I loved The History of Pendennis, Book 1. This is Thackeray’s semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman. As in Vanity Fair we have Thackeray’s assured and playful voice (occasionally speaking directly to the reader) describing various follies of human nature, but Thackeray’s personality is more directly present in this work. Pendennis brings to mind a better known contemporaneous Bildungsroman, David Copperfield, for comparison. In Dickens’ work we admire its endearing protagonist, the innocent humor, and its fairy tale like quality. In The History of Pendennis the protagonist is more flawed and foolish, there is more cynicism, and the humor is more often sarcastic or tongue in cheek. I find this work funnier, more true to life, and more adult. More than the plot or characters, I treasure Thackeray’s entertaining company and his penchant for skewering pomposity. I’m glad to have Book 2 yet to enjoy.
Some Victorian expressions and words:
Sate = sat
Fain = adj. pleased or willing under the circumstances; adv. with pleasure; gladly
Hard by = next to
By and by = eventually
Signify = to have significance
Excerpts:
I never knew a man to die of love certainly, but I have known a twelve stone man go down to nine stone five under a disappointing passion, so that pretty nearly a quarter of him may be said to have perished: and that is no small portion.
Up to this time, the old county families had been rather shy of our friends of Clavering Park. The Fogeys of Drumington; the Squares of Tozely Park; the Wellbores of the Barrow &c.😂
I doubt whether the wisest of us know what our own motives are, and whether some of the actions of which we are the very proudest will not surprise us when we trace them, as we shall one day, to their source.
He was so poor that he couldn’t afford to know a poor man.
We admit into our aristocracy merit of every kind, and that the lowliest-born man, if he but deserve it, may wear the robes of a peer, and sit alongside of a Cavendish or a Stanley: so it ought to be the boast of our good society, that haughty though it be, naturally jealous of its privileges, and careful who shall be admitted into its circle, yet if an individual be but rich enough, all barriers are instantly removed, and he or she is welcomed, as from his wealth he merits to be. This fact shows our British independence and honest feeling – our higher orders are not such mere haughty aristocrats as the ignorant represent them: on the contrary, if a man have money they will hold out their hands to him, eat his dinners, dance at his balls, marry his daughters, or give their own lovely girls to his sons, as affably as your common roturier would do.
A London drawing room fitted up without regard to expense, is surely one of the noblest and most curious sights of the present day. The Romans of the Lower Empire, the dear Marchionesses and countesses of Louis XV., could scarcely have had a finer taste than our modern folks exhibit; and everybody who saw Lady Clavering’s reception rooms were forced to confess that they were most elegant; and that the prettiest rooms in London – Lady Harley Quin’s, Lady Hanway Wardour’s, or Mrs. Hodge-Podgson’s own, the great Railroad Croesus’ wife, were not fitted up with a more consummate “chastity.”
