Pendennis (Thackeray, 1850)

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Thackeray, William Makepeace. Pendennis. Pub. 1850. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875.

Transpose notes from 1875 ed to Sutherland Thackeray, William Makepeace. Pendennis. Pub. 1850. Ed. John Sutherland. Oxford: World's Classics, 1999.

Overall

I enjoyed Thackeray's bracing cynicism and seeming indifference to conventional morality (though not to masculine codes of honor). The depiction of the literary world of the 1830s is carefully detailed but also cynically satirical. It is much more particular about literary life than Copperfield, and Pen's class, while not quite aristocratic (though he pretends to be), is certainly less bourgeois than David's. It's also notable that Thackeray isn't interested in childhood at all whereas for Dickens it's central to the first third of the book - pen is 16 when we start. Also difference in character: P is a rascal with a heart of gold where D is just undisciplined. And there are interesting differences in narratorial positioning: Thackeray's narrator puckishly disavows the ability to see inside his characters' minds (and that they know their own minds at all), where -- especially since DC is narrated from the first person -- we get so much interiority in that book.

General Notes

  • 1850 preface interesting for acknowledgement of serialization pressures
  • 13 young Arthur's idolization of his mother like Copperfield - though Mrs P seems more deserving of the "angel" title
    • but her "idol worship" of his father and uncle cause problems - 14
  • 14 "He had not got beyond the theory yet...prison-house"
  • 56 really funny - Pen effuses while Ms F thinks about household chores
  • 65 satirizing the "jolly old times" of travel by mail coach
  • 72 the structure is charmingly haphazard, almost metonymic - Mrs P mentions knowing the danger of premature engagements and this sets up a Ch VII, which gives little Laura's background (interrupting and building suspense for the resolution of Pen's engagement)
  • 103 the Major craftily convinces Costigan Pen has no money (which is true - 120)
  • 141 "What a deal of grief, care, and other harmful excitement does a healthy dulness and cheerful insensibility avoid!" (Describing Fotheringay)
  • 142 "How lonely we are in the world! How selfish and secret, everybody!"
  • 162 "What did he think about, as he lay tossing and awake?" Interesting narratorial claim of only partial omniscience, we are in his room but not his head
  • 219: again - "Since novelists are supposed to know everything, even the secrets of female hearts, which the owners themselves do not perhaps know, we may state..." again self conscious disavowal of omniscience (Trollope does more inferiority but is still self conscious about his powers)
  • 300 "His habits were those of an aristocrat...but he could not adopt the penny-wise precautions of life."

Theme Tracking

Reading and Writing

  • 14 "He never read to improve himself out of school-hours, but, on the contrary, devoured all the novels, plays, and poetry on which he could lay his hands."
  • 24 first writing - poetry in County Chronicle
  • 26 Mr Smirke his tutor gives Pen an Elzevir Horace
  • 68 Pen's "imaginative phrensy" with verse in his head and paper steven on his bed
  • 84 the major encourages Pen to read in Debrett's every day
  • 113 Emily rather indifferently parcels up Pen's letters when she decides it's over
  • 134 the book club
  • 143 Madame Fribsby gets "absurdly sentimental" from reading novels
  • 165 part of extended satire on university life at St Boniface: "After all, private reading, as he began to perceive, was the only study which was really profitable to man; and he announced to his mamma that he should read by himself a great deal more, and in public a great deal less."
  • 166 can't write without smoking, Byron aspirations
  • 189-90 Oxbridge exam lists printed in the morning newspaper (to Pen's and the Major's shame)
  • 219 Miss Amory's taste for soppy French romances - makes her good company for Pen?
  • 262 Pen planning to enter the Inns of Court and to sell his writings to make his fortune
  • 403 ...they read it to each other [Pen's novel]: and that they also read it privately and separately, for when the widow came out of her room in her dressing-gown at one o'clock in the morning with volume two, which she had finished, she found Laura devouring volume three in bed.

London journalism world

  • 270 fellow passenger on coach to London name drops Tom Campbell, Tom Hood, and Sydney smith, all prominent early C19 journalists
  • "He believed fondly, as yet, in author's, reviewers, and editors of newspapers."
(298-9) [Warrington] "He never did anybody harm by his talk, or said evil of anybody. He is a stout politician, too, and would never write a word or do an act against his party, as many of us do." "Of us! Who are we?" asked Pen. "Of what profession is Mr. Archer?" "Of the Corporation of the Goosequill -- of the Press, my boy," said Warrington; "of the fourth estate." "Are you, too, of the craft, then?" Pendennis said. "We will talk about that another time," answered the other. They were passing through the Strand as they talked, and by a newspaper office, which was all lighted up and bright. Reporters were coming out of the place, or rushing up to it in cabs; there were lamps burning in the editors' rooms, and above, where the compositors were at work: the windows of the building were in a blaze of gas. "Look at that, Pen, " Warrington said. "There she is - the great engine - she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world - her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent, at this minute, giving bribes at Madrid; and another inspecting the price of potatoes in Covent Garden. Look! Here comes the Foreign Express galloping in. They will be able to give news to Downing-Street to-morrow: funds will rise or fall, fortunes be made or lost; Lord B. will get up, and, holding the paper in his hand, and seeing the noble marquis in his place, will make a great speech; and - and Mr. doolan will be called away from his supper at the Back Kitchen [literary club]; for he is foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on the newspaper sheet before he goes to his own." And so talking, the friends turned into their chambers, as the dawn was beginning to peep.
  • 303: (Warrington) "You don't suppose that you are a serious poet, do you, and are going to cut out Milton and Aeschylus?...No, my boy, I think you can write a magazine article, and turn out a pretty copy of verses; that's what I think of you."
  • 304 Bungay (formerly of Bacon and Bungay, nice little joke) publishing a "Spring Annual," edited by the lady Violet Lebas -- Warrington looks at poor poetry in proof plates and offers Pen to write instead
  • 306
...the pair walked from the Temple to the famous haunt of the Muses and their masters, Paternoster Row.... Pen looked at all the wonders of all the shops; and the strange variety of literature which they exhibit. In this were displayed black-letter volumes and books in the clear pale types of Aldus and Elzevir: in the next, you might see the "Penny Horrific Register," the "Halfpenny Annals of Crime," and "History of the most celebrated murderers of all countries"...and other publications of the penny press; whilst at the next window, portraits of ill-favoured individuals, with fac-similes of the venerated signatures of the Reverend Grimes Wapshot, the Reverend Elias Howle, and the works written and the sermons preached by them, showing the British Dissenter where he could find mental pabulum.... Scarce an opinion but has its expositor and its place of exhibition in this peaceful old Paternoster Row, under the toll of the bells of Saint Paul.
  • 312 founding the Pall Mall Gazette (with Bungay, Warrington, and Shandon in Fleet Prison) on solid Tory principles
  • 317 (Pen defending Shandon against the slave-driver Bungay) "So you have begun already to gird at the publishers, and to take your side amongst our order [the hacks]. Bravo, Pen, my boy!"
  • 318-19 Warrington expostulating an anti-romantic vision of the writer to Pen: "I am a prose labourer...you, my boy, are a poet in a small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are authorised to be flighty. What is it you want? Do you want a body of capitalists that shall be forced to purchase the works of all authors, who may present themselves, manuscript in hand?" & ff.
  • Ch. XXXIII narrates a "literary dinner" at Bungay's - satire bordering on farce. 337: "Pen was forced to confess that the literary personages with whom he had become acquainted had not said much, in the course of the night's conversation, that was worthy to be remembered or quoted. In fact, not one word about literature had been said during the whole course of the night: and it may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men."
  • 338 "Here it was [Catherine St. off the Strand] that Mr. Jack Finucane, the sub-editor, compiled with paste and scissors the journal of which he was supervisor."
  • 340 "The courage of young critics is prodigious..." &ff
  • 347 The narrator also represents this as a world that is changed and gone - "They buried honest Doolan the other day..."
  • 355 The Major - "You have got yourself a little reputation by your literary talents, which I am very far from undervaluing, though in my time, begad, poetry and genius and that sort of thing were devilish disreputable. There was poor Byron, for instance, who ruined himself, and contracted the worst habits by living with poets and newspaper-wrietrs, and people of that kind. But the times are changed now -- there's a run upon literature -- clever fellows get into the best houses in town, begad! Tempora mutantur, sir, and, by Jove, I suppose whatever is right, as Shakespeare says."
  • 391 Pen's novel, Walter Lorraine, receives good press - and praise from Blanche: "I've read every word of it. It's adorable," she added, still addressing herself to Pen. "I know who is," said Mr. Arthur, making rather a pert bow.
  • 392 "Pen began to laugh - "It is as cheap for a novelist to create a Duke as to make a Baronet," he said. "Shall I tell you a secret, Miss Amory? I promoted all of my characters at the request of the publisher."
  • 395 recounting the origins of his novel at home after he was plucked at Oxbridge (this puts me in mind of Barthes' Preparation of the Novel/Rachel Buurma DH Seminar)
If the secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! Many a bitter smile passed over Pen's face as he read his novel, and recalled the time and feelings which gave it birth.
  • 399 [Warrington] "The rubbish is saleable enough, sir; and my advice to you is this: the next time you go home for a holiday, take 'Walter Lorraine' in your carpet-bag -- give him a more modern air, prune away, though sparingly, some of the green passages, and add a little comedy, and cheerfulness, and satire, and that sort of thing, and then we'll take him to market, and sell him. The book is not a wonder of wonders, but it will do very well."
  • 402: "Let no young people be misled and rush fatally into romance-writing..." &ff.
  • the Major gets mad at how much money Pen makes by selling his novel

Materiality

  • 2 material description of the Major's correspondence and his "Hot newspaper"
  • 169 (this immediately following account of Pen being profligate with his allowance, more interested in clothes than serious study)
[Pen] was very fond of books of all sorts: Doctor Portman had taught him to like rare editions, and his own taste led him to like beautiful bindings. It was marvellous what tall copies, and gilding, and marbling, and blind-tooling, the booksellers and binders put upon Pen's book-shelves.
  • 170 [P's bill for] Wormall's dealings with Parkton, the great bookseller, for Aldine editions, black-letter folios, and richly illuminated Missals of the XVI century.
  • copy out long passage on 171

Shakespeare References

  • 24 "he read Shakespeare to his mother (which she said she liked, but didn't)"
  • 33 Foker "Mrs Dropsicum, Bingley's mother in law, Great in Macbeth"
  • 48 Ms Fotheringay prepping to be Ophelia when she and Pen meet, then P quizzes her on Hamlet and Kotzebue
  • 55 Pen's fathers love of the bard, though he didn't much read the works
  • 58 "He [Smirke] and Mrs. Pendennis brought books of Hamlet with them to follow the tragedy, as is the custom of honest country-folks who go to a play in state."
  • 179 "[Pen] called taking pleasure "seeing life," and quoted well-known maxima from Terence, from Horace, from Shakespeare, to show that one should do all that might become a man."
  • 397 "Well, Shakespeare was a man who wrote for money, just as you and I do," Pen answered; at which Warrington confounded his impudence, and resumed his pipe and his manuscript."
  • 403 "Laura did not say much about the book, but Helen pronounced that it was a happy mixture of Shakespeare, and Byron, and Walter Scott, and was quite certain that her son was the greatest genius, as he was the greatest son, in the world."
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