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
sure they have a friend to share it. What innocent gaiety, what jovial
suppers on threadbare cloths, and wonderful songs after; what pathos,
merriment, humour does not a man enjoy who frequents their company! Mr.
Clive Newcome, who has long since shaved his beard, who has become a
family man, and has seen the world in a thousand different phases,
avers that his life as an art-student at home and abroad was the
pleasantest part of his whole existence. It may not be more amusing in
the telling than the chronicle of a feast, or the accurate report of
two lovers’ conversation; but the biographer, having brought his hero
to the period of his life, is bound to relate it, before passing to
other occurrences which are to be narrated in their turn.
We may be sure the boy had many conversations with his affectionate
guardian as to the profession which he should follow. As regarded
mathematical and classical learning, the elder Newcome was forced to
admit, that out of every hundred boys, there were fifty as clever as
his own, and at least fifty more industrious; the army in time of peace
Colonel Newcome thought a bad trade for a young fellow so fond of ease
and pleasure as his son: his delight in the pencil was manifest to all.
Were not his school-books full of caricatures of the masters? Whilst
his tutor, Grindley, was lecturing him, did he not draw Grindley
instinctively under his very nose? A painter Clive was determined to
be, and nothing else; and Clive, being then some sixteen years of age,
began to study the art, _en règle_, under the eminent Mr. Gandish, of
Soho.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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