Contains a novel Incident
Some account has been given, in a former part of this story, how Mr.
Pen, during his residence at home, after his defeat at Oxbridge, had
occupied himself with various literary compositions, and amongst other
works, had written the greater part of a novel. This book, written
under the influence of his youthful embarrassments, amatory and
pecuniary, was of a very fierce, gloomy, and passionate sort,—the
Byronic despair, the Wertherian despondency, the mocking bitterness of
Mephistopheles of Faust, were all reproduced and developed in the
character of the hero; for our youth had just been learning the German
language, and imitated, as almost all clever lads do, his favourite
poets and writers. Passages in the volumes once so loved, and now read
so seldom, still bear the mark of the pencil with which he noted them
in those days. Tears fell upon the leaf of the book, perhaps, or
blistered the pages of his manuscript as the passionate young man
dashed his thoughts down. If he took up the books afterwards he had no
ability or wish to sprinkle the leaves with that early dew of former
times: his pencil was no longer eager to score its marks of approval:
but as he looked over the pages of his manuscript, he remembered what
had been overflowing feelings which had caused him to blot it, and the
pain which had inspired the line. If the secret history of books could
be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down
alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become
interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! Many a bitter smile
passed over Pen’s face as he read his novel, and recalled the time and
feelings which gave it birth. How pompous some of the grand passages
appeared; and how weak were others in which he thought he had expressed
his full heart! This page was imitated from a then favourite author, as
he could now clearly see and confess, though he had believed himself to
be writing originally then. As he mused over certain lines he
recollected the place and hour where he wrote them: the ghost of the
dead feeling came back as he mused, and he blushed to review the faint
image. And what meant those blots on the page? As you come in the
desert to a ground where camels’ hoofs are marked in the clay, and
traces of withered herbage are yet visible, you know that water was
there once; so the place in Pen’s mind was no longer green, and the
fons lacrymarum was dried up.
He used this simile one morning to Warrington, as the latter sate over
his pipe and book, and Pen, with much gesticulation according to his
wont when excited, and with a bitter laugh, thumped his manuscript down
on the table, making the tea-things rattle, and, the blue milk dance in
the jug. On the previous night he had taken the manuscript out of a
long-neglected chest, containing old shooting jackets, old Oxbridge
scribbling-books, his old surplice, and battered cap and gown, and
other memorials of youth, school, and home. He read in the volume in
bed until he fell asleep, for the commencement of the tale was somewhat
dull, and he had come home tired from a London evening party.
“By Jove!” said Pen, thumping down his papers, “when I think that these
were written but very few years ago, I am ashamed of my memory. I wrote
this when I believed myself be eternally in love with that little
coquette, Miss Amory. I used to carry down verses to her, and put them
into the hollow of a tree, and dedicate them ‘Amori.’”
“That was a sweet little play upon words,” Warrington remarked, with a
puff “Amory—Amori. It showed proof of scholarship. Let us hear a bit of
the rubbish.” And he stretched over from his easy-chair, and caught
hold of Pen’s manuscript with the fire-tongs, which he was just using
in order to put a coal into his pipe. Thus, in possession of the
volume, he began to read out from the ‘Leaves from the Life-book of
Walter Lorraine.’
“‘False as thou art beautiful! heartless as thou art fair! mockery of
Passion!’ Walter cried, addressing Leonora; ‘what evil spirit hath sent
thee to torture me so? O Leonora.——’”
“Cut that part,” cried out Pen, making a dash at the book, which,
however, his comrade would not release. “Well! don’t read it out at any
rate. That’s about my other flame, my first—Lady Mirabel that is now. I
saw her last night at Lady Whiston’s. She asked me to a party at her
house, and said that, as old friends, we ought to meet oftener. She has
been seeing me any time these two years in town, and never thought of
inviting me before; but seeing Wenham talking to me, and Monsieur
Dubois, the French literary man, who had a dozen orders on, and might
have passed for a Marshal of France, she condescended to invite me. The
Claverings are to be there on the same evening. Won’t it be exciting to
meet one’s two flames at the same table?”
“Two flames!—two heaps of burnt-out cinders,” Warrington said. “Are
both the beauties in this book?”
“Both, or something like them,” Pen said. “Leonora, who marries the
Duke, is the Fotheringay. I drew the Duke from Magnus Charters, with
whom I was at Oxford; it’s a little like him; and Miss Amory is Neaera.
By gad, that first woman! I thought of her as I walked home from Lady
Whiston’s in the moonlight; and the whole early scenes came back to me
as if they had been yesterday. And when I got home, I pulled out the
story which I wrote about her and the other three years ago: do you
know, outrageous as it is, it has some good stuff in it, and if Bungay
won’t publish it, I think Bacon will.”
“That’s the way of poets,” said Warrington. “They fall in love, jilt,
or are jilted; they suffer and they cry out that they suffer more than
any other mortals: and when they have experienced feelings enough they
note them down in a book, and take the book to market. All poets are
humbugs, all literary men are humbugs; directly a man begins to sell
his feelings for money he’s a humbug. If a poet gets a pain in his side
from too good a dinner, he bellows Ai Ai louder than Prometheus.”
“I suppose a poet has a greater sensibility than another man,” said
Pen, with some spirit. “That is what makes him a poet. I suppose that
he sees and feels more keenly: it is that which makes him speak, of
what he feels and sees. You speak eagerly enough in your leading
articles when you espy a false argument in an opponent, or detect a
quack in the House. Paley, who does not care for anything else in the
world, will talk for an hour about a question of law. Give another the
privilege which you take yourself, and the free use of his faculty, and
let him be what nature has made him. Why should not a man sell his
sentimental thoughts as well as you your political ideas, or Paley his
legal knowledge? Each alike is a matter of experience and practice. It
is not money which causes you to perceive a fallacy, or Paley to argue
a point; but a natural or acquired aptitude for that kind of truth: and
a poet sets down his thoughts and experiences upon paper as a painter
does a landscape or a face upon canvas, to the best of his ability, and
according to his particular gift. If ever I think I have the stuff in
me to write an epic, by Jove I will try. If I only feel that I am good
enough to crack a joke or tell a story, I will do that.”
“Not a bad speech, young one,” Warrington said, “but that does not
prevent all poets from being humbugs.”
“What—Homer, Aeschylus, Shakspeare and all?”
“Their names are not to be breathed in the same sense with you
pigmies,” Mr. Warrington said: “there are men and men, sir.”
“Well, Shakspeare was a man who wrote for money, just as you and I do,”
Pen answered, at which Warrington confounded his impudence, and resumed
his pipe and his manuscript.
There was not the slightest doubt then that this document contained a
great deal of Pen’s personal experiences, and that ‘Leaves from the
Life-book of Walter Lorraine’ would never have been written but for
Arthur Pendennis’s own private griefs, passions, and follies. As we
have become acquainted with these in the first volume of his biography,
it will not be necessary to make large extracts from the novel of
‘Walter Lorraine,’ in which the young gentleman had depicted such of
them as he thought were likely to interest the reader, or were suitable
for the purpose of his story.
Now, though he had kept it in his box for nearly half of the period
during which, according to the Horatian maxim, a work of art ought to
lie ripening (a maxim, the truth of which may, by the way, be
questioned altogether), Mr. Pen had not buried his novel for this time,
in order that the work might improve, but because he did not know where
else to bestow it, or had no particular desire to see it. A man who
thinks of putting away a composition for ten years before he shall give
it to the world, or exercise his own maturer judgment upon it, had best
be very sure of the original strength and durability of the work;
otherwise on withdrawing it from its crypt he may find, that like small
wine it has lost what flavour it once had, and is only tasteless when
opened. There are works of all tastes and smacks, the small and the
strong, those that improve by age, and those that won’t bear keeping at
all, but are pleasant at the first draught, when they refresh and
sparkle.
Now Pen had never any notion, even in the time of his youthful
inexperience and fervour of imagination, that the story he was writing
was a masterpiece of composition, or that he was the equal of the great
authors whom he admired; and when he now reviewed his little
performance, he was keenly enough alive to its faults, and pretty
modest regarding its merits. It was not very good, he thought; but it
was as good as most books of the kind that had the run of circulating
libraries and the career of the season. He had critically examined more
than one fashionable novel by the authors of the day then popular, and
he thought that his intellect was as good as theirs and that he could
write the English language as well as those ladies or gentlemen; and as
he now ran over his early performance, he was pleased to find here and
there passages exhibiting both fancy and vigour, and traits, if not of
genius, of genuine passion and feeling. This, too, was Warrington’s
verdict, when that severe critic, after half an hour’s perusal of the
manuscript, and the consumption of a couple of pipes of tobacco, laid
Pen’s book down, yawning portentously. “I can’t read any more of that
balderdash now,” he said; “but it seems to me there is some good stuff
in it, Pen, my boy. There’s a certain greenness and freshness in it
which I like somehow. The bloom disappears off the face of poetry after
you begin to shave. You can’t get up that naturalness and artless rosy
tint in after days. Your cheeks are pale, and have got faded by
exposure to evening parties, and you are obliged to take curling-irons,
and macassar, and the deuce-knows-what to your whiskers; they curl
ambrosially, and you are very grand and genteel, and so forth; but, ah!
Pen, the spring-time was the best.”
“What the deuce have my whiskers to do with the subject in hand?” Pen
said (who, perhaps, may have been nettled by Warrington’s allusion to
those ornaments, which, to say the truth, the young man coaxed, and
curled, and oiled, and perfumed, and petted, in rather an absurd
manner). “Do you think we can do anything with ‘Walter Lorraine’? Shall
we take him to the publishers, or make an auto-da-fe of him?”
“I don’t see what is the good of incremation,” Warrington said, “though
I have a great mind to put him into the fire, to punish your atrocious
humbug and hypocrisy. Shall I burn him indeed? You have much too great
a value for him to hurt a hair of his head.”
“Have I? Here goes,” said Pen, and ‘Walter Lorraine’ went off the
table, and was flung on to the coals. But the fire having done its duty
of boiling the young man’s breakfast-kettle, had given up work for the
day, and had gone out, as Pen knew very well; Warrington with a
scornful smile, once more took up the manuscript with the tongs from
out of the harmless cinders.
“Oh, Pen, what a humbug you are!” Warrington said; “and what is worst
of all, sir, a clumsy humbug. I saw you look to see that the fire was
out before you sent ‘Walter Lorraine’ behind the bars. No, we won’t
burn him: we will carry him to the Egyptians, and sell him. We will
exchange him away for money, yea, for silver and gold, and for beef and
for liquors, and for tobacco and for raiment. This youth will fetch
some price in the market; for he is a comely lad, though not over
strong; but we will fatten him up and give him the bath, and curl his
hair, and we will sell him for a hundred piasters to Bacon or to
Bungay. The rubbish is saleable enough, sir; and my advice to you is
this: the next time you go home for a holiday, take ‘Walter Lorraine’
in your carpet-bag—give him a more modern air, prune away, though
sparingly, some of the green passages, and add a little comedy, and
cheerfulness, and satire, and that sort of thing, and then we’ll take
him to market, and sell him. The book is not a wonder of wonders, but
it will do very well.”
“Do you think so, Warrington?” said Pen, delighted, for this was great
praise from his cynical friend.
“You silly young fool! I think it’s uncommonly clever,” Warrington said
in a kind voice. “So do you, sir.” And with the manuscript which he
held in his hand he playfully struck Pen on the cheek. That part of
Pen’s countenance turned as red as it had ever done in the earliest
days of his blushes: he grasped the other’s hand and said, “Thank you,
Warrington,” with all his might: and then he retired to his own room
with his book, and passed the greater part of the day upon his bed
re-reading it; and he did as Warrington had advised, and altered not a
little, and added a great deal, until at length he had fashioned
‘Walter Lorraine’ pretty much into the shape in which, as the respected
novel-reader knows, it subsequently appeared.
Whilst he was at work upon this performance, the good-natured
Warrington artfully inspired the two gentlemen who “read” for Messrs.
Bacon and Bungay with the greatest curiosity regarding ‘Walter
Lorraine,’ and pointed out the peculiar merits of its distinguished
author. It was at the period when the novel, called ‘The Fashionable,’
was in vogue among us; and Warrington did not fail to point out, as
before, how Pen was a man of the very first fashion himself, and
received at the houses of some of the greatest personages in the land.
The simple and kind-hearted Percy Popjoy was brought to bear upon Mrs.
Bungay, whom he informed that his friend Pendennis was occupied upon a
work of the most exciting nature; a work that the whole town would run
after, full of wit, genius, satire, pathos, and every conceivable good
quality. We have said before, that Bungay knew no more about novels
than he did about Hebrew or Algebra, and neither read nor understood
any of the books which he published and paid for; but he took his
opinions from his professional advisers and from Mrs. B., and,
evidently with a view to a commercial transaction, asked Pendennis and
Warrington to dinner again.
Bacon, when he found that Bungay was about to treat, of course, began
to be anxious and curious, and desired to outbid his rival. Was
anything settled between Mr. Pendennis and the odious house “over the
way” about the new book? Mr. Hack, the confidential reader, was told to
make inquiries, and see if any thing was to be done, and the result of
the inquiries of that diplomatist was, that one morning, Bacon himself
toiled up the staircase of Lamb Court and to the door on which the
names of Mr. Warrington, and Mr. Pendennis, were painted.
For a gentleman of fashion as poor Pen was represented to be, it must
be confessed, that the apartments he and his friend occupied were not
very suitable. The ragged carpet had grown only more ragged during the
two years of joint occupancy: a constant odour of tobacco perfumed the
sitting-room: Bacon tumbled over the laundress’s buckets in the passage
through which he had to pass; Warrington’s shooting-jacket was as
tattered at the elbows as usual; and the chair which Bacon was
requested to take on entering, broke down with the publisher.
Warrington burst out laughing, said that Bacon had got the game chair,
and bawled out to Pen to fetch a sound one from his bedroom. And seeing
the publisher looking round the dingy room with an air of profound pity
and wonder, asked him whether he didn’t think the apartments were
elegant, and if he would like, for Mrs. Bacon’s drawing-room, any of
the articles of furniture? Mr. Warrington’s character as a humourist
was known to Mr. Bacon: “I never can make that chap out,” the publisher
was heard to say, “or tell whether he is in earnest or only chaffing.”
It is very possible that Mr. Bacon would have set the two gentlemen
down as impostors altogether, but that there chanced to be on the
breakfast-table certain cards of invitation which the post of the
morning had brought in for Pen, and which happened to come from some
very exalted personage of the beau-monde, into which our young man had
his introduction. Looking down upon these, Bacon saw that the
Marchioness of Steyne would be at home to Mr. Arthur Pendennis upon a
given day, and that another lady of distinction proposed to have
dancing at her house upon a certain future evening. Warrington saw the
admiring publisher eyeing these documents. “Ah,” said he, with an air
of simplicity, “Pendennis is one of the most affable young men I ever
knew, Mr. Bacon. Here is a young fellow that dines with all the men in
London, and yet he’ll take his mutton-chop with you and me quite
contentedly. There’s nothing like the affability of the old English
gentleman.”
“Oh no, nothing,” said Mr. Bacon.
“And you wonder why he should go on living up three pair of stairs with
me, don’t you now? Well, it is a queer taste. But we are fond of each
other; and as I can’t afford to live in a great house, he comes and
stays in these rickety old chambers with me. He’s a man that can afford
to live anywhere.”
“I fancy it don’t cost him much here,” thought Mr. Bacon, and the
object of these praises presently entered the room from his adjacent
sleeping apartment.
Then Mr. Bacon began to speak upon the subject of his visit; said he
heard that Mr. Pendennis had a manuscript novel; professed himself
anxious to have a sight of that work, and had no doubt that they could
come to terms respecting it. What would be his price for it? would he
give Bacon the refusal of it? he would find our house a liberal house,
and so forth. The delighted Pen assumed an air of indifference, and
said that he was already in treaty with Bungay, and could give no
definite answer. This piqued the other into such liberal, though vague
offers, that Pen began to fancy Eldorado was opening to him, and that
his fortune was made from that day.
I shall not mention what was the sum of money which Mr. Arthur
Pendennis finally received for the first edition of his novel of
‘Walter Lorraine,’ lest other young literary aspirants should expect to
be as lucky as he was, and unprofessional persons forsake their own
callings, whatever they may be, for the sake of supplying the world
with novels, whereof there is already a sufficiency. Let no young
people be misled and rush fatally into romance-writing: for one book
which succeeds let them remember the many that fail, I do not say
deservedly or otherwise, and wholesomely abstain or if they venture, at
least let them do so at their own peril. As for those who have already
written novels, this warning is not addressed, of course, to them. Let
them take their wares to market; let them apply to Bacon and Bungay,
and all the publishers in the Row, or the metropolis, and may they be
happy in their ventures. This world is so wide, and the tastes of
mankind happily so various, that there is always a chance for every
man, and he may win the prize by his genius or by his good fortune. But
what is the chance of success or failure; of obtaining popularity, or
of holding it when achieved? One man goes over the ice, which bears
him, and a score who follow flounder in. In fine, Mr. Pendennis’s was
an exceptional case, and applies to himself only and I assert solemnly,
and will to the last maintain, that it is one thing to write a novel,
and another to get money for it.
By merit, then, or good fortune, or the skilful playing off of Bungay
against Bacon which Warrington performed (and which an amateur novelist
is quite welcome to try upon any two publishers in the trade), Pen’s
novel was actually sold for a certain sum of money to one of the two
eminent patrons of letters whom we have introduced to our readers. The
sum was so considerable that Pen thought of opening an account at a
banker’s, or of keeping a cab and horse, or of descending into the
first floor of Lamb Court into newly furnished apartments, or of
migrating to the fashionable end of the town.
Major Pendennis advised the latter move strongly; he opened his eyes
with wonder when he heard of the good luck that had befallen Pen; and
which the latter, as soon as it occurred, hastened eagerly to
communicate to his uncle. The Major was almost angry that Pen should
have earned so much money. “Who the doose reads this kind of thing?” he
thought to himself when he heard of the bargain which Pen had made. “I
never read your novels and rubbish. Except Paul de Kock, who certainly
makes me laugh, I don’t think I’ve looked into a book of the sort these
thirty years. Gad! Pen’s a lucky fellow. I should think he might write
one of these in a month now,—say a month,—that’s twelve in a year.
Dammy, he may go on spinning this nonsense for the next four to five
years, and make a fortune. In the meantime I should wish him to live
properly, take respectable apartments, and keep a brougham.” And on
this simple calculation it was that the Major counselled Pen.
Arthur, laughing, told Warrington what his uncle’s advice had been but
he luckily had a much more reasonable counsellor than the old gentleman
in the person of his friend, and in his own conscience, which said to
him, “Be grateful for this piece of good fortune; don’t plunge into any
extravagancies. Pay back Laura!” And he wrote a letter to her, in which
he told her his thanks and his regard; and enclosed to her such an
instalment of his debt as nearly wiped it off. The widow and Laura
herself might well be affected by the letter. It was written with
genuine tenderness and modesty; and old Dr. Portman when he read a
passage in the letter, in which Pen, with an honest heart full of
gratitude, humbly thanked Heaven for his present prosperity, and for
sending him such dear and kind friends to support him in his ill
fortune,—when Doctor Portman read this portion of the letter, his voice
faltered, and his eyes twinkled behind his spectacles, and when he had
quite finished reading the same, and had taken his glasses off his
nose, and had folded up the paper and given it back to the widow, I am
constrained to say, that after holding Mrs. Pendennis’s hand for a
minute, the Doctor drew that lady towards him and fairly kissed her: at
which salute, of course, Helen burst out crying on the Doctor’s
shoulder, for her heart was too full to give any other reply: and the
Doctor blushing at great deal after his feat, led the lady, with a bow,
to the sofa, on which he seated himself by her; and he mumbled out, in
a low voice, some words of a Great Poet whom he loved very much, and
who describes how in the days of his prosperity he had made “the
widow’s heart to sing for joy.”
“The letter does the boy very great honour, very great honour, 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. Everybody 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
dependant.”
“A dependant! who ever so thought of you? You are the equal of all the
world,” Pynsent broke out.
“I am a dependant 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 dispraises of others. Nor did their praise elate him over
much; 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 rather hurt 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-humour! 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 honour!