The Illustrator's Book Club

Illustrator's Book Club Cover

Join us for the Art Division's Illustrator's Book Club as we read The Newcomes!

The Newcomes Book Cover

The Newcomes
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Illustrated by artist Howard Pyle

Read in serial, as originally presented in Harper’s Magazine
November 2024 through October 2026

What to do:
Get the book.
Start reading any time in November.
Follow the reading schedule below.
Join the discussion group, meeting periodically in person and online!

Read like it’s 1853!
In the 1800s, novels were often written and published in magazines, described as ‘in serial’ or month-to-month. Readers received only a few chapters at a time. Imagine the anticipation of getting the next chapters! With our story, The Newcomes, readers got to know the characters over two years and through decades of the fictional family’s life. It is said that readers felt the loss of these characters after the last chapters ended, as did their author. Let’s experience a little of what these first readers of The Newcomes felt by following the same schedule they did.

Where to find the story:
> With a subscription to Harper’s Magazine, you can access an archive to read the story in the original format: Home | Harper's Magazine (harpers.org)
> Local or online booksellers
> TTU Library
> Project Gutenberg online: The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family by William Makepeace Thackeray | Project Gutenberg
> Internet Archive online: Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

Join us for our Virtual Book Club Meeting!

April 5, 2025
2-3 p.m. Central Time

In our first meeting of the Illustrators Book Club this year, we’re discussing chapters 1-15 in this epic story about the Newcome family. These chapters cover five months in a two-year reading plan that mimics the experience original readers had from 1853 to 1855. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the chapters. Find month-by-month summaries below, which will form our discussion!

Please register for this meeting by March 30 and receive the Zoom link right in your email inbox!

Registration link:https://forms.office.com/r/L6UZUBc3fZ

Reading Schedule:
We’ve used the chapter’s original Roman numerals, which were also used in our copy of the book by Penguin Classics, published in 1996, with notes and an introduction by David Pascoe.

Test your Roman numerals knowledge!

Roman Numeral	Number
I	1 (one)
V	5 (five)
X	10 (ten)
L	50 (fifty)

1853 / 2024

November: Chapters I-III

When was the last time you read a story in which Owl and Fox were arguing in words? Chapter I of The Newcomes introduces cunning, devouring, sneaking, envy, privilege, wisdom, scholarship, and airs in a fable or story using animals as characters to deliver a moral. This surprising start (to our 21st-century ears) allows the author to warn us that not all will be as it seems on our two-year journey with the Newcome family in England.

With this warning duly given, the story’s author attends the theatre with friends, followed by dinner at the local pub, where, to his surprise, Colonel Newcome enters with his son Clive (the young man in our painting), whom he’d known at school. The Colonel has returned to England from a 35-year military service in India. He visits the pub to reacquaint himself with the who’s who of English society and politics.

When someone jokes that young Clive should be in bed (too young to be in a pub), Colonel Newcome replies, “Why shouldn’t my boy have innocent pleasure? I was allowed none when I was a young chap, and the severity was nearly the ruin of me.” We learn the Colonel is enthusiastic and generous, one who laughs, delights, and sings – and erupts in anger when things get a bit too rowdy. What is this ‘severity’ and near ‘ruin’ he mentions?

Chapter II tells the Newcome family history as far back as 1775, how they made the family fortune, and how the Colonel, Clive’s father, becomes estranged from his parents and leaves for India "frantic with wrath and despair.” There, like his own father, he winds up a widowed parent.

Chapter III recounts the correspondence in the Colonel’s “letter-box” (no smartphone for him). Through the conflicting voices of in-laws and stepbrothers swirling around the Colonel’s wealth and birthright, we hear about Clive’s birth, childhood, and education. Born in India, Clive makes a four-month journey to England and, raised by his mother’s sister with help (or interference) from her brother, is “everything that a father’s, an uncle’s (who loves him as a father), a pastor’s, a teacher’s affection could desire.”

December: Chapters IV-VI

In this set of chapters, following the schedule on Harpers.org (which we’ve discovered is different than the one published in the book... you may find others too!), we learn greater detail about the characters to whom we’ve been introduced. The morning after the pub incident, our narrator takes us back in time, revealing more about Clive, the hero of the story, about his and Clive’s relationship, Clive’s uncles and aunts, his father’s aspiration for him, and that he has a cousin two years his junior, named Ethel.

We learn the Colonel does not hold a grudge – his wrath from the night before is gone – and he values learning over wealth and military achievement. We see the familiar theme of respectability and elements of the ‘gentleman’s code’ in both business and country life.

We read that Clive’s paternal family receives him with warmth and kindness during his short visits but, driven by wealth and acclaim as they are, forget him as soon as he leaves. The narrator also considers the motivations for her love of Clive’s maternal aunt, who is his guardian. This leads to contemplation about the consequences of war on children and families—as timely a topic then as now, with this story published during the Crimean War.

The circumstances of the Colonel’s marriage to Clive’s mother are revealed along with significant elements of his heart. Given Pyle’s illustration, this quote must be celebrated!

“If Clive had not been as fine and handsome a young lad as any in that school or country, no doubt his fond father would have been just as well pleased and endowed him with a hundred fanciful graces; but, in truth, in looks and manners he was everything which his parent could desire; and I hope the artist who illustrates this work will take care to do justice to his portrait.”

Despite this glowing account, December ends with snobbery, irreverence, and indifference from the next generation.

Learn about the Crimean War:

https://www.nps.gov/places/the-crimean-war.htm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/crimea_01.shtml

1854 / 2025

January: Chapters VII-IX

In this set of chapters, we get Clive’s first-hand impressions of his aunts and uncles who have raised him after his mother died and his father remains in military service in India. He spends quality time with his dad, after the Colonel is excluded from a dinner party hosted by his sister-in-law, called Mrs. Newcome, but is then hastily invited to the after party. To make up for her snafu, this aunt claims she made Clive well after he had scarlet fever.

Surrounding this party, we learn the Newcome family members are pushy to get what they want. Clive’s cousin Barnes dismays the Colonel as a possible influence on Clive. The Colonel meets for the first time his late wife’s brother, Charles, and we hear more about Clive’s mother, Emma – a woman whose personality when alive caused the Colonel “many a night of pain and day of anxiety.” Uncle Charles proceeds to describe all the people at the dinner party so “that you might fancy they were listening over his shoulder.” At the party, the Colonel runs into an old friend from India. Finally, in him we meet someone who knows and respects the Colonel. We hear again of the Colonel’s sincere dedication to young Clive.

Most fun is the first meeting of two of Clive’s aunts – his mother’s sister, Miss Honeyman with whom he lives, and his uncle’s wife through his father’s family, Lady Ann. At the suggestion of the family doctor, Lady Ann, her children, and her trusty German butler stay unawares at Miss Honeyman's boarding house to care for Lady Ann's sick son.Lady Ann makes demands of rank and class that miff Miss Honeyman to the point of threatening to turn them out. As her young son cries in hunger, Lady Ann begs Miss Honeyman to let them stay. Suddenly, Ethel recognizes Miss Honeyman as Clive’s aunt, and Lady Ann and Miss Honeyman with new understanding swiftly reconcile over a glass of wine.

This month, we see in action all the women in Clive’s life. Mrs. Newcome seems oblivious. Lady Ann seems simple. Miss Honeyman seems proud. Could the source of this pride

be dissatisfaction and respectability, where she might instead revel in the grace of simplicity? Ethel by contrast appears humble, joyful, grateful, observant...and ignored. Hmm...

February: Chapters X-XII

This month, we continue the journey with Colonel Newcome as he reestablishes himself in England, set amid two side stories – one of Saint Pedro of Alcantara, whose extreme sacrifice contrasts with pastor Honeyman’s indulgence, and the second, a cautionary tale of the pent-up child, who finally breaking free of parental protection brings infamy on the family...a warning perhaps, but about which young person remains to be seen.

We learn about Ethel’s maternal family, the House of Kew; about pastor Charles Honeyman (brother of Clive’s deceased mother) and the skeleton in his closet; and about Clive’s friendship with fellow young artist, John James (J.J.)

To begin, Ethel, a tall girl who suffered from scant education, felt outcast by her peers and found comfort in caring for younger children, telling them countless stories. Her grandmother, Old Lady Kew, arranged the marriage between Ethel's parents, her daughter, Lady Ann, and the Colonel's half-brother, Brian Newcome.

Old Lady Kew is known for her cruel treatment of her other unmarried daughter, Lady Julia, who suffers from a spinal disease and her mother’s constant mocking. She is called "Pincushion" for the jabs of sarcasm she endures. Her mother’s harshness is infamous, with her being regarded as "the wickedest old woman in England" by Jack Belsize, a dinner guest with her grandson the Earl of Kew. Jack and the Earl have a chance outing with young Ethel and her siblings, in which they witness Ethel’s bravery. When they recount this to the Old Lady, she calls for an audience with Ethel, a fellow sufferer with her Aunt Julia, who had always “rebelled against the grandmother and...fought on her Aunt Julia’s side....”

Charles Honeyman is beloved preacher, adored by the community. Little do his parishioners know, Mr. Honeyman is not as perfect as he appears, despite his landlady’s best efforts to know. The story’s narrator, Mr. Pendennis (Clive’s former mentor at school), while revealing the skeleton(s) in Honeyman’s closet, tells us too about the pastor’s boarding house neighbors and the skeletons in their closets. One of these neighbors is Mr. Fredrick Bayham, son of the house’s owner, who nevertheless lives penniless on the top floor. One night, Bayham pays an unexpected visit to his childhood friend’s room, drinks Honeyman’s (very expensive) wine, and reveals Honeyman as a liar, even from childhood!

Then we meet the young and frail John James (J.J.), only son of the boarding house butler. Born with a birth defect, John James suffered ridicule and bullying as a child; even his own father was ashamed of him. He found a friend in one of the house residents, Miss Cann, who taught him as much as she could about drawing and painting and alighted in him hope through a passion for art and a life where imagination is more prized than respectability.

As a fellow artist, John James greatly admires his peer Clive, seeks every opportunity to see Clive, and models the heroes in his drawings after Clive’s countenance. Clive, on the other hand, though he admires John James’ artistic talent, merely uses him to smuggle food and cigars into school. Clive too has artistic talent, but he exclaims to his father, “...I can only draw what I see. Somehow he seems to see things we don’t....” Clive determines to be a true artist like his friend.

Chapter 12 ends with the Colonel, Pendennis, and Clive paying a visit to Honeyman and meeting Bayham, who had been present at the pub where the story began and had greatly admired the Colonel’s display of gentlemanliness. The four men decide to dine together at the Colonel’s lodgings, and on the way, gather a large dinner party.

In this month’s chapters, we meet many characters surrounding the Colonel, his half-brother Brian, and his brother-in-law Charles, painting a picture of the dynamic milieu in which Ethel and Clive begin to assert themselves as young adults.