The Newcomes

by William Makepeace Thackeray

when you sing so wonderfully, so beautifully, yourself? Do not leave the

  piano, please--do sing again!" And she puts out a kind little hand

  towards the superior artist, and, blushing, leads her back to the

  instrument. "I'm sure me and Emily will sing for you as much as you like,

  dear," says Mrs. Sherrick, nodding to Rosey good-naturedly. Mrs.

  Mackenzie, who has been biting her lips and drumming the time on a

  side-table, forgets at last the pain of being vanquished in admiration of

  the conquerors. "It was cruel of you not to tell us, Mr. Honeyman," she

  says, "of the--of the treat you had in store for us. I had no idea we

  were going to meet professional people; Mrs. Sherrick's singing is indeed

  beautiful."

  "If you come up to our place in the Regent's Park, Mr. Newcome," Mr.

  Sherrick says, "Mrs. S. and Emily will give you as many songs as you

  like. How do you like the house in Fitzroy Square? Anything wanting doing

  there? I'm a good landlord to a good tenant. Don't care what I spend on

  my houses. Lose by 'em sometimes. Name a day when you'll come to us; and

  I'll ask some good fellows to meet you. Your father and Mr. Binnie came

  once. That was when you were a young chap. They didn't have a bad

  evening, I believe. You just come and try us--I can give you as good a

  glass of wine as most, I think," and he smiles, perhaps thinking of the

  champagne which Mr. Warrington had slighted. "I've ad the close carriage

  for my wife this evening," he continues, looking out of window at a very

  handsome brougham which has just drawn up there. "That little pair of

  horses steps prettily together, don't they? Fond of horses? I know you

  are. See you in the Park; and going by our house sometimes. The Colonel

  sits a horse uncommonly well: so do you, Mr. Newcome. I've often said,

  'Why don't they get off their horses and say, Sherrick, we're come for a

  bit of lunch and a glass of Sherry?' Name a day, sir. Mr. P., will you be

  in it?"

  Clive Newcome named a day, and told his father of the circumstance in the

  evening. The Colonel looked grave. "There was something which I did not

  quite like about Mr. Sherrick," said that acute observer of human nature.

  "It was easy to see that the man is not quite a gentleman. I don't care

  what a man's trade is, Clive. Indeed, who are we, to give ourselves airs

  upon that subject? But when I am gone, my boy, and there is nobody near

  you who knows the world as I do, you may fall into designing hands, and

  rogues may lead you into mischief: keep a sharp look-out, Clive. Mr.

  Pendennis, here, knows that there are designing fellows abroad" (and the

  dear old gentleman gives a very knowing nod as he speaks). "When I am

  gone, keep the lad from harm's way, Pendennis. Meanwhile Mr. Sherrick has

  been a very good and obliging landlord; and a man who sells wine may

  certainly give a friend a bottle. I am glad you had a pleasant evening,

  boys. Ladies, I hope you have had a pleasant afternoon. Miss Rosey, you

  are come back to make tea for the old gentlemen? James begins to get

  about briskly now. He walked to Hanover Square, Mrs. Mackenzie, without

  hurting his ankle in the least."

  "I am almost sorry that he is getting well," says Mrs. Mackenzie

  sincerely. "He won't want us when he is quite cured."

  "Indeed, my dear creature!" cries the Colonel, taking her pretty hand and

  kissing it; "he will want you, and he shall want you. James no more knows

  the world than Miss Rosey here; and if I had not been with him, would

  have been perfectly unable to take care of himself. When I am gone to

  India, somebody must stay with him; and--and my boy must have a home to

  go to," says the kind soldier, his voice dropping. "I had been in hopes

  that his own relatives would have received him more, but never mind about

  that," he cried more cheerfully. "Why, I may not be absent a year! I

  perhaps need not go at all--I am second for promotion. A couple of our

  old generals may drop any day; and when I get my regiment I come back to

  stay, to live at home. Meantime, whilst I am gone, my dear lady, you will

  take care of James; and you will be kind to my boy."

  "That I will!" said the widow, radiant with pleasure, and she took one of

  Clive's hands and pressed it for an instant; and from Clive's father's

  kind face there beamed out that benediction which always made his

  countenance appear to me among the most beautiful of human faces.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  In which the Newcome Brothers once more meet together in Unity

  His narrative, as the judicious reader no doubt is aware, is written

  maturely and at ease, long after the voyage is over, whereof it recounts

  the adventures and perils; the winds adverse and favourable; the storms,

  shoals, shipwrecks, islands, and so forth, which Clive Newcome met in his

  early journey in life. In such a history events follow each other without

  necessarily having a connection with one another. One ship crosses

  another ship, and after a visit from one captain to his comrade, they

  sail away each on his course. The Clive Newcome meets a vessel which

  makes signals that she is short of bread and water; and after supplying

  her, our captain leaves her to see her no more. One or two of the vessels

  with which we commenced the voyage together, part company in a gale, and

  founder miserably; others, after being wofully battered in the tempest,

  make port, or are cast upon surprising islands where all sorts of

  unlooked-for prosperity awaits the lucky crew. Also, no doubt, the writer

  of the book, into whose hands Clive Newcome's logs have been put, and who

  is charged with the duty of making two octavo volumes out of his friend's

  story, dresses up the narrative in his own way; utters his own remarks in

  place of Newcome's; makes fanciful descriptions of individuals and

  incidents with which he never could have been personally acquainted; and

  commits blunders, which the critics will discover. A great number of the

  descriptions in Cook's Voyages, for instance, were notoriously invented

  by Dr. Hawkesworth, who "did" the book: so in the present volumes, where

  dialogues are written down, which the reporter could by no possibility

  have heard, and where motives are detected which the persons actuated by

  them certainly never confided to the writer, the public must once for all

  be warned that the author's individual fancy very likely supplies much of

  the narrative; and that he forms it as best he may, out of stray papers,

  conversations reported to him, and his knowledge, right or wrong, of the

  characters of the persons engaged. And, as is the case with the most

  orthodox histories, the writer's own guesses or conjectures are printed

  in exactly the same type as the most ascertained patent facts. I fancy,

  for my part, that the speeches attributed to Clive, the Colonel, and the

  rest, are as authentic as the orations in Sallust or Livy, and only

  implore the truth-loving public to believe that incidents here told, and

  which passed very probably without witnesses, were either confided to me

  subsequently as compiler of this biography, or are of such a nature that

  they must have happened from what
we know happened after. For example,

  when you read such words as QVE ROMANVS on a battered Roman stone, your

  profound antiquarian knowledge enables you to assert that SENATVS POPVLVS

  was also inscribed there at some time or other. You take a mutilated

  statue of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, or Virorum, and you pop him on a wanting

  hand, an absent foot, or a nose which time or barbarians have defaced.

  You tell your tales as you can, and state the facts as you think they

  must have been. In this manner, Mr. James (historiographer to Her

  Majesty), Titus Livius, Professor Alison, Robinson Crusoe, and all

  historians proceeded. Blunders there must be in the best of these

  narratives, and more asserted than they can possibly know or vouch for.

  To recur to our own affairs, and the subject at present in hand, I am

  obliged here to supply from conjecture a few points of the history, which

  I could not know from actual experience or hearsay. Clive, let us say, is

  Romanus, and we must add Senatus Populusque to his inscription. After

  Mrs. Mackenzie and her pretty daughter had been for a few months in

  London, which they did not think of quitting, although Mr. Binnie's

  wounded little leg was now as well and as brisk as ever it had been, a

  redintegration of love began to take place between the Colonel and his

  relatives in Park Lane. How should we know that there had ever been a

  quarrel, or at any rate a coolness? Thomas Newcome was not a man to talk

  at length of any such matter; though a word or two occasionally dropped

  in conversation by the simple gentleman might lead persons who chose to

  interest themselves about his family affairs to form their own opinions

  concerning them. After that visit of the Colonel and his son to Newcome,

  Ethel was constantly away with her grandmother. The Colonel went to see

  his pretty little favourite at Brighton, and once, twice, thrice, Lady

  Kew's door was denied to him. The knocker of that door could not be more

  fierce than the old lady's countenance, when Newcome met her in her

  chariot driving on the cliff. Once, forming the loveliest of a charming

  Amazonian squadron, led by Mr. Whiskin, the riding-master, when the

  Colonel encountered his pretty Ethel, she greeted him affectionately, it

  is true; there was still the sweet look of candour and love in her eyes;

  but when he rode up to her she looked so constrained, when he talked

  about Clive, so reserved, when he left her, so sad, that he could not but

  feel pain and commiseration. Back he went to London, having in a week

  only caught this single glance of his darling.

  This event occurred while Clive was painting his picture of the "Battle

  of Assaye" before mentioned, during the struggles incident on which

  composition he was not thinking much about Miss Ethel, or his papa, or

  any other subject but his great work. Whilst Assaye was still in

  progress, Thomas Newcome must have had an explanation with his

  sister-in-law, Lady Anne, to whom he frankly owned the hopes which he had

  entertained for Clive, and who must as frankly have told the Colonel that

  Ethel's family had very different views for that young lady to those

  which the simple Colonel had formed. A generous early attachment, the

  Colonel thought, is the safeguard of a young man. To love a noble girl;

  to wait a while and struggle, and haply do some little achievement in

  order to win her; the best task to which his boy could set himself. If

  two young people so loving each other were to marry on rather narrow

  means, what then? A happy home was better than the finest house in

  Mayfair; a generous young fellow, such as, please God, his son was--

  loyal, upright, and a gentleman--might pretend surely to his kinswoman's

  hand without derogation; and the affection he bore Ethel himself was so

  great, and the sweet regard with which she returned it, that the simple

  father thought his kindly project was favoured by Heaven, and prayed for

  its fulfilment, and pleased himself to think, when his campaigns were

  over, and his sword hung on the wall, what a beloved daughter he might

  have to soothe and cheer his old age. With such a wife for his son, and

  child for himself, he thought the happiness of his last years might repay

  him for friendless boyhood, lonely manhood, and cheerless exile; and he

  imparted his simple scheme to Ethel's mother, who no doubt was touched as

  he told his story; for she always professed regard and respect for him,

  and in the differences which afterwards occurred in the family, and the

  quarrels which divided the brothers, still remained faithful to the good

  Colonel.

  But Barnes Newcome, Esquire, was the bead of the house, and the governor

  of his father and all Sir Brian's affairs; and Barnes Newcome, Esquire,

  hated his cousin Clive, and spoke of him as a beggarly painter, an

  impudent snob, an infernal young puppy, and so forth; and Barnes with his

  usual freedom of language imparted his opinions to his Uncle Hobson at

  the bank, and Uncle Hobson carried them home to Mrs. Newcome in

  Bryanstone Square; and Mrs. Newcome took an early opportunity of telling

  the Colonel her opinion on the subject, and of bewailing that love for

  aristocracy which she saw actuated some folks; and the Colonel was

  brought to see that Barnes was his boy's enemy, and words very likely

  passed between them, for Thomas Newcome took a new banker at this time,

  and, as Clive informed me, was in very great dudgeon because Hobson

  Brothers wrote to him to say that he had overdrawn his account. "I am

  sure there is some screw loose," the sagacious youth remarked to me; "and

  the Colonel and the people in Park Lane are at variance, because he goes

  there very little now; and he promised to go to Court when Ethel was

  presented, and he didn't go."

  Some months after the arrival of Mr. Binnie's niece and sister in Fitzroy

  Square, the fraternal quarrel between the Newcomes must have come to an

  end--for that time at least--and was followed by a rather ostentatious

  reconciliation. And pretty little Rosey Mackenzie was the innocent and

  unconscious cause of this amiable change in the minds of the three

  brethren, as I gathered from a little conversation with Mrs. Newcome, who

  did me the honour to invite me to her table. As she had not vouchsafed

  this hospitality to me for a couple of years previously, and perfectly

  stifled me with affability when we met,--as her invitation came quite at

  the end of the season, when almost everybody was out of town, and a

  dinner to a man is no compliment,--I was at first for declining this

  invitation, and spoke of it with great scorn when Mr. Newcome orally

  delivered it to me at Bays's Club.

  "What," said I, turning round to an old man of the world, who happened to

  be in the room at the time, "what do these people mean by asking a fellow

  to dinner in August, and taking me up after dropping me for two years?"

  "My good fellow," says my friend--it was my kind old Uncle Major

  Pendennis, indeed--"I have lived long enough about town never to ask

  myself questions of that sort. In the world people drop you and take you

  up every day. You know Lady Chedd
ar by sight? I have known her husband

  for forty years: I have stayed with them in the country, for weeks at a

  time. She knows me as well as she knows King Charles at Charing Cross,

  and a doosid deal better, and yet for a whole season she will drop me--

  pass me by, as if there was no such person in the world. Well, sir, what

  do I do? I never see her. I give you my word I am never conscious of her

  existence; and if I meet her at dinner, I'm no more aware of her than the

  fellows in the play are of Banquo. What's the end of it? She comes round

  --only last Toosday she came round--and said Lord Cheddar wanted me to go

  down to Wiltshire. I asked after the family (you know Henry Churningham

  is engaged to Miss Rennet?--a doosid good match for the Cheddars). We

  shook hands and are as good friends as ever. I don't suppose she'll cry

  when I die, you know," said the worthy old gentleman with a grin. "Nor

  shall I go into very deep mourning if anything happens to her. You were

  quite right to say to Newcome that you did not know whether you were free

  or not, and would look at your engagements when you got home, and give

  him an answer. A fellow of that rank has no right to give himself airs.

  But they will, sir. Some of those bankers are as high and mighty as the

  oldest families. They marry noblemen's daughters, by Jove, and think

  nothing is too good for 'em. But I should go, if I were you, Arthur. I

  dined there a couple of months ago; and the bankeress said something

  about you: that you and her nephew were much together, that you were sad

  wild dogs, I think--something of that sort. 'Gad, ma'am,' says I, 'boys

  will be boys.' 'And they grow to be men!' says she, nodding her head.

  Queer little woman, devilish pompous. Dinner confoundedly long, stoopid,

  scientific."

  The old gentleman was on this day inclined to be talkative and

  confidential, and I set down some more remarks which he made concerning

  my friends. "Your Indian Colonel," says he, "seems a worthy man." The

  Major quite forgot having been in India himself, unless he was in company

  with some very great personage. "He don't seem to know much of the world,

  and we are not very intimate. Fitzroy Square is a dev'lish long way off

  for a fellow to go for a dinner, and entre nous, the dinner is rather

  queer and the company still more so. It's right for you who are a

  literary man to see all sorts of people; but I'm different, you know, so

  Newcome and I are not very thick together. They say he wanted to marry

  your friend to Lady Anne's daughter, an exceedingly fine girl; one of the

  prettiest girls come out this season. I hear the young men say so. 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. Mark my words, they intend Miss Newcome for Lord Kew. Those

  banker fellows are wild after grand marriages. Kew will sow his wild

  oats, and they'll marry her to him; or if not to him, to some man of high

  rank. His father Walham was a weak young man; but his grandmother, old

  Lady Kew, is a monstrous clever old woman, too severe with her children,

  one of whom ran away and married a poor devil without a shilling. 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

  dooce 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." And the worthy Major gives his nephew two fingers,

  and trots off to the next club in St. James's Street, of which he is a

  member.

  The virtuous hostess of Bryanstone Square was quite civil and

  good-humoured when Mr. Pendennis appeared at her house; and my surprise

  was not inconsiderable when I found the whole party from Saint Pancras