Thackeray, W: Writings of W. M. Thackeray (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Writings of W. M. Thackeray

Indian officer, and Leonore do Bois, or de Florac, the daughter of a French tefugee. The whole action of the story parts these two characters. Tom N ewcome falls in love with the pretty Leonore while he is being taught French by her father, alarms his family by declaring his intoution of marrying her, and not supposing that there is any obstacle to his happiness except the obstinacy of his parents, finds that the old Frenchman's high sense of honour has been outraged by his plebeian proposals, and that the daughter has been bestowed upon a fiddling countryman of her own, old enough to be her parent, the Comte de Flor-ac. Parted thus at the beginning of the history, which the now sensible Mr Arthur Pendennis relates on the part of Mr Thackeray, the heartstricken lovers meet no more until Time has done his work with them, and are brought close together again only when Boath changes the countenance of one of them, and takes him away. Tom N ewcome carries his first great grief to India, and is there taken possession of matrimenially by a widow, whose life is happily of no long duration, and who leaves to him a son named Olive, the idol of his father's heart; Leonore returns to France with her old husband, whom she nurses kindly, seeking consolation for her early and ever-unforgetten grief in offices of piety and deeds of charity. There we leave her, to turn again to the object of her heart's choice, who comes back from India, rich in worldly substance, but richer far in that simple nobility of character which his hard experiences have developed. The education and the happiness of his son Olive are all that the father has to live for, and to him he seeks to devote himself and all his possessions. But kinsmen, to whom the existence of a poor relation in India had been a matter of supreme indifference, welcome the rich Gelouel, and win their way into his good graces by attentions to his darling son. Sir Brian N ewcome, of the great bankinghouse of N ewcome Brothers, comes upon the stage, bringing with him his aristo: cratic spouse, Lady Anne, and along with other members of her family, her daughter Ethel, the heroine, and her son Barnes, the villain of the story. Colonel N ewcome is drawn towards his pretty niece Ethel by certain sympathetic ties. She comes indeed to occupy a place in his affections only second to Olive, and after.

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