LXXVI Exeunt Omnes



PENDENNIS




CHAPTER I

Shows how First Love may interrupt Breakfast


One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis came
over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a
certain Club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament. As he was
one of the finest judges of wine in England, and a man of active,
dominating, and inquiring spirit, he had been very properly chosen to be
a member of the Committee of this Club, and indeed was almost the manager
of the institution; and the stewards and waiters bowed before him as
reverentially as to a Duke or a Field-Marshal.

At a quarter past ten the Major invariably made his appearance in the
best blacked boots in all London, with a checked morning cravat that
never was rumpled until dinner time, a buff waistcoat which bore the
crown of his sovereign on the buttons, and linen so spotless that Mr.
Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would probably have
employed her had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly the
country. Pendennis's coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very cane,