The things we do!

"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.


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