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The History of Pendennis

By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY Condensation by RICHARD HENRY DANA ONE fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis (retired on half pay) came to breakfast at his accustomed corner in his Pall Mall Club. His were the best blacked boots in London. His buff waistcoat, checked cravat, spotless linen, white gloves, his whiskers, his very cane, were perfect of their kind.

He seemed thirty years old, until you saw the factitious nature of his rich brown hair and the crow's feet around the eyes of his handsome face with its Wellington nose. His long white cuffs showed the gold sleeve buttons given him by His Royal Highness, the Duke of York.

Through his gold double eye-glasses, he read his letters, one an invitation from the Marquis of Steyne, one from the Bishop of Ealing and Mrs. Trail, another from an earl, and so on, and last of all, two others, one from his widowed sister-in-law, and the other from her only child, Arthur Pendennis, Jr. The first begs him to "come immediately" to Fair Oaks, Clavering, St. Mary's, "to entreat, nay command" the "wretched boy" to give up his engagement to marry Miss Costigan, an actress twelve years the senior of this lad of eighteen. The second from this same lad beseeching his uncle to remove his mother's objections to his proposed union with his "dear Emily," a descendant of the old Irish Royalty, the most beautiful woman in the world. "A love like mine, sir," writes young Pen, "I feel is contracted once and forever--I shall die without ever knowing another passion."

The major, inwardly in a rage, ruefully sends refusals to the marquis, the earl, the bishop, and other entertainers, and takes a sleepless and tiring trip in the tight, smelly night mail-coach for Clavering. On arrival Major Pendennis is most affable to Pen and his mother. He does not "entreat" or "command" his nephew, but wins the boy's confidence and talks familiarly of his own noble friends and the brilliant career he has in mind for Pen. The major then "faces the enemy," Captain Costigan, the half-tipsy, imaginative old Irish soldier, the father and protector of "Emily." To him and his beautiful, honest, but dull daughter the major is equally suave. Beautiful she is, with broad brow, large, melting eyes, black wavy hair, white complexion, rosy cheeks, and the arms of a "Venus." Pen had come to see and know her through Foker, a school friend, a lad homely and kindly, dull at his books, but bright in every-day matters, whose father, the great brewer, furnished him money, and Lady Agnes, his mother, social position. Verses Pen had been writing to the Greek goddesses he now dedicates to his new divinity. Major Pendennis, as his next move, let's slip, in the presence of the Costigans, the fact that Pen has no means beyond what his mother allows him out of her slender income. Costigan is then indignant that Pen "should have had the face to offer himself to his dear beguiled daughter." Pen cannot believe his adored Emily has calmly thrown him over, until the Costigans openly "cut" him in the street. He almost dies, or believes he is dying of despised love, with all the symptoms of sleepless nights and feverish days, and is scarcely consoled by his mother and little cousin Laura. Laura is five years younger than Pen, his second cousin on the side of his mother, who adopted her on the death of her parents, perhaps because of a romance of early unmarried days with Laura's father. Miss Costigan secures an engagement at a London theater through Major Pendennis's influence. The magnetic attraction being thus removed, Pen goes to "Oxbridge." Then through Foker and with the major's encouragement Pen makes rich and aristocratic friends and begins a brilliant career at the Debating Union, at dinners and late suppers, with his wit, eloquence, poems, and commanding self-confidence. Wild without being vulgar, extravagant beyond his means and neglecting his studies, he becomes deeply in debt and is "plucked" in his degree examination, though many a fellow he has despised for dullness or crushed in debate passes with honors.