A History of Pendennis is a Webnovel created by William Makepeace Thackeray.
This lightnovel is currently completed.
“The old rogue, where does he expect to go to? It came from the public house,” Wagg said. “It requires two men to carry off that sherry, ’tis so uncommonly strong. I wish I had a bottle of old Steyne’s wine here, Pendennis: your uncle and I have had many a one. He sends it about to people where he is in the habit of dining. I remember at poor Rawdon Crawley’s, Sir Pitt Crawley’s brother–he was Governor of Coventry Island–Steyne’s chef always came in the morning, and the butler arrived with the champagne from Gaunt House, in the ice-pails ready.”
“How good this is!” said Popjoy, good-naturedly. You must have a _cordon bleu_ in your kitchen.”
“O, yes,” Mrs. Bungay said, thinking he spoke of a jack-chain very likely.
“I mean a French chef,” said the polite guest.
“O, yes, your lordship,” again said the lady.
“Does your artist say he’s a Frenchman, Mrs. B.?” called out Wagg.
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” answered the publisher’s lady.
“Because, if he does, he’s a _quizzin yer_,” cried Mr. Wagg; but n.o.body saw the pun, which disconcerted somewhat the bashful punster. “The dinner is from Grigg’s, in St. Paul’s churchyard; so is Bacon’s,” he whispered Pen. “Bungay writes to give half-a-crown a head more than Bacon,–so does Bacon. They would poison each other’s ices if they could get near them; and as for the made-dishes–they are poison.
This–hum–ha–this _Brimborion a la Sevigne_ is delicious, Mrs. B.,”
he said, helping himself to a dish which the undertaker handed to him.
“Well, I’m glad you like it,” Mrs. Bungay answered, blushing, and not knowing whether the name of the dish was actually that which Wagg gave to it, but dimly conscious that that individual was quizzing her.
Accordingly she hated Mr. Wagg with female ardor; and would have deposed him from his command over Mr. Bungay’s periodical, but that his name was great in the trade, and his reputation in the land considerable.
By the displacement of persons, Warrington had found himself on the right hand of Mrs. Shandon, who sate in plain black silk and faded ornaments by the side of the florid publisher. The sad smile of the lady moved his rough heart to pity. n.o.body seemed to interest himself about her: she sate looking at her husband, who himself seemed rather abashed in the presence of some of the company. Wenham and Wagg both knew him and his circ.u.mstances. He had worked with the latter, and was immeasurably his superior in wit, genius, and acquirement; but Wagg’s star was brilliant in the world, and poor Shandon was unknown there. He could not speak before the noisy talk of the coa.r.s.er and more successful man; but drank his wine in silence, and as much of it as the people would give him. He was under _surveillance_. Bungay had warned the undertaker not to fill the captain’s gla.s.s too often or too full. It was a melancholy precaution that, and the more melancholy that it was necessary. Mrs.
Shandon, too, cast alarmed glances across the table to see that her husband did not exceed.
Abashed by the failure of his first pun, for he was impudent and easily disconcerted, Wagg kept his conversation pretty much to Pen during the rest of dinner, and of course chiefly spoke about their neighbors. “This is one of Bungay’s grand field-days,” he said. “We are all Bungavians here.–Did you read Popjoy’s novel? It was an old magazine story written by poor Buzzard years ago, and forgotten here until Mr. Trotter (that is Trotter with the large shirt collar) fished it out, and bethought him that it was applicable to the late elopement; so Bob wrote a few chapters _apropos_–Popjoy permitted the use of his name, and I dare say supplied a page here and there–and ‘Desperation, or, the Fugitive d.u.c.h.ess’ made its appearance. The great fun is to examine Popjoy about his own work, of which he doesn’t know a word.–I say, Popjoy, what a capital pa.s.sage that is in Volume Three–where the cardinal in disguise, after being converted by the Bishop of London, proposes marriage to the d.u.c.h.ess’s daughter.”
“Glad you like it,” Popjoy answered; “it’s a favorite bit of my own.”
“There’s no such thing in the whole book,” whispered Wagg to Pen.
“Invented it myself. Gad! it wouldn’t be a bad plot for a high-church novel.”
“I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawney, and myself, dining with Cardinal Mezzocaldo, at Rome,” Captain Sumph began, “and we had some Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember how the cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to Civita Vecchia two days afterward where Byron’s yacht was–and, by Jove, the cardinal died within three weeks; and Byron was very sorry, for he rather liked him.”
“A devilish interesting story, Sumph, indeed,” Wagg said.
“You should publish some of those stories, Captain Sumph, you really should. Such a volume would make our friend Bungay’s fortune,” Shandon said.
“Why don’t you ask Sumph to publish ’em in your new paper–the what-d’ye-call’em?–hay, Shandon,” bawled out Wagg.
“Why don’t you ask him to publish ’em in your old magazine, the Thingumbob?” Shandon replied.
“Is there going to be a new paper!” asked Wenham, who knew perfectly well; but was ashamed of his connection with the press.
“Bungay going to bring out a paper?” cried Popjoy, who, on the contrary, was proud of his literary reputation and acquaintances. “You must employ me. Mrs. Bungay, use your influence with him, and make him employ me.
Prose or verse–what shall it be? Novels, poems, travels, or leading articles, begad. Any thing or every thing–only let Bungay pay me, and I’m ready–I am now, my dear Mrs. Bungay, begad now.”
“It’s to be called the ‘Small Beer Chronicle,'” growled Wagg, “and little Popjoy is to be engaged for the infantine department.”
“It is to be called the ‘Pall-Mall Gazette,’ sir, and we shall be very happy to have you with us,” Shandon said.
“‘Pall-Mall Gazette’–why ‘Pall-Mall Gazette?'” asked Wagg.
“Because the editor was born at Dublin, the sub-editor at Cork, because the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row, and the paper is published in Catherine-street, Strand. Won’t that reason suffice you, Wagg?” Shandon said; he was getting rather angry. “Every thing must have a name. My dog Ponto has got a name. You’ve got a name, and a name which you deserve, more or less, bedad. Why d’ye grudge the name to our paper?”
“By any other name it would smell as sweet,” said Wagg.
“I’ll have ye remember its name’s not what-d’ye-call’em, Mr. Wagg,” said Shandon. “You know its name well enough, and–and you know mine.”
“And I know your address too,” said Wagg, but this was spoken in an under-tone, and the good-natured Irishman was appeased almost in an instant after his ebullition of spleen, and asked Wagg to drink wine with him, in a friendly voice.
When the ladies retired from the table, the talk grew louder still; and presently Wenham, in a courtly speech, proposed that every body should drink to the health of the new Journal, eulogizing highly the talents, wit, and learning, of its editor, Captain Shandon. It was his maxim never to lose the support of a newspaper man, and in the course of that evening, he went round and saluted every literary gentleman present with a privy compliment specially addressed to him; informing this one how great an impression had been made in Downing-street by his last article, and telling that one how profoundly his good friend, the Duke of So and So, had been struck by the ability of the late numbers.
The evening came to a close, and in spite of all the precautions to the contrary, poor Shandon reeled in his walk, and went home to his new lodgings, with his faithful wife by his side, and the cabman on his box jeering at him. Wenham had a chariot of his own, which he put at Popjoy’s seat; and the timid Miss Bunion seeing Mr. Wagg, who was her neighbor, about to depart, insisted upon a seat in his carriage, much to that gentleman’s discomfiture.
Pen and Warrington walked home together in the moonlight. “And now,”
Warrington said, “that you have seen the men of letters, tell me, was I far wrong in saying that there are thousands of people in this town, who don’t write books, who are, to the full, as clever and intellectual as people who do?”
Pen was forced to confess that the literary personages with whom he had become acquainted had not said much, in the course of the night’s conversation, that was worthy to be remembered or quoted. In fact, not one word about literature had been said during the whole course of the night:–and it may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
THE PALL-MALL GAZETTE.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Considerable success at first attended the new journal. It was generally stated, that an influential political party supported the paper; and great names were cited among the contributors to its columns. Was there any foundation for these rumors? We are not at liberty to say whether they were well or ill-founded; but this much we may divulge, that an article upon foreign policy, which was generally attributed to a n.o.ble lord, whose connection with the Foreign Office is very well known, was in reality composed by Captain Shandon, in the parlor of the Bear and Staff public-house near Whitehall Stairs, whither the printer’s boy had tracked him, and where a literary ally of his, Mr. Bludyer, had a temporary residence; and that a series of papers on finance questions, which were universally supposed to be written by a great statesman of the House of Commons, were in reality composed by Mr. George Warrington of the Upper Temple.
That there may have been some dealings between the “Pall-Mall Gazette”
and this influential party, is very possible. Percy Popjoy (whose father, Lord Falconet, was a member of the party) might be seen not unfrequently ascending the stairs to Warrington’s chambers; and some information appeared in the paper which gave it a character, and could only be got from very peculiar sources. Several poems, feeble in thought, but loud and vigorous in expression, appeared in the “Pall-Mall Gazette,” with the signature of “P. P.,” and it must be owned that his novel was praised in the new journal in a very outrageous manner.
In the political department of the paper Mr. Pen did not take any share; but he was a most active literary contributor. The “Pall-Mall Gazette”
had its offices, as we have heard, in Catherine-street, in the Strand, and hither Pen often came with his ma.n.u.scripts in his pocket, and with a great deal of bustle and pleasure; such as a man feels at the outset of his literary career, when to see himself in print is still a novel sensation, and he yet pleases himself to think that his writings are creating some noise in the world.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Here it was that Mr. Jack Finucane, the sub-editor, compiled with paste and scissors the Journal of which he was supervisor. With an eagle eye he scanned all the paragraphs of all the newspapers which had any thing to do with the world of fashion over which he presided. He didn’t let a death or a dinner-party of the aristocracy pa.s.s without having the event recorded in the columns of his Journal: and from the most recondite provincial prints, and distant Scotch and Irish newspapers, he fished out astonishing paragraphs and intelligence regarding the upper cla.s.ses of society. It was a grand, nay, a touching sight, for a philosopher, to see Jack Finucane, Esquire, with a plate of meat from the cookshop, and a gla.s.s of porter from the public-house, for his meal, recounting the feasts of the great, as if he had been present at them; and in tattered trowsers and dingy shirt sleeves, cheerfully describing and arranging the most brilliant _fetes_ of the world of fashion. The incongruity of Finucane’s avocation, and his manners and appearance, amused his new friend Pen. Since he left his own native village, where his rank probably was not very lofty, Jack had seldom seen any society but such as used the parlor of the taverns which he frequented, whereas from his writing you would have supposed that he dined with emba.s.sadors, and that his common lounge was the bow-window of White’s. Errors of description, it is true, occasionally slipped from his pen; but the “Ballinafad Sentinel,” of which he was own correspondent, suffered by these, not the “Pall-Mall Gazette,” in which Jack was not permitted to write much, his London chiefs thinking that the scissors and the paste were better wielded by him than the pen.
Pen took a great deal of pains with the writing of his reviews, and having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in the early years of his life, an eager fancy and a keen sense of fun, his articles pleased his chief and the public, and he was proud to think that he deserved the money which he earned. We may be sure that the “Pall-Mall Gazette” was taken in regularly at Fairoaks, and read with delight by the two ladies there. It was received at Clavering Park, too, where we know there was a young lady of great literary tastes; and old Doctor Portman himself, to whom the widow sent her paper after she had got her son’s articles by heart, signified his approval of Pen’s productions, saying that the lad had spirit, taste, and fancy, and wrote, if not like a scholar, at any rate like a gentleman.
And what was the astonishment and delight of our friend Major Pendennis, on walking into one of his clubs, the Regent, where Wenham, Lord Falconet, and some other gentlemen of good reputation and fashion were a.s.sembled, to hear them one day talking over a number of the “Pall-Mall Gazette,” and of an article which appeared in its columns, making some bitter fun of a book recently published by the wife of a celebrated member of the opposition party. The book in question was a Book of Travels in Spain and Italy, by the Countess of m.u.f.fborough, in which it was difficult to say which was the most wonderful, the French or the English, in which languages her ladyship wrote indifferently, and upon the blunders of which the critic pounced with delighted mischief. The critic was no other than Pen: he jumped and danced round about his subject with the greatest jocularity and high spirits: he showed up the n.o.ble lady’s faults with admirable mock gravity and decorum. There was not a word in the article which was not polite and gentlemanlike; and the unfortunate subject of the criticism was scarified and laughed at during the operation. Wenham’s bilious countenance was puckered up with malign pleasure as he read the critique. Lady m.u.f.fborough had not asked him to her parties during the last year. Lord Falconet giggled and laughed with all his heart; Lord m.u.f.fborough and he had been rivals ever since they began life; and these complimented Major Pendennis, who until now had scarcely paid any attention to some hints which his Fairoaks correspondence threw out of “dear Arthur’s constant and severe literary occupations, which I fear may undermine the poor boy’s health,” and had thought any notice of Mr. Pen and his newspaper connections quite below his dignity as a major and a gentleman.
But when the oracular Wenham praised the boy’s production; when Lord Falconet, who had had the news from Percy Popjoy, approved of the genius of young Pen; when the great Lord Steyne himself, to whom the major referred the article, laughed and sn.i.g.g.e.red over it, swore it was capital, and that the m.u.f.fborough would writhe under it, like a whale under a harpoon, the major, as in duty bound, began to admire his nephew very much, said, “By gad, the young rascal had some stuff in him, and would do something; he had always said he would do something;” and with a hand quite tremulous with pleasure, the old gentleman sate down to write to the widow at Fairoaks all that the great folks had said in praise of Pen; and he wrote to the young rascal, too, asking when he would come and eat a chop with his old uncle, and saying that he was commissioned to take him to dinner at Gaunt House, for Lord Steyne liked any body who could entertain him, whether by his folly, wit, or by his dullness, by his oddity, affectation, good spirits, or any other quality. Pen flung his letter across the table to Warrington: perhaps he was disappointed that the other did not seem to be much affected by it.
The courage of young critics is prodigious: they clamber up to the judgment-seat, and, with scarce a hesitation, give their opinion upon works the most intricate or profound. Had Macaulay’s History or Herschel’s Astronomy been put before Pen at this period, he would have looked through the volumes, meditated his opinion over a cigar, and signified his august approval of either author, as if the critic had been their born superior and indulgent master and patron. By the help of the Biographie Universelle or the British Museum, he would be able to take a rapid _resume_ of a historical period, and allude to names, dates, and facts, in such a masterly, easy way, as to astonish his mamma at home, who wondered where her boy could have acquired such a prodigious store of reading; and himself, too, when he came to read over his articles two or three months after they had been composed, and when he had forgotten the subject and the books which he had consulted. At that period of his life Mr. Pen owns, that he would not have hesitated, at twenty-four hours’ notice, to pa.s.s an opinion upon the greatest scholars, or to give a judgment upon the Encyclopaedia. Luckily he had Warrington to laugh at him and to keep down his impertinence by a constant and wholesome ridicule, or he might have become conceited beyond all sufferance; for Shandon liked the dash and flippancy of his young _aid-de-camp_, and was, indeed, better pleased with Pen’s light and brilliant flashes, than with the heavier metal which his elder coadjutor brought to bear.