Lovel the Widower by William Makepeace Thackeray (Illustrated)

William Makepeace Thackeray, Delphi Classics

• Publisher: Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786564542
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

This eBook features the unabridged text of 'Lovel the Widower' from the bestselling edition of 'The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray'.

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LOVEL THE WIDOWER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

How the novel appeared in its serial publication

CHAPTER I

THE BACHELOR OF BEAK STREET

Who shall be the hero of this tale? Not I who write it. I am but the Chorus of the Play. I make remarks on the conduct of the characters: I narrate their simple story. There is love and marriage in it: there is grief and disappointment: the scene is in the parlour, and the region beneath the parlour. No: it may be the parlour and kitchen, in this instance, are on the same level. There is no high life, unless, to be sure, you call a baronet’s widow a lady in high life; and some ladies may be, while some certainly are not. I don’t think there’s a villain in the whole performance. There is an abominable selfish old woman, certainly; an old highway robber; an old sponger on other people’s kindness; an old haunter of Bath and Cheltenham boarding-houses (about which how can I know anything, never having been in a boarding-house at Bath or Cheltenham in my life?); an old swindler of tradesmen, tyrant of servants, bully of the poor — who, to be sure, might do duty for a villain, but she considers herself as virtuous a woman as ever was born. The heroine is not faultless (ah! that will be a great relief to some folks, for many writers’ good women are, you know, so very insipid). The principal personage you may very likely think to be no better than a muff. But is many a respectable man of our acquaintance much better? and do muffs know that they are what they are, or, knowing it, are they unhappy? Do girls decline to marry one if he is rich? Do we refuse to dine with one? I listened to one at Church last Sunday, with all the women crying and sobbing; and, oh, dear me! how finely he preached! Don’t we give him great credit for wisdom and eloquence in the House of Commons? Don’t we give him important commands in the army? Can you, or can you not, point out one who has been made a peer? Doesn’t your wife call one in the moment any of the children are ill? Don’t we read his dear poems, or even novels? Yes; perhaps even this one is read and written by — Well? Quid rides? Do you mean that I am painting a portrait which hangs before me every morning in the looking-glass when I am shaving? Après? Do you suppose that I suppose that I have not infirmities like my neighbours? Am I weak? It is notorious to all my friends there is a certain dish I can’t resist: no, not if I have already eaten twice too much at dinner. So, dear sir, or madam, have you your weakness — your irresistible dish of temptation? (or if you don’t know it, your friends do). No, dear friend, the chances are that you and I are not people of the highest intellect, of the largest fortune, of the most ancient family, of the most consummate virtue, of the most faultless beauty in face and figure. We are no heroes nor angels; neither are we fiends from abodes unmentionable, black assassins, treacherous Iagos, familiar with stabbing and poison — murder our amusement, daggers our playthings, arsenic our daily bread, lies our conversation, and forgery our common handwriting. No, we are not monsters of crime, or angels walking the earth — at least I know one of us who isn’t, as can be shown any day at home if the knife won’t cut or the mutton comes up raw. But we are not altogether brutal and unkind, and a few folks like us. Our poetry is not as good as Alfred Tennyson’s, but we can turn a couplet for Miss Fanny’s album: our jokes are not always first-rate, but Mary and her mother smile very kindly when papa tells his story or makes his pun. We have many weaknesses, but we are not ruffians of crime. No more was my friend Lovel. On the contrary, he was as harmless and kindly a fellow as ever lived when I first knew him. At present, with his changed position, he is, perhaps, rather fine (and certainly I am not asked to his best dinner-parties as I used to be, where you hardly see a commoner — but stay! I am advancing matters). At the time when this story begins, I say, Lovel had his faults — which of us has not? He had buried his wife, having notoriously been henpecked by her. How many men and brethren are like him! He had a good fortune — I wish I had as much — though I dare say many people are ten times as rich. He was a good-looking fellow enough; though that depends, ladies, upon whether you like a fair man or a dark one. He had a country house, but it was only at Putney. In fact, he was in business in the city, and being a hospitable man, and having three or four spare bedrooms, some of his friends were always welcome at Shrublands, especially after Mrs. Lovel’s death, who liked me pretty well at the period of her early marriage with my friend, but got to dislike me at last and to show me the cold shoulder. That is a joint I never could like (though I have known fellows who persist in dining off it year after year, who cling hold of it, and refuse to be separated from it). I say, when Lovel’s wife began to show me that she was tired of my company, I made myself scarce: used to pretend to be engaged when Fred faintly asked me to Shrublands; to accept his meek apologies, proposals to dine en garçon at Greenwich, the club, and so forth; and never visit upon him my wrath at his wife’s indifference — for, after all, he had been my friend at many a pinch: he never stinted at “Harts’s” or “Lovegrove’s,” and always made a point of having the wine I liked, never mind what the price was. As for his wife, there was, assuredly, no love lost between us — I thought her a lean, scraggy, lackadaisical, egotistical, consequential, insipid creature: and as for his mother-in-law, who stayed at Fred’s as long and as often as her daughter would endure her, has any one who ever knew that notorious old Lady Baker at Bath, at Cheltenham, at Brighton, — wherever trumps and frumps were found together; wherever scandal was cackled; wherever fly-blown reputations were assembled, and dowagers with damaged titles trod over each other for the pas; — who, I say, ever had a good word for that old woman? What party was not bored where she appeared? What tradesman was not done with whom she dealt? I wish with all my heart I was about to narrate a story with a good mother-in-law for a character; but then you know, my dear madam, all good women in novels are insipid. This woman certainly was not. She was not only not insipid, but exceedingly bad-tasted. She had a foul, loud tongue, a stupid head, a bad temper, an immense pride and arrogance, an extravagant son, and very little money. Can I say much more of a woman than this? Aha! my good Lady Baker! I was a mauvais sujet, was I? — I was leading Fred into smoking, drinking, and low bachelor habits, was I? I, his old friend, who have borrowed money from him any time these twenty years, was not fit company for you and your precious daughter? Indeed! I paid the money I borrowed from him like a man; but did you ever pay him, I should like to know? When Mrs. Lovel was in the first column of The Times, then Fred and I used to go off to Greenwich and Blackwall, as I said; then his kind old heart was allowed to feel for his friend; then we could have the other bottle of claret without the appearance of Bedford and the coffee, which in Mrs. L.’s time used to be sent in to us before we could ring for a second bottle, although she and Lady Baker had had three glasses each out of the first. Three full glasses each, I give you my word! No, madam, it was your turn to bully me once — now it is mine and I use it. No, you old catamaran, though you pretend you never read novels, some of your confounded good-natured friends will let you know of this one. Here you are, do you hear? Here you shall be shown up. And so I intend to show up other women and other men who have offended me. Is one to be subject to slights and scorn, and not have revenge? Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! — what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

Before entering upon the present narrative, may I take leave to inform a candid public that, though it is all true, there is not a word of truth in it; that though Lovel is alive and prosperous, and you very likely have met him, yet I defy you to point him out; that his wife (for he is Lovel the Widower no more) is not the lady you imagine her to be, when you say (as you will persist in doing), “Oh, that character is intended for Mrs. Thingamy, or was notoriously drawn from Lady So-and-So.” No. You are utterly mistaken. Why, even the advertising-puffers have almost given up that stale stratagem of announcing “REVELATIONS FROM HIGH LIFE. — The beau monde will be startled at recognizing the portraits of some of its brilliant leaders in Miss Wiggins’s forthcoming roman de société.” Or, “We suspect a certain ducal house will be puzzled to guess how the pitiless author of ‘Mayfair Mysteries’ has become acquainted with (and exposed with a fearless hand) certain family secrets which were thought only to be known to a few of the very highest members of the aristocracy.” NO, I say; these silly baits to catch an unsuspecting public shall not be our arts. If you choose to occupy yourself with trying to ascertain if a certain cap fits one amongst ever so many thousand heads, you may possibly pop it on the right one: but the cap-maker will perish before he tells you; unless, of course, he has some private pique to avenge, or malice to wreak, upon some individual who can’t by any possibility hit again; — then, indeed, he will come boldly forward and seize upon his victim — (a bishop, say, or a woman without coarse, quarrelsome male relatives, will be best) — and clap on him, or her, such a cap, with such ears, that all the world shall laugh at the poor wretch, shuddering, and blushing beet-root red, and whimpering deserved tears of rage and vexation at being made the common butt of society. Besides, I dine at Lovel’s still; his company and cuisine are amongst the best in London. If they suspected I was taking them off, he and his wife would leave off inviting me. Would any man of a generous disposition lose such a valued friend for a joke, or be so foolish as to show him up in a story? All persons with a decent knowledge of the world will at once banish the thought, as not merely base, but absurd. I am invited to his house one day next week: vous concevez I can’t mention the very day, for then he would find me out — and of course there would be no more cards for his old friend. He would not like appearing, as it must be owned he does in this memoir, as a man of not very strong mind. He believes himself to be a most determined, resolute person. He is quick in speech, wears a fierce beard, speaks with asperity to his servants (who liken him to a — to that before-named sable or ermine contrivance, in which ladies insert their hands in winter), and takes his wife to task so smartly, that I believe she believes he believes he is the master of the house. “Elizabeth, my love, he must mean A, or B, or D,” I fancy I hear Lovel say; and she says, “Yes; oh! it is certainly D — his very image!”

“D to a T,” says Lovel (who is a neat wit). She may know that I mean to depict her husband in the above unpretending lines: but she will never let me know of her knowledge except by a little extra courtesy; except (may I make this pleasing exception?) by a few more invitations; except by a look of those unfathomable eyes (gracious goodness! to think she wore spectacles ever so long, and put a lid over them as it were!), into which, when you gaze sometimes, you may gaze so deep, and deep, and deep, that I defy you to plumb half-way down into their mystery.

When I was a young man, I had lodgings in Beak Street, Regent Street (I no more have lived in Beak Street than in Belgrave Square: but I choose to say so, and no gentleman will be so rude as to contradict another) — I had lodgings, I say, in Beak Street, Regent Street. Mrs. Prior was the landlady’s name. She had seen better days — landladies frequently have. Her husband — he could not be called the landlord, for Mrs. P. was manager of the place — had been, in happier times, captain or lieutenant in the militia; then of Diss, in Norfolk, of no profession; then of Norwich Castle, a prisoner for debt; then of Southampton Buildings, London, law-writer; then of the Bom-Retiro Caçadores, in the service of H.M. the Queen of Portugal, lieutenant and paymaster; then of Melina Place, St. George’s Fields, &c. — I forbear to give the particulars of an existence which a legal biographer has traced step by step, and which has more than once been the subject of judicial investigation by certain commissioners in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields. Well, Prior, at this time, swimming out of a hundred shipwrecks, had clambered on to a lighter, as it were, and was clerk to a coal-merchant, by the riverside. “You conceive, sir,” he would say, “my employment is only temporary — the fortune of war, the fortune of war!” He smattered words in not a few foreign languages. His person was profusely scented with tobacco. Bearded individuals, padding the muddy hoof in the neighbouring Regent Street, would call sometimes of an evening, and ask for “the captain.” He was known at many neighbouring billiard-tables, and, I imagine, not respected. You will not see enough of Captain Prior to be very weary of him and his coarse swagger, to be disgusted by his repeated requests for small money-loans, or to deplore his loss, which you will please to suppose has happened before the curtain of our present drama draws up. I think two people in the world were sorry for him: his wife, who still loved the memory of the handsome young man who had wooed and won her; his daughter Elizabeth, whom for the last few months of his life, and up to his fatal illness, he every evening conducted to what he called her “academy.” You are right. Elizabeth is the principal character in this story. When I knew her, a thin, freckled girl of fifteen, with a lean frock, and hair of a reddish hue, she used to borrow m...