The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable FamilyThackeray, William Makepeace
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The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Domestic fiction; Families -- England -- Fiction
“Such a rum chap there was upstairs!” Clive resumes, looking up from
his scribbling. “He was walking up and down on the landing in a
dressing-gown, with scarcely any other clothes on, holding a plate in
one hand, and a pork-chop he was munching with the other. Like this”
(and Clive draws a figure). “What do you think, sir? He was in the Cave
of Harmony, he says, that night you flared up about Captain Costigan.
He knew me at once; and he says, ‘Sir, your father acted like a
gentleman, a Christian, and a man of honour. _Maxima debetur puero
reverentia_. Give him my compliments. I don’t know his highly
respectable name.’ His highly respectable name,” says Clive, cracking
with laughter—“those were his very words. ‘And inform him that I am an
orphan myself—in needy circumstances’—he said he was in needy
circumstances; ‘and I heartily wish he’d adopt me.’”
The lad puffed out his face, made his voice as loud and as deep as he
could; and from his imitation and the picture he had drawn, I knew at
once that Fred Bayham was the man he mimicked.
“And does the Red Rover live here,” cried Mr. Pendennis, “and have we
earthed him at last?”
“He sometimes comes here,” Mr. Honeyman said with a careless manner.
“My landlord and landlady were butler and housekeeper to his father,
Bayham of Bayham, one of the oldest families in Europe. And Mr.
Frederick Bayham, the exceedingly eccentric person of whom you speak,
was a private pupil of my own dear father in our happy days at
Borehambury.”
He had scarcely spoken when a knock was heard at the door, and before
the occupant of the lodgings could say “Come in!” Mr. Frederick Bayham
made his appearance, arrayed in that peculiar costume which he
affected. In those days we wore very tall stocks, only a very few
poetic and eccentric persons venturing on the Byron collar; but Fred
Bayham confined his neck by a simple ribbon, which allowed his great
red whiskers to curl freely round his capacious jowl. He wore a black
frock and a large broad-brimmed hat, and looked somewhat like a
Dissenting preacher. At other periods you would see him in a green coat
and a blue neckcloth, as if the turf or the driving of coaches was his
occupation.
“I have heard from the young man of the house who you were, Colonel
Newcome,” he said with the greatest gravity, “and happened to be
present, sir, the other night; for I was aweary, having been toiling
all the day in literary labour, and needed some refreshment. I happened
to be present, sir, at a scene which did you the greatest honour, and
of which I spoke, not knowing you, with something like levity to your
son. He is an _ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris_—Pendennis, how
are you? And I thought, sir, I would come down and tender an apology if
I had said any words that might savour of offence to a gentleman who
was in the right, as I told the room when you quitted it, as Mr.
Pendennis, I am sure, will remember.”
Mr. Pendennis looked surprise and perhaps negation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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