The Newcomes. Memoirs of a most respectable Family

Thackeray, William Makepeace

The Newcomes. Memoirs of a most respectable Family

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William Makepeace Thackeray

The Newcomes

Memoirs of a most respectable Family

Edited by Arthur Pendennis

Chapter I

The Overture – After Which the Curtain Rises upon a Drinking Chorus.

A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sate perched on a tree, looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him. The frog's hideous large eyes were goggling out of his head in a manner which appeared quite ridiculous to the old blackamoor, who watched the splay-footed slimy wretch with that peculiar grim humour belonging to crows. Not far from the frog a fat ox was browsing; whilst a few lambs frisked about the meadow, or nibbled the grass and buttercups there.

Who should come into the farther end of the field but a wolf? He was so cunningly dressed up in sheep's clothing, that the very lambs did not know master wolf; nay, one of them, whose dam the wolf had just eaten, after which he had thrown her skin over his shoulders, ran up innocently towards the devouring monster, mistaking him for her mamma.

»He, he!« says a fox, sneaking round the hedge-paling, over which the tree grew whereupon the crow was perched, looking down on the frog, who was staring with his goggle eyes fit to burst with envy, and croaking abuse at the ox. »How absurd those lambs are! Yonder silly little knock-kneed baahling does not know the old wolf dressed in the sheep's fleece. He is the same old rogue who gobbled up little Red Riding Hood's grandmother for lunch, and swallowed little Red Riding Hood for supper. Tirez la bobinette et la chévillette cherra. He, he!«

An owl that was hidden in the hollow of the tree woke up. »Oh, ho, master fox,« says she, »I cannot see you, but I smell you! If some folks like lambs, other folks like geese,« says the owl.

»And your ladyship is fond of mice,« says the fox.

»The Chinese eat them,« says the owl; »and I have read that they are very fond of dogs,« continued the old lady.

»I wish they would exterminate every cur of them off the face of the earth,« said the fox.

»And I have also read, in works of travel, that the French eat frogs,« continued the owl. »Aha, my friend Crapaud! are you there? That was a very pretty concert we sang together last night!«

»If the French devour my brethren, the English eat beef,« croaked out the frog, – »great, big, brutal, bellowing oxen.«

»Ho, whoo!« says the owl, »I have heard that the English are toad-eaters too!«

»But who ever heard of them eating an owl or a fox, madam?« says Reynard, »or their sitting down and taking a crow to pick,« adds the polite rogue, with a bow to the old crow who was perched above them with the cheese in his mouth. »We are privileged animals, all of us; at least we never furnish dishes for the odious orgies of man.«

»I am the bird of wisdom,« says the owl; »I was the companion of Pallas Minerva. I am frequently represented on the Egyptian monuments.«

»I have seen you over the British barn-doors,« said the fox with a grin. »You have a deal of scholarship, Mrs. Owl. I know a thing or two myself; but am, I confess it, no scholar – a mere man of the world – a fellow that lives by his wits – a mere country gentleman.«

»You sneer at scholarship,« continues the owl, with a sneer on her venerable face. »I read a good deal of a night.«

»When I am engaged deciphering the cocks and hens at roost,« says the fox.

»It's a pity for all that you can't read; that board nailed over my head would give you some information.«

»What does it say?« says the fox.

»I can't spell in the daylight,« answered the owl; and giving a yawn, went back to sleep till evening in the hollow of her tree.

»A fig for her hieroglyphics!« said the fox, looking up at the crow in the tree. »What airs our slow neighbour gives herself! She pretends to all the wisdom; whereas, your reverences, the crows, are endowed with gifts far superior to those benighted old big-wigs of owls, who blink in the darkness, and call their hooting singing. How noble it is to hear a chorus of crows! There are twenty-four brethren of the Order of St. Corvinus, who have builded themselves a convent near a wood which I frequent: what a droning and a chanting they keep up! I protest their reverences' singing is nothing to yours! You sing so deliciously in parts, do for the love of harmony favour me with a solo!«

While this conversation was going on, the ox was chumping the grass; the frog was eyeing him in such a rage at his superior proportions, that he would have spurted venom at him if he could, and that he would have burst, only that is impossible, from sheer envy; the little lambkin was lying unsuspiciously at the side of the wolf in fleecy hosiery, who did not as yet molest her, being replenished with the mutton her mamma. But now the wolf's eyes began to glare, and his sharp white teeth to show, and he rose up with a growl, and began to think he should like lamb for supper.

»What large eyes you have got!« bleated out the lamb, with rather a timid look.

»The better to see you with, my dear.«

»What large teeth you have got!«

»The better to –«

At this moment such a terrific yell filled the field, that all its inhabitants started with terror. It was from a donkey, who had somehow got a lion's skin, and now came in at the hedge, pursued by some men and boys with sticks and guns.

When the wolf in sheep's clothing heard the bellow of the ass in the lion's skin, fancying that the monarch of the forest was near, he ran away as fast as his disguise would let him. When the ox heard the noise he dashed round the meadow-ditch, and with one trample of his hoof squashed the frog who had been abusing him. When the crow saw the people with guns coming, he instantly dropped the cheese out of his mouth and took to wing. When the fox saw the cheese drop, he immediately made a jump at it (for he knew the donkey's voice, and that his asinine bray was not a bit like his royal master's roar), and making for the cheese, fell into a steel trap, which snapped off his tail; without which he was obliged to go into the world, pretending, forsooth, that it was the fashion not to wear tails any more, and that the fox-party were better without 'em.

Meanwhile, a boy with a stick came up, and belaboured master donkey, until he roared louder than ever. The wolf, with the sheep's clothing draggling about his legs, could not run fast, and was detected and shot by one of the men. The blind old owl, whirring out of the hollow tree, quite amazed at the disturbance, flounced into the face of a ploughboy, who knocked her down with a pitchfork. The butcher came and quietly led off the ox and the lamb; and the farmer, finding the fox's brush in the trap, hung it up over his mantelpiece, and always bragged that he had been in at his death.

»What a farrago of old fables is this! What a dressing up in old clothes!« says the critic. (I think I see such a one – a Solomon that sits in judgment over us authors and chops up our children.) »As sure as I am just and wise, modest, learned, and religious, so surely I have read something very like this stuff and nonsense about jackasses and foxes before. That wolf in sheep's clothing – do I not know him? That fox discoursing with the crow – have I not previously heard of him? Yes, in Lafontaine's fables: let us get the Dictionary and the Fable and the Biographie Universelle, article Lafontaine, and confound the impostor.«

»Then, in what a contemptuous way,« may Solomon go on to remark, »does this author speak of human nature! There is scarce one of these characters he represents but is a villain.