A History of Pendennis. Volume 1. His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy

Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at Fairoaks during this period, where his good spirits and oddities always amused the major and Pendennis, while they astonished the widow and little Laura not a little. His tandem made a great sensation in Clavering market-place; where he upset a market stall, and cut Mrs. Pybus's poodle over the shaven quarters, and drank a glass of raspberry bitters at the Clavering Arms. All the society in the little place heard who he was, and looked out his name in their Peerages. He was so young, and their books so old, that his name did not appear in many of their volumes; and his mamma, now quite an antiquated lady, figured among the progeny of the Earl of Rosherville, as Lady Agnes Milton, still. But his name, wealth, and honorable lineage were speedily known about Clavering, where you may be sure that poor Pen's little transaction with the Chatteries actress was also pretty freely discussed.

Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from the London road as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and shining Brawl winding down from the town and skirting the woods of Clavering Park, and the ancient church tower and peaked roofs of the houses rising up among trees and old walls, behind which swells a fair back-ground of sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westward toward the sea – the place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a traveler's heart must have yearned toward it from the coach-top, and he must have thought that it was in such a calm friendly nook he would like to shelter at the end of life's struggle. Tom Smith who used to drive the Alacrity coach, would often point to a tree near the river, from which a fine view of the church and town was commanded, and inform his companion on the box that "Artises come and take hoff the Church from that there tree. – It was a Habby once, sir: " – and indeed a pretty view it is, which I recommend to Mr. Stanfield or Mr. Roberts, for their next tour.

Like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus; like Mrs. Rougemont viewed in her box from the opposite side of the house; like many an object which we pursue in life, and admire before we have attained it; Clavering is rather prettier at a distance than it is on a closer acquaintance. The town so cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks very blank and dreary. Except on market days there is nobody in the streets.

The clack of a pair of pattens echoes through half the place, and you may hear the creaking of the rusty old ensign at the Clavering Arms, without being disturbed by any other noise. There has not been a ball in the assembly rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to their colonel, the old Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which once held a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up there, and their tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the place, or on petty sessions, when the magistrates attend in what used to be the old card-room.

On the south side of the market rises up the church, with its great gray towers, of which the sun illuminates the delicate carving; deepening the shadows of the huge buttresses, and gilding the glittering windows, and flaming vanes. The image of the patroness of the church was wrenched out of the porch centuries ago: such of the statues of saints as were within reach of stones and hammer at that period of pious demolition are maimed and headless, and of those who were out of fire, only Doctor Portman knows the names and history, for his curate, Smirke, is not much of an antiquarian, and Mr. Simcoe (husband of the Honorable Mrs. Simcoe) incumbent and architect of the Chapel of Ease in the lower town, thinks them the abomination of desolation.

The rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house, of the reign of Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates, and stands at the opening of Yew-tree Lane, where the Grammar School (Rev. – Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butcher's slaughtering-house, an old barn or brew-house of the Abbey times, and the Misses Finucane's establishment for young ladies. The two schools had their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, until the Abbey Church getting rather empty, through the falling off of the congregation, who were inveigled to the Heresy-shop in the lower town, the doctor induced the Misses Finucane to bring their pretty little flock down stairs; and the young ladies' bonnets make a tolerable show in the rather vacant aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering family except the statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there is Sir Poyntz Clavering, knight and baronet, kneeling in a square beard opposite his wife in a ruff; a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task – and so forth. How well, in after life, Pen remembered those effigies, and how often in youth he scanned them as the doctor was grumbling the sermon from the pulpit, and Smirke's mild head and forehead curl peered over the great prayer-book in the desk!

The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church; their servants had a pew, so had the doctor's, so had Wapshot's, and those of Misses Finucane's establishment, three maids and a very nice looking young man in a livery. The Wapshot family were numerous and faithful. Glanders and his children regularly came to church: so did one of the apothecaries. Mrs. Pybus went, turn and turn about, to the Low Town church, and to the Abbey: the Charity School and their families of course came; Wapshot's boys made a good cheerful noise, scuffling with their feet as they marched into church and up the organ-loft stair, and blowing their noses a good deal during the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as decent as might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic tombstones. The doctor spent a great part of his income in beautifying his darling place; he had endowed it with a superb painted window, bought in the Netherlands, and an organ grand enough for a cathedral.

But in spite of organ and window, in consequence of the latter very likely, which had come out of a papistical place of worship and was blazoned all over with idolatry, Clavering New Church prospered scandalously in the teeth of orthodoxy; and many of the doctor's congregation deserted to Mr. Simcoe and the honorable woman his wife. Their efforts had thinned the very Ebenezer hard by them, which building, before Simcoe's advent used to be so full, that you could see the backs of the congregation squeezing out of the arched windows thereof. Mr. Simcoe's tracts fluttered into the doors of all the doctor's cottages, and were taken as greedily as honest Mrs. Portman's soup, with the quality of which the graceless people found fault. With the folks at the Ribbon Factory situated by the weir on the Brawl side, and round which the Low Town had grown, orthodoxy could make no way at all. Quiet Miss Myra was put out of court by impetuous Mrs. Simcoe and her female aids-de-camp. Ah, it was a hard burthen for the doctor's lady to bear, to behold her husband's congregation dwindling away; to give the precedence on the few occasions when they met to a notorious low-churchman's wife who was the daughter of an Irish Peer; to know that there was a party in Clavering, their own town of Clavering, on which her doctor spent a great deal more than his professional income, who held him up to odium because he played a rubber at whist; and pronounced him to be a heathen because he went to the play. In her grief she besought him to give up the play and the rubber – indeed they could scarcely get a table now, so dreadful was the outcry against the sport – but the doctor declared that he would do what he thought right, and what the great and good George the Third did (whose chaplain he had been): and as for giving up whist because those silly folks cried out against it, he would play dummy to the end of his days with his wife and Myra, rather than yield to their despicable persecutions.

Of the two families, owners of the factory (which had spoiled the Brawl as a trout-stream and brought all the mischief into the town), the senior partner, Mr. Rolt, went to Ebenezer; the junior, Mr. Barker, to the New Church. In a word, people quarreled in this little place a great deal more than neighbors do in London; and in the book club, which the prudent and conciliating Pendennis had set up, and which ought to have been a neutral territory, they bickered so much that nobody scarcely was ever seen in the reading room, except Smirke, who though he kept up a faint amity with the Simcoe faction, had still a taste for magazines and light worldly literature; and old Glanders, whose white head and grizzly mustache might be seen at the window; and of course, little Mrs. Pybus, who looked at every body's letters as the post brought them (for the Clavering reading room, as every one knows, used to be held at Baker's Library, London-street formerly Hog Lane), and read every advertisement in the paper.

It may be imagined how great a sensation was created in this amiable little community when the news reached it of Mr. Pen's love-passages at Chatteries. It was carried from house to house, and formed the subject of talk at high-church, low-church, and no-church tables; it was canvassed by the Misses Finucane and their teachers, and very likely debated by the young ladies in the dormitories, for what we know; Wapshot's big boys had their version of the story, and eyed Pen curiously as he sate in his pew at church, or raised the finger of scorn at him as he passed through Chatteries. They always hated him and called him Lord Pendennis, because he did not wear corduroys as they did, and rode a horse, and gave himself the airs of a buck.

And if the truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself who was the chief narrator of the story of Pen's loves. Whatever tales this candid woman heard, she was sure to impart them to her neighbors; and after she had been put into possession of Pen's secret by the little scandal at Chatteries, poor Doctor Portman knew that it would next day be about the parish of which he was the rector. And so indeed it was; the whole society there had the legend – at the news' room, at the milliner's, at the shoe-shop, and the general warehouse at the corner of the market; at Mrs. Pybus's, at the Glanders's, at the Honorable Mrs. Simcoe's soirée, at the factory; nay, through the mill itself the tale was current in a few hours, and young Arthur Pendennis's madness, was in every mouth.

All Doctor Portman's acquaintances barked out upon him when he walked the street the next day. The poor divine knew that his Betsy was the author of the rumor, and groaned in spirit. Well, well – it must have come in a day or two, and it was as well that the town should have the real story. What the Clavering folks thought of Mrs. Pendennis for spoiling her son, and of that precocious young rascal of an Arthur for daring to propose to a play-actress, need not be told here. If pride exists among any folks in our country, and assuredly we have enough of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than that of twopenny old gentlewomen in small towns. "Gracious goodness," the cry was, "how infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy, who gives himself the airs of a lord on his blood-horse, and for whom our society is not good enough, and who would marry an odious painted actress off a booth, where very likely he wants to rant himself. If dear, good Mr. Pendennis had been alive this scandal would never have happened."

No more it would, very likely, nor should we have been occupied in narrating Pen's history. It was true that he gave himself airs to the Clavering folks. Naturally haughty and frank, their cackle and small talk and small dignities bored him, and he showed a contempt which he could not conceal. The doctor and the curate were the only people Pen cared for in the place – even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust of him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried, forsooth, to keep her head up with the great county families. She, indeed! Mrs. Barker at the factory has four times the butcher's meat that goes up to Fairoaks, with all their fine airs.

&c. &c. &c.: let the reader fill up these details according to his liking and experience of village scandal. They will suffice to show how it was that a good woman, occupied solely in doing her duty to her neighbor and her children, and an honest, brave lad, impetuous, and full of good, and wishing well to every mortal alive, found enemies and detractors among people to whom they were superior, and to whom they had never done any thing like harm. The Clavering curs were yelping all round the house of Fairoaks, and delighted to pull Pen down.

Doctor Portman and Smirke were both cautious of informing the widow of the constant outbreak of calumny which was pursuing poor Pen, though Glanders, who was a friend of the house, kept him au courant. It may be imagined what his indignation was; was there any man in the village whom he could call to account? Presently some wags began to chalk up "Fotheringay forever!" and other sarcastic allusions to late transactions, at Fairoaks gate. Another brought a large play-bill from Chatteries, and wafered it there one night. On one occasion Pen, riding through the lower town, fancied he heard the factory boys jeer him; and finally going through the doctor's gate into the churchyard, where some of Wapshot's boys were lounging, the biggest of them, a young gentleman about twenty years of age, son of a neighboring small squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlor boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen.

The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute knocked the bewildered young ruffian into the grave which was just waiting for a different lodger.

Then with his fists clenched, and his face quivering with passion and indignation, he roared out to Mr. Hobnell's gaping companions, to know if any of the blackguards would come on? But they held back with a growl, and retreated as Doctor Portman came up to his wicket, and Mr. Hobnell, with his nose and lip bleeding piteously, emerged from the grave.

Pen, looking death and defiance at the lads, who retreated toward their side of the churchyard, walked back again through the doctor's wicket, and was interrogated by that gentleman. The young fellow was so agitated he could scarcely speak. His voice broke into a sob, as he answered. "The – coward insulted me, sir," he said; and the doctor passed over the oath, and respected the emotion of the honest, suffering young heart.

Pendennis the elder, who like a real man of the world had a proper and constant dread of the opinion of his neighbor, was prodigiously annoyed by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteries, and tossing about Master Pen's reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders had to support the charges of the whole Chatteries society against the young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime. Pen did not say any thing about the churchyard scuffle at home; but went over to Baymouth, and took counsel with his friend Harry Foker, Esq., who drove over his drag presently to the Clavering Arms, whence he sent Stoopid with a note to Thomas Hobnell, Esq., at the Rev. J. Wapshot's, and a civil message to ask when he should wait upon that gentleman.

Stoopid brought back word that the note had been opened by Mr. Hobnell, and read to half-a-dozen of the big boys, on whom it seemed to make a great impression; and that after consulting together, and laughing, Mr. Hobnell said he would send an answer "arter arternoon school, which the bell was a ringing; and Mr. Wapshot he came out in his Master's gownd." Stoopid was learned in academical costume, having attended Mr. Foker at St. Boniface.

Mr. Foker went out to see the curiosities of Clavering, meanwhile; but not having a taste for architecture, Doctor Portman's fine church did not engage his attention much, and he pronounced the tower to be as moldy as an old Stilton cheese. He walked down the street and looked at the few shops there; he saw Captain Glanders at the window of the reading-room, and having taken a good stare at that gentleman, he wagged his head at him in token of satisfaction; he inquired the price of meat at the butcher's, with an air of the greatest interest, and asked, "when was next killing day?" he flattened his little nose against Madam Fribsby's window to see if haply there was a pretty workwoman in her premises; but there was no face more comely than the doll's or dummy's wearing the French cap in the window, only that of Madame Fribsby herself, dimly visible in the parlor, reading a novel. That object was not of sufficient interest to keep Mr. Foker very long in contemplation, and so having exhausted the town and the inn stables, in which there were no cattle, save the single old pair of posters that earned a scanty livelihood by transporting the gentry round about to the county dinners, Mr. Foker was giving himself up to ennui entirely, when a messenger from Mr. Hobnell was at length announced.

It was no other than Mr. Wapshot himself, who came with an air of great indignation, and holding Pen's missive in his hand, asked Mr. Foker "how dared he bring such an unchristian message as a challenge to a boy of his school?"

In fact Pen had written a note to his adversary of the day before, telling him that if after the chastisement which his insolence richly deserved, he felt inclined to ask the reparation which was usually given among gentlemen, Mr. Arthur Pendennis's friend, Mr. Henry Foker, was empowered to make any arrangements for the satisfaction of Mr. Hobnell.

"And so he sent you with the answer – did he, sir?" Mr. Foker said, surveying the schoolmaster in his black coat and clerical costume.

"If he had accepted this wicked challenge, I should have flogged him," Mr. Wapshot said, and gave Mr. Foker a glance which seemed to say, "and I should like very much to flog you, too."

"Uncommon kind of you, sir, I'm sure," said Pen's emissary. "I told my principal that I didn't think the other man would fight," he continued, with a great air of dignity. "He prefers being flogged to fighting, sir, I dare say. May I offer you any refreshment, Mr. – ? I haven't the advantage of your name."

"My name is Wapshot, sir, and I am master of the grammar school of this town, sir," cried the other: "and I want no refreshment, sir, I thank you, and have no desire to make your acquaintance, sir."

"I didn't seek yours, sir, I'm sure," replied Mr. Foker. "In affairs of this sort, you see, I think it is a pity that the clergy should be called in, but there's no accounting for tastes, sir."

"I think it's a pity that boys should talk about committing murder, sir, as lightly as you do," roared the schoolmaster; "and if I had you in my school – "

"I dare say you would teach me better, sir," Mr. Foker said, with a bow. "Thank you, sir. I've finished my education, sir, and ain't a going back to school, sir – when I do, I'll remember your kind offer, sir. John, show this gentleman down stairs – and, of course, as Mr. Hobnell likes being thrashed, we can have no objection, sir, and we shall be very happy to accommodate him, whenever he comes our way."

And with this, the young fellow bowed the elder gentleman out of the room, and sate down and wrote a note off to Pen, in which he informed the latter, that Mr. Hobnell was not disposed to fight, and proposed to put up with the caning which Pen had administered to him.

CHAPTER XVI.

MORE STORMS IN THE PUDDLE

Pen's conduct in this business of course was soon made public and angered his friend Doctor Portman, not a little: while it only amused Major Pendennis. As for the good Mrs. Pendennis, she was almost distracted when she heard of the squabble, and of Pen's unchristian behavior. All sorts of wretchedness, discomfort, crime, annoyance, seemed to come out of this transaction in which the luckless boy had engaged; and she longed more than ever to see him out of Chatteries for a while – any where removed from the woman who had brought him into so much trouble.

Pen, when remonstrated with by this fond parent, and angrily rebuked by the doctor for his violence and ferocious intentions, took the matter au grand sérieux, with the happy conceit and gravity of youth: said that he himself was very sorry for the affair, that the insult had come upon him without the slightest provocation on his part; that he would permit no man to insult him upon this head without vindicating his own honor, and appealing with great dignity to his uncle, asked whether he could have acted otherwise as a gentleman, than as he did in resenting the outrage offered to him, and in offering satisfaction to the person chastised?

"Vous allez trop vite, my good sir," said the uncle, rather puzzled, for he had been indoctrinating his nephew with some of his own notions upon the point of honor – old-world notions savoring of the camp and pistol a great deal more than our soberer opinions of the present day – "between men of the world I don't say; but between two school-boys, this sort of thing is ridiculous, my dear boy – perfectly ridiculous."

"It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son," said Mrs. Pendennis, with tears in her eyes; and bewildered with the obstinacy of the boy.

Pen kissed her, and said with great pomposity, "Women, dear mother, don't understand these matters – I put myself into Foker's hands – I had no other course to pursue."

Major Pendennis grinned and shrugged his shoulders. The young ones were certainly making great progress, he thought. Mrs. Pendennis declared that that Foker was a wicked horrid little wretch, and was sure that he would lead her dear boy into mischief, if Pen went to the same college with him. "I have a great mind not to let him go at all," she said: and only that she remembered that the lad's father had always destined him for the college in which he had had his own brief education, very likely the fond mother would have put a veto upon his going to the University.

That he was to go, and at the next October term, had been arranged between all the authorities who presided over the lad's welfare. Foker had promised to introduce him to the right set; and Major Pendennis laid great store upon Pen's introduction into college life and society by this admirable young gentleman. "Mr. Foker knows the very best young men now at the University," the major said, "and Pen will form acquaintances there who will be of the greatest advantage through life to him. The young Marquis of Plinlimmon is there, eldest son of the Duke of Saint David's – Lord Magnus Charters is there, Lord Runnymede's son; and a first cousin of Mr. Foker (Lady Runnymede, my dear, was Lady Agatha Milton, you of course remember), Lady Agnes will certainly invite him to Logwood; and far from being alarmed at his intimacy with her son, who is a singular and humorous, but most prudent and amiable young man, to whom, I am sure, we are under every obligation for his admirable conduct in the affair of the Fotheringay marriage, I look upon it as one of the very luckiest things which could have happened to Pen, that he should have formed an intimacy with this most amusing young gentleman."

Helen sighed, she supposed the major knew best. Mr. Foker had been very kind in the wretched business with Miss Costigan, certainly, and she was grateful to him. But she could not feel otherwise than a dim presentiment of evil; and all these quarrels, and riots, and worldliness, scared her about the fate of her boy.

Doctor Portman was decidedly of opinion that Pen should go to college. He hoped the lad would read, and have a moderate indulgence of the best society too. He was of opinion that Pen would distinguish himself: Smirke spoke very highly of his proficiency: the doctor himself had heard him construe, and thought he acquitted himself remarkably well. That he should go out of Chatteries was a great point, at any rate, and Pen, who was distracted from his private grief by the various rows and troubles which had risen round about him, gloomily said he would obey.