The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Newcomes, by William Makepeace Thackeray
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Title: The Newcomes
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7467]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 5, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEWCOMES ***
Produced by Tapio Riikonen.
THE NEWCOMES
Memoirs of a most Respectable Family
Edited by Arthur Pendennis, Esq.
by William Makepeace Thackeray
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I The Overture--After which the Curtain rises upon a Drinking
Chorus
II Colonel Newcome's Wild Oats
III Colonel Newcome's Letter-box
IV In which the Author and the Hero resume their Acquaintance
V Clive's Uncles
VI Newcome Brothers
VII In which Mr. Clive's School-days are over
VIII Mrs. Newcome at Home (a Small Early Party)
IX Miss Honeyman's
X Ethel and her Relations
XI At Mrs. Ridley's
XII In which Everybody is asked to Dinner
XIII In which Thomas Newcome sings his last Song
XIV Park Lane
XV The Old Ladies
XVI In which Mr. Sherrick lets his House in Fitzroy Square
XVII A School of Art
XVIII New Companions
XIX The colonel at Home
XX Contains more Particulars of the Colonel and his Brethren
XXI Is Sentimental, but Short
XXII Describes a Visit to Paris; with Accidents and Incidents
in London
XXIII In which we hear a Soprano and a Contralto
XXIV In which the Newcome Brothers once more meet together in Unity
XXV Is passed in a Public-house
XXVI In which Colonel Newcome's Horses are sold
XXVII Youth and Sunshine
XXVIII In which Clive begins to see the World
XXIX In which Barnes comes a-Wooing
XXX A Retreat
XXXI Madame la Duchesse
XXXII Barnes's Courtship
XXXIII Lady Kew at the Congress
XXXIV The End of the Congress of Baden
XXXV Across the Alps
XXXVI In which M. de Florac is promoted
XXXVII Returns to Lord Kew
XXXVIII In which Lady Kew leaves his Lordship quite Convalescent
XXXIX Amongst the Painters
XL Returns from Rome to Pall Mall
XLI An Old Story
XLII Injured Innocence
XLIII Returns to some Old Friends
XLIV In which Mr. Charles Honeyman appears in an amiable light
XLV A Stag of Ten
XLVI The Hotel de Florac
XLVII Contains two or three Acts of a little Comedy
XLVIII In which Benedick is a Married Man
XLIX Contains at least Six more Courses and Two Desserts
L Clive in New Quarters
LI An Old Friend
LII Family Secrets
LIII In which Kinsmen fall out
LIV Has a Tragical Ending
LV Barnes's Skeleton Closet
LVI Rosa quo locorum sera moratur
LVII Rosebury and Newcome
LVIII "One more Unfortunate"
LIX In which Achilles loses Briseis
LX In which we write to the Colonel
LXI In which we are introduced to a new Newcome
LXII Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome
LXIII Mrs. Clive at Home
LXIV Absit Omen
LXV In which Mrs. Clive comes into her Fortune
LXVI In which the Colonel and the Newcome Athenaeum are both Lectured
LXVII Newcome and Liberty
LXVIII A Letter and a Reconciliation
LXIX The Election
LXX Chiltern Hundreds
LXXI In which Mrs. Clive Newcome's Carriage is ordered
LXXII Belisarius
LXXIII In which Belisarius returns from Exile
LXXIV In which Clive begins the World
LXXV Founder's Day at Grey Friars
LXXVI Christmas at Rosebury
LXXVII The Shortest and Happiest in the whole History
LXXVIII In which the Author goes on a Pleasant Errand
LXII In which Old Friends come together
LXXX In which the Colonel says "Adsum" when his Name is called
THE NEWCOMES
CHAPTER I
The Overture--After which the Curtain rises upon a Drinking Chorus
A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy-window, sate
perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath
him. The frog's hideous large eyes were goggling out of his head in a
manner which appeared quite ridiculous to the old blackamoor, who watched
the splay-footed slimy wretch with that peculiar grim humour belonging to
crows. Not far from the frog a fat ox was browsing; whilst a few lambs
frisked about the meadow, or nibbled the grass and buttercups there.
Who should come in to the farther end of the field but a wolf? He was so
cunningly dressed up in sheep's clothing, that the very lambs did not
know Master Wolf; nay, one of them, whose dam the wolf had just eaten,
after which he had thrown her skin over his shoulders, ran up innocently
towards the devouring monster, mistaking him for her mamma.
"He, he!" says a fox, sneaking round the hedge-paling, over which the
tree grew, whereupon the crow was perched looking down on the frog, who
was staring with his goggle eyes fit to burst with envy, and croaking
abuse at the ox. "How absurd those lambs are! Yonder silly little
knock-kneed baah-ling does not know the old wolf dressed in the sheep's
fleece. He is the same old rogue who gobbled up little Red Riding Hood's
grandmother for lunch, and swallowed little Red Riding Hood for supper.
&
nbsp; Tirez la bobinette et la chevillette cherra. He, he!"
An owl that was hidden in the hollow of the tree woke up. "Oho, Master
Fox," says she, "I cannot see you, but I smell you! If some folks like
lambs, other folks like geese," says the owl.
"And your ladyship is fond of mice," says the fox.
"The Chinese eat them," says the owl, "and I have read that they are very
fond of dogs," continued the old lady.
"I wish they would exterminate every cur of them off the face of the
earth," said the fox.
"And I have also read, in works of travel, that the French eat frogs,"
continued the owl. "Aha, my friend Crapaud! are you there? That was a
very pretty concert we sang together last night!"
"If the French devour my brethren, the English eat beef," croaked out the
frog,--"great, big, brutal, bellowing oxen."
"Ho, whoo!" says the owl, "I have heard that the English are toad-eaters
too!"
"But who ever heard of them eating an owl or a fox, madam?" says
Reynard, "or their sitting down and taking a crow to pick?" adds the
polite rogue, with a bow to the old crow who was perched above them with
the cheese in his mouth. "We are privileged animals, all of us; at least,
we never furnish dishes for the odious orgies of man."
"I am the bird of wisdom," says the owl; "I was the companion of Pallas
Minerva: I am frequently represented in the Egyptian monuments."
"I have seen you over the British barn-doors," said the fox, with a grin.
"You have a deal of scholarship, Mrs. Owl. I know a thing or two myself;
but am, I confess it, no scholar--a mere man of the world--a fellow that
lives by his wits--a mere country gentleman."
"You sneer at scholarship," continues the owl, with a sneer on her
venerable face. "I read a good deal of a night."
"When I am engaged deciphering the cocks and hens at roost," says the
fox.
"It's a pity for all that you can't read; that board nailed over my head
would give you some information."
"What does it say?" says the fox.
"I can't spell in the daylight," answered the owl; and, giving a yawn,
went back to sleep till evening in the hollow of her tree.
"A fig for her hieroglyphics!" said the fox, looking up at the crow in
the tree. "What airs our slow neighbour gives herself! She pretends to
all the wisdom; whereas, your reverences, the crows, are endowed with
gifts far superior to these benighted old big-wigs of owls, who blink in
the darkness, and call their hooting singing. How noble it is to hear a
chorus of crows! There are twenty-four brethren of the Order of St.
Corvinus, who have builded themselves a convent near a wood which I
frequent; what a droning and a chanting they keep up! I protest their
reverences' singing is nothing to yours! You sing so deliciously in
parts, do for the love of harmony favour me with a solo!"
While this conversation was going on, the ox was thumping the grass; the
frog was eyeing him in such a rage at his superior proportions, that he
would have spurted venom at him if he could, and that he would have
burst, only that is impossible, from sheer envy; the little lambkin was
lying unsuspiciously at the side of the wolf in fleecy hosiery, who did
not as yet molest her, being replenished with the mutton her mamma. But
now the wolf's eyes began to glare, and his sharp white teeth to show,
and he rose up with a growl, and began to think he should like lamb for
supper.
"What large eyes you have got!" bleated out the lamb, with rather a timid
look.
"The better to see you with, my dear."
"What large teeth you have got!"
"The better to----"
At this moment such a terrific yell filled the field, that all its
inhabitants started with terror. It was from a donkey, who had somehow
got a lion's skin, and now came in at the hedge, pursued by some men and
boys with sticks and guns.
When the wolf in sheep's clothing heard the bellow of the ass in the
lion's skin, fancying that the monarch of the forest was near, he ran
away as fast as his disguise would let him. When the ox heard the noise
he dashed round the meadow-ditch, and with one trample of his hoof
squashed the frog who had been abusing him. When the crow saw the people
with guns coming, he instantly dropped the cheese out of his mouth, and
took to wing. When the fox saw the cheese drop, he immediately made a
jump at it (for he knew the donkey's voice, and that his asinine bray was
not a bit like his royal master's roar), and making for the cheese, fell
into a steel trap, which snapped off his tail; without which he was
obliged to go into the world, pretending, forsooth, that it was the
fashion not to wear tails any more; and that the fox-party were better
without 'em.
Meanwhile, a boy with a stick came up, and belaboured Master Donkey until
he roared louder than ever. The wolf, with the sheep's clothing draggling
about his legs, could not run fast, and was detected and shot by one of
the men. The blind old owl, whirring out of the hollow tree, quite amazed
at the disturbance, flounced into the face of a ploughboy, who knocked
her down with a pitchfork. The butcher came and quietly led off the ox
and the lamb; and the farmer, finding the fox's brush in the trap, hung
it up over his mantelpiece, and always bragged that he had been in at his
death.
"What a farrago of old fables is this! What a dressing up in old
clothes!" says the critic. (I think I see such a one--a Solomon that sits
in judgment over us authors and chops up our children.) "As sure as I am
just and wise, modest, learned, and religious, so surely I have read
something very like this stuff and nonsense about jackasses and foxes
before. That wolf in sheep's clothing?--do I not know him? That fox
discoursing with the crow?--have I not previously heard of him? Yes, in
Lafontaine's fables: let us get the Dictionary and the Fable and the
Biographie Universelle, article Lafontaine, and confound the impostor."
"Then in what a contemptuous way," may Solomon go on to remark, "does
this author speak of human nature! There is scarce one of these
characters he represents but is a villain. The fox is a flatterer; the
frog is an emblem of impotence and envy; the wolf in sheep's clothing a
bloodthirsty hypocrite, wearing the garb of innocence; the ass in the
lion's skin a quack trying to terrify, by assuming the appearance of a
forest monarch (does the writer, writhing under merited castigation, mean
to sneer at critics in this character? We laugh at the impertinent
comparison); the ox, a stupid commonplace; the only innocent being in the
writer's (stolen) apologue is a fool--the idiotic lamb, who does not know
his own mother!" And then the critic, if in a virtuous mood, may indulge
in some fine writing regarding the holy beauteousness of maternal
affection.
Why not? If authors sneer, it is the critic's business to sneer at them
for sneering. He must pretend to be their superior, or who would care
about his opinion? And his livelihood is to find fault. Be
sides, he is
right sometimes; and the stories he reads, and the characters drawn in
them, are old, sure enough. What stories are new? All types of all
characters march through all fables: tremblers and boasters; victims and
bullies; dupes and knaves; long-eared Neddies, giving themselves leonine
airs; Tartuffes wearing virtuous clothing; lovers and their trials, their
blindness, their folly and constancy. With the very first page of the
human story do not love and lies too begin? So the tales were told ages
before Aesop; and asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew; and sly
foxes flattered in Etruscan; and wolves in sheep's clothing gnashed their
teeth in Sanskrit, no doubt. The sun shines to-day as he did when he
first began shining; and the birds in the tree overhead, while I am
writing, sing very much the same note they have sung ever since there
were finches. Nay, since last he besought good-natured friends to listen
once a month to his talking, a friend of the writer has seen the New
World, and found the (featherless) birds there exceedingly like their
brethren of Europe. There may be nothing new under and including the sun;
but it looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope,
scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until the night comes and quiet.
And then will wake Morrow and the eyes that look on it; and so da capo.
This, then, is to be a story, may it please you, in which jackdaws will
wear peacocks' feathers, and awaken the just ridicule of the peacocks; in
which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves, the
splendour of their plumage, the gorgeousness of their dazzling necks, and
the magnificence of their tails, exception will yet be taken to the
absurdity of their rickety strut, and the foolish discord of their pert
squeaking; in which lions in love will have their claws pared by sly
virgins; in which rogues will sometimes triumph, and honest folks, let us
hope, come by their own; in which there will be black crape and white
favours; in which there will be tears under orange-flower wreaths, and
jokes in mourning-coaches; in which there will be dinners of herbs with
contentment and without, and banquets of stalled oxen where there is care
and hatred--ay, and kindness and friendship too, along with the feast. It
does not follow that all men are honest because they are poor; and I have
known some who were friendly and generous, although they had plenty of
money. There are some great landlords who do not grind down their
tenants; there are actually bishops who are not hypocrites; there are
liberal men even among the Whigs, and the Radicals themselves are not all
aristocrats at heart. But who ever heard of giving the Moral before the
Fable? Children are only led to accept the one after their delectation
over the other: let us take care lest our readers skip both; and so let
us bring them on quickly--our wolves and lambs, our foxes and lions, our
roaring donkeys, our billing ringdoves, our motherly partlets, and
crowing chanticleers.
There was once a time when the sun used to shine brighter than it appears
to do in this latter half of the nineteenth century; when the zest of
life was certainly keener; when tavern wines seemed to be delicious, and
tavern dinners the perfection of cookery; when the perusal of novels was
productive of immense delight, and the monthly advent of magazine-day was
hailed as an exciting holiday; when to know Thompson, who had written a
magazine-article, was an honour and a privilege; and to see Brown, the
author of the last romance, in the flesh, and actually walking in the
Park with his umbrella and Mrs. Brown, was an event remarkable, and to
the end of life to be perfectly well remembered; when the women of this
world were a thousand times more beautiful than those of the present
time; and the houris of the theatres especially so ravishing and angelic,
that to see them was to set the heart in motion, and to see them again
was to struggle for half an hour previously at the door of the pit; when
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