Pelham — Complete

Name: Pelham — Complete
Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

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Language: en1,133 downloads on Project Gutenberg

Subjects

Adventure stories English fiction -- 19th century Great Britain -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction

In: Novels·British Literature

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #7623.

About this book

The novel opens with a self‑portrait of its narrator, an only child of an aristocratic but financially strained family. He sketches his lineage, his father a younger son of an ancient earldom, his mother a penniless daughter of a Scottish peer, while introducing the household’s colorful cast: the moderate Whig Mr Pelham, the diamond‑loving Lady Frances, and a bailiff turned tutor caught in a comic mishap over stolen jewels. The early chapters weave together a succession of social scandals, failed elopements, sudden inheritances, and a father’s ill‑fated horse race, each narrated with a detached, almost diary‑like tone that records the absurdities of high‑society life without revealing the larger plot.

Written in the ornate, rhetorical style of mid‑nineteenth‑century English fiction, the book reflects Edward Bulwer‑Lytton’s flair for vivid character sketches and satirical commentary on aristocratic manners. Readers who enjoy intricate social panoramas, witty observations of class pretensions, and a narrator whose voice is both intimate and analytically aloof will find this adventure story rewarding.

Characters in Pelham — Complete

Mr. PelhamMiddle‑aged gentleman in dark frock coat, waistcoat, cravat, powdered hair, dignified expression
Lady FrancesElegant lady in empire‑style gown, pearl‑white gloves, sparkling diamond necklace, refined poise

The opening · free to read

I am an only child. My father was the younger son of one of our oldest earls; my mother the dowerless daughter of a Scotch peer. Mr. Pelham was a moderate whig, and gave sumptuous dinners; Lady Frances was a woman of taste, and particularly fond of diamonds and old china.

Vulgar people know nothing of the necessaries required in good society, and the credit they give is as short as their pedigree. Six years after my birth, there was an execution in our house. My mother was just setting off on a visit to the Duchess of D_____; she declared it was impossible to go without her diamonds. The chief of the bailiffs declared it was impossible to trust them out of his sight. The matter was compromised--the bailiff went with my mother to C___, and was introduced as my tutor. "A man of singular merit," whispered my mother, "but so shy!" Fortunately, the bailiff was abashed, and by losing his impudence he kept the secret. At the end of the week, the diamonds went to the jeweller's, and Lady Frances wore paste.

I think it was about a month afterwards that a sixteenth cousin left my mother twenty thousand pounds. "It will just pay off our most importunate creditors, and equip me for Melton," said Mr. Pelham.

"It will just redeem my diamonds, and refurnish the house," said Lady Frances.

The latter alternative was chosen. My father went down to run his last horse at Newmarket, and my mother received nine hundred people in a Turkish tent. Both were equally fortunate, the Greek and the Turk; my father's horse lost, in consequence of which he pocketed five thousand pounds; and my mother looked so charming as a Sultana, that Seymour Conway fell desperately in love with her.

Mr. Conway had just caused two divorces; and of course, all the women in London were dying for him--judge then of the pride which Lady Frances felt at his addresses. The end of the season was unusually dull, and my mother, after having looked over her list of engagements, and ascertained that she had none remaining worth staying for, agreed to elope with her new lover.

The carriage was at the end of the square. My mother, for the first time in her life, got up at six o'clock. Her foot was on the step, and her hand next to Mr. Conway's heart, when she remembered that her favourite china monster and her French dog were left behind. She insisted on returning--re-entered the house, and was coming down stairs with one under each arm, when she was met by my father and two servants. My father's valet had discovered the flight (I forget how), and awakened his master.

When my father was convinced of his loss, he called for his dressing-gown--searched the garret and the kitchen--looked in the maid's drawers and the cellaret--and finally declared he was distracted. I have heard that the servants were quite melted by his grief, and I do not doubt it in the least, for he was always celebrated for his skill in private theatricals. He was just retiring to vent his grief in his dressing-room, when he met my mother. It must altogether have been an awkward rencontre, and, indeed, for my father, a remarkably unfortunate occurrence; for Seymour Conway was immensely rich, and the damages would, no doubt, have been proportionably high. Had they met each other alone, the affair might easily have been settled, and Lady Frances gone off in tranquillity;--those d--d servants are always in the way!

I have, however, often thought that it was better for me that the affair ended thus,--as I know, from many instances, that it is frequently exceedingly inconvenient to have one's mother divorced.

I have observed that the distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society, is a calm, imperturbable quiet, which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least: they eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it. To render this observation good, and to return to the intended elopement, nothing farther was said upon that event. My father introduced Conway to Brookes's, and invited him to dinner twice a week for a whole twelvemonth.

Not long after this occurrence, by the death of my grandfather, my uncle succeeded to the title and estates of the family. He was, as people justly observed, rather an odd man: built schools for peasants, forgave poachers, and diminished his farmers' rents; indeed, on account of these and similar eccentricities, he was thought a fool by some, and a madman by others. However, he was not quite destitute of natural feeling; for he paid my father's debts, and established us in the secure enjoyment of our former splendour. But this piece of generosity, or justice, was done in the most unhandsome manner; he obtained a promise from my father to retire from Brookes's, and relinquish the turf; and he prevailed upon my mother to take an aversion to diamonds, and an indifference to china monsters.

Tell arts they have no soundness, But vary by esteeming; Tell schools they want profoundness, And stand too much on seeming. If arts and schools reply, Give arts and schools the lie.--The Soul's Errand.

At ten years old I went to Eton. I had been educated till that period by my mother, who, being distantly related to Lord ------, (who had published "Hints upon the Culinary Art"), imagined she possessed an hereditary claim to literary distinction. History was her great forte; for she had read all the historical romances of the day, and history accordingly I had been carefully taught.

I think at this moment I see my mother before me, reclining on her sofa, and repeating to me some story about Queen Elizabeth and Lord Essex; then telling me, in a languid voice, as she sank back with the exertion, of the blessings of a literary taste, and admonishing me never to read above half an hour at a time for fear of losing my health.

Well, to Eton I went; and the second day I had been there, I was half killed for refusing, with all the pride of a Pelham, to wash tea-cups. I was rescued from the clutches of my tyrant by a boy not much bigger than myself, but reckoned the best fighter, for his size, in the whole school. His name was Reginald Glanville: from that period, we became inseparable, and our friendship lasted all the time he stayed at Eton, which was within a year of my own departure for Cambridge.

His father was a baronet, of a very ancient and wealthy family; and his mother was a woman of some talent and more ambition. She made her house one of the most recherchee in London. Seldom seen at large assemblies, she was eagerly sought after in the well winnowed soirees of the elect. Her wealth, great as it was, seemed the least prominent ingredient of her establishment. There was in it no uncalled for ostentation--no purse-proud vulgarity--no cringing to great, and no patronizing condescension to little people; even the Sunday newspapers could not find fault with her, and the querulous wives of younger brothers could only sneer and be silent.

"It is an excellent connexion," said my mother, when I told her of my friendship with Reginald Glanville, "and will be of more use to you than many of greater apparent consequence. Remember, my dear, that in all the friends you make at present, you look to the advantage you can derive from them hereafter; that is what we call knowledge of the world, and it is to get the knowledge of the world that you are sent to a public school."

I think, however, to my shame, that notwithstanding my mother's instructions, very few prudential considerations were mingled with my friendship for Reginald Glanville. I loved him with a warmth of attachment, which has since surprised even myself.

He was of a very singular character: he used to wander by the river in the bright days of summer, when all else were at play, without any companion but his own thoughts; and these were tinged, even at that early age, with a deep and impassioned melancholy. He was so reserved in his manner, that it was looked upon as coldness or pride, and was repaid as such by a pretty general dislike. Yet to those he loved, no one could be more open and warm; more watchful to gratify others, more indifferent to gratification for himself: an utter absence of all selfishness, and an eager and active benevolence were indeed the distinguishing traits of his character. I have seen him endure with a careless goodnature the most provoking affronts from boys much less than himself; but directly I, or any other of his immediate friends, was injured or aggrieved, his anger was almost implacable. Although he was of a slight frame, yet early exercise had brought strength to his muscles, and activity to his limbs; and his skill in all athletic exercises whenever (which was but rarely) he deigned to share them, gave alike confidence and success to whatever enterprise his lion-like courage tempted him to dare.

Such, briefly and imperfectly sketched, was the character of Reginald Glanville--the one, who of all my early companions differed the most from myself; yet the one whom I loved the most, and the one whose future destiny was the most intertwined with my own.

I was in the head class when I left Eton. As I was reckoned an uncommonly well-educated boy, it may not be ungratifying to the admirers of the present system of education to pause here for a moment, and recal what I then knew. I could make twenty Latin verses in half an hour; I could construe, without an English translation, all the easy Latin authors, and many of the difficult ones, with it: I could read Greek fluently, and even translate it though the medium of a Latin version at the bottom of the page. I was thought exceedingly clever, for I had only been eight years acquiring all this fund of information, which, as one can never recal it in the world, you have every right to suppose that I had entirely forgotten before I was five and twenty. As I was never taught a syllable of English during this period; as when I once attempted to read Pope's poems, out of school hours, I was laughed at, and called "a sap;" as my mother, when I went to school, renounced her own instructions; and as, whatever school-masters may think to the contrary, one learns nothing now-a-days by inspiration: so of everything which relates to English literature, English laws, and English history (with the exception of the said story of Queen Elizabeth and Lord Essex,) you have the same right to suppose that I was, at the age of eighteen, when I left Eton, in the profoundest ignorance.

At this age, I was transplanted to Cambridge, where I bloomed for two years in the blue and silver of a fellow commoner of Trinity. At the end of that time (being of royal descent) I became entitled to an honorary degree. I suppose the term is in contradistinction to an honourable degree, which is obtained by pale men in spectacles and cotton stockings, after thirty-six months of intense application.

I do not exactly remember how I spent my time at Cambridge. I had a piano-forte in my room, and a private billiard-room at a village two miles off; and between these resources, I managed to improve my mind more than could reasonably have been expected. To say truth, the whole place reeked with vulgarity. The men drank beer by the gallon, and eat cheese by the hundred weight--wore jockey-cut coats, and talked slang--rode for wagers, and swore when they lost--smoked in your face, and expectorated on the floor. Their proudest glory was to drive the mail--their mightiest exploit to box with the coachman--their most delicate amour to leer at the barmaid.

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