A History of Pendennis, Volume 1

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  CHAPTER XXX.

  THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE.

  Colleges, schools, and inns of court, still have some respect forantiquity, and maintain a great number of the customs and institutionsof our ancestors, with which those persons who do not particularlyregard their forefathers, or perhaps are not very well acquainted withthem, have long since done away. A well-ordained work-house or prisonis much better provided with the appliances of health, comfort, andcleanliness, than a respectable Foundation School, a venerable College,or a learned Inn. In the latter place of residence men are contentedto sleep in dingy closets, and to pay for the sitting-room and thecupboard, which is their dormitory, the price of a good villa andgarden in the suburbs, or of a roomy house in the neglected squaresof the town. The poorest mechanic in Spitalfields has a cistern and anunbounded supply of water at his command; but the gentlemen of the innsof court, and the gentlemen of the universities, have their supply ofthis cosmetic fetched in jugs by laundresses and bedmakers, and livein abodes which were erected long before the custom of cleanliness anddecency obtained among us. There are individuals still alive who sneerat the people and speak of them with epithets of scorn. Gentlemen, therecan be but little doubt that your ancestors were the Great Unwashed:and in the Temple especially, it is pretty certain, that, only underthe greatest difficulties and restrictions, the virtue which has beenpronounced to be next to godliness could have been practiced at all.

  Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had lived for more than thirtyyears in the chambers under those occupied by Warrington and Pendennis,and who used to be awakened by the roaring of the shower-baths whichthose gentlemen had erected in their apartments--a part of the contentsof which occasionally trickled through the roof into Mr. Grump'sroom--declared that the practice was an absurd, newfangled, dandyfiedfolly, and daily cursed the laundress who slopped the staircase by whichhe had to pass. Grump, now much more than half a century old, had indeednever used the luxury in question. He had done without water very well,and so had our fathers before him. Of all those knights and baronets,lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose escutcheons are painted uponthe walls of the famous hall of the Upper Temple, was there nophilanthropist good-natured enough to devise a set of Hummums for thebenefit of the lawyers, his fellows and successors? The Temple historianmakes no mention of such a scheme. There is Pump Court and FountainCourt, with their hydraulic apparatus, but one never heard of a bencherdisporting in the fountain; and can't but think how many a counsellearned in the law of old days might have benefited by the pump.

  Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have the Lamb and Flag andthe Winged Horse for their ensigns, have attractions for persons whoinhabit them, and a share of rough comforts and freedom, which menalways remember with pleasure. I don't know whether the student of lawpermits himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or indulges in poeticalreminiscences as he passes by historical chambers, and says, "YonderEldon lived--upon this site Coke mused upon Lyttleton--here Chittytoiled--here Barnwell and Alderson joined in their famous labors--hereByles composed his great work upon bills, and Smith compiled hisimmortal leading cases--here Gustavus still toils, with Solomon to aidhim;" but the man of letters can't but love the place which has beeninhabited by so many of his brethren, or peopled by their creations asreal to us at this day as the authors whose children they were--and SirRoger de Coverley walking in the Temple Garden, and discoursing with Mr.Spectator about the beauties in hoops and patches who are saunteringover the grass, is just as lively a figure to me as old Samuel Johnsonrolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on theirway to Dr. Goldsmith's chambers in Brick Court; or Harry Fielding, withinked ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles atmidnight for the Covent Garden Journal, while the printer's boy isasleep in the passage.

  If we could but get the history of a single day as it passed in any oneof those four-storied houses in the dingy court where our friends Penand Warrington dwelt, some Temple Asmodeus might furnish us with a queervolume. There may be a great parliamentary counsel on the ground-floor,who drives off to Belgravia at dinner time, when his clerk, too, becomesa gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take hispleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in somegarret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and waited, andsickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends'kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore thepatience of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be staring him in the face,when, behold, a turn of the wheel of fortune, and the lucky wretch inpossession of one of those prodigious prizes which are sometimes drawnin the great lottery of the Bar. Many a better lawyer than himself doesnot make a fifth part of the income of his clerk, who, a few monthssince, could scarcely get credit for blacking for his master's unpaidboots. On the first-floor, perhaps, you will have a venerable man whosename is famous, who has lived for half a century in the Inn, whosebrains are full of books, and whose shelves are stored with classicaland legal lore. He has lived alone all these fifty years, alone and forhimself, amassing learning, and compiling a fortune. He comes home nowat night alone from the club, where he has been dining freely, to thelonely chambers where he lives a godless old recluse. When he dies, hisInn will erect a tablet to his honor, and his heirs burn a part of hislibrary. Would you like to have such a prospect for your old age, tostore up learning and money, and end so? But we must not linger too longby Mr. Doomsday's door. Worthy Mr. Grump lives over him, who is also anancient inhabitant of the Inn, and who, when Doomsday comes home to readCatullus, is sitting down with three steady seniors of his standing, toa steady rubber at whist, after a dinner at which they have consumedtheir three steady bottles of Port. You may see the old boys asleepat the Temple Church of a Sunday. Attorneys seldom trouble them, andthey have small fortunes of their own. On the other side of the thirdlanding, where Pen and Warrington live, till long after midnight, sitsMr. Paley, who took the highest honors, and who is a fellow of hiscollege, who will sit and read and note cases until two o'clock in themorning; who will rise at seven and be at the pleader's chambers as soonas they are open, where he will work until an hour before dinner-time;who will come home from Hall and read and note cases again untildawn next day, when perhaps Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his friend Mr.Warrington are returning from some of their wild expeditions. Howdifferently employed Mr. Paley has been! He has not been throwinghimself away: he has only been bringing a great intellect laboriouslydown to the comprehension of a mean subject, and in his fierce grasp ofthat, resolutely excluding from his mind all higher thoughts, all betterthings, all the wisdom of philosophers and historians, all the thoughtsof poets; all wit, fancy, reflection, art, love, truth altogether--sothat he may master that enormous legend of the law, which he proposesto gain his livelihood by expounding. Warrington and Paley had beencompetitors for university honors in former days, and had run each otherhard; and every body said now that the former was wasting his time andenergies, while all people praised Paley for his industry. There maybe doubts, however, as to which was using his time best. The one couldafford time to think, and the other never could. The one could havesympathies and do kindnesses; and the other must needs be always selfish.He could not cultivate a friendship or do a charity, or admire a workof genius, or kindle at the sight of beauty or the sound of a sweetsong--he had no time, and no eyes for any thing but his law-books. Allwas dark outside his reading-lamp. Love, and Nature, and Art (which isthe expression of our praise and sense of the beautiful world of God),were shut out from him. And as he turned off his lonely lamp at night,he never thought but that he had spent the day profitably, and went tosleep alike thankless and remorseless. But he shuddered when he met hisold companion Warrington on the stairs, and shunned him as one that wasdoomed to perdition.

  It may have been the sight of that cadaverous ambition, andself-complacent meanness, which showed itself in Paley's yellow face,and twinkled in his narrow eyes, or it may have been a natural appetitefor pleasure and jovi
ality, of which it must be confessed Mr. Pen wasexceedingly fond, which deterred that luckless youth from pursuinghis designs upon the Bench or the Woolsack with the ardor, or rathersteadiness, which is requisite in gentlemen who would climb to thoseseats of honor. He enjoyed the Temple life with a great deal of relish:his worthy relatives thought he was reading as became a regular student;and his uncle wrote home congratulatory letters to the kind widow atFairoaks, announcing that the lad had sown his wild oats, and wasbecoming quite steady. The truth is, that it was a new sort ofexcitement to Pen, the life in which he was now engaged; and havinggiven up some of the dandyfied pretensions, and fine-gentleman airswhich he had contracted among his aristocratic college acquaintances,of whom he now saw but little, the rough pleasures and amusements of aLondon bachelor were very novel and agreeable to him, and he enjoyedthem all. Time was he would have envied the dandies their fine horsesin Rotten Row, but he was contented now to walk in the Park and lookat them. He was too young to succeed in London society without a bettername and a larger fortune than he had, and too lazy to get on withoutthese adjuncts. Old Pendennis fondly thought he was busied with lawbecause he neglected the social advantages presented to him, and, havingbeen at half a dozen balls and evening parties, retreated before theirdullness and sameness; and whenever any body made inquiries of theworthy major about his nephew, the old gentleman said the young rascalwas reformed, and could not be got away from his books. But the majorwould have been almost as much horrified as Mr. Paley was, had he knownwhat was Mr. Pen's real course of life, and how much pleasure enteredinto his law studies.

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  A long morning's reading, a walk in the Park, a pull on the river, astretch up the hill to Hampstead, and a modest tavern dinner; a bachelornight passed here or there, in joviality, not vice (for Arthur Pendennisadmired women so heartily that he never could bear the societyof any of them that were not, in his fancy at least, good and pure);a quiet evening at home, alone with a friend and a pipe or two, anda humble potation of British spirits, whereof Mrs. Flanagan, thelaundress, invariably tested the quality; these were our younggentleman's pursuits, and it must be owned that his life was notunpleasant. In term-time, Mr. Pen showed a most praiseworthy regularityin performing one part of the law-student's course of duty, and eatinghis dinners in Hall. Indeed, that Hall of the Upper Temple is a sightnot uninteresting, and with the exception of some trifling improvementsand anachronisms which have been introduced into the practice there, aman may sit down and fancy that he joins in a meal of the seventeenthcentury. The bar have their messes, the students their tables apart; thebenchers sit at the high table on the raised platform, surrounded bypictures of judges of the law and portraits of royal personages who havehonored its festivities with their presence and patronage. Pen lookedabout, on his first introduction, not a little amused with the scenewhich he witnessed. Among his comrades of the student class there weregentlemen of all ages, from sixty to seventeen; stout gray-headedattorneys who were proceeding to take the superior dignity--dandies andmen-about-town who wished, for some reason, to be barristers of sevenyears' standing--swarthy, black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who cameto be called here before they practiced in their own islands--and manygentlemen of the Irish nation, who make a sojourn in Middle Temple Lanebefore they return to the green country of their birth. There werelittle squads of reading students who talked law all dinner-time; therewere rowing men, whose discourse was of sculling matches, the Red House,Vauxhall, and the Opera; there were others great in politics, andorators of the students' debating clubs; with all of which sets, exceptthe first, whose talk was an almost unknown and a quite uninterestinglanguage to him, Mr. Pen made a gradual acquaintance, and had manypoints of sympathy.

  The ancient and liberal Inn of the Upper Temple provides in its Hall,and for a most moderate price, an excellent wholesome dinner of soup,meat, tarts, and port wine or sherry, for the barristers and studentswho attend that place of refection. The parties are arranged in messesof four, each of which quarters has its piece of beef or leg of mutton,its sufficient apple-pie and its bottle of wine. But the honest habituesof the hall, among the lower rank of students, who have a taste for goodliving, have many harmless arts by which they improve their banquet,and innocent "dodges" (if we may be permitted to use an excellentphrase that has become vernacular since the appearance of the lastdictionaries) by which they strive to attain for themselves moredelicate food than the common every-day roast meat of the students'tables.

  "Wait a bit," said Mr. Lowton, one of these Temple gourmands. "Wait abit," said Mr. Lowton, tugging at Pen's gown--"the tables are very full,and there's only three benchers to eat ten side dishes--if we wait,perhaps we shall get something from their table." And Pen looked withsome amusement, as did Mr. Lowton with eyes of fond desire, toward thebenchers' high table, where three old gentlemen were standing up beforea dozen silver dish-covers, while the clerk was quavering out a grace.

  Lowton was great in the conduct of the dinner. His aim was to manage soas to be the first, a captain of the mess, and to secure for himselfthe thirteenth glass of the bottle of port wine. Thus he would have thecommand of the joint on which he operated his favorite cuts, and maderapid, dexterous appropriations of gravy, which amused Pen infinitely.Poor Jack Lowton! thy pleasures in life were very harmless; an eagerepicure, thy desires did not go beyond eighteen-pence.

  Pen was somewhat older than many of his fellow-students, and there wasthat about his style and appearance which, as we have said, was ratherhaughty and impertinent, that stamped him as a man of _ton_--veryunlike those pale students who were talking law to one another, andthose ferocious dandies, in rowing shirts and astonishing pins andwaistcoats, who represented the idle part of the little community. Thehumble and good-natured Lowton had felt attracted by Pen's superiorlooks and presence--and had made acquaintance with him at the mess byopening the conversation.

  "This is boiled-beef day, I believe, sir," said Lowton to Pen.

  "Upon my word, sir, I'm not aware," said Pen, hardly able to contain hislaughter, but added, "I'm a stranger; this is my first term;" on whichLowton began to point out to him the notabilities in the Hall.

  "That's Boosey the bencher, the bald one sitting under the picture andaving soup; I wonder whether it's turtle? They often ave turtle. Nextis Balls, the king's counsel, and Swettenham--Hodge and Swettenham, youknow. That's old Grump, the senior of the bar; they say he's dined hereforty years. They often send 'em down their fish from the benchers tothe senior table. Do you see those four fellows seated opposite us?Those are regular swells--tip-top fellows, I can tell you--Mr. Trail,the Bishop of Ealing's son, Honorable Fred. Ringwood, Lord Cinqbar'sbrother, you know. _He'll_ have a good place, I bet any money; and BobSuckling, who's always with them--a high fellow, too. Ha! ha!" HereLowton burst into a laugh.

  "What is it?" said Pen, still amused.

  "I say, I like to mess with those chaps," Lowton said, winking his eyeknowingly, and pouring out his glass of wine.

  "And why?" asked Pen.

  "Why! they don't come down here to dine, you know, they only makebelieve to dine. _They_ dine here, Law bless you! They go to some of theswell clubs, or else to some grand dinner party. You see their names inthe 'Morning Post' at all the fine parties in London. Why, I bet anything that Ringwood has his cab, or Trail his Brougham (he's a devilof a fellow, and makes the bishop's money spin, I can tell you) at thecorner of Essex-street at this minute. They dine! They won't dine thesetwo hours, I dare say."

  "But why should you like to mess with them, if they don't eat anydinner?" Pen asked, still puzzled. "There's plenty, isn't there?"

  "How green you are," said Lowton. "Excuse me, but you _are_ green. Theydon't drink any wine, don't you see, and a fellow gets the bottle tohimself, if he likes it, when he messes with those three chaps. That'swhy Corkoran got in with 'em."

  "Ah, Mr. Lowton, I see you are a sly fellow," Pen said, delighted withhis acquaintance: on which the other modestly replied, that he ha
d livedin London the better part of his life, and of course had his eyes abouthim; and went on with his catalogue to Pen.

  "There's a lot of Irish here," he said; "that Corkoran's one, and Ican't say I like him. You see that handsome chap with the blue neck-clothand pink shirt, and yellow waistcoat, that's another; that's MolloyMaloney of Ballymaloney, and nephew to Major-general Sir Hector O'Dowd,he, he," Lowton said, trying to imitate the Hibernian accent. "He'salways bragging about his uncle; and came into Hall in silver-stripedtrowsers the day he had been presented. That other near him, with thelong black hair, is a tremendous rebel. By Jove, sir, to hear him atthe Forum it makes your blood freeze; and the next is an Irishman, too,Jack Finucane, reporter of a newspaper. They all stick together, thoseIrish. It's your turn to fill your glass. What! you won't have any port?Don't like port with your dinner? Here's your health." And this worthyman found himself not the less attached to Pendennis because the latterdisliked port wine at dinner.

  It was while Pen was taking his share of one of these dinners, with hisacquaintance Lowton as the captain of his mess, that there came to jointhem a gentleman in a barrister's gown, who could not find a seat, asit appeared, among the persons of his own degree, and who strode overthe table, and took his seat on the bench where Pen sate. He was dressedin old clothes and a faded gown, which hung behind him, and he wore ashirt, which, though clean, was extremely ragged, and very differentto the magnificent pink raiment of Mr. Molloy Maloney, who occupieda commanding position in the next mess. In order to notify theirappearance at dinner, it is the custom of the gentlemen who eat in theUpper Temple Hall to write down their names upon slips of paper, whichare provided for that purpose, with a pencil for each mess. Lowton wrotehis name first, then came Arthur Pendennis, and the next was that ofthe gentleman in the old clothes. He smiled when he saw Pen's name, andlooked at him. "We ought to know each other," he said. "We're bothBoniface men; my name's Warrington."

  "Are you St---- Warrington?" Pen said, delighted to see this hero.

  Warrington laughed--"Stunning Warrington--yes," he said. "I recollectyou in your freshman's term. But you appear to have quite cut me out."

  "The college talks about you still," said Pen, who had a generousadmiration for talent and pluck. "The bargeman you thrashed, Bill Simes,don't you remember, wants you up again at Oxbridge. The Miss Notleys,the haberdashers--"

  "Hush!" said Warrington--"glad to make your acquaintance, Pendennis.Heard a good deal about you."

  The young men were friends immediately, and at once deep incollege-talk. And Pen, who had been acting rather the fine gentleman ona previous day, when he pretended to Lowton that he could not drink portwine at dinner, seeing Warrington take his share with a great deal ofgusto, did not scruple about helping himself any more, rather to thedisappointment of honest Lowton. When the dinner was over, Warringtonasked Arthur where he was going.

  "I thought of going home to dress, and hear Grisi in Norma," Pen said.

  "Are you going to meet any body there?" he asked.

  Pen said, "No--only to hear the music, of which he was very fond."

  "You had much better come home and smoke a pipe with me," saidWarrington--"a very short one. Come, I live close by in Lamb Court, andwe'll talk over Boniface and old times."

  They went away; Lowton sighed after them. He knew that Warrington wasa baronet's son, and he looked up with simple reverence to all thearistocracy. Pen and Warrington became sworn friends from that night.Warrington's cheerfulness and jovial temper, his good sense, his roughwelcome, and his never-failing pipe of tobacco, charmed Pen, who foundit more pleasant to dive into shilling taverns with him, than to dinein solitary state among the silent and polite frequenters of thePolyanthus.

  Ere long Pen gave up the lodgings in St. James's, to which he hadmigrated on quitting his hotel, and found it was much more economical totake up his abode with Warrington in Lamb Court, and furnish and occupyhis friend's vacant room there. For it must be said of Pen, that no manwas more easily led than he to do a thing, when it was a novelty, orwhen he had a mind to it. And Pidgeon, the youth, and Flanagan, thelaundress, divided their allegiance now between Warrington and Pen.