. And it was
only by paying a second visit to Captain Costigan, and representing to
him, that if he plagued Sir Charles by letters, or addressed him in
the street, or made any further applications for loans, his allowance
would be withdrawn altogether; that Lady Mirabel was enabled to keep
her papa in order, and to restore tranquillity to her husband. And on
occasion of this visit, she sternly rebuked Bows for not keeping a
better watch over the captain; desired that he should not be allowed
to drink in that shameful way; and that the people at the horrid
taverns which he frequented should be told, upon no account to give
him credit. "Papa's conduct is bringing me to the grave," she said
(though she looked perfectly healthy), "and you, as an old man, Mr.
Bows, and one that pretended to have a regard for us, ought to be
ashamed of abetting him in it." These were the thanks which honest
Bows got for his friendship and his life's devotion. And I do not
suppose that the old philosopher was much worse off than many other
men, or had greater reason to grumble. On the second floor of the
next house to Bows's, in Shepherd's Inn, at No. 3, live two other
acquaintances of ours. Colonel Altamont, agent to the Nawaab of
Lucknow, and Captain the Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at all is
over their door. The captain does not choose to let all the world know
where he lives, and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn-street
hotel; and as for the Embassador Plenipotentiary of the Indian
potentate, he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts of St. James's
or Leadenhall-street, but is here on a confidential mission, quite
independent of the East India Company or the Board of Control.

"In fact," as Strong says, "Colonel Altamont's object being financial,
and to effectuate a sale of some of the principal diamonds and rubies
of the Lucknow crown, his wish is _not_ to report himself at the India
House or in Cannon-row, but rather to negotiate with private
capitalists--with whom he has had important transactions both in this
country and on the Continent."

We have said that these anonymous chambers of Strong's had been very
comfortably furnished since the arrival of Sir Francis Clavering in
London, and the chevalier might boast with reason to the friends who
visited him, that few retired captains were more snugly quartered than
he, in his crib in Shepherd's Inn. There were three rooms below: the
office where Strong transacted his business--whatever that might
be--and where still remained the desk and railings of the departed
officials who had preceded him, and the chevalier's own bedroom and
sitting room; and a private stair led out of the office to two upper
apartments, the one occupied by Colonel Altamont, and the other
serving as the kitchen of the establishment, and the bedroom of Mr.
Grady, the attendant. These rooms were on a level with the apartments
of our friends Bows and Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching
over the communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonnette-box
which bloomed in Bows's window.

From Grady's kitchen casement often came odors still more fragrant.
The three old soldiers who formed the garrison of No. 4, were all
skilled in the culinary art. Grady was great at an Irish stew; the
colonel was famous for pillaus and curries; and as for Strong, he
could cook any thing. He made French dishes and Spanish dishes, stews,
fricassees, and omelettes, to perfection; nor was there any man in
England more hospitable than he when his purse was full, or his credit
was good. At those happy periods, he could give a friend, as he said,
a good dinner, a good glass of wine, and a good song afterward; and
poor Cos often heard with envy the roar of Strong's choruses, and the
musical clinking of the glasses as he sate in his own room, so far
removed and yet so near to those festivities. It was not expedient to
invite Mr. Costigan always; his practice of inebriation was
lamentable; and he bored Strong's guests with his stories when sober,
and with his maudlin tears when drunk.

A strange and motley set they were, these friends of the chevalier;
and though Major Pendennis would not much have relished their company,
Arthur and Warrington liked it not a little, and Pen thought it
as amusing as the society of the finest gentlemen in the finest houses
which he had the honor to frequent. There was a history about every
man of the set: they seemed all to have had their tides of luck and
bad fortune. Most of them had wonderful schemes and speculations in
their pockets, and plenty for making rapid and extraordinary fortunes.
Jack Holt had been in Don Carlos's army, when Ned Strong had fought on
the other side; and was now organizing a little scheme for smuggling
tobacco into London, which must bring thirty thousand a year to any
man who would advance fifteen hundred, just to bribe the last officer
of the Excise who held out, and had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who
had been in the Mexican navy, knew of a specie-ship which had been
sunk in the first year of the war, with three hundred and eighty
thousand dollars on board, and a hundred and eighty thousand pounds in
bars and doubloons. "Give me eighteen hundred pounds," Tom said, "and
I'm off tomorrow. I take out four men, and a diving-bell with me; and
I return in ten months to take my seat in parliament, by Jove! and to
buy back my family estate." Keightley, the manager of the Tredyddlum
and Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet under water), besides
singing as good a second as any professional man, and besides the
Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna Sponge Company, and a little
quicksilver operation in view, which would set him straight with the
world yet. Filby had been every thing: a corporal of dragoons, a
field-preacher, and missionary-agent for converting the Irish; an
actor at a Greenwich fair-booth, in front of which his father's
attorney found him when the old gentleman died and left him that
famous property, from which he got no rents now, and of which nobody
exactly knew the situation. Added to these was Sir Francis Clavering,
Bart., who liked their society, though he did not much add to its
amusements by his convivial powers. But he was made much of by the
company now, on account of his wealth and position in the world. He
told his little story and sang his little song or two with great
affability; and he had had his own history, too, before his accession
to good fortune; and had seen the inside of more prisons than one, and
written his name on many a stamped paper.

When Altamont first returned from Paris, and after he had communicated
with Sir Francis Clavering from the hotel at which he had taken up his
quarters (and which he had reached in a very denuded state,
considering the wealth of diamonds and rubies with which this honest
man was intrusted), Strong was sent to him by his patron the baronet;
paid his little bill at the inn, and invited him to come and sleep for
a night or two at the chambers, where he subsequently took up his
residence. To negotiate with this man was very well, but to have such
a person settled in his rooms, and to be constantly burdened with such
society, did not suit the chevalier's taste much: and he grumbled not
a little to his principal.

"I wish you would put this bear into somebody else's cage," he said to
Clavering. "The fellow's no gentleman. I don't like walking with
him. He dresses himself like a nigger on a holiday. I took him to the
play the other night: and, by Jove, sir, he abused the actor who was
doing the part of villain in the play, and swore at him so, that the
people in the boxes wanted to turn him out. The after-piece was the
'Brigand,' where Wallack comes in wounded, you know, and dies. When he
died, Altamont began to cry like a child, and said it was a d--d
shame, and cried and swore so, that there was another row, and every
body laughing. Then I had to take him away, because he wanted to take
his coat off to one fellow who laughed at him; and bellowed to him to
stand up like a man. Who is he? Where the deuce does he come from? You
had best tell me the whole story. Frank, you must one day. You and he
have robbed a church together, that's my belief. You had better get it
off your mind at once, Clavering, and tell me what this Altamont is,
and what hold he has over you."

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