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

IN WHICH THE PRINTER'S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR

Pen in the midst of his revels and enjoyments, humble as they were, and moderate in cost if not in kind, saw an awful sword hanging over him which must drop down before long and put an end to his follies and feasting. His money was very nearly spent. His club subscription had carried away a third part of it. He had paid for the chief articles of furniture with which he had supplied his little bed-room: in fine, he was come to the last five-pound note in his pocket-book, and could think of no method of providing a successor; for our friend had been bred up like a young prince as yet, or as a child in arms whom his mother feeds when it cries out.

Warrington did not know what his comrade's means were. An only child, with a mother at her country house, and an old dandy of an uncle who dined with a great man every day, Pen might have a large bank at his command for any thing that the other knew. He had gold chains and a dressing-case fit for a lord. His habits were those of an aristocrat – not that he was expensive upon any particular point, for he dined and laughed over the pint of porter and the plate of beef from the cook's shop with perfect content and good appetite – but he could not adopt the penny-wise precautions of life. He could not give twopence to a waiter: he could not refrain from taking a cab if he had a mind to do so, or if it rained, and as surely as he took the cab he overpaid the driver. He had a scorn for cleaned gloves and minor economies. Had he been bred to ten thousand a year he could scarcely have been more free-handed; and for a beggar, with a sad story, or a couple of pretty piteous-faced children, he never could resist putting his hand into his pocket. It was a sumptuous nature, perhaps, that could not be brought to regard money; a natural generosity and kindness; and possibly a petty vanity that was pleased with praise, even with the praise of waiters and cabmen. I doubt whether the wisest of us know what our own motives are, and whether some of the actions of which we are the very proudest will not surprise us when we trace them, as we shall one day, to their source.

Warrington then did not know, and Pen had not thought proper to confide to his friend, his pecuniary history. That Pen had been wild and wickedly extravagant at college, the other was aware; every body at college was extravagant and wild; but how great the son's expenses had been, and how small the mother's means, were points which had not been as yet submitted to Mr. Warrington's examination.

At last the story came out, while Pen was grimly surveying the change for the last five-pound note, as it lay upon the tray from the public-house by Mr. Warrington's pot of ale.

"It is the last rose of summer," said Pen; "its blooming companions have gone long ago; and behold the last one of the garland has shed its leaves;" and he told Warrington the whole story, which we know, of his mother's means, of his own follies, of Laura's generosity; during which time Warrington smoked his pipe and listened intent.

"Impecuniosity will do you good," Pen's friend said, knocking out the ashes at the end of the narration; "I don't know any thing more wholesome for a man – for an honest man, mind you – for another, the medicine loses its effect – than a state of tick. It is an alterative and a tonic; it keeps your moral man in a perpetual state of excitement: as a man who is riding at a fence, or has his opponent's single stick before him, is forced to look his obstacle steadily in the face, and braces himself to repulse or overcome it; a little necessity brings out your pluck if you have any, and nerves you to grapple with fortune. You will discover what a number of things you can do without when you have no money to buy them. You won't want new gloves and varnished boots, eau de Cologne, and cabs to ride in. You have been bred up as a molly-coddle, Pen, and spoilt by the women. A single man who has health and brains, and can't find a livelihood in the world, doesn't deserve to stay there. Let him pay his last halfpenny and jump over Waterloo Bridge. Let him steal a leg of mutton and be transported and get out of the country – he is not fit to live in it. Dixi; I have spoken. Give us another pull at the pale ale."

"You have certainly spoken; but how is one to live?" said Pen. "There is beef and bread in plenty in England, but you must pay for it with work or money. And who will take my work? and what work can I do?"

Warrington burst out laughing, "Suppose we advertise in the Times," he said, "for an usher's place at a classical and commercial academy – A gentleman, B.A. of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and who was plucked for his degree – "

"Confound you," cried Pen.

" – Wishes to give lessons in classics and mathematics, and the rudiments of the French language; he can cut hair, attend to the younger pupils, and play a second on the piano with the daughters of the principal. Address A. P., Lamb Court, Temple."

"Go on," said Pen, growling.

"Men take to all sorts of professions. Why, there is your friend Bloundell-Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and travels the continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of fashion and fleeces them. There is Bob O'Toole, with whom I was at school, who drives the Ballynafad mail now, and carries honest Jack Finucane's own correspondence to that city. I know a man, sir, a doctor's son, like – well, don't be angry, I meant nothing offensive – a doctor's son, I say, who was walking the hospitals here, and quarreled with his governor on questions of finance, and what did he do when he came to his last five-pound note? he let his mustaches grow, went into a provincial town, where he announced himself as Professor Spineto, chiropodist to the Emperor of all the Russias, and by a happy operation on the editor of the country newspaper, established himself in practice, and lived reputably for three years. He has been reconciled to his family, and has now succeeded to his father's gallypots."

"Hang gallypots," cried Pen. "I can't drive a coach, cut corns, or cheat at cards. There's nothing else you propose?"

"Yes; there's our own correspondent," Warrington said. "Every man has his secrets, look you. Before you told me the story of your money-matters, I had no idea but that you were a gentleman of fortune, for, with your confounded airs and appearance, any body would suppose you to be so. From what you tell me about your mother's income, it is clear that you must not lay any more hands on it. You can't go on spunging upon the women. You must pay off that trump of a girl. Laura is her name? – here is your health, Laura! – and carry a hod rather than ask for a shilling from home."

"But how earn one?" asked Pen.

"How do I live, think you?" said the other. "On my younger brother's allowance, Pendennis? I have secrets of my own, my boy;" and here Warrington's countenance fell. "I made away with that allowance five years ago: if I had made away with myself a little time before, it would have been better. I have played off my own bat, ever since. I don't want much money. When my purse is out, I go to work and fill it, and then lie idle like a serpent or an Indian, until I have digested the mass. Look, I begin to feel empty," Warrington said, and showed Pen a long lean purse, with but a few sovereigns at one end of it.

"But how do you fill it?" said Pen.

"I write," said Warrington. "I don't tell the world that I do so," he added, with a blush. "I do not choose that questions should be asked: or, perhaps, I am an ass, and don't wish it to be said that George Warrington writes for bread. But I write in the Law Reviews: look here, these articles are mine." And he turned over some sheets. "I write in a newspaper, now and then, of which a friend of mine is editor." And Warrington, going with Pendennis to the club one day, called for a file of the "Dawn," and pointed with his finger silently to one or two articles, which Pen read with delight. He had no difficulty in recognizing the style afterward – the strong thoughts and curt periods, the sense, the satire, and the scholarship.

"I am not up to this," said Pen, with a genuine admiration of his friend's powers. "I know very little about politics or history, Warrington; and have but a smattering of letters. I can't fly upon such a wing as yours."

"But you can on your own, my boy, which is lighter, and soars higher, perhaps," the other said, good-naturedly. "Those little scraps and verses which I have seen of yours show me, what is rare in these days, a natural gift, sir. You needn't blush, you conceited young jackanapes. You have thought so yourself any time these ten years. You have got the sacred flame – a little of the real poetical fire, sir, I think; and all our oil-lamps are nothing, compared to that, though ever so well trimmed. You are a poet, Pen, my boy," and so speaking, Warrington stretched out his broad hand, and clapped Pen on the shoulder.

Arthur was so delighted that the tears came into his eyes. "How kind you are to me, Warrington!" he said.

"I like you, old boy," said the other. "I was dev'lish lonely in chambers, and wanted somebody, and the sight of your honest face somehow pleased me. I liked the way you laughed at Lowton – that poor good little snob. And, in fine, the reason why I can not tell – but so it is, young 'un. I'm alone in the world, sir; and I wanted some one to keep me company;" and a glance of extreme kindness and melancholy passed out of Warrington's dark eyes.

Pen was too much pleased with his own thoughts to perceive the sadness of the friend who was complimenting him. "Thank you, Warrington," he said, "thank you for your friendship to me, and – and what you say about me. I have often thought I was a poet. I will be one – I think I am one, as you say so, though the world mayn't. Is it – is it the Ariadne in Naxos which you liked (I was only eighteen when I wrote it), or the Prize Poem?"

Warrington burst into a roar of laughter. "Why, you young goose," he yelled out – "of all the miserable weak rubbish I ever tried, Ariadne in Naxos is the most mawkish and disgusting. The Prize Poem is so pompous and feeble, that I'm positively surprised, sir, it didn't get the medal. You don't suppose that you are a serious poet, do you, and are going to cut out Milton and Æschylus? Are you setting up to be a Pindar, you absurd little tom-tit, and fancy you have the strength and pinion which the Theban eagle bear, sailing with supreme dominion through the azure fields of air? No, my boy, I think you can write a magazine article, and turn out a pretty copy of verses; that's what I think of you."

"By Jove!" said Pen, bouncing up and stamping his foot, "I'll show you that I am a better man than you think for."

Warrington only laughed the more, and blew twenty-four puffs rapidly out of his pipe by way of reply to Pen.

An opportunity for showing his skill presented itself before very long. That eminent publisher, Mr. Bacon (formerly Bacon and Bungay) of Paternoster Row, besides being the proprietor of the legal Review, in which Mr. Warrington wrote, and of other periodicals of note and gravity, used to present to the world every year a beautiful gilt volume called the Spring Annual, edited by the Lady Violet Lebas, and numbering among its contributors not only the most eminent, but the most fashionable poets of our time. Young Lord Dodo's poems first appeared in this miscellany – the Honorable Percy Popjoy, whose chivalrous ballads have obtained him such a reputation – Bedwin Sands's Eastern Ghazuls, and many more of the works of our young nobles, were first given to the world in the Spring Annual, which has since shared the fate of other vernal blossoms, and perished out of the world. The book was daintily illustrated with pictures of reigning beauties, or other prints of a tender and voluptuous character; and, as these plates were prepared long beforehand, requiring much time in engraving, it was the eminent poets who had to write to the plates, and not the painters who illustrated the poems.

One day, just when this volume was on the eve of publication, it chanced that Mr. Warrington called in Paternoster Row to talk with Mr. Hack, Mr. Bacon's reader and general manager of publications – for Mr. Bacon, not having the least taste in poetry or in literature of any kind, wisely employed the services of a professional gentleman. Warrington, then, going into Mr. Hack's room on business of his own, found that gentleman with a bundle of proof plates and sheets of the Spring Annual before him, and glanced at some of them.

Percy Popjoy had written some verses to illustrate one of the pictures, which was called The Church Porch. A Spanish damsel was hastening to church with a large prayer-book; a youth in a cloak was hidden in a niche watching this young woman. The picture was pretty; but the great genius of Percy Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most execrable verses which ever were perpetrated by a young nobleman.

Warrington burst out laughing as he read the poem: and Mr. Hack laughed too, but with rather a rueful face. – "It won't do," he said, "the public won't stand it. Bungay's people are going to bring out a very good book, and have set up Miss Bunyan against Lady Violet. We have most titles to be sure – but the verses are too bad. Lady Violet herself owns it; she's busy with her own poem; what's to be done? We can't lose the plate. The governor gave sixty pounds for it?"

"I know a fellow who would do some verses, I think," said Warrington. "Let me take the plate home in my pocket: and send to my chambers in the morning for the verses. You'll pay well of course."

"Of course," said Mr. Hack; and Warrington, having dispatched his own business, went home to Mr. Pen, plate in hand.

"Now, boy, here's a chance for you. Turn me off a copy of verses to this."

"What's this? A Church Porch – a lady entering it, and a youth out of a wine-shop window ogling her. – What the deuce am I to do with it?"

"Try," said Warrington. "Earn your livelihood for once, you who long so to do it."

"Well, I will try," said Pen.

"And I'll go out to dinner," said Warrington, and left Mr. Pen in a brown study.

When Warrington came home that night, at a very late hour, the verses were done. "There they are," said Pen. "I've screwed 'em out at last. I think they'll do."

"I think they will," said Warrington, after reading them; they ran as follows: —

The Church Porch

Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Sometimes I hover,
And at the sacred gate,
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.

The Minster bell tolls out
Above the city's rout
And noise and humming:
They've stopp'd the chiming bell,
I hear the organ's swell —
She's coming, she's coming!

My lady comes at last,
Timid and stepping fast,
And hastening hither,