“I don’t wonder they don’t like it at Rome, sir. There’s serious matter in it which may set the prelates of a certain Church rather in a tremor. You haven’t read—the—ahem—the Pulpit Pencillings in the P. M. G.? Slight sketches, mental and corporeal, of our chief divines now in London—and signed Latimer?”
“I don’t do much in that way,” said Clive.
“So much the worse for you, my young friend. Not that I mean to judge any other fellow harshly—I mean any other fellow sinner harshly—or that I mean that those Pulpit Pencillings would be likely to do you any great good. But, such as they are, they have been productive of benefit.—Thank you, Mary, and my dear, the tap is uncommonly good, and I drink to your future husband’s good health.—A glass of good sound beer refreshes after all that claret. Well, sir, to return to the Pencillings, pardon my vanity in saying, that though Mr. Pendennis laughs at them, they have been of essential service to the paper. They give it a character, they rally round it the respectable classes. They create correspondence. I have received many interesting letters, chiefly from females, about the Pencillings. Some complain that their favourite preachers are slighted; others applaud because the clergymen they sit under are supported by F. B. I am Laud Latimer, sir,—though I have heard the letters attributed to the Rev. Mr. Bunker, and to a Member of Parliament eminent in the religious world.”
“So you are the famous Laud Latimer?” cries Clive, who had, in fact, seen letters signed by those right reverend names in our paper.
“Famous is hardly the word. One who scoffs at everything—I need not say I allude to Mr. Arthur Pendennis—would have had the letters signed—the Beadle, of the Parish. He calls me the Venerable Beadle sometimes—it being, I grieve to say, his way to deride grave subjects. You wouldn’t suppose now, my young Clive, that the same hand which pens the Art criticisms, occasionally, when His Highness Pendennis is lazy, takes a minor theatre, or turns the sportive epigram, or the ephemeral paragraph, should adopt a grave theme on a Sunday, and chronicle the sermons of British divines? For eighteen consecutive Sunday evenings, Clive, in Mrs. Ridley’s front parlour, which I now occupy, vice Miss Cann promoted, I have written the Pencillings—scarcely allowing a drop of refreshment, except under extreme exhaustion, to pass my lips. Pendennis laughs at the Pencillings. He wants to stop them; and says they bore the public.—I don’t want to think a man is jealous, who was himself the cause of my engagement at the P. M. G.,—perhaps my powers were not developed then.”
“Pen thinks he writes better now than when he began,” remarked Clive; “I have heard him say so.”
“His opinion of his own writings is high, whatever their date. Mine, sir, are only just coming into notice. They begin to know F. B., sir, in the sacred edifices of his metropolitan city. I saw the Bishop of London looking at me last Sunday week, and am sure his chaplain whispered him, ‘It’s Mr. Bayham, my lord, nephew of your lordship’s right reverend brother, the Lord Bishop of Bullocksmithy.’ And last Sunday being at church—at Saint Mungo the Martyr’s, Rev. Sawders—by Wednesday I got in a female hand—Mrs. Sawders’s, no doubt—the biography of the Incumbent of St. Mungo; an account of his early virtues; a copy of his poems; and a hint that he was the gentleman destined for the vacant Deanery.
“Ridley is not the only man I have helped in this world,” F. B. continued. “Perhaps I should blush to own it—I do blush: but I feel the ties of early acquaintance, and I own that I have puffed your uncle, Charles Honeyman, most tremendously. It was partly for the sake of the Ridleys and the tick he owes ’em: partly for old times’ sake. Sir, are you aware that things are greatly changed with Charles Honeyman, and that the poor F. B. has very likely made his fortune?”
“I am delighted to hear it,” cried Clive; “and how, F. B., have you wrought this miracle?”
“By common sense and enterprise, lad—by a knowledge of the world and a benevolent disposition. You’ll see Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel bears a very different aspect now. That miscreant Sherrick owns that he owes me a turn, and has sent me a few dozen of wine—without any stamped paper on my part in return—as an acknowledgment of my service. It chanced, sir, soon after your departure for Italy, that going to his private residence respecting a little bill to which a heedless friend had put his hand, Sherrick invited me to partake of tea in the bosom of his family. I was thirsty—having walked in from Jack Straw’s Castle at Hampstead, where poor Kitely and I had been taking a chop—and accepted the proffered entertainment. The ladies of the family gave us music after the domestic muffin—and then, sir, a great idea occurred to me. You know how magnificently Miss Sherrick and the mother sing? Thy sang Mozart, sir. Why, I asked of Sherrick, should those ladies who sing Mozart to a piano, not sing Handel to an organ?