pirits, and went to
sleep delighted with his kind old uncle from London, who must evidently
yield to his wishes in time; and, in a word, in a preposterous state of
contentment with himself and all the world.

CHAPTER IX. In which the Major opens the Campaign

Let those who have a real and heartfelt relish for London society and
the privilege of an entree into its most select circles, admit that
Major Pendennis was a man of no ordinary generosity and affection,
in the sacrifice which he now made. He gave up London in May,--his
newspapers and his mornings--his afternoons from club to club, his
little confidential visits to my Ladies, his rides in Rotten Row, his
dinners, and his stall at the Opera, his rapid escapades to Fulham or
Richmond on Saturdays and Sundays, his bow from my Lord Duke or my Lord
Marquis at the great London entertainments, and his name in the Morning
Post of the succeeding day,--his quieter little festivals, more select,
secret, and delightful--all these he resigned to lock himself into a
lone little country house, with a simple widow and a greenhorn of a son,
a mawkish curate, and a little girl of ten years of age.

He made the sacrifice, and it was the greater that few knew the extent
of it. His letters came down franked from town, and he showed the
invitations to Helen with a sigh. It was beautiful and tragical to
see him refuse one party after another--at least to those who could
understand, as Helen didn't, the melancholy grandeur of his self-denial.
Helen did not, or only smiled at the awful pathos with which the Major
spoke of the Court Guide in general: but young Pen looked with great
respect at the great names upon the superscriptions of his uncle's
letters, and listened to the Major's stories about the fashionable world
with constant interest and sympathy.

The elder Pendennis's rich memory was stored with thousands of these
delightful tales, and he poured them into Pen's willing ear with
unfailing eloquence. He knew the name and pedigree of everybody in the
Peerage, and everybody's relations. "My dear boy," he would say, with a
mournful earnestness and veracity, "you cannot begin your genealogical
studies too early; I wish to Heavens you would read in Debrett every
day. Not so much the historical part (for the pedigrees, between
ourselves, are many of them very fabulous, and there are few families
that can show such a clear descent as our own) as the account of family
alliances