Babylon
Our reader must now please to quit the woods and sea-shore of the west,
and the gossip of Clavering, and the humdrum life of poor little
Fairoaks, and transport himself with Arthur Pendennis, on the
‘Alacrity’ coach, to London, whither he goes once for all to face the
world and to make his fortune. As the coach whirls through the night
away from the friendly gates of home, many a plan does the young man
cast in his mind of future life and conduct, prudence, and peradventure
success and fame. He knows he is a better man than many who have
hitherto been ahead of him in the race: his first failure has caused
him remorse, and brought with it reflection; it has not taken away his
courage, or, let us add, his good opinion of himself. A hundred eager
fancies and busy hopes keep him awake. How much older his mishaps and a
year’s thought and self-communion have made him, than when, twelve
months since, he passed on this road on his way to and from Oxbridge!
His thoughts turn in the night with inexpressible fondness and
tenderness towards the fond mother who blessed him when parting, and
who, in spite of all his past faults and follies, trusts him and loves
him still. Blessings be on her! he prays, as he looks up to the stars
overhead. O Heaven! give him strength to work, to endure, to be honest,
to avoid temptation, to be worthy of the loving soul who loves him so
entirely! Very likely she is awake, too, at that moment, and sending up
to the same Father purer prayers than his for the welfare of her boy.
That woman’s love is a talisman by which he holds and hopes to get his
safety. And Laura’s—he would have fain carried her affection with him
too, but she has denied it, as he is not worthy of it. He owns as much
with shame and remorse; confesses how much better and loftier her
nature is than his own—confesses it, and yet is glad to be free. “I am
not good enough for such a creature,” he owns to himself. He draws back
before her spotless beauty and innocence, as from something that scares
him. He feels he is not fit for such a mate as that; as many a wild
prodigal who has been pious and guiltless in early days, keeps away
from a church which he used to frequent once—shunning it, but not
hostile to it—only feeling that he has no right in that pure place.
With these thoughts to occupy him, Pen did not fall asleep until the
nipping dawn of an October morning, and woke considerably refreshed
when the coach stopped at the old breakfasting place at B——, where he
had had a score of merry meals on his way to and from school and
college many times since he was a boy. As they left that place, the sun
broke out brightly, the pace was rapid, the horn blew, the milestones
flew by, Pen smoked and joked with guard and fellow-passengers and
people along the familiar road; it grew more busy and animated at every
instant; the last team of greys came out at H——, and the coach drove
into London. What young fellow has not felt a thrill as he entered the
vast place? Hundreds of other carriages, crowded with their thousands
of men, were hastening to the great city. “Here is my place,” thought
Pen; “here is my battle beginning, in which I must fight and conquer,
or fall. I have been a boy and a dawdler as yet. Oh, I long, I long to
show that I can be a man.” And from his place on the coach-roof the
eager young fellow looked down upon the city, with the sort of longing
desire which young soldiers feel on the eve of a campaign.
As they came along the road, Pen had formed acquaintance with a cheery
fellow-passenger in a shabby cloak, who talked a great deal about men
of letters with whom he was very familiar, and who was, in fact, the
reporter of a London newspaper, as whose representative he had been to
attend a great wrestling-match in the west. This gentleman knew
intimately, as it appeared, all the leading men of letters of his day,
and talked about Tom Campbell, and Tom Hood, and Sydney Smith, and this
and the other, as if he had been their most intimate friend. As they
passed by Brompton, this gentleman pointed out to Pen Mr. Hurtle, the
reviewer, walking with his umbrella. Pen craned over the coach to have
a long look at the great Hurtle. He was a Boniface man, said Pen. And
Mr. Doolan, of the Star newspaper (for such was the gentleman’s name
and address upon the card which he handed to Pen), said “Faith he was,
and he knew him very well.” Pen thought it was quite an honour to have
seen the great Mr. Hurtle, whose works he admired. He believed fondly,
as yet, in authors, reviewers, and editors of newspapers. Even Wagg,
whose books did not appear to him to be masterpieces of human
intellect, he yet secretly revered as a successful writer. He mentioned
that he had met Wagg in the country, and Doolan told him how that
famous novelist received three hundred pounds a volume for every one of
his novels. Pen began to calculate instantly whether he might not make
five thousand a year.
The very first acquaintance of his own whom Arthur met, as the coach
pulled up at the Gloster Coffee-house, was his old friend Harry Foker,
who came prancing down Arlington Street behind an enormous cab-horse.
He had white kid gloves and white reins, and nature had by this time
decorated him with a considerable tuft on the chin. A very small
cab-boy, vice Stoopid retired, swung on behind Foker’s vehicle;
knock-kneed and in the tightest leather breeches. Foker looked at the
dusty coach, and the smoking horses of the ‘Alacrity’ by which he had
made journeys in former times. “What, Foker!” cried out
Pendennis—“Hullo! Pen, my boy!” said the other, and he waved his whip
by way of amity and salute to Arthur, who was very glad to see his
queer friend’s kind old face. Mr. Doolan had a great respect for Pen
who had an acquaintance in such a grand cab; and Pen was greatly
excited and pleased to be at liberty and in London. He asked Doolan to
come and dine with him at the Covent Garden Coffee-house, where he put
up: he called a cab and rattled away thither in the highest spirits. He
was glad to see the bustling waiter and polite bowing landlord again;
and asked for the landlady, and missed the old Boots and would have
liked to shake hands with everybody. He had a hundred pounds in his
pocket. He dressed himself in his very best; dined in the coffee-room
with a modest pint of sherry (for he was determined to be very
economical), and went to the theatre adjoining.
The lights and the music, the crowd and the gaiety, charmed and
exhilarated Pen, as those sights will do young fellows from college and
the country, to whom they are tolerably new. He laughed at the jokes;
he applauded the songs, to the delight of some of the dreary old
habitues of the boxes, who had ceased long ago to find the least
excitement in their place of nightly resort, and were pleased to see
any one so fresh, and so much amused. At the end of the first piece, he
went and strutted about the lobbies of the theatre, as if he was in a
resort of the highest fashion. What tired frequenter of the London pave
is there that cannot remember having had similar early delusions, and
would not call them back again? Here was young Foker again, like an
ardent votary of pleasure as he was. He was walking with Grandy
Tiptoff, of the Household Brigade, Lord Tiptoff’s brother, and Lord
Colchicum, Captain Tiptoff’s uncle, a venerable peer, who had been a
man of pleasure since the first French Revolution. Foker rushed upon
Pen with eagerness, and insisted that the latter should come into his
private box, where a lady with the longest ringlets and the fairest
shoulders, was seated. This was Miss Blenkinsop, the eminent actress of
high comedy; and in the back of the box snoozing in a wig, sate old
Blenkinsop, her papa. He was described in the theatrical prints as the
“veteran Blenkinsop”—“the useful Blenkinsop”—“that old favourite of the
public, Blenkinsop”—those parts in the drama, which are called the
heavy fathers, were usually assigned to this veteran, who, indeed,
acted the heavy father in public, as in private life.
At this time, it being about eleven o’clock, Mrs. Pendennis was gone to
bed at Fairoaks, and wondering whether her dearest Arthur was at rest
after his journey. At this time Laura, too, was awake. And at this time
yesterday night, as the coach rolled over silent commons, where cottage
windows twinkled, and by darkling woods under calm starlit skies, Pen
was vowing to reform and to resist temptation, and his heart was at
home. Meanwhile the farce was going on very successfully, and Mrs.
Leary, in a hussar jacket and braided pantaloons, was enchanting the
audience with her archness, her lovely figure, and her delightful
ballads.
Pen, being new to the town, would have liked to listen to Mrs. Leary;
but the other people in the box did not care about her song or her
pantaloons, and kept up an incessant chattering. Tiptoff knew where her
maillots came from. Colchicum saw her when she came out in ’14. Miss
Blenkinsop said she sang out of all tune, to the pain and astonishment
of Pen, who thought that she was as beautiful as an angel, and that she
sang like a nightingale; and when Hoppus came on as Sir Harcourt
Featherby, the young man of the piece, the gentlemen in the box
declared that Hoppus was getting too stale, and Tiptoff was for
flinging Miss Blenkinsop’s bouquet to him.
“Not for the world,” cried the daughter of the veteran Blenkinsop;
“Lord Colchicum gave it to me.”
Pen remembered that nobleman’s name, and with a bow and a blush said he
believed he had to thank Lord Colchicum for having proposed him at the
Megatherium Club, at the request of his uncle, Major Pendennis.
“What, you’re Wigsby’s nephew, are you?” said the peer. “I beg your
pardon, we always call him Wigsby.” Pen blushed to hear his venerable
uncle called by such a familiar name. “We balloted you in last week,
didn’t we? Yes, last Wednesday night. Your uncle wasn’t there.”
Here was delightful news for Pen! He professed himself very much
obliged indeed to Lord Colchicum, and made him a handsome speech of
thanks, to which the other listened with his double opera-glass up to
his eyes. Pen was full of excitement at the idea of being a member of
this polite Club.
“Don’t be always looking at that box, you naughty creature,” cried Miss
Blenkinsop.
“She’s a dev’lish fine woman, that Mirabel,” said Tiptoff; “though
Mirabel was a d——d fool to marry her.”
“A stupid old spooney,” said the peer.
“Mirabel!” cried out Pendennis.
“Ha! ha!” laughed out Harry Foker. “We’ve heard of her before, haven’t
we, Pen?”
It was Pen’s first love. It was Miss Fotheringay. The year before she
had been led to the altar by Sir Charles Mirabel, G.C.B., and formerly
envoy to the Court of Pumpernickel, who had taken so active a part in
the negotiations before the Congress of Swammerdam, and signed, on
behalf of H.B.M., the Peace of Pultusk.
“Emily was always as stupid as an owl,” said Miss Blenkinsop.
“Eh! Eh! pas si bete,” the old Peer said.
“Oh, for shame!” cried the actress, who did not in the least know what
he meant.
And Pen looked out and beheld his first love once again—and wondered
how he ever could have loved her.
Thus on the very first night of his arrival in London, Mr. Arthur
Pendennis found himself introduced to a Club, to an actress of genteel
comedy and a heavy father of the Stage, and to a dashing society of
jovial blades, old and young; for my Lord Colchicum, though stricken in
years, bald of head and enfeebled in person, was still indefatigable in
the pursuit of enjoyment, and it was the venerable Viscount’s boast
that he could drink as much claret as the youngest member of the
society which he frequented. He lived with the youth about town: he
gave them countless dinners at Richmond and Greenwich: an enlightened
patron of the drama in all languages and of the Terpsichorean art, he
received dramatic professors of all nations at his banquets—English
from the Covent Garden and Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket,
French from their own pretty little theatre, or the boards of the Opera
where they danced. And at his villa on the Thames, this pillar of the
State gave sumptuous entertainments to scores of young men of fashion,
who very affably consorted with the ladies and gentlemen of the
greenroom—with the former chiefly, for Viscount Colchicum preferred
their society as more polished and gay than that of their male
brethren.
Pen went the next day and paid his entrance-money at the Club, which
operation carried off exactly one-third of his hundred pounds; and took
possession of the edifice, and ate his luncheon there with immense
satisfaction. He plunged into an easy-chair in the library, and tried
to read all the magazines. He wondered whether the members were looking
at him, and that they could dare to keep on their hats in such fine
rooms. He sate down and wrote a letter to Fairoaks on the Club paper,
and said, what a comfort this place would be to him after his day’s
work was over. He went over to his uncle’s lodgings in Bury Street with
some considerable tremor, and in compliance with his mother’s earnest
desire, that he should instantly call on Major Pendennis; and was not a
little relieved to find that the Major had not yet returned to town.
His apartments were blank. Brown hollands covered his library-table,
and bills and letters lay on the mantelpiece, grimly awaiting the
return of their owner. The Major was on the Continent, the landlady of
the house said, at Badnbadn, with the Marcus of Steyne. Pen left his
card upon the shelf with the rest. Fairoaks was written on it still.
When the Major returned to London, which he did in time for the fogs of
November, after enjoying which he proposed to spend Christmas with some
friends in the country, he found another card of Arthur’s, on which
Lamb Court, Temple, was engraved, and a note from that young gentleman
and from his mother, stating that he was come to town, was entered a
member of the Upper Temple, and was reading hard for the bar.
Lamb Court, Temple:—where was it? Major Pendennis remembered that some
ladies of fashion used to talk of dining with Mr. Ayliffe, the
barrister, who was “in society,” and who lived there in the King’s
Bench, of which prison there was probably a branch in the Temple, and
Ayliffe was very likely an officer. Mr. Deuceace, Lord Crabs’s son, had
also lived there, he recollected. He despatched Morgan to find out
where Lamb Court was, and to report upon the lodging selected by Mr.
Arthur. That alert messenger had little difficulty in discovering Mr.
Pen’s abode. Discreet Morgan had in his time traced people far more
difficult to find than Arthur.
“What sort of a place is it, Morgan?” asked the Major, out of the
bed-curtains in Bury Street the next morning, as the valet was
arranging his toilette in the deep yellow London fog.
“I should say rayther a shy place,” said Mr. Morgan. “The lawyers lives
there, and has their names on the doors. Mr. Harthur lives three pair
high, sir. Mr. Warrington lives there too, sir.”
“Suffolk Warringtons! I shouldn’t wonder: a good family,” thought the
Major. “The cadets of many of our good families follow the robe as a
profession. Comfortable rooms, eh?”
“Honly saw the outside of the door, sir, with Mr. Warrington’s name and
Mr. Arthur’s painted up, and a piece of paper with ‘Back at 6;’ but I
couldn’t see no servant, sir.”
“Economical at any rate,” said the Major.
“Very, sir. Three pair, sir. Nasty black staircase as ever I see.
Wonder how a gentleman can live in such a place.”
“Pray, who taught you where gentlemen should or should not live,
Morgan? Mr. Arthur, sir, is going to study for the bar, sir,” the Major
said with much dignity; and closed the conversation and began to array
himself in the yellow fog.
“Boys will be boys,” the mollified uncle thought to himself. “He has
written to me a devilish good letter. Colchicum says he has had him to
dine, and thinks him a gentlemanlike lad. His mother is one of the best
creatures in the world. If he has sown his wild oats, and will stick to
his business, he may do well yet. Think of Charley Mirabel, the old
fool, marrying that flame of his! that Fotheringay! He doesn’t like to
come here until I give him leave, and puts it in a very manly nice way.
I was deuced angry with him, after his Oxbridge escapades—and showed it
too when he was here before—Gad, I’ll go and see him, hang me if I
don’t.”
And having ascertained from Morgan that he could reach the Temple
without much difficulty, and that a city omnibus would put him down at
the gate, the Major one day after breakfast at his Club—not the
Polyanthus, whereof Mr. Pen was just elected a member, but another
Club: for the Major was too wise to have a nephew as a constant inmate
of any house where he was in the habit of passing his time—the Major
one day entered one of those public vehicles, and bade the conductor to
put him down at the gate of the Upper Temple.
When Major Pendennis reached that dingy portal it was about twelve
o’clock in the day; and he was directed by a civil personage with a
badge and a white apron, through some dark alleys, and under various
melancholy archways into courts each more dismal than the other, until
finally he reached Lamb Court. If it was dark in Pall Mail, what was it
in Lamb Court? Candles were burning in many of the rooms there—in the
pupil-room of Mr. Hodgeman, the special pleader, where six pupils were
scribbling declarations under the tallow; in Sir Hokey Walker’s clerk’s
room, where the clerk, a person far more gentlemanlike and cheerful in
appearance than the celebrated counsel, his master, was conversing in a
patronising manner with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door;
and in Curling the wigmaker’s melancholy shop, where, from behind the
feeble glimmer of a couple of lights, large serpents’ and judges’ wigs
were looming drearily, with the blank blocks looking at the lamp-post
in the court. Two little clerks were playing at toss-halfpenny under
that lamp. A laundress in pattens passed in at one door, a newspaper
boy issued from another. A porter, whose white apron was faintly
visible, paced up and down. It would be impossible to conceive a place
more dismal, and the Major shuddered to think that any one should
select such a residence. “Good Ged!” he said, “the poor boy mustn’t
live on here.”
The feeble and filthy oil-lamps, with which the staircases of the Upper
Temple are lighted of nights, were of course not illuminating the
stairs by day, and Major Pendennis, having read with difficulty his
nephew’s name under Mr. Warrington’s on the wall of No. 6, found still
greater difficulty in climbing the abominable black stairs, up the
banisters of which, which contributed their damp exudations to his
gloves, he groped painfully until he came to the third story. A candle
was in the passage of one of the two sets of rooms; the doors were
open, and the names of Mr. Warrington and Mr. A. Pendennis were very
clearly visible to the Major as he went in. An Irish charwoman, with a
pail and broom, opened the door for the Major.
“Is that the beer?” cried out a great voice: “give us hold of it.”
The gentleman who was speaking was seated on a table, unshorn and
smoking a short pipe; in a farther chair sate Pen, with a cigar, and
his legs near the fire. A little boy, who acted as the clerk of these
gentlemen, was grinning in the Major’s face, at the idea of his being
mistaken for beer. Here, upon the third floor, the rooms were somewhat
lighter, and the Major could see place.
“Pen, my boy, it’s I—it’s your uncle,” he said, choking with the smoke.
But as most young men of fashion used the weed, he pardoned the
practice easily enough.
Mr. Warrington got up from the table, and Pen, in a very perturbed
manner, from his chair. “Beg your pardon for mistaking you,” said
Warrington, in a frank, loud voice. “Will you take a cigar, sir? Clear
those things off the chair, Pidgeon, and pull it round to the fire.”
Pen flung his cigar into the grate; and was pleased with the cordiality
with which his uncle shook him by the hand. As soon as he could speak
for the stairs and the smoke, the Major began to ask Pen very kindly
about himself and about his mother; for blood is blood, and he was
pleased once more to see the boy.
Pen gave his news, and then introduced Mr. Warrington—an old Boniface
man—whose chambers he shared.
The Major was quite satisfied when he heard that Mr. Warrington was a
younger son of Sir Miles Warrington of Suffolk. He had served with an
uncle of his in India and in New South Wales, years ago.
“Took a sheep-farm there, sir, made a fortune—better thing than law or
soldiering,” Warrington said. “Think I shall go there too.” And here
the expected beer coming in, in a tankard with a glass bottom, Mr.
Warrington, with a laugh, said he supposed the Major would not have
any, and took a long, deep draught himself, after which he wiped his
wrist across his beard with great satisfaction. The young man was
perfectly easy and unembarrassed. He was dressed in a ragged old
shooting jacket, and had a bristly blue beard. He was drinking beer
like a coalheaver, and yet you couldn’t but perceive that he was a
gentleman.
When he had sate for a minute or two after his draught he went out of
the room, leaving it to Pen and his uncle, that they might talk over
family affairs were they so inclined.
“Rough and ready, your chum seems,” the Major said. “Somewhat different
from your dandy friends at Oxbridge.”
“Times are altered,” Arthur replied, with a blush. “Warrington is only
just called, and has no business, but he knows law pretty well; and
until I can afford to read with a pleader, I use his books, and get his
help.”
“Is that one of the books?” the Major asked, with a smile. A French
novel was lying at the foot of Pen’s chair.
“This is not a working day, sir,” the lad said. “We were out very late
at a party last night—at Lady Whiston’s,” Pen added, knowing his
uncle’s weakness. “Everybody in town was there except you, sir; Counts,
Ambassadors, Turks, Stars and Garters—I don’t know who—it’s all in the
paper—and my name, too,” said Pen, with great glee. “I met an old flame
of mine there, sir,” he added, with a laugh. “You know whom I mean,
sir,—Lady Mirabel—to whom I was introduced over again. She shook hands,
and was gracious enough. I may thank you for being out of that scrape,
sir. She presented me to the husband, too—an old beau in a star and a
blonde wig. He does not seem very wise. She has asked me to call on
her, sir: and I may go now without any fear of losing my heart.”
“What, we have had some new loves, have we?” the Major asked in high
good-humour.
“Some two or three,” Mr. Pen said, laughing. “But I don’t put on my
grand serieux any more, sir. That goes off after the first flame.”
“Very right, my dear boy. Flames and darts and passion, and that sort
of thing, do very well for a lad: and you were but a lad when that
affair with the Fotheringill—Fotheringay—(what’s her name?) came off.
But a man of the world gives up those follies. You still may do very
well. You have been bit, but you may recover. You are heir to a little
independence; which everybody fancies is a doosid deal more. You have a
good name, good wits, good manners, and a good person—and, begad! I
don’t see why you shouldn’t marry a woman with money—get into
Parliament—distinguish yourself, and—and, in fact, that sort of thing.
Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman: and a
devilish deal pleasanter to sit down to a good dinner, than to a scrag
of mutton in lodgings. Make up your mind to that. A woman with a good
jointure is a doosid deal easier a profession than the law, let me tell
you that. Look out; I shall be on the watch for you: and I shall die
content, my boy, if I can see you with a good ladylike wife, and a good
carriage, and a good pair of horses, living in society, and seeing your
friends, like a gentleman. Would you like to vegetate like your dear
good mother at Fairoaks? Dammy, sir! life, without money and the best
society isn’t worth having.” It was thus this affectionate uncle spoke,
and expounded to Pen his simple philosophy.
“What would my mother and Laura say to this, I wonder?” thought the
lad. Indeed old Pendennis’s morals were not their morals, nor was his
wisdom theirs.
This affecting conversation between uncle and nephew had scarcely
concluded, when Warrington came out of his bedroom, no longer in rags,
but dressed like a gentleman, straight and tall and perfectly frank and
good-humoured. He did the honours of his ragged sitting-room with as
much ease as if it had been the finest apartment in London. And queer
rooms they were in which the Major found his nephew. The carpet was
full of holes—the table stained with many circles of Warrington’s
previous ale-pots. There was a small library of law-books, books of
poetry, and of mathematics, of which he was very fond. (He had been one
of the hardest livers and hardest readers of his time at Oxbridge,
where the name of Stunning Warrington was yet famous for beating
bargemen, pulling matches, winning prizes, and drinking milk-punch.) A
print of the old college hung up over the mantelpiece, and some
battered volumes of Plato, bearing its well-known arms, were on the
book-shelves. There were two easy-chairs; a standing reading-desk piled
with bills; a couple of very meagre briefs on a broken-legged
study-table. Indeed, there was scarcely any article of furniture that
had not been in the wars, and was not wounded. “Look here, sir, here is
Pen’s room. He is a dandy, and has got curtains to his bed, and wears
shiny boots, and a silver dressing-case.” Indeed, Pen’s room was rather
coquettishly arranged, and a couple of neat prints of opera-dancers,
besides a drawing of Fairoaks, hung on the walls. In Warrington’s room
there was scarcely any article of furniture, save a great shower-bath,
and a heap of books by the bedside: where he lay upon straw like
Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe, and read half through the night his
favourite poetry or mathematics.
When he had completed his simple toilette, Mr. Warrington came out of
this room, and proceeded to the cupboard to search for his breakfast.
“Might I offer you a mutton-chop, sir? We cook ’em ourselves hot and
hot: and I am teaching Pen the first principles of law, cooking, and
morality at the same time. He’s a lazy beggar, sir, and too much of a
dandy.”
And so saying, Mr. Warrington wiped a gridiron with a piece of paper,
put it on the fire, and on it two mutton-chops, and took from the
cupboard a couple of plates and some knives and silver forks, and
castors.
“Say but a word, Major Pendennis,” he said; “there’s another chop in
the cupboard, or Pidgeon shall go out and get you anything you like.”
Major Pendennis sate in wonder and amusement, but he said he had just
breakfasted, and wouldn’t have any lunch. So Warrington cooked the
chops, and popped them hissing hot upon the plates.
Pen fell to at his chop with a good appetite, after looking up at his
uncle, and seeing that gentleman was still in good-humour.
“You see, sir,” Warrington said, “Mrs. Flanagan isn’t here to do ’em,
and we can’t employ the boy, for the little beggar is all day occupied
cleaning Pen’s boots. And now for another swig at the beer. Pen drinks
tea; it’s only fit for old women.”
“And so you were at Lady Whiston’s last night,” the Major said, not in
truth knowing what observation to make to this rough diamond.
“I at Lady Whiston’s! not such a flat, sir. I don’t care for female
society. In fact it bores me. I spent my evening philosophically at the
Back Kitchen.”
“The Back Kitchen? indeed!” said the Major.
“I see you don’t know what it means,” Warrington said. “Ask Pen. He was
there after Lady Whiston’s. Tell Major Pendennis about the Back
Kitchen, Pen—don’t be ashamed of yourself.”
So Pen said it was a little eccentric society of men of letters and men
about town, to which he had been presented; and the Major began to
think that the young fellow had seen a good deal of the world since his
arrival in London.