Her father, Patrick Hiffernan, is described by Whistler's friends, Joseph Pennell and his wife Elizabeth, as being like "Captain Costigan," the drunken Irishman in Thackeray's novel Pendennis.
Pen, heartbroken, leaves home to study at St Boniface's college in Oxbridge.
Pendennis | Pendennis Castle | GWR 4073 Class 4079 Pendennis Castle | GWR 4073 Class 4079 ''Pendennis Castle'' |
In spring 2002 at Castel Pendynas, Pendennis, Falmouth in Cornwall, Wearne was made a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd for services to Cornish Music in America (in Cornish: Rag gonys dhe Ylow Kernewek yn Ameryky) with the bardic name Canor Gwanethtyr - Singer of the Prairie.
In William Thackeray's novel Pendennis, published in 1849, the main character attends the fictional Boniface College, Oxbridge.
The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century (1857-59) is a historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray which forms a sequel to his Henry Esmond and is also loosely linked to Pendennis.
They are the scene for a brief but pivotal turning point in the fortunes of anti-heroine Becky Sharp in William Makepeace Thackeray's 19th-century novel Vanity Fair, as well as a setting in his novel Pendennis.