William Makepeace Thackeray was born on July 18, 1811, at
Calcutta, where his father was in the service of the East
India Company. He was educated at Charterhouse School, then
situated in Smithfield, and spent two years at Trinity
College, Cambridge. After travelling on the continent as an
artist, he returned to London, and wrote for the "Examiner"
and "Fraser's Magazine," subsequently joining the staff of
"Punch." "The Newcomes," finished by Thackeray at Paris in
1855, was the fourth of his great novels. Without being in any
real sense a sequel to "Pendennis," it reintroduces us to
several characters of the earlier work, and is told in the
first person by Arthur Pendennis himself. The Gray Friars
School is the Charterhouse where Thackeray was at school. In
1859 Thackeray started the "Cornhill Magazine," and on
December 23, 1863, he died at Kensington. Besides his five
great novels, a large number of shorter stories and sketches
came from Thackeray's pen.
_I.--The "Cave of Harmony"_
It was in the days of my youth, when, having been to the play with some
young fellows of my own age, we became naturally hungry at twelve
o'clock at night, and a desire for welsh-rarebits and good old glee
singing led us to the "Cave of Harmony," then kept by the celebrated
Hoskins, among whose friends we were proud to count.
It happened that there was a very small attendance at the "cave" that
night, and we were all more sociable and friendly because the company
was select. The songs were chiefly of the sentimental class; such
ditties were much in vogue at the time of which I speak.
There came into the "cave" a gentleman with a lean brown face and long
black mustachios, and evidently a stranger to the place. At least he had
not visited it for a long time. He was pointing out changes to a lad who
was in his company; and, calling for sherry-and-water, he listened to
the music and twirled his mustachios with great enthusiasm.
At the very first glimpse of me the boy jumped up from the table, ran to
me with his hands out, and, blushing, said, "Don't you know me?"
It was little Newcome, my schoolfellow, whom I had not seen for six
years, grown a fine tall young stripling now, with the same bright blue
eyes which I remembered when he was quite a little boy.
"What the deuce brings you here?" said I.
He laughed and looked roguish. "My father--that's my father--would come.
He's just come back from India. He says all the wits used to come here.
I told him your name, and that you used to be very kind to me when I
first went to Smithfield. I've left now: I'm to have a private tutor."
Here the whiskered gentleman, Newcome's father, strode across the room
to the table where we sat, and held out his hand to me.
"I have heard of your kindness, sir," says he, "to my boy. And whoever
is kind to him is kind to me. Will you allow me to sit down by you? and
may I beg of you to try my cheroots."
We were friends in a minute--young Newcome snuggling by my side, and his
father opposite.
It was worth a guinea to see the simple Colonel, and his delight at the
music. He became quite excited over his sherry-and-water. He joined in
all the choruses with an exceedingly sweet voice; and when Hoskins sang
(as he did admirably) "The Old English Gentleman," and described the
death of that venerable aristocrat, tears trickled down the honest
warrior's cheek.
And now Mr. Hoskins asking if any gentleman would volunteer a song, what
was our amazement when the simple Colonel offered to sing himself. Poor
Clive Newcome blushed as red as a peony, and I thought what my own
sensations would have been if, in that place, my own uncle Major
Pendennis had suddenly proposed to exert his lyrical powers.
The Colonel selected the ditty of "Wapping Old Stairs," and gave his
heart and soul to the simple ballad. When the song was over, Clive held
up his head too, and looked round with surprise and pleasure in his
eyes. The Colonel bowed and smiled with good nature at our plaudits. "I
learnt that song forty years ago," he said, turning round to his boy. "I
used to slip out from Grey Friars to hear it. Lord! Lord! how the time
passes!"
Whilst he was singing his ballad, there had reeled into the room my
friend Captain Costizan, in his usual condition at this hour of the
night.
"Captain Costizan, will you take something to drink?"
"Bedad I will," says the Captain, "and I'll sing ye a song too."
Having procured a glass of whisky and water, the unlucky wretch, who
scarcely knew what he was doing or saying, selected one of the most
outrageous of what he called his prime songs, and began his music. At
the end of the second verse, the Colonel started up, and looking as
ferocious as though he had been going to do battle with a Pindaree,
roared out "Silence!"
"Do you dare, sir," cries the Colonel, trembling with anger, "to call
yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the king's commission,
and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honour, and defile the
ears of young boys with this wicked balderdash?"
"Why do you bring young boys here, old man?" cries a malcontent.
"Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of gentlemen. I never
could have believed that Englishmen could meet together and allow an old
man so to disgrace himself. For shame! Go home to your bed, you hoary
old sinner! And for my part, I'm not sorry that my son should see for
once in his life to what degradation, drunkenness, and whisky may bring
a man. Never mind the change, sir!" says the Colonel, to the amazed
waiter. "Keep it till you see me in this place again, which will be
never--by George, never!" And shouldering his stick, and scowling round
at the company, the indignant gentleman stalked away, his boy after him.
Clive seemed rather shamefaced; but I fear the rest of the company
looked still more foolish.
_II.--Clive Newman in Love_
The Colonel, in conjunction with an Indian friend of his, Mr. Binnie,
took a house in London, No. 120, Fitzroy Square, and there was fine
amusement for Clive and his father and Mr. Binnie in the purchase of
furniture for the new mansion. It was like nobody else's house. What
cosy pipes did we not smoke in the dining room, in the drawing room, or
where we would!
Clive had a tutor, whom we recommended to him, and with whom the young
gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his great _forte_
decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he drew the dogs. He
drew his father in all postures--asleep, on foot, on horseback; and
jolly little Mr. Binnie, with his plump legs on a chair, or jumping
briskly on the back of a cob which he rode.
"Oh," says Clive, if you talk to him now about those early days, "it was
a jolly time! I do not believe there was any young fellow in London so
happy." And there hangs up in his painting-room now a head, with hair
touched with grey, with a large moustache, and melancholy eyes. And
Clive shows that portrait of their grandfather to his children, and
tells them that the whole world never saw a nobler gentleman.
Of course our young man commenced as an historical painter, deeming that
the highest branch of art. He painted a prodigious battle-piece of
Assaye, and will it be believed that the Royal Academicians rejected
this masterpiece? Clive himself, after a month's trip to Paris with his
father, declared the thing was rubbish.
It was during this time, when Clive and his father were in Paris, that
Mr. Binnie, laid up with a wrenched ankle, was consoled by a visit from
his sister, Mrs. Mackenzie, a brisk, plump little widow, and her
daughter, Miss Rosey, a blue-eyed, fair-haired lass, with a very sweet
voice.
Of course the most hospitable and polite of colonels would not hear of
Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter quitting his house when he returned to
it, after the pleasant sojourn in Paris; nor indeed, did his fair guest
show the least anxiety or intention to go away. Certainly, the house was
a great deal more cheerful for the presence of the two pleasant ladies.
Everybody liked them. Binnie received their caresses very
good-humouredly. The Colonel liked every woman under the sun. Clive
laughed and joked and waltzed alternately with Rosey and her mamma. None
of us could avoid seeing that Mrs. Mackenzie was, as the phrase is,
"setting her cap" openly at Clive; and Clive laughed at her simple
manoeuvres as merrily as the rest.
Some months after the arrival of Mr. Binnie's niece and sister in
Fitzroy Square, Mrs. Newcome, wife of Hobson Newcome, banker, the
Colonel's brother, gave a dinner party at her house in Bryanstone
Square. "It is quite a family party," whispered the happy Mrs. Newcome,
when we recognised Lady Ann Newcome's carriage, and saw her ladyship,
her mother--old Lady Kew, her daughter, Ethel, and her husband, Sir
Brian, (Hobson's twin brother and partner in the banking firm of Hobson
Brothers and Newcome), descend from the vehicle. The whole party from
St. Pancras were already assembled--Mr. Binnie, the Colonel and his son,
Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss Rosey.
Everybody was bent upon being happy and gracious. Miss Newcome ran up to
the Colonel with both hands out, and with no eyes for anyone else, until
Clive advancing, those bright eyes become brighter still with surprise
and pleasure as she beholds him. And, as she looks, Miss Ethel sees a
very handsome fellow, while the blushing youth casts down his eyes
before hers.
"Upon my word, my dear Colonel," says old Lady Kew, nodding her head
shrewdly, "I think we were right."
"No doubt right in everything your ladyship does, but in what
particularly?" asks the Colonel.
"Right to keep him out of the way. Ethel has been disposed of these ten
years. Did not Ann tell you? How foolish of her! But all mothers like to
have young men dying for their daughters. Your son is really the
handsomest boy in London. Ethel, my dear! Colonel Newcome must present
us to Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss Mackenzie;" and Ethel, giving a nod to
Clive, with whom she had talked for a minute or two, again puts her hand
into her uncle's and walks towards Mrs. Mackenzie.
Let the artist give us a likeness of Ethel. She is seventeen years old,
rather taller than the majority of women. Youth looks out of her bright
eyes and flashes scorn or denial, perhaps too readily, when she
encounters flattery or meanness. Her smile, when it lights up her face
and eyes, is as beautiful as spring sunshine. Her countenance somewhat
grave and haughty, on occasion brightens with humour or beams with
kindliness and affection.
That night in the drawing room we found the two young ladies engaged
over an album, containing a number of Clive's drawings made in the time
of his very early youth, and Miss Ethel seemed to be very much pleased
with these performances.
Old Major Pendennis, whom I met earlier in the day, made some
confidential remarks concerning Miss Ethel and her relatives, which I
set down here. "Your Indian Colonel," says he, "seems a worthy man. He
don't seem to know much of the world and we are not very intimate. They
say he wanted to marry your friend Clive to Lady Ann's daughter, an
exceedingly fine girl; one of the prettiest girls come out this season.
And that shows how monstrous ignorant of the world Colonel Newcome is.
His son could no more get that girl than he could marry one of the royal
princesses. These banker fellows are wild after grand marriages. Mark my
words, they intend Miss Newcome for some man of high rank. Old Lady Kew
is a monstrous clever woman. Nothing could show a more deplorable
ignorance of the world than poor Newcome supposing his son could make
such a match as that with his cousin. Is it true that he is going to
make his son an artist? I don't know what the deuce the world is coming
to. An artist! By Gad, in my time a fellow would as soon have thought of
making his son a hairdresser, or a pastrycook, by Gad."
Lady Kew carried off her granddaughter Ethel, the Colonel returned to
India, and Clive, endowed with a considerable annual sum from his
father, went abroad with an apparatus of easels and painting boxes.
Clive found Lady Ann, with Ethel and her other children, at Bount on
their way to Baden Baden, and the old Countess being away for the time,
it seemed to Clive that the barrier between himself and the family was
withdrawn. He was glad enough to go with his cousins, and travel in the
orbit of Ethel Newcome--who is now grown up and has been presented at
Court.
At Baden Baden was Lady Kew; and Clive learning that Ethel was about to
be betrothed, and that his suit was hopeless, retreated, with his paint
boxes across the Alps to Rome.
_III.--Clive is Married_
It was announced that Miss Newcome was engaged to the Marquis Fairntosh,
but for all that no marriage took place. First the death of Lady Kew
made an inevitable postponement, and then Ethel herself shrunk from the
loveless match, and, in spite of Lord Fairntosh's protests, dismissed
the noble marquis.
But the announcement drove Clive to marry pretty little Rose Mackenzie.
The Colonel was back in England again, and for good--a rich man, thanks
to the success of the Bundeleund Bank, Bengal, in which his savings were
invested, and heavily displeased with Ethel's treatment of his son.
Clive's marriage was performed in Brussels, where Mr. James Binnie, who
longed to see Rosey wedded, and his sister, whom we flippantly ventured
to call the Campaigner, had been staying that summer. After the marriage
they went off to Scotland, and the Colonel and his son and
daughter-in-law came to London--not to the old bachelor quarters in
Fitzroy Square, but to a sumptuous mansion in the Tyburnian
district--and one which became people of their station. To this house
came Mrs. Mackenzie when the baby was born, and there she stayed.
In a pique with the woman he loved, and from that generous weakness
which led him to acquiesce in most wishes of his good father, the young
man had gratified the darling wish of the Colonel's heart, and taken the
wife whom his old friends brought to him. Rosey, who was also of a very
obedient and docile nature, had acquiesced gladly enough in her mamma's
opinion, that she was in love with the rich and handsome young Clive,
and accepted him for better or worse.
If Clive was gloomy and discontented even when the honeymoon had scarce
waned, what was the young man's condition in poverty, when they had no
love along with a silent dinner of herbs; when his mother-in-law grudged
each morsel which his poor old father ate--when a vulgar, coarse-minded
woman--as Mrs. Mackenzie was--pursued with brutal sarcasm one of the
tenderest and noblest gentlemen in the world; when an ailing wife,
always under some one's domination, received him with helpless
hysterical cries and reproaches!
For a ghastly bankruptcy overwhelmed the Bundeleund Bank, and with its
failure went all Colonel Newcome's savings, and all Mrs. Mackenzie's
money and her daughter's. Even the Colonel's pension and annuities were
swallowed up in the general ruin, for the old man would pay every
shilling of his debts.
When I ventured to ask the Colonel why Mrs. Mackenzie should continue to
live with them--"She has a right to live in the house," he said, "it is
I who have no right in it. I am a poor old pensioner, don't you see,
subsisting on Rosey's bounty. We live on the hundred a year secured to
her at her marriage, and Mrs. Mackenzie has her forty pounds of pension
which she adds to the common stock. They put their little means
together, and they keep us--me and Clive. What can we do for a living?
Great God! What can we do?"
But Clive was getting on tolerably well, at his painting, and many
sitters came to him from amongst his old friends; he had work, scantily
paid it is true, but work sufficient. "I am pretty easy in my mind,
since I have become acquainted with a virtuous dealer," the painter
assured me one day. "I sell myself to him, body and soul, for some half
dozen pounds a week. I know I can get my money, and he is regularly
supplied with his pictures. But for Rosey's illness we might carry on
well enough."
Rosey's illness? I was sorry to hear of that; and poor Clive, entering
into particulars, told me how he had spent upon doctors rather more than
a fourth of his year's earnings.
_IV.--The Colonel Says "Adsum" When His Name is Called_
Mention has been made of the Grey Friars school--where the Colonel and
Clive and I had been brought up, an ancient foundation still subsisting
at Smithfield.
On the 12th of December, the Founder's Day, a goodly company of old
Cistercians is generally brought together, to hear a sermon in chapel;
after which we adjourn to a great dinner, where old condisciples meet,
and speeches are made. In the chapel sit some three-score old gentlemen
pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms.