Pendennis in the Temple Gardens

Something of Pendennis

Daily Dose

From The History of Pendennis, Volume Two, by William Makepeace Thackeray

GENTLEMEN

"Gentlemen, there can be but little doubt that your ancestors were the Great Unwashed..."

From Chapter IV, The Knights of the Temple

Daily Dose

From The History of Pendennis, Volume One, by William Makepeace Thackeray

THE EFFUSIONS OF YOUTH

"Nor was she in the least moved while performing this act. What hours the boy had passed over those papers! What love and longing: what generous faith and manly devotion--what watchful nights and lonely fevers might they tell of! She tied them up like so much grocery, and sate down and made tea afterwards with a perfectly placid and contented heart: while Pen was yearning after her ten miles off: and hugging her image to his soul."



From Chapter 12, In Which a Shooting Match is Proposed

An Excerpt

From The History of Pendennis, Book II, Vol. 3, by William Makepeace Thackeray

“What I argue here is, that I will not persecute. Make a faith or a dogma absolute, and persecution becomes a logical consequence; and Dominic burns a Jew, or Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or Mary a Papist or a Protestant; or their father both or either, according to his humor; and acting without any pangs of remorse, - but on the contrary, with strict notions of duty fulfilled. Make dogma absolute, and to inflict or suffer death becomes easy and necessary; and Mohomet’s soldiers shouting ‘Paradise! Paradise!’ and dying on the Christian spears, are not more or less praiseworthy than the same men slaughtering a town full of Jews, or cutting off the heads of all prisoners who would not acknowledge that there was but one prophet of God.”

Daily Dose

From The History of Pendennis, Book Two, Volume Two, by William Makepeace Thackeray

PICTURE

“Only antiquarians and literary amateurs care to look at the gardens with much interest, and fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator with his short face pacing up and down the road; or dear Oliver Goldsmith in the summer-house, perhaps meditating about the next ‘Citizen of the world,’ or the new suit that Mr. Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or the dunning letter that Mr. Newbery has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff-colored suit, and a wig that sadly wants the barber’s powder and irons, one sees the Great Doctor step up to him (his scotch lackey following the lexicographer’s heels, a little the worse for port wine that they have been taking at the Mitre), and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams. Kind faith of Fancy! Sir Roger and Mr. Spectator are as real to us now as the two doctors and the boozy and faithful scotchman.”