Which is passed in the Neighbourhood of Ludgate Hill
Our imprisoned Captain announced, in smart and emphatic language in his
prospectus, that the time had come at last when it was necessary for
the gentlemen of England to band together in defence of their common
rights and their glorious order, menaced on all sides by foreign
revolutions, by intestine radicalism, by the artful calumnies of
mill-owners and cotton-lords, and the stupid hostility of the masses
whom they gulled and led. “The ancient monarchy was insulted,” the
Captain said, “by a ferocious republican rabble. The Church was
deserted by envious dissent, and undermined by stealthy infidelity. The
good institutions, which had made our country glorious, and the name of
English Gentleman the proudest in the world, were left without defence,
and exposed to assault and contumely from men to whom no sanctuary was
sacred, for they believed in nothing holy; no history venerable, for
they were too ignorant to have heard of the past; and no law was
binding which they were strong enough to break, when their leaders gave
the signal for plunder. It was because the kings of France mistrusted
their gentlemen,” Mr. Shandon remarked, “that the monarchy of Saint
Louis went down: it was because the people of England still believed in
their gentlemen, that this country encountered and overcame the
greatest enemy a nation ever met: it was because we were headed by
gentlemen, that the Eagles retreated before us from the Donro to the
Garonne: it was a gentleman who broke the line at Trafalgar, and swept
the plain of Waterloo.”
Bungay nodded his head in a knowing manner, and winked his eyes when
the Captain came to the Waterloo passage: and Warrington burst out
laughing.
“You see how our venerable friend Bungay is affected,” Shandon said,
slily looking up from his papers—“that’s your true sort of test. I have
used the Duke of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo a hundred times,
and I never knew the Duke to fail.”
The Captain then went on to confess, with much candour, that up to the
present time the gentlemen of England, confident of their right, and
careless of those who questioned it, had left the political interest of
their order as they did the management of their estates, or the
settlement of their legal affairs, to persons affected to each peculiar
service, and had permitted their interests to be represented in the
press by professional proctors and advocates. That time Shandon
professed to consider was now gone by: the gentlemen of England must be
their own champions: the declared enemies of their order were brave,
strong, numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their foes in the
field: they must not be belied and misrepresented by hireling
advocates: they must not have Grub Street publishing Gazettes from
Whitehall; “that’s a dig at Bacon’s people, Mr. Bungay,” said Shandon,
turning round to the publisher. Bungay clapped his stick on the floor.
“Hang him, pitch into him, Capting,” he said with exultation: and
turning to Warrington, wagged his dull head more vehemently than ever,
and said, “For a slashing article, sir, there’s nobody like the
Capting—no-obody like him.”
The prospectus-writer went on to say that some gentlemen, whose names
were, for obvious reasons, not brought before the public (at which Mr.
Warrington began to laugh again), had determined to bring forward a
journal, of which the principles were so-and-so. “These men are proud
of their order, and anxious to uphold it,” cried out Captain Shandon,
flourishing his paper with a grin. “They are loyal to their Sovereign,
by faithful conviction and ancestral allegiance; they love their
Church, where they would have their children worship, and for which
their forefathers bled; they love their country, and would keep it what
the gentlemen of England—yes, the gentlemen of England (we’ll have that
in large caps, Bungay, my boy) have made it—the greatest and freest in
the world: and as the names of some of them are appended to the deed
which secured our liberties at Runnymede—”
“What’s that?” asked Mr. Bungay.
“An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword-hilt,” Pen said, with
great gravity.
“It’s the Habeas Corpus, Mr. Bungay,” Warrington said, on which the
publisher answered, “All right, I dare say,” and yawned, though he
said, “Go on, Capting.”
“—at Runnymede; they are ready to defend that freedom to-day with sword
and pen, and now, as then, to rally round the old laws and liberties of
England.”
“Bravo!” cried Warrington. The little child stood wondering; the lady
was working silently, and looking with fond admiration. “Come here,
little Mary,” said Warrington, and patted the child’s fair curls with
his large hand. But she shrank back from his rough caress, and
preferred to go and take refuge at Pen’s knee, and play with his fine
watch-chain: and Pen was very much pleased that she came to him; for he
was very soft-hearted and simple, though he concealed his gentleness
under a shy and pompous demeanour. So she clambered up on his lap,
whilst her father continued to read his programme.
“You were laughing,” the Captain said to Warrington, “about ‘the
obvious reasons’ which I mentioned. Now, I’ll show ye what they are, ye
unbelieving heathen. ‘We have said,’” he went on, “‘that we cannot give
the names of the parties engaged in this undertaking, and that there
were obvious reasons for that concealment. We number influential
friends in both Houses of the Senate, and have secured allies in every
diplomatic circle in Europe. Our sources of intelligence are such as
cannot, by any possibility, be made public—and, indeed, such as no
other London or European journal could, by any chance, acquire. But
this we are free to say, that the very earliest information connected
with the movement of English and Continental politics will be found
only in the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette, The Statesman and the
Capitalist, the Country Gentleman and the Divine, will be amongst our
readers, because our writers are amongst them. We address ourselves to
the higher circles of society: we care not to disown it—the Pall Mall
Gazette is written by gentlemen for gentlemen; its conductors speak to
the classes in which they live and were born. The field-preacher has
his journal, the radical free-thinker has his journal: why should the
Gentlemen of England be unrepresented in the Press?’”
Mr. Shandon then went on with much modesty to descant upon the literary
and fashionable departments of the Pall Mall Gazette, which were to be
conducted by gentlemen of acknowledged reputation; men famous at the
Universities (at which Mr Pendennis could scarcely help laughing and
blushing), known at the Clubs, and of the Society which they described.
He pointed out delicately to advertisers that there would be no such
medium as the Pall Mall Gazette for giving publicity to their sales;
and he eloquently called upon the nobility of England, the baronetage
of England, the revered clergy of England, the bar of England, the
matrons, the daughters, the homes and hearths of England, to rally
round the good old cause; and Bungay at the conclusion of the reading
woke up from a second snooze in which he had indulged himself, and
again said it was all right.
The reading of the prospectus concluded, the gentlemen present entered
into some details regarding the political and literary management of
the paper, and Mr. Bungay sate by listening and nodding his head, as if
he understood what was the subject of their conversation, and approved
of their opinions. Bungay’s opinions, in truth, were pretty simple. He
thought the Captain could write the best smashing article in England.
He wanted the opposition house of Bacon smashed, and it was his opinion
that the Captain could do that business. If the Captain had written a
letter of Junius on a sheet of paper, or copied a part of the Church
Catechism, Mr. Bungay would have been perfectly contented, and have
considered that the article was a smashing article. And he pocketed the
papers with the greatest satisfaction: and he not only paid for the
MS., as we have seen, but he called little Mary to him, and gave her a
penny as he went away.
The reading of the manuscript over, the party engaged in general
conversation, Shandon leading with a jaunty fashionable air in
compliment to the two guests who sate with him and, and who, by their
appearance and manner, he presumed to be persons of the beau monde. He
knew very little indeed of the great world, but he had seen it, and
made the most of what he had seen. He spoke of the characters of the
day, and great personages of the fashion, with easy familiarity and
jocular allusions, as if it had been his habit to live amongst them. He
told anecdotes of their private life, and of conversations he had had,
and entertainments at which he had been present, and at which such and
such a thing occurred. Pen was amused to hear the shabby prisoner in a
tattered dressing-gown talking glibly about the great of the land. Mrs.
Shandon was always delighted when her husband told these tales, and
believed in them fondly every one. She did not want to mingle in the
fashionable world herself, she was not clever enough; but the great
Society was the very place for her Charles: he shone in it: he was
respected in it. Indeed, Shandon had once been asked to dinner by the
Earl of X; his wife treasured the invitation-card in her workbox at
that very day.
Mr. Bungay presently had enough of this talk and got up to take leave,
whereupon Warrington and Pen rose to depart with the publisher, though
the latter would have liked to stay to make a further acquaintance with
this family, who interested him and touched him. He said something
about hoping for permission to repeat his visit, upon which Shandon,
with a rueful grin, said he was always to be found at home, and should
be delighted to see Mr. Pennington.
“I’ll see you to my park-gate, gentlemen,” said Captain Shandon,
seizing his hat, in spite of a deprecatory look and a faint cry of
“Charles” from Mrs. Shandon. And the Captain, in shabby slippers,
shuffled out before his guests, leading the way through the dismal
passages of the prison. His hand was already fiddling with his
waistcoat pocket, where Bungay’s five-pound note was, as he took leave
of the three gentlemen at the wicket; one of them, Mr. Arthur
Pendennis, being greatly relieved when he was out of the horrid place,
and again freely treading the flags of Farringdon Street.
Mrs. Shandon sadly went on with her work at the window looking into the
court. She saw Shandon with a couple of men at his heels run rapidly in
the direction of the prison tavern. She had hoped to have had him to
dinner herself that day: there was a piece of meat, and some salad in a
basin, on the ledge outside of the window of their room which she had
expected that she and little Mary were to share with the child’s
father. But there was no chance of that now. He would be in that tavern
until the hours for closing it; then he would go and play at cards or
drink in some other man’s room and come back silent, with glazed eyes,
reeling a little on his walk, that his wife might nurse him. Oh, what
varieties of pain do we not make our women suffer!
So Mrs. Shandon went to the cupboard, and, in lieu of a dinner, made
herself some tea. And in those varieties of pain of which we spoke
anon, what a part of confidante has that poor tea-pot played ever since
the kindly plant was introduced among us! What myriads of women have
cried over it, to be sure! What sick-beds it has smoked by! What
fevered lips have received refreshment from out of it! Nature meant
very gently by women when she made that tea-plant; and with a little
thought what a series of pictures and groups the fancy may conjure up
and assemble round the tea-pot and cup! Melissa and Sacharissa are
talking love-secrets over it. Poor Polly has it and her lover’s letters
upon the table; his letters who was her lover yesterday, and when it
was with pleasure, not despair, she wept over them. Mary tripping
noiselessly comes into her mother’s bedroom, bearing a cup of the
consoler to the widow who will take no other food, Ruth is busy
concocting it for her husband, who is coming home from the
harvest-field—one could fill a page with hints for such
pictures;—finally, Mrs. Shandon and little Mary sit down and drink
their tea together, while the Captain goes out and takes his pleasure.
She cares for nothing else but that, when her husband is away.
A gentleman with whom we are already slightly acquainted, Mr. Jack
Finucane, a townsman of Captain Shandon’s, found the Captain’s wife and
little Mary (for whom Jack always brought a sweetmeat in his pocket)
over this meal. Jack thought Shandon the greatest of created geniuses,
had had one or two helps from the good-natured prodigal, who had always
a kind word, and sometimes a guinea for any friend in need; and never
missed a day in seeing his patron. He was ready to run Shandon’s
errands and transact his money-business with publishers and newspaper
editors, duns, creditors, holders of Shandon’s acceptances, gentlemen
disposed to speculate in those securities, and to transact the thousand
little affairs of an embarrassed Irish gentleman. I never knew an
embarrassed Irish gentleman yet, but he had an aide-de-camp of his own
nation, likewise in circumstances of pecuniary discomfort. That
aide-de-camp has subordinates of his own, who again may have other
insolvent dependents—all through his life our Captain marched at the
head of a ragged staff, who shared in the rough fortunes of their
chieftain.
“He won’t have that five-pound note very long, I bet a guinea,” Mr.
Bungay said of the Captain, as he and his two companions walked away
from the prison; and the publisher judged rightly, for when Mrs.
Shandon came to empty her husband’s pockets, she found but a couple of
shillings, and a few halfpence out of the morning’s remittance. Shandon
had given a pound to one follower; had sent a leg of mutton and
potatoes and beer to an acquaintance in the poor side of the prison;
had paid an outstanding bill at the tavern where he had changed his
five-pound note; had had a dinner with two friends there, to whom he
lost sundry half-crowns at cards afterwards; so that the night left him
as poor as the morning had found him.
The publisher and the two gentlemen had had some talk together after
quitting Shandon, and Warrington reiterated to Bungay what he had said
to his rival, Bacon, viz., that Pen was a high fellow, of great genius,
and what was more, well with the great world, and related to “no end”
of the peerage. Bungay replied that he should be happy to have dealings
with Mr. Pendennis, and hoped to have the pleasure of seeing both gents
to cut mutton with him before long, and so, with mutual politeness and
protestations, they parted.
“It is hard to see such a man as Shandon,” Pen said, musing, and
talking that night over the sight which he had witnessed, “of
accomplishments so multifarious, and of such an undoubted talent and
humour, an inmate of a gaol for half his time, and a bookseller’s
hanger-on when out of prison.”
“I am a bookseller’s hanger-on—you are going to try your paces as a
hack,” Warrington said with a laugh. “We are all hacks upon some road
or other. I would rather be myself, than Paley our neighbour in
chambers: who has as much enjoyment of his life as a mole. A deuced
deal of undeserved compassion has been thrown away upon what you call
your bookseller’s drudge.”
“Much solitary pipes and ale make a cynic of you,” said Pen “You are a
Diogenes by a beer-barrel, Warrington. No man shall tell me that a man
of genius, as Shandon is, ought to be driven by such a vulgar
slave-driver, as yonder Mr. Bungay, whom we have just left, who fattens
on the profits of the other’s brains, and enriches himself out of his
journeyman’s labour. It makes me indignant to see a gentleman the serf
of such a creature as that, of a man who can’t speak the language that
he lives by, who is not fit to black Shandon’s boots.”
“So you have begun already to gird at the publishers, and to take your
side amongst our order. Bravo, Pen, my be boy!” Warrington answered,
laughing still. “What have you got to say against Bungay’s relations
with Shandon? Was it the publisher, think you, who sent the author to
prison? Is it Bungay who is tippling away the five-pound note which we
saw just now, or Shandon?”
“Misfortune drives a man into bad company,” Pen said. “It is easy to
cry ‘Fie!’ against a poor fellow who has no society but such as he
finds in a prison; and no resource except forgetfulness and the bottle.
We must deal kindly with the eccentricities of genius, and remember
that the very ardour and enthusiasm of temperament which makes the
author delightful often leads the man astray.”
“A fiddlestick about men of genius!” Warrington cried out, who was a
very severe moralist upon some points, though possibly a very bad
practitioner. “I deny that there are so many geniuses as people who
whimper about the fate of men of letters assert there are. There are
thousands of clever fellows in the world who could, if they would, turn
verses, write articles, read books, and deliver a judgment upon them;
the talk of professional critics and writers is not a whit more
brilliant, or profound, or amusing, than that of any other society of
educated people. If a lawyer, or a soldier, or a parson, outruns his
income, and does not pay his bills, he must go to gaol; and an author
must go, too. If an author fuddles himself, I don’t know why he should
be let off a headache the next morning,—if he orders a coat from the
tailor’s, why he shouldn’t pay for it.”
“I would give him more money to buy coats,” said Pen, smiling. “I
suppose I should like to belong to a well-dressed profession. I protest
against that wretch of a middle-man whom I see between Genius and his
great landlord, the Public, and who stops more than half of the
labourer’s earnings and fame.”
“I am a prose labourer,” Warrington said; “you, my boy, are a poet in a
small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are authorised to be
flighty. What is it you want? Do you want a body of capitalists that
shall be forced to purchase the works of all authors, who may present
themselves, manuscript in hand? Everybody who writes his epic, every
driveller who can or can’t spell, and produces his novel or his
tragedy,—are they all to come and find a bag of sovereigns in exchange
for their worthless reams of paper? Who is to settle what is good or
bad, saleable or otherwise? Will you give the buyer leave, in fine, to
purchase or not? Why, sir, when Johnson sate behind the screen at Saint
John’s Gate, and took his dinner apart, because he was too shabby and
poor to join the literary bigwigs who were regaling themselves, round
Mr. Cave’s best table-cloth, the tradesman was doing him no wrong. You
couldn’t force the publisher to recognise the man of genius in the
young man who presented himself before him, ragged, gaunt, and hungry.
Rags are not a proof of genius; whereas capital is absolute, as times
go, and is perforce the bargain-master. It has a right to deal with the
literary inventor as with any other;—if I produce a novelty in the book
trade, I must do the best I can with it; but I can no more force Mr.
Murray to purchase my book of travels or sermons, than I can compel Mr.
Tattersall to give me a hundred guineas for my horse. I may have my own
ideas of the value of my Pegasus, and think him the most wonderful of
animals; but the dealer has a right to his opinion, too, and may want a
lady’s horse, or a cob for a heavy timid rider, or a sound hack for the
road, and my beast won’t suit him.”
“You deal in metaphors, Warrington,” Pen said; “but you rightly say
that you are very prosaic. Poor Shandon! There is something about the
kindness of that man, and the gentleness of that sweet creature of a
wife, which touches me profoundly. I like him, I am afraid, better than
a better man.”
“And so do I,” Warrington said. “Let us give him the benefit of our
sympathy, and the pity that is due to his weakness: though I fear that
sort of kindness would be resented as contempt by a more high-minded
man. You see he takes his consolation along with his misfortune, and
one generates the other or balances it, as the way of the world. He is
a prisoner, but he is not unhappy.”
“His genius sings within his prison bars,” Pen said.
“Yes,” Warrington said, bitterly; “Shandon accommodates himself to a
cage pretty well. He ought to be wretched, but he has Jack and Tom to
drink with, and that consoles him: he might have a high place, but, as
he can’t, why, he can drink with Tom and Jack;—he might be providing
for his wife and children, but Thomas and John have got a bottle of
brandy which they want him to taste;—he might pay poor Snip, the
tailor, the twenty pounds which the poor devil wants for his landlord,
but John and Thomas lay their hands upon his purse;—and so he drinks
whilst his tradesman goes to gaol and his family to ruin. Let us pity
the misfortunes of genius, and conspire against the publishing tyrants
who oppress men of letters.”
“What! are you going to have another glass of brandy-and-water?” Pen
said, with a humorous look. It was at the Black Kitchen that the above
philosophical conversation took place between the two young men.
Warrington began to laugh as usual. “Video meliora proboque—I mean,
bring it me hot, with sugar, John,” he said to waiter.
“I would have some more, too, only I don’t want it,” said Pen. “It does
not seem to me, Warrington, that we are much better than our
neighbours.” And Warrington’s last glass having been despatched, the
pair returned to their chambers.
They found a couple of notes in the letter-box, on their return, which
had been sent by their acquaintance of the morning, Mr. Bungay. That
hospitable gentleman presented his compliments to each of the
gentlemen, and requested their pleasure of company at dinner on an
early day, to meet a few literary friends.
“We shall have a grand spread, Warrington. We shall meet all Bungay’s
corps.”
“All except poor Shandon,” said Pen, nodding a good-night to his
friend, and he went into his own little room. The events and
acquaintances of the day had excited him a good deal, and he lay for
some time awake thinking over them, as Warrington’s vigorous and
regular snore from the neighbouring apartment pronounced that that
gentleman was engaged in deep slumber.
Is it true, thought Pendennis, lying on his bed and gazing at a bright
moon without, that lighted up a corner of his dressing-table, and the
frame of a little sketch of Fairoaks drawn by Laura, and hung over his
drawers—is it true that I am going to earn my bread at last, and with
my pen? that I shall impoverish the dear mother no longer; and that I
may gain a name and reputation in the world, perhaps? These are welcome
if they come, thought the young visionary, laughing and blushing to
himself, though alone and in the night, as he thought how dearly he
would relish honour and fame if they could be his. If fortune favours
me, I laud her; if she frowns, I resign her. I pray Heaven I may be
honest if I fail, or if I succeed. I pray Heaven I may tell the truth
as far as I know it: that I mayn’t swerve from it through flattery, or
interest, or personal enmity, or party prejudice. Dearest old mother,
what a pride will you have, if I can do anything worthy of our name I
and you, Laura, you won’t scorn me as the worthless idler and
spendthrift, when you see that I—when I have achieved a—psha! what an
Alnaschar I am because I have made five pounds by my poems, and am
engaged to write half a dozen articles for a newspaper. He went on with
these musings, more happy and hopeful, and in a humbler frame of mind,
than he had felt to be for many a day. He thought over the errors and
idleness, the passions, extravagances, disappointments, of his wayward
youth: he got up from the bed: threw open the window, and looked out
into the night: and then, by some impulse, which we hope was a good
one, he went up and kissed the picture of Fairoaks, and flinging
himself down on his knees by the bed, remained for some time in that
posture of hope and submission. When he rose, it was with streaming
eyes. He had found himself repeating, mechanically, some little words
which he had been accustomed to repeat as a child at his mother’s side,
after the saying of which she would softly take him to his bed and
close the curtains round him, hushing him with a benediction.
The next day, Mr. Pidgeon, their attendant, brought in a large
brown-paper parcel, directed to G. Warrington, Esq., with Mr. Trotter’s
compliments, and a note which Warrington read.
“Pen, you beggar!” roared Warrington to Pen, who was in his own room.
“Hullo!” sung out Pen.
“Come here, you’re wanted,” cried the other, and Pen came out.
“What is it?” said he.
“Catch!” cried Warrington, and flung the parcel at Pen’s head, who
would have been knocked down had he not caught it.
“It’s books for review for the Pall Mall Gazette: pitch into ’em,”
Warrington said. As for Pen, he never had been so delighted in his
life: his hand trembled as he cut the string of the packet, and beheld
within a smart set of new neat calico-bound books—travels, and novels,
and poems.
“Sport the oak, Pidgeon,” said he. “I’m not at home to anybody to-day.”
And he flung into his easy-chair, and hardly gave himself time to drink
his tea, so eager was he to begin to read and to review.